labial letters. The front vertical plane includes the aspirates; that at the back, the non-aspirates. The left vertical comprehends the medial letters; that on the right, the tenues. Every letter is, of course, at the intersection of three of these planes, and may be defined accordingly. A distribution of the letters according to the actual nature of the sounds is of considerable use in the examination of those numerous euphonic and dialectic changes which occur not only in the polished language of Greece, but also in those languages which are inconsiderately called barbarous. But no single distribution will at once present to the view all the relations of the different letters. Not merely are the several letters in each of our horizontal, and to a certain extent also in the vertical divisions, interchangeable with their neighbours, but the twelve consonants arranged in No. 1 are in fact also related to the liquids, and even to the vowels. As these consonants extend from the throat to the lips, so do the liquids, and the vowels also, y and i being formed in the back of the mouth, u and w at the lips. In fact, the principle of lengthening the vocal pipe, which gave Mr. Willis the series of vowel sounds, is nothing more than what is done in the human mouth. To produce the first sound, we shorten the tube of the mouth; for the last, we extend it to its utmost length; and in intermediate degrees for the vowels, between the two extremes. In comparing therefore our ordinary consonants with the liquids and vowels, we find, as we might expect, g closely related to y, as our language in its older forms, and even its existing dialects, fully establishes. The intermediate d again has an affinity for 1, n; and 6, at the labial extremity of the consonants, is intimately related to m, w, and u, at the corresponding points of the other series. To make our views include the whole body of letters, it remains to be observed, in the first place, that had the nasal organ been considered, we should have had a series m, n, ng with their intermediate sounds depending partly upon the nose, and partly upon the lips, teeth, and palate respectively. In the Sanscrit alphabet, the series of guttural, palatal, lingual, dental, and labial consonants, have an n belonging to each class with a distinct symbol. That which belongs to the guttural series is a sound analogous to our ng in ringing. The nasal of the labial series is of course m. The other omission of our tabular view is the letter h, which, when pronounced at all, is a faint representative of the guttual aspirate ch. In the Hebrew alphabet, the names cheth and heth are given indifferently to the eighth letter, and the etymology of every language would supply examples of the connection.

Having endeavoured to arrange the letters of the alphabet upon some principle, we cannot pass over in silence the apparent confusion in the alphabets we have been speaking of, the Hebrew and the Greek. That the order observed in the latter is borrowed from the former, can scarcely admit of a question. For though the vau of the Hebrew has no corresponding character in the later Greek alphabet, it is yet well known that it once had such a correlative in the digamma, at least in power; and that the digamma was actually lost from the sixth place is proved from the gap at that point in the numerical use of the Greek alphabet, and the clumsy contrivance of filling it up by the symbol s. The position of the letter F in the Roman alphabet is a proof in confirmation. The tsadi of the Hebrews can never have had a place in the Greek alphabet, but the following letter koppa most assuredly had, as is proved both by the existence of that letter in many of the older Greek inscriptions and the coins of Corinth, and no less decidedly by the insertion, as before, of a numerical substitute, which even retained the name of koppa. It may be observed, too, that the Latin q, of the same power and form, corresponds also in position; and the close connection between koppa and q is further confirmed by the fact, that as q is generally used solely before u, so koppa is rarely used except before o, as in the coins of Cos, Corinth, and Syracuse. The schin and sin of the Hebrew have in their own alphabet not merely an identity of form, except in the dicritic points, but bear also the same numerical value, so that they must be considered as one in their origin. At tau the Hebrew series terminates, while the Greek adds first a u, then a p, a x, a y, and an w. That some of these did not belong to the early Greek alphabet is proved historically. The w appears rarely before the year 403 B.C.; x, y, and 4, were represented by 2, KH, ПIH, and v or T appears to be only a variety of the ayin, to which it bears a strong resemblance in form. The letters o and u moreover in all languages are so closely related in power, that the one might almost supply the place of the other, as is actually the case in the Etruscan, which had a u, but no o. It is not therefore a very bold thing to assert that the early Greek alphabet terminated at the same point as the Hebrew. There is, however, a difficulty which should not be neglected. It has been a common assertion, that the old Greek alphabet consisted of only sixteen letters. But Pliny and Plutarch seem, in the first place, to be the sole authority for the statement; and the assertion of the former, that Palamedes, in the time of the Trojan war (!) added O, E, &, X, and Simonides Z, H, Y, O, is full of 30 many difficulties, that belief could not readily be given to him, even were there no counter authority. For upon what principle could the Greek letters have attained their present order, if they were introduced according to the chronological arrangement given by Pliny? But fortunately in the very passage of Pliny referred to (vii. 56, or 57), he gives another statement from Aristotle, differing from his own in several particulars, but it must be confessed not more satisfactory They mutually serve however to weaken the authority of each other

In enumerating the sixteen letters, it may be observed that the long vowels H 2, the double letters Z, E, Y, the aspirates, X, O, are excluded by Pliny. In defence of , Y, X, we say nothing; but the character H certainly did exist, not indeed as a long vowel, but as an aspirate. Thus with the digamma, the letter H (cheth), and the theta, the old alphabet possessed a complete trio of aspirates: so erroneous is the notion that they should all be excluded. Lastly, as for Z and E, the circumstance of their situation corresponding precisely to the zain and samech of the Hebrew would induce us to defend them, even at the risk of supposing (if such supposition be necessary) that, in their original power, they were not double letters. We do not however mean that the very characters existed, but that sibilants of some kind occupied their places. The precise correspondence of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in the order and power and names of the letters, is an argument of much stronger weight than any testimony from such careless and late writers as Pliny and Plutarch.

But we are digressing too long from the question about the principle which governed the first arrangement of the Hebrew or old Greek Alphabet, if principle there be. Though we cannot satisfactorily account for the whole order throughout the twenty-two letters, there are certainly traces of some regularity in the arrangement We find first the simplest of the vowel sounds-simplest, because it requires neither retraction nor protrusion of the lips-followed by the three medials B, y, d, then another vowel, followed, with some irregularity indeed, by aspirates corresponding in order to the above consonants, vau, cheth, theth, no bad representatives of p, x, 0. Then again we have a vowel, followed soon after by three consonants related to each other, A, μ, v. Soon after we find a fourth vowel o, and after it, in a little disorder it must be allowed, pi, koppa, tau. It cannot well be a mere accident that the several classes of labials, palatals, and dentals occur so nearly together in the different parts of the series, and always in the same order. It will, perhaps, here be observed that in these remarks we are unintentionally confirming the assertion of Pliny and Plutarch about the sixteen letters, the more so as Plutarch (Symp. lib. ix. quaest. 3. § 2, Wyttenbach's ed. vol. iii. p. 1050) speaks of four quaternions. The chief objections to such an explanation of their statements consist in the difficulty of imagining a language to exist without a sibillant or r. But th approaches very nearly to the nature of a sibilant, and may have been used as one; while to many nations r and admit of no distinction, so that one symbol is for them sufficient. Nay, the Latin had demonstrably at one time no r.

But we pause a moment to contribute a new item to the Curiosities of Literature. The theory here propounded, that the original Cadmeian alphabet consisted of four tetrads or quaternions symmetrically arranged, was originally given in the Penny Cyclopædia, in the year 1833 (Vol. I. p. 380, col. 2, &c.) In 1839 it appeared without acknowledgment in the 'New Cratylus,' pp. 99-101, with the one alteration, that in the second tetrad the vowel i was discarded in favour of a sibilant. The same writer again reproduced the theory in 1844, in his Varronianus' (pp. 188, 189); and when attention was called to this proceeding, he declared, on the word of a gentleman, that up to that moment he had not read the article, and indeed that on then referring to it, he found it to contain only a bungling approximation to his own theory. Lastly, in the second edition of his 'New Cratylus,' the same theory repeated in his text, p. 147, is accompanied by a note commencing: "This organic arrangement of the alphabet has been more or less noticed by several philologers, of whom the earliest seems to have been the acute and learned Dr. Richard Lepsius, in his essay, über die Anordnung und Verwandschaft des Semitischen . . . . Alphabets.' (Zwei Abhandl. Berl. 1836.) Does the writer then mean to declare on the word of a gentleman that the year 1836 preceded the year 1833?

The accompanying plates require a few remarks in addition to what has been already said. The first plate contains alphabets running from the right to the left, a practice which seems to have been earlier than that which is now generally adopted. Herodotus tells us (ii. 36), that such, too, was the practice of the Egyptians, and his assertion is confirmed by a considerable number of the existing inscriptions, among which, however, some are found running in the opposite direction, and still more arranged vertically. The Etruscans, it is well known, turned their letters to the left, and there even exist specimens of Latin inscriptions with the same peculiarity. Among the Greeks, there were four modes of writing, one vertical (ovidov or column wise), and three horizontal, namely, one with the words running to the left; another, which soon prevailed over the rest, turned towards the right; and a third, in which the direction of the lines alternated, as in the course of a plough, from which idea, inscriptions of this kind are said to be written Bov-σтρоpη-ddv, or ox-turning-wise. This last method must have been much more convenient than our present broad sheet of letter-press, in which the eye, on arriving at the end of a line, requires a nice perception of a straight line to hit the commencing point again. The second and third plates give numerous specimens of the Greek alphabet, which are taken chiefly from Boeckh's great work, and the numbers written after the titles at the head of each column refer to the order of the inscriptions in that work.

The several inscriptions which have furnished these alphabets exist in the following forms:

No. 14. In two flutings of a Doric column brought from the island

Olympia, in the possession of Col. Leake.-Nos. 27, 28. Part of a hymn to Bacchus inscribed on an altar, which contains also a representation of a procession in honour of the god, in the Pembroke Museum at Wilton.-No. 29. From an epitaph in elegiac verse on those who fell in the first battle before Potidæa, B.C. 432. (Thucydides, i. 62). It was found in the plain of the Academy near Athens, and is now in the British Museum, No. 290.-No. 30. The alphabet here given is that which came generally into use at Athens after the archonship of

Euclides, 403 B.C. Specimens may be seen in the Elgin marbles of the British Museum, for instance in No. 305, the date of which is said to be 398 B.C.

The column No. 26 is from Mazocchi's folio on the Heraclean tablet. The Codex Alexandrinus, No. 36, is in the British Museum. [ALEXANDRINE CODEX.] The fourth plate relates to the Roman alphabets, including, however, what are often called, but without good reason, Saxon alphabets. These last characters were undoubtedly employed in writing Saxon, but they were the ordinary characters used during the same period for Latin, and were, indeed, thence borrowed for the former language; their identity besides with the preceding Roman letters, is very evident. Such of the Saxon characters as were not common to the Latin are placed below plate 4. The other alphabets have their names affixed, and also the titles and powers of the letters. The Coptic, Russian, Servian, Mosogothic are evidently derived, with some exceptions, from the Greek; and the same is perhaps true, in a great measure, of the Ethiopic, Illyrian, and Runic. In passing the eye along the various forms which the several letters have assumed, we shall see a strong similarity running throughoutfrom the Phenician through the Greek and Etruscan to the Latin; and nearly all the differences which do exist admit of explanation, if a few points be taken into consideration. The form of a letter must, in the first place, depend much upon the nature of the material upon which it is written, and of the instrument employed. On hard substances where incisions are to be made, straight lines will naturally prevail. When the letter is merely painted or inscribed upon a very yielding material, two or more inclined lines are apt to degenerate into

PLATE I.

Alphabets from right to left.

8 X

Hagl

h

13

i

9

I

Iis

i

li

i

Leth

n

18

ૐ

12 HP Ye

y

12 P

Madur

m

Gimel

14 db Liudi

15 M

Missile m

8 16 P

17

18 Pokoy P

8

BH

त्र

23 Fert

f

23 КИ

Ayin

O

D

Pe

h

23

39 HO Yo

ye yo

27V

Czi

cz

20

28 Cieru ci

N. B. The names of these letters are also the names of material objects.

Shin

Sin

1 0 9 9 9 199 19109

W✓ ✓ W W M2 M2E

a single curve. Compare the forms of y (the third letter) in columns 16 and 21; of 8 (fourth letter) in 21, 23, and the Latin D'; of e (fifth letter) in 30, 33, and 34; of μ in 30 and 32; of in 30, and the Roman P in 1, 2, 3, 4; of p in 20 and 21; of σ in 31, 32, and 33; of our own u and v, both derived from the same Latin character, &c. Again, in incisions the different lines which constitute a character will be generally of uniform thickness, but when a split reed or quill is employed, the strokes in one direction will be thick, in the other fine. Such has clearly been the origin of the existing Hebrew forms. A principle of corruption, not less powerful, is the desire of rapidity, which is most readily obtained by connecting the different parts of a letter together, so that the whole may be produced by one movement of the instrument, or, more strictly speaking, without raising the instrument from the surface. Thus the e in 30 seems to be made by four separate strokes, such is certainly the case with the Roman letter in column 3; but that in 33 requires only two movements, and that in 34 but one. In the same way may be compared the forms of n in 36 and 37; of έ in 30, 33, 35; of π in 37 and 38; of 7 in 36 and 37, &c. But there may be several ways of effecting this object; a letter moreover may be commenced at different points, and hence arise double or more forms for the same letter, even at the same period: compare B in 37 and 38; e in 34 with our own small running e, &c. This principle of rapidity carried a step farther leads to the connection of successive letters. In this way are formed what are called the cursive letters,

PLATE II.

Greek Alphabets.

which run on in continuous succession. Such modes of writing were no doubt common in very early times; and, as regards the Romans, we are not left to mere conjecture, as the British Museum contains an inscription of the kind on papyrus, which is referred to the second or third century. Lastly, a fanciful love of variety shows itself in all the works of man, and in none more than the arbitrary variations of letters, particularly those at the beginning and end of words. These several causes of change were more active, when nearly all writings were produced by the pens of individual writers. In modern times, the art of printing has tended strongly to create a unity of form, and will be the best protection against future change.

Having spoken thus generally of the alphabets given in the four plates, we will now remark upon each character in succession.

Of the letter A, one of the oldest forms, it appears to us, is in columns 10, 25, or 3. The greater part of the other forms arise from the different inclinations of the cross stroke, which in 7 runs from the extremity of one of the main strokes, and in 2, 4, and 11 is too much inclined even to meet the opposite side. No. 2 again is a mean between 4 and 1, and shows how the Hebrew form has originated. There was also an old Italian form of this vowel, which may be described as formed from the II in 31, with a diagonal line running from the lower extremity on the right to the opposite angle; it was in fact the character in 14 or 16, with a square instead of a round or pointed top.-Of B it need only be remarked, that the Samaritan and Phenician

PLATE III.

Greek Alphabets continued.

After 403 B.C.

Α Α Α Α Α Α Α Α α

B

B

T

Δ

Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ

1010 Θ

༨

KKK

1

KKKKK MA

К

KK

К

入入

IM

N

N

E

Ο Ο

MMM

NN

PP

PRIR

MMMMX 25

R

forms show the progress of degradation between the Greek and the corrupted Hebrew. The forms of I are chiefly remarkable for the different positions of the angle which constitute the letter. The round form in 6, 10, and 16, is also found in the coins of the cities Gela, Agrigentum, and Regium. The third letter of the Latin alphabet has this form, and once possessed the same power. Hence, the oldest orthography of that language presents macistratus, leciones, for magistratus, legiones, and it is known that the common name Caius was pronounced Gaius, and indeed was so written by the Greeks. The form of the Hebrew daleth may be traced through the Samaritan from the Greek, in precisely the same way as the beth. The difference between the Samaritan or Phenician letters for daleth and those for

beth consists solely in the lower stroke thrown out by the latter from the perpendicular, and the same is the case with the Hebrew letters; in both, the triangular or circular top has degenerated into a thick line.-The form of E in 10 is very anomalous and very rare. Of the other forms the Samaritan is again purer than the Hebrew. The next letter has been the subject of much controversy. The form in 8, 10, and 15, may perhaps be considered as the parent of all the rest; and again the Phenician has the advantage over the Hebrew, the form in 2 being intermediate between 4 and 1. The zain bears a faint resemblance to of No. 9, which is the oldest form of that Greek letter, and from which the late forms are derived, upon the simple principle above mentioned, of completing a letter at one movement, and therefore substituting the diagonal stroke for the perpendicular.

The next letter has gone through violent changes, both in form and power. Its original power seems to have been a guttural ch, which would naturally wear away into an ordinary aspirate; or perhaps more correctly it may be stated, that its first power, as in the other letters, was syllabic, namely, che, which became he, and in the Greek language eventually only e. The two Hebrew names of the letters, cheth, heth, and the Greek form cta, all bear evidence in favour of such a supposition, and it would be difficult otherwise to account for the singular fact, that the same character H was at one time the Greek representative of an aspirate, afterwards of an initial he, and finally of a long C. In No. 26 of Plate II. H is the long vowel ē, and so in 30 of Plate III. and those which follow. In all the others which precede, it is an aspirated consonant. With regard to the various forms, the character in 3, 4, 6, 9, 22 being supposed to be the purest, No. 2 is half-way between the Hebrew on the one hand, and 18 on the other. But the Greek form did not stop here. When the letter H was appropriated as a vowel, the aspirate gradually lost its second pillar, until at last it appeared in the first of the two forms given in the Heraclean tablet, the second in that column being, as we have just stated, the representative of the long vowel. This form of the aspirate appears in many manuscripts above the initial letter of the word, but was eventually further corrupted into a mere comma, thus (). There exists, it should be stated, a story, that the Greeks derived their aspirate in a mode somewhat different from the above statement. The letter H, we are told, was cut into two parts, each consisting of a pillar and half the cross stroke; the first half being employed as an aspirate, the second as what they call a soft breathing, by which is meant simply the absence of an aspirate. A character to denote the absence of a sound is, it has been justly remarked, something new in alphabetic writing; and in fact it is now a common belief, that the soft breathing and its supposed representative are the mere creation of grammarians: at any rate, the supposed character for the soft breathing is found in no inscription whatever, and in no manuscript of any antiquity. Of the next letter it need only be stated, that the Hebrew character is generally considered by modern Hebraists as a mere T, and it is often called teth. Of the iod the Samaritan form seeins even more perfect than the Greek in 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17. The third of these, however, bears a close affinity to the Hebrew. The forms in 12 and 16 are gradually approaching the straight line, which afterwards prevailed.-The kappa in 21 is a mean between the more perfect in No. 9 and the Hebrew caph. The next letter has a great uniformity throughout, the chief difference turning upon the different position of the angle as in the gamma; but it may be observed, that the forms in 27 and 28 closely approximate to the Phenician and Hebrew in 1, 2, 3.—Of μ and y we have spoken before.-The samech and Greek & present many difficulties. Their forms, in the first place, have no similarity; the Greek letter is rarely met with in old inscriptions, as it was common to employ in its place the x and σ, as may be seen in 23 and 29 (the kσ in the Nanian column is open to much suspicion.) The X given in 9, though found in Greek, is more common in Latin; yet even in this language the old inscriptions generally have XS, rather than X alone; so that it would seem that here, too, the X had originally the power of the Greek xThe reason why the Greeks generally wrote XX rather than K or rê, was most probably because the letter sigma has something of the nature of an aspirate, as Payne Knight contends. Upon the same principle they wrote 2 for y, not П. (Column 29.)-The letter ayin is the subject of controversy, some calling it a nasal consonant, others a guttural, others a vowel o. The first and third assertions seem more at variance than they really are, for the close connection between the two sounds n and o is well marked in the Portuguese tongue in the pronunciation of such words as João, the representative of our John or Johann. The Romans, too, thought it enough to write Plato, where the Greeks wrote Platon. Lastly, if the vowel and liquid scales that have been given above be applied to one another, it will be found that the liquid n ought to have an affinity to the vowels o and a,* in the same way that the lip liquid m is related to u and w, and the palatal / (witness the mouillé sound of the French W) to y, i, and e-But, to proceed, the Hebrew pe has, it has already been observed, a stroke at the bottom which appears to have something of the nature of a flourish. Remove it, and the identity of the remainder with the Greek is self-apparent. The difference between the Greek II and the Roman

• The connection between a and the final nasals is exhibited in the Ionie plurals of passive verbs, the double form of the accusatives of the third deelension, and the Greek numerals déка, ëπта &c., compared with the Latin.