and "Corinthian" architectures are determinable approximately by their respective characteristics--so the time of a literary production is largely determined by the characteristics of the handwriting in which it is written. We quote the words of Professor Mahaffy: "The task of palæography is now changed. We have ample evidence of antiquity; we rather seek to distinguish the small peculiarities of ancient handwriting as to tell their age approximately when the writer has affixed no note of his own time. And this we do with wonderful certainty, because almost every century has its own hand so distinctly that even the man who attempts to copy older fashions can easily be detected by his want of freedom. Years ago I was shown, in the great library at Naples, a manuscript of this kind, apparently of the tenth century. After a few minutes' examination, though I had never before seen such a thing, I told the librarian that it seemed to me a careful copy of an old hand by a laborious scribe of later date. He was surprised, but then showed me, what he had intended to conceal, a note at the end dated 1450, showing that my guess was correct. This anecdote is quoted to show that the freedom of the hand, as well as the shape of the letters, must be carefully estimated and considered by the palæographer. By using a good microscope, un-steadiness of lines which escape the naked eye will become apparent; and this is now well known to those who have studied the detection of forgeries in criminal cases."[60] XV MECHANICAL AND ARTIFICIAL DEVICES OF LITERATURE The universal divisions of modern literary productions into books, chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, and members of sentences, together with capitalization and the system of punctuation, are so important and so enthralled with modern composition and rhetoric that we could hardly appreciate or understand literature apart from them. Apropos to this observation, Professor Dobschütz says: "If we look at the earliest manuscripts of the Bible which have come down to us, we shall almost think that supernatural assistance was necessary for reading them; no punctuation, no accent, no space between the words, no breaking off at the end of a sentence. The reader has to know his text almost entirely by heart to do it well."[61]