Students of Chinese will be inter ested in learning that the language they are acquiring with so much pain and tribulation was the primitive tongue that followed the insolent building of the Tower of Babel.
Such, at least, was the convinced opinion of John Webb of Butleigh the County of Somerset Esquire, who published An Historical Essay endeavouring a Probability that The Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language. His book of 212 pages was printed, Licensed by Authority, in London for Nath. Brook at the Angel in Gresham Colledge 1669, and is dedicated to the Most Sacred Majesty of Charles The Second, the dedication being dated May 29, 1668. The author was evidently a serious student and widely mead, and was well acquainted with Latin, Greek, Italian and French, as frequent quotations prove.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.