Dr. Pierce, Dean of Sarum, a perpetual controversialist, and to whom it was dangerous to refuse a request, lest it might raise a controversy, asked Dr. Ward, bishop of Salisbury, for a Prebend for his son. He was refused; and studying revenge, he opened a controversy with the bishop, maintaining that the king had the right of bestowing every dignity in all the Cathedral Churches of the kingdom, and not the bishops. This required a reply from the bishop, who had formerly been an active controversialist himself. Dean Pierce renewed his attack with a folio volume, entitled “A vindication of the king’s sovereign right, &c.” Thus it proceeded, and the web thickened round the bishop in replies and rejoinders. It cost him many tedious journeys to London, through bad roads, fretting at “the king’s sovereign right” all the way; and in the words of a witness, “in unseasonable times and weather, that by degrees his spirits were exhausted, his memory quite gone, and he was totally unfitted for business.” Such was the fatal disturbance occasioned by Dean Pierce’s folio of “The king’s sovereign right.” WRITING AMONG THE GREEKS. As a proof of the simplicity of the times described by Homer, it is a great doubt if his kings and heroes could write or read; at least when the Grecian leaders cast lots who should engage Hector in single combat, in the seventh Iliad, they only made their marks, for when the lot signed by Ajax fell out of the helmet, and was carried round by the herald, none of the chiefs knew to whom it belonged till it was brought to Ajax himself. The learned Mr. Wood in his Essay on the original genius and writings of Homer, after observing that neither in the Iliad nor Odyssey is there any thing that conveys the idea of letters or reading, nor any allusion to literal writing, adds, “As to symbolical, hieroglyphical, or picture-like description, something of that kind was, no doubt, known to Homer, of which the letter (as it is called) which Bellerophon carried to the king of Lycia is a proof.” This letter was sent from Prœtus; (_Iliad_, vi. line, 168, &c.) “To Lycia the devoted youth he sent, With _marks_, expressive of his dire intent GRAV’D on a tablet, that the Prince should die.” The probability that Homer lived much nearer the times he described than is usually supposed, has been shewn by Mr. Mitford (_Hist. of Greece, Appx. to ch. 4._) with all the clearness of which so distant an event is capable. To this account of the ignorance of the Greeks in literal writing may be added that the Mexicans, though a civilized people, had no alphabet; the art of writing was no farther advanced among them than the using of figures composed of painted feathers, by which they made a shift to communicate some simple thoughts; and in that manner was the Emperor Montezuma informed of the landing of the Spaniards in his territories.