Having had occasion, in the month of September last, to accompany some friends in a short visit to Paris, I was very agreeably surprised with several literary and scientific novelties of uncommon interest, and all of them such as either had originated, or might have originated, from my own pursuits. I had first the pleasure of hearing, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, an optical paper read by Mr. Fresnel; who, though he appears to have rediscovered, by his own efforts, the laws of the interference of light, and though he has applied them, by some very refined calculations, to cases which I had almost despaired of being able to explain by them, has, on all occasions, and particularly in a very luminous statement of the theory, lately inserted in a translation of Thomson’s Chemistry, acknowledged, with the most scrupulous justice, and the most liberal candour, the indisputable priority of my investigations. In the course of the same week, I was invited to sit next to Mr. Champollion junior, while he was reading, to the Academy of Belles Lettres, a Memoir on the Analysis of the Inscription of Rosetta: he, also, had been partly anticipated in his results by what had been done in this country: though I could not help fancying, that he had not so completely forgiven the injury, as his countryman Mr. Fresnel appeared to have done. But Mr. Fresnel is the friend of Arago, and nothing more requires to be said of his character and sentiments.
I must, however, at once beg to be understood, that I fully and sincerely acquit Mr. Champollion of any intentions actually dishonourable: and if I have hinted, that I have received an impression of something like a want of liberality in his conduct, I have only thrown out this intimation, as an apology for being obliged to plead my own cause, and not as having any right to complain of his silence, or as having any desire or occasion to profit by his indulgence: at the same time I am far from wishing to renounce his friendship, or to forego the pleasure and advantage of his future correspondence.
At the beginning of my Egyptian researches, I had accidentally received a letter from Mr. Champollion, which accompanied a copy of his work on the state of Egypt under the Pharaohs, sent as a present to the Royal Society: and as he requested some particular information respecting several parts of the enchorial inscription of Rosetta, which were imperfectly represented in the engraved copies, I readily answered his inquiries from a reference to the original monument in the British Museum: and a short time afterwards I sent him a copy of my conjectural translation of the inscriptions, as it was inserted in the Archaeologia.
Of Mr. Champollion’s Egypte sous les Pharaons, the two volumes, that have hitherto appeared, relate only to the geography of ancient Egypt, and especially to the determination of the old Egyptian names of places, as compared with the Greek and the Arabic, by the assistance of Coptic manuscripts, and other intermediate documents. The work exhibits considerable research, and some ingenuity: the author had devoted his life to one very extensive pursuit, and he proposed to illustrate every part of his subject, by the most minute investigation of every circumstance, that could be brought to bear upon it. The undertaking, commenced on so large a scale, appears to have proceeded but slowly; nor is it probable that the life of any man would be sufficient for its complete execution.
With regard to the enchorial Inscription, Mr. Champollion appeared to me to have done at that time but little. A few of the references, that he made to it, seemed to depend entirely upon Mr. Akerblad’s investigations, although, as I have formerly had occasion to remark, it was tacitly that he adopted Mr. Akerblad’s conclusions. I imagine, however, that he even now retains some erroneous prepossessions, which he had imbibed from Mr. Akerblad, although, very possibly, without recollecting their exact origin; in particular respecting the adoption of some Greek epithets, without translation, into the enchorial inscription: this question, however, I trust is now set at rest, by means of some later discoveries.
Mr. Champollion continued to reside at Grenoble, where he had some employment in the public library, till the beginning of 1821. I had not a convenient opportunity of sending him any of my later papers; and it was not till after he had left Grenoble, that he read the Article Egypt of the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia, into which their contents were condensed. He had been devoting himself, in the mean time, to the uninterrupted study of the enchorial inscription, and he appears to have discovered, before he came to Paris, the original identity of these characters with the imperfect imitations of the more distinct hieroglyphics. Whether he made this discovery before I had printed my letters in the Museum Criticum, I have no means of ascertaining: I have never asked him the question, nor is it of much consequence, either to the world at large or to ourselves. It may not be strictly just, to say, that a man has no right to claim any discovery as his own, till he has printed and published it: but the rule is at least a very useful one. It is always easy to publish such an account of a discovery, as to establish the right of originality, without affording much facility to the pursuits of a competitor: although it is generally true, that not only honesty, but even liberality, is the best policy.
Passing by, however, what I had already done, by far the most important to me was what I had not done, and there was enough of this to satisfy me, that Mr. Champollion was at least capable of doing many things, with respect to which his claim of actual priority might appear more than doubtful.
He had found, in the first place, among the multitude of Egyptian papyri, which he had taken the trouble to copy at length, with the permission of their various possessors, one in particular, of which a series of the chapters were pretty obviously numbered in the enchorial character, the series extending, with a few interruptions, from 1 to 20. He had already applied this discovery to the illustration of some parts of the pillar of Rosetta: and I have since derived at least equal advantage from it, in the examination of the enchorial papyrus of Casati.
He had also discovered a fragment of a pillar formerly in the possession of the Duc de Choiseul, which exhibited the character for a month, followed by several various groups, together with different numbers, evidently indicative of days; so that to the names of the three months, which I had discovered, he was enabled to add at least four more, though without completely ascertaining to which of the months these new symbols belonged.
Mr. Champollion had ascertained, in the third place, the analogy of one of the manuscripts, purchased of Casati, to the enchorial inscription of Rosetta, and he had obtained from it, without difficulty, the mode of writing the name Cleopatra in that character. He did not, however, then mention to me the important consequences which he had derived from this discovery; these, it seems, were the subject of a short paper read to the Academy the succeeding Friday; and it will be proper to extract a more particular account of them, from his Letter to Mr. Dacier, since printed; in which I did certainly expect to find the chronology of my own researches a little mere distinctly stated.