The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

The Phonographic Teacher. By Isaac Pitman.
Eleventh edition, pp. 32.

Ihe Manual of Phonography. By Isaac Pitman.

Elevelith edition, pp, 72.
F. Pitman: Bath and London.

The Eleventh Edition upon the title-page of the
" Manual" of Pitman's Phonography, signifies in
other words that one hundred and seventy-seven
thousand copies of it have now been put into
circulation ! The same intimation upon the title-
page of the " Teacher" by the self-same hand,
stands yet more notably for an equivalent to the
announcement that this is the three hundredth
thousand of it published ! Having mentioned which
significant facts in regard to these two little pocket
pamphlets, the one price sixpence, the other price
eighteen pence, it would almost seem superfluous
to add that both " Manual" and " Teacher" are
intrinsically worthy of the very extended popularity
and the very brilliant success they have each of
them acquired—a success and a popularity which,
or we are much mistaken, they are both of them
long destined to enjoy. A disastrous error it will
always, however, be, inevitably, on the part of any
would-be phonographer—to imagine for one instant
that a system so wonderfully swift and simple as
that here so cleverly contrived by Mr. Pitman, and
in these two capital little handbooks explained
by him (the inventor of it) with so alluring and
encouraging a lucidity, will clear away any very
appreciable portion even of the enormous array of
difficulties standing in the path of the beginner!
We take it to be a fact altogether indisputable,
that there are not two shorthand writers anywhere
to be found in the wide world who write phono-
graphically precisely alike. A couple of students
may begin learning and practising phonography
upon the same identical system—say upon this very
system of Mr. Pitman's, for example—but the
longer they ply the pencil, the more dissimilar will
become their respective methods. The greater the
lapse of time during which they continue to toil as
phonographers, the more remarkable will become
the divergence from each other of the track followed
up by each respectively. Not a shorthand writer
but has tricks of his own individually. Symbolical
touches of abbreviation that he adopts almost, we
might say, unpremeditatedly, and to which he soon
becomes habituated. Little turns and twists of
ellipsis, incommunicable perhaps to another by any
sort of " rule" in the way of guidance or explanation.
We are insisting upon this especial peculiarity of
phonography, because it indicates by a sort of
necessary corollary that the one grand and para-
mount axiom to be borne in mind by the shorthand
writer (as the only principle indeed that will point
out what really will clear away all difficulties),
is the very trite but very truthful proverb,
that "Practice Makes Perfect." As applied to
phonography it should rather be held to signify
indeed, that practice, and practice alone, can, by
any possibility, make perfect the possessor even
of the quickest ear and the swiftest hand. With-
out practice even Pitman's system will be of little
or no avail. With practice it will facilitate the
tyro's progress in phonography very wonderfully—
but more especially at the outset. Perhaps as good
an illustration, in its way--instantaneously—as to
what it is Phonography really aims at, in the mat-
ter of abbreviation, may be found in Miss Braddon's
famous story of Aurora Floyd! Namely, where that
handsome vagabond, James Conyers, the rough rider,
returns quite drunk to the north Lodge of Mellish
Park but a very few hours before he is murdered,
and—as he descends from the chocolate cushioned
Newport Pagnell, thus addresses the "Softy,"
Steeve Hargraves (in a language, says the writer,
entirely composed of consonants)—" B't s'nc' y'
h'v' th'a'n t' s't 'p y' m'y dr'v tr'p b'ck t' st'brs."
Not in the writing of the mere symbols of
any such one abbreviation as that, however,
lies the chief bulk of the difficulty.
That is discernible rather at a later stage in the
practice of shorthand—to wit, in the bewildering
attempt to read those hieroglyphics afterwards
when jotted down, no matter how glibly, those
wretched little puzzling dots and flies' legs that
almost drove David Copperfield, to despair when
grinding his way (with the aid of Aunt Betsy and
Mr. Dick) along that dull track of preliminary
drudgery that alone leads up to The Gallery.

Cassell's Illustrated Bunyan. Part IV. Cassell,

Peter, and Galpin.

Another instalment of this wonderfully cheap
and very beautiful edition of the Great Prose Alle-
gory of the pious Tinker, reveals to us yet more
clearly the discrimination of those by whom the
illustrators of the present edition were selected—P.
Priolo and H. C. Selous. Let any one glance at the
ful-page Embellishment delineating Christian and
Faithful passing through Vanity Fair, or that other
one of the Pillar of Sait, and the force of this re-
mark will be at once recognised.