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HANDWRITING 543
chancery, the exchequer, and the law courts had each evolved
its own highly artificial and intricate hand, uniform in execu^
tion and recognizable at a glance. For this reason the historians
of court hand tend to draw a further distinction between the set
and the free hand, that is between writing according to the copy
book and what the professional scribe often pressed for time
makes of it in practice. For writing throughout the middle
ages was in general a matter for experts and a profession. Of
the products of the *literate layman* or amateur we encounter
very little until the later part of our period.
The fundamental hand of all medieval writing, as well as
modern, is the square Roman capitals (PI 1 1 1 0), the supreme
legacy ofRoman art, which has persisted unchanged for nearly
two thousand years. Here already is the alphabet we use today,
and though *an inconvenient form of writing*, except for titles,
it was employed for important books as late as the fourth or
fifth century. Not very much survives, apart from inscriptions
on stone, in this script. For whole books it was wasteful both of
space and oftime; and in PL 1 120, the full severity ofthe basic
script is relaxed. The name ofthis fine script, Rustic Capitals,
is, in fact, a misnomer, for the evidence suggests that it was the
true book hand of classical times: but by the fifth century, its
place was being filled by Uncials (PL 1 I2&) and a century later
by Half'Uncials (PL 1 12