w Folio, Neapoli : ex regia typographic vol. I., 1793 — vol. VI. 1839.— Also, Herculanen-
sium voluminum ; Pars prima, Oxonii sumptions typographei Clarendoniani lithographice
excudebat N. Whittock, 1824, 8vo. pp. 133.— Pars aecunda, 1825, pp. 155.
2 c



194 GREEK INSCRIPTION ON A WALL AT POMPEII. XIV. 50

by one of our most eminent classical scholars, — a gentleman who has the
happy art of blending so many interesting circumstances, and personal
adventures with his erudition and criticism, as to render the deciphering
and illustrating of ancient inscriptions attractive and amusing. 1 We
allude to Dr. Wordsworth who, while he did not neglect any object of
interest at Pompeii, judiciously directed his particular attention to the
inscriptions on the walls of the buildings. He not only deciphered, bat
took accurate facsimiles of the most important of the numerous inscrip-
tions, which, he observes, are " for the most part scratched with a pointed
stylus on the hard red stucco with which the buildings, at Pompeii, are
covered. It is owing to the exceeding solidity of this material, that the
words carelessly traced upon it by hands, which have now withered and
crumbled in the dust for more than seventeen hundred years, are still, in
many cases as legible as these printed characters which are now before you."
Dr. Wordsworth published many of these inscriptions in a very neat and
interesting little work entitled Inscriptiones PompeiantB* and it is through
his liberality that we are enabled to give a few specimens of his facsimiles.
