Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

faithfully to the eye as foon as they are formed in the mind, are the wonderful properties of letters. It is not eafy for thofe to whom books have from their childhood been familar, and who view litera ture only in its prefent highly advanced state of improvement, to form a proper notion of the ingenuity, or the merit of this invention. Whoever invented letters, if it was a human invention, was a man of a moft refined understanding, and metaphysical turn of mind, for it was a very extraordinary tranfition to pafs from the reprefentation of objects by pictures or hieroglyphics, to tracing the founds of the human voice to their fimpleft elements, reducing them to a fmall number of vowels and confonants, and expreffing by thofe vowels and confonants every word of the mouth, and thought of the mind. Drawings and paintings fhewed the ingenious efforts which human art could make towards reprefenting events and actions, by the imitation of objects of fight; and this was the univerfal practice of nations in the early ages of the world. During the first interview of Cortes and his Spaniards with the Mexicans, fome painters were diligently employed in delineating upon white cotton cloths, figures of the fhips, horfes, artillery, foldiers, and whatever attracted their eyes as fingular and novel. These pictures were fent to the Emperor Montezuma, to give him information of the arrival of the wonderful ftrangers. But it comes not within the province of the art of painting to reprefent a fucceffion of thoughts, and its operations are very tedious; fo that fuch a mode of infor

mation is very ill adapted to the quickness of the mind, and its various exertions. The great excellence of the characters of the alphabet confifts in their fimplicity, in the eafe and precifion with which they can exprefs, and the expedition and clearness with which they can communicate ideas of all kinds. By their affiftance in carrying on epiftolary correfpondence, the warm effufions of love and friendship are conveyed even to the most remote countries, and the conftant intercourse of commerce, fcience, and learning, is maintained in defiance of all the obftacles of distance. Learning is indebted to the art of writing for its wide diffufion and long continuance; and to the fame cause genius and virtue owe the rewards of lafting fame. Oral tradition is fleeting and uncertain; it is a ftream which, as it continues to flow into the ocean of oblivion, is mixed with the impure foil of error and falfehood. A striking proof is afforded by the depraved notions of a Deity, and the abfurd and cruel rites and ceremonies of religion which

The application of letters to fome of the most important affairs of life is touched upon with great elegance by Palamedes, a Hero in the Trojan war, who claims the invention.

Τα της γε λήθης φαρμακ' όρθωσας μονα

Αφωνα και φωνῶντα συλλαβας τίθεις,
Εξευρον άνθρωποισι γραμμαί ειδέναι,
Ως ο παρονια πουλιας ὑπερ πλακ
Τακει κατ' οικες παι' επιςασθαι καλώς,
Παισιν τ' αποθνησκονία χρηματων μέτρον
Γραψανία λειπειν, τον λαβοντα δ' ειδέναι.
A d εις πιπλεσιν ανθρωποις κακα
Δελτα διαιρει· κ' εκ εα ψεύδη λεγειν.

Euripid. Fragment. Edit. Barnes, p. 487.

formerly

formerly prevailed among fome barbarous nations, and ftill continues among others. But the art of writing preferves the memorials of truth, and imparts to fucceffive generations the records of accurate knowledge: it conftitutes the light, glory, and ornament of civilized man. It has fixed and perpetuated the inventions and difcoveries which have been made in the world, and placed them out of the reach of time and accident. The voices of the most profound philofophers, and most delightful poets of antiquity, have for ages ceafed to charm the ear; and even the facred words once uttered by the Redeemer of mankind himself, as they were neceffarily limited to a particular time and place, can now be heard to iffue from his lips no more: but the art of writing, brought to perfection as it has been by the art of printing, has conferred a kind of immortality on the expreffions of the tongue, and conveys the ineftimable leffons of revelation, learning, and fcience, to every age and to every people.

Can any two alphabets appear to the eye more unlike each other than the Hebrew and the Englith? Yet the ingenious reafons affigned by Bifhop Warburton, the author of the divine legation of Mofes, make it highly probable, that the latter were derived from the former. He states upon the authority of antient writers, that in the early ages of the world, there was a gradual improvement in the manner of conveying ideas by figns; that pictures, as we have obferved, were employed, as

the

an

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

the first representations of actions, and, in process of time, alphabetical characters were substituted as eafier and fhorter mode of communicating thoughts. Mofes, the great law-giver of the Jews, brought letters with the reft of his learning from Egypt; and he fimplified their forms, in order to prevent the abufe to which they would have been liable, as 'fymbolical characters, among a people fo much inclined to fuperftition as the Jews. From the Jews this alphabetical mode of writing paffed to the Syrians and Phenicians, or perhaps was common to them both at the fame time. The Greek authors maintained that Cadmus and his Phoe nician companions introduced the knowledge of letters into Greece. Herodotus records the curious fact that he faw at Thebes in Boeotia, in the temple of Apollo, three tripods infcribed with Cadmeian letters, which very much refembled the Ionic*. It is too well known to require any detail of proof, that the Romans were taught their letters by the Greeks. Tacitus has remarked the fimilarity of the Roman character to the most ancient Greek, that is, the Pelafgic, and the fame obfervation is made by Pliny, and confirmed by the infeription on an ancient tablet of brafs, dedicated to Minerva. By the Romans their alphabet was communicated to the Goths, and the nations of modern Europe. And if evidence to this detail of proofs be wanted, the curious may find fome that

Herodoti, 1. 5. fect. 58, 59. p. 306. Edit. Gronov.

* Taciti Annal. 1. xi. Plinii Nat. Hift. 1, vii. c. 58.

may

may be more fatisfactory, by confidering attentively the order, the names, and the powers of the letters in the feveral alphabets juft mentioned; and by examining in the learned works of Montfaucon, Shuckford, and Warburton, the characters themfelves, copied from ancient infcriptions, how they have gradually been altered, and have deviated from the first forms through fucceffive changes, previous to their affuming their prefent fhapes and figures".

It does not appear how it could poffibly have happened that all the languages before mentioned, that is to fay, the Hebrew, the Syriac, the Phenician, the Greek, the Roman, and the English, could have the fame, or very nearly the fame, number and order of letters, and fimilar letters with fimilar powers, if they had not been derived from the fame origin.

Nor is the different direction in which the Hebrew language was written, any ground of objection to this opinion. The Hebrew letters are written from the right hand to the left, and this was the custom of all the eastern nations; but the English reverse this order. Now, it appears from fome old infcriptions, that the eastern mode of writing from the right to the left, the Greeks. They afterwards

[ocr errors][merged small]

was practiced by adopted a new

Shuckford's Connexion, Goguet's Origin of Laws,.

method,

« ElőzőTovább »