336
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. in. APRIL 29,
with wood engravings, and in an emblematic
wrapper. At the end of the year these were
bound up, and formed ' Peter Parley's An-
nual.' I well remember the pleasure a present
of it used to give in early life about Christ-
mas. It continued as an annual publication
for many years.
No wonder the " analytical reproductions " in " Parley's Penny Library " provoked the indignation of authors, as not only did they interfere with copyright, but presented works in a mangled form, either stripping off their beautiful descriptions or otherwise shortening them. It was like reading Livy or Herodotus in an analysis. We can now, after a lapse of fifty-five years, buy these excellent stories for sixpence each. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.
Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
A QUOTATION FROM KABELAIS (9 th S. iii. 208). This does not seem to be verbally exact. We naturally turn to Friar John and the enumeration of his virtues. Here is the passage referred to :
"Jeune, galant, frisque, dehait, bien a dextre, hardi, avantureux, delibere", haut, maigre, bien fendu de gueule, bien a vantage en nez, beau d6- pecheur d'heures, beau desbrideur de messes, beau descroteur de vigiles." Book i. cap. 27.
" Descroteur de vigiles (moine qui expedie les vigiles) " is quoted from Rabelais in Littre.
GEORGE MARSHALL. Sefton Park, Liverpool.
BLOTTING PAPER (1 st S. viii. 104, 185 ; 2 nd S. xii. 454 ; 3 rd S. iv. 497 ; 9 th S. iii. 136). Pliny the younger (A.D. 113) in the eighth book of his ' Epistles,' xv. 2, speaks of " charta bibula," which Lewis and Short translate " blotting paper," and refer to Isidore's 'Origines,' 6, 10, 1. This latter authority is out of my reach, but Pliny's words are :
"Igitur mihi quoque licebit scribere quse legas, sit modo unde chartae emi possint : quae si scabrse bibulseye sint, aut non scribendum, aut necessario quicquid scripserimus boni malive delebimus."
This appears to mean :
"I am ready to write to you if I can afford to buy paper fit to write on. With rough or porous paper one had better not write at all, or whatever one does write, be it good or bad, will be illegible from blots."*
Obviously this is not blotting paper in our modern sense of the word. vElfric's ' Glossary' has the word " bobla," which Somner thought might = "papyrus bibula" (Ducange, s.v.). So far we have no trace apparently of our blotting paper. I can find no allusion to it
- Thomas Cooper ('Thesaurus,' ed. London, 1565)
so understands Pliny : " Bibula Charta. That drinketh inke, or will not beare inke."
in the 'Promptorium Parvulorum,' c. 1440,
but a century later, at least on the Con-
tinent, it is in established use. Jo. Lud.
Vives enlarges on the subject in one of the
dialogues included in his 'Pueritise et Ado-
lescentise Sapiens Informatio.' This cele-
brated Spanish scholar was appointed by
Bishop Foxe the first Professor of Humanity
at his newly founded college Corpus, Oxford.
He was tutor to Princess Mary, and in high
esteem with Henry VIII. till he opposed the
divorce, and was obliged to retire to the Con-
tinent. I cannot fix the date of the original
edition of this interesting educational work.
My edition, enriched with copious notes by
Matt. Martinius, was printed at Bremen in
1618. The dialogue in question is the tenth.
Its subject is ' Scriptio,' the collocutors Manri-
cus and Mendoza (two Spanish boys) and a
master, whom they call upon for instruction
in writing. After a discussion on pens-
goose or hen quills they come to paper. The
boys have brought some paper. The master
says it is too rough :
"The pen will catch in it, and not run smoothly, and in consequence many things which you had in- tended to write down will escape you. Leave the [ large, hard, thick, rough kind to the booksellers (librarii), who use it for its durability. Let alone, too, the costly papers, called Augusta, imperialis, hieratica,* such as you see in the service-books, but get letter-paper, which is brought in its best quality from Italy, very fine and strong, or the common sort which they import from France, and offer for sale everywhere at eightpence a packetf more or less ('in singulos codices numis octonis plus minus'). They will give you in as a present a sheet or two of i shop-paper, which we call blotting ( ' philyra una aut altera chartaa emporeticse, quam bibulam dicimus').
" MENDOZA. What is the meaning of these terms ? I have often wondered.
" MASTER. Emporetic, from the Greek, is so called from wrapping up merchandise, bibulous, because it sucks up ink. So you will have no need of bran or sand or dust scraped from the wall. But the best plan of all is to let the letters dry by themselves, so they last the longer. Shop-paper also will be useful j to spread under your hand, that you may not injure the whiteness of your paper through perspiration or dirt."
There is a note to the word bibula, " quia fungosararitate imbibit seu sorbet liquorem."
From this passage one may suppose that the first blotting paper was the coarse, open- 1 textured, whitey-brown paper still used on the Continent for wrapping up parcels, and here at home for pressing botanical specimens.j
Only three more references :
Jo. Amos Comenius, 'Orbis Sensualiuro
- These varieties and many others are given in
the locus dassicus on ancient paper (Plin., 'Nat. Hist.,' xiii. 11-13.
f Codex seems here to mean a fixed quantity of unbound paper, probably a ream.
