Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres

“ It was in Germany and the Low Countries that the practice appears to have originated, chiefly among students and other members of the universities, of collecting autograph inscriptions and signatures of one's friends in albums, alba amicorum, little oblong pocket volumes of which a considerable number have survived, a very fair collection being in the British Museum. ”

“ When lithography came into vogue in this country, he quickly adopted it as a means of providing good examples for the use of pupils and students, and in the many works which he published greatly developed the resources of the art, carrying it in fact to a point of excellence which has not been surpassed. The 'Académie des Beaux Arts' had awarded him two gold medals for lithographic drawings exhibited at the Louvre. His early productions were drawing-books, consisting of pencil sketches and studies of trees ”

“ It seems, young gentlemen, to be generally the custom in colleges for the students to ornament the walls and benches of their recitation-rooms with various inscriptions and caricatures, so that after the premises have been for a short time in the possession of a class, every thing within reach, which will take an impression from a penknife or a trace from a pencil, is covered with names, and dates, and heads, and inscriptions of every kind. ”

“ It is never wise to jumble a number of different styles of lettering together in one inscription, as is sometimes done. The practice of this kind of thing tends to make the lettering less readable, besides making it look somewhat freakish. ”

“ The letters, ordinarily drawn with minium on the monument before being cut (and also often painted, after having been cut, with the same colour) , sometimes have been painted with a brush, and thence receive a peculiar form. To save space, on coins first and afterwards in inscriptions also, two or three or even more letters were joined, especially at the end of the lines, to a nexus or a ligatura. This system of compendious writing, very rare in the republican epoch, and slowly extending itself during the 1st century, became rather frequent in the 2nd and 3rd, especially in Spain and Africa. ”

“ The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities counts itself fortunate to have secured the services of the world’s greatest expert on antiques in the preparation of this book and in the collecting of the enormous mass of data which is always open to any member of the Academy or to any antique-collector in good and regular standing. ”

“ All the display inscriptions are primarily of architectural character, whether intended to face the walls of the palace or to be deposited as a sort of corner stone under the gates or at the corners of the wall. We should not expect their value to be high, and indeed they are of but little worth when the corresponding annals on which they are based has been preserved. For example, we have four different recensions of a very long display inscription, as well as literally scores of minor ones, also of a display character, from the later years of Sargon. ”

“ The student cannot have too much practice with the reed and quill pen.
The many good historical forms of Roman lettering should not be neglected. Roman lettering is, without doubt, the most useful form of lettering for general inscriptions, and it is necessary that the modern illuminator should be familiar with the beautiful forms of this style of lettering. ”

“ The space available for a given inscription may in this way largely determine the arrangement of the lettering, comparatively small and large spaces suggesting respectively “Massed Writing” and “Fine Writing” (see p. 262) .
Fig. 155.
In certain decorative inscriptions, where letters are merely treated as decorative forms—readableness [p267] being a matter of little or no moment—the treatment of the spacing is adapted to a particular surface; and, for example:—
Fig. ”

“ On this the inscription reads 'June 29, 1585,' which no doubt refers to the date of engraving, or, probably, to the date at which the design for the engraving was finished by the artist. As a work of art it is poor, but its interest as a book-plate to collectors is not lessened on that account. ”

“ Setting-out.—An inscription of any size, or one requiring complex or very nice arrangement, is set-out in faint, sketchy outline of lead pencil or chalk. Simple writing is not set-out, but such slight calculation or planning as is necessary is carried out mentally, or on a scrap of paper. By practice the scribe, like the compositor, can fit his lettering to the given space with ease and accuracy. ”

“ The work at any one place must have required many years, and could not have been done by a single man; nor is it probable that it was all done in one generation. Separate hieroglyphs must have been preserved in the same way. It is this rigid adherence to a type, and the banishment of artistic fancy, which will allow of progress in the deciphering of the inscriptions or the comparison of the statues. Line after line, ornament after ornament, is repeated with utter fidelity. ”

“ The inscriptions on the specimens teach us these matters.
Fifthly, stamp-collecting assists us to gain a real knowledge of history. Ask any collector when Columbus discovered America? Who was Prince Henry the Navigator? Over what country did King Amadeus reign? What form of government is possessed by Paraguay? His answers will be far more intelligent than those given by a non-collector.
But the foregoing are not the only matters which our stamps teach us. What is the difference between an engraving and a lithograph, between cream-laid paper and wove paper, between magenta and cerise? ”

“ Many of the old university libraries are yet in existence.
[Pg 37]
CHAPTER VI The Dawn of a New Era Methods of inscribing words or characters upon vellum or other writing material other than by the toilsome process of handwriting had long been in existence. Among the oldest of human remains are stamps and seals for the impression of symbols, words, or signatures upon plastic substances, as the impression of a signet or seal is now made on sealing wax softened by heat. ”

“ One word as to the name 'National Academy of the Arts of Design.' Any less name than 'National' would be taking one below the American Academy, and therefore is not desirable. If we were simply the 'Associated Artists,' their name would swallow us up; therefore 'National' seems a proper one as to the arts of design. These are painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving, while the fine arts include poetry, music, landscape gardening, and the histrionic arts. Our name, therefore, expresses the entire character of our institution and that only. ”

“ The test of beauty is fitness, and as the inscription of the name and trade of a storekeeper is not likely to be eclipsed by another inscription close to it, that the very architectural members serve as a separation, or, as it were, a framing, and that therefore no expedient is necessary to protect the words from being confused by the proximity or brilliancy of another inscription, but that simplicity, boldness and clearness are the great conditions to be fulfilled by the sign-painter. ”

“ The majority of amateur draughtsmen make their drawings in pencil or ink and these the lithographer traces upon lithographic transfer paper and transfers them to the stone; he, the lithographer, may merely trace the salient features and work the drawing up on the stone. ”

“ II. Information regarding the forms of letters used on Roman inscriptions will be found under the articles Latin Language, Palaeography and Writing (cf. Hübner, Exempla scripturae epigraphicae Latinae, 1895) . The forms of the single letters vary not inconsiderably according to the material of the monuments, their age and their origin. Carefully cut letters, especially when on a large scale, naturally differ from those scratched or painted on walls by non-professional hands, or hewn on rocks by soldiers ”

“ Art. 98. Having noted in the general register the grades of the ordinary examination, they shall proceed, under the supervision of the secretary of the school, to cut the second section of the inscription of the pupils who have passed, in order to join it on their respective documents. The same operation shall be repeated at the end of the examinations in June, except in regard to the pupils who have not passed, to whom the inscriptions refer. ”

“ In 1793 the Convention suppressed the French Academy, also the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and the Academy of Architecture. They were re-established in 1795, under the name of a National Institute, composed of three sections: the first comprising the sciences of physics and mathematics; the second, the moral and political sciences; the third, literature and the fine arts. From that period dates the uniform which is still worn by the members of the institute at public ceremonials and other solemn functions. ”

“ One group is manifestly the older: in orthography, punctuation, and abbreviation it bears close resemblance to inscriptions of the classical or Roman period. The other group is as manifestly composed of the more recent manuscripts: this may be inferred from the corrupt or barbarous spelling, from the use of abbreviations unfamiliar in the classical period but very common in the Middle Ages, or from the presence of punctuation, which the oldest manuscripts invariably lack. The manuscripts of the first group show letters that are simple and unadorned and words unseparated from each other. ”

“ However, if the shape of a utilitarian article incorporates features, such as artistic sculpture, carving, or pictorial representation, which can be identified separately and are capable of existing independently as a work of art, such features will be eligible for registration. ”

“ In approving of the design mentioned in your "Notes" by MR. DUNKIN, it has surprised me that in no one of the communications which you have there printed is any allusion to the multitude of inscriptions already collected, and now preserved in the British Museum and other libraries. A list of what are already copied should first be made, which would considerably abridge the labour of collecting. For instance, the whole of Gloucestershire has been preserved by Bigland, and nearly two-thirds of these have been printed. ”

“ In 1876 the system of reproducing sketches in pen and ink by photo-engraving became general in England, and in the pages of Academy Notes of that year there appeared, for the first time, sketches by the painters of their exhibited works. ”

“ Towards the close of the age of manuscripts, it became a fairly common practice, more especially in Italy, for book-lovers to cause their arms to be painted as part of the decoration of the first page of text. In the last years of the fifteenth century book-plates came into use in Germany, and during the next hundred years were slowly adopted both in France and England. But until the sixteenth century was far advanced the commonest way of marking possession of a book in England remained that of inscribing the owner's name on the title-page or a fly-leaf. ”

“ The inscription, which I now proceed to consider, wants no arguments to prove its antiquity to those among the learned, who are versed in the writers of the darker ages, and know that the Latin poetry of those times was of a peculiar cast and air, not easy to be understood, and very difficult to be imitated; nor can it be conceived, that any man would lay out his abilities on a way of writing, which, though attained with much study, could gain him no reputation; and engrave his chimeras on a stone, to astonish posterity. ”

“ The study of manuscripts, for most persons, is confined to the period between the twelfth century and the sixteenth; since it is not given to everyone to make pilgrimages to the museums scattered over Europe, for the purpose of looking at the earlier and rarer examples of writing. Besides, the chief interest of the study lies rather in the decoration than the calligraphy of manuscripts; and it was not till the fourteenth century that the production of such work became so large and general as to leave a sufficient number of specimens readily accessible to modern inspection. ”

“ The department of art-literature which classifies prints is called Iconography, and the classifications adopted by iconographers are of the most various kinds. For example, if a complete book were written on Shakespearian iconography it would contain full information about all prints illustrating the life and works of Shakespeare, and in the same way there may be the iconography of a locality or of a single event.
The history of engraving is a part of iconography, and various histories of the art exist in different languages. ”

“ But you find a resemblance in the inscriptions as well. Thus, wherever the Methodists obtained a firm hold on the community, you find the spirit of ugliness appearing in the village churchyard from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, when the old ornate and beautiful stones with figures of winged cherubs bearing torches, scattering flowers or blowing trumpets, were the usual decorations, giving place to the plain or ugly stone with its square ugly lettering and the dull monotonous form of the inscription. ”

“ And it was a matter of course that in the Middle Ages, when the craftsmen took care that beautiful form should always be a part of their productions whatever they were, the forms of printed letters should be beautiful, and that their arrangement on the page should be reasonable and a help to the shapeliness of the letters themselves. The Middle Ages brought caligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely. ”