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Curiosities of Literature (Origin of the Materials) (II)

Origin of the Materials of Writing-Minute Writing-Titles of Books-Literary Labour and Perseverance-Curious Account of the Scarcity of Books -Celebrated Libraries-Book of Blunders-Curious Account of the Means of Intellectual Improvement in London. "Of all the pleasures, noble and refin'd, Which form the taste and cultivate the mind; In ev'ry realm where science darts its beam, From Zembla's ice to Afric's golden stream; From climes where Phoebus pours his orient ray, To the fair regions of declining day :

The The 'feast of reason' which from reading springs, the highest solace brings. 'Tis books a lasting pleasure can supply, Charm while we live, and teach us how to die."

ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. - The most an cient mode of writing was on bricks, and on tables of stone, afterwards on plates of various materials, on ivory, on the bark of trees, and on their leaves.

Specimens of most of these modes of writing may be seen in the British Museum. No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a the British Museum.

No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a Nabob's letter, on a piece of bark about two yards long, and richly ornamented with gold. No. 3207, is a book of Mexican hieroglyphics, painted on bark. In the same collection are various species , many from the Malabar coast, and other parts of the East. parts of the East. The latter writings are chiefly on leaves. Sibyls were on leaves. There are seve ral copies of Bibles written on palm-leaves, still preserved in various collections in Europe. The ancients, doubtless, wrote on any leaves they found adapted for the purpose. Hence the leaf of a book, as well as that of a tree, is derived.

In the book of Job, mention is made of writing on stone, and on sheets of lead. The law of Moses was written on stone. on sheets of lead. The law of Moses was written on stone.

Hesiod's works were written on leaden tables; lead was used for writing, and rolled up like a cylinder, as Pliny states.

The laws of the Greeks were engraven on bronze tables. In the shepherd state, they wrote their songs with thorns and awls, on leather. The Icelanders wrote on walls; and Olaf, according to one of the sagas, built a large house, on the balks and spars of which he had engraven the history of his own and more ancient times; while another northern hero appears to have had nothing better than his own chair and The Arabs bed, on which to perpetuate his own heroic acts. The Araba took the shoulder-bones of sheep, on which they carved remarkable events with a knife, and after tying them with a string, they hung these chronicles up in their cabinets.

These early inventions led to the discovery of tablets of wood; and as cedar is incorruptible, from its bitterness, they chose this wood for cases or chests to preserve their most important writings. From this custom arises the celebrated expression of the ancients, when they meant to give the highest eulogium of an excellent work, et cedro digna locuti; ; that it was worthy to be written on cedar. These tablets were made of the trunks of trees; the use of them still exists, but in general they are made of other materials than wood. The same reason which led them to prefer the cedar to other trees, induced them to write on wax, which is incorruptible from its nature. Men generally used it to write their testaments, in order the better to preserve them: thus Juvenal says, Cerus implere capaces. This thin paste of wax was also spread on tablets of wood, that it might more easily admit of erasure. They wrote with an iron bodkin, as they did on the other substances we have noticed. The stylus was made sharp at one end to write with, and blunt and broad at the other to deface and correct easily; hence the phrase vertere stylum, to turn the stylus, was used to express blotting out. But the out.

Romans forbade the use of this sharp instrument. from the instrument , from the circumstance of many persons having used then. as daggers. A schoolmaster was killed by the pugillares, or table-book. and the styles of his own scholars. They substituted a stylus made of the bone of a bird, or other animal, so that tl cir writings resembled engravings. When they wrote on softer materials, they employed reeds and canes, split like our pens at the points, which the Orientalists still use to lay their colour or ink neater on the paper.

By the word pen in the translation of the Bible, we are to understand an iron style. Table-books of ivory are still used for memoranda, written by black-lead pencils. The Romans used ivory to write the edicts of the senate on; and the expression of libris elephantinis, which, some authors imagine, alludes to books which for their size were called elephantine others more rationally conclude, were composed of ivory, the tusk of the elephant.

Pumice was likewise a writing material of the ancients, which they used to smooth the roughness of the parchment, or to sharpen their reeds.

In the progress of time, the art of writing consisted in painting with different kinds of ink This novel mode of writing occasioned them to invent other materials proper to receivo materials proper to receive their writing. They now chose the thin bark of certain trees