ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 141 



When now, in addition to the deliberate drawing and engraving of 

 records on durable substances, there arose the practice of writing 

 with the reed on the papyrus-rind or skins, the celerity of execution 

 which the impetuosity of human thought demands — and demands 

 still in vain, in spite of the assistance of stenography — produced fur- 

 ther modifications in letters, until a cursive or script style was formed, 

 which became particularly beautiful in the Greek. What the cursive 

 or script Latin character was we have no means of knowing precisely. 

 We may be sure that Cicero had some convenient and rapid method 

 of securing thought as it wells up within the brain : that he did not 

 make his memoranda in capitals. We may conclude that the familiar 

 Roman script has been in some measure preserved in the traditional 

 styles of the old professional transcribers, who did not always execute 

 their tasks in uncials, but produced MSS, like the Medicean Virgil of 

 the fifth century, in a kind of round hand, which, under the influence 

 of certain peculiar predilections, converted itself, in some nations, into 

 the so-called black letter. This round hand of the Lihrarii was re- 

 produced in the early printed books, in what we call Italic, the next 

 remove from the script, in which, in the time of Aldus Manutius, 

 (1516), for example, not prefaces merely, and dedications, but whole 

 volumes were printed. Our present so-called Roman characters, the 

 capitals excepted, are apparently a compromise between this ancient 

 script or Italic, and the black letter or Gothic. 



The modern alphabet, then, both as written and printed, is seen to 

 be the result of a series of departures farther and farther from its 

 primitive types — errata, indeed, but errata which we now willingly 

 describe as recepta and no longer corrigenda : for as our national 

 speech itself has attained its acknowledged terseness and point by a 

 succession of free clippings in its parts and forms, — so its nimble 

 servitors, the letters, by disencumbering themselves of much that 

 once seemed essential, and was essential, have attained to an efficiency 

 which if not complete is most convenient. 



This simplicity of form, involving distinctness, is highly to be 

 esteemed aud carefully guarded. English printers of late have been 

 bringing back the style of type, both Roman and Italic, in vogue a 

 century and a half ago, but which had nearly fallen out of ordinary 

 use. A certain feeling of incongruity is at first experienced at meet- 

 ing with the advanced ideas of the present day in a garb associated in 

 the mind with many obsolete notions of the reign of Anne and the 

 first Georges, and we are moved for a moment to imagine that the 



