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synoninious. The meaning might still be certain, though 

 not so precise as if sounds had been represented by those 

 characters; yet there could not be that strong necessity for 

 the signs of sounds, which would be sufficient to instigate 

 the mind to labour after so profound and recondite a disco- 

 very. What then, it may be asked, could create this strong 

 necessity? — I reply, in a word, Poetry — and Poetry alone. 



Circumstances may be picturesque and ideas poetical, but 

 thjgy do not constitute poetry, unless they are clad in the 

 language of the Muses. The harmonious flow of sounds is 

 the very essence of a poem; and to fix and consohdate 

 their volatile and evanescent nature, to give them stability 

 and render them permanent, can only be accomplished by 

 marks which represent them ; and not by the symbols of ideas, 

 or the pictures of things. Hieroglyphics, or the improved 

 characters to which Hieroglyphics in the first instance gave 

 birth, could never have become the record of an Iliad 6t 

 Mneid. — An alphabet was necessary to preserve them'for suc- 

 ceeding ages. — Nay, withouf an alphabet, they would' pef- 

 haps have perished during the very life of the poet Avho 

 produced them ; or possibly the most admired of his epis- 

 odes would have continued their ephemeral existence, only 

 so long as his memory could retain theni. Let us then ima- 

 gine a Homer, a Virgil, or a Milton, carried away by hi^ 

 sublime conceptions and the melody by which he gate them 

 utterance — satisfied that they were worthy to excite emci- 

 tions of delight and wonder in the latest posterity, yet pef- 



