Lodicule

“ They were my own missing pick and shovel, side by side, and leaning neatly against the blasphemously carved wall of that hellish crypt. God in heaven—and I had babbled to myself about daring jokers from Binger!
That was the last straw. After that the cursed hypnotism of the manuscript got at me, and I actually saw the half-transparent shapes of the things that were pushing and plucking; pushing and plucking—those leprous palaeogean things with something of humanity still clinging to them—the complete forms, and the forms that were morbidly and perversely incomplete ... ”

“ The figures of Christ and the Evangelists are sometimes hardly human in form, but are worked up into a kind of conventional scroll-pattern, just as they are in the older Celtic illuminations. The Paris library possesses two manuscripts of the Gospels, which are good examples of this revived Celtic style (Bibl. Nat. Lat. Nos. 257 and 8849) . The borders and initial letters in these manuscripts are remarkable for their intricate delicacy of design, and for their rich colour, tastefully arranged; while the figure drawing is of the purely ornamental scroll type.
Figure 14
Fig. ”

“ Folio. How you would start back with surprise--peradventure mingled with indignation--to be told that, for this very meagre little folio, somewhat cropt, consisting but of eleven leaves cruelly scribbled upon ... not fewer than three thousand three hundred livres were given--at the sale of Cardinal Lomenie's library, about thirty years ago! It is even so. And wherefore? Because only one other copy of it is known:--and that "other" is luckily reposing upon the mahogany shelves in St. James's Place. The present copy measures ten inches seven eighths, by eight inches. ”

“ But the royal library has 75,000 volumes, and if it had the library that Queen Christina sent to the Vatican at Rome, it would be still a greater wonder, and then would be increased if the ancient collection made by Charles X., 405and consumed by fire in 1697, had been preserved. The Codex Aureus, a Latin manuscript of the gospels, dating in the sixth or seventh century, “is written in Gothic characters of gold, on folio leaves of vellum, alternately white and violet.” ”

“ If not, belike you might walk down our noble library’s length, and survey the books and busts, and stalls and gallery at each side, and the beautiful antique manuscripts in glass cases at the end just before you enter the Fagel Library, and be no more impressed—you will excuse us—no more than a grave-digger in knocking about an old coffin or a skull, yea, though the skull should once have belonged to poor Yorick, the king’s jester! ”

“ The most ancient, artistic miniatures of which we know are those on a manuscript of a part of the book of Genesis; it is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and was made at the end of the fifth century. In the same collection there is a very extraordinary manuscript, from which I give an illustration.
This manuscript is a treatise on botany, and was written by Dioskorides for his pupil, the Princess Juliana Anicia, a granddaughter of the Emperor Valentine III. As this princess died at Constantinople a.d. 527, this manuscript dates from the beginning of the sixth century. ”

“ The illustrative history of the ancient Egyptians does not point to a time before the reed was used as a pen. The various sculptures, carvings, pottery and paintings, exhibit the scribes at work in their avocations, recording details about the hands and ears of slaughtered enemies, the numbers of captives, the baskets of wheat, the numerous animals, the tribute, the treaties and the public records. These ancient scribes employed a cylindrical box for ink, with writing tablets, which were square sections of wood with lateral grooves to hold the small reeds for writing. ”

“ There are five full pages of decoration, in cruciform design of most extraordinary elaboration; six pages of ornamented text; four full-page miniatures of the Evangelists, in which the scribes are drawn in profile, seated, with cushion, desk, and footstool; sixteen pages of Canon tables, decorated in pure Celtic style; and numerous initials of various sizes.
The great interest in this manuscript lies in the cruciform pages. When I first saw them I thought the work a marvelous example of the amount of intricate design an artist could devise within a given area of space. ”

“ The other word for parchment used for manuscripts is membrana.
Linen MSS. Manuscripts on linen; in ancient Egypt hieroglyphic manuscripts with sacred hymns and portions of the so-called Ritual of the Dead were frequently written with a reed pen on fine linen. These manuscripts, which are often found among the mummy wrappings of burials under the Theban Dynasties, are usually illustrated with pen drawings in outline, not painted miniatures like those on the papyrus rolls. These drawings are executed with much spirit and with a beautiful, clean, certain touch. ”

“ Inflorescence consisting of spikelets, rarely of single flowers, usually enclosed by 2 glumes (outer or empty glumes) and arranged in spikes, racemes, or panicles. Flowers in the axil of the flowering glume (or valve) , subtended by the usually 2-keeled palea and sometimes by one or two, rarely more, minute lodicules. Perianth none. Stamens 1-6, usually 3. Anthers opening by 2 slits or pores. Ovary 1-celled. Ovule 1, erect or laterally affixed, slightly curved, with the micropyle turned downwards. Styles 2, rarely 3 or 1. Fruit indehiscent; pericarp usually dry and adnate to the seed. ”

“ It had therefore now to be unrolled afresh and to be re-rolled into its normal shape—a troublesome process which the lazy man shirked, and which the careful man accomplished by making the revolutions with his two hands while he held the revolving material steady under his chin.
Although the codex or manuscript in book-form began to make its way in Greek and Roman literature as early as the 1st century of our era, the roll maintained its position as the recognized type of literary document down to the 3rd, and even into the 4th, century, when it was altogether superseded. ”

“ The number of abbreviations increases considerably during the eighth century. Previously the only symbols found in calligraphic majuscule manuscripts are the “Nomina Sacra” (deus, dominus, Iesus, Christus, spiritus, sanctus) , which constantly occur in Christian literature, and such suspensions as are met with in our fragment. A familiar exception is the manuscript of Gaius, preserved in the Chapter library of Verona, MS. xv (13) . This is full of abbreviations not found in contemporary manuscripts containing purely literary or religious texts. ”

“ The presence of these on Plates 25-28 of the Codex, in the manner there given, is perhaps the surest guide as to the quarters to which they respectively belong; the fact they are so often found occupying the four corners of the spaces of the plates of the Manuscript is what leads us to suspect that they indicate the cardinal points. The chief, and, so far as I can see, the only objection to this interpretation is the occasional change of order in the spaces; but, as we have seen, this seldom, if ever, occurs where they are in a line. The chief doubt is as to the points assigned them. ”

“ Louder grew the sound and louder, and now all the body of the cube vibrated to their rhythm. The crystal walls were melting, growing misty as though formed of the mist of diamonds. And the disc itself was growing ... the shapes shifting, dividing and multiplying as though some door had been opened and into it companies of phantasms were pouring. While brighter, more bright grew the pulsing light. ”

“ The Figure Alphabet.—In the Print Room of the British Museum there is a curious little book (six inches by four inches in size) in which nearly all the letters of the alphabet are formed by grotesque figures of men. Except that it was bequeathed to the Museum by Sir George Beaumont, no one knows anything of its history; but internal evidence warrants us in attributing it to the work of an engraver of the first half of the fifteenth century. ”

“ The monks have torn out the text from the cover, and left it behind; there was no more room for the manuscript in the crowded bag. The treasure is lost to science. Our hand touches what was once the cover of the manuscript, and we cannot help having the bitter feeling of sorrow for what is irreparable, the same as if it had passed away in our sight. But we return to the light in possession of our faculties, and must do our duty in making available to our generation, and those who come after us, what remains. ”

“ A Latin manuscript of the seventh century has a high dot ( ̇) equivalent to a comma, a semicolon used as at present, and a dot accompanied by another dot or a dash to indicate the end of a sentence. A Latin manuscript of the ninth century shows the comma and an inverted semicolon ( [;] ) having a value between the semicolon and colon. Mediæval manuscript pointing, therefore, approximates modern forms in places, but lacks standardization into recognized systems.
The spread of printing brought new needs into prominence. ”

“ It was on the following day and the entire group was bent over the manuscript which had been written by the long dead priest. The book lay spread out on the library table before them, yellow and fragile, with corners which threatened to fall away to dust at their touch. Rotted cord held it together and had broken in so many places that the ancient book held together by a miracle. ”

“ This hand printing was done by men called monks, who lived in monasteries, away from the noise and bustle of the world, and who often devoted their whole lives to the lettering of religious books. They did this lettering on sheepskin or parchment instead of on paper, and they spared no pains in making these manuscripts as beautiful as possible. Color was often used for initials and for capital letters, and sometimes artistically designed borders were placed around the lettering, making each page in these manuscript books as beautiful as a picture. ”

“ Thus, for example, the little bosses and studs of gold, which are strewn so thickly among the foliage in the illuminated borders of Italian manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are convex in shape, like an old-fashioned watch-glass, and each boss reflects a brilliant speck of light whatever the direction may be in which the light falls upon the page. ”

“ In others, where a score of monks, or even fewer, have slumbered away their term of years, they have yet retained a vague traditionary belief in the value of the manuscripts which they knew to lie, in heaps, in some cell or vault, never visited, by themselves. In some cases the books, which had been huddled away from the library in a moment of danger, when an enemy was under the walls, have remained—safe and forgotten, in their concealment—perhaps for centuries. ”

“ To return now to classical forms of manuscripts, it appears to have been a long time before the book or codex form of manuscript was extended from the wood and ivory tablets to writings on parchment or paper.
The roll form of MS.It seems probable that throughout the Greek period manuscripts on paper or vellum were usually, if not always, in the shape of a long roll; and that it was not till about the beginning of the Roman Empire that leaves of parchment or paper were sometimes cut up into pages and bound together in the form of the older tablets. ”

“ Those exposed to the air have all disappeared ages ago. In the second century parchment was brought into common use as a writing material, and papyrus paper gradually fell into disuse. And with the change of material the shape of manuscripts was changed; the ancient form of the papyrus-roll giving place, in manuscripts written on parchment, to the form of books with leaves. How we should value the original rolls which contained the handwriting of the evangelists and apostles! ”

“ Late survivals. Late survivals of writing on tablets. Before passing on to describe other forms of classical manuscripts, it may be interesting to note that the ancient waxed tablets or pugillares continued to be used for certain purposes throughout the whole mediaeval period, down to the sixteenth century or even later. Many of the principal churches, especially in Italy, but also in other countries, possessed one or more diptychs on which were inscribed the names of all those who had in any way been benefactors either to the ecclesiastical foundation or to the building. ”

“ The noble manuscript library founded by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and greatly enriched by his son Edward, who inherited his father’s love of science, claims a distinguished place in every account which may be given of 104the literary treasures of antiquity in general, and of this country in particular. ”

“ A great conqueror had taken possession of an ancient library, when there were no printing presses, containing one hundred thousand volumes, all in manuscript comprising more history than was in any library extant in the ancient world. ”

“ After having made the measure for the work, we set a line for the letter that is designed for it, and take notice how much copy will come into the line in the stick, whether less or more than a line of manuscript. And as it is seldom that neither one nor the other happens, we make a mark in the copy where the line in the stick ends, and number the words that it contains. ”

“ Across three of these royal tablets are inscriptions. One can be reached from the foot of the cliff, the others, being on the higher sculptures, cannot be seen from below. They are all more or less injured, but being very nearly, word for word, the same, they can to some extent be restored. I was lowered by ropes to those on the face of the precipice, which are not otherwise accessible. Standing on a ledge scarcely six inches wide, overlooking a giddy depth, and in a constrained and painful position, I had some difficulty in copying them. ”