Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name: of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our UniversitiesCampion, Edmund, Saint
Religion
Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name: of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities
Campion, Edmund, Saint
Catholic Church -- Apologetic works
A Greek fount was evidently wanting. Campion was fond, after the
fashion of scholars of that day, of throwing into his Latin
letters a word or two of Greek, which in his autograph are
written, as Mr. Simpson has remarked, with the facility of one
familiar with the language. Here on fol. 24 a we find _adynata_,
where [Greek: adunata] would have been in Campion's epistolary
manner. Again, on fol. 4 b he quotes, "Hic calix novum
testamentum in sanguine meo, qui (calix) pro vobis fundetur," and
in the margin _Poterion Ekchynomenon_, in Italics, where Greek
script, if obtainable, would obviously have been preferred. A
further indication of the difficulties under which type had been
procured is seen in the use of a query sign of a black-letter
fount (_i.e. [different question mark]_) instead of the Roman
fount (_i.e.,?_). This will be the more readily comprehended when
we remember that Father Persons' books, which Brinkley had
printed before, were in English, and that English prose was then
still generally printed in Gothic character[9].
So Persons also made use of it in order that there might be
nothing in his books to strike the eye as unusual in books of
that class. Campion's volume on the other hand being in Latin, it
was necessary to procure a new set of "Roman" type. The use of
the black-letter query-signs would not at once attract attention,
so they were kept, though all else was changed.
A further trace of the difficulty in finding type is found in
the signs for a, e, diphthong. This combination recurred very
frequently in Latin, and the printers had very few of them. Very
soon after starting we find them substituting for Roman an
Italic diphthong, [ae ligature] also o, e ([oe ligature]), and
even e, an ordinary mediaeval form of the sign. It will be
noticed that these substitutions become increasingly frequent,
as we approach fol. 12 (end of signature C), fol. 32 (end of
signature H), and 36 (end of signature I), whereas as soon as
the next signature begins the fount of [ae ligature] is ready to
hand again. The conclusion to be deduced is that leaves C, H,
and I were each printed off, and the type distributed, before
the setting up of D, I, and K could be proceeded with. This
illustrates what has been said before of the very small stock of
type in the printing establishment.
Another slight peculiarity ought perhaps to be noticed: it is
the accentuation of the Latin. Adverbs, for instance, are
generally accented on the last syllable, e.g., doctiu's,
facile', qua'm, eo', quo': the rule, however, is by no means
regularly kept. But this has evidently nothing to do with the
peculiar conditions under which Campion's book was produced, and
is to be accounted for by the use of accents in other
publications of the same class. Nothing was then definitely
settled about the accentuation of either French, Italian, or
Latin, and Campion's volume does but reproduce the uncertainty
on the matter which was everywhere prevalent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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