Dark-colored liquids were used to stain letters previously engraved on some hard substance, long before they were made to flow in the calamus or pen for forming them on a smooth surface; and the Chinese made their “Indian Ink” in the same manner as now, 1120 years before the Christian Era; but, only used it, at that time, to blacken incised characters.[1] Ink was termed by the ancient Latin authors _atramentum scriborium_,[2] or _librarium_, to distinguish it from _atramentum sutorium_ or _calchantum_. It was made of the soot of resin, or pounded charcoal, and other substances, mixed with gum, and not, like ours, of vitriol, gall-nuts, alum, &c. The earliest positive mention of ink is perhaps the passage in Jeremiah, in the Vulgate, “_Ego scribebam in volumine, atramento_.”[3] Footnote 1: Here we might add, without fear of contradiction, that _Ink_ is still extensively used to “blacken characters,” without regard to the depth of the incision. Footnote 2: The specimen of the English language which we quote, is not faultless; and the _Latin_ is execrable. There is no such word as _scriborium_ in any language, ancient or modern. The Romans called writing-ink _atramentum scriptorum_. Footnote 3: _This_ is a very paltry piece of pedantry. Why could not this author (who shows that he does not understand _Latin_,) give us the text in English? The passage is in Jeremiah, chap. XXXVI, verse 18: “I wrote them with _Ink_ in a book.” The only other references in the Bible to _Ink_, are the following: 2 Corinthians, III, 3: “written not with _Ink_, but the spirit.” 2 John, XII: “I would write with paper and _Ink_.” 3 John, XIII: “I had many things to write, but I will not with _Ink_.” Ezekiel, IX, 2: “with a writer’s _ink_-horn by his side.” Gold liquids, and also silver, purple, red, green, and blue inks, were eventually used in manuscripts after the fourth century,—red and gold having been employed much earlier. St. Jerome speaks of rich decorations, which must have been executed with colored inks; but, before his time, Ovid alludes not only to the purple _charta_, made use of for fine books, which were also tinged with an oil drawn from cedar-wood, to preserve them, but, also to titles written in red ink, which were the first kind of illuminations. The passage occurs in his first elegy, “Ad Librum:” “_Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo; Non est conveniens luctibus ille color. Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur. Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras._” The last line proving, as Casley observes, that Ovid wrote upon a _roll_. This author, not having been kind enough to translate Ovid for us, we are compelled to do it for him. This “Elegy” of the poet is addressed “To his Book;” and the following words contain the meaning of the four lines above quoted: