Here Dr. Johnson has closed his account, which we shall endeavour to complete by noticing some other philosophical speculations of a similar nature that have been submitted to the public. But we shall first present the reader with amore detailed account of Bishop Wilkins' plan of a universal and philosophical language. This account we shall give in an extract from Dr. Priestley's Lectures on the Theory of Language, because it contains the most clear and concise exposition of it, that can possibly be given.
"Having in the first place, with prodigious labour and exactness, distributed all things to which names are given into classes; under forty genuses or general heads, (some of which, however, are subordinate to others) he assigns a short and simple character to each of these forty genuses,—a definite variation of the character, to each difference under the genuses, and a further variation for each species, etc. By this means, the characters, representing all things that have names, have the same analogies with one another that the things themselves have.
"Characters being provided for the names of things, the grammatical distinctions of words, numbers, tenses, persons, voices, etc. are denoted by some appendage to the character.
"In this manner may we be furnished with an
