Young was himself disposed to think highly of his life of Lagrange, which he had prepared with more than ordinary labour and care: but we have ventured elsewhere to dispute the justice of the estimate which he has formed of the character of that extraordinary man, which he was disposed to consider as indicative rather of extraordinary industry, than of great sagacity and talent. He has done more justice to the works of Coulomb and Robison, which he was better enabled to appreciate by the connection of many of them with his own special studies and investigations: those of Coulomb, more especially his Statical Problems relating to Architecture, exercised, as he himself informs us, a most important influence upon some of the most successful of his own speculations.

Of all his biographical sketches that of Porson is undoubtedly the best. It is written throughout with great liveliness and point, and contains some admirable observations on the real value and importance of classical studies and critical scholarship. His own early passion for such studies and the eminence which he attained in them, notwithstanding the variety and absorbing nature of his other occupations, enabled him thoroughly to appreciate this extraordinary man. He enjoyed the privilege also in very early life, as we have already seen, of sitting occasionally at the feet of this great master, and he was not indisposed to refer, with a very pardonable pride, to his own share in critical conflicts, in which he had participated. Even the

b Supra, p. 23. Dr. Young refers, in his sketch, to a party at which he was present in 1791, when only 18 years of age, where Burney—referring to a canon of the versification of the Greek tragic writers which Porson had recently established, prescribing that where an iambic trimeter ends with a trisyllabic word, forming a pes creticus as it is called, it must be preceded

beauty and nicety of penmanship, more especially in forming the Greek characters, in which Young as well as Porson so much excelled, formed no slight bond of connection between them: and they were equally well qualified, by their own experience, to form a just estimate of the value of an acquirement or rather of a gift-though some men are disposed to underrate it as mechanical—which not only places every letter of a mutilated manuscript at the command of a copyist, but indelibly fixes attention on the minutest variations of their forms, and thus lays the foundation of those accurate habits of observation which are not less important to a critical scholar than to a man of science. One of his biographers has said that Porson, in speaking of his own Greek writing, "admitted that another person surpassed him not in the stroke but in the sweep of his letters:" but Young himself assures us that this statement was not quite correct; for whilst Porson conceded to him the advantage with respect to the "command of hand" which his system gave him, he preferred the model upon which his own was formed. Young himself very modestly adds, that "Porson's hand was more like that of a scholar, whilst his own, as exhibited in the Calligraphia Græca, exhibits more the appearance of the work of a writing-master: holding a middle place between the neatness of Porson and the marvellous accuracy of the country school-master, who made the fac-simile of the Oxford Pindar in the British Museum."

either by a short syllable or by a monosyllable-introduced a very happy illustration of its violation in the verse

Πᾶν ἐκπέπωκας· οὐ λέλειπται κότταβος.

at the very time that Porson-in a state which was unhappily too common with him-was attempting to fill his glass from an empty bottle. Young, with his usual promptitude and courage, suggested the reading k’ovd éveσti KÓTTаßos, which was equally advantageous to the sense and to the metre.

LIFE.

S

CHAPTER X.

HIEROGLYPHICAL RESEARCHES.

A TRAVELLER in Egypt, Sir W. Rouse Boughton, had found, in a mummy-case in a catacomb near Thebes, a papyrus written in cursive Egyptian characters, which, though nearly perfect when first discovered, was subsequently very much injured by being accidentally soaked in sea-water. The fragments that remained were submitted, in the spring of the year 1814, to Dr. Young, who appended to a communication made by its discoverer to the Antiquarian Society, a short notice respecting them, which was not otherwise important except as being the occasion of calling the attention of its author to a class of researches upon the sacred and common writing of the ancient Egyptians, for which he afterwards became so famous. Between the month of May-when this first notice was written and sent to the press-and the following November, he subjected the three inscriptions of the well-known Rosetta stone to a most laborious analysis, which ended in a conjectural translation of the second of the three, which was printed as an appendix to his former notice.

Of the three inscriptions upon this stone, the first is in the hieroglyphical or sacred, and the second in the enchorial," characters of Egypt, whilst the third is in

The term demotic is adopted by Champollion from Herodotus, instead of enchorial which is used in the Greek inscription. Young objects to the

Greek; and at the conclusion of the last, it is stated that "what is here decreed shall be inscribed on a block of hard stone, in sacred, in native (enchorial), and in Greek, characters, and placed in each temple, both of the first and second and third gods." We should be authorised to conclude, therefore, that the three inscriptions expressed the same decree, as nearly as was compatible with the genius of the different languages employed and with the sacred and enchorial characters used in two of them, whether those characters were alphabetical, ideographical, or symbolical, or a mixture of all three; and that, consequently, the comparison of them with each other, if carefully made, could not fail to give very important information with respect to the mode in which proper names, or any other words, were written or represented, provided that their peculiar position in the inscriptions, or their frequent recurrence, enabled us sufficiently to identify them.

Unhappily, however, the early portion of the first inscription was destroyed, and many other parts of it mutilated or nearly obliterated; the same observation extended also to many parts of the Greek or third inscription, particularly towards the conclusion; but sufficient of it was preserved not only to make the purport of it intelligible, but also to afford a clue to Porson, and more especially to Heyne, to enable those eminent scholars to restore the whole, or nearly the

use of the former term, on the ground that we have no means of determining the precise nature of the characters thus designated by the historian. See Works, vol. iii. p. 271.

The original Greek, the parts underlined being restored, partly with reference to the extent of the deficient spaces and partly to the context, is as follows:—τὸ δὲ ψήφισμα τοῦτο ἀναγράψαι εἰς στήλην μεγάλην στερεοῦ λίθου, τοῖς τε ἱεροῖς καὶ ἐγχωρίοις καὶ Ελληνίκοις γράμμασιν καὶ στῆσαι ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν τε πρώτων καὶ δευτέρων καὶ τρίτων ἱερῶν

K. T. a.

whole, of the deficient parts, without much opening for any material omission or error. The intermediate inscription in the enchorial characters or those in common usage, was nearly complete, with the exception of the beginning of some of the earlier lines.

A fac-simile of the three inscriptions had been engraved by the Antiquarian Society, though wanting in that minute accuracy which is more or less necessary in all cases where the issue of an important critical inquiry may be affected by the most trifling omission, or the most minute variation of form. Young had furnished himself with copies of this engraving when he made his annual visit to Worthing in the summer of 1814, and he there proceeded, by an attentive and methodical comparison of the several parts with each other, to ascertain those portions of the two first inscriptions, and more especially of the second, which corresponded with the Greek.

Silvestre de Sacy, the celebrated orientalist-to whom a copy of the inscriptions upon this stone had been submitted soon after its discovery by the French at the beginning of this century -- in a letter addressed to Chaptal, the Minister of the Interior, had pointed out, from their recurrence and position, in the second of the three inscriptions, the groups of characters which expressed the names of Ptolemy, Alexander, and Alexandria; and Akerblad, a gentleman connected with the diplomatic service of Sweden, a good classical and a first-rate Coptic scholar, who was at that time resident in Paris,

b

pro

Lettre au Citoyen Chaptal, Ministre de l'Intérieur, au sujet de l'Inscription Egyptienne de Rosette. Paris, an x. 1802.

b Lettre sur l'Inscription Egyptienne de Rosette, adressée au C. Silvestre de Sacy, Professeur de langue Arabe à l'école spéciale des langues Orientales. Par J. D. Akerblad, 1802. For notices of the labours of Akerblad see Dr. Young's Works, vol. iii. p. 30, 44, 79, and 270.