Scrivener

“ We can trace the appointment of masters to teach writing for this purpose in this country from the fifteenth century. Thus, of the three masters appointed to the college of Acaster in 1483, one was to teach grammar, the second, song, “and the third to teche to Write and all suche thing as belonged to Scrivener craft.” [195] The third stage in the evolution of writing is reached when ability to write is considered to be one of the earliest of the school tasks to be undertaken, and when writing is considered indispensable for all intellectual progress. ”

“ Scrivener, skriv′en-ėr, n. a scribe: a copyist: one who draws up contracts, &c.: one who receives the money of others to lay it out at interest.—n. Scriv′enership. [O. Fr. escrivain (Fr. écrivain) —Low L. scribanus—L. scriba, a scribe.]
Scrobe, skrōb, n. a groove in the rostrum of weevils or curculios, or on the outer side of the mandible.—adjs. ”

“ I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. ”

“ Writing, similarly, was taught by dictation and practice, and the art of the "scrivener," as the writing master was called, was one thought to be difficult to learn. The lack of practical value of the art, the high cost of paper, and the necessity usually for special lessons, all alike tended to make writing a much less commonly known art than reading. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides the broad and palpable distinction between uncial and cursive letters, persons who have had much experience in the study of manuscripts are able to distinguish those of either class from one another in respect of style and character ”

“ If we extend our researches to the manuscript copies of Scripture or of its versions which abound in every great library in Christendom, we see in the very best of them variations which we must at once impute to the fault of the scribe, together with many others of a graver and more perplexing nature, regarding which we can form no probable judgement, without calling to our aid the resources of critical learning. ”

“ Besides the universal forms of abridgement (see p. 49) , [symbol] and [symbol] are frequent in the Greek, but no others: in the Latin the abbreviations are numerous, and some of them unusual: Scrivener (Cod. Augiensis Proleg. pp. xxxi-ii) has drawn up a list of them. This copy abounds as much as any with real variations from the common text, and with numberless errors of the pen, itacisms of vowels, and permutations of consonants. ”

“ Another source of error is described by some critics as proceeding ex ore dictantis, in consequence of the scribe writing from dictation, without having a copy before him. One is not, however, very willing to believe that manuscripts of the better class were executed on so slovenly and careless a plan. It seems more simple to account for the itacisms7 or confusion of certain vowels and diphthongs having nearly the same sound, which exist more or less in manuscripts of every age, by assuming that a vicious pronunciation gradually led to a loose mode of orthography adapted to it. ”

“ As regards the orthography [pg 113] it is partially, and only partially, modernized; clauses or whole passages omitted in the manuscript are supplied from other sources, although the fact is duly notified146; sometimes the readings of the first hand are put in the margin, while those of the second stand in the text, sometimes the contrary: in a word, the plan of the work exhibits all the faults such a performance well can have. ”

“ The very plan of his work, however, seemed to reserve a slight preference for the received text as such, in cases of doubt and difficulty; and this editor, with a calmness and sagacity which may well be called judicial, was usually disposed to relax his stern mechanical law when persuaded by reasons founded on internal probabilities, which (as we cheerfully admit) few men have been found able to estimate with so much patience and discrimination. ”

“ The whole manuscript is disfigured by corrections, a few by the original scribe, or by the usual comparer or διορθώτης (see p. 55) ; very many by an ancient and elegant hand of the sixth century (אa) , whose emendations are of great importance; some again by a hand but little later (אb) ; far the greatest number by a scholar of the seventh century (אc) , who often cancels the changes introduced by (אa) ; others by as many as eight several later writers, whose varying styles Tischendorf has carefully discriminated and illustrated by facsimiles118. ”

“ These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. ”

“ The next thing necessary in your destination, is writing correctly, elegantly, and in a good hand too; in which three particulars, I am sorry to tell you, that you hitherto fail. Your handwriting is a very bad one, and would make a scurvy figure in an office-book of letters, or even in a lady’s pocket-book. But that fault is easily cured by care, since every man, who has the use of his eyes and of his right hand, can write whatever hand he pleases. As to the correctness and elegance of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best authors the other. ”

“ The writing is continuous in full line without stichometry. Quotations from the Old Testament are marked with a kind of inverted comma. There are no breathings, or accents. Punctuation is made only with the single comma or double comma, consisting of a point slightly elongated much like a modern written comma, and placed at about mid-height, or else with a vacant space, or by passing to the next line. The apostrophe is not always used to mark elisions, but is generally put after Ρ final. Abbreviations are of the most ancient kind. ”

“ Can you read, you Rogue?”
“Yes, marry, can I, Sir,” quoth I. “I thank God I can read reasonable well, but my writing is better than my reading.”
“Sayst thou so, Boy?”
And with that he entreated me, that I would teach him to write his name, or to make some mark that might serve for a subscription, or undersigning. He cared not which, for either would serve his turn.
“I pray, Sir,” said I, “what good can this do you? What can you benefit yourself, by having learnt to make a bare mark and no more? Methinks you should have no great use for that alone, unless you could write too.” ”

“ Hort say (Notes, p. 76) , “It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”
John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. ”

“ Do you wonder, then, that an employer calling one of his young men, and directing him to write a letter to one of his correspondents, saying such and such things, and bring it to him for his signature, is surprised and grieved to see that the letter is in such shape that he cannot sign it and let it go out of his office?
It is very true that letter-writing is not the chief business of life, not the only thing of importance in a counting-house, but it is an elegant accomplishment, and most desirable of attainment. ”

“ All that we have said respecting the form of Cod. Δ applies to this portion of it: the Latin version (a specimen of the Old Latin, but as in Codd. Bezae and Laudianus much changed to suit the Greek) is cursive and interlinear; the Greek uncials coarse and peculiar; the punctuation chiefly a stop at the end of the words, which have no breathings nor accents. Its affinity to the Cod. Augiensis has no parallel in this branch of literature. Scrivener has noted all the differences between them at the foot of each page in his [pg 181] edition of Cod. ”

“ But there are two tests of a more objective character that may be used—orthography, and indication of lacunae or other faults in his exemplar. A scribe who preserves in his spelling the traces of a bygone age is probably trustworthy. If faithful in small things, he is likely to be faithful in great. A scribe again who scrupulously records the presence of a lacuna or illegibility in what he is copying, inspires us with confidence in the rest of his work. ”

“ However perfect in all other respects, no epistle that is badly spelled will be regarded as the work of an educated gentleman or lady. Carelessness will never be considered, and to be ignorant of spelling is to expose an imperfect education at once.
10. AN EXCELLENT PRACTICE.—After writing a letter, read it over carefully, correct all the errors and re-write it. If you desire to become a good letter writer, improve your penmanship, improve your language and grammar, re-writing once or twice every letter that you have occasion to write, whether on social or business subjects. ”

“ While we continue to look back at the voluminous eighteenth century and to regret the decay of letter-writing, we are every one of us every week receiving from a dozen different correspondents letters vibrant with personality, vivid, readable, inviting preservation. Far from not writing letters, people never wrote more letters than they do to-day, nor better ones; if ours are not so long as the letters of the past, they are far livelier. ”

“ Amateurs in literary composition soon acquire the bad habit of writing carelessly; they spell strange names in two or more different ways; they form capital letters, and even the small lower-case letters, so obscurely that one word may be mistaken for another; they have no clearly defined system, or at least observe none, for the proper placing of capitals, italic, and the marks of punctuation.
The above sentence is from the preface of what is probably the most complete work on composition written in recent years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the writer of a letter, if he wish his words to prevail with the reader, should send them out as written by himself, by his own hand, with his own marks, his own punctuation, correct or incorrect, with the evidence upon them that they have come out from his own mind. ”

“ Δ a line begins at any place, even in the middle of a word; if the capital letters be assumed to commence the lines, the text divides itself into regular στίχοι. See above, pp. 52-54. Here are also the τίτλοι, the sections and canons. The letters Ν and ι, Ζ and Ξ, Τ and Θ, Ρ and the Latin R are perpetually confounded. Facsimiles of Luke i. 1-9 may be seen in Pal. Soc. ”

“ But it is gratifying to notice the emphasis that professors and teachers of business English are placing on the avoidance of these horrors and on the adoption of a method of writing in which one says exactly what one means and says it gracefully and without stiltedness or intimacy. Their aim seems to be the ability to write a business letter which may be easily read, easily understood, and with the important facts in the attention-compelling places. ”

“ This splendid copy was purchased for the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Samuel Butler, Bishop of Lichfield. It contains the whole New Testament; was first cited by Wetstein (107) from notices by Jo. Lamy, in his “de Eruditione Apostolorum,” Florence, 1738; glanced at by Birch, and stated by Scholz (N. T. vol. ii. pp. xii, xxviii) to have been cursorily collated by himself: how that is possible can hardly be understood, as he elsewhere professes his ignorance whither the manuscript had gone (N. T. vol. i. p. lxxii) . Scrivener collated the whole volume. ”

“ Not there shall you find anything of [243] that conversation apart which constitutes the joy of writing as of reading letters. The letter which is intelligible to everybody is already impersonal and almost professional in tone, and you may print it with impunity; but a letter which is addressed to a friend will, in proportion to its intimacy, teem with allusions, oddities of phrase, and obscure references which make full sense only to the recipient, and you will print it at your peril. ”