Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3: containing a collection of curious travels, voyages, and natural histories of countries as they have been delivered in to the Royal SocietyRoyal Society (Great Britain)
History
Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3: containing a collection of curious travels, voyages, and natural histories of countries as they have been delivered in to the Royal Society
Royal Society (Great Britain)
Natural history; Science -- Early works to 1800; Voyages and travels -- Early works to 1800
Notwithstanding which I find they do vary the bigness of the Character
upon several Occasions, as in the Titles of Books, in the Titles of
the Chapters or Sections, in the Comments, Explications or Notes, and
upon several other occasions of variety, which they do at Pleasure
with their Pencil, as we use variety of Letters in the Printing of a
Book. The Titles of Books are generally in very large Characters, 6 or
8 times as big as those of the Book, the explication Notes ½ of the
bigness, the Contents usually twice as big, and the like variety on
several other occasions. I have met with also three several kinds of
Characters, the most usual is the fixed or set square form. The second
sort is the running Hand, in which the orders of the Courts are written
by their Secretaries, of which I have seen 3 or 4 kinds, in which the
Pencil is never taken off, till the whole Character be finished, and
sometimes two or three are all written without break. The third seems
to be somewhat like the flourishing great Letters, used by Scriveners
at the beginning of Deeds, and by the _Germans_ in the beginning of
Chapters and Sections. They are compounded of the same strokes as the
set Character, but modulated and shaped a little otherwise to make them
appear the more beautiful and regular. A Specimen of each of these
three are in the Plate. This third is made use of for Epitaphs, and
other Inscriptions on Buildings or Monuments. These three sorts I may
call the three general kinds of Writing, but there is to be found an
almost infinite variety of forms which Men use. This will be the more
easie to be believed, when we consider that the Printed Characters
are exactly the same with the Written, insomuch that every variety in
each stroke, line or point, that is or can be made with the Pencil,
is perfectly expressed in the Impression, and the Form, Mode, or
Hand, as we call it, of every Writer is exhibited so curiously, that
I think it hardly possible to be performed after the way of wooden
Cuts, as Authors affirm it is, but must be done after the method of our
Copper Cuts, Printed by a Roll-press, which the way of expressing the
Running or Court-Hand, does, I conceive, most evidently demonstrate,
and from divers circumstances, I could evidently make appear from the
Book it self, which I cannot so well express in Writing. Their Paper
is generally very thin and fine, and very transparent, but brown, so
that whatever is Written or Printed on it, is almost as legible on
the back, as on the foreside, which is of great use in the cutting of
their Stamps. And thence they never Write or Print on both sides of
the same Leaf, but only on one, and to make the Leaf appear Printed on
both sides, they double the Sheet with the Printed sides outwards, and
putting the folded part forward, they Sew, Bind, or Stitch together,
all these Sheets with the cut Edges, and upon whole Sheets instead of
single Leaves; just in the same manner as the Plate annexed to this
Discourse is Printed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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