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One thinks the soul is air; another, fire;
Another blood, diffused about the heart;
Another saith the elements conspire,

And to her essence each doth give a part.
Davies. Of the Soul of Man and the Immortality thereof.
But I omit further prosecution of this matter, since these
places have been more diffusely urged in a late discourse to this
Glanville. Preexistence of Souls, ch. xi.

purpose.

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Goodwin. Works, vol. v. part i. fol. 19. And therefore the determination of councils pertains to all, and is handled by all, not in diffusion but in representation. Taylor. Polemical Discourses. Episcopacy Asserted. The divine benignity is much more diffusive than the light, the air, the most communicable element in the world, and filleth every thing according to its measure and capacity of reception. Hale. Contemplation, vol. i. p. 254. Of Humility. The truth and spirit of religion comes in a narrow compass, though the effect and operation thereof are large and diffusive. Id. A Discourse of Religion, vol. i. p. 459. And then, what is so much larger than the particulars diffusively taken is sure very unlikely to be the summ of them. Hammond. Works, vol. ii. part iv. fol. 71. Of Metropoles, &c. He [Horeman] was one of the most generall schollars of his age as may appear by the diffusiveness of his learning, and books written in all faculties.

Fuller. Worthies. Wiltshire.

One of my designs, I had in making this experiment, being to examine a conjecture I had made about the great diffusedness of the noctilucal matter.

Boyle. Works, vol. iv. p. 482. Experiments discovering a strange
subtility of parts in the Glacial Noctiluca.
Pleas'd that her magic fame diffusely flies,
Thus with a horrid smile the hag replies.
Rowe. Lucan, book vi.
Thus to the noon of her high glory run,
From her bright orb, diffusive like the sun,
She did her healing influence display.
Stepney. To the Memory of Queen Mary.

B

DIFFUSE.

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But when the star, day's harbinger, arose,
Soon after whom, in saffron vest attir'd,
The morn her beams diffuses o'er the sea,
The pyre, then wasted, ceas'd to flame.

Cowper. Homer. Iliad, book xxiii.

Mr. Warburton's text, as well as all others, read,

"she would infect to the north-star;" and it is the diffusedness, or extent of her infection which is here described. Edwards. The Canons of Criticism, canon 22. A sentiment, which, expressed diffusely, will barely be admitted to be just, expressed concisely, will be admired as spirited. Blair. Lecture 18. vol. ii.

Of a beautiful and magnificent diffusiveness, Cicero is, beyond doubt, the most illustrious instance that can be given. Id. Ib.

If I were to choose, I should clearly give the preference to the style resembling winter snow, that is, to the full and diffusive; in short, to that pomp of eloquence, which seems all heavenly and divine. Melmoth. Pliny, to Cornelius Tacitus.

Grand reservoirs of public happiness, Through secret streams diffusively they bless. Young. Love of Fame, sat. 6. DIG, Dician. A. Saxonibus est Fossam foDIGGER, dere: (Lye.) i. e. to dig a ditch.-SomDIGGING. ner; To make a trench, ditch, dike or

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To dig, as now used, is to raise, turn or throw up, or turn over the earth, sc. with a spade or other tool. Dijkers and delvers diggeden up þe balkes. Piers Plouhman. Vision, p. 134. And he answered vii. lambes shalte thou take of my hande, that it maye be a wytaesse vnto me, yt I haue dygged this well. Bible, Anno 1551. Genesis, ch. xxi. And trees far under earth, (by daily digging found.) Drayton. Poly-olbion, song 28.

Metalls elsewhere are digged, as out of the bowells of the earth, so out of the bowells of the land; I mean so far from any conveyance by water, that the expence of the portage swallows much of the profits thereof. Fuller. Worthies. Wales, Generall.

But the rarest invention is the supplying the miners with fresh aire, which is performed by two men's blowing wind by a paire of bellows on the outside of the adit, into a pipe of lead, daily lengthened as the mine is made longer, whereby the candle in the mine is daily kept burning, and the diggers recruited constantly with a sufficiency of breath. This invention was the master-piece of Sir Francis Bacon, Id. Ib.

A rav'nous vulture in his open side,
Her crooked beak and cruel talons try'd:
Still for the growing liver digg'd his breast;
The growing liver still supply'd the feast.
Dryden. Virgil. Eneid, book vi.

On that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, and little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful. Burke. On the Sublime and Beautiful.

DI'GAMY, て Gr. dauía, a second marriage; DIGAMIST. from di-ja-civ, to marry twice or a second time. Fr. digame.

Digamy and Bigamy were formerly used indiscriminately. See BIGAMY.

Therefore it must probably signifie her that is departed by divorce, and then that which followeth of the digamist will also concur with it, to interpret his sense to this purpose. Hammond. Works, vol. iii. fol. 693. Annotations, 1 Epistle to Timothy, ch. iii.

Then for the other interpretation, that here the digamist, or he that hath had two wives successively one after another, should be made incapable of holy orders, or be under some reproach for so doing, &c. Id. Ib. fol. 693.

And for the ordinary digamy, the marrying a second after the decease of the former, that that should be so reproachfull and blameable in any, as to render one incapable of holy orders (which they are capable of, which have been guilty of some faults) this is not imaginable neither.

Id. Ib. vol. i. fol. 597. Of Divorces.

DIG.

DIGAMMA.

DIGAM M A.

DIGAMMA, Gr. ĉis qáμμa, a figurd. The Double Gamma, so named from its form, F. One Gamma set upon another.

While tow'ring o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our digamma, and o'ertops them all.
Pope. The Dunciad, book iv.

From the same root we have a word for the wild goat of the mountains, from its climbing upwards; also for the leaf of a tree, from its superiour situation; whence, from the for digamma prefixed, we have the Latin folium.

Horne. Works, vol. i. p. 436. Letter on the Use of the Hebrew Language.

The DIGAMMA, DIGAMMOS, or DIGAMMON, was the sixth letter of the ancient Pelasgic or Grecian Alphabet. Its form and power have given rise to great discussion among scholars. The Phoenician or Samaritan letters appear to have been originally exactly the same with those of the Pelasgians in form, order, power, and name. Aleph or Alpha, Beth or Beta, Gimel or Gamma, Daleth or Delta, He, VAU. That this last name was given to the Digamma by the Greeks we know from Priscian, (de Litt. ;) and that it occupied the sixth place in the Alphabet we may also conclude from

the fact that it is still found in ancient documents for the number 6. In the Codex Beza, we find the character used for this number, to denote the Ammonian section in the margin. This explains the paradoxical introduction of the character 5, by which this number is usually expressed in MSS., and which is, in reality, only a corruption of the more ancient form. As the subject is one on which conjectures have been almost boundless, we think we shall best consult the interests of knowledge by setting down such information on this point as antiquity has left us.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, (Antiq. Rom. lib. i. cap. 20,) speaking of the aboriginal inhabitants of Italy, says "To the Pelasgians they gave lands in the neighbourhood of the sacred lake, the greater part of which were marshy, (won,) which are still called Velia, (Ovéλia,) after the ancient form of the language; for it was the general custom of the ancient Greeks to prefix to words beginning with a vowel the syllable ov written in a single letter. This letter resembled a г, with two cross lines joining one straight one, as Feλévy, Fáva, Foîkos, Farijp, and many similar."

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Mr. Payne Knight is of opinion that the Digamma GAMMA. fell into general disuse about the time of the Persian war. But long after this letter had become obsolete with the other nations of Greece, it was retained among the Eolians; and therefore we frequently find it mentioned in ancient writers under the title of "the Eolian Digamma." It had, however, long since ceased to be used even among them in the time of Dionysius; and Priscian mentions as a curiosity an inscription on a tripod at Constantinople which he had himself seen, and which ran thus:

AHMOOO FON AAFOKOFON.

It became therefore an object of interest with anti-
quaries to discover some inscription, or ancient docu-

ment, wherein the Digamma should appear: and in the
XVIth century, Goltz published several coins supposed of
the Falisci with the inscription FAAEION. This testi-
mony, although well authenticated, was little regarded,
as, the word being written in Latin with an F, it was
supposed that it had been adopted into the Greek to
express a sound which that language did not possess.
But it is probable that these coins belonged to the
Eleans, as that nation is termed FAAEIOI on the
Elean inscription. In 1708, however, Montfaucon
(Palæographia Græca, lib. ii. 1,) published a fac simile
of an inscription on the pedestal of a statue of Apollo
in the Island of Delos, which was given him by Tour-
nefort, and runs thus:

ONEY TOMB OFMANDPIASKAITOSÓEras

This, Montfaucon reads....oa ev tŵ XiOų eiμì åvôpias
kai Tò opéλas: mistaking the third letter for a mu-
tilated E. Chishull, in his Antiquitates Asiaticæ, has
clearly shown that this letter is really no other than
the Digamma: and thus the passage will stand:
Ο ΑΥΤΟ ΛΙΘΟ ΕΜΙ ΑΝΔΡΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΣΦΕΛΑΣ ;
in more modern Greek,

8 αὐτῇ λίθε εἰμὶ ἀνδριὰς καὶ τὸ σφέλας.
The next discovery of the Digamma was in 1783, when
a brazen tablet was found at Petilia, in the country of
the Brutti, which contains the word FOIKIAN. And
in 1795, Mr. Morritt discovered, near Olympia, a
brazen helmet with an inscription, of which a copy is
given in the Classical Journal, vol. i. p. 328, and of
which Bishop Marsh has offered a most satisfactory
account in his Hora Pelasgica, (part i. ch. iii.) The
inscription is

TARF |||||||| OI ANEOENTOIAIFITONKOPINOOOEN.
That is τάργειοι (fort. ταργει Foι) ἀνέθεν τοι Διδι τον
Κορινθοθεν,—οἱ Αργέιοι ἀνέθεσαν τῷ Δαι τῶν Κορινθόθεν.
Besides these, the Orchomenian Marble, in the collec-
tion of Lord Elgin, contains the words Fikari, Feria,
and Feλατιn, for εἴκοσι, ἔτεα, and Ελατείας and an in-
scription copied by Gropius from a marble near the site
of the ancient Crissa, on the Corinthian bay, exhibits
FOMA probably for ou

In all these inscriptions, the Digamma resembles
more or less the Roman F, the only difference ex-
isting in the inclination of the cross lines to the
stem. There is, however, another form under which
it sometimes appears, resembling an upright and
inverted Gamma united, C. This form was supposed
to be confined to Italy; but coins have been found in-
scribed CAZION as well as FAZION, and the latter
are generally referred to Axus in Crete. The L is
used on the Heraclean Tables, which exhibit LEIKATI
for clkoo, [EZ for , CETOΣ for eros, LE for,
[ΕΙΚΑΤΙΔΕΙΩ for εἰκατιδέω, [EKΤΑ for ἕκτη, ΕΙΚΑΤΙ
also for elkoot. Beside these words, the Digamma is
found in all others derived from them.

The most important inscription, however, for illustrating the use of the Digamma is one which was brought from Elis by Sir William Gell, in 1813. It is a brazen tablet, and relates to a treaty between the Eleans and Evæans, entered into, as Mr. Payne Knight conjectures, about the XLth Olympiad. It has the

advantage of being the most ancient inscription ever
copied in Greece, or brought to this country; it
contains FRATPA for pτpα, FAAEIOIΣ for 'Heios,
EYFAOΙOΙΣ for Εὐαοίοις, FETEA for ἔτεα, FΕΠΟΣ
for ἔπος, FΑΡΓΟΝ apparently for ἔργον, and FΕΤΑΣ
for ἔτης.

From all this unexceptionable testimony we derive a
very fair notion of the several forms of the Digamma,
and of the manner in which it was formerly employed.
We will now proceed to collect from ancient autho-
rity the mode of its pronunciation.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as we have already seen, attributes to the Digamma the force of the Greek ov: and that the Greek ou corresponds nearly, though not entirely, with the Roman V, whether vowel or consonant, is obvious from the manner in which the two nations respectively wrote the names of each other. Thus the Romans rendered 'AptoτóẞOYλos by Aristoblus; and the Greeks, Virgilius and Varro by OYıpriAtos and OYappwv yet that the Greeks had no letter precisely corresponding to the Latin V, may be inferred from the words Νόμας, Σύλλα, Βιργίλιος, Βαῤῥων, by which they also expressed the Roman names, Numa, Sulla, Virgilius, Varro. Ov, therefore, is rather to be considered an approximation to the Latin V, than the sound itself; and the nearest which Dionysius could employ to express the sound in question. Knowing, therefore, that the sound of the Roman V did not exist in the Greek language in the time of Dionysius; that the Digamma was also lost; that the place which he calls Ovelia was actually written in Latin Velia; and that this name originally had the Digamma; it seems difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the Digamma was no other in power than the Latin V. We shall see how far this opinion is supported by ancient testimony. The authority of the learned and laborious Varro, far more important than that of Dionysius, comes first to be noticed, who observes, (de Ling. Lat.) " Tempus secundum Ver, quod tum virere incipiunt virgulta, et vertere se tempus anni; nisi quod Iones dicunt BHP." That the Ionians did not write BHP, we know from their works; and indeed Varro's statement only implies that this was the Ionian pronunciaton. B therefore appears to be used by Varro as an approximation to the Eolic Digamma, as it is used by the Greeks themselves as an approximation to the Latin V. Suetonius (Claud. xlv.) and Tacitus (Annal. xi. xiv.) inform us, that the Emperor

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GAMMA.

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Claudius added three letters to the Roman alphabet, GAMMA. and wrote a Treatise on their necessity. Such an authority as Claudius would be of little value, had we not the opinion of Quinctilian, that the Eolic Digamma, which was one of these, was by no means an useless addition. In the inscriptions of that Emperor the Digamma makes its appearance inverted, as in the words AMPLIAIT, TERMINA¡ITQ, and uniformly for V. The advantage of this introduction appears to have been the distinction of the consonant and vowel V, which hitherto had been expressed by the same letter. The Digamma of Claudius was discontinued after his death. Marius Victorinus (de Litteris) expressly declares that the Eolian Digamma was pronounced similarly to the Latin V; and Priscian is very copious on the subject, (lib. i. Cap. de Litteris.) consonant in Latin (says the latter author) had always the force of the Eolic F, and therefore it takes the same name Vau, formed from its sound, as Varro and Didymus testify, who show that this was its appellation." "So true is it that the Eolic Digamma is represented by our V, that we find Astyages writing Οἰόμενος Γέλεναν ἑλικώπιδα·

and we also say,

At Venus haud animo nequicquam exterrita mater."
To the same purpose
Terentianus,

si prior sit V, sequatur illa (littera I)
Quum dico Vide, contulit I sonum priori,
Ast ipsa manet tempore quo sonabat ante ;
Vocalibus hoc eo reliquis prædita servat,
Ut Vade, Veni, vota refer, teneto vultum,
Crevisse sonum perspicis, et coïsse crassum.
Unde Æoliis littera fingitur Digammos,
Quæ de numero sit magis una consonantum
Vocalis in istum mage quùm versa sit usum.

"V

In addition to this evidence, Papirian and Adamantius Martyrius, as cited by Cassiodorus, (de Orthographia, iv. v.) and Donatus, and Sergius his commentator, all ascribe to the Digamma the power of the Roman V.

Strong as appears to be this body of testimony, Bishop Marsh, in his Hora Pelasgica, contends that the Digamma was not pronounced like the V, but like the F of the Roman alphabet. For this hypothesis the learned Prelate is unable to allege any ancient evidence except a passage of Priscian, who, as has been already seen, has himself vindicated the contrary opinion. In the beginning of the Chapter de Numero litterarum apud veteres, the Grammarian observes, "the Æolic Digamma, among the early Latins had the power of the Greek . P with the aspirate expresses nearly the same sound which F now has; as we find even among the early Greeks ПH for . In writing Greek words we retain the ancient orthography, as Orpheus, Phaethon; but in Latin words F was afterwards employed for P and H, as Fama, Filius, Facio; but instead of the Digamma, V consonant, because that letter appeared to bear an affinity of sound to the Digamma." This testimony is certainly explicit and positive; but even this admits that the Latin V, although not the same with the Digamma, was used as its substitute, and will bear no comparison with the early evidence of Varro.

The argument of Bishop Marsh will not admit of abridgement, nor have we the means of stating it at length from what has been said, however, it will be evident, that, although highly learned and ingenious,

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it is purely conjectural and analogical, and has no positive support, except what is afforded it by the GAMMA. single, equivocal, and even self-contradictory testimony of Priscian.

More fortunate, however, is the learned Prelate when contending against Dawes and res aupi Aavior, who would express the Digamma by the English W. There is no evidence whatever that either the Digamma or the Latin V was thus pronounced. It is quite enough to picture to our minds the honey-tongued Nestor beginning an oration:

ὦ πόποι, ἢ δὴ παῖσι WeWoίκοτες αγορέψεσθε.

Mr. Payne Knight, however, has defended the theory of Dawes with great ingenuity, in his Prolegomena in Homerum, wherein he contends, from the testimony of Terentianus concerning the Latin V, that the Eolic Digamma was not remarkably melodious.

We will now endeavour to ascertain somewhat of

the purposes which the Digamma served in the early
language of Greece. The Phoenician characters which
were first used in Greece, ended with the letter T.
The Greeks, however, possessed a sound in their lan-
guage, inexpressible by the Phoenician character, con-
cerning which it is in vain now to conjecture. To
express this sound, the character V, afterwards Y, was
invented at a very early period in the history of the
language; but before this invention, when the rules
of pronunciation were less definite, the language less
settled, and practice less restricted, it appears that
they sometimes employed the Digamma as the best
approximation. The Delian inscription appears to
have been written when the use of the V was scarcely
determined, for there we find AFYTO for AFTO or
AVTO. The modern Greeks have now two pronun-
ciations of the Y; when it occurs in a diphthong,
they pronounce it like a V; but otherwise like their
own I or the English E. That the Romans also gave
the V the consonant sound in what we call diphthongs,
appears from the circumstance of the word cauneas
being mistaken by the soldiers of Crassus for cave ne
eas. (Cic. de Div. lib. ii. cap. xl.) In the Sigean in-
scription, there can be little doubt that V stands for
the Digamma in the word ITEVEVZI," where, if we
consider each ev as a diphthong, the word is very un-
couth, both in pronunciation and in grammatical form.
But if we divide the word thus, IгE-VEV-2I, and
consider V as a consonant, substituted for F at a time
when F was fallen into disuse, the inconvenience is at
once removed. We may thus also account for the two
forms which appear in this inscription, ΣΙΓΕΙΕΣ and
ZITEYEYZI, which Dawes (Miscellanea Critica, p.
122) considered as irreconcilable. If EI-TE-FEF2 was
the original nominative, 21-гE-FEF-2I, and (when V
was substituted for F) EI-TE-VEV-I would, of
course, be the dative plural, Again, if at a period
when orthography was subjected to little or no rule,
we suppose that the termination was indifferently
written FEFΣ or FIFE, (FETIA is for FETEA on the
Orchomenian marble) the nominative plural of I-
TE-FIFE would be I-TE-FIFE, or, without the
Digamma, which was not then used at Sigeum, EI-
TE-I-EZ. We see, therefore, in what manner
EIE might become the nominative plural of a word
which had produced IrEVEVEI for the dative
plural." (Marsh's Hora Pelasgicæ, part i. ch. iv. note.)
In the Elean inscription we have EFAOIOI for

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