We may easily understand the nature of these phenomena by asking a few questions, which, however hypothetical they may be, will well illustrate the bearings of the facts under notice. "What" (let us ask) "would be the character of the present alphabet of the English Language if it had been taken direct from the Greek ?"

This engenders another question, "Which Greek is meant, the Older alphabet or the Newer; the Older which ran from Alfa to Tau, or the Newer which ran from Alfa to Omega ?"

Whichever way we answer, we find something different from the present state of things; e. g. if we had taken direct from either the Older or Newer Greek, z would be the sixth letter in our alphabet instead of the last.

Again, had we taken from the Newer alone, we should have had two different e's and different o's-one for the e in pen, and another for the e in glebe; one for the o in not, another for the o in note, &c., &c.

Again, let us look at the two letters U and Q. The former we could only have got from the Newer, the latter only from the Older alphabet. Yet we have both; and that when our alphabet has not been taken from the Greek at all.

This (to which much might be added) suggests the likelihood of the difference of the two stages of the Greek alphabet being important, and deserving of attention. Let us deal with it in as simple a form as possible, unencumbered of unnecessary details, and solely with a view to the phenomena which it will explain. Doing this let us take the two extreme forms-the oldest, which will also be the most Phoenician; the newest, which will also be the most English or Angle form.

In this table Tsadi has been admitted, because, as it professes to exhibit the extreme forms of the Greek alphabet, the very early period to which that letter may be referred is recognised.

It may not be inconvenient to give names to these two extreme forms, names founded upon the character of the resemblance which they bear to the two alphabets with which they are most compared. These are the Phoenician on the one side, and the Slavonic on the other. From these two terms let us coin the words Phonicoeid and Slavoniform.*

It is clear that the earlier any alphabet is derived from the Greek, the more Phoenicoeid it will be; nay, it may be so Phoenicoeid as to present the same appearance that would have arisen out of an immediate deduction from the Phoenician itself.

Let us, in fixing upon a rough approximation for the two stages, say that 700 B.C. the Greek alphabet was Phoenicoeid rather than Slavoniform, and 100 B.C. Slavoniform rather thau Phonicoeid.

§ 314. The reader may now either continue the study of the present section, or pass on to § 315. If he do the former, he will meet with some observations upon writing in general, observations which have their bearing upon the criti* See note at end of chapter for meaning of this term.

cism of the development, evolution, and affiliation of alphabets of the world at large; observations, however, which are more or less episodical to the present work. On the other hand, by missing these questions for the present, he may take up the history of the Phoenician and Phoenicoeid alphabets of Italy; alphabets whose structure influenced that of the Romans, the Roman alphabet being the basis of our own.

The questions to be noticed are those of-(1.) Form, to which are subordinate those of nexus and direction; (2.) Power; (3.) Name; and (4.) Order.

1. Form.-At the present moment we have more forms than one for the same letter, and it is not difficult to see how they originated. There are the Capitals-different in MSS. and in printed books, different, too, from what they were in the days of Black-letter. There are the smaller letters-different in writing and in printing, different, too, from the Black-letter. There are Italics, which are intermediate to type and MS.print in imitation of penmanship. All this we find within the limits of our own language. Beyond these limits, we find difference as well as likeness. The German and Danish texts are what the English once was, i. e. forms of Black-letter-and that in writing as well as printing. It is easy, then, to find varieties in the form of the letters.

How do they arise? Printing is one process, writing another. One requires a pen, the other a type. Differences of this kind evidently have a tendency to develope different results. But printing is a recent invention, and, being such, is evidently inadequate to account for the differences of form between the old alphabets. What do we look for here? Difference of material-difference of the material written on, difference in the instrument wherewith men wrote. It is no slight matter in respect to the shape of a letter whether we use a pen, a style, or a reed, a waxen tablet, a strip of papyrus, or a skin of parchment

Again, we have a coinage. So had the ancients. A coin, however, is at least as different from a printed book as a printed book is from a MS.

Finally we have inscriptions. So had the ancients.

Now, without saying that MS. writing demands that its

VOL. II.

G

letters should be round and curved rather than straight and angular, it is safe to say that inscriptional writing requires angular and straight lines rather than curves and sinuosities.

Hence, with the slightest tendency for the MS. forms of letters to get rounded, there sets in a tendency towards the evolution of two classes of letters-one for inscriptions (or glyptographic), one for communications on paper, parchment, &c. (or cursive). Now, the cursive forms tolerate the introduction of glyptographic shapes better than the glyptographic tolerate the introduction of cursive ones. Hence, in inscriptions we find the angular forms almost exclusively; in MSS. the curved forms, and, on certain occasions, the angular ones as well. Out of these angular, inscriptional, or glyptographic letters grow the Capital as opposed to the Small letters.

Now, as all our early specimens of the alphabet are from coins or inscriptions, it is only the Capital or glyptographic forms of the older alphabets that we know anything about. Hence, in working problems connected with the affiliation and derivation of alphabets, we must compare the Capitals rather than the smaller letters-the glyptographic rather than the cursive forms.

Closely akin and (as aforesaid) subordinate to the question of forms, is that of—

Nexus, connection, conjunction, or concatenation.—In glyptography we carve, in MS. we write. In the former, the letters may be kept separate; in the latter, they have a tendency to join, or touch each other. Carve such a word as THOMAS on a tombstone, stamp such a word as GEORGE on a coin, and the letters keep separate. Print them, and they must be separate. Write them, and they run into each other. This produces modifications of form, i. e. connecting lines and abbreviations.

Closely akin, and (as aforesaid) subordinate to the question of concatenation, is that of

Direction. We write from left to right-George. But what if we wrote egroe G, i. e. from right to left? The Hebrews did so write.

Again, they or we might have written

No known nation writes from bottom to top. The Mongols, however, write from top to bottom.

Hence, the direction of a line of writing may be either horizontal, or perpendicular (vertical)—these being the primary lines. Intermediate to the two we may have one from corner to corner, or a diagonal one. This might easily have existed, though it is not known to have done so.

The direction, then, of a line of writing may be horizontal, vertical, or a mixture of the two, i. e. diagonal—the two first forms being real and actually in practice.

Again, the Greeks give us the adverb ẞovorρopndòv (bustrofedon), from Bovç (bus =ox) and orpe (stref=turn). This means the way in which an ox at the plough turns, i. e. up one furrow and down another. Hence, in the bustrofedon direction one line runs from right to left (or vice versa), and the next from left to right (or vice versa).

It is not enough to remember the different possible and actual varieties of direction, deducing the diagonal from a mixture of the two primary forms of the vertical and horizontal, as well as noticing the left-to-right, the right-to-left, and the bustrofedon forms of the latter; there is a further distinction to be drawn-the distinction between the direction of letters and the direction of lines.

Such a line as