Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/153

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THE INTRODUCTION OF PAPER IN EUROPE.
143

before its utility was recognized. Hallam says that the use of this cotton paper was by no means general or frequent, except in Spain or Italy, and perhaps in the South of France, until the end of the fourteenth century. Nor was it much used in Italy for books.[1]

Paper came before its time and had to wait for recognition. It was sorely needed. The Egyptian manufacture of papyrus, which was in a state of decay in the seventh century, ceased entirely in the ninth or tenth. Not many books were written during this period, but there was then, and for at least three centuries afterward, an unsatisfied demand for something to write upon. Parchment was so scarce that reckless copyists frequently resorted to the desperate expedient of effacing the writing on old and lightly esteemed manuscripts. It was not a difficult task. The writing ink then used was usually made of lamp-black, gum, and vinegar; it had but a feeble encaustic property, and it did not bite in or penetrate the parchment. The work of effacing this ink was accomplished by moistening the parchment with a weak alkaline solution and by rubbing it with pumice-stone. This treatment did not entirely obliterate the writing, but made it so indistinct that the parchment could be written over the second time. Manuscripts so treated are now known as palimpsests. All the large European public libraries have copies of the palimpsests which are melancholy illustrations of the literary tastes of many writers or book-makers during the middle ages. More convincingly than by argument, they show the utility of paper. Manuscripts of the Gospels, of the Iliad, and of works of the highest merit, often of great beauty and accuracy, are dimly seen underneath stupid sermons, and theological writings of a nature so paltry

  1. Paper, whenever or wherever invented, was very sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French, Germans or English, or linen paper even among the Italians, until near the close of the fourteenth century. Upon the study of the sciences it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is to be added that the earliest linen paper was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too much like card for general convenience. Literature of Europe in the Middle Ages, chap. 1, sec. 65.