But in answer to this, it is said that letters were used only for inscriptions on stone or wood, and not for the preservation of writings so voluminous.

If this were the case, I scarcely see why the Greeks should have professed so grateful a reminiscence of the gift of Cadmus, the mere inscription of a few words on stone would not be so very popular or beneficial an invention! But the Phoenicians had constant intercourse with the Egyptians and Hebrews; among both those nations the art and materials of writing were known.

The Phoenicians, far more enterprising than either, must have been fully acquainted with their means of written communication--and indeed we are assured that they were so.

Now, if a Phoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledge of a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the communication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercial people--their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,--would they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode of commercial correspondence ?--importing just enough of the art to suffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they have stopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful to themselves?
And in vindicating that most able people from so wilful a folly, have we no authority in history as well as common sense?
We have the authority of Herodotus! When he informs us that the Phoenicians communicated letters to the Ionians, he adds, that by a very ancient custom the Ionians called their books diptherae, or skins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus was scarce [168], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep--a custom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations.

Were such materials used only for inscriptions relative to a religious dedication, or a political compact?
NO; for then, wood or stone--the temple or the pillar--would have been the material for the inscription,--they must, then, have been used for a more literary purpose; and verse was the first form of literature.