the written: the
one, the gift of God; the other, the invention of man."--_Elocution_, p.
xiv. If this ascription of the two things to their sources, were as just as
it is clear and emphatical, both parts of our question would seem to be
resolved. But this great rhetorician either forgot his own doctrine, or did
not mean what he here says. For he afterwards makes the former kind of
language as much a work of art, as any one will suppose the latter to have
been. In his sixth lecture, he comments on the gift of speech thus: "But
still we are to observe, that nature did no more than furnish the power and
means; _she did not give the language_, as in the case of the passions, but
left it to the industry of men, to find out and agree upon such articulate
sounds, as they should choose to make the symbols of their ideas."--_Ib._,
p. 147. He even goes farther, and supposes certain _tones of the voice_ to
be things invented by man: "Accordingly, as she did not furnish the
_words_, which were to be the symbols of his ideas; neither did she furnish
the _tones_, which were to manifest, and communicate by their own virtue,
the internal exertions and emotions, of such of his nobler faculties, as
chiefly distinguish him from the brute species; but left them also, like
words, to the care and invention of man."--_Ibidem_. On this branch of the
subject, enough has already been presented.

17. By most authors, alphabetic writing is not only considered an
artificial invention, but supposed to have been wholly unknown in the early
ages of the world. Its antiquity, however, is great. Of this art, in which
the science of grammar originated, we are not able to trace the
commencement. Different nations have claimed the honour of the invention;
and it is not decided, among the learned, to whom, or to what country, it
belongs. It probably originated in Egypt. For, "The Egyptians," it is said,
"paid divine honours to the Inventor of Letters, whom they called _Theuth_:
and Socrates, when he speaks of him, considers him as a god, or a god-like
man."--_British Gram._, p. 32. Charles Bucke has it, "That the first
inventor of letters is supposed to have been _Memnon_; who was, in
consequence, fabled to be the son of Aurora, goddess of the
morning."--_Bucke's Classical Gram._, p. 5. The ancients in general seem to
have thought Phoenicia the birthplace of Letters:

"Phoenicians first, if ancient fame be true,
The sacred mystery of letters knew;