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Title: The History of Ink, Including Its Etymology, Chemistry, and Bibliography

Author: Thaddeus Davids

Release date: November 27, 2015 [eBook #50564]
                Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)


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Transcriber's note:

      Words in fonts different from the main text,
      used to denote emphasis, have been surrounded by
      _underscores_.

      Superscripts have been indicated by preceding the
      superscripted letters with ^. When more than one
      character in a row is superscripted, the letters
      have been surrounded by {}.

      An attempt has been made to transcribe the handwritten
      text in plates used to show the different kinds of ink.
      Where the original text was unclear, dots have been
      used to mark illegible letters, [] surround illegible
      but obvious letters, and <> surround letters deleted by
      the original scribe.

      Hyphens have been added at the end of lines where
      appropriate.

      Macrons and tildes on consonants within the plates have
      not been reproduced.

      Longer illegible sections were replaced by [illegible].

      In some cases, a descriptive word or phrase has been
      added and surrounded by square brackets, for example
      [Hieratic text].

      Some corrections have been made to the original. These
      are described in a second transcriber's note at the end
      of the text.





[Illustration:

  THE
  History
  OF INK

  VOX DICTA PERIT, LITERA SCRIPTA MANET.

  THADDEUS DAVIDS & CO.

  NEW YORK.

  SNYDER, BLACK & STURM,

  LITHOGRAPHERS, 92 WILLIAM ST. N.Y.]


THE HISTORY OF INK

Including Its Etymology, Chemistry, and Bibliography.







New-York;
Thaddeus Davids & Co.
127 William Street.


[Illustration:

FRANCIS HART & CO.

Printers,

63 Cortlandt St. N.Y.]





                          The History of Ink.


Ink IS history, in the common acceptation of the word; for, what is
generally denominated history—is ink diffused on paper in certain
definite lines. Yet ink has no history written or composed hitherto. In
view of this deficiency—which betrays a singular negligence (on the part
of historians and all literary men) and a thoughtless ingratitude to
this indispensable means of accomplishing and preserving their work—we
propose to supply the desideratum, by furnishing, on these little pages,
what is indicated by the above title, in the fullest sense and widest
scope of the term, including its etymology, its chemistry, and all that
can be suggested and justified by the title, or fairly demanded under
it, or claimed from it.

The great common error of general historians, ancient and modern, (with
a very few exceptions among the moderns,) has been, that they have given
to the world little else than narrations and descriptions of wars and
treaties, of governmental changes and political events, omitting to
record the often far more important facts in the history of literature,
science, and the arts of utility, by which the progress of civilization
and the development of the human race in its higher capacities have been
effected or aided. The great “Instaurator of the Sciences” was the first
to call attention to these omissions and deficiencies in all previous
histories, and to indicate the duty of historians to avoid these
errors,—setting a good example in that respect, in the specimen, or
model work, which he produced as a pattern,—his history of the reign of
Henry the Seventh. Since his time, many special histories of inventions
and of the arts of utility have been written; and the numerous
cyclopaedists have largely contributed to this object; still, however,
leaving many vacancies to be filled in this department of human
knowledge, of which the one before us can not be considered the least
worthy of the labor needful for its investigation.




                              DEFINITION.


The word INK has been variously defined by lexicographers, cyclopaedists
and chemists; but the following terms may be taken as fully expressing
the common qualities and essential specific characteristics of all
substances included under the name.

INK is a colored liquid employed in making lines, characters or figures
on surfaces capable of retaining the marks so made. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica, (vol. xii. p. 382, 1856,) gives the following definition:
“INK.—The term ink is usually restricted to the fluid employed in
writing with a pen. Other kinds of ink are indicated by a second word,
such as red ink, Indian ink, marking ink, sympathetic ink, printers’
ink, etc. Common ink is, however, sometimes distinguished as writing
ink.”

As to COLOR,—black is and has always been preferred in ordinary uses.
For ornamental purposes and for occasionally useful distinctions,
various other tints have been and are adopted—as blue, red, green,
purple, violet, yellow—and so on, according to the fancy of the maker,
or purchaser, or consumer.

The substance employed to receive and preserve the marks thus made is
now almost universally Paper. Parchment is still used in many legal
documents and writings of form and ceremony. Cotton, linen and silk,
when woven into fabrics for garments and like uses, are also subjected
to marks of ink for the purpose of identifying property. So are wooden
and leathern surfaces in similar conditions. It is also employed in
writing on stone, in the quite modern art of lithography.

Though its great original and continual employment is in writing, it
must be remembered that it is also largely used in the delineation of
objects by artists. Ink and paint are mutually convertible to each
other’s uses, but are yet so distinct in character and objects, that no
one regards the words as synonymous, and no precise definition is needed
to teach the distinction between them. As, for instance, in pen-and-ink
drawings and sketches, the ink serves the purpose of paint. So likewise
in the letters on sign-boards, &c. paint may be considered as a
substitute for ink. The artist who traces his name on the canvas in a
corner of his painting, employs paint in a similar manner. Printing-ink
is used as black paint. In the best red inks, carmine (a paint in
water-colors) is the essential ingredient. Indian Ink is used here only
as paint,—in China, as ink.




                               ETYMOLOGY.


The derivation of the English word “INK,” and of its representatives in
various modern languages, has caused much perplexity to philologists,
and has been the subject of many erroneous conjectures. We suffix the
names by which it is known in those nations who have most employed it:

 English,                                                             Ink.

 Low-Dutch, Neder-Duytsch, Hollandisch,                              Inkt.

 German or Deutsch,                                       Dinte and Tinte.

 Old German,                               Anker, Tincta, Tinta and Dinde.

 Danish, Norwegian, }                           Blaek, (India Ink, Tusch.)
 Norse, Icelandic,  }

 Swedish,                                       Blaeck, (India Ink, Tusk.)

 French,                                                            Encre.

 Old French,                                                        Enque.

 Italian,                                                      Inchiostro.

 Spanish,                                                           Tinta.

 Portuguese,                                                        Tinta.

 Illyrian,                                                         Ingvas.

 Polish,                                                          Incaust.

 Basque,                                                         Coransia.

 Latin,                                                        Atramentum.

 Mediæval Latin,                                                Encaustum.

 Greek,                                                             Melan.

 Hebrew,                                                             D’yo.

 Chaldee,                                                          N’kaso.

 Arabic,                                                   Nikson, Anghas.

 Persian,                                                        S’y’ah’o.

 Hindustani, }                          S’yaho, Rosh’na, kali, shira, mas,
 and Hindui, }                                     murakkat, kalik, midad.

 Sanscrit,                                                  Kali, (Black.)

 Armenian,                                                       Syuaghin.

We might amuse ourselves by extending this tabular list indefinitely.
Enough, however, has been already shown to illustrate a few remarkable
facts which we wish to present that are connected with the etymology of
our subject; but we present a page of Lithographic illustrations which
will enable any “curious reader” to trace the word further.

No dictionary of the English language gives us any help or light about
the matter. Webster suggests “_inchiostro_,” (the Italian word,) as the
source of derivation; and all the Italian lexicographers agree that
_inchiostro_ is from the later Latin ENCAUSTUM, which is in fact Greek,
Εγκαυστον, (Encauston,) “_burned-in_ or corroded.” Encaustum became
corrupted into “_enchaustrum_,” from which the transition to
“_inchiostro_,” is by the regular form of derivation from the Latin to
the Italian,—the L before a vowel giving place to a short I—as “_piano_”
from PLANUS. (The CH, in Italian is always sounded hard, like the
English K.)

Leaving the French word _encre_ as on the middle ground between
different etymologies, and affording no light either way,—we find the
Spanish and Portugese “_tinta_,” and the German (a language widely
remote from those of the Iberian peninsula in origin and affinities)
“_dinte, tinte and tincta_,” forcibly reminding us of the Latin
participle TINCTUS, TINCTA, TINCTUM, from the verb TINGO, which is
represented in English by TINGE, and other derivatives, such as
“_tincture_,” &c. We cannot refuse to recognize the Holland-Dutch
“_Inkt_” as from the same root to which we have thus traced the
corresponding word in a language which we may call its “cousin-German;”
and it is hard to exclude the Old French “_Enque_” and modern “_Encre_”
from this circle of relationship.

Then, we are somewhat impressed by the discovery of the word _Ingvas_ in
the Illyrian, a language of the Slavonic (or more properly Slovenic)
stock, like the Polish,—and, like that, enriched by words derived from
the Latin. The Polish, however, presents us with the actual Graeco-Latin
_Encaustrum_.

Still more remote from the English and Italian, we find among the
Orientals of the Shemitish race, ANGHAS and NIKSON in the Arabic, and
N’KASHO in the Chaldee, with a manifest resemblance in sound, and with
an actual possession of the same elements and radical letters, N. K. Yet
we do not think of suggesting that these words had a common origin with
the corresponding ones in European Languages, though so nearly
coincident in sound. The case is simply one of accidental resemblance, a
remarkable coincidence,—(because occurring at three different and remote
points,) but yet a coincidence not wholly unparalleled.

The probability is that the English word, like the Dutch, German,
Spanish, &c., came from the Latin TINCTUM, but it may be left “an open
question;” for if we had not these instances to direct the formation of
our opinions, we should have no hesitation in acknowledging the Italian
_Inchiostro_ as the true ETYMON; just as, if we had neither of these in
view, we might suspect the origin of our word to be in the Oriental
ANGHAS or NIKSON.

The Ethiopic KALAMA at first sight appears to be related to the
Hindustani KALI; but the latter is merely the word in all the languages
of Hindustan for black,—while the former is but a modification of the
Greek and Latin CALAMUS, a _reed_ or pen,—the instrument (naturally
enough) giving its name to the liquid which was essential to its use.

The word ENCAUSTUM connects, in a very interesting and instructive
manner, both with the history and the chemistry or manufacture of our
modern inks, and is a satisfactory demonstration of the utility of such
etymological researches as those in which we have been here indulging.

The one great distinction between the ancient and the modern inks is
this: The old inks were PAINTS; the writing inks now in use by all
nations (excepting those of Southern Asia) are DYES. That is the whole
difference.

It would be well to give a definition or limitation of the words
“Ancient” and “Modern.” No one has done it hitherto. We will not attempt
to fix the point precisely, but may reasonably say that the period
intervening between September, A.D. 410, (when Rome was taken by ALARIC
and his Visigoths) and December 25, A.D. 800, (when Karl the Great,
otherwise called Charlemagne, was crowned in Rome by Pope Leo with the
title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) contains the interval between
antiquity and modern times.

The introduction of Paper as the common material upon which significant
characters were to be marked must have had a great agency in producing a
change in the composition of the liquid employed in making the marks.

PARCHMENT was the substance in use, among all the European nations, as
the substratum of manuscript, from the time when the Egyptian _papyrus_
went out of fashion. Both the parchment and the papyrus were written
upon, by Romans, Greeks and Hebrews, with pens made of small reeds,
dipped in a fluid composed of _carbon_, (not dissolved, but) held in a
state of suspension by an oil or a solution of gum.

The letters were originally painted on the surface of the papyrus,
parchment, board, or other material so employed—the ink not being
imbibed or absorbed by the substance on which it was shed, but remaining
on the surface, capable of being removed by washing, scraping, rubbing,
or any similar process. The surface thus cleansed was then in a state to
receive a new inscription; so that erasions and inscriptions might be
indefinitely repeated upon it, as upon a modern sign-board.

MODERN INK, on the contrary, leaves its marks upon paper, parchment,
&c., by penetrating the material to such a depth that it cannot be
erased (mechanically) without the removal or destruction of the surface
which it has _tinged_. Chemical agency, as of various acids, chlorine
and its compounds, is generally employed, therefore, to discharge the
color from modern writing-ink-marks. CARBON, in all its common forms,
(charcoal, bituminous coal, anthracite, jet, plumbago, lignite,
ivory-black, lamp-black and soot,) is wholly unalterable in color by any
of these chemical means.

PRINTING INK (which is composed of carbon suspended in a drying oil) is,
in essential characteristics, identical with the writing-inks of the
ancient Romans and Greeks. It is impressed upon the surface of paper,
(that which is _unsized_ or bibulous being commonly preferred,) and is
retained unchanged by the action of moisture, on account of the
insolubility of the carbon and the repulsion between oil and water.
These two forms of ink are therefore the exact opposites of each other,
in the qualities on which their use and permanence depend. The most
important peculiarity of the modern writing-ink, as contrasted with the
ancient, naturally suggested the two names which it bore in the Latin
and Greek of the middle ages, or (to speak more definitely,) the time of
its invention and first employment. It was a _Tincta_, a DYE, or STAIN,
which _tinged_ and _tinctured_ the material on which it was placed,
entering among its fibres as coloring fluids do into cloth in the
ordinary processes of manufacture. It penetrated the substance of the
paper (as caustics or powerful chemical solvents and corrosives act on
the organic fibre): it _bit in_, or _burned in_,—and was therefore well
named ENCAUSTON and _Incaustum_.




                    CHEMISTRY or COMPOSITION of INK.


We do not propose to furnish recipes, prescriptions, directions or
instructions for the manufacture of this article. No mere statement in
words can enable any one to arrive at perfection, or excellence, or
practical success in the production of this article, or any articles
whatsoever. A skill and carefulness, which can be acquired only by long
and laborious experience, are indispensable to the management of the
various processes. Time is an essential element of success in this
peculiar art; and that makes absolutely requisite also, two other
conditions,—_patience_ and _capital_. We shall therefore be brief on
this point,—referring those who wish for minute details, to the
cyclopaedias, dictionaries of the arts and sciences, and the larger
works on practical chemistry. The following we venture to present as the
most correct account of this subject, derived from the latest scientific
and practical authorities.

The composition of ink varies according to its colors, and the purposes
to which it is to be applied.

COMMON BLACK WRITING-INK is the tannate of the sesquoxyd of iron mixed
with a smaller quantity of the gallate of the sesquoxyd of iron. When in
the liquid form, it is generally the tannate and gallate of the
protoxyd; but after being long kept, (or put on the paper and drying
there,) it absorbs more oxygen from the atmosphere; and thus the saline
compounds become the per-tannate and per-gallate, which are blacker than
the tannate and gallate of the protoxyd. It is thus and therefore that
good modern ink is known by the simple test-quality of darkening by age.
On the other hand, when writing becomes yellow, pale or indistinct by
age, it is from the decay of the imperfectly combined vegetable
astringent,—the marks on the paper or parchment being then little more
than the stain of the per-oxyd (that is the sesquoxyd) of iron. If the
written surface be then carefully washed or even moistened with the
infusion of nut-galls, it will be rendered blacker, and if before
indistinct will become legible. This may sometimes be better
accomplished by first applying a weak solution of oxalic acid or very
dilute muriatic (hydro-chloric) acid, and then delicately laying on the
infusion of galls.

When the writing paper has been made of inferior rags, bleached with
chlorine, the best ink used upon it is liable to become discolored.

Nut-gulls or gall-nuts (_Gallæ-tinctoriæ_) are excrescences growing upon
the leaves or twigs of oak trees, (especially the _Quercus infectoria_,)
caused by the puncture of an insect (the _Cynips gallæ-tinctoriæ_) which
deposits its eggs in the perforations thus made. The _Quercus
infectoria_ is most abundant in Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia
Minor, from which countries the galls are brought in large quantities to
the manufactories of Europe and America. The best are called “ALEPPO
galls,” from the name of the Syrian city which is the chief original
market for them. Those from Smyrna are also highly esteemed.

They contain the vegetable astringent principle called _tannin_ in
greater abundance than any other known substance. This is chemically
resolved into the acids known as the tannic and gallic. All the woods
and barks employed in the manufacture of leather by the tanning of hides
contain this astringent matter in various degrees. The oak and the
hemlock, for instance, are in extensive and familiar use for this
purpose in the United States. The blackness of ink, as has been already
indicated, is derived from the combination of these two acids with
oxydized iron in saline compounds which are insoluble in water, and are
therefore precipitated or deposited at the bottom of the fluid, unless
held mechanically suspended in it, by gum, sugar or some similar
substance which gives the quality of viscidity to its solutions.

The following will serve as a good formula for making common ink, and
will be enough to give an idea of the ordinary and general mode of its
composition:—“Take of Aleppo galls finely bruised, six ounces,—sulphate
of iron, four ounces,—gum Arabic, four ounces,—water, six pints. Boil
the galls in the water for about two hours, occasionally adding water to
supply the loss from evaporation; then add the other ingredients; and
keep the whole for two months in a wooden or glass vessel, which is to
be shaken at intervals. Then strain the ink into glass bottles, adding a
few drops of creosote to prevent mouldiness.”

Besides its property of viscidity, the gum possesses the power of
preventing the ink from being too fluid: and it also serves to protect
the vegetable matter from decomposition. The great desideratum or
requisite is that the ink should flow with perfect freedom from the pen,
to allow rapid writing, and that it should adhere to the paper, or “bite
into it,” so as not to be effaceable by washing or sponging. The great
defect to be avoided and prevented is the want of durability. The
writing ink of the ancients was characterized by great permanency, being
composed of finely pulverized carbon mixed with a mucilaginous or
adhesive liquid. INDIA or CHINA INK is of this composition: it is formed
of lamp-black and size or fine animal glue, with the incidental addition
of perfumes. It is used in China with a brush, both for writing and
painting on Chinese paper; and it is employed in other countries for
making drawings in black and white,—the different depths of shade being
produced by varying the degree of dilution in water.

Inks of other colors than black were anciently used only for purposes of
ornamental and decorative writing. In later and present times, red and
blue inks have been extensively employed in ruling account-books and
other paper for like uses. Blue ink, within ten or more years past, has
been, with many, a preferred fluid for common writing.

Blue ink, when properly made, flows with great ease and rapidity from
the pen, dries almost instantly on the paper, and has been supposed or
expected to be quite durable, and unchangeable in color, under ordinary
vicissitudes. Yet, experience has demonstrated the contrary,—though
various and well-contrived chemical combinations have been attempted for
the purpose. Blue inks that change to black some time after writing are
very popular. On well-made and high-priced paper, and with gold pens,
such inks, if prepared by good chemists, may ultimately prove worthy of
the high esteem in which they are held; but their absolute and
unchangeable durability is yet to be tested by experience, before they
can be safely employed for writings of permanent value, and relied on
for use in making records designed for preservation and reference during
a long course of years.

There is a compound of bichromate of potash and extract of logwood,
which forms a very cheap and convenient writing fluid. Dr. Ure
pronounces it “a vile dye.” Yet it may have its utilities, in localities
remote from the centres of civilization and commerce,—as in the new
settlements in western America, in Australia, &c., and for travelers in
Africa, in the Arctic and other barbarous or uninhabited regions. The
following is the best formula which can be given for this compound; and
we present it on the highest chemical authority:—“Take Bichromate of
potash, 1-4 oz.—Extract of logwood 1 oz.—Boiling water, 1 gallon.”

We have taken the trouble to give this prescription or formula, because
some quacks have been peddling it all over the country, at all sorts of
prices, varying (according to the credulity and liberality of
purchasers) from 50 cents to $250. We give it for just what it is worth;
and that is—exactly what this book costs the reader.




                             BIBLIOGRAPHY.


The longest and most valuable passage which we find in the writings of
any English author, who has alluded to our subject, is the following,
from “THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF WRITING,” by Thomas Astle, F. R. S., F.
A. S. &c., pp. 209 to 212, 2d edition, London, 1803.

“OF INKS. Ink has not only been useful in all ages, but still continues
absolutely necessary to the preservation and improvement of every art
and science, and for conducting the ordinary transactions of life.

“Daily experience shows that the most common objects generally prove
most useful and beneficial to mankind. The constant occasion we have for
Ink evinces its convenience and utility. From the important benefits
arising to society from its use, and the injuries individuals may suffer
from the frauds of designing men in the abuse of this necessary article,
it is to be wished that the legislature would frame some regulation to
promote its improvement, and prevent knavery and avarice from making it
instrumental to the accomplishment of any base purpose.

“Simple as the composition of Ink may be thought, and really is—it is a
fact well known, that we have at present none equal in beauty and color
to that used by the ancients; as will appear by an inspection of many of
the manuscripts above quoted, especially those written in England in the
times of the Saxons. What occasions so great a disparity? Does it arise
from our ignorance, or from our want of materials? FROM NEITHER, _but
from the negligence of the present race_; as very little attention would
soon demonstrate that we want neither skill nor ingredients to make Ink
as good now as at any former period.

“It is an object of the utmost importance that the Records of
Parliament, the Decisions and Adjudications of the Courts of Justice,
Conveyances from man to man, Wills, Testaments, and other Instruments
which affect property, should be written with Ink of such durable
quality as may best resist the destructive powers of time and the
elements. The necessity of paying greater attention to this matter may
be readily seen by comparing the Rolls and Records that have been
written from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, with
the writings we have remaining of various ages from the fifth to the
twelfth century. Notwithstanding the superior antiquity of the latter,
they are in excellent preservation; but we frequently find the former,
though of more modern date, so much defaced that they are scarcely
legible.

“Inks are of various sorts, as—encaustic or varnish, Indian ink, gold
and silver, purple, black, red, green, and various other colors. There
were also secret and sympathetic Inks.

“The Ink used by the ancients had nothing in common with ours, but the
color and gum. Gall-nuts, copperas and gum make up the composition of
our Ink; whereas soot, or ivory-black, was the chief ingredient in that
of the ancients; so that very old charters might be suspected, if
written with Ink entirely similar to what we use; but the most acute and
delicate discernment is necessary in this matter; for some of the
[black] Inks formerly used were liable to fade and decay, and are found
to have turned red, yellow or pale. Those imperfections are however rare
in manuscripts prior to the tenth century.

“There is a method of reviving the writing; but this expedient should
not be hazarded, lest a suspicion of deceit may arise, and the support
depended on [be] lost.

“GOLDEN Ink was used by various nations, as may be seen in several
libraries, and in the archives of churches. SILVER Ink was also common
in most countries. Red Ink, made of vermilion, cinnabar, or purple, is
very frequently found in manuscripts; but none are found written
entirely with ink of that color. The capital letters, in some, are made
with a kind of varnish, which seems to be composed of vermilion and gum.
Green Ink was rarely used in charters, but often in Latin manuscripts,
especially in those of the latter ages. The guardians of the Greek
emperors [or rather the Regents of the Empire] made use of it in their
signatures, till the latter [the monarchs during minority] became of
age. Blue or Yellow Ink was seldom used but in _manuscripts_.[!!!] The
yellow has not been in use, as far as we can learn, for six hundred
years.

“Metallic and other characters were sometimes burnished. Wax was used as
a varnish by the Latins and Greeks, but much more by the latter, with
whom it continued a long time. This covering or varnish was very
frequent in the ninth century.

“COLOR. The color of Ink is of no great assistance in authenticating
manuscripts and charters. There is in my library a long roll of
parchments, at the head of which is a letter that was carried over the
greatest part of England by two devout monks, requesting prayers for
Lucia de Vere, Countess of Oxford, a pious lady, who died in 1199,—who
had formed the house [or convent] of Henningham in Essex, and done many
other acts of piety. This roll consists of many membranes or skins of
parchment sewed together,—all of which, except the first, contain
certificates from the different religious houses that the two monks had
visited them, and that they had ordered prayers to be offered up for the
Countess, and had entered her name on their bead-rolls. It is observable
that time hath had very different effects on the various inks with which
these certificates were written. Some are as fresh and black as if
written yesterday; others are changed brown; and some are of a yellow
hue. It may naturally be supposed that there is a great variety of
handwritings upon this; but the fact is otherwise, for they may be
reduced to three.

“It may be said in general, that BLACK ink of the seventh, eighth, ninth
and tenth centuries, at least among the Anglo-Saxons, preserves its
original blackness [thereby meaning that its “form had not lost all its
original _brightness_”] much better than that of succeeding ages,—not
even excepting the sixteenth and seventeenth, in which it was frequently
very bad. Pale ink very rarely occurs before the four last centuries.
[Illustration]

“Peter Caniparius, Professor of Medicine at Venice, wrote a curious book
concerning Ink, which is now scarce, though there is an edition of it
printed in London, in 1660, quarto. The title is—_De Atramentis
cujuscunque generis opus sanè novum. Hactenus à nemine promulgatum._ [A
WORK ACTUALLY NEW, CONCERNING INKS OF EVERY KIND WHATSOEVER,—HITHERTO
PUBLISHED BY NO ONE.] This work is divided into six parts. The _first_
treats generally of Inks made from PYRITES, [sulphurets of iron and
copper,] stones and metals. The _second_ treats more particularly of
Inks made from metals and CALXES. [Better say _calces_, or, to speak
chemically, crystallized salts deprived of their “water of
crystallization,” or carbonic acid, by the action of heat.]—The _third_
treats of Ink made from soots and vitriols.—The _fourth_ treats of the
different kinds of Inks used by the _librarii_ or book-writers,
[professional scribes or copyists of manuscripts before the invention of
the art of Printing,] as well as by printers and engravers, and of
staining (or writing upon) marble, stucco or scagliola, and of ENCAUSTIC
modes of writing; as also of liquids for painting or coloring of
leather, cloths made of linen or wool, and for restoring inks that have
been defaced by time, as likewise many methods of effacing
writing—restoring decayed paper—and of various modes of secret
writing.—The _fifth_ part treats of Inks for writing, made in different
countries, of various materials and colors,—as from gums, woods, the
juice of plants, &c., and also of different kinds of varnishes.—The
_sixth_ part treats of the various operations of extracting vitriol, and
of its chemical uses.

“This work abounds with a great variety of philosophical, chemical and
historical knowledge, and will give great entertainment to those who
wish for information on this subject.

“Many curious particulars concerning Ink will be found in “_Weckerus de
Secretis_.” (Printed at Basle, in 1612, octavo.)—This gentleman also
gives receipts for making Inks of the color of Gold and Silver, composed
as well with those materials as without them,—also, directions for
making a variety of Inks for secret writing, and for defacing of
[effacing] Inks. There are many marvelous particulars in this last work,
which will not easily gain credit with the judicious part of mankind.”

We have chosen to give Mr. Astle’s paragraphs on this subject, entire,
“pure and simple,” (with no corrections or alterations, except as to a
few particulars in spelling, punctuation, &c.,) including some
unnecessary formal verbiage,—instead of embodying his facts and
observations in our own language. We shall do likewise with other
authors whose books we use in this work, as the most effectual way of
giving each of them due credit for their several discoveries and
statements, and, at the same time, securing our own just claims to what
we herein present as of our own discovery or production. But we will
give no credit to a mere compiler or plagiarist.

Mr. Astle was keeper of the ancient Records of the English Government in
the Tower of London, and thus enjoyed extraordinary facilities for
ascertaining such facts, and making such observations as he furnishes in
his very useful, interesting, and elegantly illustrated book. As to what
he says (in his seventh paragraph) about the inexpediency of “hazarding”
any effort to revive writing which has faded or become illegible, from
fear of “a suspicion of deceit,”—the caution must of course be limited
to cases where the words proposed to be restored to legibility have
reference to some question of disputed title, or other matter in
litigation or controversy. Mr. Astle would not have hesitated (any more
than Angelo Mai) to use any possible process for the restoration of a
_palimpsest_ manuscript of a long-lost work of Cicero or Livy, or of any
document worth the labor and the time requisite to revive the letters or
read them. Mr. Astle’s slight lapse of pen or mind in stating (eighth
paragraph) that “Blue or yellow ink was seldom used except in
_manuscripts_,” reminds us of Noah Webster’s reason, given in the first
edition of his quarto dictionary, for the use of the word “Iland”
instead of “Island,” viz., that the latter spelling was “found only in
books.” Perhaps the venerable Mr. Astle would have been as much
astonished to learn that he himself had always written manuscript,
whenever he put pen to paper, as the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, in
Moliere’s comedy, was to learn that he “had been speaking prose all his
life.”

A comparatively recent author gives the following as the sum and
substance of his knowledge on this division of the subject of our book.




                             WRITING-INKS.


Dark-colored liquids were used to stain letters previously engraved on
some hard substance, long before they were made to flow in the calamus
or pen for forming them on a smooth surface; and the Chinese made their
“Indian Ink” in the same manner as now, 1120 years before the Christian
Era; but, only used it, at that time, to blacken incised characters.[1]
Ink was termed by the ancient Latin authors _atramentum scriborium_,[2]
or _librarium_, to distinguish it from _atramentum sutorium_ or
_calchantum_. It was made of the soot of resin, or pounded charcoal, and
other substances, mixed with gum, and not, like ours, of vitriol,
gall-nuts, alum, &c. The earliest positive mention of ink is perhaps the
passage in Jeremiah, in the Vulgate, “_Ego scribebam in volumine,
atramento_.”[3]

Footnote 1:

  Here we might add, without fear of contradiction, that _Ink_ is still
  extensively used to “blacken characters,” without regard to the depth
  of the incision.

Footnote 2:

  The specimen of the English language which we quote, is not faultless;
  and the _Latin_ is execrable. There is no such word as _scriborium_ in
  any language, ancient or modern. The Romans called writing-ink
  _atramentum scriptorum_.

Footnote 3:

  _This_ is a very paltry piece of pedantry. Why could not this author
  (who shows that he does not understand _Latin_,) give us the text in
  English? The passage is in Jeremiah, chap. XXXVI, verse 18: “I wrote
  them with _Ink_ in a book.” The only other references in the Bible to
  _Ink_, are the following: 2 Corinthians, III, 3: “written not with
  _Ink_, but the spirit.” 2 John, XII: “I would write with paper and
  _Ink_.” 3 John, XIII: “I had many things to write, but I will not with
  _Ink_.” Ezekiel, IX, 2: “with a writer’s _ink_-horn by his side.”

Gold liquids, and also silver, purple, red, green, and blue inks, were
eventually used in manuscripts after the fourth century,—red and gold
having been employed much earlier. St. Jerome speaks of rich
decorations, which must have been executed with colored inks; but,
before his time, Ovid alludes not only to the purple _charta_, made use
of for fine books, which were also tinged with an oil drawn from
cedar-wood, to preserve them, but, also to titles written in red ink,
which were the first kind of illuminations. The passage occurs in his
first elegy, “Ad Librum:”

              “_Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo;
              Non est conveniens luctibus ille color.
              Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur.
              Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras._”

The last line proving, as Casley observes, that Ovid wrote upon a
_roll_.

This author, not having been kind enough to translate Ovid for us, we
are compelled to do it for him. This “Elegy” of the poet is addressed
“To his Book;” and the following words contain the meaning of the four
lines above quoted:

 _Nor shall huckleberries stain [literally, VEIL] thee with purple juice:
 That color is not becoming to lamentations.
 Nor shall title (or “head-letter”) be marked with vermilion, or paper
    with cedar,
 Thou shalt carry neither white nor black horns on thy forehead (or
    front, or frontispiece)._

  The word “huckleberries,” we have rightly spelled here. The
  dictionaries generally are wrong in spelling the word
  “whortleberry.” Huckleberry, or Hockleberry, is found in the kindred
  languages of Northern Europe.


Diplomas were seldom written in gold or colored inks; but some charters
of the German Emperors are known, not only in gold, but on purple
vellum; and Leukfeld mentions one of the year 912, ornamented also with
figures; while several early English charters have gold initial letters,
crosses, &c. The black ink that has kept its color best, in mediaeval
manuscripts, is that used from the tenth to the thirteenth century. The
signatures of the Eastern Emperors are frequently in red ink.

Colored inks were common in mediaeval manuscripts,—the red being most
usual for titles, which has given rise to the term _Rubric_. The writers
of books (that is, the copyists,) often appended their names to the end
of the work, generally in ink of a different color from that of the body
of the work, stating the time and place in which the work was executed.

To this may be added, with advantage, some instructive account of




                          WRITING INSTRUMENTS,


whose history is closely connected, to a great extent, with that of
writing FLUIDS.

The Egyptian, and all other oriental and ancient scribes, who wrote upon
stone, employed (of course) some instrument similar in character to the
chisel of our modern tomb-stone cutters, or monument letterers. So with
the Greeks and Romans, writing on surfaces of wax or wood, the
instruments were the graphium, or glypheion, (the graver,) and the
stilus, or caelum, all of steel or iron. When the use of a dark-colored
liquid or _Ink_ was introduced, there arose a necessity for instruments
of very different material, and great flexibility, in opposition to the
unyielding rigidity of the tools previously employed. Then were invented
the first implements properly called Pens, or really resembling what we
so denominate and use. These were universally made of vegetable
material, growing in the tubular form, of convenient size, as the
_calamus_, _arundo_, _juncus_, and, in general terms, the smaller stems
of various plants called “reeds” and “rushes” in English. We have
already mentioned the uniform employment of the hair-pencil, or brush,
by the Chinese, from the most ancient time of their writing. The quill,
or feather-pen, was introduced during the fourth century.

We have alluded to the _palimpsest_ manuscripts. This is the term
applied to parchments that have been twice written upon,—the first
writing being effaced to make room for the second. During the period
commonly called “the dark ages,” the monks and other scribes, copyists
or book-makers, were in the habit of effacing the letters from old
manuscripts, in order to make a clean surface for a new writing. In this
way was caused the deplorable destruction of an immense and an
inestimably valuable amount of ancient literature, of Greek and Roman
history, poetry, eloquence and philosophy, merely to make room for
mass-books, and other works of stupid superstition and mis-directed
devotion, or, of scholastic theology and philosophy, now long ago
universally condemned and exploded. Within the past and present
generation, however, the learned world has been delighted by the
surprising recovery of some of these long-lost treasures, through the
skilful and ingenious labors of the deservedly famous Cardinal Angelo
Mai, and others, whose researches in the libraries of Rome, Milan,
Padua, Naples, Florence, and other cities, have resulted in the
restoration of inestimably precious writings, thus partially obliterated
or obscured.

Brande’s Dictionary of Literature, Science, and Art, gives a brief
summary of the same general facts in the article “Palimpsest.”

The fullest and most elaborate exposition of the composition and
manufacture of Ink which we have been able to find, however, is in the
great French “Dictionnaire des Arts et Manufactures,” by an association
of distinguished _savans_, in two volumes, imperial octavo, Paris, 1853,
article, ENCRE.

But, of all articles and treatises on the subject, which we have
examined, that in the English Penny Cyclopaedia has the merit of
containing, if not the best and longest account, a very good and
satisfactory one,—because it expresses all the essential facts in the
fewest and best-chosen because perfectly intelligible words. As we do
not attempt to furnish a text-book for ink-manufacturers, we do not
transcribe in full, or translate, from these and other works of great
value on this subject.

That modern inks do not resist the decomposing and destructive power of
chemical agents (whether acids, alkalies, saline bodies or elements,) as
well as the ancient inks, is the result of a necessity existing in their
very composition and invention, and even in the use for which they were
designed, and to which they are applied. A _dye_ (like modern ink) is
the result of chemical action, and is therefore subject to chemical
re-agents; yet, when well made, it is proof against mechanical action,
such as washing, rubbing, and scraping; nor can it be removed from paper
to which it is applied, without destroying that material, or rendering
that part of it practically useless. But, on the other hand, the ancient
inks, which resist all chemical processes, can be removed by mechanical
action, such as has been named. If a new ink were compounded of the two,
possessing the best properties of each, any writing executed with it
could be effaced by the joint or successive action of mechanical and
chemical applications.

It must be borne in mind that the ancient inks had one use for which
writing ink is now never required; and that was in making books, or
multiplying copies of manuscripts indefinitely for _general reading_, or
_publication_. The invention and universal employment of the art of
printing has wholly done away with that.

Of INDELIBLE INKS, or those used for marking fabrics of cotton, linen,
&c., for the identification of ownership, it is not necessary to give
any particular description. Their ordinary composition is very generally
understood to be a solution of nitrate of silver, or some similar
caustic, applied with a pen of proper material, to a portion of the
surface of the cloth, which has been previously prepared by the
absorption of a gummy or mucilaginous fluid dried upon it under
pressure.

SYMPATHETIC INKS are fluids employed in coloring drawings made for
parlor amusement, or the diversion of children and youth. As, for
instance, a landscape drawn in ordinary colors with a wintry aspect,
cloudy or sombre sky, snow on the ground, and leafless trees, if
properly touched with sympathetic inks, will, at any time, when brought
near a fire, or otherwise subjected to a certain degree of warmth,
change to the hues of summer, the sky becoming of a clear blue, the
trees in full foliage, and the turf rich with grass, each with its
appropriate shade of verdure, as also flowers of their various natural
colors, &c., according to the fancy of the artist, the whole
disappearing as the picture grows cold. The chloride, the nitrate, the
acetate, and the sulphate of cobalt, form sympathetic inks,—the first,
blue, and (with the addition of nickel,) green; the second, red.
Chloride of copper gives a gamboge yellow; bromide of copper, a fine
rich brown.

Letters written with a solution of acetate of lead, are invisible until
exposed to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen, which makes them
distinct, with the lustrous greyish black of sulphuret of lead, the same
substance which is called galena when it occurs as lead-ore. A weak
infusion of galls or other vegetable astringent, will, if applied to
paper in the form of letters, become legible when touched with any
solution of iron. If written with a solution of ferro-cyanide of potash,
letters will remain invisible until touched with a solution of sulphate
of iron.




                        IMPORTANCE OF GOOD INK.


Astle speaks very impressively and justly on this point; and we
contribute to this part of our subject by calling attention to facts
almost daily occurring or brought to notice in this country, especially
in the older cities and states, where town-records, parish-registers,
and other documents of ancient date, and of high importance in history,
chronology, and genealogy, (as well as in regard to the title and
inheritance of estates,) are found obscured and obliterated, causing
losses, public and private, that need but to be mentioned to be properly
estimated.

In the appendix will be found a fac-simile of a sheet upon which various
specimens of ink were thoroughly and fairly tested, which is a brief but
emphatic demonstration of a difference of qualities by difference of
results.

To show what can be done in the preservation of writing on material even
frailer than such paper as we employ, we need but produce the specimen
of Egyptian writing on papyrus, pronounced by Champollion to have been
executed more than sixteen hundred (1600) years before the birth of
Christ, yet still in preservation and legible, as may be seen by the
representation we give of it.

This is undoubtedly as old as any specimen of phonetic characters or
written letters (representing sounds, not ideas or objects,) extant,
made by marking with a fluid upon any substance. There are inscriptions
of letters upon stone, for which an earlier date of 4000 years B.C., is
claimed with truth. But this is INK-writing, absolutely 3500 years old!

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.

All writers upon this subject have strangely overlooked the fact that
the art of impressing or printing letters with a metallic stamp or type
on parchment, as a substitute for pen-work, is about a thousand years
older than the period above specified as the date of the invention of
the modern art of printing. The CODEX ARGENTEUS, (the oldest translation
of the entire Bible into any European language,) is a famous book, in
the Library of the University of Upsala in Sweden.

(We give the particulars of its history in our Appendix.)

This “antique” is on purple _vellum_, (which is parchment made of
_calf-skin_,) and all the letters are SILVER, (whence the name Codex
Argenteus, the “silver book,”) manifestly impressed on the page by a
metallic stamp or type, each letter evidently being on a separate stock
or handle, and applied by manual pressure. We give a specimen of this
style of work. It may be called printing, but can not be denominated
_manuscript_, for that is (literally) “hand-writing,” which this
certainly is not.

In our Appendix may be found still earlier instances of this art as
practiced by the ancient Romans on a small scale, in signatures,
trade-marks, &c.

The Edinburgh review refers to Pliny and Dioscorides, as furnishing
directions for the manufacture of ink. The Edinburgh reviewer says
“receipts,”—not recognizing the broad distinction between a _receipt_
and a _recipe_. The former of these two words was originally intended to
convey the idea that the person who signs the paper has _got_ something:
the latter word, or its representative initial (℞) means simply,
“_take_.”

The directions of Pliny are in the following words:—

                 C. Plinii Secundi Historia Naturalis.

                            Lib. XXXV, §25.

                             _ATRAMENTUM._

  Atramentum quoque inter factitios erit, quanquam est et terra geminæ
  originis. Aut enim salsuginis modo emanat, aut terra ipsa sulphurei
  coloris ad hoc probatur. Inventi sunt pictores, qui e sepulcris
  carbones infectos effoderent. Importuna haec omnia, et novitia. Fit
  enim e fuligine pluribus modis, resina vel pice exustis. Propter
  quod, officinas etiam aedificavere, fumum eum non emittentes.
  Laudatissimum eodem modo fit e tedis. Adulteratur fornacum
  balnearumque fuligine, quo ad volumina scribenda utuntur. Sunt qui
  et vini faecem exsiccatam excoquant; adfirmantque, si ex bono vino
  faex fuerit, Indici speciem id atramentum praebere. Polygnotus et
  Micon celeberrimi pictores Athenis, e vinaceis facere: tryginon
  appellant. Apelles commentus est ex ebore combusto facere, quod
  elephantinum vocavit. Adportatur et Indicum, inexploratae adhuc
  inventionis mihi. Fit etiam apud infectores ex flore nigro, qui
  adhaerescit aheneis cortinis. Fit et e tedis ligno combusto,
  tritisque in mortario carbonibus. Mira in hoc sepiarum natura: sed
  ex his non fit. Omne autem atramentum sole perficitur, librarium
  gummi, tectorum glutino admixto. Quod autem aceto liquefactum est,
  aegre eluitur.

                             (TRANSLATION.)

“INK (or literally) BLACKING.—Ink also may be set down among the
artificial (or compound) drugs, although it is a mineral derived from
two sources. For, it is sometimes developed in the form of a saline
efflorescence,—or is a real mineral of sulphureous color—chosen for this
purpose. There have been painters who dug up from graves colored coals
(CARBON). But all these are useless and new-fangled notions. For it is
made from soot in various forms, as (for instance) of burnt rosin or
pitch. For this purpose, they have built manufactories not emitting that
smoke. The ink of the very best quality is made from the smoke of
torches. An inferior article is made from the soot of furnaces and
bath-house chimneys. There are some (manufacturers) also, who employ the
dried lees of wine; and they DO say that if the lees so employed were
from good wine, the quality of the ink is thereby much improved.
Polygnotus and Micon, celebrated painters at Athens, made their black
paint from burnt grape-vines; they gave it the name of TRYGYNON.
APELLES, we are told, made HIS from burnt ivory, and called it
elephantina “ivory-black.” Indigo has been recently imported,—a
substance whose composition I have not yet investigated. The dyers make
theirs from the dark crust that gradually accumulates on brass-kettles.
Ink is made also from torches (pine-knots), and from charcoal pounded
fine in mortars. “The cuttle-fish” has a remarkable quality in this
respect; but the coloring-matter which it produces is not used in the
manufacture of ink. All ink is improved by exposure to the sun’s rays.
Book-writers’ ink has gum mixed with it,—weaver’s ink is made up with
glue. Ink whose materials have been liquified by the agency of an acid
is erased with great difficulty.”


This sounds very much like nonsense: but it is exactly what the “Great
Naturalist,” Pliny, meant when he wrote all that _he_ knew, and probably
all that was then known on the subject of ink, black paints and dyes,
and very dark-colored fluids generally, which were then employed by
painters, dyers, weavers, writers and physicians. To make his chapter on
this subject fully intelligible to us, we must bear in mind the fact,
that the great science of _Chemistry_ had no existence till many
centuries after Pliny wrote. And thus, it never occurred to him that
there was but one substance, (now known to be elementary,) CARBON, which
gave the quality of blackness to all the materials which he names, with
the exception of one salt of copper, and probably one of iron, (the
sulphate,) and INDIGO, a purely vegetable substance, the dried coloring
matter of a plant in India, (_Indicofera anil_,) and named by the Romans
from the country that produced it, and first made it known to them.

PEDANIUS DIOSCORIDES, born in Anazarbus, (a city of Cilicia, about fifty
miles from TARSUS, the birth-place of the Apostle Paul,) wrote a book on
the Materia Medica, or the qualities of drugs, a little after the time
when Pliny composed his Natural History. Neither of them seems to have
been acquainted with the writings of the other. Apparently, they lived,
wrote and died nearly or actually cotemporary, in the same empire,
utterly ignorant of each other’s existence,—though they are now
universally recognized as the two most eminent writers of all antiquity
on the subjects of Natural History and the Materia Medica. They both
lived in the reign of Nero, and the date of the active or middle part of
both their lives may be reasonably placed at or about the year 100 of
the Christian Era.

From Dioscorides to LINNÆUS, (in the last century,) the Materia Medica
made no actual progress and received no scientific improvement; yet,
eminent as is Dioscorides, he was so little known to his own generation
or that next following, that it is now impossible to ascertain the exact
date of his birth or of his death, or any facts in his life, but that he
wrote two books, of which that here quoted is the best known, and has
made him known 1700 years after his birth.

(We may mention that this Dioscorides was, in no traceable degree,
related to the person of the same name, whose manuscript we have copied
in our illustrations as the oldest extant specimen of Greek
ink-writing.)

We give a translation of his brief but complete description of the ink
used in his time, and the Latin version, that those who wish may satisfy
themselves of the correctness of our rendering. It will be seen that it
occurs at the close of the great work of Dioscorides:—

  Atramentum, quo scribimus, e fuligine taedarum collecta conficitur.
  In singulas gummi uncias ternae fuliginis unciae adjiciuntur. Fit
  etiam e resinae fuligine et pictoria illa modo dicta. Hujus
  fuliginis autem sumi oportet minam unam, gummi sesquilibram, taurini
  glutinis et chalcanthi singulorum sesquiunciam. Idoneum est ad
  septica; et confert ambustis ex aqua paullo crassius inunctum et
  tamdiu dimissum, donec cicatrix obducatur, sanatis nimirum ulceribus
  sponte sua excidit.

  Atque jam, carissime Aree, tum pro operis modo, quem proposueramus,
  tum pro materiae auxiliorumque copia, quam colligere licuit,
  hucusque dicta sufficiant.

  Libri quinti et ultimi de Materia Medica finis.

  Pedanii Dioscoridis Anazarbei De Materia Medica.

                             [TRANSLATION.]

[The] “INK with which we write is composed of the soot of torches,
collected.

“To each ounce of gum, add three of soot.

“It is also made of the soot of resin and of that lately called
‘painters’ black.’ Of this soot, however,—take one MINA,—of gum, half a
pound,—of ox-glue and of copperas, each, half an ounce.

“It is a good application in cases of gangrene, and is useful in scalds,
if a little thickened and employed as a salve, and permitted to remain
until a new cuticle is formed, when it will spontaneously fall off from
the healed sore.

“And now, my very dear Areas, in due proportion to the work which we had
undertaken, and the quantity of the materials and contributions which we
could gather, what we have thus far said must suffice.

“End of the fifth and last book on The Materia Medica.

“[The book] of Pedanius Dioscorides on the Materia Medica.”

We have followed the text of Karl Gotleib Kuhn. _Medicorum Graecorum,
opera quae extant._ Leipzig, 1829.

Among the fantastic trifles with which DEAN SWIFT was accustomed to
amuse his leisure, is a little string of verses on this subject which
are appended, not as being of any poetic merit, but as a “curiosity of
literature”—not out of place here:—


                                On Ink.

              _I am jet black, as you may see,
              The son of pitch and gloomy night;
              Yet all who know me will agree
              I’m dead, except I live in light._

              _Sometimes in panegyric high,
              Like lofty Pindar, I can soar,
              And raise a virgin to the sky,
              Or her to a * * * * *_

              _My blood this day is very sweet,
              To-morrow of a bitter juice;
              Like milk, ’tis cried about the street
              And so applied to different use._

              _Most wondrous is my magic power:
              For with one color I can paint.
              I’ll make the devil a saint this hour,
              Next make a devil of a saint._

              _Through distant regions I can fly,
              Provide me with but paper wings,
              fairly show a reason why
              There should be quarrels among kings._

              _And, after all, you’ll think it odd,
              When learned doctors will dispute,
              That I should point the word of God,
              And show where they can best confute._

              _Let lawyers bawl and strain their throats,
              ’Tis I that must the lands convey,
              And strip their clients to their coats,—
              Nay, give their very souls away._

We find also in Pope’s epistle of Heloise to Abeillard an allusion to
the power of letters, as conveying ideas, which seems appropriate in
this connexion as illustrating the uses of ink.

        _Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,
        Some banished lover, or some captive maid:
        They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
        Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
        The virgin’s wish without her fears impart,
        Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
        Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
        And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole._

The genius of BYRON (in a playful flash) has illuminated our subject
with one of his most brilliant passages:—

         _But words are things: and a small drop of INK,
         Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
         That which makes thousands (perhaps millions) think._

A less distinguished poet has, in expressive, and though in quainter,
humbler, yet in noble strain, said what is equally appropriate in this
place:—

              _Books are a part of man’s prerogative:
              In formal INK, they thought and voices hold,
              That we to them our solitude may give,
              And make time present travel as of old._

CELSUS, who lived in this world, about the commencement of the Christian
era, has left a little memorandum on this subject which is worth
quoting.

We give his words entire:—

There are two kinds of bald spots occurring on the human head,—one of
them a baldness which creeps over the scalp like a serpent,—the other
showing itself in the form of round spaces uncovered by hair. Some
recommend the use of acrid irritant articles, combined with oils, &c.
But there is nothing better for you than to have the bald place shaved
every day with a [very dull] razor, and, after having done that, you
needn’t do anything else but rub on the place thus shaved a little
_atramentum sutorium_—(“shoemakers’ ink,” “copperas-water,”)—[solution
of the Di-proto sulphate of the (per) sesquoxyd of iron].

The editor of the printed copy of the edition of the works of AULUS
CORNELIUS CELSUS which was printed in Padua, made a material error on
this point.

The word “sutorium” (being unintelligible to the ignorant monk who
superintended the printing) was changed to “scriptorium,”—that is,
“writing-ink,” instead of “shoemakers’-ink.” It is well-known that a
solution of copperas properly made, will remedy or prevent premature
baldness; but we assert that no quantity of lamp-black and gum, or
grease, will be found effectual for that purpose.

In the time of Celsus, the sulphate of iron (copperas) had not yet
become an essential ingredient of writing-ink; and even after that its
combination with carbonaceous and oleaginous matters entirely
neutralized the power which renders it applicable and useful in such
cases.




                              CONCLUSION.


We have thus herein attempted the fulfilment of the promise (with which
we began) to produce a “HISTORY OF INK,”—a thing never before done or
even proposed to be done. If not successful in our attempt, we hope that
we have at least, in this little book, furnished hints and suggestions
on this subject which the learned may employ hereafter when the history
of this important material of history shall be undertaken and executed
on a larger scale. In view of which possibility, we may, with a
pardonable self-gratulation, say,—in the words of Martin Luther,—“We
have given to other and higher spirits occasion to reflect.”

But we are loth to leave this subject (which has grown into our
affections as we have dwelt upon it) without giving a blow or a kick to
one monstrous absurdity which has prevailed among the learned, “falsely
so-called,”—from the time when the Jesuits returned from China with
their “edifying and curious” tales about the huge antiquity of all the
arts and some of the sciences of civilization among the people of what
they called the “Celestial Empire,”—a term wholly unknown to the
Chinese, in any form or variation of expression.

The simple facts are that—the Chinese derived their knowledge of INK (of
writing with a colored liquid) from Europe. So did they obtain their
knowledge of the art of printing, carried to them by Venetian travelers,
“overland,” just at the moment before the clumsy engraved wood-blocks
were superseded by the moveable types of Gansefleisch or Gutenberg. So
was it with the Mariner’s Compass, the manufacture of gunpowder, and all
their boasted “inventions,”—among which may be included their
calculation of eclipses backward through fabulous cycles of centuries,
and the morals of Confucius or Kong-foo-tsee, a mythical personage
unmentioned in the history of China until the contents of the New
Testament had been made known there,—and _that_—many ages after the date
of his supposed life and death.

But for their derivation and appropriation or theft of the great arts
from the West, the Chinese and all Oriental nations, from the Euphrates
to the Pacific, including the Japanese, would have remained to this day
in the condition in which the Mexicans and Peruvians were found by the
Spanish and Italian robbers who first explored the Western Hemisphere,
and murdered its inhabitants for their land, and the fruits and the gold
and silver of that land.

Whatever arts the Chinese or Japanese or Jesuits may have invented or
preserved, the art of TELLING THE TRUTH is evidently, to all of them,
one of “THE LOST ARTS,“—lost irretrievably and forever!

[Illustration:

  Blackwood’s Black Ink.

  Davids & Co’s Limpid
  Writing Fluid.—

  Harrison’s Columbian Ink.

  Steel-Pen Ink, Thaddeus Davids.

  Maynard & Noye’s Black
  Writing Ink.—

  Written, Augt. 14, 1855, to test
  permanence by long exposure to
  Sun & Rain—

  James R. Chilton, MD.
  Chemist

  The above is a close fac-simile of
  a paper upon which I wrote with Several Kinds
  of Ink, as it appeared after being exposed to
  the weather for five months.

  James R. Chilton, MD.
  Chemist.

  New York, March 15, 1856.

  Snyder, Black & Sturn, 92 William St.]




                       DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.


No. 1.—A fac simile of the oldest Hieratic writing extant—about the 15th
century B.C. The hawk (the emblem of Divinity) and the man stand on
something that “teters”—the circle between them (a serpent biting its
own tail) is the ancient symbol of eternity. The Deity overbalances the
man.

No. 2.—From a Greek MS. buried at Herculaneum in the year 29 B.C.

No. 3.—Written on papyrus in Egypt; in the 3d century B.C.

No. 4.—Written on papyrus 260 years B.C.

No. 5.—Specimen of a Palimpsest copy of Cicero’s “Republic” in the
Vatican Library.

No. 6.—Phœnician writing on papyrus.

No. 7.—From a Pentateuch in the Bib^{e.} Nat^{e.} Paris, A.D. 450.

No. 8.—From a Greek Copy of the Book of Genesis, written in gold on
purple vellum, A.D. 400.

No. 9.—From a MS. on papyrus written in Egypt 3d century B.C.

No. 10.—From a Charter of Childebert III. A.D. 703.

No. 11.—From a Charter of Charlemagne, about A.D. 785.

No. 12.—From a Charter of the Emperor Conrad I. A.D. 988.

No. 13.—Specimen of “Roman Saxon,” A.D. 600.

No. 14.—From a Charter of Dagobert I. about A.D. 620.

No. 15.—From an early Gælic MS.

No. 16.—From a Deed of William the Conqueror.

No. 17.—The monogram signature to a Charter of Charlemagne about A.D.
785.

No. 18.—From a Charter of the reign of Hugh Capet, A.D. 988.

No. 19.—From a Deed of Henry I.

No. 20.—From a Deed of Stephen, dated A.D. 1139.

No. 21.—From a Deed of the reign of Richard I.

No. 22.—From a MS. of Wyckliffe’s translation of the Bible.

No. 23.—“Set Saxon,” A.D. 850.

“_Qui sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus est, et sepultus, tertia die
resurrexit._”

No. 24.—From a Charter of Sebbi, King of the East Saxons, A.D. 664,

“_Ego Sebbi Rex East Sax(onum) pro—confirmatione Subscripsi._”

No. 25.—Part of a Charter of Alfred the Great, A.D. 800.

No. 26.—From a Charter of Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1045.

No. 27.—From a Deed of the reign of Edward I.

No. 28.—From a Deed of William the Conqueror.

No. 29.—From a Deed of the reign of Edward III.

_Edwardus Dei gratia Rex Anglias Dominus Hiberniæ, Dux Aquitaniæ, &c._

No. 30.—From the Will of William Mikelfeld, Nov. 7, 1439.

No. 31.—From a Deed of the reign of Edward IV.

No. 32.—From a Grant by William Wallace.

No. 33.—From a Deed of Richard III.

No. 34.—From a Deed of the reign of John.

No. 35.—Autograph of Lord Macaulay.

No. 36.—From a Deed of Henry VII.

No. 37.—From an English translation of the works of Chauliac, A.D. 1400.

No. 38.—From a Deed of Henry VIII.

No. 39.—From a MS. in the rounded hand of Italy, 15th century.

No. 40.—Letter from Columbus to the Viceroy of Castile, 15th century.

No. 41.—Letter of Anne of Brittany, 1514.

No. 42.—Signature of “Bayard,” the Chevalier.

No. 43.—Letter from Charles V. to Francis I.

No. 44.—Letter from Calvin, 1559.

No. 45.—Letter of the Earl of Essex, 1567.

No. 46.—Letter of Copernicus, 1473.

No. 47.—William H. Prescott.

No. 48.—Letter of Charles the XII of Sweden.

No. 49.—Rosseau, 1757.

No. 50.—Letter of Erasmus, 1476.

No. 51.—Letter of Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV of France.

No. 52.—Christina of Sweden, 1626.

No. 53.—Charles I. to his sister.

No. 54.—Oliver Cromwell, 1643.

No. 55.—Duke of Marlborough, June, 1706.

No. 56.—The Empress Catherine II. of Russia, July, 1773.

No. 57.—Washington, 6th Sept. 1788.

No. 58.—Louis XVI, June 30, 1773.

No. 59.—Robespierre.

No. 60.—Napoleon to Soult.

No. 61.—Wellington, June 19, 1815.

No. 62.—Lord Byron, Nov. 4, 1821.

No. 63.—Voltaire, July 29, 1757.

No. 64.—Edmund Burke.

No. 65.—William Pitt, March 27, 1803.

No. 66.—Wellington, April 21, 1834.

The colored engraving is an illustration of the picture writing of the
Mexicans, from Lord Kingsborough’s great work. The blue border
represents a series of years, distinguished by the dots. The compartment
with five dots representing the fifth year of the reign, that with ten
the tenth, and so on. The pictures of the acts of the Prince being
connected with each special year by means of a connecting line. The
additional symbols have different significations—that of the flower
signifying a calamitous year, &c. In this plate King Acamapich is
represented in the first and sixth year of his reign; at the top of the
page are warlike instruments, signifying his preparation for war; the
figures below, on the right, are the four cities—Quahnahuac, Mezquic,
Cuitlhuac and Xochimilco—represented by descriptive symbols. The four
heads on the left are those of the respective kings or chiefs of these
cities, beheaded by Acamapich, each distinguished by the iconographic
symbol by which his name was expressed in this system of writing.

  These picture records, which would have illustrated the unknown
  history of this continent, were destroyed in “mountain heaps” by the
  first Spanish archbishop of Mexico—an act of fanatical vandalism
  equalled only by the burning of the Alexandrian Library, and the
  vast hoard of Moorish literature at Granada by Ximenes.

[Illustration:

  Pl. 1.

  1.
  [Hieratic text]

  2.
  ...μασιν.στερον πο.αι
  ...ιψόμεθα ὅταν δὲ πε.
  ...αν καὶ δόξαν ἐ[κ] τοῦ
  μαθήματος φῶσι περιγί-
  νεσθαι λέγωμεν ὅτι
  <π>κο<λ>ι-
  νά τε προφέρονται πολ-
  λ<α>ῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων καὶ
  λειπόμενα [π]λειόνων καὶ

  3.
  ναὶ οὐ Ἀλκμὰν ὁ ποιητὴς
  οὕτως ἀπεφαίνετο οὐ-

  4.
  Διοσκουρίδης Δωρίωνι χαίρειν. τῆς πρὸς
  Δωρίωνα ἐπιστολῆς τὸ ἀντίγραφον ὑπόκει-

  _Snyder Black & Sturn 92 William St_]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 2.

  5.
  teterrimus
  et ex hac vel

  homines heretici maxime
  quia non ds illam dedit
  -catur; quia et legem ds dedit
  -varet propter certam

  6.
  [Phœnician text]

  7.
  κῡ, καὶ προσοίσουσιν
  οἱ υἱοὶ Ααρων οἱ ἱερεῖς

  8.
  ἐξῆλθεν δὲ
  -τησιν αὐτῷ

  _Snyder Black & Sturn 92 William St_]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 3.

  9.
  κϛʹ Ξανδικ[ο]ῦ αʹ Θῶυθ κεʹ

  10.
  [flourish representing “I(n) C(hristi) N(omine)”] Childeberths

  11.
  Et nostra indulgentia in aelimosina

  12.
  Et ut huĩs cõplacitationis pceptũ firmũ stabileq;

  13.
  abbas sirum pater

  14.
  quotienscumque petitionib[us]

  _Snyder Black & Sturn 92 William St_]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 4.

  15.
  Nirsatimini curio annso

  16.
  W rex anglo[rum]

  17.
  KAROLVS

  18.
  in eisdem degentium orem nostre celsitudinis

  19.
  h. dei gra rex

  20.
  S rex—Anno m.cxxix

  21.
  Ricard di gra Rex Angl

  22.
  IN þe biginyng was þe wrd and þe

  _Snyder Black & Sturn 92 William St_]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 5.

  23.
  qui sub pontio pilato crucifixus:
  & sepultus tertia die resurrexit

  24.
  + ego sebbi rex east sax pro

  25.
  dccclxxvo—Ego alfred gratia di rex hanc

  26.
  nomina hic caraxata sunt—EADUUEARDUS

  27.
  Istud starr recog est

  _Snyder, Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 6.

  28.
  Will di gra rex—Sciatis me concessisse

  29.
  [E]dwardus dei gra Rex Angl Dominus Hibnie & Dux A

  30.
  This is the laste Wil ind{en}tid of me Willia Meklfeld Esquyer being

  _Snyder, Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 7.

  31.
  Edwardus dei gr Rex Anglie &c

  32.
  Wlls Walays miles Custos regni

  33.
  Ricardus dei gratia Rex Anglie &c.

  34.
  Johannes Dei Gra Rex Angl

  35.
  T B Macaulay

  36.
  Henricus dei grā Rex Anglie & Francie

  _Snyder, Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 8

  37.
  it was saide aboue in þe chapitle of

  38.
  Henricus octavus dei grā Angl & Francie rex

  39.
  fecunditatem modo celi per multra

  40.
  Señor

  dejado nō se puede

  41.
  Monsieur mon bon frere

  42.
  Bayart

  _Snyder Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 9.

  43.
  monsr mon bon frer

  Charles

  44.
  le 22 de Decembre 1559

  45.
  I. Caluin

  46.
  singularj, qua studiosos prosequi solet

  47.
  W H Prescott

  48.
  [illegible]

  _Snyder, Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 10.

  49.
  ne rentre pas dans l’ame aussi

  50.
  at ego nō possum omnem

  51.
  affection & solide Amitie

  52.
  Vostre approbation

  53.
  I cannot refuse this

  54.
  reade and expound the Scriptures

  _Snyder Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 11.

  55.
  happy success in this

  56.
  J’ai lue le memoire

  57.
  well affected to the

  58.
  votre amour pour le bien public

  59.
  Le comite a pris toutes les mesures

  60.
  les anglais ont bombardé Granville
  la division de bateaux canonniers ayant
  à bord la 24^e légère a marché à eux

  61.
  Wellington
  Waterloo, June 19 1815

  _Snyder Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration:

  Pl. 12.

  62.
  They are very civil
  about “Cain” but alarm^{ed}
  at its tendency—as they

  63.
  faites je vous en pris le moins

  64.
  you have an armed Tyranny to deal with; &

  65.
  I conclude from your letter

  66.
  Wellington &c

  _Snyder Black & Sturn, 92 William St._]

[Illustration]




                          FORM OF THE WORD INK

                         IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES


Hebrew:__[Illustration]

Chaldaic:__[Illustration] DȲŌ

Sanskrit:__[Illustration]

Greek:__Μελαν (Melan)

Latin:__ATRAMEUTUM (Scriptorum)

Mediaeval Latin:__ENCANSTUM

China:__[Illustration] MĬH SHWUY (liquid Ink)

  "  [Illustration] MĬH (Chinese Ink)

Canton dialect:__ MAK SHUY

Hindostan:__[Illustration] KALI

Bengal:__[Illustration] KALI

Shingalese:__[Illustration]

Burmese:__[Illustration]

Malayhim:__[Illustration]

Persia:__[Illustration] SIYAHI

Sinic:__[Illustration]

Turkey:__[Illustration] MUREKKEB

Armenia:__[Illustration]

Thibet:__[Illustration]

Anamitic:__MU^cC VIÊT

Malay:__[Illustration] DAWĀT

Japan:__[Illustration]

Java:__ MANULYSAN

Egyptian:__[Illustration]

Coptic:__[Illustration]

Amharic:__[Illustration]

Algerian:__[Illustration] SIMEKH

Aethiopic:__[Illustration]

Arabic:__[Illustration] HBR, HIBR, HIBAR.

               {Old French__ENQUE}
French:__ENCRE {Breton__LYOU     }
               {Provincal__ANCRA }
                                   {Low Dutch }
German:__[Illustration] (Tinte.)   {Flamande  } INK
                                   {Hollandais}

Spanish:__TINTA

Portugese:__TINTA

Italian:__INCHIOSTRO

Piedmontese:__INCIOSTR.

Russian:__[Illustration] {Lettish__BLAKKA
                         {Lettauish__TINTA

Polish:__INKAUST

Hungarian:__TENTA

Bunda or Argolense:__TINTA

Bohemia:__INGAUST

Basque:__CORANSIA

Illyrian:__INGOAS

Danish:__BLÆC

Swedish:__BLÄCK

Laplandish:__BLEKK

Greenlandish:__BLEK

Icelandish:__BLEK

English:__INK {Old English__ENKE, INKE, YNKE
              {Anglo-Saxon__BLÆC

Welsh:__DU, ENGE

Gaelic:__DUBHADH

Irish:__[Illustration] DUBH

Peruvian:__YANATULLPU

Chilian:__CHILLCAMOM

Mexican:__THLLI

Guarani:__TIV_TIRV_ (Tinta)

Caribee Islands: OÚLITI OR OÚLITACLE




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:

Some corrections have been made to the original text, including
standardizing the punctuation. Further corrections are listed below:

    p. 12 unparalelled -> unparalleled

    p. 26 Flenningham -> Henningham

    p. 36 Dictionaire -> Dictionnaire

    p. 36 pschyo -> psycho

    p. 46 elogè -> éloge

    p. 77 Macauley -> Macaulay

Other spelling and hyphenation inconsistencies have been retained as
printed.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF INK, INCLUDING ITS ETYMOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ***


    

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