de re Diplomatica; and in Scotland a treatise appeared in 1739. Thereafter Greece, Italy, and Germany were severally the objects of paleographic research; and in 1803 a similar service was performed for England, It was not, however, till 1873 that a Paleographical Society was formed in London.
122. Nowadays writings are placed under one or two classes, viz., genuine or spurious. Thus, a writing is spurious if it is not the production of the person whose name it claimed as author, or, when anonymous, it is held to be spurious if it has not sprang from the time and place of pretended origin, Again, any writing is genuine which is really the work of the author thereof, or whose name belongs to the period and place alleged for the first appearance of the MS.
123. Paleography is not specially concerned with the ethics revealed, but tells us the genuine from the spurious in writings on sun-dried bricks, oyster shells, slabs, tiles, papyri, parchment, medals, bones, coins, metals, paper, ivory, bark, leather, lead, wood, or other substance used for recording the thoughts of mankind. The necessity at the moment, or the ingenuity of man, has often shown itself by the strangest methods of chronicling events.[1]
124. Chronology, when founded on paleography, becomes a more exact science; and, consequently, the elaborate tables of dates which in the last century were looked upon as perfectly accurate, have been relegated to the limbo of the effete. A copy—perhaps a copy of a tenth copy—of a writing was too often regarded as the original, and dateless
- ↑ Specimens of writings on all the substances mentioned are in the British Museum.
