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greimir, it contained a lift of Icelandic
lagmen, and a langfedgatal or genealogy
o f Sturlefon’s anceftors. He therefore
deiires to know i f this codex is not a
magazine of all kinds o f Icelandic
works, which have been accidentally
colleded into one volume, and bound
together ? I anfwer to this, i f the cafe
were thus, Mr. Schlozer might have
expeded from a man who aded with
candour and fome knowledge o f the
matter before him, that he would not
have omitted this circurnftance. I
therefore now declare that there is nothing
elfe in it, but what has already
been mentioned; unlefs I add,
that p. 92 and 93, after the author has
defcribed the general rules o f poetry,
and the nature o f letters, and the co-
pyift has left half a blank page before
he writes the names of all the different
forts o f verfification ufed in the Icelandic
poetry, another hand has
patched in a fteganographical writing,
that I did not know what to
make o f during a long time, and indeed
I did not take great pains to decypher
it.
I will,
I will however give a fpecimen o f
i t : dfxtfrb fcrkptprks bfnfdktb f i t pmnk-
hxs hprks. As I was reading inVanly’s
Bibliotheca Anglo Saxonica, I accidentally
met with a fimilar colledion
o f confonants, with a key affixed to it,
which ffiewed that the whole fecret con-
fifted in placing, inftead o f each vowel,
that confonant which in the alphabet
followed next to it; alfo inftead o f a, e,
U 0, u, y, the letters b, f i k, p, x, z,
were put ; and according to this rule
the afore-mentioned riddle fignified,
Dextra fcriptoris benedida fit omnibus
horis.
I afterwards found the fame kind o f
fteganography mentioned in a little
work afcribed to Rhrabanus Maurns,
under the title o f De Inventione Lit-
terarum, and which is fo celebrated
on account o f the proof contained in
it o f the runes o f the Marcomans.
After letters became more univerfally
known aifiong the people, the fubtle
monks however, defirous o f knowing
fomething that the vulgar were unacquainted
with, invented various
myfterious ways o f writing in this
manifJ/
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