184 



observable, that he adopted at least the principle on which 

 those prior alphabets were formed ; — rejecting their charac- 

 ters, either on account of some difficulty in applying them 

 to a language requiring very different powers to designate 

 its sounds ; or perhaps from the vanity of encountering 

 greater difficulties, and a wish to be considered an original 

 inventor. Yet any man's ambition ought to be sufficiently 

 gratified by the mere act of bestowing so inappreciable a 

 gift upon his nation. What would not the Chinese owe to 

 the individual, who could persuade their government to en- 

 courage the use of our characters, in place of that cumber- 

 some and unmanageable machinery, which, if not the sole, 

 has been the principal obstacle to their progress in the fine 

 arts, literature, and science, the cultivation of the mind, 

 and the intellectual embellishment of society. 



It may be said that what has been done once may be 

 done again. But so many circumstances must have con- 

 curred in the discovery of alphabetic writing, even in the 

 simplified view we have been considering, that it seems to 

 present, at least, one obstacle to the general application of the 

 remark. If there be any plausdoility in the process I have 

 detailed, we can scarcely suppose that a plurality of indivi- 

 duals could have arisen in different ages and nations, quali- 

 fied for the accomplishment of such a task ; — all of them poets 

 — all producing poems worthy, at least in their own estima- 

 tion, of descending to after ages — all eager and enthusiastic 

 to find a certain and permanent record for their verses : — 



