VOL. XLV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 531 



horizontal, the perpendicular, and the acute, and grave (if I may so call them); 

 it is manifest, by inspection, that from these 4 directions there will arise, at 

 least, 8 curvilinear characters, as each of the straight ones admits distinctly of 

 2 opposite curves ; and there is no absolute necessity that any of them should be 

 always semicircular; a shape that, for the most commodious combination of 

 simple characters, is in fact much oftner inconvenient than otherwise. 



The alphabet then of simple characters may be fairly enlarged by one third ; 

 and room be also left for the fancy of an inventor to extend it farther, if he 

 should find it convenient on the whole. He says on the whole ; for the worst 

 short-hand may happen to express a few particular words better than the best ; 

 and arbitrary marks for words or sentences may be often shorter than regular 

 ones : but this is no inducement to write, in one case, by a bad method, and in 

 the other by none at all. 



Another oversight in this plan is the neglect of beauty and linearity ; though 

 the simplicity of its character does not perhaps admit of such enormous scrawling 

 as others may. For, to instance again in the specimen ; suppose the mark for 

 the word temptation, which expresses a vast variety of different combinations of 

 consonants, to be limited, by a previous knowledge of the language, to that 

 word only, yet after all it is a very auk ward one ; and ought, by a common 

 short-hand rule of leaving out such consonants as are not sounded (as the p is 

 not in temptation) to have been formed in another manner, wherein the beauty 

 and linearity, and of course the brevity of the mark, would have been pre- 

 served. 



In short, this gentleman set out on right principles, which many hap-hazard 

 undertakers have but little considered ; but he had not leisure enough perhaps to 

 examine them to the bottom ; as was the case with Dr. Green of Cambridge (he 

 that wrote the Greenian Philosophy, as he calls it), who formed a short-hand for 

 his own private use, on much the same plan and principles. He gave Mr. B. 

 one of his sermons in it ; and on suggestion of the advantages that he might have 

 taken, he said, that for want of time to consider of his scheme more thoroughly, 

 when he first adopted it, he had overlooked them. 



A perfect short-hand, Mr. B. supposes, would be a solution of some such 

 problem as this : " A language being given, to assign the most compendious 

 method of expressing it readily, and legibly, by an alphabet, and rules, the best 

 adapted to that purpose." 



This gentleman proceeds no farther than to make an alphabet for his plan ; * 

 but, he must be sensible that were it ever so complete a one, many compendious 



* Mr. Jeake only offers hi> plan as the mere elements of a short-hand, leaving it to practitioner* 

 to build upon his foundation, as they shall judge necessary from practice : he retains the » because 

 it often stands tor v or ve or w. — Orig. 



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