Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/35

 26 INTRODUCTION.

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excited the people to massacre a Roman senator with their style ; and the empercr Claudius was so afraid of being assassinated, that he would scarcely permit the libnj, or public writers, to enter his presence, without the cases which contained their st)% being first taken from them. The stylus was pointed at one end to form the letters, ik other end being flat, for the purpose of erasing them, by flattening the wax. Heii«| Horace uses the phrase, " to turn the stylus," for correcting what had been written. (M word style, is derived fiwn the same source, which is used metaphorically, to signify dl choice and an'angement of words employed by an author to express his thoughts.

"I wU) go get a leaf of bran, And, with a gad of steel, 'kHI write ttaeae words."— Skakspbark.

As the style was too sharp for writing on parchment, and Egyptian p^r, and moreover, was not adapted for holding or conveying a fluid; a species of reed wis, employed. Persons of rank and fortune, often wrote with a calamus of silver, something, probably, like our silver pens.

Our Saxon ancestors appear to have sometimes used the style without ink, idien writing upon parchment or vellum. But, for writing with ink, or coloured liquids, reeds or canes, and afterwards quills were employed, and sometime pencils made of hair. Pencils made of hair, are used by the Chinese for their writing. The ciuioas large capital letters used in Italy, in the decline of the Roman empire, and until the sixteenth century, were made with hair pencils. The exact date of the introduction of quills of geese, swans, pelicans, peacocks, crows, and other birds, for the use of writing, is uncertain. Mabillon states, that he saw a manuscript of the gospels, which had been written in letters of gold, in the ninth century ; in which the four Evangelists were represented with quills in their hands. St. Isodore of Seville, who died about the middle of the seventh century, describes a pen as in use in his time. " The instruments necessary for a scribe, are the reed and the pen." In the same century, Adhehn, bishop of Sherbom, wrote a short poem on a writing pen. Many proofs of their use occur so frequently in the eighth century, as to place the matter beyond all doubt.

From ancient authors, as well as from figures from manuscripts, we learn thatth( used a sponge to cleanse the reed, and to nib out such letters as were written by mistake? a knife for mending the reed ; pumice, for a similar purpose, or to smooth the ment ; compasses for measuring the distances of the lines ; scissors, for cutting the a puncher, to point out the beginning and end of each line ; a rule, to draw lines, divide the sheets into columns ; a glass, containing sand, and another glass filled water, probaby to mix with the ink.

Neither the ptaticular species of calamus, used as pens by the ancients, nor Ae manner in which they prepared them for this purpose, is known. This is remarkabfei since all the places, where these reeds grow wild, have been ascertained, and exploit by botanists : with so Utde' success, however, that after a variety of learned as weU » scienUfic conjectures, the calamus of the ancients has not yet found a place in th« botanical system of Linnaeus. This is yet more remarkable, as reeds are stiU employed by many eastern nations to write with. Ranwolf, who (ravelled in the sixteenth century, informs us, that canes for pens were sold in the shops of Turkey, small, hollow within.