THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE ART OF WRITING. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF WRITING. HE Art of Writing and its progress, superficially considered, may ap THE pear a trivial subject for investigation. Indeed, carelessly viewed, its study would merely seem to consist in the minute examination of the inscribed entries in the ledger of some London merchant, and accurately noting their superiority in flowing freedom and general neatness over those in the accountbooks of his ancestor, written a century ago. One might fancy, without due reflection, that such a comparison would, at all events, form an important link in the history of the art of writing; and, with such a conception of the subject, it would doubtless present a very dry and barren aspect. Even if, greatly extending the sphere of our observations, we should attentively examine a well-arranged series of autographs, of recent, and even medieval periods, and carefully define the progress writing has made since the time of Richard II. (the first Anglo-Norman monarch who could write his name) down to our own day, we might find, it is true, some interest in tracing the gradual transition from the stiff Gothic characters of the Plantagenet, through various shades of progression, towards the dashing flow of the handwriting of the last note laid, fresh from the post, upon our library table, yet our notion of the history of writing, or its origin, would still remain restricted within very narrow compass; for by such a course of observation we should not have acquired a single positively new idea respecting the first invention of that wonderful art, now the possession of every school-boy, but the origination and perfecting of which required the successive labours of succeeding generations thousands of years to accomplish. The world has now possessed a purely alphabetic system of writing for three thousand years or more, and iconographic systems more than three thousand years longer; so that not only over those long periods must we travel, B but even farther back, to detect and examine the primeval efforts which eventually resulted in the development of those strictly alphabetic characters, by means of which every sound of spoken language may be reduced to unmistakeable written signs, and every shade of thought reduced to the form of a permanent inscribed record; a result which, when rightly considered, must be deemed one of the sublimest conquests of intellectual progress, and the great motive power of all future advances in the path of general civilisation. Aristotle remarks that letters are the marks of words, as words themselves are marks of thoughts; and the distinction between language and writing— between the art of conveying ideas by speech or by letters-has also been neatly expressed by St. Augustine, who says: Signa sunt verba visibilia verba signa audibilia: "Letters are visible words-words, audible signs." Writing, as multiplied by the printing-press, is the light which photographs, as it were, every step of human progress, in signs remaining visible and intelligible to all future generations; preserving and extending every branch of knowledge, and daily carrying the thoughts of the wisest into regions where knowledge had never penetrated. It is a light whose rays are continually spreading, and which will continue to spread, till the whole earth is illuminated by it. Ignorance flies before the effulgence of the ideas it conveys, in vain endeavouring to take refuge in the everywhere decreasing darkness, and its constant companions, prejudice and superstition, are everywhere retreating without the possibility of return; this miracle is being wrought by the sole agency of an art, the habitual use of which disguises its giant power, and deprives it, to a superficial observer, of its really deep interest and importance. Change, of mighty import, is being daily wrought through the medium of the art which we simply and coolly term "writing," without staying to reflect that the examination of its origin, its earliest development, and eventual progress to completeness, open to us one of the most interesting and important fields of investigation that the story of man's intellectual progress affords. The names of the first men who were fortunately able to make use of this engine in a form intelligible to future generations, and thus to embalm their highest thoughts, and record the great events of their time, and, as it were, speak to posterity, are, even now, those that stand highest in our memories of the past. Greater thoughts may have been conceived before them and after them, even by greater minds; but it is the earliest human thoughts thus rendered perennial by the sublime invention of writing that will ever occupy the first place. The words of their precursors passed away with the winds to which they were spoken; but the earliest human ideas that have reached us, wonderfully preserved by a few conventional signs-those of Homer, of Moses, of Hesiod, of Herodotus-are those which our race will ever look upon with fervent veneration. These men were the first who mastered the power (or their admirers for them) of transmitting the highest thoughts of their time to our time, through the medium of written signs. Their thoughts, preserved in the mystic signs of a hieroglyphic or alphabetic system of writing, have reached us in all the purity and grandeur of their antique simplicity, unsullied (as mere traditions would have been) by the long dark ages of ignorance and misrule through which they have passed; and such relics of the wisdom, of the thoughts, of the very words of those great elders of our race, form noble illustrations of the value of the art by means of which they have been preserved. What are our great modern inventions-our clocks, our railways, our electric telegraphs-to such a power as this, simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages? It is true the skilfully elaborated chronometer may, by measuring time with curious accuracy, lend powerful aid to the most important scientific discoveries; but without the art of writing to record them, they would be lost as fast as achieved. The railway simply annihilates space, and the electric telegraph outstrips its speed, and even conveys language to the furthest corners of the earth with the swiftness of lightning. It could be made to speak to the antipodes in a few seconds, as easily as it now speaks from London to Paris; but it can only speak with its contemporaries, it cannot speak to futurity; this high privilege is reserved for the art of writing, which can speak on to "Ages yet unborn, in accents yet unknown;" for with a true phonetic alphabet all languages may be written, and by its means a continuous chain of human thought will be extended to future races of men, when railways and telegraphs may have disappeared before appliances of science more perfect and more true-the result of the written thoughts of succeeding discoverers. it Seeing, then, the vast importance and unlimited power of the wonderful art we possess; the priceless legacy of earlier labourers in the field of progress; must surely be deeply interesting to trace its origin, its earliest rude and feeble steps, its subsequent extension in various phases, and the eventual but gradual development of a perfect phonetic alphabet, by means of which every word of every language, every inflexion of which the human voice is capable, may be noted down with the same accuracy and facility as the seven musical tones of the diatonic scale of music. So important was this step deemed among human arts by men who lived in times nearer to those of its first accomplishment, and ere the wonder of its extraordinary powers was blunted by long possession and common use, that its invention was invariably attributed to miracles, divine inspiration, or other supernatural sources; and the Egyptians, the Chinese, and even the Greeks, had all their mythological legends respecting the manner in which the gift was mysteriously conferred upon man. But the principles of modern investigation seek other sources for the origin of knowledge than mythological fables, however closely interwoven with the history, religion, and progress of peoples; and the results of modern enterprise and discovery have enabled us to take a |