VOICE ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 489 



lar words might be added from our own language. Ecrire, formerly 

 escrire, the French for " to write," is from the Latin scribere; and, 

 anciently, a kind of style was used for tracing the letters in wax; which 

 instrument, by a like analogy, was called, by the Greeks, <jxapi$oj. M. 

 de Brosses 1 accounts for these, by supposing, that the teeth, being the 

 most immovable of the organic apparatus of the voice, the firmest of, 

 what he calls the dental letters, T, has been mechanically employed to 

 denote stability; and to denote hollowness, the K or C has been 

 adopted, which are produced in the throat, the most hollow of the 

 vocal organs. The letter S serves, he conceives, merely as an augmen- 

 tative; as the sound can, by its addition, be made continuous. It is 

 itself, however, a letter expressive of softness, when combined, as we 

 have seen, with certain other consonants; or when employed alone at 

 the commencement of a word. 



In the same manner, the letters fl are used tp designate the motion 

 of fluids more especially, as in the Greek, $>ju>t, a flame ; $te^, a vein ; 

 ^teytQuv, a burning river in the infernal regions: in the Latin, flamma, 

 flame; fluo, I flow; flatus, wind; fluctus, wave, &c. : in the German, 

 floss en, to float; f lot en, to play on the flute; flu as, a river; 

 f lug, flight, &c.; and in the French and English words of the same 

 meaning. Lastly, the idea of roughness and asperity is conveyed by the 

 letter r, as in the words rough, rude, rock, romp, &c. How different, 

 for example, in smoothness are the two following lines, in which the S 

 predominates, from those that succeed them, where the R frequently, 

 and perhaps designedly, occurs: 



" Softly sweet in Lydian measures, 

 Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures ;" 



And: 



" Now strike the golden lyre again, 

 A louder yet, and yet a louder strain ; 

 Break his bands of sleep asunder ; 

 And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder." 



DRTDEN'S " Mexander^s Feast" 



The foregoing remarks, suggested by those of Wallis and M. de Bros- 

 ses, must not, however, be received too absolutely. In the condition in 

 which we find languages at the present day, it would be impossible that 

 they should hold good universally ; but they will tend to show, that the 

 physiology of the voice is intimately connected with this part of philo- 

 logy; and that the sounds emitted by the agency of particular parts of 

 the vocal tube, may have led to the first employment of those sounds, 

 according to the precise idea it may have been desired to convey; 

 gutturals, for example, for sounds conveying the notion of hollowness: 

 resisting dentals, that of obstacles, &c. The words mamma and papa 

 are composed of a vowel and consonant, which are the easiest of enun- 

 ciation ; and which the child, consequently, pronounces and unites 

 earlier than any other. Hence they have become the infantile appella- 

 tions for mother and father with many nations. President de Brosses 2 

 affirms and he has brought forward numerous examples to prove his 

 position that in all ages, and in every country, a labial, or, in default 



*0p. cit.,i.261. 9 Op. cit., i. 244. 



