Particularly of the LETTER $ 1 F M A. 115 



the more commodious method of writing which was afterwards 

 invented. 



In whatever part of the world, or at whatever time, the ufe 

 of letters took its origin, (for I do not mean at prefent to enter 

 upon that inquiry *), it cannot be denied that it is one of the 

 moll admirable of all human inventions. That we fhould be 

 able, by means of twenty-four vifible characters, to denote 

 the various thoughts of our minds, uttered by articulate founds, 

 fo as not only to convey them to perfons abfent and at a di- 

 ftance, but even to tranfmit them to poflerity, nrnft, if it did 

 not, as fome fuppofe, proceed immediately from the Deity, be 

 conudered as the moft eminent of all the improvements which 

 human art has yet made of thofe powers which he has been 

 pleafed to beftow upon our fpecies f . 



P 2 Indeed, 



tablet. We have no authority to tranflate o-^xrcc, Letters, or y^a.-\>xg, having written, 

 as is generally done. Indeed, no where in the poems of Homer, do we find any part of 

 the fimple verb yj«p», except here, and in the 599th line of the 17th book, of the Iliad, 

 where ypd^nv occurs ; and there it fignifies to wound, or to make an incijion, being applied 

 to what the fpear of Polydamas did to Penelaus the Boeotian. Its compound l^i^a^a/ 

 indeed is found four or five times, and always fignifies to raze or g raze the (kin with the 

 point of a weapon. But neither y^dfift* nor r«*x^ a1 ' are to be met with in Homer, nor 

 does he any where make mention of Letters or writing by any terms whatever. For 

 duct, which occurs fo often, can fcarcely ever be faid to fignify what we mean by a Letter: 

 And hence an argument has been adduced, though not by any means a decifiveone, againft 

 Homer's knowledge of the art of writing, or the ufe of letters. But this is an invefti- 

 gation which cannot properly be introduced in a note. See what the late Mr Robert 

 Wood has written upon this fubjecl in the laft fedlion of his EJ/ay on the original Genius 

 cf Homer. Lond. 1775. 4to. 



* See a fhort but elegant Differtation, printed at the conclufion of the 2d Vol. of 

 Havercamp's Sylloge Scriptorum qui de Ling. Grcec. vera et reBd pronuntiatione commen- 

 taries reliquerunt, entitled, De Fanicum Literis, &c. Guillielmo Postello Barentonio 

 auilore. See alfo Harris's Hermes, Book III. ch. 2. 



f " La communication des pensees par l'Ecriture, n'eft gueres moins admirable que 

 *' celle qui fe fait par la Parole. Ce ne fut apparemment qu'apres bien des meditations 

 " et des effais multiplies, que degoute des difficultes, des equivoques, des obfeurites, des 

 w bornes trop etroites de l'ecriture hieroglyphique, l'inventeur de l'ecriture litterale re- 



" connut 



