can recollect, even occur in Champollion's Egyptian correspondOn the general subject of hieroglyphic interpretation, Mr. Wilkinson observes, that

ence.

Many are still prepossessed against the alphabetic or phonetic system, and obstinately refuse either to admit its utility or examine its pretensions. I therefore think it right to state that, with the assistance of Coptic, the early discoveries of Dr. Young, and the subsequent extensive improvements of M. Champollion, I have arrived at the same general results, with some few immaterial exceptions, as the savant I have just mentioned, without having had the least communication with him, either in Europe, or during his stay in Egypt; and the same conclusions have sometimes been formed previously, sometimes subsequently to his. Thus, then, generally speaking, the observations of two persons on the same subject have given similar results; and though I am far from pretending to compare my own to the unparalleled success of M. Champollion, I cannot but mention a fact which goes so far to demonstrate the truth of a system which some are still determined to call in question.'

Mr. Wilkinson will, on reconsideration, be aware that this sort of language argues at least as much prepossession' in him that gives' as in him that takes. To say of an adversary, that he is determined to make opposition, is an easy and off-hand way of laying exclusive claim to all imaginable candour and all possible infallibility. Speaking for ourselves, who have most certainly formed no determination in the matter, we shall, without any hesitation, express our conviction, that the questioners, if not altogether in the right, can at least put forward a very fair show of reason for their suspicions. The mode of arguing adopted by Mr. Wilkinson, amounts pretty nearly to what logicians are wont to call a non sequitur, since there is obviously nothing wonderful in the fact, that two inquirers intent on the same object, and working with the same tools on the same materials, should bring out the same results. In the following passage, however, he expresses himself in language at once more discreet and more definite. Few persons, we are persuaded, who are not pledged to a theory, and who have bestowed fair consideration on the subject, will hesitate at giving in their adhesion to his conclusions.

With regard to the translation of hieroglyphics, M. Champollion must allow, no one is yet sufficiently advanced in the language of ancient Egypt to enable him literally to translate an inscription of any length, or moderately complicated; though a general meaning may frequently be obtained. Time will no doubt do more, and we may hope to see this language interpreted with the same facility as many with which we have been long acquainted. But the steps must be slow and cautious; and the only mode of convincing those who still adhere to a contrary opinion, is to trust little to conjecture, or at least to state an uncertainty wherever it exists; to admit and correct errors when dis

VOL. XIII.-N.S.

3 D

covered; and to settle a fixed, rather than a temporary interpretation to the groupes, which will answer to their meaning whenever they

occur.'

Had Champollion acted upon these principles, we are quite sure that the science for which he did so much, would have been not only more generally accredited, but further advanced. With him, however, there is none of this wise reserve; he rushes boldly to his conclusions, and avows his pride, that, after tracing the Nile from its mouth to the Second Cataract, he has acquired a 'right' to say, that there is nothing to modify' in his "Letter on the hieroglyphic Alphabet." "Our alphabet,' he proceeds, 'is good; it applies with equal success, first to the Egyptian monuments of the times of the Romans and the Lagidæ; and next, 'what becomes of a far higher interest, to the inscriptions of all 'the temples, palaces, and tombs of the Pharaonic epochs." When we meet, after having made some general acquaintance with the facts of the case, with such presumptuous language as this, we may be excused for doubting. In truth, the prepos'sessions' alluded to by Mr. Wilkinson are not altogether without cause. The charlatanism and want of common candour betrayed by Champollion, whenever his nationality or his all-grasping vanity throw temptations in his way, may well excite, in the minds of cautious inquirers, a suspicion that all is not right. The absence of high and honourable feeling exhibited in his attempts to escape from the galling conviction, that he had been anticipated in the two great discoveries of Egyptian literature, by a man who had not bestowed a thousandth part of the same labour on the subject, can most assuredly have no favourable effect on the minds of impartial readers; while the mystifying processes by which he endeavours to effect the suppressio veri, do not always enable him to avoid the suggestio falsi. Were it worth while, we could point out, in the early portion of his 'Précis,' a tissue of evasions and misrepresentations, studiously involved in language affectedly systematic and precise, but really intricate and obscure, introduced for the purpose of ejecting Dr. Young hors de cour et de procès, that casts a deep and deplorable shade over the memory of Champollion. Into this examination, however, we cannot now enter, since the task-by no means a pleasant one-still lies before us, of stating the heavy charges brought against the great Hiero-grammate by no less formidable an accuser than Julius Klaproth. Whether the motives of this eminent linguist are altogether without taint of personality, is a point that we cannot undertake to decide; though there is a keenness, a sarcastic tone, a relentless perseverance in the manner of the attack, that may justify suspicion; but these things do not affect the substance of the indictment, and perhaps the true merits of the case could hardly be thoroughly brought out in

any other way. Champollion's writings will bear rough handling he is a master of mystification; he is a marvellous 'cloudcompeller,' and his decisive, unhesitating manner aids in the imposition.

'Reflecting,' writes M. Klaproth, towards the close of his pamphlet, on all these difficulties, and on the circumstance that we only know the import of a comparatively very small number of alphabetico-demotic letters, we cannot but feel extreme surprise at the hardihood with which M. Champollion has endeavoured to make it believed that he was able to read, understand, and translate the papyri, and the demotic portion of the Rosetta inscription; while it is certain that, spite of his brilliant discoveries, he had never succeeded in comprehending the half of a single line in the hieroglyphic part of that famous inscription. Thus has he never been able to comply with the reiterated demand of the learned of all countries, repeated some time since by the illustrious Silvestre de Sacy-" to publish a special examination of the text, both demotic and hieroglyphic, of the Rosetta monument, were it even nothing more than an imperfect sketch." "Such a work,” adds the Nestor of oriental literature, "would be, doubtless, of the greatest weight in the question under discussion."'

We are, of course, unable to say whether the 'savant Egypto'logue' has left among his papers the particulars of any such examination; but we observe, in a prospectus attached to the first of two Letters, addressed by a François Salvolini to the secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin, that he, the friend and disciple of Champollion, is ready, under the guarantee of a subscription, to publish the results of such an analysis, undertaken by himself. The pamphlets are interesting, and shew skill in the manipulation of difficult materials; but, with the science of his master, Salvolini seems to have inherited a good portion of his unscrupulous spirit, since he has the cool audacity to speak of his proposed work as a homage rendered to a discovery which will confer everlasting honour on literature 6 and on France. Knavery seems catching in this department; for M. Salvolini, while mentioning a paper, on the Astronomical Year of the Egyptians, read by Champollion to the Institute, laments that fate has deprived us, perhaps for ever, of this last work, his intended legacy to science! Champollion mentioned, a few days before his death, the name of an individual to whom, in the true spirit of his fine character, he had not 'been able to refuse his manuscript: this name, not being familiar to the friends who surrounded his bed, was forgotten 'during the terrible catastrophe which a few days after termi'nated a life so precious; and it is thus that, by an act which we are not permitted to qualify, science has been hitherto de'prived of this master-piece.' This is an odd story, but le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable; else we might be tempted

6

6

to express our astonishment at so strange an instance of inattention and forgetfulness, and to inquire whether the rough notes and the fair copy of the dissertation vanished at the same time. From this digression, however, we return to M. Klaproth.

6

He begins his Examen Critique with the somewhat caustic observation, that, although great enthusiasm has been excited by the late M. Champollion's discovery of the phonetic alphabet, few persons seem to have a precise idea, either of what it really is, or of what it may have produced in the way of satisfactory result. 'Dr. Young,' he says, 'in England, is, without contradiction, the first author of this discovery.' It was in 1818 that he ascertained the alphabetical value of the greater part of the hieroglyphics composing the names of Ptolemy and Berenice. M. Klaproth qualifies this concession by observing, that the sagacity of the English savant failed to carry him beyond this heureuse rencontre, and that he left to his French competitor all the glory that may belong to a discovery reasoned out and 'submitted to demonstration.' This is not exactly fair. In the first place, Dr. Young did carry the discovery further. He had previously traced the connexion, cavilled at, but not disproved by Champollion, between the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and enchorial characters; and he subsequently pursued his inquiries to a considerable extent, acknowledging, with unrequited delicacy, the aid which he derived from the more extended researches of his French competitor.' It is, however, not to be forgotten, that, while the Doctor was a universal student, and a discoverer in almost every branch of science and literature, the fame of Champollion rests but upon one foundation, and that apparently not particularly solid or secure. Dr. Young had a distinct and laborious profession, claiming not only his immediate attention, but the anxious application of his leisure hours, and permitting but a partial and remitted advertence to extraneous objects. Hence, when his sagacity' had detected and ascertained the master-key to hieroglyphic interpretation, he retired and left further research to those whose proper and exclusive business it was *.

6

For a considerable period previously to this cardinal discovery, Champollion had devoted himself to the study of Egyptian antiquities. When he commenced his labours in this direction, Jablonsky and Zoëga were the great leaders of public opinion;

*We refer our readers for further details on this subject, as well as on the various and eminently successful investigations of this distinguished man, to his highly interesting " Account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphic literature" (1823); to a sketch of his life and catalogue of his works, published in 1831; and to his "Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary in the ancient enchorial character," appended (in 1830) to the Rev. Henry Tattam's Coptic Grammar.

and the latter had already suggested the notion, that some, at least, of the hieroglyphics might have been the representatives of sounds; and to these he assigned the well-imagined term phonetic, afterwards adopted, as usual without acknowledgement, by Champollion. This important conjecture had not, however, made proselytes among the learned, and the sacred characters were still considered as symbolical or ideographic; when the discovery of the Rosetta Stone came in time to modify the general opinion, without making a convert of Champollion, who retained his old opinions. In 1821, he published a volume “ On the Hieratic Writing of the ancient Egyptians "; and there, after having admitted that a whole host of learned men, with Humboldt and the members of the Egyptian Commission among them, had come to the inference that the writing of the Egyptian manuscripts was alphabetic, he states broadly, that a long comparative study of the hieroglyphic and hieratic characters had led him to a contrary conclusion. On this undeniable expression of opinion, M. Klaproth gives the following decisive comment.

66

This small volume in folio is become extremely rare; it is said, that the Author made every possible effort to prevent the copies from meeting the public eye, by withdrawing from commerce, and from the possession of his friends, those which he had before sent abroad. The reason assigned was, "the fear of wounding the scruples of pious persons. But there is in that work absolutely nothing that relates to the high antiquity of the empire of the Pharaohs, and therefore, on that point, in open contradiction to the Bible narrative. It must be permitted us to believe that M. Champollion's true motive for suppressing the book, was, that it might not supply a too accurate measure of the progress which he had made up to 1821, a year before his "Letter to M. Dacier." The true measure of that progress exists in the assertion, that "the hieroglyphic signs are signs of things, and "not signs of sounds." Assuredly, he who had bestowed ten years' labour on the hieroglyphics without deciphering them, and who, in 1821, consigned to the press such an axiom as this, greatly needed to be guided in his new researches of 1822, by the discoveries of Dr. Young, published in December 1819, in the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It can then no longer be doubted, that the discoveries of M. Champollion are grafted on those of Dr. Young, to whom belongs the merit of having first demonstrated, that the Egyptians used hieroglyphical signs to express proper names alphabetically.'

In the mean time, further materials were in course of acquisition; and the inscription of Philæ, communicated by Mr. Bankes to the Academy of Inscriptions, gave a new impulse to these studies. In 1822, Champollion published his Letter to M. Dacier, and, in that document, argued upon the newly established hypothesis with good discretion and fair analysis; but, in his