New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1893-06-25
ERAS OF HANDWRITING.
TWO INTERESTING BOOKS on MANUSCRIPTS.

RAPRS. By Edward Mannde Thompson. D: c: L..
Co. Co. d he International pn A sc,:nae ser Hep'''"
BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT. A short Introduction to
their study and use. With a chapter on records
Ey palsSnes MADAM no Nj A. ,o pP R sg 800
Among the things calculated to take the con-
cet out Of mankind is the capricious fortune that
has attended antique writings. OF course IL
would be unreasonable to hope for the recovery
of Homer's autograph, or that of Terpander or
Alcaeus or Sappho: but it really seems as though
tho world had reason to look for a poem OF virgil
or an epistle OF Saint Paul ode of Horace
or even O dialogue of Plato in the authors own
handwriting Two hundred years after Virgil,
his own careful script-a man so relcntessly criu-
cal toward his verse must have been careful IN
writing-waA still in existence. But now IL Is
gone, and by the strange irony of fate the ear
lest bit of original handwriting in Latin Is
record on wax tablet OF money paid to a woman
Umbrella Januaria, resident OF Pompeii, VINO
vas probably neither better nor worse than
millions of people whose names hardly outlasteh
their funeral Even this prosaic fragment Is
later than the Christian era, IS A. ID. similar
state OF things is found IN reference to Greek
autographs The oldest Greek writing, not speak
ing Of inscriptions says Mr.. MADAM, is an imprc-
cation Of Artemsia, otherwise unknown, out
Christ, invoking the vengeance Of the gods upon
the father of her dead child, who had left her
without the means to bury it. This bitter curse,
tho utterance Of beartbroken woman, scrubbed
on a sheet Of frail papyrus, has survived the
mutations of more than 1000 years. while OF
the voluminous works. but little earlier, that go
BY the name of Aristotle not one is beyond dis
pute II cannot be proved to the universal sat
isfaction of scholars that the original OF any
Aristotelian essay came from the hand OF the
master rather than from that Of some admlrng
disciple But curlously enough, as Or. 1homp-
son has pointed out in his wonderfully compact
treatise on photography, probably the earliest
specimen of q metal pen was recently 1ound by
Professor Wslds!ein in the tomb where Aristotle
may have been buried at Eretria VI course IL
must have belonged to a later inhabitant OF the
sepulchre, but the grotesqde perversity OF mani
mate things could hardly be better cXempllhed
than in the suspicion that the pen OF Aristotle ad
been saved while the genuineness of his writings
stll remained one of the quarrels of literature
INT there is another side to the affair. Peo-
ole in modern times are too ready to deprecate
the knowledge and skill of the past. In order
N sunport the flattering theory that humanity Is
ever making progress to better and better THINGS
they ignore the proofs of the contrary opinion.
Those proofs may or may not be adequate' ou'
at least they deserve consideration. Does II seem
an Incredible assertion that among civilized races
thousands Of years ago the art OF writing was
a. universally familiar as it Is at the present
day? Yet that is the conclusion to which THESE
cases of Umbrella Januaria and Artemisla poih'.
Neither Of these persons seems 10 nave oeohsco
to what would now be called the cultured classes
They are rather to be ranked with tommy Az
kins's Mary Ann or 1.-THE girl L lett Dehlhu
me, in respect of intelligence or social position.
Nevertheless. they or their acquaintance could
write. Thus, as early as the third century before
Christ. we have on the one hand the philosophers
and men of learning about whose skill with the
pen there is no doubt, though ocular proof Is
wanting. and on the other the wretchel and
homeless Artemisia, more sinned against than
aiming. who il also able to put her thoughts
into A form which has practically proved TO DE
eternal 1t is not to be supposed that the classes
Of people between these two extremes were less
skilled than that poor girl with her deau' uh-
buried child who appeals to us Tor pity across
the ages Arguments like this amply JUSTIFY
DR.. Thompson in saying that throughout all the
periods as far back as We can reach We nave
aide by side two classes Of Greek writing: the
literary or bookhand, in which works OF hiera-
ture were usually tbut not always WRITTEN anu
the cursive hand Of everyday life; that, now
end in them evidence that then all sorts and
conditions of men wrote as huently as we uo
now: that the scribe Of those days could pro-
duce rs finely written texts the scribcs OF
later times, and that the educated or professional
,nen could note down records Of daily business
with as much facility as any of their descend
ants"
though. as has been said, the autographs OF
great men in antiquity which might reasonably
be expected to survive, have almost uniformly
disappeared, yet the quantity Of writing pre-
served is really very great. Every historical age
is 40 we'll represented that the processes OF nven-
ton, of advancement and of deterioration can De
studied in the utmost detail. with the
ordinary and popular notions Of evolution III
mind one is sure to imagine that the advancement
must have been very gradual. Not at all. HE
most striking phenomenon-and 1t is one repeated
in every field Of human endeavor-is that periods
of gradual decay are followed by sudden revolu-
tions The inventors of style Of writing were as
q rule its best practitioners Then came im-
tati0n and carelessness and natural depravity,
the result being that when things were at their
worst somebody invented novelty. Dr.
Thompson over and again calls attention to
the fact that the better forms Of handwriting are
invariably followed by worse until the scribcs,
out Of patience with their work, turn to some
thing new But it il not at all certain that the new
system was really an Improvement on the one
that preceded il, comparing the two in their
perfection. What is certain is the link that
unites them, a link in the chain which reaches
back from modern times through the royal and
haronial and episcopal courts Of the Middle Ages,
through the scriptoria Of the mOnasteries, through
Lombard and Mcrovin9an times, through the
lawyers offices and the public and private writ
ings Of Rome, through the schools of Hellas,
through the counting houses of Phocnicia, the
temples and the social life Of Egypt to time
of which all memory is lost. Not single manu-
script in all this vast series hut betrays its re-
laton to the times in which it was written and to
the times that preceded. And when the reader