Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/168

 152 PALAEOGRAPHY the development of the Irish and English schools), and finally how, in the revival of learning under Charlemagne, the reformed Caroline minuscule, became the standard on which the writing of all the &quot;Western nations was finally modelled. Capital. The oldest form of book-writing which we find employed in Latin MSS. is in capitals ; and of these there are two kinds the square and the rustic. Square capitals may be defined as those which have their horizon tal lines at right angles with the vertical strokes ; rustic letters are not less accurately formed, nor, as their title would seem to imply, are they rough in character, but, being without the exact finish of the square letters, and being more readily written, they have the appearance of greater simplicity. In capital writing the letters are not all of equal height ; F and L, and in the rustic sometimes others, as B and R, overtop the rest. In the rustic the forms are generally lighter and more slender, with short horizontal strokes more or less oblique and wavy. Both styles of capital writing were obviously borrowed from the lapidary alphabets employed under the empire. But it ha.s been observed that scribes with a natural conservatism would perpetuate a style some time longer in books than it might be used in inscriptions. We should therefore be prepared to allow for this in ascribing a date to a capital written MS., which might resemble an inscription older by a cen tury or more. Rustic capitals, on account of their more convenient shape, came into more general use ; and the greater number of the early MSS. in capitals which have survived are consequently found to be in this character. In the Exempla Codicum Latinorum of Zangemeister and Wattenbach are collected specimens of capital writing, which are supplemented by other facsimiles issued by the Pakeographical Society. The earliest application of the rustic hand appears in the papyrus rolls recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum (Exempla, tabb. 1-3), which must necessarily be earlier than 79 A.D. In some of these speci mens we see the letters written with a strong dashing stroke ; in others they are mixed with cursive and uncial forms. In the vellum MSS. the writing in the earliest instances is of a perfectly exact -character. MSS. of this class were no doubt always regarded as choice works. The large scale of the writing and the quantity of material required to produce a volume must have raised the cost to a height which would be within reach of only the wealthy. Such are the two famous copies of Virgil in the Vatican the Codex Romanus, adorned with paintings, and the Codex Palatinus (Exempla, tabb. 11, 12; Pal. Soc., pis. 113-115), which may be even as early as the 3d or 4th century, for in the regularity of their letters they resemble very nearly the inscriptions of the 1st and 2d century. There are no marks of punctuation by the first hand ; nor are there enlarged initial letters. HJUIVJUM MOilTIAVMJf ADiHOf UACOG1 Roman Rustic Capitals (Virgil), 3d or 4th century (Testatui qtie deos iterum se ad proelia cogi Bis iam Italos hostis haec altera foedera) In a third and younger MS. of Virgil, the Scheduc Vaticanae (Exempla, tab. 13; Pal. Soc., pis. 116, 117), the imitation of the lettering of inscriptions is far less appar ent, and the writing may be said to have here settled down into a good working book hand ; but, like the MSS. just noticed, this volume also was doubtless prepared for a special purpose, being adorned with well-finished paintings of classical style. In assigning dates to the earliest MSS. of capital-writing, one feels the greatest hesitation, none of them bearing any internal evidence to assist the process. It is not indeed until the close of the 5th century that we reach firm ground, the Medicean Virgil of Florence having in it sufficient proof of having been written before the year 494. The writing is in delicately-formed letters, rather more spaced out than in the earlier examples (Exempla, tab. 10 ; Pal. Soc., pi. 86). Another ancient MS. in rustic capitals is the Codex Bembinus of Terence (Exempla, tabb. 8, 9; Pal. Soc., pi. 135), a volume which is also of parti cular interest on account of its marginal annotations, written in an early form of small hand. Among palimpsests the most notable is that of the Cicero In Verrem of the Vati can (Exempla, tab. 4). Of MSS. in square capitals the examples are not so early as those in the rustic character. Portions of a MS. of Virgil in the square letter are preserved in the Vatican, and other leaves of the same are at Berlin (Exempla, tab. 14). Each page, however, begins with a large coloured initial, a style of ornamentation which is never found in the very earliest MSS. The date assigned to this MS. is therefore the end of the 4th century. In very similar writ ing, but not quite so exact, are some fragments of another MS. of Virgil in the library of St Gall, probably of a. rather later time (Exempla, tab. 14 a; Pal. Soc., pi. 208). In the 6th century capital-writing enters on its period of decadence, and the examples of it become imitative. Of this period is the Paris Prudentius (Exempla, tab. 15; Pal. Soc., pis. 29, 30) in rustic letters modelled on the old pattern of early inscriptions, but with a very different result from that obtained by the early scribes. A compari son of this volume with such MSS. as the Codex Romanus. and the Codex Palatinus shows the later date of the Prudentius in its widespread writing and in certain incon sistencies in forms. Of the 7th century is the Turin Sedulius (Exempla, tab. 16), a MS. in which uncial writing also appears the rough and misshapen letters being evidences of the cessation of capital writing as a hand in common use. The latest imitative example of an entire MS. in rustic capitals is in the Utrecht Psalter, written in triple columns and copied, to all appearance, from an ancient example, and illustrated with pen drawings. This MS. may be assigned to the beginning of the 9th century. If there were no other internal evidence of late date in the MS., the mixture of uncial letters with the capitals would decide it. In the P.salter of St Augustine s, Canterbury, in the Cottonian Library (Pal. Soc., pi. 19 ; Cat. Anc. MSS., ii. pis. 12, 13), some leaves at the beginning are written in this imitative style early in the 8th century; and again it is found in the Benedictional of Bishop yEthelwold (Pal. Soc., pi. 143) of the 10th century. In the sumptu ous MSS. of the Carlovingian school it was continually used ; and it survived for such purposes as titles and colo phons, for some centuries, usually in a degenerate form of the rustic letters. Uncial. Uncial writing differs from the capital in adopting certain rounded forms, as A b 6 h fO, and in having some of its letters rising above or falling below the line. The origin of the round letters may be traced in some of the Roman cursive characters as seen in the wall inscrip tions of Pompeii and the waxen tablets. A calligraphic development of these slighter forms resulted in the firmly- drawn letters which are seen in the early vellum MSS. The most ancient of these may Avithout much hesitation be assigned to the 4th century, and in them the writing is so well-established that one might well believe that it had been already practised for some generations. On the other hand, a calligraphic style may be stimulated into quick development by various causes, caprice, fashion, or even the substitution of a different writing material, as vellum for papyrus. Uncial writing lasted as an ordinary book-