A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool on the subject of the Greeks. By Thomas, Lord Erskine. 8vo. 3s.

A Compendium of Finance: containing an account of the origin and present state of the public debts, revenue, expenditure, national banks, and currencies; authenticated by official documents. By Bernard Cohen. royal 8vo. 11. 7s.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR NOVEMBER, 1822.

Art. I. Illustrations of Biblical Literature, exhibiting the History and Fate of the Sacred Writings, from the Earliest Period to the Present Century; including Biographical Notices of Translators, and other eminent Biblical Scholars. By the Rev. James Townley. 8vo. 3 vols. pp. 1620. Price 21. 2s. London. 1821.

T often happens that the greatest moral or political advantages are enjoyed by persons who, having been put in possession of them almost gratuitously, have no adequate apprehension of the means to which they are indebted for them. This is strikingly true in reference to the majority of readers of the Holy Scriptures in vernacular translations. The benefit conferred upon them is of a transcendently important kind; but of the difficulties which have been overcome, and the labour and cost expended in the preparation of the gift, how few have any conception! "Other men laboured," and they have "entered into their labours," without even a knowledge of their benefactors, and by no means correctly appreciating the value of the Scriptures themselves. Place a copy of the original Scriptures in the hands of an unlearned reader, and they are to him a sealed book. Nor can the seal be broken, without the labour of acquiring the languages in which they were primarily written, till translations shall have been supplied by competent scholars. The latter is, in most instances, the only practicable alternative; and the service rendered by the translators, ought, in all equity, to be estimated at the price of the time and labour saved to the individuals whom they benefit. It is, therefore, not only the gratification of a laudable curiosity, but the discharge of a grateful duty, to collect the memorials of their learned and pious labours, who, as translators and editors of the Bible, were so much the benefactors of their own, and of other and distant times.

The ample volumes before us comprise a rich fund of instrucVOL. XVIII. N. S. 2 G

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tive and pleasing information on the subject of sacred bibliography. They have been compiled from a great variety of publications, many of them inaccessible to the generality of readers, and some of them of extreme rarity. We can appreciate the diligence with which Mr. Townley must have prosecuted his researches, and the difficulties which he had to over. come in the course of inquiries so minute and so extensive as those which his undertaking embraced; and we are happy to bear our testimony to the respectable manner in which he has executed his design. These volumes include accounts of the ancient versions, and of most of the modern translations of the Scriptures; interspersed throughout with biographical anecdotes and memoirs; bibliographical descriptions; sketches of ecclesiastical manners and superstitions, and of the revival and progress of learning and religion.

In the first part of this work, which comprises within rather narrow limits, an account of the state of Biblical Literature previous to the Christian era, the Author briefly notices the curious and obscure question of the origin of Alphabetical Characters, and describes the various expedients employed in ancient times for the preservation of writing. The statement of Mr. Townley, that the Hebrew, the Samaritan, the Syriac, to which we may add the Greek Alphabets, not to mention any other, seem to have had but one Author,' is not very happily expressed. His meaning we suppose to be, that the greater part of those alphabets were derived from a common origin, the first one known being the model of the others; not that the several characters of which they are formed, were, as to their discovery and primary use, contemporaneous. The Samaritan alphabet exhibited by Mr. T. at p. 9, no more admits of thorough cutting, than does the Hebrew: the former contains certainly one close letter, contrary to the assertion at p. 20. The materials used in the early periods of the history of Letters, were such as were easily procured, and varied as the case might require different degrees of durability, tablets of stone being the most obvious and common for permanent records. Table-books of wood, wax, ivory, metal, the skins of animals, the leaves of trees, and similar articles were all used for the purpose.

The Bark of trees is another material which has been employed in every age and quarter of the globe; and was called Xylochartion by the Greeks. Before the use of the Papyrus became general, the Bark of the Philyra, a species of the Linden tree, was frequently made use of for writing upon; and books written on it existed in the third century. The Bark of Oak was also used for the same purpose. Hence the Latins called a book, Liber, which signifies the inner bark

of a tree; and the Greeks used the word as (Phloios) which also means bark.

Of the several kinds of PAPER, used at different periods, and manufactured from various materials, the Egyptian is unquestionably the most ancient. The exact date of its discovery is unknown, and even the place where it was first made is matter of dispute. According to Isidore, it was first made at Memphis; and according to others, in Seide, or upper Egypt. It was manufactured from the inner films of the Papyrus or Biblos, a sort of flag or bulrush, growing in the marshes of Egypt. The outer skin being taken off, there are next, several films or inner skins, one within another. These, when separated from the stalk, were laid on a table and moistened with the glu tinous waters of the Nile. They were afterwards pressed together and dried in the sun. From this papyrus it is, that what we now make use of to write upon, hath also the name of papyr or paper; though of quite another nature from the ancient papyrus.

According to Montfaucon, Charta Bombycina or Cotton-paper, was discovered towards the end of the ninth, or early in the tenth century. Casiri states paper to have been first manufactured in Bucharia; and that the Arabs ascribe its invention to Joseph Amria, in the year of the Hegira 88, of Christ 706. Other learned men have thought that we are indebted for it to the Chinese, from whom it passed successively to the Indians, Persians, and Arabs; and by the latter was communicated to the western nations. The manufacture of Cotton-paper, is said to be still carried on to a considerable extent in the Levant.

• Paper, fabricated from Linen Rags, is now used throughout Europe, and almost every part of the world whither Europeans have penetrated; and is a much more valuable material for writing upon, than the cotton-paper. We are ignorant both of the inventor, and of the date of this important discovery. Dr. Prideaux delivers it as his opinion, that Linen-paper was brought from the East, because many of the oriental manuscripts are written upon it. Mabillon believes its invention to have been in the twelfth century. One of the earliest specimens of paper from linen rags, which has yet been discovered, is that in the possession of Pestel, Professor in the university of Rinteln, in Germany. It is a document, with the seal preserved, dated A.D. 1239; and signed by Adolphus, Count of Schaumburg. But Casiri positively affirms, that there are many manuscripts in the Escurial, both upon cotton and linen-paper, written prior to the thirteenth century. This invention appears to have been very early introduced into England; for Dr. Prideaux assures us, he had seen a register of some acts of John Cranden, Prior of Ely, made on linen-paper, which bears date in the fourteenth year of King Edward II. A. D. 1320; and in the Cottonian library are said to be several writings on this kind of paper, as early as the year 1335. The first Paper-mill erected in this kingdom, is said to have been at Dartford, in 1588, by M. Spilman, a German. Shakspeare, however, refers it to the reign of Henry VI., and makes Jack Cade (Henry VI. part ii.) say, in accusation of Lord Sands: "Whereas, before, our forefathers had