Page:The History of Ink.djvu/41

Rh 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