capital letters that would have been requisite for the purpose; and it is besides frequently signified that the letters were written hastily. The year of the king's reign, however, is often specified, as also the day of the month, or of the saint nearest to it, but always in Latin numerals.
Observing in Plate VI. No 31, annexed to these letters, a specimen of the Arabic figures which the editor said were then in use, I expected to have seen many of them; but unless I have overlooked them, they are only to be met with in p.p. 153, 184, of Vol. the Ist, which have been just examined, and in Vol. the IInd, p. p. 300, 302, on the margin of a paper with this title "The Inventory off Englyshe Boks of John made ye v daye of Novembr Ao R. R. E. iiij." And yet there are not fewer than one hundred and fifty-five of these letters and papers, and all of them written in the years 1440–1486; that is, two hundred years subsequent to the time when Dr. Wallis imagined them to have been in common use. "These figures," writes the Doctor[1], "seem to have come in use in these parts about the eleventh century (or rather in the tenth century, about the middle of it, if not sooner), though some rather think not till the middle of the thirteenth, and it seems they did scarce come to be of common use till about this time."
Such, Sir, are the grounds on which I have thought myself warranted to controvert a notion that has long prevailed of a too early frequent use of the vulgar arithmetical figures; nor is it improbable that it might be the more readily acquiesced in from its having been zealously maintained by two very eminent professors. They, however, did not coincide in their opinions respecting the introduction and confined use of Arabic numerals; for Dr. Ward
- ↑ Treatise of Algebra, Preface, page 2.
thought
