330 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 260. 



The word " temperare " acquired a meaning 

 which was certainly not commonly attached to it 

 in a more classical age, but which gave birth to 

 the French word " tremper," to dip : a sword- 

 blade was tempered (trerape) by being dipped; and 

 this use still survives, though steel is not now, I 

 believe, always tempered by dipping. If, there- 

 fore, our task of translating Cuthbert's words had 

 been imposed upon me, and I had not heard of 

 the learned conjectures and doubts of my pre- 

 decessors, I should have caused Bede to say to 

 Cuthbert, " Take your pen, dip it in the ink, and 

 write quickly," &c. It may, indeed, be objected 

 that it was superfluous for Bede to tell his friend 

 to dip his pen in the ink, because he could not 

 write at all without doing so. To this it may be 

 replied that the dying man does not appear to 

 have felt any desire to economise words, other- 

 wise he might have spared his two first injunctions 

 altogether, and have said only " write quickly ; " 

 but the language of the unjust steward must have 

 been familiar to the ear of one so versed in his 

 Vulgate as Bede, and may have unconsciously 

 moulded the form of his instructions to Cuthbert, 

 — "Accipe cautionem tuam, et sede cito, scribe 

 quinquaginta," — Luke xvi. 6. 



On this passage from the Vulgate Testament, let 

 me suggest, by the way, a critical emendation. 

 The authorised English version seems to have 

 followed the Vulgate, and erroneously (in my 

 opinion) attached the adverb " quickly " to the 

 act of sitting and not of writing. I apprehend that 

 this is not a legitimate version of the Greek text, 

 though I do not deny that " raxiws " may belong 

 to the word on either side of it, and that the con- 

 struction is equivocal. I confess that I should 

 have read it " Take thy bill, sit down, and write 

 quickly fifty." Edward Smikke. 



" Accipe tuura calamum, tempera, et scribe velociter." 



Whatever may have been the defects of former 

 translators, the contribution of Rupicastrensis 

 appears only to render obscurity more obscure. 

 He proposes to translate the above line as 

 follows : 



" Take your pen, dilute (the ink), and write quill," or 

 " Take your pen, moisten (the parchment), and write 

 quill." 



To his specimens of various translations may be 

 added that of Bishop Challoner, in his Britannia 

 Sancta : 



" Take your pen and write speedily." 



No one before Rupicastrensis ever translated 

 " velociter " by " quill." But for its occurring 

 twice in his communication, one must have set 

 this down as an error of the press. The following 

 appears to me to be the true version : 



" Take thy pen, dip it (in the ink), and write quickly." 



There is a verse of a psalm in the Vulgate, which 

 it is probable that Venerable Bede had in his mind 

 at the time. It runs thus : 



"Lingua mea calamus scribse velociter scribentis." — 

 Ps. xliv. 2. 



F. C. H. 



" Accipe tuum calamum, tempera, et scribe velociter." 



Your correspondent Rupicastrensis has ad- 

 duced six different translations of the above pas- 

 sage : their variance being ascribed to uncertainty 

 as to the force of the word " tempera" which four 

 of them ignore altogether, a fifth renders to " make 

 ready," and the sixth to " mend your pen." Rupi- 

 castrensis conjectures that it may mean to 

 " dilute your ink ; " but G. M. B. in a subsequent 

 Number (p. 229.) contends, somewhat brusquely, 

 that " tempera " governs " calamum," and means 

 " mend your reed" or " temper it." 



Had steel pens been in vogue in the eighth 

 century, the term to " temper " might have cor- 

 rectly applied to them ; but I doubt whether G. 

 M. B. can turn to any example in ])ure or mediasval 

 Latinity where " temperare " is applied to the 

 cutting or mending of a pen or reed, which latter, 

 by the way, very rarely requires mending ; its 

 broad point, unlike that of the quill, being gene- 

 rally ready for immediate use. 



Now it is well known that the use of the reed 

 (calamus or arundo), which in Europe was not 

 superseded by the quill till the sixth century, was 

 still kept up in the age of Bede, and for a con- 

 siderable time after. The ink suitable to it differs 

 materially from the liquid preparation which is 

 adapted to the concave barrel, the sharper point 

 and finer lines produced by the quill. In fact, the 

 preparation of lamp-black, vine-charcoal, or other 

 substances mixed with gum mucilage, which Pliny 

 describes as having been used in the earliest ages 

 for writing with the reed, is the same which is 

 still applied to the same purpose in Persia and 

 Arabia and all parts of the East. The so-called 

 " Indian ink " of China is a type of it, which is 

 sufficiently familiar to us in England. At Con- 

 stantinople, Smyrna, and the other towns of the 

 Levant, this dry ink is to be bought in lumps 

 or in grains in the bazaars, and the purchaser 

 makes a paste of it by the addition of a little 

 water, and then stores it away for future use in 

 the receptacle at the extremity of the brass ink- 

 horn, in the tube of which he carries his reed pens. 

 When he addresses himself to write, the first ope- 

 ration, after drawing out his reed, is to take a small 

 portion of this paste or cake of ink from his box, 

 and to moisten it with water (temperare), pre- 

 paratory to applying it thus liquefied to his pen. 



So long as the reed maintained its ground in 

 Europe, and this was partially to the end of the 

 eighth or ninth century, this peculiar ink con- 

 tinued to be used along with it. 



