Bibliography, or, Books and their history : a lecture to the members of the Exeter Literary Society, delivered at the Athenaeum, December 1, 1869 / by Nathaniel Rogers.

  • Rogers, Nathaniel.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bibliography, or, Books and their history : a lecture to the members of the Exeter Literary Society, delivered at the Athenaeum, December 1, 1869 / by Nathaniel Rogers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    excellent material for cups, and other domestic utensils ; of the stem they made staves, or ribs ol boats ; and of the hark, cloth, sails, ropes, string, shoes, baskets, wicks for lamps, and especially paper. Of the mode of preparing the last article, Pliny gives the following account. The fibrous coats of the stem were peeled off ; and one layer was placed upon another, with the fibres at right angles. The water of the Kile was used to glue them together. The sheet, thus formed, was well pressed ; and after being dried in the sun, was beaten with a mallet, and the process was completed by polishing with a shell. The paper was then cut into various sizes ; from three inches square to thirteen. The celebrated modern traveller, Bruce, paid much attention to the subject, and gives a very interesting account of it. He. succeeded in manufacturing papyrus, both in Egypt and in Abyssinia ; but differs, in one particular, from the account given by Pliny. The water of the Nile, he affirms, has no glutinous property ; and must have been used, by the ancients, only to dissolve the saccharine matter of the plant; which is alone, he says, a cement sufficiently strong to give the layers coherence ; but I doubt whether this glutinous matter is really saccharine. For many centuries, papyrus formed the principal commerce of the Mediterranean. Of the wealth acquired by its manufac- ture, the following is an example. In the middle of the third century, Firmus, a paper merchant at Alexandria, gained over the multitude by his wealth, and assumed the imperial power. Ho coined money, issued edicts, and raised an army ; all which he maintained from the profits of his trade. The place of its first manufacture was Memphis ; but it was afterward removed to Alexandria. At the time the Romans conquered Egypt, its quality was very inferior ; but Roman artists, being sent to Alexandria, very much improved it; as they did everything else which fell into their hands. By dint of repeated beating, sizing, pressing, and polishing, its quality was greatly improved ; and by their continued care it attained, in later ages, to perfect whiteness of colour, and smoothness of sur- face. It always remained, however, very friable ; and, in the manufacture of books, a leaf of parchment was inserted between every six of papyrus ; that the fragility of the one substance might be counterbalanced by the durability of the other. We still possess manuscripts of this kind, of as early a date as the fourth ccntnry, but none later than the ninth. When Alexandria was taken by the Saracens (who burned its famous library of 700 thousand volumes), a.d. CIO, the ex- portation of papyrus was much impeded, and to a great extent suppressed. Parchment, from its high price, could but imper- fectly supply the deficiency. The gloomy shade of the dark ages overspread the world ; science drooped ; the arts languished ; learning retired to a monastery; till, in the ninth century, a material for books, more convenient than any of its predecessors, came to the relief of expiring literature. Charta Bombycina, or cotton-paper, was invented in Asia; but whether in China, Persia, or Bucharia, is not known. The
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