Feb. 26, 1880] 



NATURE 



405 



the alphabet of these inscriptions is the oldest alphabet of 

 which we know. The forms of the characters in it bear 

 so close a resemblance to those on the Moabite Stone as 

 to justify us in concluding that the parent-alphabet from 

 which those of Thera and of Mo.ib were both derived, 

 was the same, and that the date of the inscriptions of 

 Thera was not far distant from that of the inscription of 

 King Mesha. In this case the alphabet would have been 

 introduced into Greece in the ninth century 13. C. 



The Greeks themselves believed that the old Phoe- 

 nician colony in Boeotian Thebes was the source and 

 centre from which the alphabet was spread throughout 

 the country. Kadmus, "the Eastern," for such is the 

 meaning of his name, was its mythical inventor, though 

 later legends told how the crafty Palamedes and the poet 

 Simonides subsequently added fresh letters. But these 

 legends are all the fables of the literary age ; the kernel 

 of truth they contain is the fact that the Greek alphabet 

 came from Phoenicia. It is a fact, indeed, to which the 

 word alphabet itself still bears witness ; alphabet, or 

 alpha, beta, the two first letters of the alphabet, are 

 both, as we have seen, Phoenician words. 



It would be tedious and unnecessary to follow out the 

 fortunes of the alphabet when once it had made good its 

 settlement on European soil. The forms, and in some 

 cases the values, of the characters gradually changed, 

 and many of them underwent particular modifications in 

 different parts of the Greek world. A little practice 

 enables us at once to determine, by merely looking at 

 the forms of the letters, to what special branch of the 

 Greek race an inscription belongs. 



Like the Phoenicians before them, the Greeks repaid 

 the benefit they had received by handing on their alpha- 

 bet to nations still further west. The Greek colonies in 

 Sicily and Southern Italy being mostly of Doric descent, 

 brought with them the Doric alphabet, and accordingly 

 the natives of Southern Italy, when they first began to 

 write, used the Doric alphabet of their Greek neighbours. 

 Hence it is that the Latins and ourselves after them 

 attach a tail to the letter R, which was wanting in the 

 old alphabet of Phoenicia ; hence, too, we have inherited 

 from the Romans the letter O, which had been lost in all 

 the Greek alphabets except that of Dorian origin. On the 

 other hand, the Etruscans, that mysterious people of 

 Northern Italy, who exercised so profound an influence 

 upon the infant civilisation of Rome, learnt the art of 

 moulding and decorating vnses from the potters of Athens, 

 and since the latter were in the habit of inscribing the 

 names of the gods and heroes they depicted above the 

 representations of them the Etruscans learnt at the same 

 time the Old Attic or Ionic alphabet. We neel only- 

 place the alphabets of Etruria and Athens side by side to 

 be convinced of this fact. R, for instance, is represented 

 in both by the tailless P, we look in vain in both for a Q, 

 and the two distinct symbols that once stood for the 

 gutturals c and k are amalgamated into one. Alphabets, 

 like words, if rightly questioned, can be made to tell their 

 own history as well as that of the people who employed 

 them. 



The alphabets of Western Europe are the lineal 

 descendants of that of Rome. Our capital letters are 

 identical with those inscribed on the monuments of the 

 Eternal City, and we can trace by the help of contem- 

 poraneous documents the successive changes which have 

 transformed these capitals into the smaller type of the 

 printing-press or the letters of our running-hand. Thus 

 A became f\^, ^, a on the one side, and A , a on the 

 other, while b and b can be followed back to B through 

 the intermediate stages ^, ^, j^, L- , and b. 



But in borrowing or deriving an alphabet from another 

 people one great difficulty has always to be encountered. 

 The pronunciation of no two peoples is exactly the same, 

 nay, generally speaking, it differs very widely. Consequently 



the sounds attached by the one people to the letters of 

 their alphabet will not in all cases agree with those 

 attached to the eame letters by the other. It will often 

 happen, moreover, that sounds will be wanting in one 

 language which are common in another. In borrowing 

 an alphabet, therefore, it will be necessary to do more 

 than simply transfer it ; it must be adapted just as the 

 pronunciation of French words like Paris or Marseilles 

 has been adapted to the genius of English pronunciation. 

 New sounds have to be given to the old letters, new 

 letters have to be invented or formed out of old ones, 

 while some of the old letters may be dropped altogether. 

 It is not often, however, that an alphabet has been 

 adopted and adapted in so scientific a manner as to make 

 it express even approximately all the varieties of sound 

 peculiar to the language of the borrowers. Generally 

 speaking, the adaptation has been of a rough-and-ready 

 kind, and those who use it have been contented if the 

 words they utter are made fairly intelligible when written 

 in it. Often, too, the alphabet has not been consciously 

 and deliberately introduced among an illiterate people or 

 a race which has hitherto employed a different mode of 

 writing. Most of our West-European alphabets have 

 gradually grown into what they are through the slowly- 

 working force of time and circumstances and the succes- 

 sive attempts of individuals to improve them. We cannot 

 say, for instance, with any real truth, that our English 

 alphabet has been borrowed and adapted in the same 

 sense in which it has itself been borrowed and adapted 

 for representing the sounds of a Polynesian dialect. From 

 the time that it was first introduced into these islands 

 under the form of the so-called Anglo-Saxon alphabet it 

 has had a continuous history, a history of slow and some- 

 times almost imperceptible change and development, 

 which, if allowed to have gone on without check and 

 hindrance, wo-ld have resulted in a tolerably serviceable 

 instrument for representing and recording our words. 

 But unfortunately its natural development was suddenly 

 checked nearly 400 years ago by the invention of printing. 

 The necessities of the printing-press stereotyped the 

 alphabet and spelling of the time with all their imperfec- 

 tions, and, what is more, stereotyped the pronunciation of 

 words which that spelling endeavoured to symbolise. It 

 was in vain that a healthy spirit of independence long 

 continued to prevail among that large section of educated 

 Englishmen who were neither printers, authors, nor 

 schoolmasters, and that as late as the end of the last 

 century- it was considered no disgrace for a cultivated 

 member of the aristocracy- to spell in any way he might 

 think fit. We have only to examine the original manu- 

 scripts left by some of the most distinguished Englishmen 

 of the eighteenth century to discover that they were still 

 able to assert the .liberty of private spelling against the 

 tyranny of the printing-press. 



For a language and its pronunciation must change from 

 generation to generation in spite of all the efforts of 

 printers and pedants to put them into a straight waistcoat. 

 We have only to use our ears to perceive that the pronun- 

 ciation of cultivated English is even at the present moment 

 slowly but surely undergoing alteration. I wonder how 

 many here this evening still cling like myself to the old 

 pronunciation of either and neither, and have not yet 

 passed over to the ever-multiplying camp of those who 

 change the pure vow-el of the first syllable into a diph- 

 thong, or agree with the poet-laurate in accenting can- 

 template and retinue after the fashion of our grandfathers? 

 So long as a language lives it must grow and change like 

 a living organism, and until this fact is recognised by our 

 schoolmasters, our boys will never realise the true nature 

 of the language they speak and the grammar they learn 

 in childhood. The change that has passed over the 

 pronunciation of English since the days of Shakspeare is 

 greater than can be easily conceived. Were he to come 

 to life again among us, the English that we speak would 



