Page:The History of Ink.djvu/61

Rh 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 touched 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