TYPOGRAPHIA.

PART I.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION:

SECTION I.

The Origin of Printing considered, unconnected with the idea of forming Books-The first step in the Art referred to the Second Age of the World, or that immediately succeeding the Flood-Description of the Printed Bricks of Babylonia, with an Engraving-Opinion of the mode by which the impressions on these Bricks were effected-Of circular pieces that present curious specimens of Clay-printing, with an Engraving-Failure of the learned in their attempts to decipher the contents of these Chaldean Prints-Hypothesis as to the intended use of such mementos-Reasons for concluding the origin of Alphabetic Writing to have been divine-Specimen of the most ancient Alphabetic Writing extant-Description of a Roman Signet used for Stamping— Concluding Reflection.

To investigate properly the Origin of Printing, it is necessary to

carry our research to a period far more remote than that at which the art first became applicable to the making of books. The early inhabitants of the earth would naturally desire to perpetuate their useful discoveries, as well as the important events of their time, and it may be therefore fairly presumed, that they had some mode of communicating their ideas to succeeding generations before the invention of an alphabet. The scanty traditions recorded concerning the antediluvians do not enable us to come to any determination relative to their proficiency in commemorating the transactions of their time: whether, therefore, they employed stamps of any kind, or had any means whatever of transmitting knowledge except by oral tradition, we have neither history nor relics to inform us. But that period which immediately followed the deluge, and which some chronologers have termed the Second Age of the world, affords convincing proofs of the art of forming

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impressions being then practised; and most probably with a view to propagate science-to inculcate special facts-and as a general means of preserving to posterity certain useful memorials. Purposes such as these, it is reasonable to conclude, were contemplated by the ancient Chaldeans when they stamped or PRINTED their tiles or bricks with various figures, hieroglyphics, or inscriptions.

In some instances these ancient specimens seem to have been sun-baked yet, for the most part, they appear kiln-burnt to a surprising degree of hardness-even to partial vitrification. Of such materials was built the original City and celebrated Tower of Babylon; and although "a period of four thousand years has rolled away since the construction of the superb metropolis whose name they bear,"* still, even to the present day, do the Babylonian bricks, which have supplied the antiquary and orientalist with so many curious subjects for reflection and discussion, continue to be found. The Great City-" whose towers, whose temples, and whose palaces were built with brick dried in the sun, or baked in the furnace," and whose walls were ornamented with animals modelled to resemble life, richly painted in their natural colours upon the bricks of which they were composed, and into which the colours were afterwards burnt-if we regard it entire as the mother of cities, and in the accounts of historians look upon its vastness and its magnificence; or if we descend to the contemplation of so small a fragment of it as even a single brick; being in the latter case lost in wonder, how must imagination be overpowered in the former! What inexpressible emotions must the spectacle of operose splendour presented by the real pile, at the zenith of its glory, have excited! And what must reasoning creatures think of human grandeur, looking now at the bald and desolate site that once boasted such a display of sumptuous edificessuch a gorgeous scene of civic ostentation!

With regard to the substance on which the early Chaldeans denoted such things as they desired to commemorate, clay mixed with reeds seems to have been the composition that was prepared to receive the impression. This being formed into the shape of bricks, when the device to be stamped had been properly communicated to each, they were exposed to induration, by either the sun or fire.

Maurice, on the Ruins of Babylon, p. 4.

+ Ibid. p. 6-10.

Of this substance- oтns λives-of burnt brick, formed into square masses, covered with mystic characters, the walls and palaces of Babylon were, for the most part, constructed. Thus, intelligent travellers who have visited those ruins, and examined the composition of the bricks, and the various characters with which they are severally stamped, enable us to ascertain that the species of printing of which they afford specimens was practised soon after the flood; and though no emblems whatever of a prior date are extant, still it is not unreasonable to suppose that similar modes of perpetuating occurrences might have been invented, and in use among the antediluvians, and have been derived, among other arts, from them by the patriarchal Chaldeans.

Admitting, that by the labours of the learned, the devices. stamped upon Babylonian bricks—the Persepolitan arrow-headed obeliscal characters-and the still more occult hieroglyphics of Egypt, may have been partially interpreted; yet the difference of opinion which exists respecting the subjects to which these extraordinary specimens of ancient art relate, renders it very doubtful whether the utmost efforts of human skill will ever be able to explain their true signification. It is, nevertheless, made probable, that the Babylonians were accustomed to imprint on their bricks certain allusions to astronomical phenomena having some signal astrological import. Particular configurations of the heavens, which distinguished the several seasons, as they related to the business of husbandmen, might also be registered in this way, to serve as a sort of calendar; and some impressions are imagined to contain historical details relative to the founders of those stupendous structures originally composed of the bricks in question. Struck at once with a sense of the antiquity of these vestiges of art-of the numbers presented to view--and of the variety of devices they bear (for every furnace-baked brick, found amidst these vast ruins, is imprinted with some emblematical design), the spectator, in the moment of his astonishment, feels almost disposed to concur with Pliny in the opinion-Literas SEMPER arbitror Assyrias."*

I shall next attach, to a further description of printed bricks, some engraved specimens, with a view to afford my readers a

Maurice, p. 92.

more perfect idea of THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS THE ART OF PRINTING. In this part of my task I shall confine myself to literal inscriptions, omitting the notice of every thing regarding animal and other hieroglyphical figures as found enamelled in a variety of colours upon ancient bricks. These inscriptions appear in vertical columns divided by lines; the characters that occupy the spaces between the lines are by some termed arrow-headed— by others, javelin-headed-by the French, caractères à cloux, or nail-headed. I should liken them to the kind of nails used for shoeing horses; or to the sort commonly used for fastening the tire upon wheels. It is thus that they are described by Chardin, Le Brun, Hagar, Maurice, and other oriental writers. Sir W. Jones observes, that "they appear to be regular variations and compositions of a right line; each line towards the top becoming of an angular figure." It has been already intimated that all attempts to explain the signification of these characters of antiquity have, as yet, been vainly exerted by the most skilful orientalists; nor has it been even satisfactorily determined whether they really are alphabetic characters, as the European-syllabic, as many known orientals-hieroglyphic, as the Egyptian-or arbitrary signs, expressive of complete ideas, as the Chinese.

Dr. Hagar, a celebrated orientalist, who in 1801 was appointed by the French government to superintend the publication of a Chinese dictionary at Paris, remarks, "that the spaces between the characters, as well as the proportions of the characters themselves, vary in bricks not impressed with the same stamp ;" which strongly authorises the presumption that a system of characters was employed in these impressions, and that they were not symbolical representations of particular subjects.

There are three of this species of brick in the library, or, more strictly speaking, in the hall of the stair-case leading to the library, of Trinity College, Cambridge-two or three are deposited in the British Museum-and in the East-India Company's library, at their house in Leadenhall-street, there are several. I have examined them all; but finding those at Cambridge the most perfect, I went twice to that University for the purpose of minutely inspecting them in the first place, for the sake of satisfying myself as to their identity with those specimens from which the engraving I have given was copied; and secondly (to me an object

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of far greater interest), to ascertain, if possible, the method by. which the characters were impressed. Perhaps, from the nature of his profession, a printer may presume upon being competent

to give an opinion upon this long-controverted subject. I am decided, in my mind, that the whole body of characters contained in