52 ACCOUNT OF A BOY 



tion Dalgarno, and the more, because Dr Wilkins's own 

 name is printed in the margin of King Charles II.'s letter pre- 

 fixed to Dalgarno's book, as one of those who informed his 

 Majesty of Dalgarno's design, and approved it, as a thing that 

 might be of singular use to facilitate an intercourse between 

 people of different languages ; which prevailed with his Majes- 

 ty to grant his said letters of recommendation to so many, of 

 his subjects, especially of the Clergy, as were sensible of the 

 defectuousness of art in. this particular." Biog. Britan. Art. 



WiLKINS *.. 



That Dalgarno's suggestions with respect to the Education 

 of the Dumb, were not altogether useless to Dr Wallis, will, 

 I think, be readily admitted by those who take the trouble to 

 compare his letter to Mr Beverly (published eighteen years 

 after Dalgarno's treatise) with his Tractatus de Loquela, pu- 

 blished in 1653. In this letter some valuable remarks are to 

 be found on the method of leading the dumb to the significa- 

 tion of words ; and yet, the name of Dalgarno is not once 

 mentioned to his correspondent. 



If some of the details and digressions in this note should be 

 censured, as foreign to the principal design of the foregoing 

 memoir, I can only plead in excuse, my anxiety to do justice, 



even 



* In Grainger's Biographical" History of England, mention is made of a still 

 earlier publication than the Ars Signorum, entitled, " The Universal Character, 

 by which all Nations in the World may understand one another's conceptions, 

 reading out of one common Writing their own Tongue. By Cave Beck, Rec- 

 tor of St Helen's, in Ipswich, 1657." This book I have never seen. 



Thename-of Dalgarno (or Dalgarus, as it has been sometimes written) is 

 not altogether unknown, on the Continent. His Ars Signorum is alluded to by 

 Leibnitz on various occasions, and also by Fontenelle in the Eloge of Leib- 

 nitz. His ideas with respect to the education of the Dumb, do not seem 

 to have attracted any notice whatever. The truth is, they were much too 

 refined and enlightened to be duly appretiated at the period when he wrote. 



