VOL. XXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TBANS ACTIONS. 231 



leaner, and make use of more jugations and abreviations than usually others 

 did. And this is the only account that I can give, for that variety of hands 

 which in former ages, being learned of, or borrowed from the Romans, was 

 commonly used, and in fashion at the same time, and in the same country, 

 throughout these western parts of Europe, and for their growing less and less 

 for one age after another. An instance of this may be given from the hands 

 of England, which about the year of our Lord 730 were of three sorts. 



]. The Roman capitals, still retained, and kept up by the antiquarii, in some 

 books and charters. 2. The more set Saxon letters (which have a near affinity 

 with the more ancient Irish characters, as being with them derived from the 

 Roman,) which were used as the common hand of the age, by the monks in 

 their books, and some charters of their dictating and writing. 3. The running 

 Saxon letters, fuller of abbreviations, and something of kin to the Longbardic 

 and Franco- Gallic, (both which, with this third sort, were also of Roman ori- 

 gin,) and was used by these librarii in their books and in the charters ; as also 

 by some authors who wrote much, as Bede, &c. 



There was another sort of book-writers still in use, namely, the notarii, 

 whose business it was to take trials and pleadings at courts of Judicature; to 

 write as amanuenses from the mouth of an author ; and to take homilies and 

 sermons at church, from the mouth of the preacher. These notarii made use 

 of notae or marks instead of letters: but when, in process of time, letters 

 were usually written small and quick, and abbreviations grew common, tbq 

 notarii were turned off, unless they would write books in long- hand, as other 

 librarii did, and their notse grew out of use ; and most of their performances in 

 notes or marks have been since destroyed. 



Suppose then that a man had one Latin book of each of the four sorts above- 

 mentioned laid before him, written all at a time, and without any date or notq 

 of the age : would not he be ready to say that the tirst three were older than 

 each other.* As that in capitals was older than that in the middling hand; and 

 this again older than that in the running and smaller hand ? and that such a 

 book written in the notae being all full of marks, was not Latin, but of some 

 other unknown language? But to come down later; suppose that a person 

 should have some more recent books or charters laid before him in the pipe, 

 text, exchequer, chancery, court, and common hands, all written at the same 

 time, would he not be apt to say, that one seemed to him to be older than an- 

 other, and that they were the hands of several nations? 



If it be difficult then for an inquisitive person to be a perfect master in all the 

 successions of hands, that have been used in his own country, so far as he may 

 be guided by the monuments extant in it, (and I never heard of any man that 



