"Go write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent, and full of invention; taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou'st him thrice, it shall nor be amiss; and as many lies as will lie on a sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set 'em down; go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose pen, no matter: about it." The general black ink conditions for a period of at least three hundred years, if we exclude the sixteenth century, had been but repetitions of each other. They so remained until the year 1626, when the French government concluded an arrangement with a chemist by the name of Guyot, for the manufacture of a "gall" ink WITHOUT added color and which thereby guaranteed and insured more sameness in respect to desirable ink qualities. That government with a few modifications relative to the proportions of ingredients continued its employment, which was followed by the contemporaneous writers. Other governments later partially adopted the French formulas while some of them gave the matter no attention, although their records and those of the cities or towns not only of Europe but early America, the United States and Canada are found in most instances to have been written with an ink of this character. Where prior to 1850, inks containing a different base (with the single exception of indigo) were used, they have either disappeared or nearly so and it is not an infrequent occurrence among those who are accustomed to examine old records to find that signatures or dates to valuable instruments, pages of writings and indeed sometimes the writings in an entire book are more or less obliterated. The black inks of a large portion of the seventeenth century, on documents of every kind, are found to be nearly perfect as to color conditions, which is evidence of the extreme care used in their preparation and the exclusion of "added" color in ink manufacture. CHAPTER XI. ANCIENT INK TREATISES. INK TREATISES OF THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES--JOHN BAPTISTA PORTA AUTHOR OF THE FIRST--SECRET INKS---NERI, CANEPARIUS, BOREL, MERRET, KUNCKEL AND OTHER AUTHORS WHO REFER TO INK MANUFACTURE--PROGRESS OF THE ART OF HANDWRITING ILLUSTRATED IN THE NAMES OF OVER A HUNDRED CALLIGRAPHERS CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. THE literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the subject of black and colored ink formulas, secret inks, etc., is both diversified and of considerable importance. The following authors and citations are deemed the most noteworthy: John Baptista Porta, of Naples, born A. D. 1445 and died A. D. 1515, is best known as the inventor of the "camera obscuro;" was also the author of many MSS. books compiled; he says,