MICROSCOPIC WRITING

Western Star, Issue 1387, 7 September 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

MICROSCOPIC WRITING

Pliny’s assertion that Cicero once saw the “Iliad ’ of Homer in a nutshell has always been regarded with incredulity, but some remarkable and undisputed facts about minute caligraphy favour the possibility of Cicero being correct in his statement. Both ancient and modern writers record the achievements of penmen whose writing was in so small a hand that it was invisible to the naked eye. One wrote a distich m letters of gold which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of wheat. Another wrote a verse of Homer on a grain of millet. Menage mentions a pen-and-ink sketch of the Dauphiness (indiscernible except by the aid of a microscopic, which instrument revealed a face of the most pleasing delicacy and correct resemblence. In Harleian MSS. we have a narrative of “a rare piece of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman and a clerk of the Chancery.” It was a copy of the whole Bible in an English walnut no bigger than a hen’s egg. We are told that “the nut holdeth the book; there are as many leaves in the little book as in the great Bible, and he hath written as much in one of nis tiny leaves as a great leaf of the Bible.” The writing was too small to be read by the naked eye. In the library of St John’s College, Oxford, is a drawing of the head of Charles 1. wholly composed of minute written characters which at a short distance resembles the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head and ruff are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, aud the Lord’s Prayer.—Cassell’s Saturday Journal.