52 ACCOUNT OF A BOY 



tion Dalgarmo, and the more, because Dr Wilkins's own 

 name is printed in the margin of King Charles IL's letter pre- 

 fixed to Dalgarno's book, as one of those who informed his 

 JNIajestj of Dalgarno's design, and approved it, as a thing that 

 miaht be of singular use to facihtate an intercourse between 

 people of different languages; which prevailed with his Majes- 

 ty to grant his said letters oi' recommendation to so many of 

 his subjects, especially of the Clergy, as were sensible of the 

 defectuousness of art in this particular." Biog. Britan. Art. 



WiLKINS *. 



That Dalgarno's suggestions with respect to the Education 

 of the Dumb, were not altogether useless to Dr Wallis, will, 

 I think, be readily admitted by those who take the trouble to 

 compare his letter to i\Ir Beverly (published eighteen years 

 after Dalgarno's treatise) with his Tractatus de Loquela, pu- 

 blished in 1653. In this letter some valuable remarks are to 

 be found on the method of leading the dumb to the significa- 

 tion of words ; and yet, the name of Dalgarno is not once 

 mentioned to his correspondent. 



If some of the details and digressions in this note should be 

 censured, as foreign to the principal design of tlie foregoing 

 memoir, I can only plead in excuse, my anxiety to do justice, 



even 



• In Grainger's Biographical' History of England, mention is made of a still 

 earlier publication than the Ars Signoriim, entitled, " The Universal Character, 

 by which all Nations in the World may understand one anotlier's conceptions, 

 reading out of one common Writing their own Tongue. By Cave Bbck, Rec- 

 tor of St Helen's, in Ipswich, 1657." This book I have never seen. 



The nameof Dalgarno (or Dalgarus, as it has been sometimes written) is 

 not altogether unknown on the Continent. His Ars Signorum. is alluded to by 

 Leibnitz on various occasions, and also by Fontenelle in the Elogc of Leib- 

 nitz. His ideas with respect to the education of the Dumb, do not seem 

 to have attracted any notice whatever. The truth is, they were miich too 

 refined and enligliteued to be duly appretiated at the period when he wrote. 



