There is nothing absolutely incorrect in this statement, but the reader naturally infers from it that the group in question occurs either exclusively or principally in these nine lines. The fact is, however, that in the first five lines, or rather half lines, the group is found ten times, and in the remaining nine, only eighteen, that is, about half as frequently, in proportion to the actual length of the lines: nor can I find any where a context that favours Mr. Champollion’s interpretation; though I have lately observed that an Enchorial group, resembling ´O, is found almost uniformly to answer to the Greek infinitive: being read perhaps MNR or MARE: but I cannot make these characters agree either with the hieroglyphics in question, or with the sounds SNE, which Mr. Champollion attributes to them. So little is Mr. Champollion in the habit of distinguishing _proofs_ from _assertions_ in his own case, that it is the less surprising that he should sometimes confound them with respect to others. He says, for example, with respect to the nature of the Hieratic characters, which he explained to the Academy of Belles Lettres in 1821, “_je me suis convaincu depuis que M. le Dr. Young avait publié avant moi ce même résultat, et de plus, que nous avions été_ PREVENUS _de quelques années, l’un et l’autre, quant au_ principe de cette découverte et sa définition, par M. Tychsen de Goettingue.” (p. 20.) Professor Tychsen had _asserted_ this agreement as a probable opinion: it was amply _demonstrated_ in 1816; _five years_ afterwards Mr. Champollion thinks he has a right to consider himself as a new inventor of the doctrine, because he chose to neglect what was done in a neighbouring country, and to undervalue the actual _proof_, in which he had been anticipated, by classing it with a bare _assertion_ to be found in a German publication. [p317] Precisely in the same spirit he remarks, in the next page, that Barthélemy and Zoëga had _pointed_ out the rings as containing proper names: they had, indeed, _said_ that they might be proper names, _or_ moral sentences, _or_ something else; but the only question was, if it was worth questioning at all, to whom belonged the priority of the _demonstration_ that they actually were proper names: which, before the publication of the Archaeologia for 1814, was no where to be found. This publication was the first great step after the discovery of the pillar of Rosetta: the second was the identification of the different kinds of characters, in 1816, by means of the Déscription de l’Egypte: the third, the application of that identification to the names of Ptolemy and Berenice: the fourth, perhaps, was Mr. Bankes’s discovery in Egypt, of the name of Cleopatra, which he sent to Paris: and on these grounds is certainly _founded_ ALL that is at present known of Egyptian literature, for a very considerable proportion of which we are unquestionably indebted to Mr. Champollion. * * * * *