Manuscript

“ No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads and paging-figures. ”

“ Down to the time of the invention of printing, and until the printed book had driven it out of the field, the manuscript was the vehicle for the conservation and dissemination of literature, and discharged all the functions of the modern book. In the present article a description is given of the development of the ancient manuscript, particularly among the Greeks and Romans, leading on to the medieval manuscripts of Europe, and bringing down the history of the latter to the invention of printing ”

“ These common manuscript Horae are monotonous in form and detail; they nearly always have the same set of miniatures, which are {142}often coarse in detail and harsh in colour; and the illuminated borders, with which they are lavishly though cheaply decorated, have the same forms of foliage and fruit repeated again and again in dozens of manuscripts, which all look as if they had come out of the same workshop. ”

“ This manuscript, which I have examined at Leipzig, is written on foolscap paper, rather rough and yellow; it is written on both sides of the page, and in sheets or quires; here and there the paging shows that some pages have been omitted, and in their place are smaller sheets of thinner and whiter paper, all in Casanova’s handsome, unmistakable handwriting. The manuscript is done up in twelve bundles, corresponding with the twelve volumes of the original edition; and only in one place is there a gap. ”

“ I have catalogued the pictures and the china, the armour and the various curios, after a style of my own, with the history, so far as possible, of each of the masters, the date and a copy of such criticisms as have appeared in the press. The catalogues, you observe, are all written by hand.”
She pored over the vellum-bound manuscript book which he had been carrying, turning the pages, and glancing at the extracts written with great care in a stiff, clerkly handwriting. ”

“ MS. Chronicles.One rather abnormal class of manuscript, which belongs both to this period and the following (the fifteenth) century, consists of French or Latin Chronicles of the World beginning with the Creation and reaching down to recent times, written and illuminated with numerous miniature paintings on great rolls of parchment, often measuring from fifty to sixty feet in length. These are usually rather coarse in execution. ”

“ But if we think for a moment of how the manuscript books to which the early printers were accustomed had been produced we shall see that it was the most natural thing in the world. A scribe would take his quire of paper or vellum, and if he were a high-class scribe, mindful of the need of keeping his text clean, he would leave his first leaf blank and begin at the top of his second. ”

“ But would a pretender carry his or her cunning to the extreme of fortifying the manuscript in every possible way against the sallowing touch of time, lay it away in a trunk of old papers, lie down and die without mentioning it, and leave it for some one in the second or third generation afterward to find? ”

“ Illumination and printing.Thus we see that as early as about the year 1400 the printer's art had begun to supplement that of the manuscript illuminator [162] ; and the two arts continued to work, as it were, hand in hand till after the close of the fifteenth century when the illumination of manuscripts ceased to be a real living art and gradually degenerated into a mere appendage to individual pomp and luxury. ”

“ The two chief desiderata of a manuscript book—of a written production which was intended to give currency to a writer's thoughts and at the same time to serve as a more or less permanent depository of them—are legibility and durability. He who writes for the publicity of his ideas will not write on stone nor on clay; and he who writes for the preservation of his ideas will not write on ice or dust. ”

“ An illuminated manuscript on vellum, if not a prayer-book, secures additional attention; independent of its value as a work of art, it must be of some consequence to have made it worth illuminating. A large manuscript, as a general rule, is worth more than a little one, for the same evident reason that its contents were considered at the time when it was written to have been of some importance, and deserving of more labor, time, and care, than if it was just written out cheaply by a common scribe. ”

“ The intense pleasure and refreshment that can be gained by the study of a fine mediaeval illuminated manuscript depend largely on the fact that the exquisite miniatures, borders and initial letters were the product of an age which in almost every respect differed widely from the unhappy, machine-driven nineteenth century in which we now live. ”

“ I had still, in favor of her manuscript, another idea more reasonable, but which, by more distant effects, has not been much less prejudicial to me; so much does everything concur with the work of destiny, when that hurries on a man to misfortune. I thought of ornamenting the manuscript with the engravings of the New Eloisa, which were of the same size. ”

“ TOOLS & MATERIALS The making of manuscript books, based on a study of the early MSS., offers the best training to the scribe and illuminator in writing, lettering, rubricating, gilding, illuminating initials and borders, and miniature painting, and is the best means of mastering the foundations of Book Typography and Decoration. ”

“ Fig. 28 shows part of a border from a manuscript of this class, a Book of Hours executed for the Duke de Berri; the typical pointed "ivy-leaves" grow from each of the quatrefoils which are introduced to hold the arms and initials of the owner. It comes from the same manuscript as the illumination shown in fig. 25. ”

“ For alignment and arrangement of elements, follow the format of recent publications in the series for which the manuscript is intended. Guidelines for preparing bibliography may be secured from Series Section, SI Press.
Legends for illustrations must be submitted at the end of the manuscript, with as many legends typed, double-spaced, to a page as convenient.
Illustrations must be submitted as original art (not copies) accompanying, but separate from, the manuscript. Guidelines for preparing art may be secured from Series Section, SI Press. ”

“ A great part of the beauty of mediaeval manuscripts is quite unconnected with their illumination. The plain portion of the text, from the exquisite forms of its letters and the beautiful glossy black of the ink on the creamy ivory-like vellum page, lighted up here and there by the crisp touch of the rubricator's red, is a thing of extraordinary beauty and charm. This perfection of technique in the writing and beauty of the letters lasted considerably longer than did the illuminator's art. ”

“ Seventeen years have been employed in transcribing a single manuscript, and an ordinary page is the utmost that can be produced by one entire day’s steady application. A book is composed of separate leaves enclosed between wooden boards, usually furnished with the fragment of a broken looking-glass for the toilet of the proprietor, and carefully enveloped in a leathern case. ”

“ With this clue in our possession it can be demonstrated that the manuscript began with the first book of the Letters. We start with the fact that not all the 47 folios (or 94 pages) which preceded our six leaves were devoted to the text of the Letters. For, from the contents of our six leaves we know that each book must have been preceded by an index of addresses and first lines. The indices for Books I and II, if arranged in general like that of Book III, must have occupied four pages.3 We also learn from our fragment that space must be allowed for a colophon at the end of each book. ”

“ A scribe could write on the soft white metal with a sharp stilus almost as easily and rapidly as if he were using pen and ink on paper, and the manuscript thus produced would have the advantage of extreme durability. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The superiority of the inks known to the ancients has long been the object of surprise and admiration. The inscriptions on mummy-cases, made at a time long antedating the Christian Era, and the writing on manuscripts made in the early centuries of Christian history, in addition to the beauty of the form and finish of the writing, have a freshness of appearance as though they were only of years' instead of centuries' duration. ”

“ The best material upon which to write a manuscript book is undoubtedly vellum, although fine hand-made paper may be substituted if it is not desirable to go to the expense of procuring vellum for this purpose. A paper that is soft and flexible should be selected in preference to one that is hard and stiff. Anything approaching cardboard should be avoided.
Frontispiece of Illuminated MS. of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.”
BY SIDNEY FARNSWORTH.
217 The first thing to decide in writing a manuscript book is the size of the page. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before sending it to press, get your manuscript into a shape you can abide by. Alterations made on the proof-sheet must be paid for; and, further, matter that has undergone alterations seldom makes a handsome page: some lines will appear crowded, others too widely spaced. ”

“ With a sigh over my lost joke, I did as I was bidden, and soon, after a vigorous shaking and the removal of a cork which I had not previously noticed, the substance within issued forth through the bottle's neck.
"Dear me," said I. "It appears to be manuscript."
"Let me see," said Hans. "Ah," he observed, "it is writing. Why did you say it was manuscript?"
"That is writing," I explained. ”

“ Beauty of the text.And it is not only the unequalled beauty of the painted decorations and miniatures for which these late Italian manuscripts are so remarkable; the mere writing of the text in the most brilliant black and red ink is of striking beauty in the form of the letters and the perfect regularity of the whole. Last of all the vellum used by the Italian scribes of this period is far more beautiful, from its ivory-like perfection of tint and surface, than that of any other class of manuscripts. ”

“ There are even, as Kirchhoff points out, [345] instances of scribes preparing their manuscripts from printed “copy,” and there are examples of these manuscript copies of printed books being made with such literalness as to include the imprint of the printer. ”

“ A school of magnificently decorative art began then to be developed, and though the drawing of the human figure was still weak, yet effects of the noblest decorative character were produced by manuscript illuminators, foreshadowing that marvellous climax of manuscript art which was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ”

“ As before mentioned, the trade in the production of manuscript copies went on for a number of years after the introduction of printing. The noblemen and wealthy scholars who had inherited, or who had themselves brought together, collections of famous works in manuscript, were for some time, not unnaturally, unwilling to believe that ordinary people could, by means of the new invention, with a comparatively trifling expenditure secure perfect and beautiful copies of the same works. ”

“ That manuscript had a curious history and certainly deserves a place in a Museum. I heard lately that Gabriel Wells, [Pg 75] the American collector, has got hold of it. J. C. had made alterations in black ink, the magazine editor had gashed it horribly in red; and when the book publisher came to restore the mangled corpus he could do so, intelligibly for the printer, only by an extravagant use of green ink. You see, there was no duplicate copy of the original. Always make duplicates. If you don’t, and if you are a writer of J. C.’s size, your manuscripts may some day be priceless. ”

“ The upper part of each manuscript is occupied by a series of pictural tablets; under them are vertical columns of distinct hieroglyphics, or, in the epistolographic manuscripts, pages of the text, which are commonly divided [Pg 25] into paragraphs, with a tablet at the head of each; the first words being constantly written with red ink, made of a kind of ochre, as the black is of a carbonaceous substance. ”

“ Ages, except in the Church alone, who seem to have kept up the production of manuscript books principally for ecclesiastical and medical purposes was complete. Hence, any information pertaining to those epochs about ink, writing materials and ink writings, must be sought for in the undestroyed records and the ink writings themselves left by the fathers of the Church. All else is tainted and of doubtful authority. ”