CHAPTER 28.

ON THE

ART OF WRITING-ITS GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH FIVE STAGES-1. MEXICAN PICTURE-WRITING: 2. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS: 3. CHINESE WORD-WRITING: 4. HEBREW SYLLABIC OR

CONSONANTAL WRITING: 5. ALPHABETIC WRITING.

The changes which are effected by lapse of time in the language of a nation, though partly influenced by external causes, are, nevertheless, partly independent of those causes. Motion is one of the principles of the universe and not merely of human things. Nothing is stationary: the great outlines of the material globe, on which we live, are daily changing; the ocean, which washes the coasts of the solid continents of the earth, is ever fretting and chafing, as if eager to extend its dominion; and, whilst in some parts it has made large encroachments upon the land, it has in other places receded before its enemy: so that, whilst ships now sail over an expanse of water where the husbandmen formerly drove his plough, we may elsewhere gather fruit and flowers, where in bygone ages the sailor steered his ship.

Man is subject to the same physical laws as the creation which surrounds him. Through the long period of authentic history, no nation has retained for two hundred years all the original elements of its constitution. Its language, as well as almost all other features, has submitted to the law of change. The life of even one man is long enough to furnish instances of this law. New fashions arise, whether of dress, gait, speech, pronunciation or writing, which draw after them the imitation of buoyant and fickle youth, whilst they, as surely, bring down the

reprobation of the old, who think nothing right or good, but what themselves did when they were boys.

Se puero.

laudator temporis acti

Novelty is a constant charm. "Did Ennius or Lucilius enrich the native tongue of Latium by the introduction of new words, and shall Horace be the object of the public execration because he coined a few fresh words, which before his time were unknown?" The law of finality must be abandoned, both by the politician and the philosopher. It must also be abandoned by the historian; for whoever casts his figures, of different countries and of ages far remote, in the same mould, will find that his imitations present a strong likeness to one another, but are very imperfect representations of the originals.

If however, notwithstanding these observations, we can suppose any people in the world to have retained the use of the same language so completely, that a book written nearly a thousand years ago, could be still read to the people by their priests and teachers, so as to be understood by the audience, the people selected to illustrate this permanence of language could not be the Israelites, who, as we have seen in former chapters, went through most remarkable and continual vicissitudes.

I shall devote the present chapter to an inquiry into the origin of the Art of Writing, and especially of Alphabetic writing, by the help of which alone we have obtained almost all the knowledge that we possess both of former times and of our own species.

The art of writing is the most noble that mankind have yet acquired. It enables persons residing in remote quarters of the world, to communicate their thoughts to one another with no more delay than the time necessary for transmitting the vehicle to which those thoughts are

consigned. It also furnishes the means of handing down the history of past ages to the most distant posterity, and so of accumulating, for the benefit of each succeeding generation, all the wisdom which their predecessors have laid up.

Yet the origin of this art, so wonderful for its results, and so useful to mankind in the daily business of life, is utterly lost in obscurity, though it has been often investigated with all that profound sagacity of which men are capable, when they apply the powers of their intellect to a specific subject of enquiry.

It is perhaps vain to hope that it will ever be discovered to whom mankind is indebted for the invention of this wonderful art: because, the name of the inventor not having been recorded, no stretch of intellect can supply the absence of what is evidently a matter of fact, until some fresh documents shall be discovered, which may help us to elucidate the difficulty.

It has been maintained by some authors that the art of alphabetic writing was first given to mankind by an immediate revelation from God. Among those who hold this theory may be mentioned Dr Wall, the learned professor of Hebrew at the University of Dublin. In a work* published within a few years on this subject, he has propounded an opinion that the knowledge of Alphabetical Characters was first communicated by God, through Moses, to the Israelites at the time of the promulgation of the Hebrew Law. And the learned author lays for the basis of this conclusion the fact that the inhabitants of Egypt,

* An examination of the ancient orthography of the Jews, and of the original state of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Part the First, containing an Inquiry into the origin of Alphabetic Writing; with which is incorporated an essay on the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. By C. W. Wall, D. D. senior fellow of Trinity College, and professor of Hebrew in the University of Dublin, Royal 8vo London 1835.

where alone the Israelites could, by human means, have previously learnt the art of alphabetic writing, did not possess that art, until long after Moses and the delivery of the Law. I accept the premises which the learned professor has laid down, and with much learning established, but I deny his conclusion, because a better and more rational conclusion seems to follow, namely that the Hebrew law was not given by Moses, in alphabetic writing, at all.

If then we reject the theory, that alphabetic writing was given by immediate revelation to mankind, this art must be supposed to have proceeded from the natural talents of the human race gradually, from small beginnings, elaborating the invention until it has at length attained to its present state of perfection. It remains to be shewn that existing facts strongly corroborate this view, and that no other view is compatible with these facts.

There can be little doubt [says the author of the Celtic Researches] that the primitive ages possessed some means, beside oral tradition, of recording and perpetuating their several branches of knowledge, but respecting the nature of these means, we are left some what in the dark. It is universally allowed that no human device could have answered this purpose better than alphabetic writing. PAGE 34.

But it is not necessary that this art should have existed in several of the ancient nations; for

In the back settlements of America we find men accommodated like savages, but informed as members of civil society; and in ancient authors we read of sages, of no mean fame, residing amongst rude and barbarous nations. CELTIC RES. p. 114.

The art of writing, however excellent, is no more than one of the numerous arts by which the life of man is embellished and improved, and it is possible for a people to attain to a high state of advancement in many respects, whilst its individuals may be able neither to read nor write.

We are too apt to attach the idea of barbarism to those who are ignorant of the art of reading and writing, forgetting that some of our own kings, and almost all our nobility in former times, knew nothing of either the one or the other. Perhaps a just idea of this subject may be formed by saying that a nation ignorant of the use of letters, can progress in civilization only to that point which the life of one man can attain to, because the use of letters alone can enable a nation to store up the successive and accumulated wisdom of several lives.*

Yet if we take the most simple and untutored people that History has made us acquainted with, we shall find that they have some mode of conveying their thoughts, analogous, though infinitely inferior, to alphabetic writing.

The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters, and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes languid and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this impor tant truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries, whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses, but very little, his fellow-labourer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties, The same, and even a greater, difference will be found between nations than between individuals, and we may safely pronounce, that without some species of writing, no people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life. GIBBON, chap. ix, vol. I, p. 352 of the 12 vol. edit. Lon

don 18.2.

Tacitus, Germ. ii, 19. Literarum secreta viri pariter ac fœminæ ignorant. We may rest contented with this decisive authority, without entering into the obscure disputes concerning the antiquity of the Runic characters. The learned Celsius, a Swede, a scholar, and a philosopher, was of opinion, that they were nothing more than the Roman letters, with the curves changed into straight lines for the ease of engraving. See Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, 1. ii, c. 11. Dictionaire Diplomatique, tom. 1, p. 223. We may add, that the oldest Runic inscriptions are supposed to be of the third century, and the most ancient writer who mentions the Runic characters is Venantius Fortunatus (Carm. vii, 18.), who lived towards the end of the sixth century.