Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/320

274 is good to honour the founders of all uſeful conſtitutions; and I believe that King  was the inventor of this as to this realm, becauſe theſe laws of King  ſay ſo; and ſo was, the inventor of letters in Greece, though we can trace them out of Phœnicia; and the letters ſpeak for themſelves. For if it be Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth in one place, and in the ſame order it is Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, in the other place; then we are ſure there has been an underſtanding and communication. For it is impoſſible to be otherwiſe, when the alphabets are ſettled on both ſides, by being their numeral letters; as it was plainly in King ’s time by the octonaries of the 119th Pſalm, as it ſtands in the middle of of [sic] the Bible; and as it was in ’s time in Greece: or elſe the old ſcholiaſts have deceived me, who ſay that purpoſely couched the number of all his books in the firſt words of his Iliads Μ᾵νινΜῆνιν [sic] ἄειδε θεά, which numerals ſtand for 48. The Greeks likewiſe taught the Welch to tell twenty, and I believe they taught the Romans too. Now by the ſame rule, if there was a very antient Folkmote in the neighbouring kingdom of France upon every kalends of May, then, perhaps, King borrowed from them, and it is good to look upon their kalends, becauſe it is poſſible they may give light to our’s.