Chapter VII: Varieties and Changes in the Materials of Books

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.