The materials upon which literature has been embodied, and the changes
and improvements which these materials have undergone from age to
age, opens up one of the most interesting chapters of bibliographical
science and of the world's history. A knowledge of the materials
successively used in the book-making industry, and of the improvements
through which these have continually passed, together with the
various kinds of the completed products, the style of writing (there
is a "gait" of hand as well as of foot), and certain distinguishable
characteristics of the literature of the different periods, all assist
in fixing with approximate certainty the date at which a manuscript was
produced.
In considering the materials of books it needs to be held in mind
that the time of a manuscript's production was seldom affixed to it
until a late date; that must be determined or inferred from collateral
data. We would instance the "water marks" of manufactured paper as an
example of these collateral data helping to determine the age of a
manuscript. It is a well known fact that every paper manufactory has
its own individual mark of identification for its output. This is its
protective "water mark" and is impressed in the texture or fiber of
every sheet made, and at regular intervals in the sheet. This is by no
means an exclusively modern device of authentication, for these were
known as early as the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth century,
when the quality of the paper was improved, the "water marks" became
more elaborate and, as early as the sixteenth century, the name of the
maker of the paper was inserted. These marks of identification greatly
aid the antiquarian student in fixing the date of any writing. They
are often, too, of legal significance, inasmuch as important cases in
courts of law in our times--and earlier times--have been known to turn
upon such facts of evidence as the "water marks" of the paper used in
documents, as other cases have turned upon the kind or quality of the
ink or the "hand" in which the documents at issue were written. An
incident narrated in a book by Dr. N. D. Hillis may not be historical
though it does illustrate what has often actually occurred: "In looking
at the thick white paper, upon a sheet of which the guide said that the
deed had been written, John noticed that it was the usual parchment
paper of the time--a paper strong, and made of linen, so that it might
survive the rough usage of the settler's cabin. Holding it up between
his eyes and the sun he noticed this water-mark and stamp--'C. Saur,
Philadelphia, 1787.' The purported deed was dated 1740."[23] The press
dispatches some time ago reported a case before the Senate in one of
our states in which the conviction or the acquittal of the defendant
turned, largely, upon the quality of the ink which had been used in
signing a certain check, given in payment of a claim. It was admitted
by experts on both sides that the ink employed in signing the check was
of a different quality than that upon which the stub of the check had
been filled out, and that the writing on stub and check, respectively,
had not been made at the same time.
It is evident then that the materials themselves and the changes
through which they passed in the process of their improvement, the
ink and its constituents, the "hand" of the writer and, as well, the
peculiarities of the author's style of thought and expression as
evidenced by his other and well-known composition (there is a "gait"
of mind as well as of walk)--all become, so to speak, the "water
marks" which determine or help to determine, approximately, the time
at which a book or writing was made or produced. To illustrate: If the
antiquarian should "unearth" a manuscript having evidences of great
antiquity and should ascertain that it was written upon "cotton paper"
that fact would assure him, without any additional evidence whatever,
that the document could not be much, if any, earlier than the ninth
century, for it was then that cotton paper began to displace the
Egyptian papyrus. Or, if the writing was upon "linen paper" then he
would be assured by the same kind of evidence that, probably, it was
not made before the fourteenth century when paper made from linen rags
first came into more common use.