I will now say a few words about pens and ink, for without them we could neither have had printing nor books.  Pens are of great antiquity, and are frequently alluded to in the Bible.  Pens of iron, which may mean styles, are mentioned by Job and Jeremiah.  Reed pens are known to have been in common use by the ancients, and some were discovered at Pompeii.  Pens of gold and silver are alluded to by the classical writers, and there is evidence of the use of quills in the seventh century.  Of whatever material the pen was made, it was called a calamus, whence our familiar saying, “currente calamo” ("with a flowing pen").  The use of styles, or iron pens, must have been very prevalent in ancient days, as Suetonius tells us that the emperor Caligula incited the people to massacre a Roman senator with their styles; and, previous to that, Caesar had wounded Cassius with his style.

The next, and not the least important, ingredient in writing and printing is ink.  Staining and coloring matters were well known to the ancients at a very early period, witness the lustrous pigments on Etruscan vases more than two thousand years ago; and inks are often mentioned in the Bible.  Gold, silver, red, blue, and green inks were thoroughly understood in the Middle Ages, and perhaps earlier; and the black writing-ink of the seventh down to the tenth century, as seen in our manuscripts, was in such perfection that it has retained its lustre better than some of later ages.  Printing-ink, by the time it began to be currently used for book-printing in the fifteenth century, had attained a perfection which has never been surpassed, and indeed scarcely equalled.

Paper and ink being at their highest point, we will now consider the advances which had in the mean time been made in engraving and type or letter cutting.  It will be seen that the material elements of printing were by degrees converging to a culminating point.  The evidences of engraving, both in relief and intaglio, are of very ancient date.  I need hardly remind you of the exquisite workmanship on coins, cameos, and seals, many centuries before the Christian era, to illustrate the high state of cultivation at which the arts must then have arrived.  The art of casting and chasing in bronze was extensively practised in the twelfth century, and I have seen a specimen with letters so cut in relief that they might be separated to form movable type.  The goldsmiths were certainly among the greatest artists of the early ages, and were competent to execute forms or moulds of any kind to perfection.

In the British Museum is a brass signet stamp, more than two thousand years old, on which two lines of letters are very neatly engraved in relief, in the reversed order necessary for printing; and as the interstices are cut away very deeply and roughly, there is little doubt but that this stamp was used with ink on papyrus, parchment, or linen, for paper was not then known.  Indeed, the experiment of taking impressions from it in printing-ink has been tried, and found to answer perfectly.  A large surface so engraved would at once have given to the world an equivalent to what is now regarded as the most advanced state of the art of printing; that is, a stereotype plate.  Vergil mentions brands for marking cattle with their owner’s name; probably this kind of brass stamp, but larger.