The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various
page 29 of 295 (09%)
page 29 of 295 (09%)
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Latin, and these Latin notes are always written in the Italian hand of
fac-simile No. 1; so that we find that hand, in which all the notes, English and Latin, (with a few exceptions, like "_England_,") are written for the first twenty-seven folios, afterward in juxtaposition with each of the other hands. For instance, on folio 87, recto, we find "_tolerare laborem propter virtutem quis vult si praemia desunt_," written in the style of "_Experience_" No. 1 above, though not so carefully, and immediately beneath it, manifestly with the same pen, and it would seem with the same pen-full of ink, "the saying of Galen," in the style of No. 4, "_strangers where they come_," etc. The ink, too, in which these notes are written illustrates the shifts to which our ancestors were put when writing-materials were not made and bought by the quantity, as they are now,--a fact which bears against a not yet well-established point made by Mr. Maskelyne of the British Museum against Mr. Collier's marginalia. This writing exhibits every possible variety of tint and of shade, and also of consistence and composition, that ink called black could show. As far as the recto of folio 12 it has the look of black ink slightly faded. On the reverse of that folio it suddenly assumes a pale gray tint, which it preserves to the recto of folio 20. There it becomes of a very dark rich brown, so smooth in surface as almost to have a lustre, but in the course of a few folios it changes to a pale tawny tint; again back to black, again to gray, again to a fine clear black that might have been written yesterday, and again to the pale tawny, with which it ends. It is also worthy of notice, that, where this ink has the dark rich brown hue, it also seems, in the words of Professor Maskelyne, in his letter to the London "Times," dated July 13, 1859, to be "on rather than in the paper"; and it also proved in this instance, to use the phraseology of the same letter, to be "removable, with the exception of a slight stain, |
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