The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 · the Elder Pliny
CHAP. 25.—THE PECULIAR DEFECTS IN PAPER.
The roughness and inequalities in paper are smoothed down with a tooth[898] or shell; but the writing in such places is very apt to fade. When it is thus polished the paper does not take the ink so readily, but is of a more lustrous and shining surface. The water of the Nile that has been originally employed in its manufacture, being sometimes used without due precaution, will unfit the paper for taking writing: this fault, however, may be detected by a blow with the mallet, or even by the smell,[899] when the carelessness has been extreme. These spots, too, may be detected by the eye; but the streaks that run down the middle of the leaves where they have been pasted together, though they render the paper spongy and of a soaking nature, can hardly ever be detected before the ink runs, while the pen is forming the letters; so many are the openings for fraud to be put in practice. The consequence is, that another labour has been added to the due preparation of paper. CHAP. 26.—THE PASTE USED IN THE PREPARATION OF PAPER.
The common paper paste is made of the finest flour of wheat mixed with boiling water, and some small drops of vinegar sprinkled in it: for the ordinary workman’s paste, or gum, if employed for this purpose, will render the paper brittle. Those, however, who take the greatest pains, boil the crumb of leavened bread, and then strain off the water: by the adoption of this method the paper has the fewest seams caused by the paste that lies between, and is softer than the nap of linen even. All kinds of paste that are used for this purpose, ought not to be older or newer than one day. The paper is then thinned out with a mallet, after which a new layer of paste is placed upon it; then the creases which have formed are again pressed out, and it then undergoes the same process with the mallet as before. It is thus that we have memorials preserved in the ancient handwriting of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, which I have seen in the possession of Pomponius Secundus,[900] the poet, a very illustrious citizen, almost two hundred years since those characters were penned. As for the handwriting of Cicero, Augustus, and Virgil, we frequently see them at the present day.
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