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writing, when employed in public business to convey the royal commands to leaders of armies and distant governors, must be unavoidably attended with the inconveniencies of imperfect and obscure information, it was natural for our Secretary to set himself upon contriving a remedy: and this he found in the invention of the letters of an alphabet; serving to express words, not things; whereby all the inconveniencies of imperfect information, so fatal in nice conjunctures, were avoided, and the writer's mind delivered with the utmost clearness and precision: which too had this further advantage, that as the Government would endeavour to keep their invention to themselves, LETTERS OF STATE were, for some time, conveyed with the security of our modern ciphers and thus, being at first appropriated to the use of the cabinet, literary writing naturally acquired the name of EPISTOLARY †; which if you will not allow, no reasonable account, I think, can be given of its title.

That this was, indeed, the fact, appears from Plato's account of Theuth's INVENTIONS. He tells us that when Theuth came to consult his master, king Thamus, about communicating his discoveries to the people, wapa τατον ἐλθὼν ὁ Θεὺθ τὰς τέχνας ἐπέδειξε, καὶ ἔφη δεῖν διαδοθῆναι τοῖς ἄλλοις Αἰγυπτίοις, the king declared particularly against communicating the invention of LETTERS. But the reason he gives for the prohibition, we see, was not the principal and more immediate (as it rarely is amongst Politicians), but only a secondary, and more remote ; namely, a regard to the interests of hieroglyphic learning: for the King tells his Secretary, that, if this secret should be divulged, men's attention would be called away from THINGS, to which hieroglyphics, and the manner of explaining them, necessarily attached it, and be placed in exterior and arbitrary SIGNS, which would prove the

* It was an ancient custom, as Diodorous tells us, for the kings of Egypt to read all the letters of state, themselves.-wes i ràp ἐγερθέντα λαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἔδει πρῶτον τας παλαχόθεν ἀπεςαλμένας ἐπιτολὰς, ἵνα δύναται πάντα καλὰ τρόπον χρηματίζειν καὶ πράττειν εἰδὼς ἀκριβῶς ἔκατα τῶν καλὰ τὴν βασιλείαν συλελυμένων. p. 44.

+ See note [QQ] at the end of this Book.

greatest

greatest hindrance to the progress of knowledge*. What is still more pleasant, and in the true genius of politics, even the reason given was thought fit to be disguised: for though there might be some truth in this; yet, without doubt, the chief concern of the Egyptian Priests was to continue themselves useful; which they would be, while science lay concealed in hieroglyphics.

Thus the reader finds, that the very contrary to the common opinion is the true; that it was the first literary writing, not the first hieroglyphical, which was invented for secrecy. In the course of time, indeed, they naturally changed their use; letters became common, and hieroglyphics hidden and mysterious.

But now it may be said, that though the progress from a Picture to a simple Mark hath been traced out, step by step, and may be easily followed, till we come to that untried ground where ART takes the lead of nature, the point where real characters end, and the literary begin; yet here, art seeing a precipice before her, which seems to divide the two characters to as great a distance as at first setting out, she takes so immense a leap as hath been thought to exceed all human efforts : which made Tully say, Summæ sapientiæ fuisse sonos vocis †, qui infiniti videbantur, paucis literarum notis. terminare; and many of the ancients to believe that LITERARY WRITING was an invention of the Gods.

However, if we would but reflect a little on the nature of sound, and its unheeded connexion with the objects of sight, we should be able to conceive how the chasm closed, and how the passage from a real to a literary character was begun and smoothed out.

While the picture, or image of the thing represented, continued to be objected to the sight of the reader, it could raise no idea but of the thing itself. But when the picture lost its form, by being contracted into a mark or note, the view of this mark or note would, in

* Τοῦτο γὰρ τῶν μαθόνων λήθην μὲν εν ψυχαῖς παρέξει, μνήμης ἀμελελησία; ἅτε διά τισιν γραφῆς ἔξωθεν ὑπ ̓ ἀλλοῖρίων τύπων ἐκ ἔνδοθεν ἀυλοὺς ὑφ ̓ αὐτῶν ἀναμιμνησκομένες. ἔκεν μνήμης, ἀλλ ̓ ὑπομνήσεως φαρμακὸν εὗρες, σοφίας δὲ τοῖς μαθηταῖς δόξαν ἐκ ἀλήθειαν πόριζεις. Phæd.

† See note [RR] at the end of this Book.

Tusc. i. 25.

Course

course of time, as naturally raise, in the mind, the sound expressing the idea of the thing, as the idea itself. How this extension, from the idea to the sound, in the use of the real character first arose, will be easily conceived by those who reflect on the numerous tribe of words in all languages, which is formed on the sound emitted by the thing or animal*.

Yet the use to which this new connexion might be applied, would never be thought of till the nature of human sounds had been well studied.

But when men had once observed (and this they could not but observe early and easily, by the brute and inarticulate sounds which they were perpetually hearing emitted) how small the number is of primitive sounds, and how infinite the words are which may be formed by varied combinations of those simple sounds, it would naturally and easily occur to them, that a very few of those marks, which had before casually excited the sensation of those simple sounds, might be selected and formed into what has been since called an alphabet, to express them all: And then, their old accustomed way of combining primitive sounds into words, would as naturally and easily direct them to a like combination of what were now become the simple marks of sound; from whence would arise LITERARY WRITING.

In the early language of men, the simple, primitive sounds would be used, whether out of choice or necessity, as significative words or terms, to denote the most obvious of those things with which they perpetually conversed. These sounds, without arbitrary institution, would incite the idea of the thing, sometimes, as its audible image, sometimes, as its natural representative. Therefore the old marks for things, to which words of this original belonged, would certainly be first thought of for the figures of those alphabetic letters by the ingenious inventer of this wonderful contrivance. And, in fact, this which appears so natural has been found to be

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*For example, (to use the words of St. Austin) when we say Latin, æris tinnitum, equorum hinnitum, ovium balatum, turbarum clangorem, stridorem catenarum, perspicis hæc verba ita sonare, ut res quæ his verbis significantur. This class of words the Greeks designed by the name of ὀνομαλοπο ΐα.

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Part of one side of the Florentine Obelisk From Kircher.

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