Very slight indeed can be the notice which we are able to give of the proposed Universal Language, the description of which, as set forth in the early part of the _Logopandecteision_, is more like an incoherent dream than anything else. There is no evidence that Sir Thomas Urquhart ever really made a grammar or vocabulary of the new language. Indeed, he writes about it in such a manner as to lead one to think that he had made no way in the real working out of the scheme, but merely dreamed of what he was going to do. In the new tongue which was to supersede all others there were to be twelve parts of speech, all words would have at least ten synonyms, nouns and pronouns would have eleven cases and four numbers--singular, dual, plural, and redual--and verbs would have four voices, seven moods, and eleven tenses. "In this tongue," says the author, "there are eleven genders,[224] wherein," he truthfully adds, "it exceedeth all other languages." "Every word in this language," we are told, "signifieth as well backward as forward, and however you invert the letters, still shall you fall upon significant words, whereby a wonderful facility is obtained in making of anagrams.... Of all languages, this is the most compendious in complement, and consequently fittest for courtiers and ladies.... As its interjections are more numerous, so are they more emphatical in their respective expression of passions, then [than] that part of speech is in any other language whatsoever."[225] And finally Sir Thomas vouches for its conciseness in a hyperbole which it would be difficult to excel. "This language," he says, "affordeth so concise words for numbering, that the number for setting down, whereof would require in vulgar arithmetic more figures in a row then [than] there might be grains of sand containable from the center of the earth to the highest heavens, is in it expressed by two letters."[226] A considerable revenue might be secured if the rule found at the end of some of Grimm's _Household Tales_ were applied to this statement, and strictly enforced: "Whosoever does not believe this must pay a thaler." In a very innocent manner our author excuses himself for the extravagant praise he has poured out upon his own invention. "Why it is," he exclaims, "I should extoll the worth thereof, without the jeopardy of vaine glory, the reason is clear and evident, being necessitated ... to merchandise it for the redintegrating of an ancient family, it needeth not be thought strange, that in some measure I descend to the fashion of the shop-keepers, who, to scrue up the buyer to the higher price, will tell them no better can be had for mony, 'tis the choicest ware in England, and if any can match it, he shall have it for nought.... [And so] I went on in my laudatives, to procure the greater longing, that an ardent desire might stir up an emacity [a propensity to buy], to the furtherance of my proposed end." One is obliged sadly to assent to his further statement about such conduct--"whereof ... there wanteth not store of presidents [precedents]."[227]