Page:The History of Ink.djvu/59

Rh 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 provable 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 material. The tirades of Cyril or Jerome, of 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 or  signifying twice rubbed;  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 it twice prepared