INTRODUCTION. 27
without, and of a brownish colour. Tavemier, Chardin, Tumefort, and other lets, give a similar account, adding, that the reeds are about the size of large swan "
- , and are cut and split in the same manner that we do quills, except that the nib is
och larger. The best grow near the Persian Gulph. The mode of preparing them is still practised in the east, was followed by the ancients. Pens made from reeds were jpscorered during the excavation at Pompeii ; they are cut like a quill-pen, except that the nib is much broader. iji The composition, and colour of the ink used by the ancients, were various. Lamp I black, or the black taken from bnmt ivory, and soot, from baths and furnaces, according IJt to Pliny, and other eminent ancient authors, formed the basis of it ; the black liquor of the cuttle fish, is also said, to have been used as ink, principally, in a metaphorical expression of the poet Persius ; but of whatever ingredient it was made, it is certain, from chemical analysis, from the solidity and blackness, in the most ancient manuscripts, ■nd from an inkstand found at Herculaneum, in which the ink appears like a thick oil ; that the ink then made, was much more opaque, as well as encaustic, than that used at piEsent. Black ink was evidently the first in use ; yet, aflerwards, inks of different colours were occasionally used. Golden ink was used by various nations, as may be seen in several libraries, and the archieves of churches ; and was more used by the Greeks than by the Romans. The manufacture, both of gold and silver ink, was a distinct, as weD as lucrative business in the middle ages. Silver ink was also common in most countries. Red, blue, green, and yellow inks, were not uncommon. The red was made from vermilion, cinnabar, and carmine ; the purple from the murex, or purple fish ■ Blue, yellow, and green, were made from pulverized gold and silver, sulphuretted, and sabmitted to the action of fire. The term (dtev) used by Baruch, the sacred writer, signifies blackness ; as does also the word ater, from whence atramentum, the Latin term tor ink. One kind of this coloured ink, was called the sacred encauster, wa.s set apart for sole tise of the emperors. Another distinct business, in the middle ages, was that insdibing the titles, capitals, or emphatic words, in coloured, gold, and silver inks ; A the subscriptions at the end of the Greek and other manuscripts, containing the of the copyist, and the year, month, day, and sometimes the hour, when he
his labour, were generally written in purple ink.
Lcellus, in his work on the antiquities of the Church o/ St. Ambrose, at Milan,
OS, that the originals of the charters of the kings Hugo and Lotharius were
in golden letters ; and that these, as well as other charters of different kings
emperors, executed in characters of gold, upon the skins of fishes, are still extant
MBDngst the archieves of the church. — Mahillon.
Xftias been conjectured, that the celebrated Argonautic expedition was undertaken to ebtun a work written on skins, containing a treatise on the art of writing in gold letters. Such u a very general representation of the state and means of literary communication ^Amongst the ancients, and before the art of printing was discovered ; whoever reflects vfoo It, will not be surprised that the progress of mankind, in every thing useful and valoable, was extremely slow and difficult. Individual and uncommunicated knowledge cannot purify itself from error, and till printing was discovered, how much knowledge most necessarily have been individual, and uncommunicated. In these circuins'tances.
LjOOQ IC
