from the lips of Peter Abelard, unable to learn it but from the living voice. Still earlier, ere writing had been there devised, think how the rhapsodists of Greece and Asia Minor wandered through their lands, reciting at the courts of kings, and the crowded festivals of the gods, the epic of Troy; when a man's memory was his library. What a gigantic influence has arisen since those days! "Certainly," says Carlyle, "the art of writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.”

We find it difficult to realize this now; but there are those still on the earth who can do so. It was not long ago that I happened to be in a part of Central Africa where no white man had been before. I was separated from my companions-a hundred miles distant. War was raging around me; the road was difficult. I wished to communicate with those whom I had left behind. "Who will return," I asked of the naked savages, "to the white men and carry them something from me?" Numbers volunteered, glad to earn a yard of cloth for the job. A letter was written, and offered to a man, and he was told that this piece of paper would inform my friends of all-that it would speak to them. He dropped the letter on the ground, and ran away. Others were tried, but it was useless. A great crowd assembled, and, at a safe distance, gazed at the little bit of paper fluttering on the ground. "It is medicine," they said. "It is charmed." In vain I tried to

reason them out of their terror.

None would touch it. "Will no one," I said, "keep it and give it to the white men as they pass this way?" A yell of refusal and excited gesticulations answered my request. "Then I shall place it here, in this tree," I said, moving towards it, while the crowd dispersed in flight, "and you can point it out to the white men when they come." Even this they refused to do. My friends passed close under the tree, but no one dared show them the charmed thing; and there it is probably to this day, fluttering on the branch of that stunted figtree, like an evil spirit, the awe and terror of the tribe.

I shall now sketch briefly-with only such detail and continuity as may be necessary for my object— the origin and development of this miraculous art of civilized man, so that we may see the nature of the thing, and be better enabled to discern its true characteristics and its true functions when limited to the meaning to which I propose confining it.

And to do this we must go back to what is rather a philological subject—the origin of words unwritten ; the origin, that is, of language.

Whether or not the faculty of speech was innate in man-as distinguished from the other animals,— or whether it was taught him by Divine agency; whether it was developed from a few elementary roots that exist as a part of the human constitution, or from the imitative power by means of which man named the animals from their cries, and gave ex

pression to his feelings by ejaculations-these are questions, however interesting, that we must not enter upon here. However he is enabled to do so, man is enabled to speak and to write. What do we mean by speaking and by writing? Let us try to solve this question, so that we may pave the way for the consideration of our subject. First let us see what makes us require language; then, how writing became a representation of language.

The philosopher will tell us that our mind not only receives through the senses impressions of the outer world—is not only receptive-not only apprehends the form, colour, and other qualities of an object, but has an active power by which it combines these external impressions into a conception of the object.* As a proof of the existence of these two acts of what may be called loosely sensation and consciousness, or perception and conception, it is frequently the case that the one exists without the other. Extreme emotion may make us insensible to the pain of a wound, to a sight, or a sound; and, in so far as the thing is merely presented to us by our eyes or ears or sense of touch, and not comprehended by our intellect, so far we have no right to speak of it as pain, as a sight, or a sound. This twofold faculty of the mind must be noted, for I shall refer to it later when I have to speak of the creative power of the poet. And even in our

* Arist. de Anima, iii. 5. Νοῦς ποιητικὸς, νοῦς παθητικός.

ordinary conceptions there is something creative. "The world of appearances," says Dr. Farrar, "is re-created by the intelligence into an ideal world of general conceptions." Wordsworth in several passages uses a similar expression. He speaks

"Of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive.'

And again

My voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual mind
to the external world

Is fitted; and how exquisitely too
The external world is fitted to the mind;
And the creation (for by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish."

I have said that the active conceptive power of the mind may be absent or dormant, and thus produce an unconsciousness of what the senses present to us. Notice, in passing, that this conceptive power may act also independently of the senses,-that it can form combinations of things unseen: can create, and people a world of its own. At present, however, let us confine ourselves to our conception of facts, and the means of communicating them.

Our eyes present to us a material object, of a certain form, colour, and substance. It is a solid globe of a certain size and contour, of a certain shade of yellow. Our touch tells us that it is soft and

pulpy. Our sense of smell reminds us of another similar object that we have seen before. We put this object into a class, and in doing this we have used a power which the Greeks called λóyos, the power of classification, and which we call understanding, or the conceptive power. "The act of the understanding," says Coleridge, " that brings any given object or impression into the same class with any other objects or impressions by means of some character or characters common to them all is conception."

It

Were one alone in the world, this classification of objects (which is certainly a power possessed by the animals in common with us) would be sufficient. But we wish to transmit these conceptions to others: and the way in which we do this is by making a certain audible, visible, or tangible symbol. that, by mutual agreement, shall stand for this or that class. may be a gesture, a representation in wood, stone, or any material, a drawing of the object, or a hundred other things. But the way that has been found to be easiest and best is that of producing a sound. We call the round, yellow, pulpy, fragrant thing, an orange. We make a picture of that sound—and it is the written word orange.

But, leaving language, let us turn our attention for a few minutes from this method of communicating our conceptions, and consider some others for the sake of comparison.

To some-and among these we naturally find