HKB
Steward’s letter of the third century B.C., in various documents of the same century lying in the British Museum, at Paris, Berlin, Leyden, and elsewhere, of which the oldest, being amongst the papyri discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie at Gurob is referred to B.C. 268, and the Leyden papyrus to 260(37). Yet the earliest books of a later age known to be written in cursive letters are Cod. 481 (Scholz 461, dated A.D. 835) the Bodleian Euclid (dated A.D. 888) and the twenty-four dialogues of Plato in the same Library (dated A.D. 895)(38). There is reason to believe, from the comparatively unformed character of the writing in them all, that Burney 19 in the British Museum (from which we have extracted the alphabet No. 8, Plate iii), and the minute, beautiful and important Codex l of the Gospels at Basle (of which see a facsimile No. 23), are but little later than the Oxford books, and may be referred to the tenth century. Books copied after the cursive hand had become regularly formed, in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are hard to be distinguished by the mere handwriting, though they are often dated, or their age fixed by the material (see p. 23), or the style of their illuminations. Colbert. 2844, or 33 of the Gospels (facsim. No. 39), is attributed to the eleventh century, and Burney 21 (No. 15)(39), is dated A.D. 1292, and afford good examples of their respective dates. Beta (l. 1 letter 4), when joined to other letters*, is barely distinguishable from upsilon(40); *nu is even nearer to mu; the tall forms of eta and epsilon are very graceful, the whole style elegant and, after a little practice, easily read. Burney 22 (facsimile No. 37) is dated about the same time, A.D. 1319, and the four Biblical lines much resemble Burney 21(41). In the fourteenth century a careless style came into fashion, of which Cod. Leicestrensis (No. 40) is an exaggerated instance, and during this century and the next our manuscripts, though not devoid of a certain beauty of appearance, are too full of arbitrary and elaborate contractions to be conveniently read. The formidable list of abbreviations and ligatures represented in Donaldson’s Greek Grammar (p. 20, third edition)(42) originated at this period in the perverse ingenuity of the Greek emigrants in the West of Europe, who subsisted by their skill as copyists; and these pretty puzzles (for such they now are to many a fair classical scholar), by being introduced into early printed books(43), have largely helped to withdraw them from use in modern times.