The Invention of Printing/Chapter 2
II
Antique Methods of Impression and their Failure.
Transfer of Form by Impression one of the Oldest Arts…The Stamped Bricks of Assyria and Egypt…Assyrian Cylinders of Clay…Greek Maps…Roman Theories about Combinations of Letters…Roman Stamps…The Brands and Stamps of the Middle Ages…English Brands. Stamping is not Printing…Ink then used was Unsuitable for Printing…Printing Waited for Discovery of Ink and Paper…Romans did not Need Printing…Printing Depends on a multitude of Readers…Readers were few in the Dark Ages…Invention of Printing was Not purely Mechanical…Printing needs many Supports…Telegraph…Schools…Libraries…Expresses. Post-Offices…A Premature Invention would have been Fruitless.
Lanzi.
SOME notice of the material and moral elements needed for the development of typography should precede a description of the work of the early printers. We shall form incorrect notions about the invention of printing unless we know something about the state of the arts of paper-making, ink-making and engraving at the beginning of the fifteenth century. We should also know something about the books and the book-makers of the middle ages. Nor will it be out of place to review the mechanical processes which have been used, almost from the beginning, for the preservation of written language. The review will show us what elements the inventor of typography found at his hand ready for use; what he combined from the inventions of others, and what he invented anew.
A Stamped Brick from the Ruins of Babylon.
[From Hansard.]In Babylonia and Assyria, engraved forms were printed or stamped on clay specially prepared for this purpose. In the ruins of the ancient edifices of these primeval nations there is scarcely a stone or a kiln-burnt brick without an inscription or a stamp upon it. The inscriptions on stone appear to have been cut with a chisel, after the usual method of stone-cutters; but the stamps on the bricks were made from engravings on wood, or by the separate impressions of some pointed instrument. The preceding illustration is that of a stamped brick taken many years ago from the ruins of ancient Babylon. When in perfect condition, it was thirteen inches square and three inches thick. The inscription, which is in the cuneiform or arrow-headed character, is irregularly placed on the surface, but the letters or words are arranged in parallel rows, and are obviously made to be read from top to bottom. The characters of this inscription were not cut upon the brick, nor were they separately impressed. That they were made
Fac-simile of the Impression on the Brick.
[From Hansard.]
 Face. |
 Back. |
on the plastic clay by the sudden pressure of a xylographic block, is seen by the oblique position of the square inscription on the brick,[1] in the nicety of the engraving and its uniform depth, in the bulging up of the clay on the side, where it was forced outward and upward by the impression. In old Egypt, bricks were impressed by the same method of stamping, but not to such an extent as they were in old Assyria. The cuts annexed represent the face and back of an old Egyptian stamp discovered in a tomb of Thebes. The stamp is five inches long, two and one-quarter inches broad, and half an inch thick, and is fitted to an arched handle. The characters are engraved below the surface of the wood, so that an impression taken from the stamp on the clay would show the engraved characters in relief. The inscription on the stamp has been translated, Amenoph, beloved of truth. Amenoph is supposed, by some authorities, to have been the king of Egypt at the period of the exodus of the Israelites.
The characters on the Egyptian and Babylonian bricks are much more neatly executed than would seem necessary for inscriptions on so common a material as clay. But they are really coarse, when compared with the inscriptions upon the small cylinders of clay which were used by the Assyrians for the preservation of their public documents. Layard mentions a small six-sided Assyrian cylinder that contains sixty lines of minute characters which could be read only by the aid of a magnifying glass. Antiquaries are not yet perfectly agreed as to the method by which the cylinders were made. Layard, who says that the Babylonian bricks were stamped, thinks that the inscriptions on the cylinders were cut on the clay. But there are many cylinders which show the clearest indications of impression.
It is probable that they were made by both methods. The clay was prepared for writing as well as for stamping. Ezekiel, who prophesied by the river Chebar in Assyria, was commanded to take a tile, and portray upon it the city of Jerusalem. The Chaldean priests informed Callisthenes that they kept their astronomical observations on tiles that were subsequently baked in the furnace. Four large piles of tablets of unburned clay were found by Layard in the library or hall of records of Assurbanipal. Some of the tablets are the grammars and primers of the language; some are records of agreements to sell property or slaves; some are filled with astronomical or astrological predictions. On one of them was inscribed the Assyrian version of the deluge. The cylinders contained the memorials which were then considered as of most value, such as the proclamations of the king, or the laws of the empire. In the museum of the East India Company is the fragment of a clay cylinder which contains a portion of the decrees or annals of Nebuchadnezzar. For perpetuating records of this nature, the cylinders were admirably adapted. They were convenient for reference, and their legibility, after so long an exposure, shows that they were perfectly durable.
An Assyrian Cylinder. [From Hansard.]We do not know by what considerations Assyrian rulers were governed when about to choose between engraving or writing on clay; but it is not unreasonable to assume that the inscription was written or cut on the clay, when one copy only of a record was wanted; if numerous copies were wanted, a die or an engraving on wood was manufactured, from which these copies were moulded. No surer method of securing exact copies of an original could have been devised among a people that did not use ink and paper. These cylinders are examples of printing in its most elementary form.
The accompanying illustration, copied from Hansard's Typographia represents an Assyrian cylinder which presents the same indications of impression which have been noticed upon the bricks. This cylinder, which is seven inches wide at each end, was so thoroughly baked in a furnace that it is partially vitrified. Around its largest circumference is a ragged and bulging line, about a quarter of an inch wide, which seems to have been made by the imperfect meeting of two moulding stamps. If the inscription had been cut on the clay, this defect would not appear; the vertical lines would have been connected, and the ragged white line would have been made smooth.
This method of printing in clay was rude and imperfect, but, to some extent, it did the work of modern typography. Writings were published at small expense, and records were preserved for ages without the aid of ink or paper. The modern printer may wonder that this skill in printing was not developed. The engraving that was used to impress clay could have been coated with ink and stamped on parchment. Simple as this application of the engraving may appear, it was never made. So far from receiving any improvement, the art of printing in clay gradually fell into disuse. It has been neglected for more than twenty-five centuries on the soil where it probably originated. For Layard tells us that an Assyrian six-sided cylinder was used as a candlestick by a reputable Turcoman family living in the village where it was found. A hole in the centre of one of the ends received the tallow candle. There is a practical irony in this base application of what may have been a praise of "the great king" which has never been surpassed by Solomon or Shakspeare in their reflections on the vanity of human greatness.
Engraving was used by the ancient Greeks in a manner which should have suggested the feasibility of printing with ink. Some of the maps of the Athenians were engraved on smooth metal plates, with lines cut below the surface, after the method of copper-plate printers, from which impressions on vellum, or even on papyrus, could have been taken. But, so far as we know, the impressions were not taken: for every new map there was a new engraving.
The Assyrian method of engraving stamps for impressing clay was practised by the old Roman potters, who marked their manufactures with the names of the owners or with the contents of the vessel. The potters clearly understood the value of movable types. On some of their lamps of clay, the inscriptions were made by impressing, consecutively, the type of each letter. These types must have been movable, and, in appearance, somewhat like the punches or the model letters of type-founders.
There were some men in ancient Rome who had a clear perception of the ease with which engraved letters could be combined. Cicero, in an argument against the hypothesis of logical results from illogical causes, has intimated that it would be absurd to look for an intelligible sentence from a careless mixing up of the engraved letters of the alphabet.[2] The phrase by which he describes the assembled letters, formæ literarum, was used by the early printers to describe types. His argument implies, conversely, that if proper care were exercised, it would be easy to arrange the letters in readable sentences. But the speculation of Cicero did not go beyond the idea of combination. It does not appear that he thought that the letters could be used for printing.
Quintilian had speculations about engraved letters. He recommended to teachers the use of a thin stencil plate of wood, on which should be cut the letters that a boy might be required to copy when learning to write. The boy who traced the characters with his writing implement would have his hand guided and formed by the outlines of the perforated letters. The curt manner in which stencil plates are noticed should lead us to think that they were then in common use. We can see that stencils of this nature could have been used, at least as an aid, in the mechanical manufacture of books; but it is not probable that they were so used.
We have some evidences that the old Romans practised, at least experimentally, the art of printing with ink. The British Museum has a stamp with letters engraved in relief, that was found near Rome, and which seems to have been made for the purpose of printing the signature of its owner. The stamp is a brass plate, about two inches long and not quite one inch wide. A brass ring is attached to the back of the plate which may have been used as a socket for the finger, or as a support when it was suspended from a chain or girdle. On the face of the stamp are engraved two lines of capital letters, huddled together in the usual style of all old Roman inscriptions, 
cut the reverse way, as it would now be done for printing, and enclosed by a border line. An impression taken from this stamp would produce the letters in the accompanying illustration, which may be translated, the signature of Cecilius Hermias. Of Cecilius Hermias we know nothing. He may have been a civic official who used this stamp to exempt himself from the trouble of writing, or a citizen who tried to hide his inability to write.
If this stamp should be impressed in wax, the impression would produce letters sunk below the surface of the wax in a manner that is unlike the impressions of seals. The raised surface on the wax would be rough where it should be flat and smooth. This peculiarity is significant. As this rough field unfitted it for a neat impression on any plastic surface, the stamp should have been used for printing with ink.
An Old Roman Stamp.
[From Jackson.]The accompanying illustration is that of a brass printing stamp in the British Museum, which is preserved as a specimen of old Roman workmanship.[3] The letters were cut in relief, in reverse order, and with a rough counter or field. This roughness proves that it could not have been used to impress wax.
Brass stamps of similar construction and of undetermined age have been frequently found in France and Italy. All of them are of small size, and contain names of persons only.
Roman Stamps.
[From Jackson.]The illustrations annexed, of two engraved brass stamps of eccentric shapes, were also copied from the originals in the British Museum. As the letters are roughly sunk in the metal, and are not fitted for stamping in wax, it is supposed that the stamps were made for impression with ink. They are regarded as Roman antiquities, of undoubted authenticity but the meaning of the inscriptions, the special purposes for which they were made, and the period in which they were employed, are unknown. The difficulty connected with the proper fixing of ink upon these stamps of brass, of which a subsequent notice will be made, is one of many causes which prevented the development of this experimental form of printing.
A favorite method of making impressions was that of branding. Virgil, in the third book of the Georgics, tells us of its application to cattle. The old laws of many European states tell us of its application to human beings. The cruel practice was kept up long after the invention of typography. During the reign of Edward vi, of England (1547–1553), it was enacted that, "whosoever, man or woman, not being lame or impotent, nor so aged or diseased that he or she could not work, should be convicted of loitering or idle wandering by the highwayside, or in the streets, like a servant wanting a master, or a beggar, he or she was to be marked with a hot iron upon the breast with the letter V [for vagabond], and adjudged to the person bringing him or her before a justice, to be his slave for two years; and if such adjudged slave should run away, he or she, upon being taken and convicted, was to be marked upon the forehead, or upon the ball of the cheek, with the letter S [for slave], and adjudged to be the said master's slave forever."
With these evidences before us of long continued practice in various methods of engraving and stamping, and of a fair knowledge of some of the advantages of movable letters, the question may be asked, Why did the world have to wait so long for the invention of typography? This question is based on the assumption, that the civilization of antiquity was capable of making and preserving the invention which was missed through accident or neglect. Here is a grave error. The elements of an invention are like those of a chemical mixture. All the constituents but one may be there, exact in quantity and quality, but, for the lack of that one, the mixing of the whole in a new form cannot be accomplished. Failure in one point is entire failure.
The ancients failed in many points. They were destitute of several materials which we regard as indispensable in the practice of printing. They had no ink suitable for the work. Pliny and Dioscorides have given the formulas for the writing ink that was used by Greek and Roman scribes during the first century. Pliny says that the ink of book-writers was made of soot, charcoal and gum. He does not say what fluid was used to mix these materials, but he does allude to an occasional use of acid, to give the ink encaustic property and to make it bite in the papyrus. Dioscorides is more specific as to the quantities. He says that one ounce of gum should be mixed with three ounces of soot. Another formula is, one-half pound of smoke-black made from burned resin, one-half ounce each of copperas and ox-glue. Dioscorides further says that the latter mixture "is a good application in cases of gangrene, and is useful in scalds, if a little thickened, and employed as a salve." From this crude recipe one may form a correct opinion of the quality of the scientific knowledge then applied to medicine and the mechanical arts.
These mixtures, which are more like liquid shoe blacking than writing fluid, were used, with immaterial modifications, by the scribes of the dark ages. Useful as they may have been for their methods of writing, they could not have been applied to the inking of a metal surface engraved in relief. If the brass stamps described on a previous page had been brushed over never so carefully with these watery inks, the metal surface would not be covered with a smooth film of color. The ink would collect in spots and blotches. When stamped on paper or vellum, the ink thereupon impressed would be of irregular blackness, illegible in spots, and easily effaced. Writing ink, thickened with gum, has but a feeble encaustic property. It will not be absorbed, unless it is laid on in little pools, and unless the writing surface is scratched by a pen to aid the desired absorption. The flat impression of a smooth metal stamp could not make a fluid or a gummy ink penetrate below the writing surface. It was, no doubt, by reason of the inferior appearance of impressions of this nature that the brass stamps described on a previous page found so limited a use.
An unsuitable ink may seem but a trifling impediment to the development of printing, but if there had been no other, this would have been an insurmountable obstacle. The modern printer, who sees that the chief ingredients of printing ink are the well-known materials smoke-black and oil, may think that an ignorance of this mixture, or an inability to discover it, is ridiculous and inexcusable. Modern printing ink is but one of many inventions which could be named as illustrating the real simplicity of a long delayed improvement. Simple as it may seem, the mixing of color with oil was a great invention which wrought a revolution in the art of painting.
This invention, attributed by some authors to unknown Italian painters of the fourteenth century, and by others to Hubert Van Eyck of Holland, at or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, immediately preceded the invention of types. The early typographic printers, who could not use the ink of the copyists, succeeded only when they mixed their black with oil. After four centuries of experience in the use of printing ink made with oil, and after repeated experimentation with impracticable substitutes, it may be confidently asserted that an invention of typography would have failed, if this use of oil had not been understood. The invention of types had to wait for the invention of ink.
Typography had to wait for the invention of paper, the only material that is mechanically adapted for printing, the only material that supplies the wants of the reader in his requirements for strength, cheapness, compactness and durability. Paper was known in civilized Europe for at least two centuries before typography was invented, but it was not produced in sufficient quantity nor of a proper quality until the beginning of the fifteenth century.
The old Romans had no substitute for paper that could have been devoted to printing or book- making. The papyrus which they used was so brittle that it could not be folded, creased and sewed like modern rag paper. It could not be bound up in books; it could not be rolled up, unsupported, like a sheet of parchment. It was secure only when it had been carefully wound around a wooden roller, The scribes of Rome and the book copyists of the middle ages preferred vellum. It was preferred by illuminators after printing had been invented. But vellum was never a favorite material among printers. In its dry state, it is harsh, and wears types; it is greasy, and resists ink; in its moistened state, it is flabby, treacherous and unmanageable. The early books on vellum are not so neatly printed as those on paper. But these faults were trivial as compared with the graver fault of inordinate price. When we consider that the skins of more than three hundred sheep were used in every copy of the first printed Bible, it is clear that typography would have been a failure if it had depended on a liberal supply of vellum. Even if the restricted size of vellum could have been conformed to, there were not enough sheep at the end of the fifteenth century to supply the demands of printing presses for a week.
If the idea of printing books from movable types had been entertained by an ancient Roman bookseller, or by a copyist, during the earlier part of the dark ages, it may be doubted whether he could have devised the mechanism that is needed in the making of types. For types that are accurate as to body, and economical as to cost, can be made by one method only. It is, in the highest degree, improbable, that the scientific method of making types by mechanism could have been invented at an earlier date than the fifteenth century. There was mechanical skill enough for the production of any kind of ingenious hand work, but the spirit that prompted men to construct machines and labor-saving apparatus was deficient or but feebly exercised. There was no more of true science in mechanics than there was in chemistry. The construction of a suitable type-mould, with its appurtenances, during the dark ages, would have been as premature as an invention of the steam engine in the same period.
The civilization of ancient Rome did not require printing. If all the processes of typography had been revealed to its scholars the art would not have been used. The wants of readers and writers were abundantly supplied by the pen. Papyrus paper was cheap, and scribes were numerous; Rome had more booksellers than it needed, and books were made faster than they could be sold. The professional scribes were educated slaves, who, fed and clothed at nominal expense, and organized under the direction of wealthy publishers, were made so efficient in the production of books, that typography, in an open competition, could have offered few advantages.
Our knowledge of the Roman organization of labor in the field of book-making is not as precise as could be wished; but the frequent notices of books, copyists and publishers, made by many authors during the first century, teach us that books were plentiful. Horace, the elegant and fastidious man of letters, complained that his books were too common, and that they were sometimes found in the hands of vulgar snobs for whose entertainment they were not written. Martial, the jovial man of the world, boasted that his books of stinging epigrams were to be found in everybody's hands or pockets. Books were read not only in the libraries, but at the baths, in the porticoes of houses, at private dinners and in mixed assemblies. The business of book-making was practised by too many people, and some were incompetent. Lucian, who had a keen perception of pretense in every form, ridicules the publishers as ignoramuses. Strabo, who probably wrote illegibly, says that the books of booksellers were incorrect.
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Tablet with Waxed Surface. |
Manuscript Roll, with Title on the Ticket. | |
| Roman Scrinium, with Rolls of Papyrus. | ||
The prices of books made by slave labor were necessarily low. Martial says that his first book of epigrams was sold in plain binding for six sesterces, about twenty-four cents of American money; the same book in sumptuous binding was valued at five denarii, about eighty cents. He subsequently complained that his thirteenth book was sold for only four sesterces, about sixteen cents. He frankly admits that half of this sum was profit, but intimates, somewhat ungraciously, that the publisher Tryphon gave him too small a share. Of the merits of this old disagreement between the author and publisher, we have not enough of facts to justify an opinion. We learn that some publishers, like Tryphon and the brothers Sosii, acquired wealth, but there are many indications that publishing was then, as it is now, one of the most speculative kinds of business. One writer chuckles over the unkind fate that sent so many, of the unsold books of rival authors from the warehouses of the publisher, to the shops of grocers and bakers, where they were used to wrap up pastry and spices; another writer says that the unsold stock of a bookseller was sometimes bought by butchers and trunk-makers.
The Romans not only had plenty of books but they had a manuscript daily newspaper, the Acta Diurna, which seems to have been a record of the proceedings of the senate. We do not know how it was written, nor how it was published, but it was frequently mentioned by contemporary writers as the regular official medium for transmitting intelligence. It was sent to subscribers in distant cities, and was, sometimes, read to an assembled army. Cicero mentions the Acta as a sheet in which he expected to find the city news and gossip about marriages and divorces.
In the sixth century the business of book-making had fallen into hopeless decay. Ignorance pervaded all ranks of society.[4] The books that had been written were neglected, and the number of readers and scholars diminished with every succeeding generation.[5] The treasures of literature at Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria which were destroyed by fire or by barbaric invasion were not replaced. Books were so scarce at the close of the seventh century, that Pope Martin requested one of his bishops to supply them, if possible, from Germany. The ignorance of ecclesiastics in high station was alarming. During this century, and for centuries afterward, there were many bishops and archbishops of the church who could not sign their names. It was asserted at a council of the church held in the year 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first element of letters. Hallam says, "To sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman of any rank to know how to sign his name." Charlemagne could not write, and Frederic Barbarossa could not read; John, king of Bohemia, and Philip the Hardy, king of France, were ignorant of both accomplishments.[6] The graces of literature were tolerated only in the ranks of the clergy; the layman who preferred letters to arms was regarded as a man of mean spirit. When the crusaders took Constantinople, in 1204, they exposed to public ridicule the pens and inkstands that they found in the conquered city as the ignoble arms of a contemptible race of students.
During this period of intellectual darkness, which lasted from the fifth until the fifteenth century, a period sometimes described, and not improperly, as the dark ages, there was no need for any improvement in the old method of making books. The world was not then ready for typography. The invention waited for readers more than it did for types; the multitude of book-buyers upon which its success depended had to be created. Books were needed as well as readers. The treatises of the old Roman sophists and rhetoricians, the dialectics of Aristotle and the schoolmen, and the commentaries on ecclesiastical law of the fathers of the church, were the works which engrossed the attention of men of letters for many centuries before the invention of typography. Useful as these books may have been to the small class of readers for whose benefit they were written, they were of no benefit to a people who required the elements of knowledge.
We may imagine the probable fate of a premature and unappreciated invention of typography by thinking of results that might have been and have not been accomplished by printing among a people who were not prepared to use it as it should be used. Printing has been practised in China for many centuries, but there can be no comparison between the fruits of printing in China and in Europe. The remarkable inefficiency of the Chinese method is the result not so much of clumsiness of the process, as of the perverseness of a people who are unable to improve it, and unwilling to accept the improvements of Europeans. The first printing press brought to the New World was set up in the City of Mexico about one hundred years before a printing office was established in Massachusetts. Books were printed in Constantinople, perhaps as early as 1490, certainly before types were thought of in Scotland. And now Scotland sends types and books to Turkey, and Boston sends printing paper and presses to Mexico. If the people of Turkey and Mexico are receiving benefits from printing, the benefits have been derived from the practice of the art abroad and not at home.
In making an estimate of the service that printing has done for the world, we frequently overlook the supports by which it has been upheld. It is a common belief that the diffusion of knowledge which was so clearly manifested in the fifteenth century was due to the invention of printing. This belief reverses the proper order, and substitutes the effect for the cause. It was the broader diffusion of knowledge that made smooth the way for the development of typography. In its infancy, the invention was indebted for its existence to improvements in liberal and mechanical arts; in its maturity, it is largely indebted for its success to discoveries in science, and to reforms in government.
The magnetic telegraph is the most recent discovery, and of the most importance, in its services to the daily newspaper press. The circulation of leading American daily newspapers has more than trebled since the invention of the telegraph.
The free public schools of America have done much to promote the growth of printing. If the State did not offer free books and free education, a large portion of the people would grow up in ignorance. Every scholar in a public school becomes for life a reader, and to some extent, a purchaser of books. The value of the school-books manufactured in the United States annually, has been estimated at fifteen million dollars. Of Webster's Spelling-Book alone, thirty-five million copies have been sold, and a million copies are printed every year. If printing were deprived of the support it receives from public schools, there would at once follow a noticeable decrease in the production of printed matter, and a corresponding decrease in the number of readers and book-buyers.
To foster the tastes which have been cultivated by public schools and newspapers, some States have established public libraries in every school district. There are, also, a great many valuable libraries which have been established by voluntary association or by individual bequest These libraries create books as well as readers.
Railroads, steamboats and package expresses are aids of as great importance. The New-York daily newspaper, printed early in the morning, is sold within a radius of three hundred miles before sunset of the same day. Newspapers now find hundreds of eager purchasers in places where they would not have found one in the days of stage-coaches. The benefits of cheap and quick transportation are also favorable to the sale of books. A bookseller's package, weighing one hundred pounds, will be carried from New York to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, within sixty-five hours, at an average expense of three dollars. When there was no railroad from St Louis to San Francisco, the overland charges on one hundred pounds of books were one hundred dollars. The long delays and great expenses of stage-coach transportation would operate almost as a prohibition to the sale of periodicals and new books.
The greatest legislative aid that printing has received is through the facilities which are furnished by post-offices and mails. They create readers. Weekly newspapers are now sent, for one year, for twenty cents, to subscribers in the most remote corner of the Union. Books are sent three thousand miles at the rate of one cent per ounce. The improvement of postal facilities has increased the number of readers and purchasers of newspapers to an amount unforeseen by the most sanguine projector.
All these aids are, comparatively, of recent introduction. The beginnings of the telegraph, the railroad and the express are within the memory of the men of the present generation. The systematic establishment of free schools and libraries is the work of the present century. Public mails and post-offices were introduced in 1530, but it is only within the past forty years that their management has been more liberal for the benefit of the people. It is by aids like these, and not by its intrinsic merits alone, that printing has received its recent development. It was for the want of these aids that printing languished for many years after its invention. One has but to consider the many supports printing has received to see that its premature invention would have been fruitless.
If, even now, when books and readers and literary tastes are as common as they were infrequent, it is necessary to the success of printing that there shall be schools and libraries, cheap and rapid methods of travel, generous postal facilities, a liberal government and a broad toleration of the greatest differences in opinion, what but failure could have been expected when the world was destitute of nearly all? Printing not only had to wait many centuries for improvements in mechanical appliances, without which it would have been worthless; it had to wait for a greater number of readers, for liberal governments, for instructive writers, for suitable books. It came at the proper time, not too soon, not too late. "Not the man, the age invents."
- ↑ The accompanying translation of a tablet taken from the record room of the second Assurbanipal (according to some original scholars, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks), king of Assyria, B. C. 667, will give an idea of one purpose for which the impressions were made:
Assurbanipal, the great king, the powerful king, king of nations, king of Assyria, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, son of Sennacherib, king of Assyria; according to the documents and old tablets of Assyria, and Sumri and Akkadi, this tablet in the collection of tablets I wrote, I studied, I explained, and for the inspection of my kingdom within my palace I placed. Whoever my written records defaces, and his own records shall write, may Nabu all the written tablets of his records deface.
Mr. Smith of the British Museum is translating some of these tablets.
- ↑ Balbus, the stoic, in replying to Vellejus, the epicurean, opposes his atheistical argument that the world was made by chance, and says:
He who fancies that a number of solid and invisible bodies could be kept together by weight [gravitation?], and that a world full of order and beauty could be formed by their accidental juxtaposition—from such a man I cannot understand why he should not also believe that if he threw together, pell-mell a great number of the twenty-one letters, either of gold or of some other material, the Annals of Ennius could be legibly put together from the forms scattered on the ground. De Natura Deorum, book II, chap. 20.
- ↑ Jackson and Chatto, Treatise on Wood Engraving, p. 12.
- ↑ The emperor Justin (518–527) could not write, and was obliged to sign state papers with a stencil.
- ↑ When Latin ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the laity. Hallam, Middle Ages.
- ↑ Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii, pp. 286, 287.