“_Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo; Non est conveniens luctibus ille color. Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur. Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras._”
The last line proving, as Casley observes, that Ovid wrote upon a _roll_.
This author, not having been kind enough to translate Ovid for us, we are compelled to do it for him. This “Elegy” of the poet is addressed “To his Book;” and the following words contain the meaning of the four lines above quoted:
_Nor shall huckleberries stain [literally, VEIL] thee with purple juice: That color is not becoming to lamentations. Nor shall title (or “head-letter”) be marked with vermilion, or paper with cedar, Thou shalt carry neither white nor black horns on thy forehead (or front, or frontispiece)._
The word “huckleberries,” we have rightly spelled here. The dictionaries generally are wrong in spelling the word “whortleberry.” Huckleberry, or Hockleberry, is found in the kindred languages of Northern Europe.
Diplomas were seldom written in gold or colored inks; but some charters of the German Emperors are known, not only in gold, but on purple vellum; and Leukfeld mentions one of the year 912, ornamented also with figures; while several early English charters have gold initial letters, crosses, &c. The black ink that has kept its color best, in mediaeval manuscripts, is that used from the tenth to the thirteenth century. The signatures of the Eastern Emperors are frequently in red ink.
Colored inks were common in mediaeval manuscripts,—the red being most usual for titles, which has given rise to the term _Rubric_. The writers of books (that is, the copyists,) often appended their names to the end of the work, generally in ink of a different color from that of the body of the work, stating the time and place in which the work was executed.
To this may be added, with advantage, some instructive account of
whose history is closely connected, to a great extent, with that of writing FLUIDS.
The Egyptian, and all other oriental and ancient scribes, who wrote upon stone, employed (of course) some instrument similar in character to the chisel of our modern tomb-stone cutters, or monument letterers. So with the Greeks and Romans, writing on surfaces of wax or wood, the instruments were the graphium, or glypheion, (the graver,) and the stilus, or caelum, all of steel or iron. When the use of a dark-colored liquid or _Ink_ was introduced, there arose a necessity for instruments of very different material, and great flexibility, in opposition to the unyielding rigidity of the tools previously employed. Then were invented the first implements properly called Pens, or really resembling what we so denominate and use. These were universally made of vegetable material, growing in the tubular form, of convenient size, as the _calamus_, _arundo_, _juncus_, and, in general terms, the smaller stems of various plants called “reeds” and “rushes” in English. We have already mentioned the uniform employment of the hair-pencil, or brush, by the Chinese, from the most ancient time of their writing. The quill, or feather-pen, was introduced during the fourth century.