Communion, its Philosophy, Theology, and Practice,’ Dublin, 1861, 12mo.
In 1865 his health began to break down, though he still laboured hard in religious and philosophical literature; and from that time till 1875, when his sufferings culminated in paralysis, his life was passed under extreme trials of sickness and sorrow. Latterly his studies chiefly turned on religious metaphysics, and he was a distinguished member of a celebrated society for the discussion of such subjects to which some of the most noted men of the age in England belonged (Nineteenth Century, xvii. 178, 181). ‘Few in their day have been more beloved or admired; nor was his influence limited to his own land, but was familiar to many in France, Italy, and Germany’ (Tablet, 15 April 1876, p. 499). He died in the monastery of the Cistercians at Burgess Hill, near Brighton, on 11 Feb. 1876, and was buried at Sydenham, near the body of Father Faber, in the cemetery of the Oratorian Fathers (Weekly Register, 15 April 1876, pp. 243, 254).
Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote: 1. A treatise on ‘The Spiritual Life of the First Six Centuries,’ prefixed to a translation of the Countess Hahn-Hahn's ‘Lives of the Fathers of the Desert,’ Lond. 1867, 8vo. 2. ‘An Essay on the Spiritual Life of Mediæval England,’ prefixed to a reprint of Walter Hilton's ‘Scale of Perfection,’ Lond. 1870, 8vo. 3. An Essay on ‘The Personality of God,’ in the ‘Contemporary Review’ (1874), xxiv. 321.
[Authorities cited above.]
DALGARNO, GEORGE (1626?–1687), writer on pasigraphy, was born, according to Wood, ‘at Old Aberdeen, and bred in the university at New Aberdeen; taught a private grammar school with good success for about thirty years together, in the parishes of St. Michael and St. Mary Mag. in Oxford … and dying of a fever on 28 Aug. 1687, aged sixty or more, was buried in the north body of the church of St. Mary Magdalen’ (Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 970). Dalgarno was master of Elizabeth School, Guernsey, on 12 March 1661–2; but having some disputes with the royal court about the repairs of the school-house, he returned to Oxford in the summer of 1672, and sent in his resignation on 30 Sept. of that year. He was married and had a family. Among other eminent men he knew Ward, bishop of Sarum, Wilkins, bishop of Chester, and Wallis, Savilian professor. Yet not the slightest notice of him is taken in the works either of Wilkins or of Wallis, both of whom must have derived some very important aids from his speculations. To Dalgarno has been erroneously ascribed the merit of having anticipated some of the most refined conclusions of the present age respecting the education of the deaf and dumb. His work upon this subject is entitled ‘Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor. To which is added a Discourse of the Nature and Number of Double Consonants,’ &c., 8vo, printed at the theater in Oxford, 1680. He states the design of it to be ‘to bring the way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near as possible, to that of teaching young ones to speak and understand their mother tongue.’ ‘In prosecution of this general idea,’ says Dugald Stewart, who was the first to call attention to Dalgarno, ‘he has treated, in one very short chapter, of “A Deaf Man's Dictionary;” and in another of “A Grammar for Deaf Persons;” both of them containing (under the disadvantages of a style uncommonly pedantic and quaint) a variety of precious hints, from which useful, practical lights might be derived by all who have any concern in the tuition of children during the first stage of their education.’ Dalgarno may also claim the distinction of having first exhibited, and that in its most perfect form, a finger alphabet. He makes no pretensions, however, to the original conception of such a medium of communication. In Wallis's letter to Thomas Beverley (published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for October 1698, no mention is made of Dalgarno, whom he and John Bulwer [q. v.] had anticipated. A long controversy had taken place upon this subject between Wallis [see Wallis, John] and William Holder [q. v.], whose investigations had preceded those of Dalgarno by twenty years. Nearly twenty years before the appearance of his ‘Didascalocophus’ Dalgarno had published another curious treatise entitled ‘Ars Signorum, vulgo Character Universalis et Lingua Philosophica,’ &c., 8vo, London, 1661, from which it appears that he was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his speculations concerning ‘A Real Character and a Philosophical Language’ (1668). Dalgarno's treatise exhibits a methodical classification of all possible ideas, and a selection of characters adapted to this arrangement, so as to represent each idea by a specific character, without reference to the words of any language. He admits only seventeen classes of ideas, and uses the letters of the Latin alphabet, with two Greek characters, to denote them. The treatise is dedicated to Charles II in this philosophical character, ‘which,’ observes Hallam, ‘must have been as great a mystery to the sovereign as to his subjects.’ Dalgarno here anticipated
