to his Italian hand, but
becomes more and more antique in his style, so that on folio 65, and for
ten folios before and after, we have such writing as that of fac-simile
No. 4, "_strangers where they come change the speech there used_." On
folios 93 to 95 we find characters like those given in fac-simile No. 5,
which it requires more experience than ours in record-reading entirely
to decipher. On the reverse of folio 95 the annotator, apparently weary
of his task, stayed his hand.

Now in these ninety-nine folios (including the Preface, which is not
numbered) are not only all the five varieties of chirography fac-similed
above, but others partaking the character of some two of these, and
all manifestly written by the same hand; which is shown no less by the
phraseology than by the chirographic traits common to all the notes. And
besides, not a few of these notes, which fill the margins, are in
Latin, and these Latin notes are always written in the Italian hand of
fac-simile No. 1; so that we find that hand, in which all the notes,
English and Latin, (with a few exceptions, like "_England_,") are
written for the first twenty-seven folios, afterward in juxtaposition
with each of the other hands. For instance, on folio 87, recto, we find
"_tolerare laborem propter virtutem quis vult si praemia desunt_,"
written in the style of "_Experience_" No. 1 above, though not so
carefully, and immediately beneath it, manifestly with the same pen, and
it would seem with the same pen-full of ink, "the saying of Galen," in
the style of No. 4, "_strangers where they come_," etc.

The ink, too, in which these notes are written illustrates the shifts to
which our ancestors were put when writing-materials were not made and
bought by the quantity, as they are now,--a fact which bears against
a not yet well-established point made by Mr. Maskelyne of the British
Museum against Mr. Collier's marginalia. This writing exhibits every
possible variety of tint and of shade, and also of consistence and
composition, that ink called black could show. As far as the recto of
folio 12 it has the look of black ink slightly faded. On the reverse of
that folio it suddenly assumes a pale gray tint, which it preserves to
the recto of folio 20. There it becomes of a very dark rich brown, so
smooth in surface as almost to have a lustre, but in the course of a few
folios it changes to a pale tawny tint; again back to black, again
to gray, again to a fine clear b