Grose says:—“The cattus, cat-house, gattus or cat, was a covered shed, occasionally fixed on wheels, and used for covering soldiers employed in filling up the ditch, &c.”—Military Antiquities, 4to. 1801.
32.
How to compose an universal Character methodical and easie to be written, yet intelligible in any Language; so that if an English-man write it in English, a French-man,[5] Italian, Spaniard, Irish,[6] Welsh,[7] being Scholars; yea, Grecian or Hebritian shall as perfectly understand it in their owne Tongue, as if they were perfect[8] English, distinguishing the Verbs from the Nouns, the Numbers, Tenses and Cases as properly expressed in their own Language as it was written in English.
Footnotes
[5]man—omitted.
[6]Irish and.
[ [7]]or Welchman. P.
[8]perfect—omitted. P.
[An universall Character.] In 1668, the Royal Society ordered the printing of “An Essay towards a real Character, and a philosophical language; by John Wilkins, D. D. Dean of Ripon, and F. R. S.,” folio. It is dedicated to the president, William Lord Viscount Brouncker, and consists of a treatise of 454 pages, to which is appended a dictionary of 155 pages. The very extent of such a work is almost fatal to its acceptance, and we must admit that it is questionable whether, with all its learning and ingenuity, it affords a single hint calculated to promote the intended object.
In relation to this subject, the reader, desirous of enlarged information, could not do better than consult the recently published “Lectures on the Science of Language,” by Professor Max Müller, M. A.