Excerpt from The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing: A Connected Narrative of the Development of the Art in Its Primeval Phases in Egypt, China, and Mexico and Its Subsequent Progress to the Present Day
The rapid sale of a large edition of a work, which, in an age of "shilling volumes," may be considered an expensive one, has sufficiently proved that it supplied a gap in the literature of popular Arch?ology, in a manner not altogether unsuited to the wants of the public.
It also proved that the plan of the work, in reducing its intricate subject to the form of a simple continuous narrative, divested of learned technicalities, and philological ramifications, was, with all its inherent blemishes, deemed on the whole satisfactory. I have, therefore, in the Second Edition, which is now called for, adhered to that form of treating the subject; only making such additions as a subsequent revision of his labours always enables an author to effect.
My original inducement to undertake a work on this branch of the history of art, was, as stated in my First Edition, the great public interest excited by the recent discovery and interpretation of the sculptured records of Assyria; the successful decyphering of the wedge-formed characters of which excited public curiosity in an extraordinary manner, and created a desire for information respecting other ancient methods of writing, and their origin. But no work adapted to gratify this curiosity was in existence. Astle's treatise on the progress of writing can only be said to commence after the art was reduced to its present alphabetic form; while the valuable and extensive works of the learned Benedictines, written before our present knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics was acquired, exhibit the same deficiency; and while more recent works of the class were published, previous to the successful interpretation of the Cuneatic character.
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