28 INTRODUCTION.
error gained strength; important and valuable truths died at their very birth, or struggl useless and unproductive till the art of printing nourished them to maturity, and enabO them like plants to strike their roots deeply, and spread their branches widely, to produ their natural and genuine firuits of practical good to the human race. From the fiicti already stated, and also from those in the dark and middle ages, till the art of print was discovered, I feel confident, that every reader will be disposed to prize at a high: the advantages derived from the art of typography, and to form some notion of what thel state of knowledge must have been, when all the books in the world were written out ' by the hand.
It has been contended, that the Romans were well acquainted with the art of printing, and that they only wanted the blessings of peace to bring it to perfection. Cicero, in his D« Naturd Deorum, has a passage from which Toland supposes the moderns took the hint of printing. That author orders the types to be made of metal, and calls them forma literamm, the very words used by the first printers to express them. We have shewn that Virgil mentions brands for marking cattle, with the owner's name. In the second book, Cicero gives a hint of separate cut letters, when he speaks of " some ingenious man's tlirowing the twenty-fovur letters of the alphabet,* (either made of gold or other metal) by chance together, and thus producing the annals of Ennics. He makes this observation, in opposition to the atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance.
Chevillier cites the apophthegms of Plutarch, an anecdote of Agesilaus, long of Sparta. Willing by a stratagem to animate his soldiers to battle, he wrote upon his hand the word yuvn (or victory); and thence by pressure imprinted the same word upon the liver of the slain victim; and the letters thus impressed became in the eye and imagination of the superstitious multitude, a sure pledge of success. We are told of a sultan, who on signing an edict, dipped Iris hand in blood, and then impressed the paper.
Mr. Ottley differs born those writers, who contend that the ancients were convinced of the advantages to be derived from the practice of the art, though they did not think | proper to use it. Upon this subject, Lanci justly remarks, " That the stamps of ancients, and the impressions from seals of metal, found on deeds and conveyances the low ages, prove nothing more, than that mankind walked for many centuries upon the borders of the two great inventions of typography and chalcography, nithout han the luck to discover either of them; and appear neither to have had any influence u}j the origin of those arts, nor to merit any place in their history."
Having treated upon these interesting subjects, as iar as my limits will allow, hit to those who wish to know further, may consult the authors already quoted, at greater length: and shall conclude this Introduction, with a concise review of the state of literature among our Saxon ancestors.
There is not, prehaps, any language in the world, which has experienced so many
' changes as the English; and like the political constitution of the countrj', it seems to
have gained both strength and energy by every change. We may conclude, from Caesar's
- The able maUieiiutician Jacqnct, calculates that the various combinatioiis of the twenty four letters of the
alphabet, -without any repetition amount to C20,'l4g,40l,733,239,439,36o,00«.— See Astle on the Origin and Progrtn '
of Writing, tendon, »80«, folio.
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