CLOCKS AND WATCHES…

CLOCKS AND WATCHES

A paper on this subject was read by Professor Hamberger, in the year 1758, before the Society of Göttingen; but as the publication of the Transactions of the Society was interrupted, it was never printed. I however procured the manuscript from the professor’s son, Secretary Hamberger, at Gotha, and I here insert it, corrected in a few places, where necessary, but without any other alteration[1040].

“Weidler[1041] and Chambers[1042] are, doubtless, both mistaken when they place the invention of automatous clocks about the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century. The latter says, ‘It is certain that the art of constructing clocks, such as those now in use, was first invented or at least revived in Germany about two hundred years ago.’ The same account is given by Weidler, whom Chambers perhaps copied. But, however flattering this opinion may be to the ingenuity of the Germans, it is so apparently false in regard to the time, that one cannot assent to it; nor is it even probable in regard to the country, though it must be allowed that the art of clockmaking flourished very much in Germany, particularly at Nuremberg, about the beginning of the sixteenth century.

“As these two authors make the invention of clocks too modern, others, on the contrary, carry it back to a period too early. Without entering into any dissertation on the machines of Archimedes and Posidonius, which are said to have measured the hours of the day, I shall only observe that a certain writer pretends to have found mention made of a clock in the third century[1043]. In support of this assertion he refers to the Acts of St. Sebastian, the martyr, where Chromatius, the governor of Rome, says, when about to be cured by him, ‘I have a glass chamber in which the whole learning and science of the stars is constructed mechanically, in making which my father Tarquinius is known to have expended more than two hundred pounds of gold.’ St. Sebastian answers, ‘If you have made your choice to keep this whole, you destroy yourself.’ To which Chromatius replies, ‘How so? do we employ any sacrificial rights in the construction of an almanac or ephemeris, when merely the courses of the months and years are distinguished numerically for every hour; and the full and new moon is, by means of certain calculations, foreshown by a motion of the fingers[1044].’ This valuable machine, however, can hardly be called a clock; for if it had been an automaton, it would not have required to be moved with the fingers in order to show the time of full moon. If I understand the author’s words properly, it was not calculated to point out the hours; but to exhibit the sun’s course through the twelve signs of the zodiac, the motion of the rest of the planets, and their relative situation in every month, or at any period of the year. That the signs of the zodiac and the planets were represented on the machine, appears from what follows. St. Polycarp (the companion of St. Stephen) said, ‘There are the signs of the Lion, of Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio and the Bull; in Aries the moon, in the Crab an hour, in Jupiter a star, in Mercury the tropics, in Venus Mars, and in all those monstrous demons is seen an art hostile to God[1045].’ But whatever this machine might have been, it was of no use to others, or to posterity: it was broken to pieces by these saints, so that, even allowing it to have been a clock, the knowledge of it must have been then lost.

“We find also, that Bernardus Saccus[1046] ascribes the invention of clocks to Boëthius, in the fifth century; but Bernardus seems to have forgotten what he quoted a little before from Cassiodorus[1047], respecting the clock of Boëthius, that it determined the hours guttis aquarum. It must, therefore, have been a water-clock, and not a clock moved by wheels and weights. The same Cassiodorus had provided his monks at the monastery of St. Andiol[1048], in Languedoc, with machines of the like kind: ‘I am known,’ says he, ‘to have constructed for you a time-piece which the light of the sun indexes; moreover another acting by water which marks the hours both day and night; as frequently upon some days there is no sunshine[1049].’ We are to understand also, as alluding to such clocks, what is said by the writer of the life of St. Leobin, bishop of Chartrain, about the year 556[1050], when he tells us, that to him (St. Leobin) was committed the duty of regulating the course of the hours and the vigils.

“I come now to the seventh century. In Du Cange’s Glossary we find the word Index, which is explained to be the index or hand of a clock, or the small bell which announces the hours by its sound; and this opinion is adopted by Muratori[1051]. Du Cange quotes in support of his assertion a monkish work called Regula Magistri, the author of which is not certainly known[1052], but which Mabillon[1053] asserts to have been written before the year 700. The passages to which he refers are, ‘Cum advenisse divinam horam percussus in oratorio index monstraverit.’ (When the index being struck in the oratory shall have shown that the hour for prayer had come.) ‘Cum sonuerit index;’ and ‘Cum ad opus divinum oratorii index sonaverit[1054].’ But Du Cange might have perceived, had he quoted the whole passage from the fifty-fifth chapter, that allusion is not here made to a clock; for it is said, not merely ‘cum sonuerit index,’ but ‘cum sonuerit index ab Abbate percussus.’ (When the index struck by the Abbot shall sound). It was a scilla or skella, perhaps only a board; and Martene[1055] seems to understand the word index in the true sense when he explains it the signal by which the brethren were called to divine service.

“That machine which was sent as a present to Charlemagne by the king of Persia, in the year 807, is supposed also to have been a clock like those used at present; and if we follow the Chronicon Turonense, one may easily fall into the same opinion: ‘The king of the Persians sent a time-piece in which the twelve hours were marked by the performance of a cymbal and of certain horsemen who at each hour went out through the windows, and on their return in the last hour of the day shut the windows as they marched back[1056].’ The description of it however, to be found in Annales Francorum, ascribed to Eginhard, shows clearly that it was far different from our clocks. The author says, ‘Likewise a time-piece wonderfully constructed of brass with mechanical art, in which the course of the twelve hours was turned towards a clepsydra, with as many brass balls which fell down at the completion of the hour, and by their fall sounded a bell placed under them[1057].’ It was evidently therefore a water-clock, furnished with some ingenious mechanism, but having nothing in common with our clocks.

“About the same period lived Pacificus, archdeacon of Verona, who is celebrated for having invented a clock[1058]. His epitaph, besides relating other services which he did, says,--

Horologium nocturnum nullus ante viderat. En invenit argumentum et primus fundaverat; Horologioque carmen spheræ cœli optimum, Plura alia graviaque prudens invenit.

Scipio Maffei endeavours to prove, that we are here to understand a clock moved by wheels and weights; but, in my opinion, his arguments are extremely weak. ‘This horologium,’ says he, ‘the like of which had been never seen, and which was different from a sun-dial, because it showed the hours in the night-time, could not be a clepsydra or water-clock, for clocks of that kind were not only known to the ancients, but even to the inhabitants of Italy in latter times, so that it could have been nothing but a clock like ours.’ But even if we allow, with this learned man, that water-clocks were known in Italy at that period, it cannot be denied that they were scarce, and used only by few, as may be evidently gathered from what is said of these machines by Cassiodorus. The greater part of the people might have been unacquainted with them at the above-mentioned time; and there is no necessity for adhering so closely to the words of the epitaph, ‘nullus ante viderat,’ as Maffei has done. Besides, Maffei himself destroys the foundation on which he rests his opinion; for he relates that a horologium nocturnum was sent to Pepin, king of France, by pope Stephen II. This appears from the pope’s own letter; but Maffei is under a mistake respecting the name, for it was Paul, and not Stephen. The letter, which may be found in the Codex Carolinus[1059], is dated in the year 756. Maffei thinks that this machine was of a construction different from that of a water-clock; but if it pointed out the hours in the day-time, as well as in the night, according to his supposition, there is no reason, as Muratori observes, why it should have been called horologium nocturnum. In my opinion, we ought here to understand a clepsydra, or water-clock, such as that used by Cassiodorus for the like purpose, and which Hildemar recommended in the ninth century to the monks, who were obliged to observe the hours. Hildemar says, ‘He who wishes to do this properly, must have horologium aquæ[1060].’

“That these water-clocks however were then scarce, as well as in the following centuries, we have reason to conclude from their being so little spoken of in the writings of those periods. In the ancient customs of the monastery of St. Viton, at Werden[1061], written as is said in the tenth century, no mention of them occurs; and the monks regulated their prayers by the crowing of the cock; for it is said, ‘Cum lucem ales nunciaverit, dabuntur omnia signa in resurrectione Domini nostri,’ &c. I find as little mention of them in the eleventh century, even in passages where they could not have been omitted, had they been known. Thus, in a little work by Pet. Damiani, De Perfectione Monachorum, where the author speaks of the significator horarum, he does not so much as allude to a clepsydra. That the reader may know what he means by significator horarum, I shall here quote his own words: ‘He could not find time for idle fables, nor hold long conversations, nor finally could he trouble himself about what was done by the laity, but always intent on the duties of his office, always provident, always anxious, he felt a desire to construct a voluble sphere that should never stop, should show the passage of the stars and the flight of time. He also had a custom of singing to himself whenever he wished to have a notion as to the quantity of time; that, whenever the brightness of the sun or the position of the stars was obscured by the weather he might form a certain time-measurer by the quantity of psalmody he had accomplished[1062].’

“Some ascribe the invention of our modern clocks to Gerbert, who, in the tenth century, was raised to the pontifical chair at Rome, under the name of Sylvester II., and who was reckoned to be the first mathematician and astronomer of his time[1063]. This opinion however is supported only by mere conjecture, and appears to be false from the account of Dithmar, who says, ‘Gerbert, on being expelled from his country, sought the emperor Otho, and after a long conversation with him, made the time-piece in Magdeburg, constructing it correctly by taking as guide the polar star[1064].’ No mention is made here of wheels or weights, and this horologium seems to have been a sun-dial, which Gerbert fixed up by observing the polar star. It appears, indeed, that Gerbert was acquainted with no other kind of horologia; for those who speak of his book De Astrolabio, in which he explains the method of constructing dials for various latitudes, produce no further proofs[1065]. Some, according to the testimony of Kircher, consider this horologium to have been a portable dial, which showed the hour when properly set by the help of a needle touched with a magnet; but even this opinion is not warranted by the words of Dithmar.

“The anonymous author of the Life of William, abbot of Hirshau[1066], who lived in the eleventh century, and who was a very learned man for his time, says, ‘Naturale horologium ad exemplum cælestis hæmispherii excogitasse.’ Though this passage is so short, that no idea can be formed from it of the construction of the machine, it is evident that it alludes neither to a sun-dial nor to a water-clock, but to some piece of mechanism which pointed out the hours and exhibited the motion of the earth and other planets. As more frequent mention of horologia occurs afterwards, and as, in speaking of them, expressions are used which cannot be applied to sun-dials or water-clocks, I am induced to think that the invention of our clocks belongs to this period. In the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, or Gengebacenses, of the same William, it is said of the sacristan, ‘eum horologium dirigere et ordinare.’ In the like manner Bernardus Monachus, a writer of the same century, says, in the Ordo Cluniacensis, ‘apocrisiarium horologium dirigere et diligentius temperare.’ The same author, in the Ancient Customs, &c. of the Monastery of St. Victor, at Paris, written also about the same time, says that the registrar (matricularius), the sacrist’s companion, ought ‘horas canonicas nocte et die ad divinum celebrandum custodire, signa pulsare, horologium temperare.’

“The unequal hours then in use rendered this regulating of the horologia necessary. The days and the nights consisted of twelve hours each; but were sometimes shorter and sometimes longer. The reason of this is explained in the sixty-fourth chapter of the before-mentioned Customs, where it is said, ‘From the solstice of summer to the solstice of winter, the time-piece is regulated thus: as much as that space of night which precedes the matins gradually increases according to the increments of the nights through the several months, it, slowly increasing, makes that space in the winter solstice which is before matins to that which follows, twice. On the contrary, from the winter solstice to that of spring it is thus regulated: it decreases that space which it had got in advance according to the decrease of the nights through the several months, until scarcely decreasing, it at length in the summer solstice passes over in the same time that space which is before matins and that which follows[1067].’ Such was the regulating of the horologia, and I much doubt whether it could be applied to water-clocks.

“These horologia not only pointed out the hours by an index, but emitted also a sound. This we learn from Primaria Instituta Canonicorum Præmonstratensium[1068], where it is ordered that the sacristan should regulate the horologium and make it sound before matins to awaken him. I dare not however venture thence to infer, that these machines announced the number of the hour by their sound, as they seem only to have given an alarm at the time of getting up from bed. I have indeed never yet found a passage where it is mentioned that the number of the hour was expressed by them; and when we read of their emitting a sound, we are to understand that it was for the purpose of wakening the sacristan to morning-prayers. The expression ‘horologium cecidit,’ which occurs frequently in the before-quoted writers, I consider as allusive to this sounding of the machine. Du Cange, in my opinion, under the word horologium, conceives wrongly the expression ‘de ponderibus in imum delapsis,’ because the machine was then at rest, and could rouse neither the sacristan nor any one else whose business it was to beat the scilla.

“I shall now produce other testimony which will serve further to confirm what I have here said of the origin of clocks. Calmet, in his Commentary on the Regulæ S. Benedicti, quotes from a book on the usages of the Cistercians, three passages which I shall give as he has translated them, because I have not access at present to the original. ‘We read,’ says he, ‘in chap. 21 of the first part of their Customs, compiled about the year 1120, that the bells will not be sounded for any service, not even for the clock, from the mass of Holy Thursday, to that of Holy Saturday; and in chap. 114, the sacristan is ordered to regulate the clock that it may strike and wake him during winter before matins or before the nocturns; and in chaps. 68 and 114, that when the brethren have risen too early the sacristan give notice to him who reads the last lesson to continue it until the clock strikes, or till signal be made to the reader to leave off[1069].’

“The use of these machines must have been continued from that period, for we find them mentioned in the thirteenth century, in the commentary of Bernardus Cassinensis (Bernard of Cassino) on the unpublished Regulæ S. Benedicti, from the eighth chapter of which Martene gives the following quotation: ‘But the eighth hour being already come, there was sufficient interval,--from the middle of the night, when he who had care of the clock rose to strike it and to light the lamps of the church which might have gone out on account of the length of the night, and to ring the bells in order to wake the sleeping brothers,--that he was able to get through half the eighth hour before the brothers had risen[1070].’ It is said also in the Chronicon Mellicense, in Du Cange, ‘Some one, deputed by the superior who had the care of the striking clock, struck; and also carried light to all the cells[1071].’

“As all arts are at first imperfect, it is observed of these clocks that they sometimes deceived; and hence, in the Ordo Cluniacensis Bernardi Mon., the person who regulated the clock is ordered, in case it should go wrong, ‘ut notet in cereo, et in cursu stellarum vel etiam lunæ, ut fratres surgere faciat ad horam competentem.’ The same admonition is given in the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses.

“From what has been said I think it is sufficiently apparent that clocks moved by wheels and weights began certainly to be used in the monasteries in Europe, about the eleventh century. I do not, however, think that Europe is entitled to the honour of this invention; but that it is rather to be ascribed to the Saracens, to whom we are indebted for most of the mathematical sciences. This conjecture is supported by the horologium, which, as Trithemius tells us, was sent by the sultan of Egypt, in the year 1232, to the emperor Frederic II. ‘In the same year,’ says he, ‘the Saladin of Egypt sent by his ambassadors as a gift to the emperor Frederic a valuable machine of wonderful construction worth more than five thousand ducats. For it appeared to resemble internally a celestial globe in which figures of the sun, moon, and other planets formed with the greatest skill moved, being impelled by weights and wheels, so that performing their course in certain and fixed intervals they pointed out the hour night and day with infallible certainty; also the twelve signs of the zodiac with certain appropriate characters, moved with the firmament, contained within themselves the course of the planets[1072].’

“The writers of this century speak in such a manner of clocks that it appears they must, at that period, have been well-known. Gulielmus Alvernus, disputing against those who deny the existence of the soul, after producing various arguments, thus obviates one which might be used against him. ‘Neither,’ says he, ‘do the motions of those clocks which are moved by water or weights give you uneasiness, both kinds of which move but for a short and moderate time, require frequent repair, the arranging of their parts, and the perfect skill of the astronomer who has a thorough knowledge of his art. But in the bodies of animals and vegetables the motive power is entirely internal, which moderates and regulates the movements of their parts and renders it in all ways perfect[1073].’ And Dante, the Italian poet, says[1074],

E come cerchi in tempra d’ orivoli Si giran, si che ’l primo, a chi pon mente Quieto pare, e l’ ultimo che voli, &c.

“In the fourteenth century mention is made of the machine of Richard de Wallingford, which has been hitherto considered as the oldest clock known. The description of it I shall give in the words of Leland: ‘Being chosen superior of the monastery, as he was now enabled by his ample fortune, he resolved to show by means of some glorious work a miracle not only of genius, but also of excelling knowledge. He therefore with great labour, with greater expense and with the utmost art, constructed such a clock as, in my opinion, exists nowhere else in Europe; whether we observe the course of the sun and moon, or the fixed stars, again, whether we consider the ebb and flow of the tide, or the lines together with the figures and demonstrations various almost to infinity: and when he had brought to perfection this work so worthy of eternity, he drew up rules for it, as he was the first man of his age in mathematical learning, which he published in this book, lest so excellent a machine should fall into disrepute through the mistakes of the monks, or should become silent from the law of its structure being unknown[1075].’ This machine, if I remember right, was called by the inventor Albion (all by one).

“Clocks hitherto had been, as it were, shut up in monasteries; but they now began to be employed for the common use and convenience of cities, though no instance of this is to be found before the above period. Hubert, prince of Carrara, caused the first clock ever publicly erected, to be put up at Padua, as we are told by Peter Paul Vergerius: ‘He caused to be built at the top of the tower, a clock, in which, during day and night, the four-and-twenty hours pointed themselves out[1076].’ It is said to have been made by James Dondi, whose family afterwards got the name of Horologio[1077]. In remembrance of this circumstance the following verses were inscribed on his tombstone:--

Quin procul excelsæ monitus de vertice turris Tempus, et instabiles numero quod colligis horas, Inventum cognosce meum, gratissime lector.

“John Dondi, son of the former, acquired no less fame by a clock which he constructed also, and which is thus described: ‘In which was the firmament and all the planetary globes, so that the movements of all the stars were comprised as in the heavens; it shows the days appointed for festivals and many other things wonderful to be seen: so great was the admirable construction of this clock, that after his death no one knew how to correct it, nor to assign the suitable weights. At length a skilful artist from France, attracted by the fame of this clock, came to Pavia, and employed many days in arranging the wheels, which he succeeded in putting together in proper order, and gave it the right motion[1078].’

“We are informed by the Chronica Miscella Bononiensis, that the first clock at Bologna was fixed up in the year 1356: ‘On the 8th day of April the great bell of the tower, which was in the palace called della Biada, belonging to Giovanni, lord of Bologna, was removed; and was conveyed into the Corte del Capitano, and was drawn up and placed on the tower del Capitano on Holy Wednesday; and this was the first clock which the state of Bologna ever possessed, and it began to strike on the 19th of May, which Messer Giovanni caused it to do[1079].’

“Some time after the year 1364, Charles V., surnamed the Wise, king of France, caused a large clock to be placed in the tower of his palace, by Henry de Wyck[1080], whom he invited from Germany, because there was then at Paris no artist of that kind, and to whom he allowed a salary of six sols per day, with free lodging in the tower.

“Towards the end of the century, about the year 1370, Strasburg also had a clock, a description of which is given by Conrad Dasypodius[1081].

“Courtray, about the same period, was celebrated for its clock, which was carried away by the duke of Burgundy, in the year 1382. This circumstance is thus related by Froissart, a contemporary writer: ‘The duke of Burgundy took away a clock (which struck the hours), one of the best to be found, either here or beyond the sea: and he caused this clock to be taken to pieces and placed upon carriages and the bell also. This clock was conveyed to the town of Dijon in Burgundy; and was there put together again and set up; and there it strikes the four-and-twenty hours in the course of day and night[1082].’

“We are told by Lehmann[1083], that a public clock was put up at Spire in the year 1395. ‘That year,’ says he, ‘the clock was erected on the Altburg gate. The bell for calling the people together to divine worship was cast by a bell-founder from Strasburg.--The works of the clock cost fifty-one florins.’

“The greater part however of the principal cities of Europe were at this period without striking clocks, which could not be procured but at a great expense. Of this we have an instance in the city of Auxerre. In the year 1483, the magistrates resolved to cause a clock to be constructed; but as it would cost a larger sum of money than they thought they had a right to dispose of by their own authority, they applied to Charles VIII. to request leave to employ a certain part of the public funds for that purpose.

“The great clock in the church of the Virgin Mary at Nuremberg was erected in the year 1462.

“A public clock was put up at Venice in the year 1497[1084].

“In the same century an excellent clock, which is described in a letter of Politian[1085] to Francis Casa, in the year 1484, was constructed by one Lorenzo, a Florentine, for Cosmo I. of Medici.

“Towards the end of this century clocks began to be in use among private persons. This appears from a letter of Ambrosius Camaldulensis to Nicolaus, a learned man of Florence: ‘When I received your letter I immediately made ready your clock, and should have sent it had any one been at hand to have taken it. I have caused it to be cleaned, for it was full of dust, and thus as it could not go freely it was retarded; and because it could not thus run correctly, I gave it to that illustrious youth Angelo, who is most skilful in these things[1086].’

“About this period also, mention is made of watches. Among the Italian poems of Gaspar Visconti, there is a sonnet with the following title: ‘Si fanno certi orologii piccioli e portativi, che non poco di artificio sempre lavorano, mostrando le ore, e molti corsi de pianeti, e le feste, sonando quando il tempo lo ricerca. Questo sonetto è facto in persona de uno inamorato, che, guardando uno delli predicti orologii, compara se stesso a quello, &c.’[1087]

“It appears, therefore, that Doppelmayer is mistaken when he says that watches were invented by Peter Hele, at Nuremberg, in the sixteenth century; and that because they were shaped like an egg, they were called Nuremberg animated eggs. I. Cocleus, in his Description of Germany, speaking of this Hele, says, ‘This young man has performed works which the most skilful mathematicians may admire. For he makes small watches of steel with numerous wheels, which, as they move without any weight, both point out and strike forty hours, even though they are contained in the bosom or in the pocket[1088].’”

FOOTNOTES

[1040] The author says that the principal writers on this subject are Alexander, a monk of the order of St. Benedict; Paute, his countryman; and our Derham.

[1041] Histor. Astron.

[1042] Encyclopædia, art. Clock.

[1043] Bona De Div. Psalmod. cap. 3. s. 2.

[1044] Act. SS. cap. 16. 20 Jan. p. 273. Chrom. “Habeo cubiculum holovitrum, in quo omnis disciplina stellarum ac mathesis mechanica est arte constructa, in cujus fabrica pater meus Tarquinius amplius quam ducenta pondo auri dignoscitur expendisse.” St. Sebast. “Si hoc tu integrum habere volueris, te ipsum frangis.” Chrom. “Quid enim? Mathesis aut ephemeris aliquo sacrificiorum usu coluntur, cum tantum eis mensium et annorum cursus certo numero per horarum spatia distinguuntur; et lunaris globi plenitudo, vel diminutio, digitorum motu, rationis magisterio, et calculi computatione praevidetur?”

[1045] “Illic signa Leonis, et Capricorni, et Sagittarii, et Scorpionis, et Tauri sunt; illic in Ariete Luna, in Cancro hora, in Jove stella, in Mercurio tropica, in Venere Mars, et in omnibus istis monstruosis daemonibus ars Deo inimica cognoscitur.”

[1046] Hist. Ticin. lib. vii. c. 17.

[1047] Var. lib. i. in fine.

[1048] In the original, Monasterium Vivariense.--TRANS.

[1049] “Horologium vobis unum, quod solis claritas indicet, praeparasse cognoscor; alterum vero aquatile, quod die noctuque horarum iugiter indicat quantitatem; quia frequenter nonnullis diebus solis claritas abesse cognoscitur.”--De Institut. Div. Litter. c. 29.

[1050] Mabil. Annales St. O. B. sec. i. p. 123.

[1051] Antiq. Med. Ævi, Diss. 24, p. 392.

[1052] Lucæ Holstenii Codex Regularum. Paris, 1663, p. 172.

[1053] Annales.

[1054] Capp. 54, 55. 95.

[1055] Index Onomasticus ad tom. iv. De Antiq. Eccl. Rit.

[1056] Martene, Coll. ampl. tom. v. p. 960. “Misit rex Persarum--horologium, in quo XII horarum cursus cognoscebantur, cymbalo ibi personante et equitibus, qui per singulas horas per fenestras exibant, et in ultima hora diei redeuntes, in regressione sua fenestras apertas claudebant.”

[1057] Ad a. 807. Calmet, Hist. de Lorraine, vol. i. p. 582. “Nec non et horologium, ex aurichalco arte mechanica mirifice compositum, in quo duodecim horarum cursus ad clepsydram vertebatur, cum totidem æreis pilulis, quæ ad completionem horarum decidebant, et casu suo subjectum sibi cymbalum tinnire faciebant.”

[1058] Panuvini Antiq. Veron. lib. vi. p. 153. Scip. Maffei Degli Scrittori Veronesi, p. 32. Muratori, Ant. Ital. Med. Ævi, Diss. 24. p. 392.

[1059] Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens de la Gaule, tom. v. p. 513.

[1060] See Martene De Ritib. Eccl. tom. iv. p. 5.

[1061] Martene, tom. iv. p. 853.

[1062] “Non fabulis vacet, non longa cum aliquo misceat, non denique, quid a secularibus agatur, inquirat; sed commissæ sibi curæ semper intentus, semper providus, semperque sollicitus, volubilis sphæræ necessitatem, quiescere nescientem, siderum transitum, et elabentis temporis meditetur semper excursum. Porro psallendi sibi faciat consuetudinem, si discernendi horas quotidianam habere desiderat notionem; ut, quandocunque solis claritas, sive stellarum varietas nubium densitate non cernitur, illic in quantitate psalmodiæ, quam tenuerit, quoddam sibi velut horologium metiatur.”

[1063] Journal des Sçavans, 1734, p. 773.

[1064] Chron. lib. vi. p. 83. Franc. 1580. fol. “Gerbertus, a finibus suis expulsus, Ottonem petiit imperatorem, et cum eo diu conversatus, in Magdaburg horologium fecit, illud recte constituens, considerata per fistulam quadam stella nautarum duce.”

[1065] Le Beuf. Rec. de div. écrits, &c. vol. ii. p. 89.

[1066] Published by Car. Stengelius. Aug. Vind. 1611, p. 1.

[1067] “Ab æstivali solstitio usque ad solstitium hiemale sic horologium temperetur, quatenus illud noctis spatium, quod matutinas præcedat, per singulos menses secundum incrementa noctium aliquantulum crescat, donec paulatim crescendo tandem in hiemali solstitio spatium illud, quod est ante matutinas, ad illud quod sequitur, duplum fiat. Similiter per contrarium ab hiemali solstitio usque ad æstivale solstitium sic temperetur, quatenus spatium, quod præcedit, secundum noctium decrementum per singulos menses decrescat, donec paulatim decrescendo, tandem in solstitio æstivali spatium, quod est ante matutinas, et quod post sequitur, æquale fiat.”

[1068] Diss. ii. c. 8. ap. Martene De Ant. Rit. tom. iii. p. 909.

[1069] “On lit, au chap. 21 de la première partie de leurs Usages, compilez vers l’an 1120, qu’on ne fera sonner les cloches pour aucun exercice, pas même pour l’Horloge, dépuis la messe du Jeudi saint jusqu’à celle du Samedi saint; et au chap. 114, il est ordonné au sacristain de regler l’Horloge, en sorte qu’elle sonne, et qu’elle l’éveille pendant l’hyver avant matines, ou avant les nocturnes; et au chap. 68 et 114, que quand on s’est levé trop tôt, le sacristain avertît celui qui lit la dernière leçon, de la prolonger jusqu’à ce que l’Horloge sonne, ou qu’on fasse signe au lecteur de cesser.”

[1070] Rit. Ant. tom. iv. p. 5. “Facta autem jam hora octava, modicum erit amplius de media nocte quando surrexerit, horologio excitante, qui habet horologium custodire, et accensis lucernis ecclesiæ, quæ poterant propter prolixitatem noctis fuisse obscuratæ, ac pulsatis campanis ad dormientium fratrum excitationem, potuit transire dimidia octavæ horæ antequam surrexerint fratres.”

[1071] Cap. 774. “Excitabit aliquis a superiore deputatus, qui horologium excitatorium habeat; ad omnes quoque cellas lumen deferat.”

[1072] “Eodem anno, Saladinus Egyptiorum Frederico imperatori dono misit per suos oratores tentorium pretiosum, mirabili arte compositum, cujus pretii æstimatio quinque ducatorum millium procul valorem excessit. Nam ad similitudinem sphærarum cælestium intrinsecus videbatur constructum, in quo imagines solis, lunæ, ac reliquorum planetarum artificiosissime compositæ movebantur ponderibus et rotis incitatæ; ita videlicet, quod, cursum suum certis ac debitis spatiis peragentes, horas tam noctis quam diei infallibili demonstratione designabant; imagines quoque xii signorum zodiaci certis distinctionibus suis motæ cum firmamento cursum in se planetarum continebant.”

[1073] De Anima, c. i. p. 7, 72. “Nec te conturbant, inquit, motus horologiorum, qui per aquam fiunt et pondera, quæ quidem ad breve tempus et modicum fiunt, et indigent renovatione frequenti, et aptatione instrumentorum suorum, atque operatione forinsecus, astrologi videlicet qui peritiam habet hujus artificii. In corporibus vero animalium vel etiam vegetabilium totum intus est, intra ea scilicet, quod motus eorum atque partium suarum moderatur, et regit, ac modis omnibus perficit.”

[1074] Parad. cant. xxiv. ver. 13.

[1075] “Electus in monasterii præsidem--cum jam per amplas licebat fortunas, voluit illustri aliquo opere non modo ingenii, verum etiam eruditionis ac artis excellentis miraculum ostendere. Ergo talem horologii fabricam magno labore, majore sumtu, arte vero maxima compegit, qualem non habet tota, mea opinione, Europa secundam; sive quis cursum solis ac lunæ, seu fixa sidera notet, sive iterum maris incrementa et decrementa, seu lineas una cum figuris ac demonstrationibus ad infinitum pene variis consideret: cumque opus æternitate dignissimum ad umbilicum perduxisset, canones, ut erat in mathesi omnium sui temporis facile primus, edito in hoc libro scripsit, ne tam insignis machina errore monachorum vilesceret, aut incognito structuræ ordine sileret.”--See Tanneri Biblioth. Brit. Hibern. p. 629.

[1076] In Vit. Princip. Carrar. ap. Murator. tom. xvi. p. 171. “Horologium, quo per diem et noctem quatuor et viginti horarum spatia sponte sua designarentur, in summa turri constituendum curavit.”

[1077] See Scardeonius De Antiq. Urbis Patavii, lib. ii. class. 9, p. 205, ed. Basil, 1560, fol. and the authors which he quotes.

[1078] “In quo erat firmamentum, et omnium planetarum sphæræ, ut sic siderum omnium motus, veluti in cœlo, comprehendantur; festa edicta in dies monstrat, plurimaque alia oculis stupenda; tantaque fuit ejus horologii admiranda congeries, ut usque modo post ejus relictam lucem corrigere, et pondera convenientia assignare sciverit astrologus nemo. Verum de Francia nuper astrologus et fabricator magnus, fama horologii tanti ductus, Papiam venit, plurimisque diebus in rotas congregandas elaboravit; tandemque actum est, ut in unum, eo quo decebat ordine, composuerit, motumque ut decet dederit.”--These are the words of Mich. Savanarola in Comm. de Laud. Patav. in Muratori, vol. xxiv. col. 1164.

[1079] In Muratori, tom. xviii. p. 444. “A di 8 di Aprile fu tolta via la campana grossa della torre, ch’ era nel palazzo di Messer Giovanni signor di Bologna, il qual palazzo dicevasi della Biada; e fu menata nella Corte del Capitano, e tirata e posta sulla Torre del Capitano nel Mercoledi Santo; e questo fu l’ orologio, il quale fu il primo, che avesse mai il Commune di Bologna, e si commincio a sonare a di 19 di Maggio, il quale lo fece fare Messer Giovanni.”

[1080] Moreri, Diction. art. Horloge du Palais.

[1081] In the account of the astronomical clock at Strasburg, to be found in lac. von Königshovens Elsass und Strasb. Chronik. p. 574.

[1082] “Le duc de Bourgogne fit oster un horloge (qui sonnoit les heures), l’un des plus beaux qu’on seust trouver deçà ne delà la mer: et celui horloge fit tout mettre, par membres et pieces, sur chars, et la cloche aussi. Lequel horloge fut amené et charroyé en la ville de Digeon en Bourgogne, et fut là remis et assis: et y sonne les heures vingt-quatre, entre jour et nui.”--Vol. ii. c. 128, p. 229.

[1083] Lib. vii. c. 69, towards the end.

[1084] Thes. Ital. iii. p. 3, p. 308.

[1085] Politiani Op. 1533, 8vo, p. 121.

[1086] “Horologium tuum mox, ut tuas accepi literas, paravi, misissemque, si fuisset præsto qui afferret. Ipsam mundari feci, nam erat pulvere obsitum, atque ideo, ne libere posset incedere. retardabatur. Et quia ne sic quidem recte currebat, Angelo illi illustri adolescenti harum rerum peritissimo dedi.”

[1087] This sonnet I shall here transcribe from A. Saxii Hist. Litterario-typographica Mediolan.:--

Hò certa occulta forza in la secreta Parte del cor, qual sempre si lavora De sera a sera, e d’una a l’altra aurora, Che non spero la mente aver mai quieta. Legger ben mi potria ogni discreta Vista nel fronte, ove amor colora D’affanno e di dolore il punto e l’ora, E la cagion, che riposar mi vieta. L’umil squilletta sona il pio lamento, Che spesso mando al cielo, e la fortuna, Per disfogar cridando il fier tormento. De le feste annual non ne mostro una, Ma pianeti iracondi, e di spavento, Eclipsati col sole, e con la luna.

Dominico Maria Manni, in his book De Florentinis Inventis, chap. 29, calls the artist Lorenzo a Vulparia, and says that he was a native of Florence.

[1088] Added to his Comm. in Pomp. Melam, cap. de Noriberga. “Eum juvenem adhuc admodum, opera efficere, quæ vel doctissimi admirentur mathematici. Nam ex ferro parva fabricat horologia plurimis digesta rotulis, quæ, quocunque vertantur, absque ullo pondere, et monstrant et pulsant xl horas, etiam si in sinu marsupiove contineantur.”

CLOCKS AND WATCHES (ADDITIONAL)

The term Horologia occurs very early in different parts of Europe; but as this word, in old times, signified dials as well as clocks, nothing decisive can be inferred from it, unless it can be shown by concomitant circumstances or expressions, that it relates to a clock rather than a dial. Dante seems to be the first author who hath introduced the mention of an orologio that struck the hour, and which consequently cannot be a dial, in the following lines:--

Indi come horologio che ne chiami, Nel hora che la sposa d’Idio surge, Amattinar lo sposo, perche l’ami[1090].

Dante was born in 1265, and died in 1321, aged fifty-seven; striking-clocks therefore could not have been very uncommon in Italy, at the latter end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth.

But the use of clocks was not confined to Italy at this period; for we had an artist in England about the same time, who furnished the famous clock-house near Westminster Hall, with a clock to be heard by the courts of law, out of a fine imposed on the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, in the sixteenth year of Edward I., or in 1288[1091]. Blackstone in his Commentaries has observed, that this punishment of Radulphus de Hengham is first taken notice of in the Year Book[1092], during the reign of Richard III., where indeed no mention is made of a clock being thus paid for; but if the circumstances stated in the report of this case are considered, it was highly unnecessary, and perhaps improper, to have alluded to this application of the Chief Justice’s fine.

It appears by the Year Book, that Richard III. had closeted the judges in the Inner Star Chamber, to take their opinions upon three points of law; the second of which was, “Whether a justice of the peace, who had enrolled an indictment, which had been negatived by the grand-jury, amongst the true bills, might be punished for this abuse of his office.” On this question a diversity of opinion arose amongst the judges, some of whom supposed that a magistrate could not be prosecuted for what he might have done, whilst others contended that he might, and cited the case of Hengham, who was fined eight hundred marks for making an alteration in a record, by which a poor defendant was to pay only six shillings and eightpence, instead of thirteen shillings and fourpence. Thus far the answer of the judges to the question was strictly proper; but the application of the fine to build a clock-house was not the least material[1093]; besides, that it was probably a most notorious fact to every student, upon his first attending Westminster-hall, as we find judge Southcote, so much later, in the early part of queen Elizabeth’s reign, not only mentioning the tradition, but that the clock still continued there, which had been furnished out of the Chief Justice’s fine[1094]. Sir Edward Coke likewise adds, that the eight hundred marks were actually entered on the roll, so that it is highly probable he had himself seen the record[1095].

But we have remaining to this day some degree of evidence, not only of the existence of such a clock, but that it is of the antiquity already ascribed to it, viz. the reign of Edward I. On the side of New Palace-yard, which is opposite to Westminster-hall, and in the second pediment of the new buildings from the Thames, a dial is inserted with this remarkable motto upon it, “Discite justitiam moniti,” which seems most clearly to relate to the fine imposed on Radulphus de Hengham being applied to the paying for a clock. But it may be said that this inscription is on a dial and not upon a clock; which though it appears upon the first stating it to be a most material objection, yet I conceive it may receive the following satisfactory answer. The original clock of Edward the First’s reign was probably a very indifferent one, but from its great antiquity, and the tradition attending it, was still permitted to remain till the time of queen Elizabeth, according to the authorities already cited. After this, being quite decayed, a dial might have been substituted and placed upon the same clock-house, borrowing its very singular motto; which whether originally applied in the time of Edward I. or in later reigns, most plainly alludes to Hengham’s punishment for altering a record. It should also be mentioned that this dial seems to have been placed exactly where the clock-house stood according to Strype[1096].

Mr. Norris, secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, hath been likewise so obliging as to refer me to the following instance of a very ancient clock in the same century: Anno 1292, novum orologium magnum in ecclesia (Cantuariensi), pretium 30l.[1097].

I shall now produce a proof, that not only clocks but watches were made in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Seven or eight years ago, some labourers were employed at Bruce Castle, in Fifeshire, where they found a watch, together with some coin, both of which they disposed of to a shopkeeper of St. Andrews, who sent the watch to his brother in London, considering it as a curious piece of antiquity. The outer case is silver, raised in rather a handsome pattern over a ground of blue enamel; and I think I can distinguish a cypher of R. B. at each corner of the enchased work. On the dial-plate is written Robertus B. Rex Scotorum, and over it is a convex transparent horn, instead of the glasses which we use at present. Now Robertus B. Rex Scotorum can be no other king of Scotland than Robert Bruce, who began his reign in 1305, and died in 1328; for the Christian name of Baliol, who succeeded him, was Edward; nor can Robertus B. be applied to any later Scottish king. This very singular watch is not of a larger size than those which are now in common use; at which I was much surprised till I had seen several of the sixteenth century in the collection of Sir Ashton Lever and Mr. Ingham Forster, which were considerably smaller.

As I mean to deduce the progress of the art of clock-making in a regular chronological series, the next mention I find of horologia is in Rymer’s Fœdera, where there is a protection of Edward III., in the year 1368, to three Dutchmen, who were Orlogiers. The title of this protection is, “De horologiorum artificio exercendo;” and I hope to have sufficiently proved that there was no necessity of procuring mere dial-makers at this time.

Clock-makers however were really wanted at this period of the fourteenth century, as may be inferred from the following lines of Chaucer, when he speaks of a cock’s crowing:--

Full sikerer was his crowing in his loge, As is a clock, or any abbey orloge[1098]:

by which, as I conceive at least, our old poet means to say, that the crowing was as certain as a bell or abbey-clock[1099]. For though we at present ask so often, “What is it o’clock?” meaning the time-measurer, yet I should rather suppose, that in the fourteenth century the term clock was often applied to a bell which was rung at certain periods, determined by an hour-glass or a sun-dial. Nor have I been able to stumble upon any passage which alludes to a clock, by that name, earlier than the thirteenth year of the reign of Henry VIII.[1100] The abbey orloge (or clock) however must have been not uncommon when Chaucer wrote these lines; and from clocks beginning to be in use we might have had occasion for more artificers in this branch, though it should seem that we had Englishmen, who pretended at least to understand it, because the protection of Edward III. above-cited, directs that the persons to whom it was granted, should not be molested whilst they were thus employed.

I now pass on to a famous astronomical clock, made by one of our countrymen in the reign of Richard II., the account of which I have extracted from Leland. Richard of Wallingford was son of a smith, who lived at that town, and who, from his learning and ingenuity, became abbot of St. Albans. Leland, speaking of him, says, “Cum jam per amplas licebat fortunas, voluit illustri aliquo opere, non modo ingenii, verum etiam eruditionis, ac artis excellentis, miraculum ostendere. Ergo talem horologii fabricam magno labore, majore sumtu, arte vero maxima, compegit, qualem non habet tota Europa, mea opinione, secundam, sive quis cursum solis ac lunæ, seu fixa sidera notet, sive iterum maris incrementa et decrementa[1101].” Richard of Wallingford wrote also a treatise on this clock, “Ne tam insignis machina vilesceret errore monachorum, aut incognito structuræ ordine silesceret.” From what hath been above stated, it appears that this astronomical clock continued to go in Leland’s time, who was born at the latter end of Henry VII.’s reign, and who speaks of a tradition, that this famous piece of mechanism was called Albion by the inventor.

Having thus endeavoured to prove that clocks were made in England from the time of Edward I. to that of Richard II., it is not essential to my principal purpose to deduce them lower through the successive reigns; but when I have shortly stated what I happened to have found with regard to this useful invention in other parts of Europe, I shall attempt to show why they were not more common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The citation from Dante, which I have before relied upon, shows that they were not unknown in Italy during that period; and M. Falconet, in Mémoires de Litterature, informs us, that a James Dondi, in the fourteenth century, assumed from a clock made by him for the tower of a palace, the name of Horologius, which was afterwards borne by his descendants.

In France, or what is now so called, Froissart mentions, that during the year 1332, Philip the Hardy, duke of Burgundy, removed from Courtray to his capital at Dijon a famous clock which struck the hours, and was remarkable for its mechanism[1102]. The great clock at Paris was put up in the year 1370, during the reign of Charles V., having been made by Charles de Wic[1103] a German. Carpentier, in his supplement to Du Cange, cites a decision of the parliament of Paris in the year 1413, in which Henry Bye, one of the parties, is styled Gubernator Horologii palatii nostri Parisiis[1104]. About the same time also the clock at Montargis was made, with the following inscription:--

Charles le Quint (sc. de France) Me fit par Jean de Jouvence.

The last word seems to be the name of a Frenchman.

Though I have not happened to meet with any mention of very early clocks in Germany, yet from the great clock at Paris in 1370 being the work of De Wic, as also from the protection granted by Edward III. to three clock-makers from Delft, it should seem that this part of Europe[1105] was not without this useful invention; and the same may be inferred with regard to Spain from the old saying, “Estar como un relox[1106].”

Having now produced instances of several clocks, and even a watch, which were made in different parts of the fourteenth century, as also having endeavoured to prove that they were not excessively uncommon even in the thirteenth, it may be thought necessary that I should account for their not being more generally used during those periods, as in their present state at least they are so very convenient. For this it should seem that many reasons may be assigned.

In the infancy of this new piece of mechanism, they were probably of a very imperfect construction, perhaps never went tolerably, and were soon deranged, whilst there was no one within a reasonable distance to put them in order. To this day the most musical people have seldom a harpsichord in their house, if the tuner cannot be procured from the neighbourhood. We find therefore that Henry VI. of England, and Charles V. of France, appointed clock-makers, with a stipend, to keep the Westminster and Paris clocks in order.

It need scarcely be observed also, that, as the artists were so few, their work must have been charged accordingly, and that kings only could be the purchasers of what was rather an expensive toy than of any considerable use. And it may perhaps be said, that they continued in a great measure to be no better than toys till the middle of the seventeenth century. Add to this, that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was so little commerce, intercourse, or society, that an hour-glass, or the sun, was very sufficient for the common purposes, which are now more accurately settled by clocks of modern construction. Dials and hour-glasses likewise wanted no mending.

Having now finished what hath occurred to me with regard to the first introduction of clocks, I shall conclude by a few particulars, which I have been enabled to pick up, in relation to those more portable measurers of time, called watches, the earliest of which, except that of Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, seems to be one in Sir Ashton Lever’s most valuable museum, the date upon which is 1541[1107].

Derham, in his Artificial Clock-maker[1108], published in 1714, mentions a watch of Henry VIII. which was still in order; and Dr. Demainbray informs me, that he hath heard both Sir Isaac Newton and Demoivre speak of this watch[1109]. The emperor Charles V., Henry’s contemporary, was so much pleased with these time-measurers, that he used to sit after his dinner with several of them on the table, his bottle being in the centre[1110]; and when he retired to the monastery of St. Just, he continued still to amuse himself with keeping them in order, which is said to have produced a reflection from him on the absurdity of his attempt to regulate the motions of the different powers of Europe.

Some of the watches used at this time seem to have been strikers; at least we find in the Memoirs of Literature, that such watches having been stolen both from Charles V. and Lewis XI. whilst they were in a crowd, the thief was detected by their striking the hour[1111]. In most of the more ancient watches, of which I have seen several in the collection of Sir Ashton Lever and Mr. Ingham Forster, catgut supplied the place of a chain[1112], whilst they were commonly of a smaller size than we use at present, and often of an oval form[1113].

From these and probably many other imperfections, they were not in any degree of general request till the latter end of queen Elizabeth’s reign. Accordingly in Shakspeare’s Twelfth Night, Malvolio says, “I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel.” Again, in the first edition of Harrington’s Orlando Furioso, printed in 1591, the author is represented with what seems to be a watch, though the engraving is by no means distinct, on which is written “Il tempo passa[1114].”

In the third year of James I., a watch was found upon Guy Fawkes, which he and Percy had bought the day before, “to try conclusions for the long and short burning of the touch-wood, with which he had prepared to give fire to the train of powder[1115].”

In 1631, Charles I. incorporated the clock-makers; and the charter prohibits clocks, watches, and alarms, from being imported; which sufficiently proves that they were now more commonly used, as well as that we had artists of our own who were expert in this branch of business.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, Huygens made his great improvement in clock-work, which produced many others from our own countrymen[1116]; the latest of which was the introduction of repeating watches, in the time of Charles II., who, as I have been informed by the late lord Bathurst, sent one of the first of these new inventions to Lewis XIV. The former of these kings was very curious with regard to these time-measurers; and I have been told by an old person of the trade, that watchmakers, particularly East, used to attend whilst he was playing at the Mall; a watch being often the stake.

But we have a much more curious anecdote of royal attention to watches in Dr. Derham’s Artificial Clock-maker (p. 107). Barlow had procured a patent, in concert with the Lord Chief Justice Allebone, for repeaters; but Quare making one at the same time upon ideas he had entertained before the patent was granted, James II. tried both, and giving the preference to Quare’s, it was notified in the gazette. In the succeeding reign, the reputation of the English work in this branch was such, that in the year 1698, an act passed, obliging the makers to put their names on watches, lest discreditable ones might be sold abroad for English[1117].

Letter on the pretended Watch of King Robert Bruce[1118].

You will remember that I formerly mentioned something to you in reference to the observations made by the Hon. Daines Barrington, on the earliest introduction of clocks, published in the Annual Register for 1779, under the article Antiquities, p. 133. According to your desire, I will communicate what circumstances come within my personal knowledge, about a watch that corresponds very much to one described by him as once the property of king Robert Bruce. I must be indulged, although in some particulars I cannot speak with absolute certainty, as so much time hath elapsed since the transaction I am going to relate.

Being early fond of anything ancient or uncommon, I used to purchase pieces of old coin from a goldsmith who wrought privately in Glasgow, and sometimes went about as a hawker. Having often asked him from the curiosity of a boy, if he had ever been at the castle of Clackmannan, or heard of any antiquities being found there, he told me that he had purchased from Mrs. Bruce, who is the only survivor of that ancient family in the direct line, an old watch, which was found in the castle, and had an inscription, bearing, that it belonged to king Robert Bruce. I immediately asked a sight of it; but he told me it was not at hand. He fixed a time for showing me this invaluable curiosity; but even then it could not be seen. My avidity produced many anxious calls, although by that time I began to suspect he meant to play upon me, especially as I did not think it altogether credible that Mrs. Bruce would sell such a relict of her family if she had ever had it in her possession. At length I was favoured with a sight of it. The watch, as far as I can recollect, almost entirely answered the one described. It had a ground of blue enamel. It had a horn above the dial-plate instead of a glass. The inscription was on the plate. But whether it was Robertus B. or Robertus Bruce, I cannot remember. The watch was very small and neat, and ran only, to the best of my knowledge, little more than twelve hours, at least not a complete day. The Hon. Mr. Barrington does not mention anything about this circumstance. It is about twelve years since I saw it. Whether there be any castle in Fife properly called Bruce castle, I know not; but the castle of Clackmannan hath always been the residence of the eldest branch of the family; and although the town in which it stands now gives name to a small county, yet in former times, and still in common language, that whole district receives the name of Fife, as distinguishing it from the county on the other side of the firths of Forth and Tay. The first thing that occurred to me about the watch itself, was in regard to the inscription. Observing that all the coins of king Robert’s age bore Saxon characters, I could not believe the inscription to be genuine, because the characters were not properly Saxon, but a kind of rugged Roman, or rather Italic characters, like those commonly engraved, but evidently done very coarsely, to favour the imposition. He valued it at 1_l._ 10_s._, but I would have nothing to do with it. The first time I had an opportunity of seeing Mrs. Bruce of Clackmannan, after this, I asked her if such a watch had ever been found. She told me that she never so much as heard of any such thing. This confirmed the justness of my suspicion.

I paid no further regard to this story till about seven years ago, when I received a letter from a friend, informing me, that a brother of his in London, who had a taste for antiquity, had desired him, if possible, to procure some intelligence from Glasgow about a watch, said to be king Robert Bruce’s, which had thence found its way to London, and was there making a great noise among the antiquaries. I then applied to my former goldsmith, who was then in a more respectable way, and mentioned the old story. He immediately fell a-laughing, and told me, that he did it merely for a piece of diversion, and thought the story would take with me, as I had been often asking about the place. He said that it was an old watch brought from America; that, to get some sport with my credulity, he had engraved the inscription upon it in a rough, antiquated-like form; that he had afterwards sold it for two guineas; he had learned that it was next sold for five, and had never more heard of it.

However early the invention of clocks might be, I am greatly mistaken if any authentic documents can be produced of the art of making pocket-watches being discovered so early as the beginning of the fourteenth century. Lord Kaimes, somewhere in his Sketches of Man, asserts, that the first watch was made in Germany, so far as I can remember, near the close of the fifteenth century[1119]. If any watch had been made so early as R. Bruce’s time, it is most likely the inscription would have been in Saxon characters, as not only the money both of Scotland and England, but of Germany, in that age, bears a character either Saxon, or greatly resembling it.

Whatever ardour one feels for anything that bears the genuine marks of antiquity, it is certainly a debt he owes to those who have the same taste, to contribute anything in his power that may prevent impositions, to which antiquaries are abundantly subject, through the low humour or avarice of others; or that may tend to confirm a fact by proper comparison and minute investigation of circumstances. Besides, this is of greater moment than settling the genuineness of a coin, or many other things of the same nature, because it involves in it the date of a very important discovery. It doth not merely refer to the history of an individual, or even of one nation, but to the history of man. It respects the progress of the arts; and an anachronism here is of considerable importance, because, being established upon a supposed fact, it becomes a precedent for writers in future ages.

[The time and place at which watches were first made similar to those now in use, are not positively determined. The first step towards its accomplishment must have consisted in making a mainspring the source of motion instead of a weight[1120]. The invention of the fusee speedily followed the mainspring, and without it the former would be useless, in consequence of its tension varying according to the size of its coil. In the time of Elizabeth a watch was a very different kind of instrument to one of the present day. As regards size, it closely resembled one of our common dessert-plates. Before Dr. Hooke’s improvement, the performance of watches was so very irregular that they were considered as serving only to give the time for a few hours, and this in rather a random kind of way. The invention by Dr. Hooke of a spiral spring applied to the arbor of the balance, by which means effects were produced on its vibrations similar to the action of gravity on the pendulum of a clock, was perhaps of more importance than any improvement which has been subsequently made. Watches were common in France before 1544, as in that year the corporation of master clockmakers in Paris had a statute enacted to ensure to themselves the exclusive privilege of making and causing to be made clocks and watches, large or small, within the precincts of that city. The anchor-escapement was invented by Clement, a London clockmaker, in 1680. Previously to 1790, two kinds of watches were made, the vertical and the horizontal. The former was first used in clocks, then in watches. The horizontal was invented in 1724, by George Graham, F.R.S. (an apprentice of the renowned Tompion), to whom we are indebted for two of the most valuable improvements in clocks which have ever been made, viz. the dead-beat, or Graham escapement[1121], as it is called, and the mercurial compensation pendulum. The best proof that can be adduced of the importance of these inventions is, that they still continue to be employed in all their early simplicity, in the construction of the best astronomical clocks of the present day. Graham’s horizontal escapement is still extensively employed in the Swiss and Geneva watches, but in the better sort of those of English manufacture, it has been superseded by the duplex, and recently by the lever, which is nothing more than the application of Graham’s dead-beat escapement to the watch, though patents have been taken out by various persons who have claimed the invention. The most remarkable inventions of this period were those of Harrison, consisting of his gridiron pendulum, the going fusee, the compensation curb, and the remontoir escapement. In 1736, he appears to have completed his longitude watch, and received from the Royal Society their gold medal; he ultimately received the government reward of £20,000, together with other sums from the Board of Longitude and the Honourable East India Company. Notwithstanding his application of the compensation curb to the watch, it was still a subject of inquiry, and by many persons it was thought that the expansion and contraction of the metal, of which the spring is composed, was the source of variation in the equality of its motion under changes of temperature; but the consideration that the change of rate in the clock, with a seconds pendulum, in passing from the winter to the summer temperature, amounted only to about twenty seconds, while that of the watch exceeded six minutes and a half under similar circumstances, led careful observers to infer that some other cause must be assigned for the anomaly, and the loss of elasticity of the balance-spring by heat began to be suspected, as appears by the following passage in the Prize Essay of Daniel Bernoulli, read before the French Academy:--“I must not omit (said this celebrated geometrician) a circumstance which may be prejudicial to balance watches; it is, that experimental philosophers pretend to have remarked that certain changes of elastic force uniformly follow changes of temperature. If that be the case, the spring can never uniformly govern the balance.” That which Bernoulli only conjectured, was in 1773 established as a matter of certainty, and the amount in loss of time due to each of the three conjointly operating causes determined by Berthoud to be,--loss by expansion of the balance, 62 seconds; loss by elongation of the balance-spring, 19 seconds; and loss by the diminution of the spring’s elastic force by heat, 312 seconds, by an increase of 60° of heat of Fahrenheit’s scale. We have previously observed that Harrison’s compensation curb was inefficient, as besides other defects, it interfered too much with the isochronism of the balance-spring, as the inventor himself was candid enough to confess that the balance, balance-spring, and compensation curb, were not contemporaneously affected by changes of temperature, since small pieces of metal were sooner affected than large, and those in motion before those at rest. Whence he was led to conclude, that if the provision for heat and cold could properly reside in the balance itself, as was the case with his gridiron pendulum clocks, the time-piece might be made much more perfect. This ingenuous observation is the more to Harrison’s credit, as it was certainly his interest to conceal such a suggestion, being at that time a candidate for the government reward. The complexity of Harrison’s timekeeper and the high price, £400, demanded by Kendall to make them after that model, still left the timekeeper to be discovered that would come within the means of purchase of private individuals: for admirably as Harrison had succeeded in the construction of those which had procured him his reward, and great as were the talents of his assistant Larcum Kendall, yet for practical purposes, there needed an instrument of greater simplicity, and to John Arnold we are indebted for its invention.

Arnold is also celebrated for the manufacture of the smallest repeating-watch ever known: it was made for his majesty George III., to whom it was presented on his birthday, the 4th of June 1764. Although less than six-tenths of an inch in diameter, it was perfect in all its parts, repeated the hours, quarters and half-quarters, and contained the first ruby cylinder ever made. Indeed so novel was the construction of this little specimen of mechanical skill, that he was forced not only to form the design and execute the work himself, but also to manufacture the greater part of the tools employed in its construction. It is minutely described in Rees’s Cyclopædia, and also in the Sporting Magazine of that time, in which latter work it is correctly stated to be of the size of a silver twopence, and its weight that of a sixpence. The King was so much pleased with this rare specimen of mechanical skill, that he presented Mr. Arnold with 500 guineas; and the Emperor of Russia afterwards offered Mr. Arnold 1000 guineas for a duplicate of it, which he declined.

Arnold’s model, though destined to perform the same office as Harrison’s, was entirely different in its construction, and was as simple as his predecessor’s was complex. By progressive stages of improvement, it was brought by the inventor himself to so high a point of perfection, that it continues to be the model followed in the construction of the best chronometers of the present day. The instruments upon which Arnold experimented are now in the possession of his successor, Mr. C. Frodsham, and show the gradual progress of advancement made in the escapement, &c., until he arrived at that beautiful, yet simple, detached escapement, which is still followed, and known under the name of the Arnold escapement. He was the first watchmaker who introduced jewelling into watches and clocks, and in 1771 he applied ruby pallets to the two clocks of the Royal Society by Graham and Smeaton, and likewise to the transit clock by Graham at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. In 1776 Arnold achieved what was unquestionably his greatest work, viz. the invention of the cylindrical spring and compensation balance, and their application in the chronometer, which is the name that Arnold then first employed to designate his timekeepers. This ingenious and valuable discovery introduced a new æra in chronometry. Each part of the machine under the new arrangement performed unchecked the office assigned to it. The escapement was completely detached, except at the moment of discharge and giving impulse; the balance-spring, no longer interfered with in corrections for temperature (as formerly) by the compensating curb, became a free agent and the generator of motion, in which state only it is capable of being perfectly isochronized; the balance, by its expansion and contraction, varied its inertia according to the varied tension of the balance-spring by its increased or diminished elastic force in changes of temperature, while the office of the main-spring was reduced to that of a simple maintaining power. This beautiful discovery, together with the law of isochronism and other important improvements in the modification of the compensation balance, procured for him and his son John Roger Arnold the reward from government of the sum of £3000. The accuracy with which chronometers keep time is truly astonishing: in 1830 two chronometers constructed by Mr. Charles Frodsham were submitted for public trial at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, for twelve months, and were observed daily. One of them made an extreme variation of 86-hundredth parts of a second, and the other of 57-hundredths only; but even this degree of accuracy, surprising as it is, is surpassed by the performance of his best astronomical clocks. It is therefore highly honourable to the English artists, that by their ingenuity and skill they have accomplished the great object which had occupied the attention of the learned of Europe for nearly 300 years, namely, the means of discovering the longitude at sea. It is not a little singular that Sir Isaac Newton suggested the discovery of the longitude by the aid of an accurate timekeeper.

If we go back to the period of Philip III. of Spain, we shall then see the interest and importance attached to this great discovery. As early as 1598, this monarch offered a reward of 100,000 crowns to any person who should discover the means of finding the longitude of a ship at sea; but what was the opinion then entertained of the nature of the task to be accomplished by means of the balance-watches then in use, may be gathered from an expression of Morin, who wrote about the year 1630, and who in speaking to the Cardinal Richelieu of the difficulty of constructing an instrument which should keep time to the requisite degree of accuracy for that purpose, is reported to have said, “Id verò an ipsi dæmoni nescio, homini autem suscipere scio esse stultissimum[1122].”

We have not said much on the beautiful discovery of the law of isochronism, of the balance-spring, on which the higher adjustment of clocks and watches so entirely depend, as an elaborate essay on this subject by Charles Frodsham, F.R.A.S., is in the hands of the publisher, and will shortly be circulated.

Some very ingenious contrivances have within the last few years been effected in the application of the electric fluid as a source of motive power to clocks and chronometers, and they offer peculiar advantages in the great simplicity of the apparatus in which wheels are dispensed with, hence friction is reduced to a minimum. Their invention is a subject of dispute between Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Alexander Bain[1123]. We shall briefly describe Mr. Bain’s clock. His source of electricity is obtained by fixing galvanic plates in moist earth. The clock consists of a pendulum, the bob of which vibrates between the poles of two permanent magnets, the opposite poles of which face one another. A small platinum-ball is affixed to the upper part of a small brass stem, which is free for lateral motion, being fastened below to a light spindle carried by the upper part of the pendulum-rod. A wire coated with silk is attached to the lower end of the suspension-spring of the pendulum. It is led down the back of the rod (which is composed of wood) and then coiled longitudinally in many convolutions around the edge of the bob in a groove. It is then taken up the back of the rod and terminates in the bearings of the spindle. The pendulum is suspended from a metal bracket fixed to the back of the case, and to which one of the poles of the battery is attached. Two pins are fixed horizontally, parallel with the platinum-ball, leaving space for its lateral motions, and at such a distance that the ball alternately comes into contact with each pin, when the pendulum has reached the opposite extremity of its arc. The other pole of the battery is placed in contact with the metal bracket which supports one of the pins. As long as the platinum-ball rests on the pin projecting from the pin-bracket to which the second pole of the battery is attached, a constant current of electricity is established and passes through the earth, the plates and the wires. But when the pendulum is set in motion by being drawn on one side, the point of support of the rod carrying the platinum-ball is thus moved to the same side, hence the centre of gravity of the platinum-ball being removed beyond its base, it falls upon the opposite pin. This motion of the ball lets on and cuts off the flow of electricity, at or near the ends of the vibrations of the pendulum, so that the convoluted wire of the bob is alternately attracted and repelled by the magnets at the proper points of its vibrations, and thus a continual motion is kept up. Mr. Bain has also contrived arrangements by which a great number of clocks may be worked simultaneously or in rotation; as also by which ordinary clocks may be made to keep time. The latter are effected by transmitting a current of electricity once in every four hours from a regulating clock. As the details connected with these valuable contrivances can hardly be followed without figures, we must rest satisfied with referring the reader to Mr. Bain’s work, before cited.]

FOOTNOTES

[1089] This article was written by the Hon. Daines Barrington. It is here given with the addition of Professor Beckmann’s notes, which are distinguished by the initials of his name.

[1090] Dante, Paradiso, c. x.

[1091] Selden, in his preface to Hengham.

[1092] Mic. 2 Ric. III.

[1093] We find that this clock was considered, during the reign of Henry VI., to be of such consequence, that the king gave the keeping of it, with the appurtenances, to William Warby, dean of St. Stephens, together with the pay of sixpence per diem, to be received at the Exchequer. See Stow’s London, vol. ii. p. 55. The clock at St. Mary’s, Oxford, was also furnished in 1523, out of fines imposed on the students of the university.

[1094] III. Inst. p. 72.

[1095] IV. Inst. p. 255.

[1096] p. 55, in his Additions to Stow. This clock-house continued in a ruined state till the year 1715.--Grose’s Antiquarian Repertory, p. 280.

[1097] Dart’s Canterbury, Appendix, p. 3.

[1098] Chaucer was born in 1328, and died in 1400.

[1099] To the time of queen Elizabeth clocks were often called orologes:

He’ll watch the horologe a double set, If drink rock not his cradle.--Othello, act ii. sc. 3.

by which the double set of twelve hours on a clock is plainly alluded to, as not many more than twelve can be observed on a dial; and in the same tragedy this last time-measurer is called by its proper name:

More tedious than the dial eight score times.--Ibid. act iii. sc. 4.

The clock of Wells cathedral is also, to this day, called the horologe.

[1100] See Dugdale’s Origines Jurid. Lydgate, therefore, who wrote before the time of Henry VIII., says,

I will myself be your orologere To-morrow early.--Prologue to the Storye of Thebes.

[1101] Leland de Script. Brit. [The translation of this passage will be found at p. 350.]

[1102] Froissart, vol. ii. ch. 127.

[1103] Falconet, Mémoires de Litt. vol. xx.

[1104] See Carpentier, art. Horologiator.

[1105] Mr. Peckett, an ingenious apothecary of Compton Street, Soho, hath shown me an astronomical clock which belonged to the late Mr. Ferguson, and which still continues to go. The workmanship on the outside is elegant, and it appears to have been made by a German in 1525, by the subjoined inscription in the Bohemian of the time:

_Iar. da. macht. mich. Iacob. Zech. Zu. Prag. ist. bar. da. man. zalt. 1525._

The above Englished:

Year. when. made. me. Jacob. Zech. At. Prague. is. true. when. counted. 1525.

The diameter of the clock is nine inches three-fourths, and the height five inches.

[I have transposed the words, as I find them in the original; but war seems to have stood in the place of bar, at least Barrington has translated it by is true, and we must read,

_Da man zält 1525 jar Da macht mich Iacob Zech zu Prag ist wahr._--I. B.]

[1106] I am also referred by the Rev. Mr. Bowle, F.S.A., to the following passage in the Abridged History of Spain, vol. i. p. 568: “The first clock seen in Spain was set up in the cathedral of Seville, 1400.”

[1107] The oldest clock we have in England that is supposed to go tolerably, is of the preceding year, viz. 1540, the initial letters of the maker’s name being N. O. It is in the palace at Hampton Court.--Derham’s Artificial Clock-maker.

[1108] A German translation of this book is added to Welper’s Gnomick.--I. B.

[1109] That distinguished antiquary Horace Walpole has in his possession a clock, which appears by the inscription to have been a present from Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn. Poynet, bishop of Winchester, likewise gave an astronomical clock to the same king.--Godwyn de Præsul.

[1110] Mémoires de Litt. vol. xx. See also Hardwicke’s Collection of State Papers, vol. i. p. 53.

[1111] Vol. xx.

[1112] A clockmaker of this city (Göttingen) assured me that several watches which had catgut instead of a chain, were brought to him to be repaired. I. B. [Sir Richard Burton, of Sackets Hill, Isle of Thanet, has now in his possession an early silver watch, presumed to be of the time of queen Elizabeth, in which catgut is a substitute for chain.

A similar watch is also in the possession of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., which formerly belonged to the unfortunate queen Mary, and descended to him from the Seton family. It is made of silver in the form of a death’s head, with open work for the escape of sound, the other parts covered with emblematical engraving. It appears originally to have been constructed with catgut, but now has a chain. It goes extremely well, but requires winding-up every twenty-six hours to keep it accurately to time. Queen Mary bequeathed it to Mary Seton, February 7, 1587. An engraving with a very full description of this curious watch, will be found in Smith’s Historical and Literary Curiosities, Lond. 1845, 4to, plate 96.--H. G. B.]

[1113] Barrington says here, in a note, “Pancirollus informs us, that about the end of the fifteenth century watches were made no larger than an almond, by a man whose name was Mermecide.--Encyclop.” The first part of this assertion is to be found, indeed, in Pancirollus, edition of Frankfort, 1646, 4to, ii. p. 168; but Myrmecides was an ancient Greek artist, whose παραναλώματα, or uncommonly small pieces of mechanism, are spoken of by Cicero and Pliny. He is not mentioned by Pancirollus, but by Salmuth, p. 231. It is probable that this error may be in the Encyclopédie; at least Barrington refers to it as his authority.--I. B.

[1114] Somner’s Canterbury, Supplement, No. xiv. p. 36. See also, in an extract from archbishop Parker’s will, made April 5th, 1575: “Do et lego fratri meo Ricardo episcopo Eliensi baculum meum de canna Indica, qui horologium habet in summitate.” As likewise in the brief of his goods, &c., No. xiv. p. 39, a clock valued at 54_l._ 4_s._

[1115] Stow’s Chron. p. 878; and Introduct. to Mr. Reuben Burrow’s Almanac for 1778.

[1116] More particularly Dr. Hook, Tompion, &c.

[1117] The ninth and tenth of William III. ch. 28, s. 2.

[1118] This letter, signed John Jamieson, and dated Forfar, August 20th, 1785, is taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. ii. p. 688.

One of my literary friends in London, to whom I am indebted for much learned information, says in a letter which I received from him, “I had never believed the story of Robert Bruce’s watch, mentioned in your translation of Barrington’s History of Clocks, the more as Mr. Barrington is famous for being in the wrong; but in the Gentleman’s Magazine there is a full account of the origin of this imposition.” As this error occurs in a paper which I have endeavoured to render more public by a translation, I consider myself bound to give a translation of this letter also.--B.

[1119] The passage may be found, vol. i. p. 95, of the edition in quarto. Edinburgh, 1774: “Pocket-watches were brought there from Germany, an. 1577.” Home, or Lord Kaimes, however, was too celebrated or too artful a writer to produce proofs of his historical assertions.--B.

[1120] This was first used early in the sixteenth century.

[1121] A very detailed and learned pamphlet has just been written on this beautiful escapement by Benjamin L. Vulliamy, F.R.A.S., clock-maker to the Queen, entitled, ‘On the Construction and Theory of the Dead-Beat Escapement of Clocks.’

[1122] “I know not what such an undertaking would be even to the devil himself, but to man it would, undoubtedly, be the height of folly.”

[1123] The details of this dispute may be found in the “Applications of the Electric Fluid to the Useful Arts,” by Mr. Alexander Bain. Lond. 1843. Professor Wheatstone’s clock, &c. is described in the Phil. Trans. for 1841.

QUARANTINE

Of all the means by which in modern times the infection of that dangerous malady, the plague, has been so much guarded against, that according to general opinion, unless the Deity render all precaution useless, it can never again become common in Europe, the most excellent and the most effectual is, without doubt, the establishment of quarantine[1124]. Had not history been more employed in transmitting to posterity the crimes of princes, and particularly the greatest of them, destructive wars, than in recording the introduction of such institutions as contribute to the convenience, peace, health and happiness of mankind, the origin of this beneficial regulation would be less obscure than it is at present. At any rate, I have never yet been so fortunate as to obtain a satisfactory account of it; but though I am well-aware that I am neither acquainted with all the sources from which it is to be drawn, nor have examined all those which are known to me, I will venture to lay before my readers what information I have been able to collect on the subject, assuring them at the same time, that it will afford me great pleasure if my attempt should induce others fond of historical research to enlarge it.

The opinion that the plague was brought to Europe from the East, is, as far as I am able to judge, so fully confirmed, that it cannot be any longer doubted; though it is certainly true, that every nation endeavours to trace the origin of infectious disorders to other people. The Turks think that the plague came to them from Egypt; the inhabitants of that country imagine that they received it from Ethiopia; and perhaps the Ethiopians do not believe that this dreadful scourge originated among them[1125]. As the plague however has always been conveyed to us from the East, and has first, and most frequently, broken out in those parts of Europe which approach nearest to the Levant, both in their physical and political situation, those I mean which border on Turkey, and carry on with it the most extensive trade, we may with the more probability conjecture that these countries first established quarantine, the most powerful means of preventing that evil. If further search be made in regard to this idea, we shall be inclined to ascribe that service to the Venetians, a people who, when the plague began to be less common, not only carried on the greatest trade in the Levant, but had the misfortune to become always nearer neighbours to the victorious Turks. It is also probable that the Hungarians and Transylvanians soon followed their example in this approved precaution, as the Turks continued to approach them; and this agrees perfectly with everything I have read in history.

In the first centuries of the Christian æra, it does not seem to have been known that infection could be communicated by clothing and other things used by infected persons. The Christians all considered the plague as a divine punishment, or predestinated event, which it was as impossible to avoid as an earthquake; and the physicians ascribed the spreading of it to corrupted air, which could not be purified by human art. The Christians therefore gave themselves up, like the Turks at present, to an inactive and obstinate resignation in the will of God, and hoped by fasting and prayer to hasten the end of their misfortune.

But after the plague in the fourteenth century, which continued longer than any other, and extended over the greater part of Europe, the survivors found that it was possible to guard against or prevent infection; and governments then began to order establishments of all kinds to be formed against it. The oldest of which mention has yet been found in history, are those in Lombardy and Milan of the years 1374, 1383 and 1399[1126].

In the first-mentioned year the Visconte Bernabo made regulations, the object of which was to guard against the spreading of the plague by intercourse and mixing with those who were infected; and with that view it was ordered, that those afflicted with this disease should be removed from the city, and allowed either to die or to recover in the open air. Those who acted otherwise were to suffer capital punishment, and their property was to be confiscated. But twenty-five years after it was strictly commanded that the clothes and things used by those who had the plague should be purified with great care: and in 1383 it was forbidden under severe punishment to suffer any infected person to enter the country. These means, however imperfect, must have been attended with utility, because they were again employed during a new danger of the same kind in the fifteenth century.

Brownrigg, an Englishman, who wrote a book on the means of preventing the plague, says, that quarantine was first established by the Venetians in the year 1484[1127], but like his learned countryman Mead, who assigns the same year, without adducing any proofs[1128]. I imagined that I should find some more certain information respecting this point in Le Bret’s History of the Republic of Venice; but as that historian does not mention, as the title professes, the original sources from which he derived his materials, his work is less worthy of credit. He tells us however that the grand council in 1348, chose three prudent persons, whom they ordered to investigate the best means for preserving health, and to lay the result of their inquiry before the council. The plague which broke out afterwards in 1478, rendered it necessary that some permanent means should be thought of, and on that account a peculiar magistracy consisting of three noblemen, with the title of sopra la sanità, was instituted in 1485. As these were not able to stop the progress of the disease, the painful office was imposed upon them, in 1504, of imprisoning people against whom complaints might be lodged, and even of putting them to death; and in 1585 it was declared, that from the sentence of these judges there should be no appeal. Their principal business was to inspect the lazarettos erected in certain places at some distance from the city, and in which it was required that all persons and merchandize coming from suspected parts should continue a stated time fixed by the laws. The captain of every ship was obliged also to show there the bill of health which he had brought along with him.

As Le Bret produces no proof that quarantine was established by the Venetians so early as he says, I cannot help suspecting that he is mistaken respecting the year (1348), and conjecture that it ought to be 1448, or perhaps 1484. I have not been able however to resolve my doubt; for, in examining different Italian writers, I find that various years are given[1129]. The institution of the council of health (sopra la sanità) is mentioned by Bembo; but I cannot discover from him to what year he alludes[1130]. His countryman Lancellotti, who undoubtedly must have understood him well, makes it to be 1491[1131]. Caspar Contarenus, who died in 1542, in the sixtieth year of his age, mentions no particular period, and only says that the institution had been formed not long before his time[1132]. The islands on which the pest-houses were erected, were called il Lazaretto vecchio and il Lazaretto nuovo. In the elegant description of Venice, ornamented with abundance of plates, below mentioned, it is remarked that the pest-house on the former island was built in 1423, and that on the latter in 1468[1133]. The same account is given in the newest and best Topography of Venice[1134].

The Venetians are entitled to the merit of having improved the establishments formed to prevent infection; and that their example was followed in other countries is generally admitted. But the year in which quarantine was first ordered by them to be performed is uncertain. Muratori[1135], following Lorenzo Candio, gives the year 1484, and Howard[1136] says that the college of health was instituted in 1448.

Brownrigg affirms that letters of health, in which he confides more than in quarantine, were first written in 1665 by the consuls of the different commercial nations, but they are much older, for Zegata[1137] asserts that they were first established in 1527, when the plague again made its appearance in Europe.

This much is certain, that all these means against infection, which, though far from being perfect, have secured Europe from this misfortune, were not invented or proposed by physicians, but ordered by the police, contrary to their theory. The latter seem to have known, at an early period, the most dangerous causes of infection, and to have formed at a very great expense precautionary means, the observance of which was enforced under pain of the severest punishment.

Why the space of forty days was chosen as a proof I do not know. It arose no doubt from the doctrine of the physicians in regard to the critical days of many diseases. The fortieth day seems to have been considered as the last or extreme of all the critical days; on which subject many physicians appear to have entertained various astrological conceits[1138]. On the Turkish frontiers this period was reduced under the emperor Joseph II. to twenty days[1139].

[With respect to the quarantine establishments in this country, Mc Culloch observes that they are exceedingly defective. Even in the Thames there is not a lazaretto where a ship from a suspected place may discharge her cargo and refit; so that she is detained, frequently at an enormous expense, during the whole period of quarantine, while if she have perishable goods on board, they may be very materially injured. The complaints as to the oppressiveness of quarantine regulations are almost wholly occasioned by the want of proper facilities for its performance. Were these afforded, the burdens it imposes would be rendered comparatively light.

The existing quarantine regulations are embodied in the act 6 George IV. c. 78, and the different orders in council issued under its authority. These orders specify what vessels are liable to perform quarantine, the places at which it is to be performed, and the various formalities and regulations to be complied with.]

FOOTNOTES

[1124] [This opinion is not generally admitted by the most experienced medical men in this country. It is a disputed point whether the plague is even contagious; and the mass of evidence is in favour of its being so occasionally, but that the plague is usually not propagated in this manner. The disappearance of this pest from our own and most other countries of Europe is undoubtedly owing to the much greater attention paid to drainage, ventilation, and the prevention of the accumulation of filth in the streets, &c. When the peculiar atmospheric conditions upon which its diffusion depends are present, quarantine has proved insufficient to prevent its propagation.]

[1125] The oldest plague of which we find any account in history, that so fully described by Thucydides, book ii., was expressly said to have come from Egypt. Evagrius in his Histor. Ecclesiast. iv. 29, and Procopius De Bello Persico, ii. 22, affirm also that the dreadful plague in the time of the emperor Justinian was likewise brought from Egypt. It is worthy of remark, that on both these occasions, the plague was traced even still further than Egypt; for Thucydides and the writers above-quoted say that the infection first broke out in Ethiopia, and spread thence into Egypt and other countries.

[1126] They may be found in Muratori Scriptores Rerum Italic. tom. xvi. p. 560, and xviii. p. 82, thence copied into Chenot, p. 147. See also Boccacio, Decamer. Amst. 1679, p. 2.

[1127] [“The Venetians seem to have been the first who established quarantine in their dominions about the year 1484, soon after the Turks became their neighbours in Europe; the constant intercourse which they maintained with those powerful neighbours, either in war or by commerce, rendering it necessary for them to take this and other precautions against the introduction of this contagion into their country.”]

[1128] De Peste, in Mead’s Opera Medica.

[1129] Everything said by Le Bret on this subject may be found equally full in D. C. Tentori, Saggio sulla Storia Civile, &c., della Republica di Venezia. Ven. 1786, 8vo, t. vi. p. 391. As Sandi in his Principi di Storia Civile della Republica di Venezia, 9 vols. 4to, 1755-1769, gives the same account, lib. viii. cap. 8. art. 4, they must have both got their information from the same source.

[1130] Historia Vinitiana. Vinegia, 1552, 4to, lib. i. p. 10.

[1131] L’Hoggidi, overo il mondo non peggiore, ne più calamitoso del passato. Ven. 1627, 8vo, p. 610.

[1132] De Republica Venetorum, lib. iv.

[1133] Thesaurus Antiquitatum Italiæ, v. 2, p. 241.

[1134] Topografia Veneta, overo Descrizione della Stato Veneto. Venezia, 1786, 8vo, iv. p. 263.

[1135] Lib. i. cap. 11, p. 65.

[1136] Account of the principal Lazarettos, Lond. 1789, 4to, p. 12.

[1137] Cronica di Verona, in Verona, 1747, 4to, iii. p. 93.

[1138] See G. W. Wedelii exercitatio de quadragesima medica, in his Centuria Exercitationum Medico-philologicarum. Jenæ, 1701, 4to, decas iv. p. 16. Wedel mentions various diseases in which Hippocrates determines the fortieth day to be critical. Compare Rieger in Hippocratis Aphoris. Hag. Com. 1767, 8vo, i. p. 221.

[1139] Martini Lange Rudimenta Doctrinæ de Peste. Offenbachii 1791, 8vo. See Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrt. Sachen, 1791, p. 1799.

PAPER-HANGINGS

Three kinds of paper-hangings have for some time past been much used on account of their beautiful appearance and their moderate price. The first and plainest is that which has on it figures printed or drawn either with one or more colours. The second sort contains figures covered with some woolly stuff pasted over them; and the third, instead of woolly stuff, is ornamented with a substance that has the glittering brightness of gold and silver. It appears that the idea of covering walls with parti-coloured paper might have readily occurred, but the fear of such hangings being liable to speedy decay may have prevented the experiment from being made. In my opinion the simplest kind was invented after the more ingenious, that is to say, when the woolly or velvet kind was already in use[1140]. The preparation of them has a great affinity to the printing of cotton. Wooden blocks of the like kind are employed for both; plates of copper are also used; and sometimes they are painted after patterns. Artists possess the talent of giving them such a resemblance to striped and flowered silks and cottons, that one is apt to be deceived by them on the first view. Among the most elegant hangings of this kind, may be reckoned those which imitate so exactly every variety of marble, porphyry, and other species of stones, that when the walls of an apartment are neatly covered with them, the best connoisseur may not without close examination be able to discover the deception. That the resemblance may be still greater, a hall may be divided by an architect into different compartments by pillars, so as to have the appearance of a grand piece of regular architecture. Whether M. Breitkopf at Leipsic was the inventor of this kind of hangings, I do not know, but it is certain that he brought it to great perfection.

The second kind, or, as it is called, velvet-paper (now called flock-paper), is first printed like the former, but the figures are afterwards wholly, or in part, covered with a kind of glue, over which is strewed some woolly substance, reduced almost to dust, so that by these means they acquire the appearance of velvet or plush. The ground and the rest of the figures are left plain; but the whole process is so complex that it is impossible to convey a proper idea of it by a short description. The shearings of fine white cloth, which the artist procures from a cloth manufactory, and dyes to suit his work, are employed for this purpose. If they are not fine enough, he renders them more delicate by making them pass through a close hair-sieve. This, as well as the third kind, was formerly made much more than at present upon canvas; and, in my opinion, the earliest attempts towards this art were tried, not upon paper, but on linen cloth. The paper procured at first for these experiments was probably too weak; and it was not till a later period that means were found out to strengthen and stiffen it by size and paste.

The invention of velvet-paper is by several French writers[1141] ascribed to the English; and, if they are not mistaken, it was first made known in the reign of Charles I. On the 1st of May 1634, an artist, named Jerome Lanyer, received a patent for this art, in which it is said that he had found out a method of affixing wool, silk and other materials of various colours upon linen cloth, silk, cotton, leather and different substances with oil, size and cements, so that they could be employed for hangings as well as for other purposes[1142]. The inventor wished to give to this new article the name of Londrindiana, which appears however not to have continued in use. It is worthy of remark, that this artist first made attempts to affix silk upon some ground, but that method as far as I know was not brought to perfection; that he employed for the ground, linen and cotton cloth, or leather; and that no mention is made of his having used paper, though he seems not to have confined himself entirely to leather or cloth.

Tierce, a Frenchman, has however disputed this invention with the English; for he asserts that one of his countrymen at Rouen, named François, made such kinds of printed paper-hangings so early as the year 1620 and 1630, and supports his assertion by the patterns and wooden blocks which are still preserved, with the above-mentioned years inscribed on them[1143]. He is also of opinion, that some Frenchmen, who fled to England when persecuted for their religion, carried this art along with them. The inventor’s son followed this business to a great extent for more than fifty years at Rouen, and died in 1748. Some of his workmen went privately to the Netherlands and Germany, where they sold their art; and the French, therefore, with great confidence maintain, without knowing our artists and their works, that foreigners in this branch of manufacture are still far behind them. In most works of the kind my countrymen indeed are only imitators, not through want of talents to invent or to improve, but because our great people, for whom they must labour, consider nothing as fashionable or beautiful, except what has been first made by the French or the English.

I shall here observe, that Nemeitz ascribes the invention of wax-cloth-hangings, with wool chopped and beat very fine (these are his own words), to a Frenchman named Audran, who in the beginning of the last century was an excellent painter in arabesque and grotesque figures, and inspector of the palace of Luxemburg at Paris, in which he had a manufactory for hangings of that kind[1144]. What particular service he rendered to the art of making paper-hangings, I have not however been able to learn. Equally uncertain and defective is the information of Von Heinecken[1145], that one Eccard invented the art of imprinting on paper-hangings gold and silver figures, and carried on a manufactory for such works.

In regard to the time when these hangings began to be made in Germany, I can only say that the oldest information I know respecting them is to be found in a work[1146] by Andrew Glorez von Mahren, printed for the first time in 1670. It shows that the art was then very imperfect as well as little known, and that it was practised only by women upon linen for making various small articles[1147].

One of the most ingenious new improvements in the art of manufacturing these hangings, consists in bestrewing them here and there with a glittering metallic dust or sand, by which they acquire a resemblance to rich gold and silver brocade. From the above-quoted work it appears that artists began very early to cover some parts of paper-hangings with silver-dross or gold-foil; but as real gold was too dear to be used for that purpose, and as imitations of it soon decayed, this method seems not to have been long continued. Instead of these, Nuremberg metallic dust as well as silver-coloured foil are employed. Metallic dust is the invention of an artist at Nuremberg, named John Hautsch, who constructed also a carriage which could be moved by the person who sat in it. He was born in the year 1595, and died in 1670. His descendants have continued to the present time the preparation of the metallic dust, which is exported in large quantities from Nuremberg, and is used in shell-work, lackered-ware, and for various other purposes. It is prepared by sifting the filings of different metals, washing them in a strong lye, and then placing them on a plate of iron or copper over a strong fire, where they are continually stirred till their colour is altered. Those of tin acquire by this process every shade of gold-colour, with a metallic lustre; those of copper the different shades of red and flame-colour; those of iron and steel become of a blue or violet; and those of tin and bismuth appear of a white or bluish-white colour. The dust, tinged in this manner, is afterwards put through a flatting-mill, which consists of two rollers of the hardest steel, like those used by gold and silver wire-drawers, but for the greater convenience a funnel is placed over them[1148]. I have in my possession samples of all the above kinds, which have an exceedingly beautiful appearance. This metallic dust is affixed so strongly to paper by means of a cement, that it is almost impossible to detach it without tearing the paper, as is the case with the paper-hangings procured from Aachen. In French, such paper is called papier avec paillettes. The lustre of it is so durable that it continues unaltered even on the walls of sitting-apartments. The metallic dust however has a considerable weight, which may undoubtedly injure the paper.

This inconvenience may have induced artists to employ, instead of metallic dust, that silver-coloured mica, which has been long used in the like manner. So early as the seventeenth century the miners at Reichenstein in Silesia collected and sold for that purpose various kinds of mica, even the black, which acquires a gold-colour by being exposed to a strong heat[1149]. The nuns of Reichenstein ornamented with it the images which they made, as the nuns in France and other catholic countries ornamented their agni Dei, by strewing over them a shining kind of talc[1150]. The silver-coloured mica however has not such a bright metallic lustre as metallic dust, but it nevertheless has a pleasing effect when strewed upon a white painted ground, and its light thin spangles or scales retain their brightness and adhere to the paper as long as it lasts. At present I am acquainted with no printed information respecting the method of laying on metallic dust and mica, nor do I know where artists procure the latter, which in many countries is indeed not scarce. I shall here observe, that I once saw at Petersburg a kind of Chinese paper, which appeared all over to have a silver-coloured lustre without being covered with any metallic substance, and which was exceedingly soft and pliable. It bore a great resemblance to paper which has been rubbed over with dry acid of borax. I conjecture that its surface was covered with a soft kind of talc, pounded extremely fine; but as I have none of it in my possession at present, I can give no further account of it.

[The manufacture of this important and elegant substitute for the ancient “hangings” of tapestry has undergone a gradual succession of improvements, and has now reached a high state of beauty and perfection. The patterns on these papers are sometimes produced by stencil plates, but more commonly by blocks, each colour being laid on by a separate block cut in wood or metal upon a plain or tinted ground. The patterns are sometimes printed in varnish or size, and gilt or copper-leaf applied; or bisulphuret of tin is dusted over so as to adhere to the pattern; and in what are called flock-papers, dyed wools mixed into powder are similarly applied. Powdered steatite or French chalk is used to produce the peculiar gloss known under the name of satin. Striped papers are sometimes made by passing the paper rapidly under a trough, which has parallel slits in its bottom through which the colour is delivered; and a number of other very ingenious and beautiful contrivances have lately been applied in this important branch of art. The invention of the paper-machine, by which any length of paper may be obtained, effected a great change in paper-hangings, which could formerly only be printed upon separate sheets, and were much more inconvenient to print as well as to apply to the walls[1151].]

FOOTNOTES

[1140] The simplest or worst articles are not always the oldest or the first. The deterioration of a commodity is often the continuation of an invention, which, when once begun, is by industry practised in every form, in order that new gain may be acquired from each variation. The earliest printers, for example, had not the art of printing with such slight ink and on such bad paper as ours commonly employ; and Aldus, perhaps, were he now alive, would be astonished at the cheap mode of printing some of our most useful and popular books.

[1141] Origny, in Dictionnaire des Origines, v. p. 332. Journal Œconomique, 1755, Mars, p. 86. Savary, Dictionnaire de Commerce, iv. p. 903.

[1142] I shall here insert the words of the patent: “To all those to whom these presents shall come, greeting. Whereas our trusty and well-beloved subject and servant Jerome Lanyard hath informed us, that he by his endeavours hath found out an art and mystery by affixing of wool, silk and other materials of divers colours upon linen cloth, silk, cotton, leather and other substances, with oil, size and other cements, to make them useful and serviceable for hangings and other occasions, which he calleth Londrindiana, and that the said art is of his own invention, not formerly used by any other within this realm, &c.”--Rymeri Fœdera, tom. xix. London, 1732, fol. p. 554. The following observations may serve to illustrate all works of this nature in general. Painting, according to the most common technical meaning, may be divided into three kinds. In the first the colours or pigments are mixed with a viscous or glutinous fluid to bind them, and make them adhere to the body which is to be painted. Gums, glue, varnish, &c. may be used for this purpose. Vegetable colours will not admit of such additions, because they contain gum in their natural composition. Another kind consists in previously washing over the parts that are to be painted with some viscous substance, and then laying on the colours as the figures may require. Size or cement (I use the word in the most extensive sense) is of such a nature that either in drying or glazing it becomes hard, and binds the colours. To this method belongs not only gilding, imitating bronze and making velvet-paper-hangings, but also painting on glass and in enamel. By the third method the colours are applied to the ground without any binding substance: they are therefore more liable to decay, as is the case in painting with crayons; but they will however adhere better when the pigments consist of very fine particles like ceruse, or black-lead. It would be a great acquisition if a substance could be found out to bind the colours used in this art without injuring them, or to fix the crayons. The third kind of painting is not with colours, but with different bodies ready coloured, which are joined together in pieces according to a copy, either by cement or plaster, as in mosaic, or by working them into each other, as in weaving and sewing, which is painting with the needle.... Are not the works of art almost like those of nature, each connected together as a chain? Do not the boundaries of one art approach those of another? Do they not even touch each other? Those who do not perceive this approximation are like people unacquainted with botany, who cannot remark the natural order of plants. But if a connoisseur observe a gap in the chain of artificial works, we are to suppose that some links are still wanting, the discovery of which may become a merit to more ingenious ages.

[1143] Journal Œconomique, 1756, Fevrier, p. 92.

[1144] Both his brothers, John and Benedict Audran, were celebrated engravers.

[1145] Nachrichten von Künstlern und Künstsachen. Leipzig, 1768, 8vo, ii. p. 56. The author, giving an account of his travels through the Netherlands, says, “Before I leave the Hague I must not omit to mention M. Eccard’s particular invention for making paper-hangings. He prints some which appear as if worked through with gold and silver. They are fabricated with much taste, and are not dear.”

[1146] Haus- und Land-bibliothek, iii. p. 90.

[1147] The author says, “I shall give an account of a beautiful art, by which one may cover chairs, screens and other articles of the like kind, with a substance of various colours made of wool, cut or chopped very fine, and cleaned by being made to pass through a hair-sieve.... I remember that two Swabian women travelled about through some countries, and taught people this art, by which means they gained a good deal of money.” Of the author I have been able to procure no information. His book is a compilation selected without any taste, and according to the ideas of the seventeenth century, from different writers, almost always without mentioning the sources from which the articles are taken; but it deserves a place in public libraries, because it contains here and there some things which may help to illustrate the history of agriculture and the arts.

[1148] Kunkels Glasmacher-Kunst. Nurnb. 1743, 4to, p. 368. J. J. Marxens Neu vermehrte Materialkammer.

[1149] Volkmann, Silesia Subterranea. Leipzig, 1720, 4to, p. 52.

[1150] Pomet.

[1151] Brande’s Dictionary of Science, &c.

KERMES. COCHINEAL

Though a variety of information respecting the history of cochineal and kermes may be found scattered in the works of different authors, I shall venture to lay before the public what I have gathered on the subject; as I flatter myself with the hope of being able to rectify some errors of my predecessors, as well as to supply deficiencies which they have left; and as it will undoubtedly be agreeable to many readers to see collected in one point of view whatever is most important, with the addition of a few explanatory observations and notes.

Cochineal and kermes, as they appear in commerce, are small grains, shaped almost like those small dried grapes without stones, which are called currants. They are sometimes of a deep and sometimes of a fainter reddish-brown, or violet-brown colour, are often covered with a gray dust or mouldiness[1152], appear full of wrinkles, as succulent bodies generally do when dried, and for the most part are a little more raised on the one side than on the other. When these grains are chewed, they have a somewhat bitterish and astringent taste, and communicate to the spittle a brownish-red colour. They are employed in medicine, but their principal use is in dyeing.

It is now well-known that they belong to that genus of insects called Coccus, and that they are principally the dried impregnated females. Numerous species of these insects have been described by entomologists[1153], who have most frequently named them from the plants on which they occur; for the present object, however, it will be sufficient to take notice only of three kinds.

The first is the real American cochineal, or that which at present is most used, but which at the same time is the dearest. By Linnæus it is called Coccus Cacti. The second kind is found chiefly on a species of oak, the Quercus Ilex, in the Levant, Spain, France, and other southern countries, and is therefore called Coccus Ilicis, Coccus arborum, and often also kermes. The third comprehends that saleable cochineal found on the roots of several perennial plants, which is known commonly under the appellation of Polish or German cochineal; though it is not certain whether those insects produced upon the perennial knawel (Scleranthus), bears-breech (Uva-ursi) and other plants, be the same species. They are often distinguished also by the name of Coccus radicum.

That the second species has been mentioned by the ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabian writers cannot be denied; and those who know that our information respecting the nature of this commodity, which is perhaps even yet imperfect, has been in modern times procured after much labour and research, will not be surprised to find their accounts mingled with many falsehoods and contradictions. The ancients must have been under more doubt and in greater ignorance on this subject, the less they were acquainted with the propagation of these insects; but we should be too precipitate were we to reject entirely everything they have said that may deviate from the truth; and I think it would be no difficult task to produce writers of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century, whose information on this point is as dubious and incorrect as that to be found in the writings of the ancients.

All the ancient Greek[1154] and Latin writers agree that kermes, called by the latter coccum, perhaps also coccus, and often granum, were found upon a low shrubby tree, with prickly leaves, which produced acorns, and belonged to the genus of the oak; and there is no reason to doubt that they mean Coccus Ilicis, and that low evergreen oak, with the prickly leaves of the holly (aquifolium), which is called at present in botany Quercus Ilex[1155]. This assertion appears more entitled to credit, as the ancients assign for the native country of this tree places where it is still indigenous and produces kermes.

According to the account of Dioscorides, kermes were collected in Galatia, Armenia, Asia, Cilicia and Spain. Most commentators suppose that there must be here some error, as that author first mentions Galatia and Armenia, and then Asia in general. Some, therefore, understand by the latter, the city of Asia in Lydia; others have altered or rejected the word altogether; and Serapion, in his Arabic translation, seems to have read Syria. Professor Tychsen, however, assured me that Asia proconsularis is here meant, to which Cilicia did not belong; and in this particular sense the word is often used by writers contemporary with Dioscorides. Of this difficulty Salmasius takes no notice.

We are informed by Pliny[1156] that kermes were procured from Asia and Africa; from Attica, Galatia, Cilicia, and also from Lusitania and Sardinia; but those produced in the last-mentioned place were of the least value. Pausanias says that they were to be found in Phocis. As the coccus is mentioned likewise by Moses and other Hebrew writers, kermes must have been met with at that period in some of the remote countries of the East[1157]. Bochart has quoted passages from the manuscript works of Arabian authors, which undoubtedly allude also to kermes; and I shall class among these, without any hesitation, the account of Ctesias, which has been copied by Photius, Ælian, and the poet Phile, though in more than one circumstance it deviates from the truth. It has already been considered by Tyson and Delaval as alluding to kermes, or rather the American cochineal, which Tyson, however, seems to confound with the genus of insects Coccinella, in English called the lady-bird[1158].

That the kermes-oak still grows and produces kermes[1159] in the Levant, Greece, Palestine, Persia and India, is sufficiently proved by the testimony of modern travellers. Bellon and Tournefort saw kermes collected in the island of Crete or Candia[1160]; the former saw them also between Jerusalem and Damascus[1161]; and he informs us that the greater part of them was sent to Venice. That they are indigenous in Persia, is expressly affirmed by Chardin. The kermes of Spain are so well known that it is not necessary to bring proofs of their being a production of that country. Dioscorides says that the Spanish kermes were bad[1162]; and we are expressly told by Garidel, that they are still of less value than the French.

With the real nature of kermes the ancients were not acquainted. By the greater part they were considered as the proper fruit of the tree; and although they remarked the insects, it was a common opinion that they were produced from putrefaction without propagation; and on this account they did not perceive their real origin. They imagined that the insects were the effects of corruption; and Pliny speaks as if he conceived that certain species were liable to this fault more than others. They were therefore named scolecion, and less valued. But in another passage he calls kermes, not improperly, a scurf or scab of the tree, scabies fruticis. Dioscorides says that the kermes appeared on the tree like lentils, a comparison with which Matthiolus is highly displeased; but it cannot be altogether unnatural, as many of the moderns, who never read the writings of the Greeks, compare them also to lentils or peas. The account, that a kind of kermes in Sicily, like small snails, was collected by the women with their mouths, seems to be attended with more difficulty. The comparison of snails, which may not be altogether inconsistent, I shall admit; but the gathering with the mouth is too much contrary to common sense not to be disputed. Commentators, therefore, have proposed various emendations, which seem to be drawn from the different readings; but the common one alluded to must be very old, as it has been adopted by Serapion in his translation[1163]. Marcellus and Cornarius are of opinion that a word must be inserted, expressive of the time when the kermes were gathered; and that instead of “with the mouth,” ought to be read “in summer[1164].” For my part, I think a word signifying some instrument employed by the women in collecting them would be more proper; for the Grecian women, according to Bellon’s account, use still for that purpose a small instrument shaped like a sickle. In France[1165] and other countries, the women suffer the nails of their fingers to grow, in order that they may assist them in their labour[1166]. However this may be, both Dioscorides and Galen ascribe to kermes an astringent, bitter taste; but I shall leave to the examination of physicians the medicinal qualities for which they have extolled them. I shall remark only, as a technologist, that kermes was used formerly in dyeing purple to give what is called the ground; but our dyers employ it to communicate a scarlet colour, which, without doubt, excels the purple of the ancients.

The first-mentioned use of kermes in dyeing seems to have been continued through every century. In the middle ages, as they are called, we meet with kermes under the name of vermiculus or vermiculum; and on that account cloth dyed with them was called vermiculata. Hence the French word vermeil, and its derivative vermilion, as is well-known, had their extraction; the latter of which originally signified the red dye of kermes, but it is now used for any red paint, and also for finely pounded cinnabar. In France and Spain, at present, kermes, as soon as they are gathered, are besprinkled with vinegar and dried in the sun; but it appears that in the middle ages they were not dried sufficiently, and that they were put into leather bottles to prevent them from making their escape[1167]. In preparing the liquid dye, dyers used Egyptian alum, the only kind then to be had, and also urine[1168]. This dye seems to have been known in Germany so early as the twelfth century; for among the productions of the country which Henry the Lion sent as a present to the Greek emperor we find scarlata[1169].

Our ancestors, in all probability, procured their kermes from the southern part of France, or rather from Spain. The Arabians, who from the earliest periods had been acquainted with this production in Africa, found it in Spain, and employed it there for dyeing, and as an article of commerce; and on this account, as appears, the Arabic name kermes, or alkermes, became so common[1170]. Salmasius thinks that the Arabs borrowed this word from the Latins, and that it is formed from vermes[1171]; but even if we allow that it is not an original Arabic word, it is perhaps more probable that it is of Celtic extraction, as is the opinion of Astruc[1172]. Guer or quer signified in the Celtic language a green (evergreen) oak; and in Lower Languedoc, uncultivated land on which the kermes-oak grows is still called garrigues. From this guer or quer Astruc is inclined to derive also the Latin word quercus, the etymology of which is nowhere else to be found. This conjecture is of the more importance, as mes in some parts signifies the fruit of the oak; so that guermes or kermes would be the acorns, les glands du chesne. Although kermes are not acorns, we cannot reject this appellation as improbable. Having requested the opinion of Professor Tychsen, as being well-acquainted with the Arabic language, on this subject, he readily complied with my desire, and I have given it in the note below, in his own words[1173]. It deserves to be remarked, that carmesin, carmin, cramoisi of the French, and charmesi, chermesino of the Italians, and other like words, hence derive their origin.

The coccus found on the roots of some plants, as far as I know, has not been mentioned by the ancients. That these insects however were collected in Germany in the twelfth century, was first proved, as I think, by J. L. Frisch[1174]. We are told that in this, and at least in the following century, several monasteries caused their vassals to collect this coccus, and bring to them by way of tribute[1175], and that those who could not deliver the production in kind were obliged to pay, in its stead, a certain sum of money. The measure by which it was delivered was called coppus, in German Kopf, which word signified formerly not only a globular drinking-vessel, but also a measure both for dry and liquid things. It is still retained in the latter sense in Zurich, Aachen, Regensburg, Austria, and several other places[1176]. As the coccus was gathered at midsummer (St. John’s day), it was called St. John’s blood; probably because the clergy wished by that appellation to make this revenue appear as a matter of religion; and that name is still continued among the country people. As the monks and nuns carried on at that time various trades, particularly that of weaving, they could employ the St. John’s blood to very good purpose[1177].

At later periods I find mention of the coccus only in the works of naturalists, such as those of Cornarius[1178], Scaliger[1179], and others; but how long the use of it, and the collecting of it for religious houses, continued, I cannot determine; perhaps longest in Poland. From that country, even at present (1792), a considerable quantity of it is sent every year to Venice; and I am inclined to believe that some of it is collected still in the county of Mark, and other parts of Germany. The following, as far as I can find, are the reasons why this indigenous production has lost its value. First, the root-kermes contain less colouring matter than the kermes of France and Spain. Secondly, the collecting of the former is more laborious as well as more tedious; and after they ceased to be paid in natura to the monasteries, they became too dear to stop the sale of those of France and Spain. But when the American cochineal, which is undoubtedly a far superior pigment, was in latter times made an article of commerce, and was sent to Europe in large quantities for dyeing, as it could be procured at all times, and in abundance, at a price which, if not low, was at least moderate, considering its excellent quality, from Mexico, where labour was cheaper[1180], and where it was cultivated in plantations formed on purpose, the French and Spanish kermes were entirely forgotten, as appears by a French ordinance of 1671 respecting dye-stuffs: and this was the case much more with the German, which, in all probability, will never turn to great account, though some have entertained a contrary opinion.

Mexico, or New Spain, the original country of the cochineal, which word appears to be the diminutive of coccus[1181], was discovered by the Spaniards in 1518 and the years following. Who first remarked this profitable production, and made it known in Europe, I have not been able to discover. Some assert that the native Mexicans, before they had the misfortune of being visited by the Christians, were acquainted with cochineal, which they employed in painting their houses and dyeing their clothing[1182]; but others maintain the contrary[1183]. The Spaniards, who had long used kermes in their own country, could not fail soon to observe the superiority of the American; and I find by Herrera, that the king in the year 1523 desired to be informed by Cortez, whether what he had been told was true, that kermes were to be found in abundance in Mexico, and if they could, as was supposed, be sent with advantage to Spain. He requested him, should this information be true, to pay attention to it, and to cause them to be collected with diligence. This commodity must soon after have begun to be an object of commerce; for Guicciardini, who died in 1589, mentions cochineal among the articles procured then by the merchants of Antwerp from Spain[1184]. The plant on which the animal lives, belongs to the genus Cactus, and in Mexico is called nopal or tuna, though several plants of the same kind seem to be comprehended under the latter name. One species is the Opuntia, which has become indigenous in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and which is not scarce in our green-houses. A second species is the cochinillifera. Oviedo[1185] described and gave figures of two kinds of tuna; but of the cochineal he makes no mention. He speaks however of an excellent dye which the Americans prepared from the fruit, and formed into small cakes; but he afterwards acknowledges that he had received no authentic account on this subject. I nevertheless suspect that these cakes were made of cochineal; for Hernandez says that such were made in his time.

With the first cochineal, a true account of the manner in which it was procured must have reached Europe, and become publicly known. Acosta in 1530, and Herrera in 1601, as well as Hernandez and others, gave so true and complete a description of it, that the Europeans could entertain no doubt respecting its origin. The information of these authors, however, was either overlooked or considered as false, and disputes arose whether cochineal was insects or worms, or the berries or seeds of certain plants. The Spanish name grana, confounded with granum, may have given rise to this contest; but there is not, perhaps, in all natural history a point which can be so fully cleared up as this can by the most undoubted testimony. A Dutchman, named Melchior de Ruusscher, affirmed in a society, from oral information he had obtained in Spain, that cochineal consisted of small animals. Another person, whose name he has not made known, maintained the contrary with so much heat and violence, that the dispute at length ended in a bet. Ruusscher charged a Spaniard, one of his friends, who was going to Mexico, to procure for him in that country authentic proofs of what he had asserted. These proofs, legally confirmed in October 1725, by the court of justice in the city of Antiquera, in the valley of Oaxaca, arrived at Amsterdam in the autumn of the year 1726. I have been informed that Ruusscher upon this got possession of the sum betted, which amounted to the whole property of the loser; but that, after keeping it a certain time, he again returned it, deducting only the expenses he had been at in procuring the evidence, and in causing it to be published. It formed a small octavo volume, with the following title, printed in red letters: The History of Cochineal, proved by authentic documents[1186]. These proofs sent from New Spain are written in Dutch, French, and Spanish.

It may be readily supposed, that the high esteem in which this production was held would soon induce people to endeavour to convey these insects to other countries in order to breed them. This the Spaniards did every thing in their power to prevent; and notwithstanding the severity of the means which they employed, attempts were made for that purpose. When Rolander, a scholar of Linnæus, was in America, he sent to Upsal, at the request of that celebrated naturalist, a plant, with the insects upon it. The plant arrived in the year 1756, when Linnæus was engaged with his pupils. The gardener, who was not acquainted with the nature of it, cleared it from what he thought vermin, and planted it; so that Linnæus, when he returned from his class, did not find a single insect alive. This circumstance, which he has mentioned in his Systema Naturæ, I was told by himself. I am however of opinion, that this was not the real cochineal, but the other kind spoken of by Sylvester; as the former, according to the latest information, can scarcely be procured even with more labour and expense than Rolander could bestow, and would hardly stand such a long voyage to the northern regions. The spurious kind were sent from Jamaica to England, on the Opuntia ficus Indica, which was planted by Miller[1187], but the insects did not live above three or four months. Thiery, a young French naturalist, brought the real cochineal to St. Domingo in the year 1777, at so much hazard that he deserves a place in the martyrology of the naturalist; but after his death, which soon followed, the insects perished through the avarice or negligence of his successors; and in that island there are none now to be found but the spurious kind[1188].

I am inclined to believe that the art of employing kermes to dye a beautiful red colour was discovered in the East at a very early period; that it was soon so much improved as to excel even the Tyrian purple; and that it contributed to cause the proper purple to be at length abandoned. From the costly red dyes extolled so much by the Hebrew writers, and which, according to the opinion of learned commentators, were made from kermes, I shall not venture to adduce any proofs, as I am not acquainted with the Oriental languages to examine their accounts with accuracy; but I have found a passage in Vopiscus[1189], which seems to render my conjecture very probable. That author informs us, that the king of Persia sent to the emperor Aurelian, besides other articles of great value, some woollen cloth, which was of a much costlier and brighter purple colour than any that had been ever seen in the Roman empire, and in comparison of which all the other purple cloth worn by the emperor and the ladies of the court appeared dull and faded. In my opinion, this cloth, which was of a beautiful purple red colour, was not dyed with the liquor of the murex, but with kermes. This idea was indeed not likely to occur to the Romans, who were acquainted only with the purple of the murex, and who had less experience in the arts in general than in that of robbing and plundering, or who at any rate in that respect were inferior to the Orientals. The Roman emperors caused this supposed purple to be sought for in India by the most experienced dyers, who, not being able to find it, returned with a vague report that the admired Persian purple was produced by the plant Sandix. I am well aware, that some commentators have supposed that the Sandix was our madder[1190]. Hesychius, however, says, very confidently, that the sandix is not a plant, but a kind of shrubby tree which yields a dye like the coccus[1191]. The Roman dyers, perhaps, prejudiced in favour of the murex, made that only the object of their search; and their labour proving fruitless, they might have heard something of kermes, or the kermes-oak, which they did not fully understand. Our dyers, even at present, believe many false accounts respecting the dye-stuffs which they use daily.

In later times, when it was known that the beautiful Oriental kermes-dye was not properly purple, it was no longer called by that name, but was considered as a new dye, and acquired a new appellation. Cloth dyed with it was called scarlata, squarlata, scarleta, scarlatina, scharlatica. That these words have an affinity to our scarlet, every one allows, but it may be difficult to discover their origin. Pezronius[1192] affirms that they are of Celtic extraction, and have the same signification as Galaticus rubor. Astruc, as I have already shown, derives kermes from the same language, which, however, like the Egyptian history, is often employed to explain what people cannot otherwise explain, because so little is known of both that much contradiction is not to be apprehended. Others wish to make scarlet from the quisquilium, cusculium, or scolecium of Pliny. To some the word appears to be composed of the first half of kermes and lack, with the addition of only an S, and every one is left at liberty to determine at pleasure, whether lack is to be understood as the Arabic for red, or the German word lacken cloth. In the first case it signifies the same as vermiculare rubrum; in the latter pannus vermicularis. Stiler[1193] says scarlach is entirely German, and compounded of schor the fire, and lacken cloth, so that its real signification is fire-cloth, fire-coloured cloth. Reiske, on the other hand, asserts, that the word is originally the Arabic scharal, which means the kermes-dye[1194]. Which of these conjectures is most agreeable to truth, cannot with certainty be concluded; but that the word is older than Dillon affirms it to be, on the authority of a Spaniard, can be proved. Dillon says that it was first used by Roderick, archbishop of Toledo, who finished his history of Spain in 1243[1195]. Vossius[1196] has quoted several writers who use escarletum or scarletum. The oldest is Cæsarius, who lived about the year 1227. Matthew Paris, who wrote about the year 1245, used the word in referring to the year 1134. But I find that the emperor Henry III. in the middle of the eleventh century, conferred upon the count of Cleves the burg-graviate of Nimeguen, on condition of his delivering to him yearly three pieces of scarlet cloth made of English wool[1197]. The word may be often found in the twelfth century. It occurs in Petrus Mauritius[1198], who died in 1157, and also in the writings of Arnold, who, in 1175, was the first abbot of Lubeck.

Of the preparation and goodness of the ancient scarlet we certainly know nothing: but as we find in many old pieces of tapestry of the eleventh century, and perhaps earlier, a red which has continued remarkably beautiful even to the present time, it cannot at any rate be denied that our ancestors extolled their scarlet not without reason. We may however venture to assert, that the scarlet prepared at present is far superior, owing principally to the effects of a solution of tin. This invention may be reckoned among the most important improvements of the art of dyeing, and deserves a particular relation.

The tincture of cochineal alone yields a purple colour, not very pleasant, which may be heightened to the most beautiful scarlet by a solution of tin in aqua regia, or muriatic acid[1199]. M. Ruhlenkamp at Bremen, one of the most learned dyers of Germany, and who has studied with great care every new improvement of his art, gave me the history of this scarlet dye, as I have already related in my Introduction to Technology[1200]. The well-known Cornelius Drebbel, who was born at Alkmaar, and died at London in 1634, having placed in his window an extract of cochineal, made with boiling water, for the purpose of filling a thermometer, some aqua regia dropped into it from a phial, broken by accident, which stood above it, and converted the purple dye into a most beautiful dark red. After some conjectures and experiments, he discovered that the tin by which the window-frame was divided into squares had been dissolved by the aqua-regia, and was the cause of this change. He communicated his observation to Kuffelar, an ingenious dyer at Leyden, who was afterwards his son-in-law[1201]. The latter brought the discovery to perfection, and employed it some years alone in his dye-house, which gave rise to the name of Kuffelar’s-colour[1202]. Becher calls him Kuffler. Kunkel, in a passage which I cannot again find, makes his name Kuster, and says that he was a German. In the course of a little time the secret became known to an anabaptist called Gulich, and also to another person of the name of Van der Vecht, who taught it to the brothers Gobelins in France. Giles Gobelin, a dyer at Paris, in the time of Francis I. had found out an improvement of the then usual scarlet dye; and as he had remarked that the water of the rivulet Bievre, in the suburbs of St. Marceau, was excellent for his art, he erected on it a large dye-house, which, out of ridicule, was called Folie-Gobelins[1203], Gobelin’s-Folly. About this period, a Flemish painter, whom some name Peter Koek, and others Kloek, and who had travelled a long time in the East, established, and continued to his death in 1550, a manufactory for dyeing scarlet cloth by an improved method[1204]. Through the means of Colbert, one of the Gobelins learned the process used for preparing the German scarlet dye from one Gluck, whom some consider as the above-mentioned Gulich, and others as Kloek; and the Parisian scarlet dye soon rose into so great repute, that the populace imagined that Gobelin had acquired his art from the devil[1205]. It is well known that Louis XIV. by the advice of Colbert, purchased Gobelin’s building from his successors in the year 1667, and transformed it into a palace, to which he gave the name of Hôtel Royal des Gobelins, and which he assigned for the use of first-rate artists, particularly painters, jewellers, weavers of tapestry, and others. After that time the rivulet was no longer called Bievre, but Gobelins. About the year 1643, a Fleming, named Kepler, established the first dye-house for scarlet in England, at the village of Bow, not far from London; and on that account the colour was called at first, by the English, the Bow-dye[1206]. In the year 1667, another Fleming, named Brewer, invited to England by king Charles II. with the promise of a large salary, brought this art there to great perfection[1207]. All these accounts, however, and the names of the persons, are extremely dubious.

[Mr. Ward states in his Mexico in 1827, vol. i. p. 84, that the plantations of the Nopal (Opuntia cochinillifera), on which the cochineal insects feed, are confined to the district La Misteca in the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico. The animals are domesticated and reared with the greatest care. When the females have become fecundated and enlarged, the harvest commences. The insects are brushed off with a squirrel’s tail, and killed by immersing them in hot water, and afterwards drying them in the sun, or by the heat of a stove. Three harvests are made annually; the first being the best, since the impregnated females alone are taken; in the second the young females are also collected; and in the third both old and young ones, and skins are collected indiscriminately. Before the rainy season commences, branches of the nopal plant loaded with young insects are cut off and preserved in the houses to prevent the animals being destroyed by the weather. It is stated in a letter from Mr. Faber to Dr. Pereira (Chemical Gazette for January 15th, 1845), that the more extensive cultivators never kill the insect by immersion, but only by the baskets being placed in heated rooms or stoves.

Three kinds of cochineal are now met with in the English market: the black, silver, and foxy. Silver cochineal is the impregnated female insect, just before laying eggs; black cochineal is the female after laying and hatching the eggs. That technically known in London as “foxy” cochineal is composed of the insects of silver cochineal which have been killed by boiling water. They are thus burst, and acquire a peculiar reddish colour, very different from the fine transparent red which forms the finest black. It is said that on the average one pound of cochineal contains 70,000 dried insects. The quantity exported from and consumed in England in 1844, amounted to no less than 1,569,120 lbs.!]

FOOTNOTES

[1152] [The powder spread out by the female insect just before laying the eggs.]

[1153] [Stephens in his Catalogue of British Insects enumerates no less than thirty species as inhabitants of these islands.]

[1154] By Dioscorides they are called κόκκος βαφική. Dioscorides, iv. 48, p. 260. Respecting the tree, Pausanias, lib. x. p. 890, seems to raise some difficulty, as he compares it to the σχῖνος, lentiscus, or, as others read the word, σχοῖνος. But it has been remarked long ago, that the reading ought to be πρῖνος, ilex; and this alteration is supported by some manuscripts.

[1155] [Kirby and Spence and Stephens state that the Coccus Ilicis is found upon the Quercus coccifera. Moreover Beckmann’s description of the “low evergreen oak” does not apply to Q. Ilex, but does to coccifera; Ilex grows sixty feet high, coccifera only ten; in the other respects detailed by him they agree.]

[1156] Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ix. cap. 41; lib. xvi. cap. 8; lib. xxii. cap. 2; lib. xxiv. cap. 4.

[1157] Bochart. Hierozoicon, vol. ii. lib. iv. cap. 27, p. 624.

[1158] Tyson’s Anatomy of a Pigmy, 1751, 4to.--Delaval’s Experimental Inquiry into the Cause of the Changes of Colours in Opake Bodies, 1777, 4to.

[1159] The insect is not natural to the tree, but adventitious. As all rosebushes have not tree-lice, nor all houses bugs; so all ilices, or oaks, have not kermes.

[1160] Bellonii Itin. i. 17.--Tournefort, Voy. du Levant, i. p. 19.

[1161] Bellon. ii. 88.--Roger, Voyage de la Terre Sainte, i. 2.--Voyages de Monconys, i. p. 179.--Brown’s Travels in Africa, &c.

[1162] In opposition to this account some have asserted that Spanish kermes are praised in Petronius, cap. 119; but the passage varies so much, in different editions, that no certain conclusion can be drawn from it. See the excellent edition of Mich. Hadrianides. Amstelod. 1669, 8vo, p. 419. If we even read, with Hardouin and others,

Hesperium coccum laudabat miles,

the soldier might mention kermes among those productions of Spain of which he was fond, though he did not consider it as the best. Hardouin says, “Loquitur de minio Hispanico;” but that was a colour for painting.

[1163] Cap. 311, p. 210.

[1164] These writers propose to read ἐν τῷ θέρει instead of τῷ στόματι; but the variation here is too great to be admitted.

[1165] Garidel, p. 254.

[1166] Having mentioned the above passage to Professor Tychsen, he suggested an emendation which, in my opinion, is preferable to any I have hitherto seen: “We must read,” said he, “τῷ στόνυχι, which transcribers may have readily mistaken and changed into the word στόματι, with which, perhaps, they were better acquainted. Στόνυξ signified not only the extremity of the nail but also any kind of instrument, and even weapons, in which last sense it occurs more than once in Lycophron.” See Hesychius. Much more forced and improbable is the amendment proposed by Salmasius, which may be found in his Annotations on Solinus.

[1167] The following passage, highly worthy of notice, taken from Gervasii Tilberiensis Otia Imperialia ad Ottonem IV. Imperatorem, iii. 55; a work which the author, a very learned man for his time, wrote in the year 1211, will serve to illustrate what I have said above: “De vermiculo. In regno Arelatensi (kingdom of Arles, which formerly belonged to the dukes of Burgundy) et confinio maritimo est arbor cujus sarcina pretium facit duodecim nummorum Wighorniensium. Ejus fructus in flore facit pretium quinquaginta librarum. Ejus cortex ad onus vestis pretium habet quinque solidorum. Vermiculus hic est, quo tinguntur pretiosissimi regum panni, sive serici, ut examiti, sive lanci, ut scharlata. Et est mirandum, quod nulla vestis linea colorem vermiculatum recipit, sed sola vestis quæ ex vivo animanteque vel quovis animato decerpitur.” [The author here is undoubtedly right, as animal substances take a dye more readily than vegetable.] “Vermiculus autem ex arbore, ad modum ilicis et quantitatem dumi pungitiva folia habente, prodit ad pedem, nodulum faciens mollem ad formam ciceris” (the same comparison as that of Dioscorides), “aquosum, et, cum exterius colorem habeat nebulæ et roris coagulati, interius rubet; et cum ungue magisterialiter decerpitur, ne, tenui rupta pellicula, humor inclusus effluat, postquam exsiccatur et corio includitur.--Cum enim tempus solstitii æstivi advenerit, ex se ipso vermiculos generat, et nisi coriis subtiliter consutis includerentur, omnes fugerent ut in nihilum evanescerent. Hinc est, quod vermiculus nominatur propter dissolutionem quam in vermes facile facit, ex natura roris Maialis, a quo generatur; unde et illo tantum mense colligitur. Arbor autem vermiculum generans vulgo Analis nuncupatur.”--This book may be found in Leibnitii Scriptor. Rerum Brunsvic. 1.

[1168] Muratori has published, in the second part of Antiquitat. Italic. Medii Ævi, p. 379, a treatise which appears to have been written in the ninth century, or in the time of Charlemagne, and which contains a great many receipts respecting dyeing and other arts. Among these is the receipt then commonly used for dyeing red, Compositio vermiculi. It is much to be regretted that the manuscript was so illegible that there are whole passages entirely destitute of sense, and that many words occur of which no one has given, or perhaps ever will be able to give, an explanation. We find, however, that the kermes were boiled with urine in a linen bag (in linteolo raro): addis hurinam expumatam. The other ingredients I confess I do not understand. What is luzarim, lulacim, quianus, coccaris? Many of these words seem to signify not simple but compounded pigments. Lulacim, by p. 378, appears to have been the expressed juice of some plant boiled with alum. “Coccarin nascitur in folio cedrin non tritæ.” Besides the word vermiculum, the word coccum also occurs: “Coccum delabas in urina.” In the last sentence we ought to read coctum.

[1169] See Barth. ad Guil. Britonis Philippidos libr. xii. Arnoldus Lubecensis, at the end of Helmoldi Chronicon Slavorum, lib. iii. cap. 4: “Præmiserat autem dux munera multa et optima juxta morem terræ nostræ, equos pulcherrimos sellatos et vestitos, loricas, gladios, vestes de scharlatto et vestes lineas tenuissimas.” See Fischer’s Geschichte des Teutschen Handels, Hanover, 1758, 8vo, i. p. 490. But can “munera juxta morem terræ nostræ” be with propriety translated “the productions of the country?” With all due respect to the extensive reading and great learning of Professor Fischer, I must warn the reader against some errors which occur in his book, and against his too bold assertions. From what he says, p. 448, one would suppose that he compared the kermes to our acorns; but the fruit only of the kermes-tree, as being a species of oak, has the figure of an acorn. In p. 493, he ventures to criticise Professor J. H. Schulze, who, in Dissertat. de Granorum Kermes Coccionellæ Convenientia, Viribus, et Usu, Halæ, 1743, adopts the opinion of a Dutchman (not an Englishman) De Ruuscher, which has been completely justified, that cochineal is an insect. According to Professor Fischer, both the insect and the acorn are cochineal. He talks of plantations of the kermes-tree among the ancients, and seems to believe that the Celts brought kermes along with them to Galatia, from their original country, in the same manner as the Europeans carried with them to America the corn of Europe. Kermes, however, are insects which cannot be transplanted, and I do not find any proof that there were ever plantations of them. [This assertion is far from correct. The true cochineal insect has been introduced from Mexico into Java, Spain, and recently into Algiers. The Journal de Pharmacie for Feb. 1844, contains a long account, by M. Simounet, of the success of the cochineal plantations in Algiers.] People collected kermes in the places where they happened to find them. The comparison of cochineal with the lady-cow, or lady-bird, as it is called, p. 493, is altogether improper, as that insect is the Coccinella, which has no affinity to cochineal. His proposal to place the Coccinellæ, or lady-birds, on the kermes-oak, or on the Scleranthus (perennial knawell), is totally impracticable; and even were they to remain there for eternity, they would never become cochineal or kermes.

[1170] Matthiolus, in his Annotations on Dioscorides, p. 725, says that the monks who wrote a Commentary on Mesues assert that the kermes of the Arabians, the Coccus radicum, is not the Coccus arborum; but he refutes this idea upon the grounds that the Arabians themselves say everything of their kermes that is related of them by Dioscorides. I am almost induced to conjecture that the monks made this assertion in order to render more agreeable that tribute which was paid to them, in some countries, under the name of St. John’s blood.

[1171] Salmasius in Solinum, p. 854.

[1172] Histoire Naturelle de Languedoc. Par. 1737, 4to, p. 472.

[1173] “The word kermes, karmes, and, with the article, al kermes, is at present in the East the common name of the animal which produces the dye, as well as of the dye itself. Both words have by the Arabs and the commerce of the Levant been introduced into the European languages. Kermes, Span. al charmes, al quermes, or more properly alkermes, alkarmes. Ital. cremesino, &c.

“To what language the word originally belongs cannot with certainty be determined. There are grounds for conjecturing several derivations from the Arabic, for example, karasa, extremis digitis tenuit, which would not ill-agree with στόνυξ; and karmis signifies imbecillus; but this word may be derived from the small insect, as well as the insect from it. As all these derivations, however, are attended with grammatical difficulties, and as the Arabians, according to their own account, got the dye and the word from Armenia, it appears rather to be a foreign appellation which they received with the thing signified, when they overran Upper Asia. Jbn Beithar in Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. p. 625, calls kermes an Armenian dye; and the Arabian lexicographers, from whom Giggeus and Castellus made extracts, explain the kindred word karmasal, coccineus, vermiculatus, as an Armenian word.

“This dye however was undoubtedly known to the Hebrews, the Phœnicians, and the Egyptians, long before the epoch of the Arabians in the East. Among the Hebrews the dye occurs, though not clearly, under other names, tola schani, or simply tola, in their oldest writer, Moses. Tola is properly the worm, and according to the analogy of kermes, worm-dye, scarlet. The additional word schani signifies either double-dyed, or, according to another derivation, bright, deep red dye. For both significations sufficient grounds and old authorities might be quoted; but the former is the most usual, and on account of its analogy with δίβαφον, seems to be the most probable.

“But was the coccus known so early? Is not tola, the worm-dye, perhaps the same with purple, because the ancients made no distinction between vermis and snail? I believe not. For purple the Orientals have a particular name, argaman, argevan, which is accurately distinguished from tola, and is often added to it as something distinct. All the ancients therefore translate the Hebrew word tola by κόκκος, kermes, zehori and zehorito (deep red, bright dye), which words they never put for argaman. As the Phœnicians traded at so early a period with Spain and other countries, where the kermes are indigenous, it may be readily comprehended how that dye was known in Palestine about and before the time of Moses.

“It must have been known also in Egypt about the same epoch; for when Moses, in the wilderness, required scarlet to ornament the tabernacle, it could have been procured only from that country. Whether kermes be indigenous in Egypt, I do not know. On the word καλάϊνον, quoted by Bochart from Hesychius as Egyptian, the abbreviation of which, laia, in the Ethiopic language signifies scarlet, I lay no great stress, because it cannot be proved,--1st, that the word is originally Egyptian, as it occurs several times in the Greek writers and in various significations; and 2ndly, that it signifies scarlet dye, because the ancients explain it sometimes by purple, sometimes by sea-colour. See Bochart, l. c. p. 730. If the word be Egyptian, it signifies rather red dye in general than defines purple colour. At any rate, there is in Coptic for the latter a peculiar word, scadschi, or sanhadschi. The latter is explained by Kircher in Prodrom. Copt. p. 337, ‘mercator purpuræ, vermiculus coccineus, purpura,’ which is altogether vague and contradictory. The Arabic lexicographer, whom he ought to have translated, gives a meaning which expresses only purple ware.

“If one might venture a supposition respecting the language of a people whose history is almost bare conjecture, I would ask if the Coptic dholi was the name of scarlet in Egypt. The lexicographers explain it by a worm, a moth; but in those passages of the translation of the Bible which I have compared another word is always used, when allusion is made to worms which gnaw or destroy. Was dholi the name of the worm that yields a dye? As dholi sounds almost like the Hebræo-Phœnician tola, we might farther conjecture that the Egyptians received both the name and the thing signified from the Phœnicians. But this is mere opinion. The following conclusions seem to be the natural result of the above observations:--

“1st. Scarlet, or the kermes-dye, was known in the East in the earliest ages, before Moses, and was a discovery of the Phœnicians in Palestine, but certainly not of the small wandering Hebrew tribes.

“2nd. Tola was the ancient Phœnician name used by the Hebrews, and even by the Syrians; for it is employed by the Syrian translator, Isaiah, chap. i. v. 18. Among the Jews, after their captivity, the Aramæan word zehori was more common.

“3rd. This dye was known also to the Egyptians in the time of Moses; for the Israelites must have carried it along with them from Egypt.

“4th. The Arabs received the name kermes, with the dye, from Armenia and Persia, where it was indigenous, and had been long known; and that name banished the old name in the East, as the name scarlet has in the West. For the first part of this assertion we must believe the Arabs.

“5th. Kermes were perhaps not known in Arabia; at least they were not indigenous, as the Arabs appear to have had no name for them.

“6th. Kermes signifies always red dye; and when pronounced short, it becomes deep red. I consider it, therefore, as a mere error of the translation when, in Avicenna, iii. Fen. 21, 13, kermesiah is translated purpureitas. It ought to be coccineum.”

[1174] Beschreibung von Allerley Insekten. Berl. 1736, 4to, vol. v. p. 10.

[1175] The ancient Spaniards, according to Pliny’s account, were obliged to pay tribute in kermes to the Romans; and we are told by Bellon, that the Turks exacted a tribute of the like kind from the modern Greeks. It appears, therefore, that the monks imitated the example of the Romans.

[1176] See Krunitz’s Encyclopedie, xliv. p. 2.

[1177] In Leibnitii Collectanea Etymologica, Hanoveræ, 1717, 8vo, p. 467, there is a catalogue of the effects and revenues of the church at Prüm, where a monastery of Benedictines was established as early as the eighth century. This catalogue, which was drawn up in the year 1222, says, “Solvit unusquisque pro vermiculo denarios sex.” But as allusion is made here to people who lived near Metz in Lorraine, it may be conjectured that we are to understand not Coccus radicum, but Coccus arborum, which they might have procured from thence. For this doubt, however, there is no room in Descriptio Censuum, Proventuum, ac Fructuum ex Prædiis Monasterii S. Emmerammi, in the year 1301, to be found in Pezii Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, i. p. 69. We are there told, “Singuli dant sex denarios pro vermiculo;” and p. 69 and 74, “singuli dant vasculum vermiculi;” p. 76, “reddunt vermiculi coppos duo.” The people of whom these passages speak belonged to the monastery of St. Emmeran, at Regensburg, and were settled in Bavaria. Papon relates in Histoire Générale de Provence, ii. p. 356, that the archbishop of Arles, in the middle of the twelfth century, sold to the Jews the kermes collected at St. Chamas and other parts of his diocese.

[1178] In Dioscoridem, iv. 39.

[1179] De subtilitate; exercit. 325, § 13.

[1180] The price of cochineal has in latter times fallen. In the year 1728 it cost fifty-eight schellings Flemish per pound; but in May 1786 it cost only twenty-seven and a half. [In 1814 the price of the best cochineal in this country was as high as 36_s._, 39_s._, but it has since gone on regularly declining till it has sunk to from 4_s._ to 6_s._ per pound.] Sifted cochineal is dearer than unsifted. It is often adulterated in Spain, but oftener in Holland, with the wild cochineal, as it is called. Some years ago an Englishman adulterated this article by mixing it with red wax; but the fraud required too laborious preparation, and was attended with too little profit to be long continued. [In France it is frequently adulterated with talc and white lead with a view of increasing its weight; and in London with sulphate of baryta or heavy spar and bone or ivory black].

[1181] There is reason to think that the Spaniards gave as names to several American articles the diminutives of like Spanish or European productions. Thus sarsaparilla signifies prickly vine-stock; platina little silver. Is the cause of this to be referred to the Spanish grandezza?

[1182] Raynal, Histoire des Indes. Gen. 1780, 4 vols. ii. p. 77.

[1183] Algemeine Geschichte der Länder und Völker von Amerika, Halle 1753, 2 vols. 4to, ii. p. 7.

[1184] See Anderson’s Hist. Commerce, iv. p. 73. It is possible however that Guicciardini may have meant Spanish kermes.

[1185] Histoire Naturelle et Générale des Indes. Paris, 1556, fol. p. 122, 130. [Figures of the Opuntia cochinillifera and of the cochineal insects, will be found in Pereira’s Materia Medica, vol. ii. p. 1850.]

[1186] The title in the original is, Natuerlyke Historie van de Couchenille, &c. Amst. 1729, 8vo. This work is scarce. A German translation of it may be found in (C. Mylius) Physikalischen Belustigungen. Berlin, 1751, 8vo, i. p. 43.

[1187] Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.

[1188] Traité de la culture du nopal et de l’éducation de la cochenille. Au Cap-Francois 1787, 8vo.

[1189] In Vita Aureliani, cap. 29.

[1190] Those who are desirous of further information respecting the sandix, may consult Salmasius on Solinus, p. 810, and the editor of the Cyneget of Gratius Faliscus, x. 86. p. 46.

[1191] Some have considered sandix as a mineral. Minerals however can be used for painting but not for dyeing. It may be replied that the Romans themselves dyed with kermes at this period, and that they must have easily procured it. But they understood the art of dyeing with it so badly that they employed it only for giving the ground of their purple, and on that account it must have appeared improbable to them that the people in India could produce by it a more beautiful colour than their purple was. From the like ignorance in modern times, indigo was decried, because people imagined that a complete colour could not be communicated by it; and this false conclusion retarded many improvements in the art of dyeing. It is very likely that the Greeks and the Romans were unacquainted with the effect produced upon kermes by acids, which the Persians and Indians used.

[1192] Antiquit. Celt. p. 69, 70.

[1193] Spaten (Stiler) der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum, 1691, 4to, p. 1062.

[1194] In his annotations on Constantini Libri de Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ, ii. p. 137. Reiske also on this occasion gives the derivation from Charlatan, a mountebank, juggler, circumforaneus, agyrta, because such people formerly on account of their red clothes were called scarlatati or scarlatani. Other conjectures respecting this word may be found in Menage, Dictionnaire Etymologique. See in the same work also, p. 498, the word écarlate. In ancient French writers the highest degree of any colour in its perfection is called écarlate, and we therefore meet with écarlate blanche, écarlate verte. Braun de Vestitu Sacerd. Hebræor. Amstelod. 1701, 4to, lib. i. cap. 15, p. 229, says, “Salacka, Tyrian red, from sar, Tyrus.” He controverts the opinion of Gronovius that scarlatum is derived from Galaticum.

[1195] Dillon’s Travels through Spain, 1780, p. 21. Rod. Toletanus De Rebus Hispan. lib. vii. 1.

[1196] G. J. Vossius De Vitiis Sermonis.

[1197] Pontani Historia Gelrica, 1639, fol. p. 83: “Tres pannos scarlitinos Anglicanos.” The year seems to have been 1050. In Lunig’s Codex Diplom. Germaniæ, ii. p. 1739, may be seen a document of the year 1172, in which the emperor Frederick I. confers on the count of Gueldres the heritable jurisdiction of Nimeguen, on condition, “ut ipse et ejus successores imperatori de eodem telonio singulis annis tres pannos scarlacos bene rubeos Anglicenses ardentis coloris--assignare deberet.”

[1198] In Statutis Cluniacensibus, cap. 18.

[1199] See Porner’s Anleitung zur Farbekunst. Leipzig, 1785, 8vo, p. 16.

[1200] Page 113.

[1201] Monconys mentions in his Travels, p. 408, Dr. Keiffer, a son-in-law of Drebbel, who was a good chemist.

[1202] In Borrichii Dissertat. ii. p. 104: Color Kufflerianus.

[1203] Rabelais, xi. 22. Menage, Diction. Etymol. i. p. 682.

[1204] Francheville, in Dissertat. sur l’Art de la Teinture des Anciens et Modernes, in Histoire de l’Académ. de Berlin, 1767, p. 67. In this dissertation, however, there is neither certainty nor proof.

[1205] Suite de Teinturier parfait. Paris, 1716.

[1206] Anderson’s History of Commerce.

[1207] Cary’s Bemerkungen über Grossbritanniens Handel; übersetzt von Wichmann. Leipzig, 1788, i. p. 372. Boyle remarks in his Experimenta de Coloribus, Coloniæ, 1680, 4to, that a bright scarlet colour was never produced except when tin vessels were used. It appears, therefore, that he had observed the good effects of a solution of tin.

WRITING-PENS

As long as people wrote upon tables covered with wax, they were obliged to use a style or bodkin made of bone, metal, or some other hard substance; but when they began to write with coloured liquids, they employed a reed, and afterwards quills or feathers. This is well-known, and has been proved by various authors[1208]. There are two circumstances however in regard to this subject, which require some further research; and which I shall endeavour to illustrate by such information as I have been able to collect. With what kind of reeds did people write? When, and where were feathers first employed and for that purpose?

It is rather astonishing that we are ignorant of what kind of reeds the ancients used for writing, though they have mentioned the places where they grew wild, and where, it is highly probable, they grow still. Besides, we have reason to suppose that the same reeds are used even at present by all the Oriental nations; for it is well known, that among the people of the East old manners and instruments are not easily banished by new modes and new inventions. Most authors who have treated on the history of writing have contented themselves with informing their readers that a reed was employed; but the genus of plants called by the ancients Calamus and Arundo, is more numerous in species than the genus of grasses, to which their corn belonged; and it might perhaps be as difficult to determine with accuracy what kind of reed they employed for writing, as to distinguish the species of grain called far, alica, and avena.

The most beautiful reeds of this kind grew formerly in Egypt[1209]; near Cnidus, a city and district in the province of Caria, in Asia Minor[1210]; and likewise in Armenia and Italy[1211]. Those which grew in the last-mentioned country, seem to have been considered by Pliny as too soft and spongy: but his words are so obscure that little can be gathered from them; and though the above places have been explored in later times by many experienced botanists, they have not supplied us with much certain information respecting this species of reed. It is however particularly mentioned by the old botanists, who have represented it as a stem, such as I have seen in collections; but as they give no characters sufficiently precise, Linnæus was not able to assign any place in his system to the Arundo scriptoria of Bauhin[1212].

Chardin speaks of the reeds which grow in the marshes of Persia, and which are sold and much sought after in the Levant, particularly for writing. He has even described them; but his account has been of no service to enlarge our botanical knowledge[1213]. Tournefort, who saw them collected in the neighbourhood of Teflis, the capital of Georgia, though his description of them is far from complete, has taught us more than any of his predecessors. We learn from his account, that this reed has small leaves, that it rises only to the height of a man, and that it is not hollow, but filled with a soft spongy substance. He has characterized it, therefore, in the following manner in his System of Botany: Arundo orientalis, tenuifolia, caule pleno, ex qua Turcæ calamos parant[1214]. The same words are applied to it by Miller; but he observes that no plants of it had ever been introduced into England. That the best writing-reeds are procured from the southern provinces of Persia is confirmed by Dapper and Hanway. The former says that the reeds are sown and planted near the Persian Gulf in the place mentioned by Chardin, and he gives the same description as that traveller of the manner in which they are prepared.

The circumstance expressly mentioned by Tournefort, that these writing-reeds are not entirely hollow, seems to agree perfectly with the account given by Dioscorides[1215]. It is probable that the pith dries and becomes shrunk, especially after the preparation described by Chardin, so that the reed can be easily freed from it in the same manner as the marrowy substance in writing-quills is removed from them when prepared. Something of the like kind seems to be meant by Pliny, who, in my opinion, says that the pith dried up within the reed, which was hollow at the lower end, but at the upper end woody and destitute of pith. What follows refers to the flowers, which were employed instead of feathers for beds, and also for caulking ships. I conjectured that Forskal had given an accurate description of this reed; but when I consulted that author, I did not find what I expected. He only confirms that a great many reeds of different kinds grow near the Nile, which serve to make hedges, thatch, and wattled-walls, and which are used for various other purposes[1216].

These reeds were split and formed to a point like our quills, but certainly it was not possible to make so clean and fine strokes, and to write so long[1217] and so conveniently with them as one can with quills. The use of them, however, was not entirely abandoned when people began to write with quills, which in every country can be procured from an animal extremely useful in many other respects. Had the ancients been acquainted with the art of employing goose-quills for this purpose, they would undoubtedly have dedicated to Minerva, not the owl, but the goose.

A passage in Clemens of Alexandria, who died in the beginning of the third century, might on the first view induce one to conjecture that the Egyptian priests even wrote with quills. This author, after describing a procession of these priests, says the sacred writer had in his hand a book with writing-instruments, and on his head feathers[1218]. But it is impossible to guess what might be the intention of these feathers or wings on the head, among a people who were so fond of symbols. Besides, Clemens tells us expressly, that one of the writing-instruments was a reed with which the priests used to write.

Some assert from a passage of Juvenal[1219], that quills were used for writing in the time of that poet; but what he says is only a metaphorical expression, such as has been employed by Horace[1220] and various ancient writers. Others have endeavoured to prove the antiquity of writing-quills from the figure of the goddess Egeria, who is represented with a book before her, and a feather in her right hand; but the period when this Egeria was formed is not known, and it is probable that the feather was added by some modern artist[1221]. No drawings in manuscripts, where the authors appear with quills, are of great antiquity. Among these is the portrait of Aristotle, in a manuscript in the library of Vienna, which, as expressly mentioned at the end, was drawn at Rome in the year 1457; and we have great reason to think that the artist delineated the figure for ornamenting his work, not after an ancient painting, but from his own imagination[1222].

If credit can be given to the anonymous author of the history of Constantius, extracts from which have been made known by Adrian de Valois, the use of quills for writing is as old as the fifth century. We are informed by this author, who lived in the above century, that Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was so illiterate and stupid, that during the ten years of his reign he was not able to learn to write four letters at the bottom of his edicts. For this reason the four letters were cut for him in a plate of gold, and the plate being laid upon paper, he then traced out the letters with a quill[1223]. This account is, at any rate, not improbable; for history supplies us with more instances of such men not destined for the throne by nature, but raised to it either by hereditary right or by accident, who had neither abilities nor inclination for those studies which it requires. The western empire was governed, almost about the time of Theodoric, by the emperor Justin, who also could not write, and who used in the like manner a piece of wood, having letters cut in it, but with this difference, that, in tracing them out, he caused his hand to be guided by one of his secretaries[1224].

The oldest certain account however known at present respecting writing-quills, is a passage of Isidore, who died in the year 636, and who, among the instruments employed for writing, mentions reeds and feathers[1225]. Another proof of quills being used in the same century, is a small poem on a writing-pen, to be found in the works of Althelmus, called sometimes also Aldhelmus, Adelhemus, and Adelmus. This writer, descended of a noble family, was the first Saxon who wrote Latin, and who made the art of Latin poetry known to his countrymen, and inspired them with a taste for compositions of that kind. He died in the year 709[1226].

In the eighth century writing-pens are mentioned by Alcuin, who at that period, in the time of Charlemagne, was of service in extending literary knowledge. He composed poetical inscriptions for every part of a monastery, among which there is one even for a privy[1227], and another for a writing-study. Speaking of the latter, he says that no one ought to talk in it, lest the pen of the transcriber should commit a mistake[1228].

After the above period proofs occur which place the matter beyond all doubt. Mabillon saw a manuscript of the gospels, which had been written in the ninth century under the reign of Louis I., in which the evangelists were represented with quills in their hands. The same author mentions a like figure of the eleventh century[1229]. In the twelfth century, Peter de Clugny, who by scholastic writers is called Venerabilis, and who died in 1157, wrote to a friend, exhorting him to assume the pen instead of the plough, and to transcribe, instead of tilling land[1230]. In short, writing-quills are often called calami by ancient and modern authors who wrote good Latin; and it is probable that this word is employed by older writers than Isidore to signify writing-pens, where, for want of other proofs, we understand reeds.

The poet Heerkens[1231] has asserted, that the use of quills for writing is much older, and that the Romans became acquainted with them during their residence in the Netherlands, where they could not easily procure Egyptian reeds, and where, according to the account of Pliny[1232], they paid so much attention to the catching of geese. That writer, however, says that this was done on account of the flesh of these animals, which they esteemed much when roasted, and of the softness of their feathers, on which they were fond of sleeping. Heerkens himself remarks, that Pliny, had he known the use of quills for writing, would not have passed it over in silence, when he gives so circumstantial an account of writing-reeds. He is of opinion also, that, as the Dutch terms of art which allude to writing, such as schryfpen, &c., are of Latin extraction, the Dutch must have acquired them as well as the things signified from the Romans. This however seems to afford very little support to his assertion. Of more importance is the observation that in an old and beautiful manuscript of Virgil, in the Medicean library, which was written soon after the time of Honorius, the thickness of the strokes, and the gradual fineness of the hair-strokes of the letters give us reason to conjecture that they must have been written by some instrument equally elastic as a quill, as it is not probable that such strokes could be made with a stiff reed[1233]. It is also certain that the letters of the greater part of ancient manuscripts, particularly those found at Herculaneum, are written in a much stiffer and more uniform manner. But little confidence is to be placed in this observation; for we do not know but the ancient artists may have been acquainted with some method of giving elasticity to their reeds, and may have employed them in such a manner as to produce beautiful writing.

Notwithstanding the great advantage which quills have over reeds for writing, the latter however seem to have continued long in use even with the former. This conclusion I do not form, because calamus and arundo are to be found in the works of late writers; for many authors may have employed these old Latin words to express quills, like Cassiodorus, who in the sixth century, when exhorting the monks to transcribe theological works, used both these terms indiscriminately[1234]; but I found my assertion on the testimony of diplomatists, and particularly on the undoubted mention made of writing-reeds in the sixteenth century.

Men of letters, well-versed in diplomatics, assure us, from comparing manuscripts, that writing-reeds were used along with quills in the eighth century, at least in France, and that the latter first began to be common in the ninth. The papal acts, and those of synods, must however have been written with reeds much later[1235]. In convents they were retained for texts and initials, while, for small writing, quills were everywhere employed.

I can allow little credit to a conjecture supported merely by a similarity of the strokes in writing, because it is probable that people at first would endeavour to write in as strong and coarse a manner with quills, as had been before done with reeds, in order that the writing might not seem much different from what was usual; and with quills one can produce writing both coarse and fine. M. Meiners, however, referred me to a passage in a letter of Reuchlin, which removes all doubt on the subject. When this worthy man, to whom posterity is so much indebted, was obliged to fly by the cruelty of his enemies, famine and the plague, and to leave behind him all his property, he was supplied with the most common necessaries by Pirkheimer[1236]. Among other articles the latter sent to him, in the year 1520, writing materials, good paper, pen-knives, and, instead of peacocks-feathers which he had requested, the best swan-quills. That nothing might be wanting, he added also proper reeds, of so excellent a sort, that Reuchlin considered them to be Egyptian or Cnidian[1237].

These reeds at that period must have been scarce and in great request, as it appears by some letters of Erasmus to Reuchlin, for my knowledge of which I am under obligations to M. Meiners, that the former received three reeds from the latter, and expressed a wish that Reuchlin, when he procured more, would send some of them to a learned man in England, who was a common friend to both[1238].

Whatever may have been the cause, about the year 1433 writing-quills were so scarce at Venice, that it was with great difficulty men of letters could procure them. We learn at any rate, that the well-known Ambrosius Traversarius, a monk of Camaldule, sent from Venice to his brother, in the above year, a bunch of quills, together with a letter, in which he said, “They are not the best, but such as I received in a present. Show the whole bunch to our friend Nicholas, that he may select a quill; for these articles are indeed scarcer in this city than at Florence[1239].” This Ambrosius complains likewise, that at the same period he had hardly any more ink, and requested that a small vessel filled with it might be sent to him[1240]. Other learned men complain also of the want of good ink, which they either would not or did not know how to make. Those even who deal in it seldom know of what ingredients it is principally composed.

[The softness of quill pens and the constant trouble required to mend them naturally led to the search for some substitute. Metals have supplied this, and the manufacture of metallic pens now gives occupation to an immense number of persons. Steel and other metallic pens have long been made occasionally[1241], but were not extensively used on account of their stiffness; this was remedied by Mr. Perry, who, in 1830, introduced the use of apertures between the shoulder and the point. Numerous other improvements have been made, the metals have all had a trial, and pens can now be obtained of almost every form and quality. Perhaps the most perfect and durable, although the most expensive, are those in which the pen is made of gold, with a nib of osmium and iridium. The total quantity of steel annually employed in the manufacture of pens has been estimated at 120 tons, from which upwards of 200,000,000 pens are produced. One Birmingham manufacturer employed in 1838, 300 persons in making steel pens. They are also extensively manufactured in London and Sheffield. When first introduced, steel pens were eight shillings a gross; they afterwards fell to four shillings a gross, and now they are procured at Birmingham for fourpence a gross[1242]!]

FOOTNOTES

[1208] See Fabricii Bibliotheca Antiquaria, p. 959. Reimmanni Idea Systematis Antiquitatis Litterariæ, 1718, 8vo, p. 169. Astle’s Origin and Progress of Writing, 4to.

[1209] Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 35. Martial, lib. xiv. epigram. 38.

[1210] Plin. lib. c. Catullus, carm. xxxvi. 13, mentions Cnidus arundinosa. Ausonius, epist. iv. 75, calls the reeds Cnidii nodi.

[1211] Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 36.

[1212] Bauhini Pinax Plantar, p. 17: Arundo scriptoria atro-rubens. Hist. Plant. ii. p. 487. Theatrum Botan. p. 273.

[1213] “Their writing-pens are made of reeds or small hard canes of the size of the largest swan-quills, which they cut and slit in the same manner as we do ours; but they give them a much longer nib. These canes or reeds are collected towards Daurac, along the Persian Gulf, in a large fen supplied with water by the river Hellé, a place of Arabia formed by an arm of the Tigris, and another of the Euphrates united. They are cut in March, and, when gathered, are tied up in bundles and laid for six months under a dunghill, where they harden and assume a beautiful polish and lively colour, which is a mixture of yellow and black. None of these reeds are collected in any other place. As they make the best writing-pens, they are transported throughout the whole East. Some of them grow in India, but they are softer and of a paler yellow colour.”--Voyages de Chardin, vol. v. p. 49.

[1214] “It is a kind of cane which grows no higher than a man. The stem is only three or four lines in thickness, and solid from one knot to another, that is to say filled with a white pith. The leaves, which are a foot and a half in length, and eight or nine lines in breadth, enclose the knots of the stem in a sheath; but the rest is smooth, of a bright yellowish-green colour, and bent in the form of a half-tube, with a white bottom. The panicle or bunch of flowers was not as yet fully blown, but it was whitish, silky, and like that of other reeds. The inhabitants of the country cut the stems of these reeds to write with, but the strokes they form are very coarse, and do not approach the beauty of those which we make with our pens.”--Voyage du Levant, vol. ii. p. 136.

[1215] Lib. i. cap. 114. Rauwolf says in his Travels, vol. i. p. 93, “In the shops were to be sold small reeds, hollow within and smooth without, and of a brownish-red colour, which are used by the Turks, Moors, and other Eastern people, for writing.” It appears that Rauwolf did not see these reeds growing, but prepared and freed from the pith. We are told by Winkelmann, in his second Letter on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, p. 46, that for want of quills he often cut into writing-pens those reeds which grow in the neighbourhood of Naples.

[1216] Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabica. Havniæ, 1775, 4to, p. 47, 61.

[1217] Those who wish to see instances of learned men who wrote a great deal and a long time with one pen, may consult J. H. Ackeri Historia Pennarum, Altenburgi, 1726. The author has collected every thing he ever read respecting the pens of celebrated men.

[1218] Clementis Alex. Opera. Coloniæ, 1688, fol. p. 633. The best account of these sacred writers may be found in the Prolegomena, p. 91, of Jablonski’s Pantheon Ægypt.

[1219] Sat. iv. 149.

[1220] Od. iii. 29, 53.

[1221] Gronovii Thesaurus Antiq. Græc. ii. n. 28.

[1222] Lambec. lib. vii. p. 76.--Montfaucon, Palæograph. Græca, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 21.

[1223] Amm. Marcellini Hist. ed. Valesii, Par. 1681, fol. p. 699. The letters might have been raised on the plate, or deeply engraven in it, so that Theodoric only followed with his pen an impression of them made upon the paper.

[1224] It is uncertain whether the characters were followed with a style, a reed, or a quill; for γραφὶς (the word used) is the general appellation. “There have been princes, also, acquainted with writing, but so lazy that they kept a servant who could imitate their hand to subscribe for them.” Of this we have an instance in the emperor Carinus, respecting whom Vopiscus says, “Fastidium subscribendi tantum habuit, ut quendam ad subscribendum poneret qui bene suam imitaretur manum.”

[1225] Origines, lib. vi. 13, p. 132.

[1226] His writings may be found in Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum. Lugduni, 1677, fol. tom. xiii. In p. 27, is the following poem on a pen:--

De Penna Scriptoria.

Me pridem genuit candens onocrotalus albam Gutture qui patulo sorbet in gurgite lymphas. Pergo ad albentes directo tramite campos, Candentique viæ vestigia cærula linquo, Lucida nigratis fuscans anfractibus arva. Nec satis est unum per campos pandere callem; Semita quin potius milleno tramite tendit, Quæ non errantes ad cœli culmina vexit.

The author does not speak here of a goose-quill, but of a pelican’s, which at any rate may be as good as that of a swan.

[1227] Ad latrinium (latrinam).

[1228] Alcuini Opera, cura Frobenii, Ratisbonæ, 1777, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 211.

[1229] De Re Diplomatica, Par. 1709, fol. in Suppl. p. 51.

[1230] Petr. Venerabil. lib. i. ep. 20, ad Gislebertum. C. G. Schwarz, who quotes the passage in Exercit. de Varia Supellectili Rei Librariæ Veterum, Altorfii, 1725, 4to, § 8, ascribes them falsely to the venerable Bede, who died about the year 735.

[1231] Ger. Nic. Heerkens Aves Frisicæ, Rot. 1788, 8vo, p. 106.

[1232] Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 22.

[1233] This manuscript was correctly printed by P. F. Fogginius, in quarto, in 1741. A specimen of the writing is given, p. 15. See also Virgilius Heynii, in Elenchus Codicum, p. 41.

[1234] Divin. Lection. cap. xxx. p. m. 477, 478.

[1235] Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, i. p. 537.

[1236] Reuchlin’s life may be found in Meiners’ Lebensbeschreibungen Berühmter Männer. Zurich. 1795, 8vo, vol. i.

[1237] Pirkheimeri Opera, Franc. 1610, fol. p. 259.

[1238] Illustrium Virorum Epistolæ ad Jo. Reuchlin.: Hagenoæ, 1519, 4to, p. 144.

[1239] Ambrosii Traversarii Epistolæ. ed. L. Mehus. Florentiæ, 1759, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 566.

[1240] Ibid. p. 580.

[1241] [The publisher has in his possession an extremely well-made metallic pen (brass) at least fifty years old, and with it a style for writing by means of smoked paper, both in a morocco pocket-book, which formerly belonged to Horace Walpole, and was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale.]

[1242] Waterston’s Cyclopædia of Commerce, 1846.

WIRE-DRAWING

It is highly probable that in early periods metals were beat with a hammer to thin plates or leaves, which were afterwards divided into small slips by means of a pair of scissors, or some other instrument; and that these slips were by a hammer and file then rounded, so as to form threads or wire. This conjecture seems to be confirmed by the oldest information respecting work of this kind. When the sacerdotal dress of Aaron was prepared, the gold was beaten and cut to threads, so that it could be interwoven in cloth[1243]. We are told also that Vulcan, desirous to expose Mars and Venus, while engaged in their illicit amour, repaired to his forge, and formed on his anvil, with hammers and files, a net so fine that it could be perceived by no one, not even by the gods themselves, for it was as delicate as a spider’s web[1244]. These fine threads therefore were at that time first beat upon the anvil, and afterwards rounded by a file, but were not drawn out like our wire. I do not remember to have found a single passage in ancient authors where mention is made of metal prepared by being wire-drawn. The æs ductile of Pliny was so called because it was malleable, and could be beat into thin leaves; and he says “tenuatur in laminas[1245].” In my opinion, works made with threads of metal occur too seldom in the writings of the ancients, to allow us to suppose that they were acquainted with that easy and cheap method of forming these threads by wire-drawing. Wire-work is rarely mentioned, and wherever it is spoken of, it appears to have been prepared on the anvil.

Such threads of the dearest and most malleable metal, gold, seem to have been early employed for ornamenting different articles of dress, but certainly not in so ingenious and beautiful a manner as in modern times. It is probable that slips of gold were sewed upon clothes, and particularly on the seams, as is still practised with lace; and perhaps gold stars and other figures cut from thin plates of gold were applied to dresses in the same manner, as is the case at present with spangles, and perhaps they were only affixed to them with paste. People however soon began to weave or knit dresses entirely of gold threads, without the addition of any other materials; at least such seems to be the account given by Pliny[1246]. Of this kind was the mantle taken from the statue of Jupiter by the tyrant Dionysius[1247], and the tunic of Heliogabalus mentioned by Lampridius[1248]. These consisted of real drap d’or, but the moderns give that name to cloth, the threads of which are silk wound round with silver wire flattened and gilded.

The invention of interweaving such massy gold threads in cloth is by Pliny ascribed to king Attalus; but I consider it to be much older, though I have found no certain proofs to support this opinion. I conjecture that the cloth of Attalus, so much extolled on account of its magnificence, was embroidered with the needle; for in the passage where embroidery is mentioned by Pliny for the first time, he speaks of its being invented by the Phrygians; he then mentions the cloth of Attalus; and immediately after the Babylonian, which, as is proved by several expressions in ancient authors, was certainly embroidered with the needle[1249]. If I am not mistaken, Attalus first caused woollen cloth to be embroidered (not interwoven) with threads of gold; and the doubt that Pliny assigns too late a period to the interweaving cloth with threads of gold is entirely removed. It appears that in the third century gold was interwoven with linen, that linen was embroidered with gold threads, or that gold threads were sewed upon linen, which the emperor Alexander Severus considered as folly; because by these means the linen was rendered stiff, cumbersome and inconvenient[1250].

It was not till a much later period that silver began to be formed into threads by a like process, and to be interwoven in cloth. Salmasius and Goguet have already remarked that no mention of silver stuffs is to be found in the works of the ancients; for the passages which might be quoted from Homer speak only, without doubt, of white garments[1251]. Pliny certainly would not have omitted this manner of preparing silver, had it been usual in his time; especially as he treats so expressly of that metal, and its being employed for ornaments, and speaks of gold threads and embroidering with gold. Vopiscus, however, seems to afford us an indubitable proof that silver thread was not known in the time of the emperor Aurelian[1252]. This author informs us that the emperor was desirous of entirely abolishing the use of gold for gilding and weaving, because, though there was more gold than silver, the former had become scarcer, as a great deal of it was lost by being applied to the above purposes, whereas every thing that was silver continued so[1253]; but it has been fully proved by Salmasius that silver threads were interwoven in cloth in the time of the last Greek emperors[1254].

The period when attempts were first made to draw into threads metal cut or beat into small slips, by forcing them through holes in a steel plate placed perpendicularly on a table, I cannot determine. In the time of Charlemagne this process was not known in Italy; for however unintelligible may be the directions given in Muratori[1255], “de fila aurea facere, de petalis auri et argenti,” we learn from them that these articles were formed only by the hammer. It is extremely probable that the first experiments in wire-drawing were made upon the most ductile metals, and that the drawing of brass and iron to wire is of later date. It is likewise certain that the metal was at first drawn by the hand of the workman; in the same manner as wire is drawn by our pin-makers when they are desirous of rendering it finer. They wind it off from one cylinder upon another, by which means it is forced through the holes of the drawing-iron; and this process agrees perfectly with the description of Vanuccio[1256] and Garzoni[1257], as well as with the figures in the German translation of the latter.

As long as the work was performed by the hammer, the artists at Nuremberg were called wire-smiths; but after the invention of the drawing-iron they were called wire-drawers and wire-millers. Both these appellations occur in the history of Augsburg so early as the year 1351; and in that of Nuremberg in 1360[1258]; so that, according to the best information I have been able to obtain, I must class the invention of the drawing-iron, or proper wire-drawing, among those of the fourteenth century.

At first threads exceedingly massy were employed for weaving and embroidering. Among the ruins of Herculaneum were found massy gold tassels, the threads of which were wound neither round silk nor any other materials[1259]. It would be of some importance if one could determine the period when flatted metal wire began to be spun round linen or silk thread, by which improvement various articles of dress and ornament are rendered more beautiful as well as cheaper. The spinning-mill, by which this labour is performed at present, is so ingeniously contrived that the name of the inventor deserves to be made immortal[1260].

It appears that the wire first spun about thread was round; and the invention of previously making the wire flat is, in my opinion, a new epoch in the history of this art. Three times as much silk can be covered by flatted as by round wire; so that tassels and other articles become cheap in proportion. Besides, the brightness of the metal is heightened in an uncommon degree; and the article becomes much more beautiful[1261]. The wire is flatted at present by means of a flatting-mill, which consists of two steel cylinders, put in motion by a handle, and as the wire passes through between them it is compressed and rendered flat. These cylinders were at first procured from the Milanese, and afterwards from Schwarzenbruck in Saxony; but since the death of the artists in those parts who were acquainted with the secret of making them, they have generally been ordered from Neufchatel. A pair of them cost two hundred dollars. The whole art, however, seems to consist in giving a proper hardness to the steel and in polishing them. In the earliest ages wire was flatted with a hammer on the anvil; and the broad slips were cut into small threads by women with a pair of scissors. The process is thus described by Vannuccio and Garzoni, without mentioning the flatting-mill which is now used for brass work, coining money, and various other purposes.

Before I proceed to the newest inventions I shall add the following observations. Of the wire-work of the ancients we have very few remains, and these are to be found upon cast statues, on which one cannot expect any fine wire spun or entwisted round other substances, even supposing that they had such. In the museum at Portici, which contains a variety of articles discovered at Herculaneum, there are three metal heads, with locks in imitation of hair. One of them has fifty locks made of wire as thick as a quill, bent into the form of a curl. On the other the locks are flat like small slips of paper which have been rolled together with the fingers, and afterwards disentangled[1262]. A Venus, a span in height, has on the arms and legs golden bracelets[1263] (armillæ et periscelides), which are formed of wire twisted round them. Grignon found in the ruins of a Roman city in Champagne a piece of gold thread which was a line in thickness[1264]. Among the insignia of the German empire is the sword of St. Maurice, the handle of which is wood bound round with strong silver wire[1265]. The ancients, however, must have been acquainted at an early period with the art of making gold-wire of considerable fineness, as they used it in weaving and for embroidery. When surgeons were desirous to fasten a loose tooth or to implant one of ivory in the room of one that had dropped out, they bound it to the next one by a piece of fine gold wire[1266].

The greatest improvement ever made in this art was undoubtedly the invention of the large drawing-machine, which is driven by water, and in which the axle-tree, by means of a lever, moves a pair of pincers, that open as they fall against the drawing-plate; lay old of the wire, which is guided through a hole of the plate; shut as they are drawn back; and in that manner pull the wire along with them[1267]. What a pity that neither the inventor nor the time when this machine was invented is known! It is, however, more than probable that it was first constructed at Nuremberg by a person named Rudolf, who kept it long a secret; and by these means acquired a considerable fortune. Conrade Celtes, who wrote about the year 1491, is the only author known at present who confirms this information; and he tells us that the son of the inventor, seduced by avaricious people, discovered to them the whole secret of the machinery; which so incensed the father that he would have put him to death, had he not saved himself by flight[1268]. Von Murr, however, has not been able to find any proofs of this circumstance; and amongst the names of wire-drawers, which he met with in the records of Nuremberg, it appears that there must have been no Rudolf, else he would certainly have mentioned it. Doppelmayer[1269], from mere conjecture, places Rudolf’s invention in the year 1400; but Von Murr makes it older, because he found in the year 1360 the name Schockenzier, which signifies a person who works at wire-drawing.

This art, it appears, was brought to the greatest perfection at Nuremberg. Several improvements were from time to time found out by different persons, who turned them to their advantage, and who received exclusive patents for using them, sometimes from the emperor, and sometimes from the council, and which gave occasion to many tedious law-suits. We have, however, reason to believe that the finer kinds of work, particularly in gold and silver, were carried on with great success, above all, in France and Italy; and that many improvements were brought from these countries to Germany. I have not materials sufficient to enable me to give a complete account of the progress of the art of wire-drawing at Nuremberg; but it affords me pleasure that I can communicate some important information on this subject, which was published[1270] by Dr. F. C. G. Hirsching of Erlangen, taken from original papers, respecting the wire-drawing manufactory at Nuremberg[1271], and which I shall here insert.

In the year 1570, a Frenchman named Anthony Fournier, first brought to Nuremberg the art of drawing wire exceedingly fine, and made considerable improvement in the apparatus used for that purpose. In 1592 Frederick Hagelsheimer, called also Held, a citizen of Nuremberg, began to prepare, with much benefit to himself, fine gold and silver wire, such as could be used for spinning round silk and for weaving, and which before that period had been manufactured only in Italy and France. Held removed his manufactory from France to Nuremberg, and received from the magistrates an exclusive patent, by which no other person was allowed to make or to imitate the fine works which he manufactured, for the term of fifteen years. On account of the large capital and great labour which was required to establish this manufactory, his patent was by the same magistrates continued in 1607 for fifteen years more.

As this patent comprehended only fine work, and the city of Nuremberg, and as works of copper gilt with silver or gold were of great importance, he obtained on the 19th of March, 1608, from the emperor Rodolphus II., an extension of his patent, in which these works were included, and by which power was granted to him to seize, in any part of the empire, as well as in Nuremberg, imitations of his manufactures made by others, or such of his workmen as might be enticed from his service. A prolongation of his patent for fifteen years was again granted to him at the same time.

After the death of the emperor Rodolphus, his patent was in everything renewed, on the 29th of September, 1612, by the emperor Matthias, and extended to the term of fifteen years more. On the 16th of June, 1621, the Nuremberg patent expired; and the same year the family of Held, with consent of the magistrates of that city, entered into an agreement, in regard to wages and other regulations, with the master wire-drawers and piece-workers[1272], which was confirmed in another patent granted to Held on the 28th of September, 1621, by the emperor Ferdinand II., agreeably to the tenor of the two patents before-mentioned, and which was still continued for fifteen years longer. On the 26th of September, 1622, this patent, by advice of the imperial council, and without any opposition, was converted into a fief to the heirs male of the family of Held[1273], renewable at the expiration of the term specified in the patent.

It appears that in the fifteenth century, there were flatting-mills in several other places as well as at Nuremberg. In the town-books of Augsburg there occurs, under the year 1351, the name of a person called Chunr. Tratmuller de Tratmul, who certainly seems to have been a wire-drawer. In 1545, Andrew Schulz brought to that city the art of wire-drawing gold and silver, which he had learned in Italy. Before this period that art was little known in Germany; and Von Stetten mentions an imperial police ordinance of the year 1548, in which gold fringes are reckoned among those wares for which large sums were at that time sent out of the empire. Schulz obtained a patent from the council, but his attempt proved unsuccessful. The business, however, was undertaken afterwards in Augsburg by others, and in particular by an opulent mercantile family named Hopfer, who bestowed great pains to establish it on a permanent footing. For this purpose they invited from Venice, Gabriel Marteningi and his son Vincent, who were excellent workmen and had great experience in the art. George Geyer, who learned under them, was the first person who introduced the flatting of wire at Augsburg; and he and his son endeavoured for a long time to monopolize the employment of wire-drawing, and to prevent other people from engaging in it near them. In the year 1698, M. P. Ulstatt, John George Geyer, Joseph Matti and Moriz Zech obtained a new patent, and out of gratitude for this favour they caused a medal to be struck, which deserves to be reckoned among the most beautiful works of Philip Henry Muller, the artist who cut the die.

In the year 1447 there was a flatting-mill at Breslau[1274]; and another, together with a burnishing-mill was constructed at Zwickau[1275] in 1506. All the wire in England was manufactured by the hand till 1565, when the art of drawing it with mills was introduced by foreigners[1276]. Before that period the English wire was bad; and the greater part of the iron-wire used in the kingdom, as well as the instruments employed by the wool-combers, was brought from other countries. According to some accounts, however, this art was carried to England at a much later period; for we are told that the first wire-making was established at Esher by Jacob Momma and Daniel Demetrius[1277]. Anderson himself says that a Dutchman constructed at Sheen, near Richmond, in 1663, the first flatting-mill ever seen in England.

Iron-wire in France is called fil d’ Archal; and the artists there have an idea, which is not improbable, that this appellation took its rise from one Richard Archal, who either invented or first established the art of drawing iron-wire in that country. The expression fil de Richard is therefore used also among the French wire-drawers[1278]. Of this Archal, however, we know as little as of the Nuremberg Rudolf; and Menage will not admit the above derivation. He is of opinion that fil d’Archal is compounded of the Latin words filum and aurichalcum[1279].

To conclude this article, I shall add a few observations respecting filigrane works and spangles. The first name signifies a kind of work of which one can scarcely form a proper idea from a description. Fine gold and silver wire, often curled or twisted in a serpentine form, and sometimes plaited, are worked through each other and soldered together so as to form festoons, flowers and various ornaments; and in many places also they are frequently melted together by the blowpipe into little balls, by which means the threads are so entwisted as to have a most beautiful and pleasant effect. This work was employed formerly much more than at present in making small articles, which served rather for show than for use; such as needle-cases, caskets to hold jewels, small boxes, particularly shrines, decorations for the images of saints and other church furniture. Work of this kind is called filagrame, filigrane, ouvrage de filigrane; and it may be readily perceived that these words are compounded of filum and granum. We are told in the Encyclopédie that the Latins called this work “opus filatim elaboratum,” but this is to be understood as alluding to the latest Latin writers; for filatim occurs only once in Lucretius, who applies it to woollen thread.

This art, however, is of great antiquity, and appears to have been brought to Europe from the East. Grignon informs us that he found some remains of such work in the ruins of the Roman city before-mentioned[1280]. Among church furniture we meet with filigrane works of the middle ages. There was lately preserved in an abbey at Paris, a cross ornamented with filigrane work, which was made by St. Eloy, who died in 665; and the greater part of the works of that saint are decorated in the like manner[1281]. In the collection of relics at Hanover is still to be seen a cross embellished with this kind of work, which is said to be as old as the eleventh or twelfth century[1282]. The Turks, Armenians and Indians make at present master-pieces of this sort, and with tools exceedingly coarse and imperfect. Marsden extols the ingenuity of the Malays on the same account[1283]; and articles of the like nature, manufactured at Deccan, are, we are told, remarkably pretty, and cost ten times the price of the metal employed in forming them[1284]. This art is now neglected in Europe, and little esteemed. Augsburg, however, a few years ago had a female artist, Maria Euphros. Reinhard, celebrated for works of this kind, who died in 1779. In 1765 she ornamented with filigrane work some silver basons, which were sent to Russia for the use of the church, and which gained her great honour[1285].

Spangles, paillettes, are small, thin, round leaves of metal, pierced in the middle, which are sewed on as ornaments; and though they are well-known, it might be difficult for those who never saw them manufactured, or read an account of the manner in which they are prepared, to conceive how they are made. The wire is first twisted round a rod into the form of a screw; it is then cut into single spiral rings, like those used by pin-makers in forming heads to their pins; and these rings being placed upon a smooth anvil are flattened by a smart stroke of the hammer, so that a small hole remains in the middle, and the ends of the wire which lie over each other are closely united. I remember to have seen on old saddle-cloths and horse-furniture large plates of this kind; but the small spangles seem to be of later invention. According to Lejisugo[1286], whose real name I do not know, they were first made in the French gold and silver manufactories, and imitated in Germany, for the first time, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The method of preparing them was long kept a secret.

FOOTNOTES

[1243] Exodus, chap. xxxix. ver. 3.--Braun, De Vestitu Sacerdotum Hebræorum, p. 173.

[1244] Homer, Odyss. lib. viii. 273, 278.--Ovid. Metamorph. lib. iv. 174.

[1245] Lib. xxxiv. cap. 8.

[1246] Lib. xxxiii. cap. 4.--Aldrovandus relates, in his Museum Metallicum, that the grave of the wife of the emperor Honorius was discovered at Rome about the year 1544, and that thirty-six pounds of gold were procured from the mouldered dress which contained the body.

[1247] Cicero de Nat. Deor. iii. 34, 83.--Valer. Max. i. 1. exter. § 3.

[1248] Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 23.

[1249] Plin. lib. viii. cap. 48. That the cloth of Attalus was embroidered with the needle is proved by a passage of Silius Italicus, lib. xiv. 661. We find by Martial, lib. xiii. ep. 28, that the Babylonian cloth was also ornamented with embroidery; and the same author, lib. xiv. ep. 50, extols the weaving of Alexandria, as being not inferior to the Babylonian embroidery with the needle. In opposition to which might be quoted a passage of Tertullian De Habitu Mulierum, where he makes use of the word insuere to the Phrygian work, and of intexere to the Babylonian. By these expressions it would appear that he wished to define accurately the difference of the Phrygian and Babylonian cloth, and to show that the former was embroidered and the latter wove. But Tertullian often plays with words. Intexere is the same as insuere. In Pliny, book xxxv. ch. 9, a name embroidered with gold threads is called “aureis litteris in palleis intextum nomen.”

[1250] Lamprid. Vita Alexand. Severi, c. 40.

[1251] Odyss. lib. v. 230; x. 23, 24.

[1252] Vita Aureliani, cap. 46.

[1253] A doubt however arises respecting this proof. It is possible that the author here speaks of gilt silver; for, as the ancients were not acquainted with the art of separating these metals, their gold was entirely lost when they melted the silver. I remember no passage in ancient authors where mention is made of weaving or embroidering with threads of silver gilt.

[1254] Salmas. ad Vopisc. p. 394; et ad Tertull. de Pallio, p. 208. Such cloth at those periods was called συρματινὸν, συρματηρὸν, drap d’argent.

[1255] Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Ævi, ii. p. 374.

[1256] Pyrotechnia, lib. ix.

[1257] La Piazza Universale, Ven. 1610, 4to.

[1258] Von Murr, in Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, v. p. 78. To this author we are indebted for much important information respecting the present subject.

[1259] Bjornstahls Briefe, i. p. 269.

[1260] See a description of it in Sprengel’s Handwerken und Künsten, iii. p. 64; or in the tenth volume of the plates belonging to the Encyclopédie, under the article Tireur et fileur d’or.

[1261] Bericht von Gold- und Silber-dratziehen; von Lejisugo. Lubeck, 1744, 8vo, p. 199.

[1262] Winkelmann, von den Herculan. Entdeckungen.

[1263] Ibid. p. 38.

[1264] Second Bulletin des Fouilles d’une Ville Romaine, par Grignon. Paris, 1775, 8vo, p. 111.

[1265] Von Murr, Beschreibung von Nürnberg, 1778, 8vo, p. 229.

[1266] Some explain the following words in the twelve tables of the Roman laws, “Cui auro dentes vincti sunt,” as alluding to this circumstance. Funccius however does not admit of this explanation, because he does not believe it possible to bind a tooth in that manner. It has, nevertheless, been sufficiently confirmed both by ancient and modern physicians. Celsus, de Medicina, lib. vii. cap. 12.

[1267] A description of this excellent machine may be found in Sprengel’s Handwerken, iv. p. 208; Cancrinus Beschreibung der vorzüglichsten Bergwerke, Frankf. 1767, 4to, p. 128; in the tenth volume of the plates to the Encyclopédie under the article Tireur et fileur d’or; and other works. Von Murr quotes a very ingenious description of it by the well-known poet Eobanus Hessus, who died in 1540.

[1268] This account may be found vol. i. p. 197 of the Urbis Norimbergæ Descriptio, Hagenoæ, 1518, fol. cap. 5.

[1269] Nachricht von Nürnbergischen Künstlern, p. 281.

[1270] In the Journal des Freyherrn von Bibra.

[1271] Journal von und für Teutschland, 1788, achtes Stück, p. 102.

[1272] Piece-workers were such masters as were obliged to work privately by the piece; because, according to the imperial patent, no one except Held or those whom he permitted durst carry on this business. For this permission it was necessary to pay a certain sum of money.

[1273] The family at this period consisted of Frederick Held and his three sons Bartholomew, Frederick, and Paul.

[1274] Von Breslau, Documentirte Geschichte, ii. 2, p. 409.

[1275] Chronica Cygnæa, durch Tob. Schmidten, Zwickau, 1656, ii. p. 254.

[1276] Anderson’s Hist. Commerce, iv. p. 101.

[1277] Husbandry and Trade improved, by J. Houghton, 1727, 8vo, ii. p. 188.

[1278] Dictionnaire de Commerce, par Savary, ii. p. 599.--Dictionnaire des Origines, par D’Origny, ii. p. 285.

[1279] Dictionnaire Etymologique, i. p. 593. The author quotes the following passage from a French bible printed at Paris in 1544: “Ne ayes pas merveilles, si tu lis en aucuns lieux à la fois, que ces choses estoient d’airain, et à la fois arcal; car airain et arcal est un mesme metal.”

[1280] Bulletin des Fouilles d’une Ville Romaine, i. p. 22.

[1281] Menage, Dictionnaire Etymologique, i. p. 593.

[1282] Jungii Disquisit. de Reliquiis, &c. Hanov. 1783, 4to.

[1283] History of Sumatra. London, 1783, 4to, p. 145.

[1284] Kindersley Briefe von der Insel Teneriffa und Ostindien. Leipzig, 1777, 8vo. The jesuit Thomans praises the negroes of Monomotapa on the same account. See his Reise und Lebensbeschreibung. Augsburg, 1788, 8vo.

[1285] Von Stetten, Kunstgeschichte, i. p. 489, and ii. p. 287.

[1286] Bericht von Dratziehen, p. 192.