Scribe

“ 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. ”

“ A scribe bends respectfully before him and introduces a procession of men, women, and children, who bring offerings of various kinds, jars of liquid, coffers, flowers, birds, and calves led by a string. ”

“ It is a requirement that when a scribe has begun to write the name of God he must not be interrupted till he51 has finished it; that a writing, when set aside to dry, should be covered with a cloth to protect it from dust; and that to turn a writing downward is shameful. ”

“ A careful scribe may not only make fewer mistakes of his own, but he may correct manifest faults of the manuscript from which he copies, and avail himself of the testimony of others, so as to revise and improve the text of that on which he chiefly relies. ”

“ But this anachronism of fashion may be detected, as well by other circumstances we are soon to mention, as from the air of constraint which pervades the whole manuscript: the rather as the scribe will now and then fall into the more familiar manner of his contemporaries; especially when writing those small letters which our Biblical manuscripts of all dates (even the most venerable) perpetually crowd into the ends of lines, in order to save space. ”

“ Let them earnestly seek out for themselves correctly written books to transcribe, that the flying pen may speed along the right path. Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons and commas, and set the points, each one in its due place, and let not him who reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due reward. ”

“ The faultiness of the manuscript—the mischances, and the oversights of the original scribe, are matters immediately connected with our subject; and it may be proper briefly to refer to them: [8] in truth, a knowledge [Pg 260] of the usual extent of such errors, and of the sources of them, tends decisively to strengthen a reasonable confidence in the general trustworthiness of the literary remains of remote times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ OLD LETTERS. There were always two divisions of handwriting: the formal hand, employed for clerk’s work, and a freer, less mechanical, less careful style, used for private correspondence. Writing was a profession, and, as late as the sixteenth century, when it was necessary to communicate with persons at a distance, a professional scribe was employed to write the letter. ”

“ A scribe could only write what the abbot or precentor set him. When his portion had been given out he could not change it for another. [193] If he were set to copy Virgil or Ovid or some lives of the saints the task would conceivably be pleasant. But such was seldom the scribe’s fortune. The continual transcription of Psalters and Missals and other service books must have been infinitely wearisome, at any rate, to the less devout members of the community. In some large and enterprising houses a scribe copied only a fragment of a book. ”

“ The scribe is simply a man who knows how to read and write, to draw up administrative formulas, and to calculate interest. The instruction which he has received is a necessary complement of his position if he belongs to a good family, whilst if he be poor it enables him to obtain a lucrative situation in the administration or at the house of a wealthy personage. ”

“ Many of them bear after them the note written in the hand of the scribe that he has tested them and found them efficacious. The pains, too, which the author takes to give variations of the process recommended in them—as for example in the quotations from a “man of Heracleopolis” in the first of the spells given above—all show that he had a more or less honest belief in the efficacy of the spells he is transcribing. ”

“ Slips of the pen, whereby words are manifestly lost or repeated, mis-spelt or half-finished, though of no interest to the critic, must yet be noted by a faithful collator, as they will occasionally throw light on the history of some particular copy in connexion with others, and always indicate the degree of care or skill employed by the scribe, and consequently the weight due to his general testimony. ”

“ It suggests possibilities for an improvement in the ordinary present-day handwriting—a thing much to be desired, and one of the most practical benefits of the study of calligraphy. The practical scribe, at any rate, will prove the advantages of being a good all-round penman. ”

“ A ready scribe - סופר מחיר sopher machir does not merely signify a speedy writer or an excellent penman, but one who was eminently skillful in expounding the law. In this sense the word γραμματευς, scribe, is repeatedly used in the New Testament, and we find that both in the Old and New Testament it had the same signification. The Syriac gives the sense of the word by translating sophro chocimo, a wise scribe, or expounder. ”

“ On the other hand the scribe of D, regardless of the rhyme, can have meant only lǣnde in writing, wite whet he us lende, meaning, preserve what he has entrusted to us, i.e. our souls; the expression of a familiar idea as at 121/144; 127/339, 368, and similarly lenne in e r. w. þenne, must be taken to represent lǣne, pr. s. subj. of lǣnan. The meaning of L, with which E and M agree, is probably the same, but if lende means convey, then wite must have the rare sense of, see to it, provide, as in, ‘Wite ȝe þet ȝe ȝemen þenne halie sunnendei,’ OEH i. ”

“ CACOETHES SCRIBENDI. If all the trees in all the woods were men, And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write, and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still would the scribblers clustered round its brim Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. ”

“ To fully describe and depict writing as it is the wide world over in our civilised age, would require a volume of itself. Suffice it in this chapter to furnish an amount of description, testimony or evidence and illustration, as shall adequately exhibit the existing condition of things in the writing world. ”

“ Bellum scribentium.—What a sight it is to see writers committed together by the ears for ceremonies, syllables, points, colons, commas, hyphens, and the like, fighting as for their fires and their altars; and angry that none are frighted at their noises and loud brayings under their asses’ skins. ”

“ Individual usage must count for a good deal: {106}also the scribes in copying and recopying our text must to a considerable extent have obliterated the earlier practice. Metre and syntax combine to make it probable that, in line 9 of our poem, the scribe has inserted the unnecessary article þāra before ymbsittendra: and in the rare cases where we have an O.E. poem preserved in two texts, a comparison proves that the scribe has occasionally interpolated an article. ”

“ In the first place the monastic scribe lived in a haven of safety and rest in the middle of a tumultuous and war-harassed world. While at work in the scriptorium he was troubled with no thoughts of {207}Absence of hurry.any necessity to complete his task within a limited time in order to earn his daily bread. Food and clothing of a simple though sufficient kind were secured to him, whether he finished his manuscript in a year or in twenty years. ”

“ Thus even in the most genteel and circumspect of arts,—which I take to be the composition of a novel in the English language,—it is droll to find from the beginning the most respectable of scribes, if not always of pharisees, depicting one or another rascally law-breaker with fervors of fond admiration whereof the writer seems wholly unconscious. ”

“ They simplified writing enormously. It is hardly too much to say that without them the labour of committing to paper the lengthy compositions of this period would have given pause to the most industrious scribes. ”

“ The scribe seems to have had a good ear for metre, and seldom goes wrong in any point of spelling which affects the verse, though apt to omit final e in case of elision. Sometimes, however, he drops words, as ‘swerd,’ i. ”

“ The Scribes were the doctors of law, of theology, the interpreters of the Book, the masters of the Scriptures, and represented the authority of word and of tradition; and He had come to transform the Word and to regenerate the tradition. These three orders of men 243never could forgive Him even after they had sent Him to Golgotha. ”

“ Then having cut the nib rightly, you may, in a sense, let the pen do the writing, while you merely follow the strokes of the model, and you will, in course of time, have the pleasure of seeing the same beautiful writing—in the very manner of the ancient scribes—growing under your own hand.
CHAPTER V ACQUIRING A FORMAL HAND: (4) PRACTICE Practice — Scripts I. & II. — Arranging & Ruling a Single Sheet — Problem I. (a Sheet of Prose) — Problem II. (a Sheet of Poetry) — Spacing & Planning Manuscript. ”

“ As society advanced, and great poets, historians and philosophers arose, the desire of possessing their works, of course, began to prevail. Accordingly, the scribes were called upon not only to prepare business papers, but to make books. ”

“ Some of them, to be sure, have strayed somewhat from the ancestral calling, for words are as wilful—or as independent—as men. Ascribe, for example, does not act like a member of the household of writers, whatever it may look like. We should have to scrutinize it carefully or consult the record for it in that verbal Who's Who, the dictionary, before we could understand how it came by its scribal affiliations honestly. But once we begin to reflect or to probe, we find we have not mistaken its identity. Ascribe is the offspring of ad (to) and scribo (write) , both Latin terms. ”

“ He purged the sacred volume of the inadvertencies of the scribes, and restored the purity of the text; for transcribing after transcribing had caused some errors and diversity of readings to occur, between the English and foreign codices, in spite of all the pious care of the monastic copyists; this was perplexing, an uniformity was essential and he undertook the task; [137] labors so valuable deserve the highest praise, and we bestow it more liberally upon him for this good work than we should have done had he been the compiler of crude homilies or the marvellous legends of saints. ”

“ Here the scribe became confused: his original had probably, ꝥ ti wil is wurch þu, but he began with wur, and erasing it forgot to add it at the end. Then he omitted het before swiðe, and tried to mend matters by changing leggen into leggeð, but forgot strupen. bliðeliche, gladly, is strange.
113. liðeri, should be in a lather: comp. ‘ꝥ hire leofliche lich | liðerede al o blode,’ SK 1542; ‘leiden swa luðerliche on hire leofliche lich; ꝥ hit . . . ”

“ Thou didst turn to the chief scribes, but in spite of their efforts these men were like birds in a net, unable to free themselves without assistance, for the reason of man, though trained in the school of scribes, is not in a position to take in the immensity of these questions. At last, wearied by barren explanations, Thou didst examine the lands of the provinces, their people, the works of their hands, but didst arrive at nothing. For there are things of which people are silent as stones, but concerning which even stones will give answer if light from the gods only falls on them. ”

“ The handwriting of the poems is smaller and neater than that of the Ordinances, or the Latin recipes, but was ascribed by Hunter2 to the time of Edward II, and may perhaps be assigned to the fourteenth century. ”

“ At first I was rather unwilling to study Latin grammar. It seemed absurd to waste time analyzing, every word I came across—noun, genitive, singular, feminine—when its meaning was quite plain. I thought I might just as well describe my pet in order to know it—order, vertebrate; division, quadruped; class, mammalia; genus, felinus; species, cat; individual, Tabby. But as I got deeper into the subject, I became more interested, and the beauty of the language delighted me. ”

“ Language is sound articulated, circumscribed and organized for the purposes of expression. ”

“ Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. ”

“ The letter you write, whether you realize it or not, is always a mirror which reflects your appearance, taste and character. A "sloppy" letter with the writing all pouring into one corner of the page, badly worded, badly spelled, and with unmatched paper and envelope—even possibly a blot—proclaims the sort of person who would have unkempt hair, unclean linen and broken shoe laces; just as a neat, precise, evenly written note portrays a person of like characteristics. ”