The Iliad of Homer in a nutshell, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw,
it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear
impossible. Ælian notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of
gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn.
Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, whose glory
consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be
legible to the naked eye. Menage mentions, he saw whole sentences which
were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope; pictures and
portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down
at random; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most correct
resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess,
containing some thousand verses, written by an officer, in a space of a
foot and a half. This species of curious idleness has not been lost in
our own country, where this minute writing has equalled any on record.
Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in the reign of Elizabeth,
astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they could not
see; for in the Harleian MSS. 530, we have a narrative of "a rare piece
of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of
the chancery;" it seems by the description to have been the whole Bible
"in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the
book: there are as many leaves in his little book as the great Bible,
and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as a great leaf
of the Bible." We are told that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the
Bible was "seen by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of
Charles I. in the library of St. John's College, at Oxford, wholly
composed of minute written characters, which, at a small distance,
resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head, and the ruff,
are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's
Prayer. In the British Museum we find a drawing representing the
portrait of Queen Anne, not much above the size of the hand. On this
drawing appears a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian
assures the marvelling spectator includes the entire contents of a thin
_folio_, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.
The learned Huet asserts that, like the rest of the world, he considered
as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have
enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he
thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in
demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and
eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the
shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can
contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the
writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain
7500 verses, and the reverse as much; the whole 15,000 verses of the
Iliad. And this he proved by using a piece of paper, and with a common
pen. The thing is possible to be effected; and if on any occasion paper
should be most excessively rare, it may be useful to know that a volume
of matter may be contained in a single leaf.