The oldest specimen of writing in Great Britain which has been preserved to the nineteenth century, was a book believed to be not later than the year 600 of the Christian era. Astle has preserved an engraved specimen of it; but the priceless original has since been destroyed by fire in the British Museum. It was said to be a book of Augustin. A specimen still in existence, dates between the years 664 and 670. It is a charter of Sebbi, King of the East Saxons, and is easily read:—“I, Sebbi, King,” &c. We subjoin a few words from the commencement of a charter of William the Conqueror, whose reign commenced in England, A.D. 1066:—WILL: DEI GRA^{ TIA} REX, &c., SCIATIS ME CONCESSISSE—“William, by the grace of God, King &c.: Know ye that I have granted—”
ISAAC D’ISRAELI, in his Curiosities of Literature, (vol. 2, page 180, of the Boston edition,) gives a treatise on the “Origin of the Materials of Writing.” He commences it with these remarkable words: “It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its discovery.”
Now, of all “curiosities of literature,” this little sentence is, in many respects, the most curious. He talks of substitutes for a thing not in existence, and not even a subject of imagination, conjecture, or conception. The name of D’Israeli does not indicate an IRISH origin, but there is a strong affinity between this and those curiosities of literature commonly called “Irish bulls.” As for instance, it reminds us of the couplet composed by an Irish officer of a garrison in the Scottish Highlands, in commemoration of the “good works” of General Wade, who had caused excellent military roads to be made through some of the previously almost impassable morasses of that region.
“_Had you seen these roads before they were made, You’d have lifted your hands and blessed General Wade._”
Now, by way of comment on D’ISRAELI, we will say that “it is very curious,” and moreover very strange, if not ridiculous, that he and ASTLE, (from whom he copies without a full and fair acknowledgment,) while “deeply complaining of the inferiority of our inks to those of antiquity,” have utterly failed to ascertain the cause or even to notice the occasion of it. They, as well as other writers on the subject, observe the excellence of the ink employed in manuscripts of earlier ages, down to the twelfth century, and the inferiority of the ink used from that period down to the close of the seventeenth century, without turning attention to the great historical fact that the FIRST PAPER-MILL in Europe was established in that same twelfth century.