ORIGIN AND DESCENT.
Many attempts have been made to discover the origin of Chirography—the art of writing. Looking back, far back, over the populous plains of Time, the eye of Research seems to have perceived four or five germinal spots whence sprang the primitive parents of all known Alphabets.
The early “untutored savage,” who chanced to be provided with an idea he deemed worth recording for the benefit of his fellows, had recourse to what artistic talent he possessed, and roughly expressed his idea in the language of permanent sign. Two circumstances will have conspired to lighten his labours: the first, that a habit of making known his ideas by means of an outward code of signals, will perhaps, have been even more familiar to him than that of expressing them through the medium of speech; the second, that the burden of his thoughts will not have been heavy with deep or intricate abstractions difficult to express. His rude inscriptions gave rise, in course of time, to the word-painting of China, the picture-writingof Mexico, and to the hieroglyphs of Egypt. Our business is with the last.
The truncated sparrows andcavo rilievocrocodiles, constituting the sculptured eloquence of the ancient Egyptians, were found too cumbersome for general purposes; so they ultimately became converted into two varieties of a running hand—thehieraticand thedemoticcharacters. These were Alphabets. One of the characters—a figure suggestive of a circle, of dissolute habits, with a stroke through it—seems to have been the founder of the House of H. The latest edition of theEncyclopædia Britannica, however, givessymbolas being the earliest representative of the H’s. The character first alluded to had this form,symbol. The Phœnicians, who derived their Alphabet from Egypt, appear to have been desirous of “squaring the circle,” for in their hands this becamesymbol, orsymbol. The Greek letter was at firstsymbol; but later on it changed its appearance, becomingH. As such it figures in the Sigean inscription of the sixth century,B.C.Had the Greeks imported their letters directly from Egypt, one might have supposedtheta(Θ, or θ), and noteta(Η), to have been the immediate descendant of the Egyptian symbol given above. The Samaritansymbol, the Chaldean and square Hebrew ח (chethorheth), bear marks of a common origin with the Phœnician H, although their general appearance has been brought into conformity with the general appearance of the alphabets to which they respectively belong.
The astonishing changes of shape seen in early letters, are also accounted for by the nature of the processes by which they were usually formed, as when a scribe would endeavour to write quickly with a metal style on a soft tablet; or an explanation of them may be found in the alterations that will, from time to time, have suggested themselves to the fancy of the calligraphist. Extreme credulity and extreme scepticism are, as a rule, found blended in the natures of those people who refuse to believe that a chain can have existed if any of its links happen to be lost; and lest any such persons find the differences of form in the above H’s to be an obstacle to a belief in their descent from a common ancestor, some specimens of evolution quite as wonderful are selected from more modern typography, and given below—
Decorative H's
Tradition asserts that the Greeks receivedtheir alphabet from the Phœnician Cadmus (1493B.C.). There is reason to believe that H had its formal representative among their oldest letters, although Pliny states it to have been introduced after the Trojan War. Mr H. N. Coleridge[2]says, with regard to the Greek:—“After Η (or η) was appropriated to express the long E, the rough breathing was not indicated in writing at all till the time of Aristophanes of Byzantium, who divided the H, and made one-half of it (aspirate) the mark of the aspirate, and the other half of it (lene) that of thelene. By degrees these marks becamesymbolandsymbol; and hence, in the cursive character ‛ and ’ marking the vowels.” These last signs (‛ and ’), Professor Geddes humorously styles, “the ghosts of a vanished consonant.”
“This practice of spiritualizing, or of sending letters aloft, that were supposed to have a turn for climbing, has always existed in languages (Encyclop. Brit., 1842).” As examples we have the two dots ¨ and the line ¯ that hover over some words, and may generally be recognised as being the shades of a departede.
The Romans derived their alphabet from theGreeks; and the Roman characters are those now in general European use.
The claims of H to a high respectability are conclusively established by a genealogical review of its ancient lineage. It may be that
“Some storied urn, or animated bust”
“Some storied urn, or animated bust”
“Some storied urn, or animated bust”
“Some storied urn, or animated bust”
may yet be the means of calling back the forms and “fleeting breath” of many of the unknown and rude forefathers of H, that are now lying in the great mysterious Asiatic burial ground.