EE 
OF THE PHONETIC ALPHABET. 89 
“the first prose writers, or rather the first WRITERS,” has quickened 
our scepticism in the pursuit of remote truths, and left us to conjec- 
ture that the sublime flights of Homer and Orpheus are rather col- 
lations from, than the creations of, those early associated names. The 
odes and hymns of the «3 (aoidoi, or singers) might have circulated 
through Greece traditionally many centuries (not, indeed, in the li- 
teral attire under which they still continue to charm) prior to their 
collation and arrangement by the master hands that have appropri- 
ated them ; and the poetic and parallel attempt of Macpherson in an 
enlightened age will sanction such a hypothesis. But the niche of 
time in which those fathers of song have been placed is anterior to 
authentic history, and was as much the subject of conjecture to those 
who arbitrarily assigned them their chronological periods as to the 
learned of our own times. From Herodotus, who recited his history 
at the Olympic games, 445 years B.c. (according to the compilers), 
and from the cyclic poets, all anterior chronologies have been ar- 
ranged; and some pains have been taken, in the beginning of these 
remarks, to point out the particular authorities on which our know- 
ledge of ancient dates is founded. 
The opinion of Dr. Gillies is startling to those who have fondly 
rested upon the received chronologists, and the letters of the afflicted 
Cadmus,*° (1400 s.c.) the Orphean lyre,5° and the epic of Homer, 
adopted, both in private and publicly ; first for mercantile transactions, and 
subsequently for the publication of laws and cosmogonies, &c. 
2° Cadmus is said to have introduced letfers into Greece from Phcenicia, 
1400 z.c. It is, however, incomprehensible that the phonetic letter should 
have so long existed amongst such a people, nor have awaked the written 
song of the poet, or inspired the plume of the historian. We are sustained, 
however, by history in our opinion that a sacred or hieroglyphic letter existed 
in Greece as well as in Egypt at that time. Orpheus, Muszeus, Deedalus, 
Homer, and other eminent Greeks, are said to have learned the sciences of 
the Egyptians; and Manetho, according to Eusebius, expressly speaks of the 
doctrines of Hermes on the Seriadic columns as sounvevbciowy mere TOU KATA 
waAvowoy ex Tas itods dimreeTe ey av EAAnda Quvny yeuppucw seeoyroginols.— 
“ Having been translated, after the flood, out of the sacred dialect, into the 
Grecian language, in hieroglyphic writing.” 
°° There is no work of Orpheus, or of Musczeus, or of Linus, extant, and 
Vossius considers them “ non fuisse,” not to have existed. The fabulous pre- 
sumption of Thamyras and Marsyas, of Dzedalus and Melampus, consigns 
them to the regions of the gods, as “lords of the manor” of all that is imagi- 
nary (as Bishop Cumberland pleasantly concludes) and of all that is absurd and 
improbable. Our opinion of Homer’s works may be collected from the text. 
His name is known to all, but belongs to none; and if its proprietor existed 
he never laid claim to a period in time or a place on earth. 
VOL’ IX., NO, XXV. 12 
