PENMANSHIP.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4324, 30 September 1921, Page 4

PENMANSHIP.

England at one time possessed a penman capable of rivalling Nessi Effendi Markarem, an Arab who recently visited Cairo with specimens of his art, including a grain of rice on which he has written 110 words from the Koran, says the “Manchester Guardian.’’ Peter Bales, as we learn from “Holinshed’s Chronicles,” put in the compass of a silver penny more -things than would fill several ordinary pages, and presented Queen Elizabeth with the manuscript set in a gold ring, and covered with a crystal, together with a magniflying-glass so powerful that the Queen could easily decipher the manuscript, “which she held on her thumb-nail, and commended the same to the Lords of the Council and the ambassadors.” Bales subsequently issued a challenge “to all Englishmen and strangers” to write, for a pen 'of .gold of £2O in value, in all: kinds of hands, best, straightest, and fastest,” and most kind of ways, “a full, a mean, a small, with line and without 'line; in a slow set hand, a m.ean facile hand, and a fast running hand.” and, further, to “-truest and speediest, most secretary and clerk-like, ft-om a man’s, mouth, reading, or pronouncing, either English or Latin.” Another writing-master, David Jphnson, accepted the challenge, and the contest opened on Michaelmas Day, 1595, before five judges and a hundred spectators. Bales was adjudged the winner in all) three sections, though -the competition .in “writing sundry kinds of fair hands” proved a near thing for him. He gained points for the- beauty and “most authentic proportion” of his “Roman hand,” but Johnson scored marks in court-hand and in “bastard secretary” hand. Bales, being then on his mettle, presented his“ Master Piece.” composed of “secretary and Roman hand four ways varied,” and offered to forego all his previous advantages if Johnson could better it. This proved impossible so Bales carried off the gold pen, and, had it painted and set up for his sign. Sir John Wrench Towse, who has been fifty years with the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, and is now vacated the office of clerk (held before him by his father and grandfather), regrets, as many have regretted, that" “we have done away with beautiful handwriting.” Not that he fails to appreciate the utility. nf the typewriter, but beauty, - if. .it stands in office correspondence for great labour and much loss of time is beauty still, and. its loss is to be lamented.