Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/172

126 luded to names not to numbers, the second article of inquiry shall be after inscriptions, carved, punched, or stamped, on stone, or wood, on brass, or other metal, in which the whole date of the year is unquestionably given in Arabic figures. Perhaps I shall be thought too venturous when I suggest a belief that of the fourteenth century no such inscription, or fac simile, can be exhibited; and that the numbers even of the succeeding century will be found comparatively few. To abate the surprise that this insinuation may at first excite, it should be considered that neither in Dugdale's History of St. Paul's Cathedral, nor in Sepulchral Monuments, is there a tomb-stone or tablet of the fourteenth century that bears these numerals. The first date of this kind that has, it seems, occurred to you, is 1858 (1454) on a brass plate on a tomb in Ware church, in memory of Elen Cook.

In several county and more local histories there are, indeed, sundry epitaphs printed in the common figures; but I am assured in many instances, and I rather suspect; it to be true in all, that from negligence, or expedition and convenience, the first copiers of them, or the subsequent transcribers, or the printers, have made use of these figures instead of Roman numerals. But had the artists who engraved the inscriptions on brass plates been well acquainted with the Arabic figures, (and if in general use their ignorance of them is unlikely) would they not have adopted these characters when the stone, or the brass-plate, on which they were to work was so scanty as not to allow sufficient room for all they wished to insert? Abbreviations were almost always necessary, and we therefore find that the initials only of the Roman characters were employed; and in not a few we meet with millo, or millesimo, for the thousandth year, and a competent number of cs for the centuries.

Possibly it may be urged, that as the epitaphs were composed in Latin, the numerals in that tongue were most suitable. We, however, find them in manuscripts upon very different subjects, and 5