It must be confessed that the knowledge of writing in Egypt led to a kind of primitive pedantry, and a taste for unnatural and to us childish formality: the free play and naivete of the story-teller is too often choked, and the art of literary finish was little understood. Simplicity and truth to nature alone gave lasting charm, for though adornment was often attempted, their rude arts of literary embellishment were seldom otherwise than clumsily employed. A word should be said about the strange condition in which most of the literary texts have come down to us. It is rarely that monumental inscriptions contain serious blunders of orthography; the peculiarities of late archaistic inscriptions which sometimes produce a kind of "dog Egyptian" can hardly be considered as blunders, for the scribe knew what meaning he intended to convey. But it is otherwise with copies of literary works on papyrus. Sometimes these were the productions of schoolboys copying from dictation as an exercise in the writing-school, and the blank edges of these papyri are often decorated with essays at executing the more difficult signs. The master of the school would seem not to have cared what nonsense was produced by the misunderstanding of his dictation, so long as the signs were well formed. The composition of new works on the model of the old, and the accurate understanding of the ancient works, were taught in a very different school, and few indeed attained to skill in them. The boys turned out of the writing-school would read and write a little; the clever ones would keep accounts, write letters, make out reports as clerks in the government service, and might ultimately acquire considerable proficiency in this kind of work. Apparently men of the official class sometimes amused themselves with puzzling over an ill-written copy of some ancient tale, and with trying to copy portions of it. The work however was beyond them: they were attracted by it, they revered the compilations of an elder age and those which were "written by the finger of Thoth himself"; but the science of language was unborn, and there was little or no systematic instruction given in the principles of the ancient grammar and vocabulary. Those who desired to attain eminence in scholarship after they had passed through the writing-school had to go to Heliopolis, Hermopolis, or wherever the principal university of the time might be, and there sit at the feet of priestly professors; who we fancy were reverenced as demigods, and who in mysterious fashion and with niggardly hand imparted scraps of knowledge to their eager pupils. Those endowed with special talents might after almost lifelong study become proficient in the ancient language. Would that we might one day discover the hoard of rolls of such a copyist and writer!