Part 3

The Chinese assert that they had the art of writing at a period 2950 years before Christ; but they have no records or monuments of that date; and their characters even to the present time, are entire words, representing objects, ideas or things, not sounds. In the art of printing, they pretend to have preceded the European nations about 2400 years, dating their invention of it from the tenth century before Christ. But they have never advanced beyond the first form of the art—letters engraved on solid wooden blocks—the very method in use by Koster, and his associates, until the invention of moveable types by John Gansfleisch, otherwise named John Gutenberg or Guttemberg, in 1435. In both arts, writing and printing alike, the Chinese have remained stiff, solid and immovable at the first step, with the characteristic unchangeability of the yellow races of Eastern Asia, so opposite to the indefinitely progressive and self-improving energy of the nations whose progenitors proceeded west from the original source and centre of the earth’s population. The same ink serves the Chinese both for writing and printing, as does the same kind of paper. This ink they invented about the end of the first century of the Christian era; before which time they wrote on boards or bamboos. Having next proceeded to the use of silken cloth for these purposes, the preparation of paper from that material naturally followed. Their ink, being carbonaceous and oleaginous, is, of course, (like that of the Egyptians and all the other ancients,) unfading, and unalterable by chemical agencies, though capable of being effaced or obscured by watery applications or exposure.

As to their claim of having _invented_ the art of printing, we shall have something to say hereafter.

The Aztecs (in Mexico, before the Spanish discovery and conquest,) extensively employed a picture-writing, as a means of recording events, during a period not exceeding two centuries before that epoch. They had the art of manufacturing materials as a basis of such writing, from the _Agave_ or American aloe, and from cotton, in the form of a very fine cloth. They also used prepared skins for the same purpose, the best specimens of which are pronounced to be more beautiful than the finest vellum. Their manuscripts were sometimes done up in rolls or scrolls, and frequently on tablets, in the form of a folding-screen. Their inks appear to have been coloring matters in watery solutions.

The oldest Phoenician ink-writing of which any specimen has been preserved, dates no later than the second century before Christ, and may be much older.

A fac-simile of a portion of it will be found among our illustrations, explained by notes referring to each by its number.

Greek manuscripts in ink (on papyrus), of the third century before Christ, are in existence. We give specimens of the oldest known,—one written in Egypt, 260 B.C., being an order from Dioscorides, an officer of the government of Ptolemy Philadelphus, to another named Dorion. The translation of the words is “Dioscorides to Dorion, greeting. Of the letter to Dorion the copy is subjoined.” * * * We add other specimens, of the same and later periods.

Of Latin writing with ink, the earliest we can find is the palimpsest of Cicero’s book, “De Republica,” which had been partly effaced to make room for a copy of Augustin’s commentary on the Psalms. It is believed by the learned that the original manuscript was executed at least as early as the second or third century of the Christian era. The restoration of this manuscript, and the discovery of this long-lost and earnestly sought classic gem, were the work of Cardinal Mai, as before mentioned. The original words are TETERRIMUS ET EX HAC VEL——, and are written in two columns on the page, while the later writing runs completely across the page.

Of the earliest writing executed in France, after that country received its name from those who conquered it, we give a specimen from the beginning of a charter of King Dagobert I, executed A.D. 628. The words are—“QUOTIESCUMQUE PETITIONIBUS”—“However many times to petitions,” &c. It is a confirmation of a partition of property between two heirs. The monogrammatic autograph of the Great Karl, (in modern times called Charlemagne,) we present also as an object of interest. A.D. 800.

The oldest specimen of writing in Great Britain which has been preserved to the nineteenth century, was a book believed to be not later than the year 600 of the Christian era. Astle has preserved an engraved specimen of it; but the priceless original has since been destroyed by fire in the British Museum. It was said to be a book of Augustin. A specimen still in existence, dates between the years 664 and 670. It is a charter of Sebbi, King of the East Saxons, and is easily read:—“I, Sebbi, King,” &c. We subjoin a few words from the commencement of a charter of William the Conqueror, whose reign commenced in England, A.D. 1066:—WILL: DEI GRA^{TIA} REX, &c., SCIATIS ME CONCESSISSE—“William, by the grace of God, King &c.: Know ye that I have granted—”

ISAAC D’ISRAELI, in his Curiosities of Literature, (vol. 2, page 180, of the Boston edition,) gives a treatise on the “Origin of the Materials of Writing.” He commences it with these remarkable words: “It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its discovery.”

Now, of all “curiosities of literature,” this little sentence is, in many respects, the most curious. He talks of substitutes for a thing not in existence, and not even a subject of imagination, conjecture, or conception. The name of D’Israeli does not indicate an IRISH origin, but there is a strong affinity between this and those curiosities of literature commonly called “Irish bulls.” As for instance, it reminds us of the couplet composed by an Irish officer of a garrison in the Scottish Highlands, in commemoration of the “good works” of General Wade, who had caused excellent military roads to be made through some of the previously almost impassable morasses of that region.

“_Had you seen these roads before they were made, You’d have lifted your hands and blessed General Wade._”

Now, by way of comment on D’ISRAELI, we will say that “it is very curious,” and moreover very strange, if not ridiculous, that he and ASTLE, (from whom he copies without a full and fair acknowledgment,) while “deeply complaining of the inferiority of our inks to those of antiquity,” have utterly failed to ascertain the cause or even to notice the occasion of it. They, as well as other writers on the subject, observe the excellence of the ink employed in manuscripts of earlier ages, down to the twelfth century, and the inferiority of the ink used from that period down to the close of the seventeenth century, without turning attention to the great historical fact that the FIRST PAPER-MILL in Europe was established in that same twelfth century.

A peculiar CACHEXY (a variety of the disease known to psycho-nosologists as the _cacoëthes scribendi_,) seems to be hereditary in the D’Israeli family. BENJAMIN D’ISRAELI, (the son of Isaac,) late Chancellor of the Exchequer, &c., when he rose in his place, as the Head or Representative of Her Majesty’s government in the House of Commons, to pronounce a eulogy on the recently deceased Duke of Wellington, had the impudence to repeat, word for word, a very bald translation of the _éloge_ delivered by Lamartine a few years previous, on occasion of the death of one of the third-rate marshals of Napoleon I.

The D’Israeli family are evidently “some” of the children of Israel, who, (as we are told on good authority,) when they left Egypt _borrowed_ everything they could get, and never, so far as the record shows, either returned the articles so obtained, or made proper acknowledgments therefor.

The Chinese did manufacture paper from the bark of the small branches of a tree of the mulberry genus, (_Morus Multicaulis_?) and also from old rags, silk, hemp, and cotton, as early as the second century of the Christian era; and it is supposed that from them the Arabs derived their knowledge of paper-making, an art which they introduced into Europe in the former half of the twelfth century, when the first paper-mill was put in operation in Spain, then under the Moorish dominion; and, in 1150, this article, as manufactured by them, had become famous throughout Christendom.

[We use the words Arab and Moor indiscriminately here. The former is the name of the race; the latter is limited to that portion found in Northern Africa. The Moor is the Arab of the WEST, (Al Mogreb, El Gharb,) in the Arabic, denominated MOGREBYN,—a word which in Roman and European mouths has smoothed and softened itself into a form suggestive of the origin of _Maurus_ and _Mauritania_.]

Now, without coming to a positive conclusion on this subject, we feel authorized to pronounce what appears to be a reasonable opinion, derived from all the facts which we have just placed before the reader,—that the introduction of writing-paper among Europeans, was the occasion and cause of the invention and general employment of modern writing-ink by them.

The fact that the vegetable astringents form a deep or bluish black color, when combined with a salt of iron, had been known from time immemorial. Among the Romans, the _atramentum sutorium_,—“shoemaker’s ink,”—was applied to a solution of sulphate of iron employed by them, as it is even to this day, by workers in leather, to blacken the surface of that material. This it does by uniting chemically with the tannin and gallic acid, by which the hide was converted into leather, whose blackened particles are therefore essentially identical with modern ink. The “copperas-water” is to be found in every shoemaker’s shop, where it is used to color the cut edges of the heels and the rest of the soles.

As soon as the difficulty of writing with convenience and rapidity on paper, with the ancient carbonaceous ink, became manifest, the resort to the _atramentum sutorium_ as a substitute for the _atramentum scriptorium_, was a matter of course, and was but a simple adaptation of a familiar substance to a new purpose, requiring no great ingenuity, and no invention whatever.

For a time, perhaps through a period of several centuries, a mixture of the two kinds of ink was employed by the Romans; and this was undoubtedly the best composition that was ever invented for the purpose of deliberate, careful, elegant writing, designed and required to be permanent and unchangeable under constant exposure and handling,—as in the case of manuscript books before the art of printing was known. Even as early as the first century of the Christian era, in the time of Pliny the Younger, and probably long before that, a solution of sulphate of iron was commonly or frequently added to the carbonaceous and oleaginous mixture which we have described as the original writing-ink. In short, the _atramentum sutorium_ was added, in moderate quantity, to the _atramentum scriptorium_, thus constituting it a CHEMICAL as well as a MECHANICAL ink. So, modern ink may be improved in blackness, durability and beauty, and rendered unchangeable in color under the action of the chlorides, acids, &c., by the intermixture of a small quantity of the very finest carbon, in the form of an impalpable powder. But, the great difficulty is—that the carbon clogs the pen, and renders the ink too thick to flow easily, so that it can never be used for rapid or ordinary writing. We can not give, in our own words, a better account of this matter than we find in the language of a very learned author in the Edinburgh Review, (volume 48, Dec. 1828).

The article here cited is entitled “THE RECOVERY OF LOST WRITINGS,” and is nominally a review of [1]GAII INSTITUTIONUM COMMENTARII: [2]INSTITUTES DE GAIUS, RECEMMENT DECOUVERTES DANS UN PALIMPSESTE DE LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DE CHAPITRE DE VERONE. [3]JURISCONSULTI ANTE-JUSTINIANEI RELIQUIAE INEDITAE, _ex codice rescripto Bibliothecae Vaticanae_, _curante_ ANGELO MAIO, _Bibliothecae ejusdem Praefecti_. The article begins on page 348 of this volume of the Review.

We quote from page 366;—“The ink which the ancients generally used, was composed of lamp-black mixed with gum, as we are informed by Dioscorides and others, who give the receipt [recipe?] for making it. Ink of this kind may be called carbonic: it possesses the advantages of extreme blackness and durability, the writing remaining fresh so long as the substance on which it is written exists; but as it does not sink into the paper, it is liable to the great inconvenience of being easily and entirely removed; for, if a wet sponge be applied to it, the writing may be washed away, and no traces of the characters will remain. The facility with which documents might be thus obliterated, gave occasion to fraud, as an artful forger was able to remove such portions of the original writing as he might desire to get rid of, and thus profit by the absence of material words, or insert in the blanks which he had made, such interpolations as might serve his turn. Many common accidents, by which books and writings were exposed to wet, or even to damp, were also fatal, or at least highly injurious, to compositions and muniments of great value. Various expedients were therefore attempted to remedy an imperfection from which many must have suffered severely. PLINY informs us that it was usual, in his time, to mix vinegar with the ink, to make it _strike into the paper or parchment_, and that it, in some degree, answered the purpose. It should seem that vitriolic ink, such as we use at present, was also adopted soon afterwards, which possesses, in perfection, the quality that was desired of sinking instantly into the paper, so as to make it far more difficult to discharge it without destroying the texture on which it is written, and of being perfectly secure against water, by which Indian and other carbonic Inks are so easily effaced. IT IS NOT, however, EQUALLY SECURE AGAINST THE EFFECTS OF TIME; for vitriolic ink gradually fades away, becomes paler by degrees, turns brown and yellow, and is scarcely legible; and sometimes, as the parchment grows yellow and brown with age, it disappears altogether. A compound kind of ink came next into use, which united the advantages and avoided the defects of the two simple sorts. Such a mixed ink was generally used for several centuries; and with this, the manuscripts that are now most fresh and legible appear to have been written. It is evident that the ink with which the original works contained in the Palimpsest manuscripts that have been deciphered were written, was at least in part vitriolic: for the letters which had been rubbed out _were rendered legible by the application of the infusion of galls_. In order to remove the original writing, the parchments on which the mixed ink had been used were, probably, first washed to take off the carbon, and thus partially to efface the characters, and were afterwards scraped or rubbed with pumice, or some other suitable substance, to complete the process of destruction, by taking away mechanically the color that the vitriolic portion of the ink still preserved. It is but too probable that many manuscripts, the characters of which were entirely formed of the more ancient carbonic ink, have been entirely destroyed, the letters having been washed off completely, and by the same simple means as the writing of a school-boy on a slate; whilst the parchment still remains in our libraries, and is covered with more modern compositions which have sacrilegiously and too successfully usurped the place of more ancient and more valuable matter. The tirades of Cyril or of Jerome, or the tawdry eloquence of Chrysostom, are perhaps firmly established in quarters from whence [?] the Margites of Homer, or the comedies of Menander, were miserably dislodged.

“A manuscript is called Palimpsest, from the adjective παλιμψαιστος or παλιμψηστος, signifying twice rubbed; NOT as the glossary of Du Cange (_membrana iterum abrasa—charta deletilis_) would seem to denote, because the parchment had twice undergone abrasure, or the writing been twice obliterated, but because it had been twice prepared for writing, which was principally effected by rubbing it with pumice, first in the course of manufacture, after the original skin had been cured, and again by the same process, after the original writing had been taken away by washing, or in any other manner. The strict and precise sense of Palimpsest is therefore ‘twice prepared for writing;’ the repetition of such preparation being the prevailing idea in the etymology, and _not erasure_, as some have erroneously supposed. It is said to be easy to remove from modern parchment, especially if what is written be of some standing, all traces of writing, by rubbing it with pumice, or similar substances; and if the surface be afterwards polished, no one, by merely looking on it, will ever suppose that it had ever been written upon; but, if it be washed by _an infusion of galls_, the letters will be so far restored, particularly if it be suffered to remain some time in the light, that it may be copied by a patient and practiced person, who is gifted with good eyes:—so deeply had the iron entered into the soul of the parchment! If the erased letters were written in a bold large hand, the task of deciphering them will of course be less troublesome, and the results more sure. And such are the characters of the more ancient manuscripts; for, the older the manuscript, the better and more legible is the writing, as approaching more nearly to the ages of civility and refinement. The method of writing in old times is also favorable, it is said, to the restoration of works apparently obliterated. The scribe did not use a flowing ink, nor a finely pointed pen, as modern writers are wont; nor was a small quantity applied so lightly and sparingly as to dry almost as fast as it touches the paper. The ancient ink was thick with gum, and was supplied copiously by a pen with a broad point, usually made of a reed; and the characters were _painted_ rather than written, the ink rather resembling paint or varnish than our thin liquor. As they rarely wrote in books, it was not necessary that the page should dry speedily, or be dried by means of sand and blotting-paper, in order to prevent the loss of time, and that the penman might turn over the leaf immediately; the loose sheets or leaves, on the contrary, which were only to be bound up when the whole was completed, were left to dry slowly, so that the pools of ink which formed the letters, stood long on the surface of the parchment; and that part of the fluid which was of a penetrating nature was gradually absorbed, and sunk deeply into the substance of the skin, so as to preserve to us—if we be not wanting to ourselves in diligence—many precious relics of ancient lore. The restoration of the original writing in a palimpsest manuscript will be best explained by referring to one of the many kinds of sympathetic ink, which is in truth, making common ink _ex post facto_, or uniting the ingredients of which it is composed, after the fact of writing. If we write with water in which copperas has been dissolved, the letters will be invisible; but when the paper has been washed over with an infusion of galls, they will appear gradually, and will in time become tolerably legible; the ink being thus formed upon the paper, although much less perfectly, than in the ordinary maceration.”

Little or nothing can be added to the full and elaborate history of ancient and modern inks which is contained in this extract,—so thorough and complete in its analysis of the subject, and so clear in its distinct statements of the results of investigations in which some of the most acute minds of Europe have long been successfully employed, that we will not linger upon it with mere verbal criticism.

We can not present a more striking illustration of the change in the composition of inks about the time of the invention of the art of printing, than is furnished by the annexed fac-simile of a page in the BIBLIA PAUPERUM, (“Bible for poor folks,”) the oldest printed book in the world. This extraordinary book is of uncertain date. (No printed book has a date prior to 1457.) There are, as we believe, only two copies of it in America, one in the possession of JAMES LENOX, of New-York,—the other in the ASTOR LIBRARY.

The maker of this book was the unconscious inventor of the art of printing. Wood-engraving was in use for ages before it occurred to the mind of man that a letter might be as easily reproduced in that way as a picture or figure. To convey scriptural history to the minds of the common people, the wood-engravers (whose art was invented to multiply and cheapen the production of PLAYING-CARDS) made little pictures representing scenes described, and events narrated, in the Bible. For the benefit of the few who could read, it was customary to write on the margin, or at the foot, of the page on which the woodcut was printed, a few words descriptive of the subject or object delineated. This was always done with a pen, by a regular scribe, until, one day, it occurred to the wood-engraver employed on the _Biblia Pauperum_, that these words might be as easily engraved as the figures to which they referred, and of which they were the explanation. He put that idea in practice: and in an instant the sublime ART OF PRINTING was an “accomplished fact.”

The advocates of the claims of Koster, Gansefleisch, (or Gutenberg,) Faust (or Fust,) and Schoeffer, to this invention, have wasted much labor in bringing forth conflicting testimony about them. The long-forgotten and now wholly unknown wood-engraver of the _Biblia Pauperum_ had preceded them by half of a generation. Such books were in existence before A.D. 1420; and the earliest date which the Haarlaem Dutchmen set up for the first printing of their fellow-townsman, Lawrence Koster, is 1428. And his pretensions are after all very dubious. Indeed they have been generally condemned as utterly fabulous by bibliographical critics and typographical historians.

We introduce it here to show the _color_ and the (thereby indicated) composition of the INK employed. It was _writing-ink_. It contained sulphate of iron (copperas), in combination with vegetable astringent matter, and with very little carbon. The vegetable substance, imperfectly united to the mineral ingredient, has (in obedience to the laws of organic matter) been decomposed and “resolved into its original elements.” It has disappeared; but the IRON remains with its yellow stain, an imperishable memorial of that humble, nameless workman, more enduring than that which the plaintive man of Uz desired; for if those words had been “graven with an IRON PEN and lead in the rock _forever_,” that anticipated eternity might have faded of realization by the action of the rain, the frost, the dust, and innumerable imaginable atmospheric vicissitudes, or, (what is worse,) “the wrath of man.”—Some Cambyses might have demolished the rock itself, and left no more of the inscription than can now be read of those once carved on the cliffs of Edom, the God-created walls of Petra in the valley of EL GHOR.

This pale rusty WORD-STAMPING on the fragile and easily combustible paper, has outlasted the inscriptions once visible in gigantic characters on the four sides of the Memphitic pyramids; and it is only an incidental result of the intelligence diffused and the learning promoted by the invention thus begun, that we can now read the long-buried records of Nineveh, the epitaphs of the Thebaic kings, and the gravings on the precipitous fronts of the mountains which surround the ruins of Persepolis.