refers them to Pelasgian and Etruscan times, antecedent to the foundation of Rome. Tacitus agrees, Annal. I. xi.

Now the Goths had not the use of letters before their irruption into Greece in the 4th century. Ulphilas was the first who invented an alphabet for them, which he modelled from the Greek, and accommodated to the barbarous pronunciation of the Goths. This fact is stated by Socrates, and by Isidore of Seville, "ad instar Græcarum literarum Gothis reperit literas," 1. viii. c. 6. Tacitus expressly says that the Teutonic nations, into whose provinces the Roman arms had penetrated beyond the Rhine and the Danube, were utterly unacquainted with letters. "Literarum secreta viri pariter ac fœminæ ignorant." In fact, no written document has been discovered in the German language older than the monk Ottofred's version of the N. T.; and he pleads this very fact in his preface, as an excuse for the barbarisms of that version: "because," says he, "the German language is uncultivated, and hitherto unwritten." Fortunatus, indeed, in the 6th century, mentions the rude Runes of the Gothic hordes of Italy. But Hickes cannot produce a single instance of Runic alphabetical writing older than the 11th century, when Runes, which were only Talismanic figures, were first applied to alphabetical use, by expressing sounds instead of representing things.

With regard to Etruscan letters, they certainly precede the foundation of Rome. This appears from Varro's quotations of the written annals of Etruria. He expressly states, that in their Rituals, or sacred books, the Etruscans registered the commencement of their years and ages. The Pelasgians and Etruscans appear to have been one people, the primeval inhabıtants of Italy. Dionysius Halic. describes them as colonizing Italy from Lydia, and says that the Romans derived the Ludi Gladiatorum from them. "Ludorum origo sic traditur. Lydos ex Asia transvenas in Hetruria consedisse, ut Timæus refert, Duce Tyrrheno, &c. Igitur in Hetruria inter cæteros ritus superstitionum suarum, spectacula quoque religionis nomine instituunt. Inde Romani arcessitos artifices mutuantur, tempus, enuntiationem, ut Ludi a Lydis vocarentur." This account is supported by Herodotus, who wrote not much more

Varro apud Censorin. de Die natali, cap. 5.

2 D. Halicarn. 1. i. Antiq. Alex. c. 21. Tertullian mentions this ancient origin in his Spectacula, cap. 1. See De la Barre's Annot. on Tertul. de Spectac. Valer. Max. 1. ii. c. 4. Cluver's Italia Antiqua, 1. ii. folio, p. 424.

than three centuries after the period to which he refers, 1. i. no. 94.

But independently of these authorities the forms of the Etruscan letters, discovered on ancient marbles and terracottas, dug up about Viterbo, Cortona, Gubbio, and other Etrurian towns, clearly indicate an origin more ancient than the remotest monuments of Rome. The Roman historians themselves derive many of the Roman usages from Etruria. "Tarquinius Thusciæ populos frequentibus armis subegit. Inde fasces, trabeæ, curules, annuli, phaleræ, paludamenta, prætextæ; inde quod aureo curru, quatuor equis triumphatur; togæ pictæ, tunicæque palmatæ, omnia denique decora, et insignia, quibus Imperii dignitas eminet." In short, the more ancient alphabets are, the more they approximate to the ancient Hebrew or Phoenician. Now the Etruscan and Latin are more ancient than the Gothic; and the greater approximation to the Greek which you find in the Gothic, owes its origin to the artful ingenuity of Ulphilas rather than to hereditary descent. In the Stowe Catalogue, vol. i. p. 3, 4, you will find an account of 41 oriental alphabets, all of which, with the exception of the most ancient mentioned in this letter, I have passed by as a degenerate, distorted, and upstart race, which had their origin, like those of Ulphilas, in the vanity which makes nations, as well as individuals, advance false pretensions to ancient renown.

These remarks sufficiently indicate the principles on which I proceed in my Catalogue, with respect to alphabetical antiquities; and I would close here, but that another part of this subject to which you advert relates to the ages of manuscripts. You state correctly at page 12, that I reduce alphabetical writing to four distinct classes, Capitals, Majuscula, Minuscule, and Cursive, as in the Stowe Catalogue, vol. ii. p. 13. I did not use the word Uncials in that passage, lest I should seem to identify Majuscule and Uncials, as the learned Papebroc and others have done, in my opinion inconsiderately.

Majuscula are (as the word imports) opposed to Minuscule, and, though they imply Uncials, they are not vice versa implied

See the Etruscan inscribed monument, published by Pietro Santi Bartoli, and by Bianchini, Storia Univ. Roma, 4to, 1747, p. 538. and others still more valuable in the Transactions of the Academy of Cortona, and by Gori, Lanzı, and Amaduzzi. These prove that the Etruscan alphabet is derived from the primeval Cadmean Greek. See the Catalogue of Stowe MSS., vol. ii. p. 190.

2 Florus, l. i. c. 5.; Diodor. l. v.; Strabo, l. iii., and l. xi., p. 530.

under that class. Majusculæ is a more comprehensive word than Uncial. It embraces letters of several forms, both rustic and elegant, square and angular, and all letters of sizes superior to Minusculæ excepting capitals. Its toleration of letters of different shapes is such, that, as the Romans tolerated all religions excepting the Christian, so the word Majuscula tolerated all letters of a larger size than Minuscule excepting capitals.Initials 1 exclude. They are of various shapes and sizes; they often extend from the top to the bottom of a page; often they sport in fantastical dresses along the four margins, and are from ten to twelve inches high. They can be reduced to no certain standard of dimensions, no model, no shape.

In short, I stated that Majuscule form a 2nd class, different from capitals, and opposed to Minuscule, but not that Majusculæ and Uncials are the same. Majusculæ may be of different shapes, but must be always of a larger size than Minusculæ, whereas the form of Uncials must be round, and somewhat hooked at the extremities. Their name has no reference to their size, but to their shape, Unca litera. Those who derived Uncial from Uncia, an inch high, were challenged to produce any ancient MS. written in letters of so enormous a size, and were driven to the absurdity of calling semi-uncial letters half an inch high.. A Bible written in uncials at this rate would require a waggon to carry it. St. Jerome, indeed, ridicules the dimensions of Uncials in manuscripts which were written for the wealthy lords of the empire; but as there are small and large capitals, so were there at all times small and large uncials. They seem to have been introduced in the 3rd century, when the arts declined, and the elegant and simple form of the Roman capitals declined with them.

It is erroneously asserted that Uncial writing ceased entirely in the 9th century: it continued in title-pages, heads of chapters, divisions of books, and other ornamental parts of manuscripts, down to the 12th century, when it was supplanted by modern Gothic. It may be seen in red ink in king Canute's book of Hyde Abbey, now in this library, and written between the years 1020 and 1036. It may also be seen in king Alfred's Psalter in this library, where the titles of the psalms are prefixed to each in red ink, in writing of the 9th century.

You state very correctly that the letters peculiar to Uncial writing are A D E G D q and U, to which may be added bLFP.

The a Uncial was also written & with a closed and rounded base; the d was sometimes not closed, thus ; the g

uncial with a tail was sometimes written without a tail G; the h was hooked nearly in the same manner b; the Ρ and 9 bad frequently similar florishes, as if they despised the plain unadorned simplicity of Roman capitals; the letter r could hardly be distinguished from the Minuscula n, except by a half-circular bend in its second shaft, and a little hook at its extremity; the letter V, even as a numeral, was rounded into a U, and even the N affected to despise its ancient perpendicular erectness, and deviated into N.

The transition from writing in pure capitals to uncials may be observed in the Medicean Virgil, fine specimens of which are prefixed to Ambrogi's Italian Version, folio, Rome 1763, vol. i. p. cxii. The Palatine and the two oldest Vatican Virgils, namely, Nos. 1631, 3225, and 3867, are living monuments of this transition. They were written before the Uncial alphabet was completely formed, before the Uncial was introduced. The oldest Vatican Virgil is referred by the Vatican librarians, Holstenius and Schelestrat, to about the reign of Septimius Severus; that is, the beginning of the third century. Norris and Bianchini, whose works are now before me, agree.2 Burman ascribes the Medicean Virgil to the same age; but, doubting how to describe its characters, styles them Capitals in one member of a sentence, and Uncials in the very next. "Hunc librum, ante 1200 annos scriptum, Literis majoribus Romanis, seu Capitalibus, forma ut vocant quadrata, typis describi, eodem charactere, literisque quibus exaratus est Uncialibus imprimi, nuper curant Petrus Fr. Fogginius, Florentiæ, anno 1741."

The fact is, that the Medicean Virgil, and the Vatican of the third century, were written at the period of the transition from Capitals to Uncials, when the Roman writers had not quite abandoned the one, nor quite formed the other, but had insensibly descended from the good taste of the Augustan age to the barbarous style of the Lower Empire. I own that there is an apparent novelty in this view of the subject, which alarms myself, lest I should appear to venture on whimsical speculations, on subjects which demand the greatest accuracy and diffidence. But I am induced, by my reading, to indulge a hope

› See Ambrogi's Virgil. ex Codice Mediceo Laurentiano, folio, Romæ, 1763, Pref., pag. xxix. xxxi.

2

Canotaphia Pisana in Norris's works, folio, Veronæ, 172.., p. 340; also Mabillon De Re Diplom. Ruinart's ed. p. 354, and Foggini's Preface to his Roman ed. of 1741, pag. iv.

that in advancing these opinions I shall not be deemed presumptuous. I find that the Uncial M does not appear in those old copies of Virgil which were written in the third or fourth century, whereas it constantly appears in Uncial MSS, of the eighth and ninth. It does appear in the old MS. fragment of St. Paul's Epistles in the library of S. Germain des Près, described by Mabillon, Montfaucon, and the Benedictines, but that MS. is written entirely in Uncials of the fifth century; it is found in the Vercelli Gospels written by St. Eusebius, bishop of that see, who died in 515. The Alexandrine MS. in the British Museum, also, has the Uncial ; but I fear that this fact proves that MS. subsequent, if not to the sixth, certainly to the fifth century; since in the oldest Uncial MSS. the not to be found. It is in the celebrated Greek and Latin Psalter of S. Germain des Près, which was written in the fifth or sixth century entirely in Uncials. The words in this MS. are not separated, an undoubted proof of antiquity higher than the seventh century.

is

I have now trespassed on your time longer than I thought I should; and yet, before I conclude, I must state, that when I classed the Stowe MSS. under four heads, I did so in reference to the collection which was before me, consisting chiefly of Saxon, Irish, and English MSS. Several other modes of writing have been introduced, which did not belong to my province or Catalogue, and are not reducible to any of those classes, even though all might, in a general view of their alphabets, be derived originally from the Roman. The Lombardic, the Modern Gothic, the Set Chancery, the Common Chancery, Court-hand, Secretary, all these forms, which prevailed in the law-courts since the Norman Conquest, all are out of the pale of the four classes to which the Stowe Collection may be reduced, with the exception of a few law MSS. of the 13th and 14th centuries.

I fear that I ought to apologize to you for prolixity; but I deem the subject of this letter important in many points of view, and I was anxious that you should not mistake my meaning, where it is somewhat involved by that brevity which the limits of a Catalogue seem to demand.

I think that a very striking resemblance of all the ancient alphabets to one another, in their order, number, powers, figures, and names, supplies clear proof of a common origin; that when History lends her aid to this evidence, both mutually supporting

'See the letter m in Dom de Vaines.