Alphabetical Characters. 113 
teen letters, four were afterwards added by 
Palamedes, and four others by Simonides.* 
During the period which intervened between 
the first of these improvements and the se- 
cond, the poems of Hesiod and Homer ap- 
pear to have been composed; yet in these 
works as we have them handed down to us at 
present we discover no traces of this imper- 
fect alphabet; and the reason is obvious. 
After the improvement was introduced, they 
were again transcribed according to the new 
systems, and the older copies, written at a 
time when the art was in a less perfect state, 
were neglected, and, through the perishable 
nature of the materials, finally lost. The 
works of Moses may very possibly have un- 
dergone a similar process; and indeed, if the 
authority of the Greek historians can be relied 
upon, when they assert that letters were im- 
ported into Greece from Phenicia, it becomes 
extremely probable that the Hebrew alphabet 
itself did not at that time contain more than 
sixteen characters, and therefore that this was 
actually the case. 
On the whole then, ona eirehe review of 
the foregoing arguments, I find myself under 
a necessity of believing that the art of al- 
* Plin. Lib. vii. ¢. 57. 
VOL. III. P 
