CALLIGRAPHUS anciently denoted a copyist or scribe, who transcribed fair, and at length, what the notaries had taken down in notes or minutes. The word is compounded of καλλος, beauty, and γραφω, I write. The minutes of acts, &c. were always taken in a kind of cipher or shorthand, such as the notes of Tyro in Gruter, by which means the notaries, as the Latins called them, or the γραμματεας and ταχυγραφας, as the Greeks named them, were enabled to keep pace with a speaker or person who dictated. These notes, being understood by few, were copied over fair, and at length, by persons who had a good hand, and who were called calligraphi, a name frequently met with in the ancient writers.