Opuscula

The essays in the present volume are chiefly upon philological and ethnographical subjects: though not exclusively. The earliest was published in 1840, the latest in 1856. In some cases they have formed separate treatises and in some Appendices to larger works. The greater part, however, consists of papers read before the Philological Society of London; a society which has materially promoted the growth of Comparative Philology in Great Britain, and which, if it had merely given to the world the valuable researches of the late Mr. Garnett, would have done more than enough to justify its existence and to prove its usefulness.

As a general rule these papers address themselves to some definite and special question, which commanded the attention of the author either because it was obscure, or because there was something in the current opinions concerning it which, in his eyes, required correction. Researches conducted on this principle can scarcely be invested with any very general interest. Those who take them up are supposed to have their general knowledge beforehand. A wide field and a clear view, they have already taken. At the same time there are, in the distant horizon, imperfect outlines, and in the parts nearer to the eye dim spots where the light is uncertain, dark spots where it is wholly wanting, and, oftener still, spots illumined by a false and artificial light. Some of the details of the following investigations may be uninteresting from their minuteness; some from their obscurity; the minuteness however, and the obscurity which deprive them of general interest make it all the more incumbent on some one to take them up: and it is needless to add that for a full and complete system of ethnographical or philological knowledge all the details that are discoverable should be discovered. This is my excuse (if excuse be needed) for having spent some valuable time upon obscure points of minute interest. Upon the whole, they have not been superfluous. This means that I have rarely, or never, found from any subsequent reading that they had been anticipated. Where this has been the case, the article has been omitted—being treated as a non scriptum. An elaborate train of reasoning submitted to the Ethnographical Society has on this principle been ignored. It was upon the line of migration by which the Polynesian portion of the Pacific islands was peopled. It deduced Polynesia from the Navigator's Islands; the Navigator's Islands, or Samoan Archipelago, from the Ralik and Radak chains; the Ralik and Radak chains from Micronesia; Micronesia from the Philippines, viâ Sonsoral and the Pelews. Some time after the paper was read I found that Forster has promulgated the same doctrine. I ought to have known it before. Hence the paper is omitted: indeed it was (though read) never published.

In respect to the others the chief writers who have worked in the same field are Dr. Scouler, Professor Turner, and Professor Buschmann,—not to mention the bibliographical labours of Dr. Ludwig, and the second paper of Gallatin. I have no hesitation in expressing my belief that where they agree with me they do so as independent investigators; claiming for myself, where I agree with them, the same consideration.

Of Hodgson and Logan, Windsor Earle, and other investigators I should have much to say in the way of both acknowledgement and criticism, had India and the Indian Archipelago taken as large a portion of the present volume as is taken by North America. As it is, it is only in a few points that I touch their domain.

The hypothesis that the Asteks (so-called) reached Mexico by sea I retract. Again—the fundamental affinity of the Australian language was a doctrine to which both Teichelmann and Sir G. Grey had committed themselves when the paper on the Negrito languages was written. The papers, however, stand as they stood: partly because they are worth something in the way of independent evidence, and partly because they illustrate allied subjects.

---

DELIVERED AT
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON,
OCTOBER 14, 1839.

Instead of detaining you with a dissertation upon the claims and the merits of our Language, it may perhaps be better to plunge at once into the middle of my subject, and to lay before you, as succinctly as I am able, the plan and substance of such Lectures as, within these walls, I promise myself the honour of delivering. For I consider that the vast importance of thoroughly understanding, of comprehending, in its whole length, and breadth, and height, and depth, the language which we all speak, we all read, and we all (in different degrees, but still each in our degree) have occasion to write—the importance also of justly and upon true grounds, valuing the magnificent literature of which we are the inheritors—I consider, I say, that the vast importance of all this is sufficiently implied by the simple single fact, that, in this Institution, the English Language, with the English Literature, is recognized as part and parcel of a liberal education. It may also be assumed, without further preface, that every educated man is, at once, ambitious of writing his own Language well; of criticizing those who write it badly; and of taking up his admiration of our National Literature, not upon Trust but upon Knowledge.

Thus having premised, I now proceed to the divisions and the subdivisions of my subject. For certain practical purposes it is found expedient to draw, between the consideration of the English Language, and the consideration of the English Literature, a broad line of demarcation. The knowledge of books is one thing; the knowledge of the rules of good composition is another thing. It is one thing to know what other men have written; it is another thing to know how you should yourself write. The one is a point of Literary History, or of Literary Biography; the other is a point of Rhetoric, or a point of Grammar. I do not say that the two studies do not mutually assist each other. All studies do so: these in a great degree. Familiarity with the works of a Shakspeare or a Milton, is an accomplishment—an accomplishment that depends upon our taste, and one which depends also upon our leisure—an accomplishment which cannot be too highly valued, but still an accomplishment. Familiarity, however, with the rules of good writing is not a mere accomplishment. It is a necessary qualification which comes home to us all. Now if I am convinced of one thing more than of another, I am convinced of the truth of this assertion; viz.: that a good style comes not of itself; it comes not uncalled for; and it comes neither by instinct nor by accident. It is the result of art, and the result of practise. The Rules of good Composition are the rules of Rhetoric; and it is very necessary that they be neither neglected nor undervalued. Two classes of men, and two classes only, can pretend to dispense with them—those that can write well, and those that cannot write at all.

The English Language is pre-eminently a mixed Language. Its basis indeed is Saxon, but upon this basis lies a very varied superstructure, of Danish and of Norman-French, of Modern French and of Greek, of Classical Latin and of the Latin of the Middle Ages imported at different periods and upon different occasions. Words from these languages are comprehended by the writer just in the proportion that he comprehends their origin and their derivation. Hence it is that the knowledge of isolated words is subordinate to the formation of a style; and hence it is that the rules for their investigation are (their aim and object being alone considered) akin to the rules of Rhetoric.

This however is but a small part of what may be our studies. It is well to know how Time affects Languages, and in what way it modifies them. It is well to know how one dialect grows out of another, and how its older stages differ from its newer ones. It is well if we can perceive that these variations are in no wise arbitrary; but it is better still if we can discover the laws that regulate them. Yet all this is but a knowledge of the changes that words undergo, a knowledge of the changes in their form, and a knowledge of the changes in their meaning. Now these points are points of Etymology, the word being used in its very laxest and its largest sense; and points of Etymology must, in no wise, be neglected or undervalued.

Lectures upon these questions will form the Etymological part of a course; and Lectures upon Prose Composition the Rhetorical part of one; whilst the two, taken together, will give a course upon the English Language, in contradistinction to one upon the English Literature.

In respect to the latter, I shall, at regular intervals, fix upon some new period, or some new subject, and, to the best of my power, illustrate it.

Thus much for the divisions and subdivisions of the subject-matter.

The considerations that come next in order are the considerations of the manner of exhibiting it, the considerations of the knowledge that can be detailed, and the considerations of the trains of thought that can be inculcated.

There are those who believe that a good style is not to be taught. Many think that the habit of writing good Prose, is like the power of creating good Poetry; a privilege that we are born to, and not a possession that we can earn; and a wit once said that, in order to write clearly, it was only necessary to understand what you would write about. If this be true, then is composition an easy matter indeed; or, to say the very least, a perspicuous style is as common as a clear understanding. The experience of the world has, however, set aside the decision of the wit, and the practice of inexperienced writers has belied his dogma. To write well you must understand not only the matter but the medium. Thus then it is, that, with respect to the use of books, and with respect to the use of rules, in our attempts at the formation of a good style, some persons neglect them as unavailing, and some despise them as superfluous.

Towards accurate writing Habit of some sort is indispensably essential. Yet this indispensable habit is not necessarily a habit of writing. A person who writes no more frequently than the common occasions of life demand, shall eventually, provided that he will habitually write his best, write accurately. Now the habit of criticism, and the habit of attention essential to habits of writing our best, a second person is, I think, able to inculcate. Such a second person should be familiar with bad as well as with good writing; even, as the physician shall grow conversant, not with health only, but with disease also. He should know what are the more egregious errors in composition; he should know also what are the more usual ones. He should be learned in the inaccuracies of good authors, and deeply erudite in the absurdities of bad ones; recognizing false taste under all its disguises, and holding up, as a beacon to avoid, the pitiful ambition of mannerism and of writing finely. The principles by which he tries these things, he can lay before his hearers; and he can illustrate them with a prodigality of commentary. And those who hearken shall thus grow critical. And, mark—the reader that continually and habitually criticizes others, soon comes to, continually and habitually, criticize himself. He grows fastidious, as it were, perforce.

In this way two things may be done: our criticism may be sharpened, and its edge may be turned upon ourselves. At this I aim, and not at teaching Rhetoric systematically.

The father of Horace, as we learn from the testimony of his son, was peculiar in his notions of education. In his eyes it was easier to eschew Vice than to imitate Virtue. Too wise a man not to know that an unapproachable model was no model at all, he let (for instance) the modesty of Virgil (as modest virtues generally contrive to do) speak for itself. But he counselled his son against the prodigality of Barrus, and held up, with parental prudence, the detected peccadilloes of Trebonius.

Now the system, that produces a negative excellence in morals, may produce also a negative excellence in literature. More than this (for the truth must be told) Art can not do. For Wit, and Vigour, and Imagination we must be indebted to Nature.

I know that the system of picking out, and holding up, either a neighbour's foibles, or an author's inelegancies, is not a gracious occupation; the question, however, is, not whether it be gracious or ungracious but whether it be efficient or inefficient.

Whosoever is conversant with the writings of etymologists must be well aware, that there are few subjects wherein men run wild to the degree that they run wild in Etymology. A little learning, dangerous everywhere, is preeminently dangerous in Etymology. There has been in the world an excess of bad etymology for two reasons.

The discovery of remote analogies is not only mental exercise, but, worse luck, it is a mental amusement as well. The imagination is gratified, and Criticism thinks it harsh to interpose.

Again, there is no language that a man so willingly illustrates as he illustrates his own. He knows it best, and he studies it with the greatest ease. He loves it not wisely but too well. He finds in its structure new and peculiar beauties; he overvalues its excellence, and he exaggerates its antiquity. Such are the men who talk—in Wales, of the ubiquity of the Celts; in Germany, of the Teutonic Origin of the Romans; and in Ireland of the Phœnician extraction of the Milesians.

Thus then, two out of the Thousand and One causes of bad Etymology are the reason psychological, and the reason patriotic. Nemini credendum de Patria sua.

I think that at the entrance upon an unsettled subject, a man should boldly say, and say at the very onset of his career, upon whose opinions he relies, and whose opinions he distrusts. He should profess himself, not indeed the implicit follower of any School, but he should name the School that he preferred. He should declare whose books he could recommend, and whose he would eschew. Thus, if I were lecturing upon Geology, I should say, at once, whether I were what is called a Scriptural Geologist or a Latitudinarian one: And thus, in the department in point, I name the writers I put faith in. In the works of Grimm and Rask I place much trust; in those of Horne Tooke some; and in those of Whiter and Vallancey (to name small men along with great) none whatsoever.

In the study of the Languages that have ceased to be spoken we find, in an Etymological view, one thing, and one thing only; words as they have been affected by previous processes of change; in other terms, the results of these processes. But in the Language that we hear spoken around us, and, still more, in the Language that we ourselves speak, we find something more than results; we find the processes that give occasion to them; in other terms, we see the change as it takes place. Within the lifetime of an individual, within even a very few years, those that look may find, not only that certain words are modified in respect to their meaning, and certain letters modified, in respect to their pronunciation, but they may also see how these modifications are brought about, ascertaining—of words the intermediate meanings, and of letters the intermediate sounds. We may trace the gradations throughout. We can, of our own Language, and in our own Times, see, with a certainty, what change our Language more especially affects; we can observe its tendencies. And we can do this because we can find towards what particular laxities (be they of meaning or be they of pronunciation) ourselves and our neighbours more especially have a bias. We can, as it were, prophesy. We cannot do this with the Latin of Augustus; we cannot do it with the Greek of Pericles.

Hence it is that what we will know, to a certainty, of Etymological processes, must be collected from Cotemporary Languages. Those who look for them elsewhere seek for the Living among the Dead; arguing from things unknown (at least unknown to a certainty), and so speculating laxly, and dogmatizing unphilosophically. Hence it is, that in Cotemporary Languages, and of those Cotemporary Languages, in our own most especially, we may lay deep and strong, and as the only true substratum of accurate criticism, the foundations of our knowledge of Etymological Processes. And, observe, we can find them in a sufficient abundance provided that we sufficiently look out for them. For Processes, the same in kind, though not the same in degree, are found in all languages alike. No process is found in any one language that is not also found (in some degree or other) in our own; and no process can be found in our own language which does not (in some degree or other) exist in all others beside. There are no such things as Peculiar Processes: since Languages differ from each other, not in the nature of their Processes, but in the degrees of their development. These are bold, perhaps novel, assertions, but they are not hasty ones.[1]

Simply considered as an Instrument of Etymology I imagine that the study of Cotemporary Languages is, in its importance, of the very first degree; while next in value to this (considered also, as an Instrument of Etymology,) is the study of Languages during what may be called their breakings-up, or their transitions.

There are two stages in Language. Through these two stages all Languages, sooner or later, make their way; some sooner than others, but all sooner or later. Of this the Latin language may serve as an illustration. In the time of Augustus it expressed the relations of Time and Place, in other words, its Cases and Tenses, by Declension and Conjugation, or, broadly speaking, by Inflexion. In the time of Dante there was little or no Inflexion, but there was an abundance of Auxiliary Verbs, and an abundance of Prepositions in its stead. The expression of Time and Place by independent words superseded the expression by Inflections. Now in all Languages the inflectional stage comes first. This is a Law. There are Languages that stay for ever (at least for an indefinite time) in their earlier stage. Others there are again, that we never come in contact with before they have proceeded to their later one. Languages of this latter kind are of subordinate value to the Etymologist. Those that he values most are such as he sees in the two stages: so being enabled to watch the breaking-up of one, the constitution of the other, and the transition intermediate to the two.

Now our own language (the Anglo Saxon being borne in mind) comes under the conditions that constitute a good and sufficient language as a disciplinal foundation in Etymology. It can be studied in two stages. When we come to the Times of the Conquest we must gird up our loins for the acquisition of a new Language.

The Breaking-up of the Latin (I speak for the sake of illustration and comparison) is a study in itself. It is a study complete and sufficient; not, however, more so than is the study of the Breaking-up of the Gothic. For in this stock of Tongues, not only did the Saxon pass into the English, but the Mœso-Gothic, the Scandinavian, and the Frisian, each gave origin to some new Tongue; the first to the High German, the second to the Languages of Scandinavia, and the third to the Modern Dutch. The study then of the Languages of the Gothic stock is something more than a sufficient disciplinal foundation in Etymology.[2]

In matters of pronunciation, living Languages have an exclusive advantage. For dead Languages speak but to the eye; and it is not through the eye that the ear is to be instructed.

It is well for the Geologist to classify rocks, and to arrange strata, to distinguish minerals, and to determine fossils; but it is far better if, anterior to this, he will study the Powers of Nature, and the Processes that are their operations: and these he can only study as he sees them in the times wherein he lives, or as he finds them recorded in authentic and undisputed histories. With this knowledge he can criticize, and construct; without it he may invent and imagine. Novel and ingenious he may, perchance, become; but he can never be philosophical, and he can never be Scientific. So it is with the Etymologist. Whenever, in a dead Language, he presumes a Process, which he has looked for in vain in a living one, he outruns his data. The basis of Etymology is the study of existing Processes.

Our Language has had its share; I must hasten to the consideration of our Literature.

The Early Literature of most modern Nations consists of the same elements; of Legends concerning their Saints, of Chronicles, and of Hymns and Romances. Too much of this fell into the hands of the Monks; and these were, too often, the prosaic writers of barbarous Latinity; for Prose (if not in language at least in idea) was, with them, the rule; and Poetry the exception. Such is the general character of the Early Modern Literature; in which, however, our Saxon ancestors were, somewhat (indeed much) more fortunate than their neighbours. Monkish writing was with them an important element; but it was not the only one. They had an originality besides. And the Scandinavians were more fortunate still. The worshippers of Odin and Thor had a Mythology; and Mythologies are the Creators and Creations of Poetry. The Norse Mythology is as poetical as the Grecian. I speak this advisedly. Now this Mythology was common to all the Gothic Tribes. The Saxon and the Norse Literatures dealt (each in their degree) with the same materials; they breathed the same spirit; and they clothed it in an allied Language. But the Saxon Mythology is fragmentary; while the Norse Mythology is a whole. For this reason Scandinavian (or Norse) Literature is not extraneous to my subject.

These, the primeval and Pagan times of our ancestors, must claim and arrest our attention; since it is from these that our characteristic modes of Thought (call them Gothic, or call them Romantic) are derived. In the regions of Paganism lie the dark fountains of our Nationality.

Beside this, I consider that, even in the matter of Language, the direct Scandinavian element of the English is much underrated;[3] and still more underrated is the indirect Scandinavian element of the Norman-French. And here, again, when we come to the Conquest, we must grapple with new dialects, irregular imaginations, and mystical and mysterious Mythologies; for the things that have a value in Language, have a value in History also.

Now come, in due order, and in lineal succession, the formation of our Early English Literature, and the days of Chaucer; and then those of Spenser: periods necessary to be illustrated, but which may be illustrated at a future time. And after these the Æra of Elizabeth, fertile in great men, and fertile in great poets; so much so, that (the full view being too extensive) it must be contemplated by instalments and in sections.

There are many reasons for choosing as a subject for illustration the Dramatic Poets of this Period. They stood as great men amid a race of great men; so doing, they have a claim on our attention on the simple solitary grounds of their own supereminent excellence. But, besides this, they are, with the exception of their one great representative, known but imperfectly. Too many of us consider the Age of Elizabeth as the Age of Shakspeare exclusively. Too many of us have been misled by the one-sided partiality of the Shakspearian commentators. These men, in the monomania of their idolatry, not only elevate their author into a Giant, but dwarve down his cotemporaries into pigmies. And who knows not how (on the moral side of the question) their writings are filled even to nauseousness, with the imputed malignity of Ben Jonson? Themselves being most malignant.

This, however, has been, by the labor of a late editor, either wholly done away with, or considerably diluted. Be it with us a duty, and be it with us a labour of love, to seek those commentators who have rescued great men from the neglect of Posterity; and be our sympathies with the diligent antiquarian, who shows that obloquy has originated unjustly; and be our approbation with those who have corrected the errors of Fame, loosely adopted, and but lately laid aside.

Yet here we must guard against a reaction. Malone, and his compeers, valued, or seemed to value, the Elizabethan Drama, just for the light that it threw upon the text of their idol. Gifford, goaded into scorn by injustice, fought the fight on the other side, with strength and with spirit; but he fought it like a partizan; reserving (too much, but as Editors are wont to do,) his admiration and his eulogy for those whom he himself edited. Next came Hazlitt and Charles Lamb; who found undiscovered beauties in poets still more neglected. I think, however, that they discovered these beauties, or at any rate that they exaggerated them, in a great degree on account of their being neglected.

Be there here a more Catholic criticism! be there here eulogies more discriminate! be there here tastes less exclusive!

The Elizabethan Drama is pre-eminently independent, it is pre-eminently characteristic, it is also pre-eminently English. It is deeply, very deeply, imbued, with the colours and complexion of the age that gave it origin. It has much Wisdom, and much Imagination. The last of our Early Dramatists is Shirley. With him terminates the School of Shakspeare. The transition hence is sudden and abrupt. Imagination decays; Wit predominates. Amatory poets write as though they wore their hearts in their heads. Wit is perfected. It had grown out of a degeneracy of Imagination; it will soon be sobered into Sense; Sense the predominant characteristic of the writers under Queen Anne. The school of Dryden passes into that of Pope, Prior being, as it were, intermediate. The Æra of the Charleses comprises two Schools; the School of Cowley, falsely called Metaphysical, with an excess of Fancy, and a deficiency of Taste, and the School of Dryden, whose masculine and fiery intellectuality simulates, aye! and is, genius. Tragedy has run retrograde; but Comedy is evolving itself towards a separate existence, and towards its full perfection. The Spirit of Milton stands apart from his cotemporaries; reflecting nothing of its age but its self-relying energy, moral and intellectual.

Now, although, the Schools of Cowley and the Schools of Dryden, differ essentially from that particular section of the Elizabethan Æra, which we have just contemplated, they do not differ, essentially, from another section of that same æra. Be this borne in mind. There are in Literature, no precipitate transitions. The greatest men, the most original thinkers, the most creative spirits stand less alone than the world is inclined to imagine. Styles of composition, that in one generation are rife and common, always exist in the age that went before. They were not indeed its leading characteristics, but still they were existent within it. The metrical Metaphysics of Cowley were the metrical metaphysics of Donne: the versified Dialectics of Dryden may be found, with equal condensation but less harmony, in the Elizabethan writings of Sir John Davies. The section of one age is the characteristic of the next. This line of criticism is a fair reason (one out of many) for never overlooking and never underrating obscure composers and obsolete literature.

The School of Pope, and the School of our own days, are too far in the prospective to claim any immediate attention.

And here I feel myself obliged to take leave of a subject, that continually tempts me to grow excursive.

There are two sorts of lecturers; those that absolutely teach, and those that stimulate to learn; those that exhaust their subject, and those that indicate its bearings; those that infuse into their hearers their own ideas, and those that set them a-thinking for themselves. For my own part, it is, I confess, my aim and ambition to succeed in the latter rather than in the former object. To carry such as hear me through a series of Authors, or through a course of Languages, in full detail, is evidently, even if it were desirable, an impossibility; but it is no impossibility to direct their attention to the prominent features of a particular subject, and to instil into them the imperious necessity of putting forth their own natural powers in an independent manner, so as to read for themselves, and to judge for themselves. Now as I would rather see a man's mind active than capacious; and, as I love Self-reliance better than Learning, I have no more sanguine expectation, than, that instead of exhausting my subject I may move you to exhaust it for yourselves, may sharpen criticism, may indicate original sources, and, above all, suggest trains of honest, earnest, patient and persevering reflection.

To be heard with confidence we must prove that we have anticipated objections. There are those who shew reason for believing that the inflectional elements were once independent roots: in other words (or rather in a formal expression) that a given case=the root+a preposition, and that a given tense=the root+the substantive verb. Now believing that, although two forms may be thus accounted for, the third may have a very different origin, in other words, drawing a difference between a method of accounting for a given part of speech, and the method of so doing, I find that the bearings of the objection are as follows:—

The independent words, anterior to their amalgamation with the root, and anterior to their power as elements in inflection were either, like the present prepositions and the verb substantive, exponents of the relations of Time and Place, or they were, like the present nouns and verbs, names expressive of ideas: and presuming the former to have been the case, the old inflected Languages may have grown out of Languages like our own; and, vice versa, Languages uninflected (or at least comparatively so), like our own, may give rise to inflected ones like the Latin: in which case, a Cycle is established, and the assertion concerning the sequence falls to the ground.

Now the assertion concerning the two stages professes to be true only as far as it goes. The fact that certain nations are even now evolving a rudimentary inflection out of a vocabulary of independent roots, gives us, as an etymological phenomenon, a third, and an earlier stage of Language; a stage, however, of which cognizance, out of a work on Etymology, would have been superfluous. The independent roots, however, in these Languages coincide, not with the prepositions and the verbs substantive of (comparatively) uninflected Languages, but with their Nouns and Verbs.

To an objector of another sort who should inquire (for instance) where was the Passive Voice in English, or the Definite Article in Latin, the answer would be that the question shewed a misapprehension of the statement in the text, which is virtually this: not that there is either in English or Latin, respectively, Passive Voices, or Definite Articles, but that there are in the two Languages the processes that evolve them. It may also be added, that (an apparent truism) the quantity of Processes depends upon the capacity of the Language. A dialect consisting (as some do) of about ten-score words can bear but a proportionate number of Processes. The truth, however, of the statements in question depends upon this: viz. that all the processes there existing are the processes that exist elsewhere, and that all processes which, with a given increase of Language may at any future time be developed, shall coincide, in kind, with the processes of other Languages.

It may be satisfactory to the Author of the Principles of Geology to discover that his criticism affects other sciences besides his own. Notwithstanding the industry, and acumen of continental critics, it may be doubted whether the Principles of Etymology (as a Science) have not yet to be exhibited. I use the word exhibited intentionally. That many Etymologists apply them I am most certain; where, however, do we find them detailed in system, or recognised as tests?

We draw too much upon the Philologists of Germany; and where men draw indefinitely they trust implicitly. I believe that the foundations of Etymology are to be laid upon the study of existing processes; and I grow sanguine when I remember that by no one so well as by an Englishman can these processes be collected. With the exception of the Russian (a doubtful exception) we come in contact with more Languages than any nation under the Sun. Here then we have an advantage in externals. The details of Etymology I can willingly give up to the scholars of the Continent; in these they have already reaped a harvest: but for the Principles of Etymology, I own to the hope that it may be the English School that shall be the first to be referred to and the last to be distrusted. In sketching the outline of a system of Scientific Etymology, I again borrow my analogies from Geology. Its primary divisions would be two: 1stly, The processes that change the form of words, or the formal processes. 2ndly, The processes that change their meanings, or the Logical processes. The first of these would be based upon the affinities and interchanges of sounds, the second upon the affinities and interchanges of ideas: the sciences (amongst others) which they were erected on being, respectively, those of Acoustics and Metaphysics; and the degrees of Etymological probability would then coincide with the correspondence of the two sorts of processes.

Few Etymologists have any conception of the enormous influence of small and common processes, provided that the extent of Language that they affect be considerable. In the very generalizing classification of Languages into Monosyllabic, Triliteral, and Polysynthetic, I put no trust; for I can refer (to my own satisfaction at least) the differences that are generally attributed to an original diversity of composition, to a diversity in the development of processes: in other words, I know of processes which with a given degree of development render the three classes convertible each in the other. With these notions I, of course, take exceptions to the Principle of the classification; for I deny that the Form of a Language is, in any degree, an essential characteristic. The axiom is not Propter formam Lingua est id quod est, but Propter elementa Lingua est id quod est. The question concerning the Classification in point is analogous to the question concerning the Chemical and the Natural-History Classification in Mineralogy.

Were it not for the admixture of other questions, the present Lecture might have been entitled The Sufficiency of the English Language as a Disciplinal Study in Grammar and Etymology, irrespective of the fact of its being the native Language of Englishmen. The appended qualification is in no wise a superfluity. Our native Language is the best instrument in Disciplinal Study simply because it is our native one; and a Pole, a Spaniard, or Hungarian can best lay in their ideas of General Grammar from the special study of the Polish, Spanish, and Hungarian Languages respectively. The very palpable reason for this is that, before we can advantageously study the System of a Language, we must have acquired a certain quantity of the detail of it. Now, in the attempt to collect ideas of General Grammar from the study of a Foreign Language, we shall find that the Theory will be swamped by the Practice; in other words, that, by attempting to do two things at once, we shall do one of them badly. Merely, then, to have predicated in England, of the English Language, that it was a good and sufficient Disciplinal Instrument would have been to have remained silent as to its abstract merits as such.

Of these abstract merits the degree depends upon the chronological extent of Language that we make use of. To get them at their maximum the Two Stages must be taken in: and the Two Stages being taken in, it is more on a par with the Languages of Classical Antiquity, than it has generally been considered to be. Still (considered thus far only) it is inferior to them. For the Greek and Latin, exceeding it in the quantity of original Inflection, have run through an equal quantity of change. Considering, however, not the English only, but the whole range of allied Languages forming the Gothic Stock, the question takes a different shape. As a Magazine of Processes and Principles, the Gothic Stock not only equals the Classical, but exceeds, by far, the Greek Branch of it. The Hebrew from its quasi-symbolic form has Disciplinal merits of its own.

Let the Languages of Greece and Italy be learned for their own sake; and by those who have the privilege to appreciate them. One might think that the works of Homer and Demosthenes, of Lucretius and Cæsar, were a sufficient reason for turning with diurnal and nocturnal hands the copies that exhibit them. But let us not (as we often are) be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or the Greek Accidence for the sake of learning grammar in general. The self-deception that in taking up Latin and Greek we are studying a Grammar, instead of beginning a Literature, is too often the excuse for concluding our studies just where they might advantageously begin, and for looking with complacency upon limited acquirements just where limited acquirements are pre-eminently of little use.

I feel that the assertion here made requires modifying and explaining. I should be sorry to be supposed to have made it, under the old notion that in any written records of the Saxon Literature there is any ostensible admixture of Danish (i. e. Scandinavian); still less do I participate in the belief of the early Gothic Scholars in the existence of their so-called Dano-Saxon Dialect. I recognize, moreover, the criticism that refers the apparent Danish (Scandinavian) element of the East-Anglian, and Northumbrian Glossaries to the original affinity between the extreme Low German and the extreme Scandinavian Dialects: thus making it indirect. It was once my opinion (one which I have since modified but not given up) that in the present English, and consequently in the Low Germanic Branch of the Gothic Stock, obscure traces of the great Scandinavian characteristics (viz. the existence of a Passive Middle or Reflective Voice, and the peculiar expression of the sense of the Definite Article) could be discovered: but it was not upon this idea that I founded the assertion in the text.

The question has its peculiar difficulties. Words that have long passed for Scandinavian, are continually being detected in the Saxon; so that the Philologist who should say this word is Scandinavian and not Saxon has the difficult task of proving a negative. Again, the point is one upon which no single person's assertion should be received. Hastiness of Induction, in favour of particular Languages, when we know these Languages (as every Language, indeed as every kind of Knowledge, must be known) at the expense of some other, comes upon us unconsciously. The Languages of the Gothic Stock that I know best are those of Scandinavia; the Provincial Dialect of England which I have most studied is that of Lincolnshire, and the neighbouring maritime Counties. Here the preeminence of the Danish (Scandinavian) element being acknowledged, the question is whether it be Direct or Indirect. I am free to confess that this circumstance sharpens my sight for the perception (true or false) of direct Danish elements. As a counterbalance, however, the consciousness of it engenders a proportionate self-distrust.

Upon the whole, I would rather that the sentence had run thus: the Direct Scandinavian element in the English is still to be determined, and here (as in many other places) there is open ground for the original investigator.

---

DELIVERED
AT THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL,
OCTOBER 1, 1847.

There are certain facts of such paramount importance, that they not only bear, but require, repetition. The common duties of every-day life, and the common rules of social policy, are matters which no moralist states once for all: on the contrary, they are reiterated as often as occasion requires—and occasion requires them very often.

Now it is from the fact of certain medical duties, both on the part of those who teach and those who learn, being of this nature, that, with the great schools of this metropolis, every year brings along with it the necessity of an address similar to the one which I have, on this day, the honour of laying before you.

You that come here to learn, come under the pressure of a cogent responsibility—in some cases of a material, in others of a moral nature—in all, however, most urgent and most imperative.

To the public at large—to the vast mass of your fellow-creatures around you—to the multitudinous body of human beings that sink under illness, or suffer from pain—to the whole of that infinite family which has bodily, not unmixed with mental affliction, for its heritage upon earth—to all who live, and breathe, and feel, and share with yourselves the common lot of suffering—here, in their whole height and depth, and length and breadth, are your responsibilities of one kind. You promise the palliation of human ailment: but you break that high promise if you act unskilfully. You call to you all those that are oppressed; but you may aggravate the misery that you should comfort and relieve. You bear with you the outward and visible signs, if not of the high wisdom that heals, at least of the sagacious care that alleviates. Less than this is a stone in the place of bread; and less than this is poison in the fountain-springs of hope.

Not at present, indeed, but within a few brief years it will be so. Short as is human life, the period for the learning of your profession is but a fraction of the time that must be spent in the practice of it. A little while, and you may teach where you now learn. Within a less period still, you will practise what you are now taught.

And practice must not be begun before you have the fitness that is sufficient for it. Guard against some of the current commonplaces of carelessness, and procrastination. Lawyers sometimes say "that no man knows his profession when he begins it." And what lawyers say of law, medical men repeat about physic. Men of that sort of standing in medicine which, like the respectability of an old error, is measured by time alone, are fondest of talking thus; and men of no standing of any sort are fondest of being their echoes. It is the current paradox of your practical men, i. e. of men who can be taught by practice alone. Clear your heads of this nonsense. It will make you egotists, and it will make you empirics: it will make you men of one idea: it will make you, even when you fancy it would do you just the contrary, the wildest of speculators. The practice of practical men, in the way I now use the words, is a capital plan for making anything in the world, save and except practitioners.

Well! this has seemed excursive, but it is not so: it is a reason against the putting off of your learning-time. When your first case comes, you must be as fit for it as you are ready for it.

A difference between old practitioners and beginners there always will be—so long at least as there is value in experience, and a difference between age and youth; but this difference, which is necessary, must be limited as much as possible, must be cut down to its proper dimensions, and must by no means whatever be permitted to exaggerate itself into an artificial magnitude. If it do so, it is worse than a simple speculative error,—it is a mischievous delusion: it engenders a pernicious procrastination, justifies supineness, and creates an excuse for the neglect of opportunities: it wastes time, which is bad, and encourages self-deception, which is worse.

A difference between old practitioners and beginners there always will be: but it should consist not so much in the quality of their work as in the ease with which it is done. It should be the gain of the practitioner, not the loss of the patient.

Now, if I did those whom I have the honour to address the injustice of supposing that the moral reasons for disciplinal preparation, during the course of study now about to be entered into, were thrown away upon their minds and consciences, I should be at liberty to make short work of this part of my argument, and to dispose of much of it in a most brief and summary manner. I should be at liberty to say, in language more plain and complimentary, and more cogent than persuasive, that you must be up to your work when you begin it. If you stumble at the threshold, you have broken down for after-life. A blunder at the commencement is failure for the time to come. Furthermore; mala praxis is a misdemeanor in the eyes of the law, for which you may first be mulcted by a jury, and afterwards be gibbeted by the press. This fact, which there is no denying, ought to be conclusive against the preposterous doctrine which I have exposed: conclusive, however, as it is, it is one which I have not chosen to put prominent. Let a better feeling stand instead of it. Honesty is the best policy; but he is not honest who acts upon that policy only.

All this may be true; yet it may be said that the responsibility is prospective. "'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' We'll think about this when we have got through the Halls and Colleges. You must give us better reasons for sacrificing our inclinations to our duty than those of a paulo-post-futurum responsibility." Be it so: you have still a duty, urgent and absolute—not prospective, but immediate—not in the distance, with contingent patients, but close at hand, with the realities of friend and family—not abroad with the public, but at home with your private circle of parents, relatives, and guardians. By them you are entrusted here with the special, definite, unequivocal, undoubted object—an object which no ingenuity can refine away, and no subtlety can demur to—of instruction, discipline, preparation. You not only come up here to learn, but you are sent up to do so: and anxious wishes and reasonable hopes accompany you. You are commissioned to avail yourself of a time which experience has shewn to be sufficient, and of opportunities which are considered necessary: and there is no excuse for neglect.

Great as are the opportunities, they are not numerous enough to be wasted; and limited as is the time in the eyes of those who only know it in its misapplication, it is the period that a considerable amount of experience has sanctioned as a fair and average time for fair and average abilities, and for fair and average industry:—not a minimum period made for iron assiduity on the one hand, or for fiery talent on the other, but a period adapted to the common capacities of the common mass of mankind—a common-sense time,—a time too long or too short only for the extremes of intellect—too short for the slowness of confirmed dulness, too long for the rapid progress of extraordinary and rarely-occurring genius.

Of this time you are bound to make the most. It is your interest to do so for your own sakes; it is your duty to do so for the sake of your friends.

You come to the hospital to learn—you come to the hospital to learn in the strictest sense of the word. You come to learn medicine, as you would go—if instead of physic your profession were the law—to the chambers of a special pleader, a common lawyer, or an equity draughtsman. In this strict sense does your presence here imply study—study exclusive, and study without any loss of time, and without any division of attention. You do not come here as a clergyman goes to the University; but as artists go to Rome—not to keep terms, but to do work.

I must here guard against the misinterpretation of an expression used a few sentences back. I wish to let nothing drop that may encourage the germs of an undue presumption. I expressed an opinion—which I meant to be a decided one—that the time allowed for your medical studies was full, fair, and sufficient,—so much so that if it prove insufficient the fault must lie in the neglect of it. Sufficient, however, as it is, it gives no opportunity for any superfluous leisure. It must not be presumed on. You have no odd months, or weeks, or days, or even hours, to play with. It is a sufficient space for you to lay in that knowledge of your profession which the experience and opinion of your examining boards have thought proper to require. I believe the amount thus required, to be, like the time granted for the acquisition of it, a fair amount. But it is not a high one, and it is not right that it should be so. Standards of fitness that are set up for the measure of a body of students so numerous as those in medicine, rarely err on the side of severity. They favour mediocrity; and they ought to favour it. It is safe: and that is all they have a right to look to. What they profess is never very formidable; and what they require is generally less than what is professed. But the time that is sufficient for this modicum (or minimum) of professional learning is not the time sufficient for the formation of a practitioner of that degree of excellence which the competition of an open profession, like that of medicine, requires as the guarantee of success. An examining board has but one point to look to—it must see that you can practise with safety to the public. It never ensures, or professes to ensure, that you shall practise with success to yourself, or even that you shall practise at all. In the eyes of an Examiner, as in those of a commissioner of lunacy, there are but two sorts of individuals; those that can be let loose upon the public, and those that cannot. In the eyes of the public there is every degree of excellence, and every variety of comparative merit or demerit.

Now as to the way of attaining these higher degrees of merit, and the rewards, moral or material, which they ensure—which follow them as truly as satisfaction follows right actions, and as penalties follow wrong ones. The opportunity we have spoken of. It consists in the whole range of means and appliances by which we here, and others elsewhere, avail ourselves of those diseases that humanity has suffered, and is suffering, for the sake of alleviating the misery that they seem to ensure for the future. Disease with us is not only an object of direct and immediate relief to the patient who endures it, but it is an indirect means of relief to sufferers yet untouched. Out of evil comes good. We make the sick helpful to the sound; the dead available to the living. Out of pestilence comes healing, and out of the corruption of death the laws and rule of life. Suffering we have, and teaching we have, and neither must be lost upon you. It is too late to find that these objects, and objects like them, are repugnant and revolting. These things should have been thought of before. Your choice is now taken, and it must be held to. The discovery that learning is unpleasant is the discovery of a mistake in the choice of your profession; and the sooner you remedy such a mistake the better—the better for yourselves, the better for your friends, the better for the public, and the better for the profession itself.

Steady work, with fair opportunities—this is what makes practitioners. The one without the other is insufficient. There is an expenditure of exertion where your industry outruns your materials, and there is a loss of useful facts when occasions for observation are neglected.

See all you can, and hear all you can. It is not likely that cases will multiply themselves for your special observations, and it is neither the policy nor the practice of those who are commissioned with your instruction to open their mouths at random.

See all you can. If the case be a common one, you get so much familiarity with a phenomenon that it will be continually presenting itself. If a rare one, you have seen what you may seldom see again. There is every reason for taking the practice of the hospital exactly as you find it. It represents the diseases of the largest class of mankind—the poor; and, although in some of the details there may be a difference, upon the whole the forms of disease that are the commonest in hospitals are the commonest in the world at large; and vice versâ. Hence, what you see here is the rule rather than the exception for what you will see hereafter. The diseases are not only essentially the same, but the proportion which they bear to one another is nearly so. I mention this, because there is often a tendency to run after rare cases to the neglect of common ones; whilst, on the other hand, remarkable and instructive forms of disease are overlooked, simply because they are thought the curiosities rather than the elements of practice. You may carry your neglect of common cases, on the strength of their being common, too far. You may know all about catalepsy and hydrophobia, and nothing about itch or measles. You may find that, of the two parties concerned, the patient and yourself, it is the former that knows the most about his complaint. You may live to have your diagnosis corrected by the porter, your prognosis criticised by the nurse. On the other hand, by missing single instances of rare disease, you may miss the opportunity of being able to refer to your memory rather than to your library.

I have given you reasons against being afraid of over-observation, and against the pernicious habit of neglecting this case because it is common, and that because it is rare—a common excuse for neglecting all diseases, and a popular reason for doing so. Medicus sum, nihil in re medicâ a me alienum puto, &c. Some minds, indeed, are so constituted that they can make much, very much, out of single cases, out of solitary specimens of diseases. The power of minute analysis is the characteristic of this sort of observation. It is just possible so to seize upon the true conditions of a disease, as to satisfy yourself, once for all, of its real permanent attribute—of its essence, if I may so express myself. And this being seen, you may, for certain purposes, have seen enough; seen it at one glance; seen it at a single view as well as others see it at a hundred. I say that certain minds are thus constituted; but they are rarely the minds of many men in a single generation, and never the minds of beginners. Before this power is attained your observation must be disciplined into the accuracy and the rapidity of an instinct; and to this power of observation—attainable only by long practice, and after long practice—a high power of reflection must be superadded.

No such power must be presumed on. If the student delude himself, the disease will undeceive him. The best practitioners, in the long run, are those whose memory is stored with the greatest number of individual cases—individual cases well observed, and decently classified. It is currently stated that the peculiar power of the late Sir Astley Cooper was a power of memory of this sort, and I presume that no better instance of its value need be adduced. Now the memory for cases implies the existence of cases to remember; and before you arrange them in the storehouse of your thoughts you must have seen and considered; must have used both your senses and your understanding; must have seen, touched, and handled with the one, and must have understood and reflected with the other.

I am talking of these things as they exist in disciplined intellects, and in retentive memories; and, perhaps, it may be objected that I am talking of things that form the exception rather than the rule; that I am measuring the power of common men by those of extraordinary instances. I weigh my words, when I deliberately assert, that such, although partially the case, is not so altogether; and that it is far less the case than is commonly imagined. In most of those instances where we lose the advantage of prior experience, by omitting the application of our knowledge of a previous similar case, the fault is less in the laxity of memory than in the original incompleteness of the observation. Observe closely, and ponder well, and the memory may take care of itself. Like a well-applied nick-name, a well-made observation will stick to you—whether you look after it or neglect it. The best way to learn to swim is to try to sink, and it is so because floatation, like memory, is natural if you set about it rightly. Let those who distrust their remembrance once observe closely, and then forget if they can.

There are good reasons for cultivating this habit at all times, but there are especial reasons why those who are on the threshold of their profession should more particularly cultivate it. Not because you have much to learn—we have all that—nor yet because you have the privilege of great opportunities—we have all that also—must you watch, and reflect, and arrange, and remember. Your time of life gives you an advantage. The age of the generality of you is an age when fresh facts are best seized: and best seized because they are fresh. Whether you are prepared to understand their whole import, as you may do at some future period, is doubtful. It is certain that the effect of their novelty is to impress them more cogently on your recollection.

And this is practice—practice in the good sense of the term, and in a sense which induces me to guard against the misconstruction of a previous application of it. A few sentences back I used the phrases practical men, adding that those so called were men who could be taught by practice only. I confess that this mode of expression was disparaging. For the purpose to which it was applied it was meant to be so. It is a term you must be on your guard against. Practice is so good a thing of itself that its name and appellation are applied to many bad things. Slovenliness is practice; if it suits the purpose of any one to call it so; contempt for reading is practice; and bleeding on all occasions when you omit to purge is practice;—and bad practice too. Be on your guard against this: but do not be on your guard against another sort of practice: the practice of men who first observe, and then reflect, and then generalise, and then reduce to a habit their results. This is the true light for you to follow, and in this sense practice is not only a safe guide but the safe guide. It is experience, or, if you choose a more philosophic term, induction. Theoretical men can be taught by this, and the wisest theories are taught by it. When I said that practical men were taught by practice only, I never implied that they were the only men that practice could teach. Experience makes fools wise; but fools are not the only persons who can profit by experience.

See and hear—the senses must administer to the understanding. Eye, and ear, and finger—exercise these that they may bring in learning.

See and hear—the senses must administer to their own improvement. Eye, and ear, and finger—exercise these, that they may better themselves as instruments. The knowledge is much, but the discipline is more. The knowledge is the fruit that is stored, but the discipline is the tree that yields. The one is the care that keeps, the other the cultivation that supplies.

The habit of accurate observation is by no means so difficult as is darkly signified by logicians, nor yet so easy as is vainly fancied by empirics. It is the duty of those who teach you to indicate the medium.

The tenor of some of my observations runs a risk of misrepresentation. It has been limited. It has spoken of cases, as if there was nothing in the whole range of medical study but cases; and of observation, as if the faculties of a medical man were to take a monomaniac form, and to run upon observation only; of hospitals, as if they consisted of beds and patients alone; and of clinical medicine and of clinical surgery, as if there was no such a paramount subject as physiology, and no such important subsidiary studies as chemistry and botany. It is all hospital and no school—all wards and no museum—all sickness and no health. This has been the line that I have run on; and I feel that it may be imputed to me that I have run on it too long and too exclusively. Whether I undervalue the acquisition of those branches of knowledge which are collateral and subordinate to medicine, rather than the elements of medicine itself—which are the approaches to the temple rather than the innermost shrine—will be seen in the sequel. At present I only vindicate the prominence which has been given to clinical observation, by insisting upon the subordinate character of everything that is taught away from the bed, and beyond the sensible limits of disease. No single subject thus taught is the direct and primary object of your learning. The art of healing is so. You learn other things that you may understand this; and in hospitals at least you learn them with that view exclusively. If you wish to be a physiologist, chemist, or botanist, irrespectively of the medical application of the sciences of physiology, chemistry, and botany, there are better schools than the Middlesex Hospital, or, indeed, than any hospital whatever. There they may be studied as mathematics are studied at Cambridge, or as classics at Eton—simply for their own great and inherent values. But here you study them differently, that is, as mathematics are taught at a military college, or as classics are taught at the College of Preceptors, for a specific purpose, and with a limited view—with a view limited to the illustration of disease, and with the specific purpose of rendering them indirect agents in therapeutics. If you could contrive the cure of disease without a knowledge of morbid processes, it would be a waste of time to trouble yourself with pathology; or if you could bottom the phenomena of diseased action without a knowledge of the actions of health, physiology would be but a noble science for philosophers; or if you could build up a system of physiology, determining the functions of organs and the susceptibilities of tissues, independent of the anatomy of those organs and those tissues, scalpels would be as irrelevant to you as telescopes; and if these three sciences received no elucidation from chemistry, and botany, and physics, then would chemistry, and botany and physics, have the value—neither more nor less—of the art of criticism or of the binomial theorem. What you are taught in the schools is taught to you, not because it is worth knowing—for Latin, and Greek, and Mathematics are worth knowing—but because, before patients can be cured, they are necessary to be learned.

And, in order to be taught at all, they must be taught systematically. It is an easy matter to ask for a certain amount of these two collateral sciences—to pick and choose just the parts wanted for use, to require just that modicum of botany which illustrates the Pharmacopœia, and just those fragments of chemistry that make prescriptions safe, and urine intelligible. It is easy, I say, to ask for all this; but the art of thus teaching per saltum has yet to be discovered. The whole is more manageable than the half. What it may be with others is more than I can tell; but, for my own particular teaching, I would sooner take the dullest boy from the worst school, and start him in a subject at the right end, than begin at the wrong end with the cleverest prizeman that ever flattered parent or gratified instructor. Bits of botany and crumbs of chemistry are less digestible than whole courses.

Thus much for those studies that make your therapeutics rational. Some few have spoken slightly of them—as Sydenham, in the fulness of his knowledge of symptoms, spoke slightingly of anatomy, or as a Greek sculptor, familiar with the naked figure, might dispense with dissection. They are necessary, nevertheless, for the groundwork of your practice. They must serve to underpin your observations.

And now we may ask, whether, when a medical education has been gone through, you have collected from it, over and above your professional sufficiency, any secondary advantages of that kind which are attributed to education itself taken in the abstract? Whether your knowledge is of the sort that elevates, and whether your training is of the kind that strengthens?

Upon the whole, you may be satisfied with the reflex action of your professional on your general education—that is, if you take a practical and not an ideal standard. It will do for you, in this way, as much as legal studies do for the barrister, and as much as theological reading does for the clergyman; and perhaps in those points not common to the three professions medicine has the advantage. Its chemistry, which I would willingly see more mixed with physics, carries you to the threshold of the exact sciences. Its botany is pre-eminently disciplinal to the faculty of classification; indeed, for the natural-history sciences altogether, a medical education is almost necessary. Clear ideas in physiology are got at only through an exercised power of abstraction and generalization. The phenomena of insanity can be appreciated only when the general phenomena of healthy mental function are understood, and when the normal actions of the mind are logically analyzed. Such is medical education as an instrument of self-culture: and as education stands at present, a man who has made the most of them may walk among the learned men of the world with a bold and confiding front.

I insist upon thus much justice being done to the intellectual character of my profession—viz. that it be measured by a practical, and not an ideal, standard. Too much of the spirit of exaggeration is abroad—of that sort of exaggeration which makes men see in the requisites for their own profession the requisites for half-a-dozen others—of that sort of exaggeration which made Vitruvius, himself an architect, prove elaborately that before a man could take a trowel in his hand he must have a knowledge of all the sciences and a habit of all the virtues. Undoubtedly it would elevate medicine for every member in the profession to know much more than is required of him—yet this is no reason for our requiring much more than we do. Such a notion can be entertained only through a confusion of duty on the part of those who direct medicine. Their business is the public safety; and the position of their profession is their business only so far as it affects this. Trusts are intended for the benefit of any one rather than the trustee.

Two objections lie against the recommendation of extraneous branches of learning in medicine: in the first place, by insisting upon them as elements of a special course of instruction, they are, by implication, excluded from a general one; in the second place, they are no part of a three years' training.

Concentrate your attention on the essentials. I am quite satisfied that as far as the merits or demerits of an education contribute to the position of a profession, we may take ours as we find it, and yet hold our own. Nevertheless, lest the position given to medicine by its pre-eminent prominence, in conjunction with the church and bar, as one of the so-called learned professions, should encourage the idea that a multiplicity of accomplishments should be the character of a full and perfect medical practitioner, one or two important realities in respect to our position should be indicated. We are at a disadvantage as compared with both the church and the bar. We have nothing to set against such great political prizes as chancellorships and archbishoprics. We are at this disadvantage; and, in a country like England, it is a great one: so that what we gain by the connection, in the eyes of the public, is more than what we give; and the connection is itself artificial, and, as such, dissoluble. It is best to look the truth in the face—we must stand or fall by our own utility.

Proud to be useful—scorning to be more

—must be the motto of him whose integrity should be on a level with his skill, who should win a double confidence, and who, if he do his duty well, is as sure of his proper influence in society, and on society—and that influence a noble one—as if he were the member of a profession ensured to respectability by all the favours that influence can extort, and all the prerogatives that time can accumulate. As compared with that of the church and bar, our hold upon the public is by a thread—but it is the thread of life.

Such are the responsibilities, the opportunities, and the prospects, of those who are now about to prepare themselves for their future career. We who teach have our responsibilities also; we know them; we are teaching where Bell taught before us; we are teaching where ground has been lost; yet we are also teaching with good hopes, founded upon improved auguries.

---

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

MAY 13, 1854.

The subject I have the honour of illustrating is The Importance of the Study of Language as a means of Education for all Classes.

I open it by drawing a distinction.

A little consideration will show that that difference between the study of a given subject in its general and abstract, and the study of one in its applied or concrete, form, which finds place in so many departments of human knowledge, finds place in respect to Language and Languages. It finds place in the subject before us as truly as it does in that science, which one of my able successors will have the honour of illustrating,—the science of the laws of Life—Physiology or Biology. Just as there is, therein, a certain series of laws relating to life and organization, which would command our attention, if the whole animal and vegetable world consisted of but a single species, so the study of Speech would find place in a well-devised system of education, even if the tongues of the whole wide world were reduced to a single language, and that language to a single dialect. This is because the science of life is one thing, the science of the forms under which the phenomena of life are manifested, another. And just as Physiology, or Biology, is, more or less, anterior to and independent of such departments of study as Botany and Zoology, so, in the subject under notice, there is the double division of the study of Language in respect to structure and development, and the study of Languages as instances of the variety of form in which the phenomenon of human speech exhibits, or has exhibited, itself. Thus—

When (as I believe once to have been the case) there was but a single language on the face of the earth, the former of these divisions had its subject-matter. And—

When (as is by no means improbable) one paramount and exclusive tongue, developed, at first, rapidly and at the expense of the smaller languages of the world, and, subsequently, slowly and at that of the more widely-diffused ones, shall have replaced the still numerous tongues of the nineteenth century; and when all the dialects of the world shall be merged into one Universal Language, the same subject-matter for the study of the structure of Language, its growth and changes, will still exist.

So that the study of Language is one thing, the study of Languages, another.

They are different; and the intellectual powers that they require and exercise are different also. The greatest comparative philologists have, generally, been but moderate linguists.

A certain familiarity with different languages they have, of course, had; and as compared with that of the special scholar—the Classic or the Orientalist, for instance—their range of language (so to say) has been a wide one; but it has rarely been of that vast compass which is found in men after the fashion of Mezzofanti, &c.—men who have spoken languages by the dozen, or the score;—but who have left comparative philology as little advanced as if their learning had been bounded by the limits of their own mother tongue.

Now this difference, always of more or less importance in itself, increases when we consider Language as an object of education; and it is for the sake of illustrating it that the foregoing preliminaries have been introduced. No opinion is given as to the comparative rank or dignity of the two studies; no decision upon the nobility or ignobility of the faculties involved in the attainment of excellence in either. The illustration of a difference is all that has been aimed at. There is a difference between the two classes of subjects, and a difference between the two kinds of mental faculties. Let us make this difference clear. Let us also give it prominence and importance.

One main distinction between the study of Language and the study of Languages lies in the fact of the value of the former being constant, that of the latter, fluctuating. The relative importance of any two languages, as objects of special attention, scarcely ever remains steady. The value, for instance, of the German—to look amongst the cotemporary forms of speech—has notably risen within the present century. And why? Because the literature in which it is embodied has improved. Because the scientific knowledge which, to all who want the key, is (so to say) locked up in it, has increased some hundred per cent.

But it may go down again. Suppose, for instance, that new writers of pre-eminent merit, ennoble some of the minor languages of Europe—the Danish, Swedish, Dutch, &c. Such a fact would divide the attention of savans—attention which can only be bestowed upon some second, at the expense of some first, object. In such a case, the extent to which the German language got studied would be affected much in the same way as that of the French has been by the development of the literature of Germany.

Or the area over which a language is spoken may increase; as it may, also, diminish.

Or the number of individuals that speak it may multiply—the area being the same.

Or the special application of the language, whether for the purposes of commerce, literature, science, or politics, may become changed. In this way, as well as in others, the English is becoming, day by day, more important.

There are other influences.

High as is the value of the great classical languages of Greece and Rome, we can easily conceive how that value might be enhanced. Let a manuscript containing the works of some of the lost, or imperfectly preserved, writers of antiquity be discovered. Let, for instance, Gibbon's desiderata—the lost Decads of Livy, the Orations of Hyperides, or the Dramas of Menander—be made good. The per-centage of classical scholars would increase; little or much.

Some years back it was announced that the Armenian language contained translations, made during the earlier centuries of our era, of certain classical writings, of which the originals had been lost—lost in the interval. This did not exactly make the Armenian, with its alphabet of six-and-thirty letters, a popular tongue; but it made it, by a fraction, more popular than it was in the days of Whiston and La Croze, when those two alone, of all the learned men of Europe, could read it.

Translations tell in another way. Whatever is worth reading in the Danish and Swedish is forthwith translated into German. E. g. Professor Retzius of Stockholm wrote a good Manual of Anatomy. He had the satisfaction of seeing it translated into German. He had the further satisfaction of hearing that the translation ran through five editions in less time than the original did through one.

Now, if the Germans were to leave off translating the value of the language in which Professor Retzius wrote his Anatomy would rise.

Upon the whole, the French is, perhaps, the most important language of the nineteenth century; yet it is only where we take into consideration the whole of its elements of value. To certain special savans, the German is worth more; to the artist, the Italian; to the American, the Spanish. It fell, too, in value when nations like our own insisted upon the use of their native tongues in diplomacy. It fell in value because it became less indispensable; and another cause, now in operation, affects the same element of indispensability. The French are beginning to learn the languages of other nations. Their own literature will certainly be none the worse for their so doing. But it by no means follows that that literature will be any the more studied. On the contrary, Frenchmen will learn English more, and, pro tanto, Englishmen learn French less.

If all this have illustrated a difference, it may also have done something more. It may have given a rough sketch, in the way of classification, of the kind of facts that regulate the value of special languages as special objects of study. At any rate (and this is the main point), the subject-matter of the present Address is narrowed. It is narrowed (in the first instance at least) to the consideration of that branch of study whereof the value is constant; for assuredly it is this which will command more than a moiety of our consideration.

This may be said to imply a preference to the study of Language as opposed to that of Languages—a singular preference, as a grammarian may, perhaps, be allowed to call it. It cannot be denied that, to a certain extent, such is the case; but it is only so to a certain extent. The one is not magnified at the expense of the other. When all has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and pre-eminently high that of what may be called the noble Languages. No variations in the philological barometer, no fluctuations in the Exchange of Language, will ever bring down the advantage of studying one, two, or even more foreign languages to so low a level as to expel such tongues as the Latin, the Greek, the French, or the German, one and all, from an English curriculum—and vice versâ, English from a foreign one.

Now, if this be the case, one of the elements in the value of the study of Language in general will be the extent to which it facilitates the acquirement of any one language in particular, and this element of value will be an important—though not the most important—one.

The structure of the human body is worth knowing, even if the investigator of it be neither a practitioner in medicine nor a teacher of anatomy; and, in like manner, the structure of the human language is an important study irrespective of the particular forms of speech whereof it may facilitate the acquirement.

The words on the diagram-board will now be explained. They are meant to illustrate the class of facts that comparative philology supplies.

The first runs—

Klein : Clean :: Petit : Petitus.

It shows the extent to which certain ideas are associated. It shows, too, something more; it shows that such an association is capable of being demonstrated from the phenomena of language instead of being a mere à priori speculation on the part of the mental philosopher.

Klein is the German for little; clean is our own English adjective, the English of the Latin word mundus. In German the word is rein.

Now, notwithstanding the difference of meaning in the two tongues, clean and klein are one and the same word. Yet, how are the ideas of cleanliness and littleness connected? The Greek language has the word hypocorisma, meaning a term of endearment, and the adjective hypocoristic. Now, clean-ness, or neat-ness, is one of the elements that make hypocoristic terms (or terms of endearment) applicable. And so is smallness. We talk of pretty little dears, a thousand times, where we talk of pretty big dears once. This, then, explains the connexion; this tells us that clean in English is klein in German, word for word.

You doubt it, perhaps. You shake your head, and say, that the connexion seems somewhat indefinite; that it is just one of those points which can neither be proved nor disproved. Be it so. The evidence can be amended. Observe the words petit and petitus. Petit (in French) is exactly what klein is in German, i. e., little. Petitus (in Latin) is very nearly what clean is in English, i. e., desired, or desirable. That petit comes from petitus is undeniable.

Hence, where the German mode of thought connects the ideas of smallness and cleanness, the Latin connects those of smallness and desirability; so that as petit is to petitus, so is klein to clean. In the diagram this is given in the formula of a sum in the Rule of Three.

The words just noticed explain the connexion of ideas in the case of separate words. The forthcoming help us in a much more difficult investigation. What is the import of such sounds as that of the letter s in the word father-s? It is the sign of the plural number.

Such is the question—such the answer; question and answer connected in the word fathers solely for the sake of illustration. Any other word, and any other sign of case, number, person, or tense, would have done as well.

But is the answer a real one? Is it an answer at all? How come such things as plural numbers, and signs of plural numbers, into language? How the particular plural before us came into being, I cannot say; but I can show how some plurals have. Let us explain the following—

The da (or de) in the second column, is the sign of the plural number in a language which shall at present be nameless. It is also the preposition with. Now with denotes association, association plurality. Hence

This is just as if the Latins, instead of nos and vos, said me-cum and te-cum.

Such is the history of one mode of expressing the idea of plurality; we can scarcely say of a plural number. The words plural number suggest the idea of a single word, like fathers, where the s is inseparably connected with the root; at least so far inseparably connected as to have no independent existence of its own. Ngi-n-de, however, is no single word at all, but a pair of words in juxta-position, each with a separate existence of its own. But what if this juxta-position grow into amalgamation; What if the form in da change? What if it become t or z, or th, or s? What if, meanwhile, the separate preposition da change in form also; in form or meaning, or, perhaps, in both? In such a case a true plural form is evolved, the history of its evolution being a mystery.

So much for one of the inflections of a noun. The remaining words illustrate one of a verb.

Hundreds of grammarians have suggested that the signs of the persons in the verb might be neither more nor less than the personal pronouns appended; in the first instance, to the verb, but, afterwards amalgamated or incorporated with it. If so, the -m in inqua-m, is the m in me, &c. The late Mr. Garnett, a comparative philologist whose reputation is far below his merits, saw that this was not exactly the case. He observed that the appended pronoun was not so much the Personal as the Possessive one: that the analysis of a word like inqua-m was not so much, say+I, as saying+my; in short, that the verb was a noun, and the pronoun either an adjective (like meus) or an oblique case (like mei), agreeing with, or governed by, it.

It is certainly so in the words before you. In a language, which, at present, shall be nameless, instead of saying my apple, thy apple, they say what is equivalent to apple-m, apple-th, &c.; i. e., they append the possessive pronoun to the substantive, and by modifying its form, partially incorporate or amalgamate it. They do more than this. They do (as the diagram shows us) precisely the same with the verbs in their personal, as they do with the nouns in their possessive, relations. Hence, olvas-om, &c., is less I read than my-reading; less read+I, than reading+my.

1.

2.

I submit, that facts of this kind are of some value, great or small. But the facts themselves are not all. How were they got at? They were got at by dealing with the phenomena of language as we found them, by an induction of no ordinary width and compass; for many forms of speech had to be investigated before the facts came out in their best and most satisfactory form.

The illustration of the verb (olvasom, and almám, &c.) is from the Hungarian; that of the plural number (nginde, &c.), from the Tumali—the Tumali being a language no nearer than the negro districts to the south of Kordovan, between Sennaar and Darfur, and (as such) not exactly in the highway of literature and philology.

Now I ask whether there be, or whether there be not, certain branches of inquiry which are, at one and the same time, recognised to be of the highest importance, and yet not very remarkable for either unanimity of opinion, precision of language, or distinctness of idea on the part of their professors. I ask whether what is called, with average clearness, Mental Philosophy, and, with somewhat less clearness, Metaphysics, be not in this predicament? I ask whether, in this branch of investigation, the subject-matter do not eminently desiderate something definite, palpable, and objective, and whether these same desiderated tangibilities be not found in the wide field of Language to an extent which no other field supplies? Let this field be a training-ground. The facts it gives are of value. The method it requires is of value.

As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the thousand, the field is a large one—one supplying much exercise, work, and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also; for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may choose our term), have its use and application. And, assuredly, this will be for some time.

As to its special value in the particular department of the ethnologist, high as it is, I say nothing, or next to nothing, about it; concerning myself only with its more general applications.

Let it be said, then, that the study of language is eminently disciplinal to those faculties that are tasked in the investigation of the phenomena of the human mind; the value of a knowledge of these being a matter foreign to the present dissertation, but being by no means low. High or low, however, it measures that of the studies under notice.

But how is this general philology to be taught? Are youths to seek for roots and processes in such languages as the Hungarian and the Tumali? No. The teaching must be by means of well-selected suggestive examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals, and be taught to infer the uncertain from the certain. I do not say that the s in fathers arose exactly after the fashion of the Tumali plural; but, assuredly, its development was the same in kind, if not in detail. At all events, language must be dealt with as a growth.

In the first stage of speech, there are no inflections at all, separate words serving instead of them:—just as if, instead of saying fathers, we said father many, or father father; reduplication being one of the make-shifts (so to say) of this period. The languages allied to the Chinese belong to this class.

In the second stage, the separate words coalesce, but not so perfectly as to disfigure their originally separate character. The Hungarian persons have illustrated this. Language now becomes what is called agglutinate. The parts cohere, but the cohesion is imperfect. The majority of languages are agglutinate.

The Latin and Greek tongues illustrate the third stage. The parts originally separate, then agglutinate, now become so modified by contact as to look like secondary parts of a single word; these original separate substantive characters being a matter of inference rather than a patent and transparent fact. The s in fathers (which is also the s in patre-s and πάτερε-ς) is in this predicament.

Lastly, inflections are replaced by prepositions and auxiliary verbs, as is the case in the Italian and French when compared with the Latin.

Truly, then, may we say that the phenomena of speech are the phenomena of growth, evolution, or development; and as such must they be taught. A cell that grows,—not a crystal that is built up,—such is language.

But these well-devised selections of suggestive examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals, &c., are not to be found in the ordinary grammars. Indeed, it is the very reverse of the present system; where there are twenty appeals to the memory in the shape of what is called a rule, for one appeal to the understanding in the shape of an illustrated process. So much the worse for the existing methods.

Moulds applied to growing trees—cookery-book receipts for making a natural juice—these are the parallels to the artificial systems of grammar in their worst forms. The better can be excused, sometimes recommended; even as the Linnæan system of botanical teaching can, in certain cases, be used with safety, provided always that its artificial character be explained beforehand, and insisted on throughout.

To stand on the level of the Linnæan system, an artificial grammar must come under the following condition:—It must leave the student nothing to unlearn when he comes to a natural one.

How can this be done? It can be done, if the grammarian will be content to teach forms only, leaving processes alone. Let him say (for instance) that the Latin for—

But do not let him say that active aorists are formed from futures, and passive ones from the third person singular of the perfect. His forms, his paradigms, will be right; his rules, in nine cases out of ten, wrong. I am satisfied that languages can be taught without rules and by paradigms only.

This recognition of what has been called artificial grammar for the teaching of special languages, as opposed to the general grammar of the comparative philologist, should serve to anticipate an objection. 'Would you,' it may be asked, 'leave the details of languages like the Latin, Greek, French, German, &c.—languages of eminent practical utility—untaught until such time as the student shall have dipped into Chinese, touched upon Hungarian, and taken a general idea of the third stage of development from the Latin, and of the fourth from the French? If so, the period of life when the memory for words is strongest will have passed away before any language but his own mother-tongue has been acquired.'

The recognition of such a thing as artificial grammar answers this in the negative. If a special language be wanted, let it be taught by-times: only, if it cannot be taught in the most scientific manner, let it be taught in a manner as little unscientific as possible.

In this lies an argument against the ordinary teaching (I speak as an Englishman) of English. What do we learn by it?

In the ordinary teaching of what is called the grammar of the English language there are two elements. There is something professed to be taught which is not taught, but which, if taught, would be worth learning; and there is something which, from being already learned better than any man can teach it, requires no lessons. The one (the latter) is the use and practice of the English tongue. This the Englishman has already. The other is the principles of grammar. With existing text-books this is an impossibility. What then is taught? Something (I am quoting from what I have written elsewhere) undoubtedly. The facts, that language is more or less regular; that there is such a thing as grammar; that certain expressions should be avoided, are all matters worth knowing. And they are all taught even by the worst method of teaching. But are these the proper objects of systematic teaching? Is the importance of their acquisition equivalent to the time, the trouble, and the displacement of more valuable subjects, which are involved in their explanation? I think not. Gross vulgarity of language is a fault to be prevented; but the proper prevention is to be got from habit—not rules. The proprieties of the English language are to be learned, like the proprieties of English manners, by conversation and intercourse; and a proper school for both, is the best society in which the learner is placed. If this be good, systematic teaching is superfluous; if bad, insufficient. There are undoubted points where a young person may doubt as to the grammatical propriety of a certain expression. In this case let him ask some one older and more instructed. Grammar, as a art, is, undoubtedly, the art of speaking and writing correctly—but then, as an art, it is only required for foreign languages. For our own we have the necessary practice and familiarity.

The true claim of English grammar to form part and parcel of an English education stands or falls with the value of the philological knowledge to which grammatical studies may serve as an introduction, and with the value of scientific grammar as a disciplinal study. I have no fear of being supposed to undervalue its importance in this respect. Indeed, in assuming that it is very great, I also assume that wherever grammar is studied as grammar, the language which the grammar so studied should represent, must be the mother-tongue of the student; whatever that mother-tongue may be—English for Englishmen, Welsh for Welshmen, French for Frenchmen, German for Germans, &c. The study is the study of a theory; and for this reason it should be complicated as little as possible by points of practice. For this reason a man's mother-tongue is the best medium for the elements of scientific philology, simply because it is the one which he knows best in practice.

Limit, then, the teaching of English, except so far as it is preparatory to the study of language in general; with which view, teach as scientifically as possible.

Go further. Except in special cases, limit the teaching of the classical tongues to one out of the two. One, for all disciplinal purposes, is enough. In this, go far. Dead though the tongue be, and object of ridicule as the occupation is becoming, go to the length of writing verses, though only in a few of the commoner metres. Go far, and go in one direction only. There are reasons for this singleness of path. I fear that there is almost a necessity. As long as men believed that the ordinary Latin and Greek grammars were good things of themselves, and that, even if they did not carry the student far into the classics, they told him something of value respecting language in general, a little learning in the dead languages was a good thing. But what if the grammars are not good things? What if they are absolutely bad? In such a case, the classical tongues cease to be learnt except for themselves. Now, one of the few things that is more useless than a little Latin is a little Greek.

Am I wrong in saying that, with nine out of ten who learn both Latin and Greek, the knowledge of the two tongues conjointly is not greater than the knowledge of one of them singly ought to be?

Am I wrong in believing that the tendencies of the age are in favour of decreasing rather than increasing the amount of time bestowed upon classical scholarship?

Unless I be so, the necessity for a limitation is apparent.

To curtail English—to eliminate one of the classical tongues—possibly that of Pericles, at any rate, either that of Pericles or of Cicero—to substitute for the ordinary elements of a so-called classical education illustrations from the Chinese, the Hungarian, or the Tumali—this is what I have recommended.

I cannot but feel that in so doing I may seem to some to have been false to my text, which was to eulogize things philological. They may say, Call you this backing your friends? I do. It is not by glorifying one's own more peculiar studies that such studies gain credit. To show the permanent, rather than the accidental, elements of their value, is the best service that can be done for them. It is also good service to show that they can be taught with a less expenditure of time and labour than is usually bestowed on them. But the best service of all is to indicate their disciplinal value; and to show that, instead of displacing other branches of knowledge, they so exercise certain faculties of the mind as to prepare the way to them.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

DECEMBER THE 18TH 1857.

The present paper is an attempt to reconcile the logical and etymological meanings of the word Distributed.

Speaking roughly, distributed means universal: "a term is said to be distributed when it is taken universally, so as to stand for everything it is capable of being applied to."—Whately, i. § 5.

Speaking more closely, it means universal in one premiss; it being a rule in the ordinary logic that no conclusion is possible unless one premiss be, either negatively or affirmatively, universal.

Assuredly there is no etymological connexion between the two words. Hence De Morgan writes:—"By distributed is here meant universally spoken of. I do not use this term in the present work, because I do not see why, in any deducible meaning of the word distributed, it can be applied to universal as distinguished from particular."—Formal Logic, chap. vii.

Neither can it be so applied. It is nevertheless an accurate term.

Let it mean related to more than one class, and the power of the prefix dis-, at least, becomes intelligible.

For all the purposes of logic this is not enough; inasmuch as the particular character of the relation (all-important in the structure of the syllogism) is not, at present, given. It is enough, however, to give import to the syllable dis-.

In affirmative propositions this relation is connective on both sides, i. e. the middle term forms part of both the others. In negative propositions this relation is connective on one side, disjunctive on the other.

In—

the middle term men forms a part of the class called mortal, by being connected with it in the way that certain contents are connected with the case that contains them; whilst it also stands in connexion with the class of heroes in the way that cases are connected with their contents. In—

the same double relation occurs. The class man, however, though part of the class hero, is no part of the class perfect but, on the contrary, expressly excluded from it. Now this expression of exclusion constitutes a relation—disjunctive indeed, but still a relation; and this is all that is wanted to give an import to the prefix dis- in distributed.

Wherever there is distribution there is inference, no matter whether the distributed term be universal or not. If the ordinary rules for the structure of the syllogism tell us the contrary to this, they only tell the truth, so far as certain assumptions on which they rest are legitimate. These limit us to the use of three terms expressive of quantity,—all, none, and some; and it is quite true that, with this limitation, universality and distribution coincide.

Say that

and the question will arise whether the Y that is X is also the Y that is Z. That some Y belongs to both classes is clear; whether, however, it be the same Y is doubtful. Yet unless it be so, no conclusion can be drawn. And it may easily be different. Hence, as long as we use the word some, we have no assurance that there is any distribution of the middle term.

Instead, however, of some write all, and it is obvious that some Y must be both X and Z; and when such is the case—

Universality, then, of the middle term in one premiss is, by no means, the direct condition that gives us an inference, but only a secondary one. The direct condition is the distribution. Of this, the universality of the middle term is only a sign, and it is the only sign we have, because all and some are the only words we have to choose from. If others were allowed, the appearance which the two words (distributed and universal) have of being synonymous would disappear. And so they do when we abandon the limitations imposed upon us by the words all and some. So they do in the numerically definite syllogism, exemplified in—

So, also, they do when it is assumed that the Y's which are X and the Y's which are Z are identical.

In each of these formulæ there is distribution without universality, i. e. there is distribution with a quality other than that of universality as its criterion. The following extract not only explains this, but gives a fresh proof, if fresh proof be needed, that distributed and universal are used synonymously. The "comparison of each of the two terms must be equally with the whole, or with the same part of the third term; and to secure this, (1) either the middle term must be distributed in one premiss at least, or (2) the two terms must be compared with the same specified part of the middle, or (3), in the two premises taken together, the middle must be distributed, and something more, though not distributed in either singly."—Thompson, Outline of the Laws of Thought, § 39.

Here distributed means universal; Mr. Thompson's being the ordinary terminology. In the eyes of the present writer "distributed in one premiss" is a contradiction in terms.

Of the two terms, distributed is the more general; yet it is not the usual one. That it has been avoided by De Morgan has been shown. It may be added, that from the Port Royal Logic it is wholly excluded.

The statement that, in negative propositions, the relation is connective on one side, and disjunctive on the other, requires further notice. It is by no means a matter of indifference on which side the connexion or disjunction lies.

(a.) It is the class denoted by the major, of which the middle term of a negative syllogism is expressly stated to form no part, or from which it is disjoined. (b.) It is the class denoted by the minor, of which the same middle term is expressly stated to form part, or with which it is connected.

here the proposition is a major, and the middle term man is expressly separated from the class perfect.

here it is a minor, and the middle term man is expressly connected with class hero.

A connective relation to the major, and a disjunctive relation to the minor are impossible in negative syllogisms. The exceptions to this are only apparent. The two most prominent are the formulæ Camestres and Camenes, in both of which it is the minor premiss wherein the relation is disjunctive. But this is an accident; an accident arising out of the fact of the major and minor being convertible.

Bokardo is in a different predicament. Bokardo, along with Baroko, is the only formula containing a particular negative as a premiss. Now the particular negatives are, for so many of the purposes of logic, particular affirmatives, that they may be neglected for the present; the object at present being to ascertain the rules for the structure of truly and unquestionably negative syllogisms. Of these we may predicate that—their minor proposition is always either actually affirmative or capable of becoming so by transposition.

To go further into the relations between the middle term and the minor, would be to travel beyond the field under present notice; the immediate object of the present paper being to explain the import of the word distributed. That it may, both logically and etymologically, mean related to two classes is clear—clear as a matter of fact. Whether, however, related to two classes be the meaning that the history of logic gives us, is a point upon which I abstain from giving an opinion. I only suggest that, in elementary treatises, the terms universal and distributed should be separated more widely than they are; one series of remarks upon—

a. Distribution as a condition of inference, being followed by another on—

b. Universality of the middle term in one premiss as a sign of distribution.

So much for the extent to which the present remarks suggest the purely practical question as to how the teaching of Aristotelian logic may be improved. There is another, however, beyond it; one of a more theoretical, indeed of an eminently theoretical, nature. It raises doubts as to the propriety of the word all itself; doubts as to the propriety of the term universal.

The existence of such a word as all in the premiss, although existing therein merely as a contrivance for reconciling the evidence of the distribution of the middle term with a certain amount of simplicity in the way of terminology, could scarcely fail, in conjunction with some of its other properties, to give it what is here considered an undue amount of importance. It made it look like the opposite to none. Yet this is what it is not. The opposite to none is not-none, or some; the opposite to all is one. In one and all we have the highest and lowest numbers of the individuals that constitute a class. In none and some we have the difference between existence and non-existence. That all is a mere mode of some, has been insisted on by many logicians, denied by few or none. Between all and some, there is, at best, but a difference of degree. Between some and none, the difference is a difference of kind. Some may, by strengthening, be converted into all. No strengthening may obliterate the difference between all and not-all. From this it follows that the logic of none and some, the logic of connexion and disjunction (the logic of two signs), is much more widely different from the logic of part and whole (the logic of three signs) than is usually admitted; the former being a logic of pure quality, the latter a logic of quality and quantity as well.

Has the admixture done good? I doubt whether it has. The logic of pure and simple Quality would, undoubtedly, have given but little; nothing but negative conclusions on one side, and possible particulars on the other. Nevertheless it would have given a logic of the Possible and Impossible.

Again, as at present constituted, the Quantitative logic, the logic of all and some, embraces either too much or too little. All is, as aforesaid, only a particular form of more than none. So is most. Now such syllogisms as—

are inadmissible in the Aristotelian paradigms. A claim, however, is set up for their admission. Grant it, and you may say instead of most—

but this is only a particular instance. You may combine any two numbers in any way you like, provided only that the sum be greater than unity. Now this may be arithmetic, and it may be fact; but it is scarcely formal logic; at any rate it is anything but general.

It is the logic of some and its modifications one, all, and anything between one and all, as opposed to the logic of the simple absolute some (some the opposite to none), and a little consideration will show that it is also the logic of the probable, with its modification the proven, (proven is probable, as all is some,) as opposed to the logic of the possible and impossible. Let, in such a pair of propositions as—

the number expressed by some, as well as the number of the men of the brigade, be known, and the question as to whether

is a problem in the doctrine of chances. One per cent. of each will make it very unlikely that the single brave man was also the single killed one. Forty-nine per cent. of each will make it highly probable that more than one good soldier met his fate. With fifty on one side, and fifty-one on the other, we have one at least. With all (either killed or brave), we have the same; and that without knowing any numbers at all.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 22. 1844.

The present paper is upon the reciprocal pronouns, and upon certain forms of the verb used in a reciprocal sense. It is considered that these points of language have not been put forwards with that prominence and care which their value in the solution of certain problems in philology requires. Too often the terms Reciprocal and Reflective have been made synonymous. How far this is true may be determined by the fact that the middle verbs in the Icelandic language have been called by so great a philologist as Rask reciprocal instead of reflective. This is equivalent to treating sentences like we strike ourselves, and we strike each other, as identical. Yet the language with which Rask was dealing (the Icelandic) was the one of all others wherein the difference in question required to be accurately drawn, and fully pointed out. (See Anvisning till Isländskan, pp. 281, 283.)

In all sentences containing the statement of a reciprocal or mutual action there are in reality two assertions, viz. the assertion that A strikes (or loves) B, and the assertion that B strikes (or loves) A; the action forming one, the reaction another. Hence, if the expression exactly coincided with the fact signified, there would always be two propositions. This, however, is not the habit of language. Hence arises a more compendious form of expression, giving origin to an ellipsis of a peculiar kind. Phrases like Eteocles and Polynices killed each other are elliptical for Eteocles and Polynices killed—each the other. Here the second proposition expands and explains the first, whilst the first supplies the verb to the second. Each, however, is elliptic. The first is without the object, the second without the verb. That the verb must be in the plural (or dual) number, that one of the nouns must be in the nominative case, and that the other must be objective, is self-evident from the structure of the sentence; such being the conditions of the expression of the idea. An aposiopesis takes place after a plural verb, and then there follows a clause wherein the verb is supplied from what went before.

When words equivalent to each other coalesce, and become compound; it is evident that the composition is of a very peculiar kind. Less, however, for these matters than for its value in elucidating the origin of certain deponent verbs does the expression of reciprocal action merit the notice of the philologist. In the latter part of the paper it will appear that for one branch of languages, at least, there is satisfactory evidence of a reflective form having become reciprocal, and of a reciprocal form having become deponent; this latter word being the term for those verbs whereof the meaning is active, and the form passive.

Beginning with those methods of denoting mutual action where the expression is the least explicit and unequivocal, it appears that in certain languages the reciprocal character of the verb is implied rather than expressed. Each man looked at his brother—or some equivalent clause, is the general phraseology of the Semitic languages.

More explicit than this is the use of a single pronoun (personal, possessive, or reflective) and of some adverb equivalent to the words mutually, interchangeably, &c. This is the habit of the Latin language,—Eteocles et Polynices invicem se trucidaverunt: also of the French, although not invariably, e. g. s'entr'aimer, s'entredire, s'entrebattre: also of the Mœso-Gothic—galeikái sind barnam tháim vôpjandam seina missô = ὁόμοιοί ἐισι παιδίοις τοῖς προσφωνοῦσιν ἁλλήλοις = loquentibus ad invicem.—Luc. vii. 32. Deutsche Grammatik, iv. 322, and iii. 13. The Welsh expressions are of this kind; the only difference being that the adverb coalesces with the verb, as an inseparable particle, and so forms a compound. These particles are dym, cym, or cy and ym. The former is compounded of dy, signifying iteration, and ym denoting mutual action; the latter is the Latin cum. Hence the reciprocal power of these particles is secondary: e. g. dymborthi, to aid mutually; dymddadlu, to dispute; dymgaru, to love one another; dymgoddi, to vex one another; dymgredu, to trust one another, or confide; dymguraw, to strike one another, or fight; çyçwennys, to desire mutually; cydadnabod, to know one another; cydaddawiad, to promise mutually; cydwystlaw, to pledge; cydymadrawn, to converse; cydymdaith, to accompany; ymadroddi, to discourse; ymaddaw, to promise; ymavael, to struggle; ymdaeru, to dispute, &c.

The form, which is at once current, full, and unequivocal, is the one that occurs in our own, and in the generality of languages. Herein there are two nouns (generally pronouns), and the construction is of the kind exhibited above—ἁλλήλους, each other, einander, l'un l'autre, &c.

Sometimes the two nouns remain separate, each preserving its independent form. This is the case in most of the languages derived from the Latin, in several of the Slavonic and Lithuanic dialects, and in (amongst others) the Old Norse, the Swedish, and the Danish,—l'un l'autre, French; uno otro, Span.; geden druheho, Bohemian; ieden drugiego, Polish; wiens wienâ, Lith.; weens ohtru, Lettish; hvert annan (masc.), hvert annat (neut.) Old Norse. See D. G. iii. 84.

Sometimes the two nouns coalesce, and form words to which it would be a mere refinement to deny the name of compounds: this is the case with the Greek—ἁλλήλον, ἁλλήλοις, ἁλλήλους.

Sometimes it is doubtful whether the phrase consist of a compound word or a pair of words. This occurs where, from the want of inflection, the form of the first word is the same in composition as it would have been out of it. Such is the case with our own language: each-other, one-another.

Throughout the mass of languages in general the details of the expression in question coincide; both subject and object are almost always expressed by pronouns, and these pronouns are much the same throughout. One, or some word equivalent, generally denotes the subject. Other, or some word equivalent, generally denotes the object, e. g. they struck one another. The varieties of expression may be collected from the following sketch:—

1. a. The subject is expressed by one, or some word equivalent, in most of the languages derived from the Latin, in several of the Slavonic dialects, in Lithuanic and Lettish, in Armenian, in German, in English, and doubtlessly in many other languages—l'un l'autre, Fr.; uno otro, Sp.; ieden drugiego, Polish; wiens wienâ, Lith.; weens ohtru, Lett.; me mæants, Armenian; einander, Germ.; one another, Engl.

b. By each, or some equivalent term, in English, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages—each other, English; elkander, Dutch; hverandre, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish.

c. By this, or some equivalent term, in Swedish and Danish (hinanden); in Lithuanic (kitts kittâ), and in Lettish (zitts zittu).

d. By other, or some equivalent term, in Greek and Armenian; ἁλλήλους, irærats.

e. By man, used in an indefinite sense and compounded with lik in Dutch, malkander (mal-lik manlik).

f. By a term equivalent to mate or fellow in Laplandic—gòim gòimeme.—Rask, 'Lappisk Sproglære,' p. 102. Stockfleth, 'Grammatik,' p. 109.

2. a. In the expression of the object the current term is other or some equivalent word. Of this the use is even more constant than that of one expressive of the subject—l'un l'autre, French; uno otro, Spanish; ἁλλήλους, Greek; geden druheho, Bohemian; ieden drugiego, Polish; weens ohtru, Lettish; irærats, Armenian; einander, German; each other, one another, English.

b. In Lithuanic the term in use is one; as, wiens wienâ. The same is the case for a second form in the Armenian mimœan.

c. In Laplandic it is denoted in the same as the subject; as gòim gòimeme.

Undoubtedly there are other varieties of this general method of expression. Upon those already exhibited a few remarks, however, may be made.

1. In respect to languages like the French, Spanish, &c., where the two nouns, instead of coalescing, remain separate, each retaining its inflection, it is clear that they possess a greater amount of perspicuity; inasmuch as (to say nothing of the distinction of gender) the subject can be used in the singular number when the mutual action of two persons (i. e. of one upon another) is spoken of, and in the plural when we signify that of more than two; e. g. ils (i. e. A and B) se battaient—l'un l'autre: but ils (A, B, C and D,) se battaient—les uns les autres. This degree of perspicuity might be attained in English and other allied languages by reducing to practice the difference between the words each and one; in which case we might say A and B struck one another, but A, B and C struck each other. In the Scandinavian languages this distinction is real; where hinanden is equivalent to l'un l'autre, French; uno otro, Spanish: whilst hverandre expresses les uns les autres, French; unos otros, Spanish. The same is the case in the Laplandic.—See Rask's Lappisk Sproglære, p. 102.

2. An analysis of such an expression as they praise one another's (or each other's) conduct, will show the lax character of certain forms in the Swedish. Of the two pronouns it is only the latter that appears in an oblique case, and this necessarily; hence the Swedish form hvarsannars is illogical. It is precisely what one's another's would be in English, or ἄλλων ἄλλων for ἁλλήλων in Greek. The same applies to the M. H. G. einen anderen. D. G. iii. 83.

3. The term expressive of the object appears in three forms, viz. preceded by the definite article (l'un l'autre), by the indefinite article (one another), and finally, standing alone (each other, einander). Of these three forms the first is best suited for expressing the reciprocal action of two persons (one out of two struck the other); whilst the second or third is fittest for signifying the reciprocal action of more than two (one out of many struck, and was struck by, some other).

The third general method of expressing mutual or reciprocal action is by the use of some particular form of the verb. In two, and probably more, of the African languages (the Woloff and Bechuana) this takes place. In the Turkish there is also a reciprocal form: as sui-mek, to love; baki-mek, to look; sui-sh-mek, to love one another; baki-sh-mek, to look at one another; su-il-mek, to be loved; sui-sh-il-mek, to be loved mutually.—David's Turkish Grammar.

The fourth form of expression gives the fact alluded to at the beginning of the paper: viz. an instrument of criticism in investigating the origin of certain deponent verbs. In all languages there is a certain number of verbs denoting actions, reciprocal or mutual to the agents. Such are the words embrace, converse, strive against, wrestle, fight, rival, meet, and several more. There are also other words where the existence of two parties is essential to the idea conveyed, and where the notion, if not that of reciprocal action, is akin to it; viz. reproach, compromise, approach, &c. Now in certain languages (the Latin and Greek) some of these verbs have a passive form; i. e. they are deponents,—loquor, colloquor, luctor, reluctor, amplector, suavior, osculor, suspicor, Latin; φιλοτιμέομαι, φιλοφρονέομαι, μάχομαι, διαλέγομαι, ἁλέομαι, διαλύομαι, ἁμείβομαι &c., Greek. Hence arises the hypothesis, that it is to their reciprocal power on the one hand, and to the connexion between the passive, reflective and reciprocal forms on the other, that these verbs owe their deponent character. The fact essential to the probability of this hypothesis is the connexion between the reflective forms and the reciprocal ones.

Now for one branch of languages this can be shown most satisfactorily. In Icelandic the middle voice is formed from the active by the addition of the reflective pronoun, mik, me, sik, him or self. Hence it is known by the terminations mc and sc, and by certain modifications of these affixes, viz. st, s, z, mz, ms. In the oldest stage of the language the reflective power of the middle voice, to the exclusion of a passive sense, is most constant: e. g. hann var nafnadr=he had the name given him; hann nefnist=he gave as his name, or named himself. It was only when the origin of the middle form became indistinct that its sense became either passive or deponent; as it generally is in the modern tongues of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Now in the modern Scandinavian languages we have, on the one hand, certain deponent forms expressive of reciprocal action; whilst on the other we have, even in the very earliest stages of the Old Norse, middle or reflective forms used in a reciprocal sense. Of some of these, examples will be given: but the proof of their sense being reciprocal will not be equally conclusive in all. Some may perhaps be looked on as deponents (ættust, beriast, skiliast, mödast); whilst others may be explained away by the assumption of a passive construction (fundoz=they were found, not they found each other). Whatever may be the case with the words taken from the middle and modern stages of the language, this cannot be entertained in regard to the examples drawn from the oldest Norse composition, the Edda of Sæmund. For this reason the extracts from thence are marked Edd. Sæm., and of these (and these alone) the writer has attempted to make the list exhaustive. The translations in Latin and Danish are those of the different editors.

1. Ættust, fought each other.

2. Beriaz, strike each other.

Voluspa, 41. Edd. Sæm.

This word is used in almost every page of the Sagas as a deponent signifying to fight: also in the Feroic dialect.

3. Bregþaz, interchange.

Helga-Qviþa Hundlingsbana, i. 41. ii. 26. Edd. Sæm.

4. Drepiz, kill one another.

finnuz þeir báder daudir—— en ecki vapn höfþu þeir nema bitlana af hestinum, ok þat hygia menn at þeir (Alrek and Eirek) hafi drepiz þar med. Sva segir Ðiodolfr.; "Drepaz kvádu."—Heimskringla. Ynglinga-Saga, p. 23.

The brothers were found dead—and no weapons had they except the bits of their horses, and men think they (Alrek and Eirek) had killed each other therewith. So says Thiodolf.: "They said that they killed each other."

5. Um-faþmaz, embrace each other. See Atla-Quiþa hin Grænslenzko, 42.—Edd. Sæm.

6. Földes, fell in with each other.—Om morgonet effter földes wy in Kobenhaffn.—Norwegian Letters in 1531, A. D. See Samlingar til det Norske Folks Sprog og Historie, I. 2. 70. The morning after we fell in with each other in Copenhagen.

7. Funduz, found each other, met. See Vafþrudnis-mal 17.—Sigurd-Quiþ. i. 6. Edd. Sæm.—Fareyingar-Saga, p. 44. Ðeir funduz is rendered de fandt hverandre=they found each other, in Haldorsen's Lexic. Island.

Harbards-l: 24. Edd. Sæm.

8. Gættuz, consult each other. See Voluspa, 6. 9. 21. 23. Edd. Sæm.

9. Glediaz, rejoice each other.

Rigsmal. 41.

The middle form and reciprocal sense of erost is remarkable in this passage.

10. Hauggvaz, hack each other, fight.

Vafþrudnis-Mal. 41. Edd. Sæm.

Sig-Qvið. ii. 1. Edd. Sæm.

11. Hættaz, cease.

Harbardslióð, 51. Edd. Sæm.

Such is the translation of the editors, although the reciprocal power is not unequivocal.

12. Hittaz, hit upon each other, meet. Hittoz, Voluspa, 7. Hittomk, Hadding-skata, 22. Hittaz, Solar-l: 82. Edd. Sæm. Hittust, Ol. Trygv. Sag. p. 90. Hittuz oc beriaz, Heimskringla, Saga Halfd. Svart. p. 4. Hittuz, Yngl. Sag. p. 42. alibi passim þeir hittu is rendered, in Bjorn Haldorsen's Islandic Lexicon, de traf hinanden, they hit upon each other.

13. Kiempis, fight each other,

gaar udi gaarden oc kiempis, oc nelegger hver hinanden, goes out in the house and fight each the other, and each knocks down the other.

Such is the translation by Resenius, in modern Danish, of the following extract from Snorro's Edda, p. 34.—Ganga ut i gardinn og beriast, og fellar huor annar. Here the construction is not, they fell (or knock down) each the other, but each fells the other; since fellar and nelegger are singular forms.

14. Mælast, talk to each other, converse. Talast, ditto.

Mæliz þu. Vafþrudnismal, 9.

melomc i sessi saman=colloquamur sedentes. ib. 19. Edd. Sæm.

mælast þeir vid, ádr þeir skiliast, at þeir mundi þar finnast þa,—Fóstbrædra-Saga, p. 7.

they said to each other before they parted from each other that they should meet each other there.

Yngvi ok Bera satu ok töluduz vidr.—Heimskr. Yngl. S. p. 24.

Griss mælti; hverír ero þessir menn er sva tulast vid bliðliga? Avàldi svarar; þa er Hallfreydr Ottarson ok Kolfinna dóthir min. Ol. Trygyv. Saga, p. 152. Griss said, who are these persons who talk together so blithely? Avaldi answers, they are Halfrid Ottarson and Kolfinna my daughter. Talast is similarly used in Feroic. Kvödust, bespoke each other, occurs in the same sense—þat var einn dag at Brand ok Finbogi fundust ok kvödust blídliga.—Vatnsdæla-Sag. p. 16.

15. Mettæst, meet each other, meet.

Kungen aff Ffranchriche, kungen aff England, oc kungen aff Schottland skule motes til Chalis.—Letter from Bergen in 1531, from Samlinger til det Norske Folks Sprog og Historie, i. 2. p. 53. The king of France, the king of England, and the king of Scotland should meet each other at Calais.

Throughout the Danish, Swedish and Feroic, this verb is used as a deponent.

16. Rekaz, vex each other.

Rigsmal. 32. Edd. Sæm.

17. Sakaz, accuse each other, recriminate.

Hamdis-Mal. 28.

Ægis-drecka, 5.

Ibid. 19. Edd. Sæm.

18. Saz, looked at each other.

Rigsmal. 24.

19. Sættaz, settle between each other, reconcile.—Atla-Mal. 45. Edd. Sæm.

Komu vinir þveggia þvi vid, at þeir sættuz, ok lögdu konungar stefnu med sér, ok hittuz ok gérdo frit mellum sin.—Heimsk. Yngling-S. 42.

There came friends of both in order that they should be reconciled, and the kings sent messages between them, and met and made peace between them.—Also Vatnsd. S. p. 16.

20. Seljas, to give to each other.

Sig. Qv. iii. 1. Edd. Sæm.

21. Sendaz, send, or let pass between each other.

Atla-Mal. 85.

Here, over and above the use of senduz and henduz, ser is equivalent to hinanden.

22. Skiliaz, part from each other.

Skiliumz.

Solar-Lioð. 82.

Skiliaz.

Sigurd-Qviþ. i. 24.

Skiliomc.

Ibid. 53. Edd. Sæm.

Vit sjiljiast, we two part—

Occurs in the poem Brinilda (st. 109) in the Feroic dialect. In Danish and Swedish the word is deponent.

23. Skiptust, interchange.

Ðeir skiptust mörgum giöfum vid um vetrinn—Vatns-dæla-S. 10. they made interchanges with each other with many gifts for the winter.

Also in the Feroic.

24. Strujast, strike one another, fight. Feroic.

og mötast tair, og strujast avlaji lanji.—Fareying-Sag. 18. Feroic text.

ok mætast þeir, ok berjast mjök leingi.—Icelandish text.

de mödtes og strede meget længe imod hinanden.—Danish text.

they met and fought long against each other.

at e vilde vid gjordust stålbröir, og strujast ikkji longur.—Feroic text, p. 21.

at við gerðimst fèlagar, en berjumst eigi leingr.—Icelandic text.

at vi skulle blive Stalbröde og ikke slaaes længer—Danish text.

that we should become comrades and not fight longer.

The active form occurs in the same dialect:

tajr struija nú langji.

18.

25. Truasc, trust each other.

vel mættern þæir truazc.

För Skirnis. Edd. Sæm.

26. Unnaz. See Veittaz.

27. Vegiz, attack each other.

vilcat ec at iþ reiþir vegiz.

Ægisdrecka 18. Edd. Sæm.

I will not that ye two angry attack each other.

28. Veittaz, contract mutually.

þav Helgi ok Svava veittuz varar, ok unnoz forþo mikit=Helgius et Svava pactum sponsalitium inter se contraxerunt, et alter alterum mirifice amarunt.—Haddingia-Sk. between 29 and 30.

29. Verpaz, throw between each other.

urpuz á orþom.

Atl.-M. 39. Edd. Sæm.

verba inter se jaciebant.

Such is a portion of the examples that prove the reciprocal power of the reflective or middle verb in the language of Scandinavia; and that, during all its stages and in each of its derived dialects. It cannot be doubted that to this circumstance certain verbs in Danish and Swedish owe their deponent form: viz. vi slåss, we fight (strike one another); vi brottas, we wrestle; vi omgass, we have intercourse with; vi mötas, we meet, Swedish; vi slaaes, we fight; vi skilles, we part; vi mödes, we meet, Danish. In the latest Swedish grammar, by C. L. Daae, this reciprocal (vekselvirkende) power is recognized and exhibited. See Udsigt over det Svenske Sprogs Grammatik. Christiana, 1837. The same is the Molbech's Danske Ordbog in vv. skilles, slaaes, mödes.

Next to the Norse languages the French affords the best instances of the reciprocal power of the reflective verb; as se battre, s'aimer, s'entendre, se quéreller, se reconcilier, se disputer, and other words of less frequent occurrence.

Ces enfans s'aimaient, s'adoraient, se sont jetés à mes pieds en pleurant.—Les Inséparables, A. 1. S. 1.

Les Républics Italiens acharnés à se détruire.—Pardessus II. 65.

This has been recognized by an old grammarian, Restaut, who insists upon the use of the adverb entre, in order to avoid the ambiguity of such phrases as "vous vous dites des injures;" "nous nous écrivons souvent;" "Pierre et Antoine se louent à tout moment."

By a writer in the Museum Criticum the reciprocal power of the Greek middle has been indicated. For the classical languages the question has not met with the proper investigation. Passages where the sense is at least as reciprocal as in the line

Χεῖρος τ' ἁλλήλων λαβήτην καὶ μιστώσαντο.—Il. vi. 233,
must be numerous.

In the Dutch language the use of zich for elkander is a peculiarity of the Guelderland and Overyssel dialects; as "zij hebt zich eslagen," for "zij hebben elkander geslagen." See Opmerkingen omtrent den Gelderschen Tongval, in Taalkundig Magazijn ii. 14. p. 403.

Of the use of ser for hinanden or hverandre, when uncombined with the verb, we have, amongst other, the following example in the Icelandic version of the Paradise Lost:—

B. 6.

Similar to this are the phrases vi se os igjen, we see us (each other) again, in Danish, and wir sehen uns wieder, in German. Examples from the M. H. G. are given in the D. G. iv. The Turkish sign of the reciprocal verb is identical with the demonstrative pronoun, i. e. ش. This may possibly indicate a connection between the two forms.

Other points upon the subject in hand may be collected from the Deutsche Grammatik, iii. 13. 82; iv. 454. Here the adverbial character of the M. H. G. einander for einandern, the omission of ein, as in anander for an einander, and the omission (real or supposed) of ander in "wider ein=wider einander," are measures of the laxity of language caused by the peculiarity of the combination in question. At present it is sufficient to repeat the statement, that for one group of languages at least there is satisfactory proof of certain deponents having originally been reciprocal, and of certain reciprocal expressions having originally been reflective.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
MARCH 9, 1849.

It is well-known that by referring to that part of the Deutsche Grammatik which explains those participial forms which (like y-cleped in English, and like ge-sprochen and the participles in general in German) begin with ge or y, the following doctrines respecting this same prefix may be collected:—

1. That it has certainly grown out of the fuller forms ka or ga.

2. That it has, probably, grown out of a still fuller form kam or gam.

3. That this fuller form is the Gothic equivalent of the Latin cum=with.

Such are the views respecting the form of the word in question. Respecting its meaning, the following points seem to be made out:—

1. That when prefixed to nouns (as is, not rarely, the case), it carries with it the idea of association or collection:—M. G. sinþs=a journey, ga-sinþa=a companion; O. M. G. perc=hill; ki-pirki=(ge-birge) a range of hills.

2. That it has also a frequentative power. Things which recur frequently recur with a tendency to collection or association:—M. H. G. ge-rassel=rustling; ge-rumpel=crumpling.

3. That it has also the power of expressing the possession of a quality:—

This is because every object is associated with the object that possesses it—a sea with waves=a wavy sea.

The present writer has little doubt that the Tumali grammar of Dr. Tutshek supplies a similar (and at the same time a very intelligible) application of a particle equivalent to the Latin cum.

He believes that the Tumali word=with is what would commonly be called the sign of the plural number of the personal pronouns; just as me-cum and te-cum would become equivalents to nos and vos, if the first syllables were nominative instead of oblique, and if the preposition denoted indefinite conjunction. In such a case

Such is the illustration of the possible power of a possible combination. The reasons for thinking it to have a reality in one language at least lie in the following forms:—

1. The Tumali word for with is da.

2. The Tumali words for I, thou, and he respectively are ngi, ngo, ngu.

3. The Tumali words for we, ye, they are ngin-de, ngon-da, ngen-da respectively.

4. The Tumali substantives have no such plural. With them it is formed on a totally different principle.

5. The Tumali adjectives have no plural at all.

6. The Tumali numerals (even those which express more than unity and are, therefore, naturally plural) have a plural. When, however, it occurs, it is formed on the same principle as that of the plurals of the substantive.

7. The word da=with is, in Tumali, of a more varied application than any other particle; and that both as a pre-position and a post-position:—daura=soon (da=in, aura=neighbourhood); datom=in (with) front (face); d-ondul=roundabout (ondul=circle); dale=near (le=side), &c.

8. Prepositions, which there is every reason to believe are already compounded with da, allow even a second da, to precede the word which they govern:—daber deling=over the earth (ber=earth).

9. The ideas with me, with thee, with him, are expressed by ngi-dan, ngo-dan, and ngu-dan respectively; but the ideas of with us, with you, with them are not expressed by nginde-dan, ngonda-dan, ngenda-dan; but by peculiar words—tinem=with us; toman=with you; tenan=with them.

On the other hand, the following fact is, as far as it goes, against this view, a fact upon which others may lay more stress than the present writer. "Da admits of a very varied application. Respecting its form the following should be observed: (a.) That a may be elided when it happens to stand as a preposition before words which begin with a vowel: for instance, ardgen, 'the valley'; dardgen, 'in the valley'; ondul, 'the circle'; dondul, 'round about in the circle'. (b.) It changes its a into ê, e, i, o, u, according to the vowel of the syllable before which the da is placed, or even without any regard to it. Instances of this are found in diring, dorong, &c.; further instances are, doromko, 'into the hut' (rom); dètum or dotum, 'in the grave.' (c.) As a postposition it appends an n: adgdan, 'on the head'; aneredan, 'on the day.'" Taking the third of these rules literally, the plural pronouns should end in dan rather than in da and de.

It is considered that over and above the light that this particular formation (if real) may throw upon the various methods by which an inflection like that of the plural number may be evolved, and more especially upon the important but neglected phænomena of the so-called inclusive and exclusive plurals, many other points of general grammar may be illustrated.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 9, 1849.

The writer wishes to make the word cujum, as found in a well-known quotation from the third eclogue of Virgil,—

Dic mihi Damæta cujum pecus?

the basis of some remarks which are meant to be suggestions rather than doctrines.

In the second edition of a work upon the English language, he devoted an additional chapter to the consideration of the grammatical position of the words mine and thine, respecting which he then considered (and still considers) himself correct in assuming that the current doctrine concerning them was, that they were, in origin, genitive or possessive cases, and that they were adjectives only in a secondary sense. Now whatever was then written upon this subject was written with the view of recording an opinion in favour of exactly the opposite doctrine, viz. that they were originally adjectives, but that afterwards they took the appearance of oblique cases. Hence for words like mine and thine there are two views:—

1. That they were originally cases, and adjectives only in a secondary manner.

2. That they were originally adjectives, and cases only in a secondary manner.

In which predicament is the word cujum? If in the first, it supplies a remarkable instance of an unequivocally adjectival form, as tested by an inflection in the way of gender, having grown out of a case. If in the second, it shows how truly the converse may take place, since it cannot be doubted that whatever in this respect can be predicated of cujus can be predicated of ejus and hujus as well.

Assuming this last position, it follows that if cujus be originally a case, we have a proof how thoroughly it may take a gender; whereas if it be originally an adjective, ejus and hujus (for by a previous assumption they are in the same category) are samples of the extent to which words like it may lose one.

Now the termination -us is the termination of an adjective, and is not the termination of a genitive case; a fact that fixes the onus probandi with those who insist upon the genitival character of the words in question. But as it is not likely that every one lays so much value upon this argument as is laid by the present writer, it is necessary to refer to two facts taken from the Greek:—

1. That the class of words itself is not a class which (as is often the case) naturally leads us to expect a variation from the usual inflections. The forms οὗ, οἷ, ἕ, and ὅς, οὗ, ὧ, are perfectly usual.

2. That the adjectives ὃς = ἑὸς,[1] κοῖος = ποῖος, and ὁῖος, are not only real forms, but forms of a common kind. Hence, if we consider the termination -jus as a case-ending, we have a phænomenon in Latin for which we miss a Greek equivalent; whilst on the other hand, if we do not consider it as adjectival, we have the Greek forms ὁῖος, κοῖος = ποῖος and ὃς = ἑὸς, without any Latin ones. I do not say that this argument is, when taken alone, of any great weight. In doubtful cases, however, it is of value. In the present case it enables us to get rid of an inexplicable genitival form, at the expense of a slight deflection from the usual power of an adjective. And here it should be remembered that many of the arguments in favour of a case becoming an adjective are (to a certain extent) in favour of an adjective becoming a case—to a certain extent and to a certain extent only, because a change in one direction by no means necessarily implies a change in the reverse one, although it is something in favour of its probability.

Probably unius, ullius, illius, and alterius, are equally, as respects their origin, adjectival forms with ejus, cujus, and hujus.

Now it must not be concealed that one of the arguments which apply to words like mine and thine being adjectives rather than genitives, does not apply to words like ejus, cujus, and hujus. The reason is as follows; and it is exhibited in nearly the same words which have been used in the work already mentioned.—The idea of partition is one of the ideas expressed by the genitive case. The necessity for expressing this idea is an element in the necessity for evolving a genitive case. With personal pronouns of the singular number the idea of partition is of less frequent occurrence than with most other words, since a personal pronoun of the singular number is the name of a unity, and, as such, the name of an object far less likely to be separated into parts than the name of a collection. Phrases like some of them, one of you, many of us, any of them, few of us, &c., have no analogues in the singular number, such as one of me, a few of thee, &c. The partitive words that can combine with singular pronouns are comparatively few, viz. half, quarter, part, &c.; and they can all combine equally with plurals—half of us, a quarter of them, a portion of us. The partition of a singular object with a pronominal name is of rare occurrence in language. This last statement proves something more than appears at first sight. It proves that no argument in favour of the so-called singular genitives, like mine and thine, can be drawn from the admission (if made) of the existence of the true plural genitives ou-r, you-r, the-ir. The two ideas are not in the same predicament.

Again, the convenience of expressing the difference between suus and ejus, is, to a certain extent, a reason for the evolution of a genitive case to words like is; but it is a reason to a certain extent only, and that extent a small one, since an equally convenient method of expressing the difference is to be found in the fact of there being two roots for the pronouns in question, the root from which we get ea, id, eum, ejus, &c., and the root from which we get sui, sibi, suus, &c.

Here the paper should end, for here ends the particular suggestion supplied by the word in question. Two questions however present themselves too forcibly to be wholly passed over:—

I. The great extent to which those who look in Latin for the same inflections that occur in Greek, must look for them under new names. That two tenses in Greek (the aorist like ἔ-τυπ-σα, and the perfect like τέ-τυφ-α) must be looked for in the so-called double form of a single tense in Latin (vic-si, mo-mordi) is one of the oldest facts of this sort. That the Greek participle in -μενος (τυπτόμενος) must be sought for in the passive persons in -mini is a newer notice.

II. The fact that the character of the deflection that takes place between case and adjective is not single but double. It goes both ways. The change from case to adjective is one process in philology; the change from adjective to case another; and both should be recognized. This is mentioned for the sake of stating, that except in a few details, there is nothing in the present remarks that is meant to be at variance with the facts and arguments of five papers already laid before this Society, viz. those of Mr. Garnett on the Formation of Words from Inflected Cases, and on the Analysis of the Verb.

The papers alluded to really deal with two series of facts:—(A.) Deflection with identity of form.—In this the inflection is still considered an inflection, but is dealt with as one different from what it really is, i. e. as a nominative instead of an oblique one. Some years back the structure of the Finlandic suggested to the present writer:—

1. A series of changes in meaning whereby such a term as with waves might equal wavy.

2. The existence of a class of words of which sestertium was the type, where an oblique case, with a convertible termination, becomes a nominative.

3. The possible evolution of forms like fluctuba, fluctubum=fluctuosa, fluctuosum, from forms like fluctubus.

Mr. Garnett has multiplied cases of this kind; his illustrations from the Basque being pre-eminently typical, i. e. like the form sestertium. If the modern vehicle called an omnibus had been invented in ancient Rome, if it had had the same name as it has now, and if its plural form had been omnibi, it would also have been a typical instance.

Words of the hypothetical form fluctuba, fluctubum, have not been discovered. They would have existed if the word just quoted had been (if used in ancient Rome at all) used as an adjective, omnibus currus, omniba esseda, omnibum plaustrum.

(B.) Deflection with superaddition.—Here the inflection is dealt with as if it were not inflectional but radical. This is the case with ἴφιος. Words like it-, as proved by the genitive i-t-s, and the so-called petrified (versteinerte) nominative cases of the German grammarians, are of this class.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 11, 1853.

A well-known rule in the Eton Greek Grammar may serve to introduce the subject of the present remarks:—"Quinque sunt aoristi primi qui futuri primi characteristicam non assumunt: ἔθηκα posui, ἔδωκα dedi, ἥκα misi, εἴπα dixi, ἥνεγκα tuli." The absolute accuracy of this sentence is no part of our considerations: it has merely been quoted for the sake of illustration.

What is the import of this abnormal κ? or, changing the expression, what is the explanation of the aorist in -κα? Is it certain that it is an aorist? or, granting this, is it certain that its relations to the future are exceptional?

The present writer was at one time inclined to the doubts implied by the first of these alternatives, and gave some reasons[2] for making the form a perfect rather than an aorist. He finds, however, that this is only shifting the difficulty. How do perfects come to end in -κα? The typical and unequivocal perfects are formed by a reduplication at the beginning, and a modification of the final radical consonant at the end of words, τύπ(τ)ω, τέ-τυφ-α; and this is the origin of the χ in λέλεχα, &c., which represents the γ of the root. Hence, even if we allow ourselves to put the κ in ἔθηκα in the same category with the κ in ὀμώμοκα, &c., we are as far as ever from the true origin of the form.

In this same category, however, the two words—and the classes they represent—can be placed, notwithstanding some small difficulties of detail. At any rate, it is easier to refer ὀμώμοκα and ἔθηκα to the same tense than it is to do so with ὀμώμοκα and τέτυφα.

The next step is to be sought in Bopp's Comparative Grammar. Here we find the following extract:—"The old Slavonic dakh 'I gave,' and analogous formations remind us, through their guttural, which takes the place of a sibilant, of the Greek aorists ἔθηκα, ἔδωκα, ἧκα. That which in the old Slavonic has become a rule in the first person of the three numbers, viz. the gutturalization of an original s, may have occasionally taken place in the Greek, but carried throughout all numbers. No conjecture lies closer at hand than that of regarding ἔδωκα as a corruption of ἔδωσα," &c.... "The Lithuanian also presents a form which is akin to the Greek and Sanscrit aorist, in which, as it appears to me, k assumes the place of an original s." (vol. ii. p. 791, Eastwick's and Wilson's translation.) The italics indicate the words that most demand attention.

The old Slavonic inflection alluded to is as follows:—

Now it is clear that the doctrine to which these extracts commit the author is that of the secondary or derivative character of the form of κ and the primary or fundamental character of the forms in σ. The former is deduced from the latter. And this is the doctrine which the present writer would reverse. He would just reverse it, agreeing with the distinguished scholar whom he quotes in the identification of the Greek form with the Slavonic. So much more common is the change from k, g and the allied sounds, to s, z, &c., than that from s, z, &c. to k, g, that the à priori probabilities are strongly against Bopp's view. Again, the languages that preeminently encourage the change are the Slavonic; yet it is just in these languages that the form in k is assumed to be secondary. For s to become h, and for h to become k (or g), is no improbable change: still, as compared with the transition from k to s, it is exceedingly rare.

As few writers are better aware of the phænomena connected with the direction of letter-changes than the philologist before us, it may be worth while to ask, why he has ignored them in the present instances. He has probably done so because the Sanscrit forms were in s; the habit of considering whatever is the more Sanscrit of two forms to be the older being well-nigh universal. Nevertheless, the difference between a language which is old because it is represented by old samples of its literature, and a language which is old because it contains primary forms, is manifest upon a very little reflection. The positive argument, however, in favour of the k being the older form, lies in the well-known phænomenon connected with the vowels e and i, as opposed to a, o, and u. All the world over, e and i have a tendency to convert a k or g, when it precedes them, into s, z, sh, zh, ksh, gzh, tsh, and dzh, or some similar sibilant. Hence, as often as a sign of tense consisting of k, is followed by a sign of person beginning with e or i, an s has chance of being evolved. In this case such a form as ἐφίλησα, ἐφίλησας, ἐφίλησε, may have originally run ἐφίληκα, ἐφίληκας, ἐφίληκε. The modified form in σ afterwards extends itself to the other persons and numbers. Such is the illustration of the hypothesis. An objection against it lies in the fact of the person which ends in a small vowel, being only one out of seven. On the other hand, however the third person singular is used more than all the others put together. With this influence of the small vowel other causes may have cooperated. Thus, when the root ended in κ or γ, the combination κ radical, and κ inflexional would be awkward. It would give us such words as ἔλεκ-κα, &c.; words like τέτυπ-κα, ἔγραπ-κα, being but little better, at least in a language like the Greek.

The suggestions that now follow lead into a wide field of inquiry; and they may be considered, either on their merits as part of a separate question, or as part of the proof of the present doctrine. In this latter respect they are not altogether essential, i. e. they are more confirmatory if admitted than derogatory if denied. What if the future be derived from the aorist, instead of the aorist from the future? In this case we should increase what may be called our dynamics, by increasing the points of contact between a k and a small vowel; this being the influence that determines the evolution of an s. All the persons of the future, except the first, have ε for one (at least) of these vowels—

τύψ-σ-ω, τύψ-σ-εις, τύψ-σ-ει, τύψ-ε-τον, &c.

The moods are equally efficient in the supply of small vowels.

The doctrine, then, now stands that k is the older form, but that, through the influence of third persons singular, future forms, and conjunctive forms, so many s-es became developed, as to supersede it except in a few instances. The Latin language favours this view. There, the old future like cap-s-o, and the preterites like vixi (vic-si) exhibit a small vowel in all their persons, e. g. vic-s-i, vic-s-isti, vic-s-it, &c. Still the doctrine respecting this influence of the small vowel in the way of the developement of sibilants out of gutturals is defective until we find a real instance of the change assumed. As if, for the very purpose of illustrating the occasional value of obscure dialects, the interesting language of the Serbs of Lusatia and Cotbus supplies one. Here the form of the preterite is as follows; the Serb of Illyria and the Lithuanic being placed in juxtaposition and contrast with the Serb of Lusatia. Where a small vowel follows the characteristic of the tense the sound is that of sz; in other cases it is that of ch (kh)

---

FROM THE
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
JUNE 23, 1843.

In respect to the cæsura of the Greek tragic senarius, the rules, as laid down by Porson in the Supplement to his Preface to the Hecuba, and as recognised, more or less, by the English school of critics, seem capable of a more general expression, and, at the same time, liable to certain limitations in regard to fact. This becomes apparent when we investigate the principle that serves as the foundation to these rules; in other words, when we exhibit the rationale, or doctrine, of the cæsura in question. At this we can arrive by taking cognizance of a second element of metre beyond that of quantity.

It is assumed that the element in metre which goes, in works of different writers, under the name of ictus metricus, or of arsis, is the same as accent in the sense of that word in English. It is this that constitutes the difference between words like týrant and resúme, or súrvey and survéy; or (to take more convenient examples) between the word Aúgust, used as the name of a month, and augúst used as an adjective. Without inquiring how far this coincides with the accent and accentuation of the classical grammarians, it may be stated that, in the forthcoming pages, arsis, ictus metricus, and accent (in the English sense of the word), mean one and the same thing. With this view of the arsis, or ictus, we may ask how far, in each particular foot of the senarius, it coincides with the quantity.

First Foot.—In the first place of a tragic senarius it is a matter of indifference whether the arsis fall on the first or second syllable, that is, it is a matter of indifference whether the foot be sounded as týrant or as resúme, as Aúgust or as augúst. In the following lines the words ἡκω, παλαι, εἰπερ, τινας, may be pronounced either as ἥκω, πάλαι, εἴπερ, τίνας, or as ἡκώ, παλαί, εἰπέρ, τινάς, without any detriment to the character of the line wherein they occur.

or,

Second Foot.—In the second place, it is also matter of indifference whether the foot be sounded as Aúgust or as augúst. In the first of the four lines quoted above we may say either νέκρων or νεκρών, without violating rhythm of the verse.

Third Foot.—In this part of the senarius it is no longer a matter of indifference whether the foot be sounded as Aúgust or as augúst; that is, it is no longer a matter of indifference whether the arsis and the quantity coincide. In the circumstance that the last syllable of the third foot must be accented (in the English sense of the word), taken along with a second fact, soon about to be exhibited, lies the doctrine of the penthimimer and hephthimimer cæsuras.

The proof of the coincidence between the arsis and the quantity in the third foot is derived partly from à posteriori, partly from à priori evidence.

1. In the Supplices of Æschylus, the Persæ, and the Bacchæ, three dramas where licences in regard to metre are pre-eminently common, the number of lines wherein the sixth syllable (i. e. the last half of the third foot) is without an arsis, is at the highest sixteen, at the lowest five; whilst in the remainder of the extant dramas the proportion is undoubtedly smaller.

2. In all lines where the sixth syllable is destitute of ictus, the iambic character is violated: as—

These are facts which may be verified either by referring to the tragedians, or by constructing senarii like the lines last quoted. The only difficulty that occurs arises in determining, in a dead language like the Greek, the absence or presence of the arsis. In this matter the writer has satisfied himself of the truth of the two following propositions:—1. That the accentuation of the grammarians denotes some modification of pronunciation other than that which constitutes the difference between Aúgust and augúst; since, if it were not so, the word ἅγγελον would be sounded like mérrily, and the word ἁγγέλων like disáble; which is improbable. 2. That the arsis lies upon radical rather than inflectional syllables, and out of two inflectional syllables upon the first rather than the second; as βλέπ-ω, βλεψ-άσ-α, not βλεπ-ώ, βλεψ-ασ-ά. The evidence upon these points is derived from the structure of language in general. The onus probandi lies with the author who presumes an arsis (accent in the English sense) on a non-radical syllable.

Doubts, however, as to the pronunciation of certain words, leave the precise number of lines violating the rule given above undetermined. It is considered sufficient to show that, wherever they occur, the iambic character is violated.

The circumstance, however, of the last half of the third foot requiring an arsis, brings us only half way towards the doctrine of the cæsura. With this must be combined a second fact arising out of the constitution of the Greek language in respect to its accent. In accordance with the views just exhibited, the author conceives that no Greek word has an arsis upon the last syllable, except in the three following cases:—

1. Monosyllables, not enclitic; as σφών, πάς, χθών, δμώς, νών, νύν, &c.

2. Circumflex futures; as νεμώ, τεμώ, &c.

3. Words abbreviated by apocope; in which case the penultimate is converted into a final syllable; δώμ', φειδέσθ', κεντείτ', εγώγ', &c.

Now the fact of a syllable with an arsis being, in Greek, rarely final, taken along with that of the sixth syllable requiring an arsis, gives, as a matter of necessity, the circumstance that, in the Greek drama, the sixth syllable shall occur anywhere rather than at the end of a word; and this is only another way of saying, that, in a tragic senarius, the syllable in question shall generally be followed by other syllables in the same word. All this the author considers as so truly a matter of necessity, that the objection to his view of the Greek cæsura must lie either against his idea of the nature of the accents, or nowhere; since, that being admitted, the rest follows of course.

As the sixth syllable must not be final, it must be followed in the same word by one syllable, or by more than one.

1. The sixth syllable followed by one syllable in the same word.—This is only another name for the seventh syllable occurring at the end of a word, and it gives at once the hephthimimer cæsura: as—

2. The sixth syllable followed by two (or more) syllables in the same word.—This is only another name for the eighth (or some syllable after the eighth) syllable occurring at the end of a word; as—

Now this arrangement of syllables, taken by itself, gives anything rather than a hephthimimer; so that if it were at this point that our investigations terminated, little would be done towards the evolution of the rationale of the cæsura. It will appear, however, that in those cases where the circumstance of the sixth syllable being followed by two others in the same words, causes the eighth (or some syllable after the eighth) to be final, either a penthimimer cæsura, or an equivalent, will, with but few exceptions, be the result. This we may prove by taking the eighth syllable and counting back from it. What follows this syllable is immaterial: it is the number of syllables in the same word that precedes it that demands attention.

1. The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by nothing.—This is equivalent to the seventh syllable at the end of the preceding word: a state of things which, as noticed above, gives the hephthimimer cæsura.

2. The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by one syllable.—This is equivalent to the sixth syllable at the end of the word preceding; a state of things which, as noticed above, rarely occurs. When, however, it does occur, one of the three conditions under which a final syllable can take an arsis must accompany it. Each of these conditions requires notice.

α). With a non-enclitic mono-syllable the result is a penthimimer cæsura; since the syllable preceding a monosyllable is necessarily final.

No remark has been made by critics upon lines constructed in this manner, since the cæsura is a penthimimer, and consequently their rules are undisturbed.

β). With poly-syllabic circumflex futures constituting the third foot, there would be a violation of the current rules respecting the cæsura. Notwithstanding this, if the views of the present paper be true, there would be no violation of the iambic character of the senarius. Against such a line as

there is no argument à priori on the score of the iambic character being violated; whilst, in respect to objections derived from evidence à posteriori, there is sufficient reason for such lines being rare.

γ). With poly-syllables abbreviated by apocope, we have the state of things which the metrists have recognised under the name of quasi-cæsura; as—

3.—The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by two syllables.—This is equivalent to the fifth syllable occurring at the end of the word preceding: a state of things which gives the penthimimer cæsura; as—

4. The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by three or more than three syllables.—This is equivalent to the fourth (or some syllable preceding the fourth) syllable occurring at the end of the word preceding; a state of things which would include the third and fourth feet in one and the same word. This concurrence is denounced in the Supplement to the Preface to the Hecuba, where, however, the rule, as in the case of the quasi-cæsura, from being based upon merely empirical evidence, requires limitation. In lines like—

or (an imaginary example),

there is no violation of the iambic character, and consequently no reason against similar lines having been written; although from the average proportion of Greek words like επεικασαι and ασπιδηστροποισιν, there is every reason for their being rare.

After the details just given the recapitulation is brief.

1. It was essential to the character of the senarius that the sixth syllable, or latter half of the third foot, should have an arsis, ictus metricus, or accent in the English sense. To this condition of the iambic rhythm the Greek tragedians, either consciously or unconsciously, adhered.

2. It was the character of the Greek language to admit an arsis on the last syllable of a word only under circumstances comparatively rare.

3. These two facts, taken together, caused the sixth syllable of a line to be anywhere rather than at the end of a word.

4. If followed by a single syllable in the same word, the result was a hephthimimer cæsura.

5. If followed by more syllables than one, some syllable in an earlier part of the line ended the word preceding, and so caused either a penthimìmer, a quasi-cæsura, or the occurrence of the third and fourth foot in the same word.

6. As these two last-mentioned circumstances were rare, the general phenomenon presented in the Greek senarius was the occurrence of either the penthimimer or hephthimimer.

7. Respecting these two sorts of cæsura, the rules, instead of being exhibited in detail, may be replaced by the simple assertion that there should be an arsis on the sixth syllable. From this the rest follows.

8. Respecting the non-occurrence of the third and fourth feet in the same word, the assertion may be withdrawn entirely.

9. Respecting the quasi-cæsura, the rules, if not altogether withdrawn, may be extended to the admission of the last syllable of circumflex futures (or to any other polysyllables with an equal claim to be considered accented on the last syllable) in the latter half of the third foot.

---

FROM THE
ANNALS AND MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY,
JUNE, 1859.

The text upon which the following remarks have suggested themselves is the Accentuated List of the British Lepidoptera, with Hints on the Derivation of the Names, published by the Entomological Societies of Oxford and Cambridge; a useful contribution to scientific terminology—useful, and satisfied with being so. It admits that naturalists may be unlearned, and provides for those who, with a love for botany or zoology, may have been denied the advantage of a classical education. That there are many such is well known; and it is also well known that they have no love for committing themselves to the utterance of Latin and Greek names in the presence of investigators who are more erudite (though, perhaps, less scientific) than themselves. As a rule, their pronunciation is inaccurate. It is inaccurate without being uniform—- for the ways of going wrong are many. Meanwhile, any directions toward the right are welcome.

In the realities of educational life there is no such thing as a book for unlearned men—at least no such thing as a good one. There are make-shifts and make-believes ad infinitum; but there is no such an entity as an actual book. Some are written down to the supposed level of the reader—all that are so written being useless and offensive. Others are encumbered with extraneous matter, and, so encumbered, err on the side of bulk and superfluity. Very rarely is there anything like consistency in the supply of information.

The work under notice supposes a certain amount of ignorance—ignorance of certain accents and certain quantities. It meets this; and it meets it well. That the work is both a safe and reliable guide, is neither more nor less than what we expect from the places and persons whence it has proceeded.

It is likely, from its very merits, to be the model on which a long line of successors may be formed. For this reason the principles of its notation (for thus we may generalize our expression of the principle upon which we use the signs of accent and quantity as guides to pronunciation) may be criticised.

In the mind of the present writer, the distinction between accent and quantity has neither been sufficiently attended to nor sufficiently neglected. This is because, in many respects, they are decidedly contrasted with, and opposed to, each other; whilst, at the same time—paradoxical as it may appear—they are, for the majority of practical purposes, convertible. That inadvertence on these points should occur, is not to be wondered at. Professional grammarians—men who deal with the purely philological questions of metre and syllabification—with few exceptions, confound them.

In English Latin (by which I mean Latin as pronounced by Englishmen) there is, in practice, no such a thing as quantity; so that the sign by which it is denoted is, in nine cases out of ten, superfluous. Mark the accent, and the quantity will take care of itself.

I say that there is no such a thing in English Latin as quantity. I ought rather to have said that

English quantities are not Latin quantities.

In Latin, the length of the syllable is determined by the length of the vowels and consonants combined. A long vowel, if followed in the same word by another (i. e. if followed by no consonant), is short. A short vowel, if followed by two consonants, is long. In English, on the other hand, long vowels make long, whilst short vowels make short, syllables; so that the quantity of a syllable in English is determined by the quantity of the vowel. The i in pius is short in Latin. In English it is long. The e in mend is short in English, long in Latin.

This, however, is not all. There is, besides, the following metrical paradox. A syllable may be made long by the very fact of its being short. It is the practice of the English language to signify the shortness of a vowel by doubling the consonant that follows. Hence we get such words as pitted, knotty, massive, &c.—words in which no one considers that the consonant is actually doubled. For do we not pronounce pitted and pitied alike? Consonants that appear double to the eye are common enough. Really double consonants—consonants that sound double to the ear—are rarities, occurring in one class of words only—viz. in compounds whereof the first element ends with the same sound with which the second begins, as soul-less, book-case, &c.

The doubling, then, of the consonant is a conventional mode of expressing the shortness of the vowel that precedes, and it addresses itself to the eye rather than the ear.

But does it address itself to the eye only? If it did, pitied and pitted, being sounded alike, would also be of the same quantity. We know, however, that to the English writer of Latin verses they are not so. We know that the first is short (pĭtied), the latter long (pītted). For all this, they are sounded alike: so that the difference in quantity (which, as a metrical fact, really exists) is, to a great degree, conventional. At any rate, we arrive at it by a secondary process. We know how the word is spelt; and we know that certain modes of spelling give certain rules of metre. Our senses here are regulated by our experience.

Let a classical scholar hear the first line of the Eclogues read—

and he will be shocked. He will also believe that the shock fell on his ear. Yet his ear was unhurt. No sense was offended. The thing which was shocked was his knowledge of the rules of prosody—nothing more. To English ears there is no such a thing as quantity—not even in hexameters and pentameters. There is no such thing as quantity except so far as it is accentual also. Hence come the following phænomena—no less true than strange,—viz. (1) that any classical metre written according to the rules of quantity gives (within certain narrow limits) a regular recurrence of accents; and (2) that, setting aside such shocks as affect our knowledge of the rules of prosody, verses written according to their accents only give metrical results. English hexameters (such as they are) are thus written.

In the inferences from these remarks there are two assumptions: 1st, that the old-fashioned mode of pronunciation be adhered to; 2nd, that when we pronounce Greek and Latin words as they are pronounced in the recitation of Greek and Latin poetry, we are as accurate as we need be. It is by means of these two assumptions that we pronounce Tityre and patulæ alike; and I argue that we are free to do so. As far as the ear is concerned, the a is as long as the i, on the strength of the double t which is supposed to come after it. It does not indeed so come; but if it did, the sound would be the same, the quantity different (for is not patulæ pronounced pattule?). It would be a quantity, however, to the eye only.

This pronunciation, however, may be said to be exploded; for do not most men under fifty draw the distinction which is here said to be neglected? Do not the majority make, or fancy they make, a distinction between the two words just quoted? They may or they may not. It is only certain that, subject to the test just indicated, it is immaterial what they do. Nine-tenths of the best modern Latin verses were written under the old system—a system based not upon our ear, but on our knowledge of certain rules.

Now it is assumed that the accuracy sufficient for English Latin is all the accuracy required. Ask for more, and you get into complex and difficult questions respecting the pronunciation of a dead language. Do what we will, we cannot, on one side, pronounce the Latin like the ancient Romans. Do what we will, so long as we keep our accents right, we cannot (speaking Latin after the fashion of Englishmen) err in the way of quantity—at least, not to the ear. A short vowel still gives a long syllable; for the consonant which follows it is supposed to be doubled.

Let it be admitted, then, that, for practical purposes, Tityre and patulæ may be pronounced alike, and the necessity of a large class of marks is avoided. Why write, as the first word in the book is written, Papiliō´nidæ? Whether the initial syllable be sounded papp- or pape- is indifferent. So it is whether the fourth be uttered as -own-, or -onn-. As far as the ear is concerned, they are both long, because the consonant is doubled. In Greek, πᾰππιλλιόννιδαι is as long as πᾱππιλλιόννιδαι.

Then comes Machā´on, where the sign of quantity is again useless, the accent alone being sufficient to prevent us saying either Mákkaon or Makaón. The a is the a in fate. We could not sound it as the a in fat if we would.

Pīeridæ.—What does the quantity tell us here? That the i is pronounced as the i in the Greek πίονος, rather than as the i in the Latin pius. But, in English Latin, we pronounce both alike. Surely Pī´eris and Pie´ridæ tell us all that is needed.

Cratæ´gī.—Whether long or short, the i is pronounced the same.

Sinā´pis, Rā´pæ, and Nā´pi.—The ( ¯ ) here prevents us from saying Ráppæ and Náppi. It would certainly be inelegant and unusual to do so. Tested, however, by the ear, the words ráppæ and náppi take just the same place in an English Latin verse as rápe-æ and nápe-i. Is any one likely to say sináppis? Perhaps. There are those who say Dianna for Diana. It is very wrong to do so—wrong, not to say vulgar. For the purposes of metre, however, one is as good as the other; and herein (as aforesaid) lies the test. The real false quantities would be Diana and sinnapis; but against these the accent protects us. Nor is the danger of saying sináppis considerable. Those who say Diánna are those who connect it with Anna and would, probably, spell it with two n's.

Cardamī´nĕs.—All that the first ( ¯ ) does here is to prevent us saying cardami´nnes. The real false quantity would be carda´mmines. The accent, however, guards against this.

The second ( ¯ ) is useful. It is certainly better to say cardamín-ees than cardamín-ess, because the e is from the Greek η. And this gives us a rule. Let the ( ¯ ) be used to distinguish η from ε, and ω from ο, and in no other case. I would not say that it is necessary to use it even here. It is better, however, to say Macháōn than Macháōn. By a parity of reasoning, the ( ˘ ), rejected in the work before us, is sometimes useful. Let it be used in those derivatives where ε replaces η, and ο replaces ω; e. g. having written Machaōn, write, as its derivative, Machaōnidæ—i. e. if the word be wanted.

This is the utmost for which the signs of quantity are wanted for English Latin. I do not say that they are wanted even for this.

One of the mechanical inconveniences arising from the use of the signs of quantity is this—when a long syllable is accented, two signs fall upon it. To remedy this, the work before us considers that the stress is to be laid on the syllable preceding the accent. Yet, if an accent mean anything, it means that the stress fall on the syllable which it stands over.

A few remarks upon words like Pīeridæ, where the accent was omitted.—Here two short syllables come between two long ones. No accent, however, is placed over either. Evidently, quantity and accent are so far supposed to coincide, that the accentuation of a short vowel is supposed to make it look like a long one. It is a matter of fact, that if, on a word like Cassiōpe, we lay an accent on the last syllable but one, we shock the ears of scholars, especially metrical ones. Does it, however, lengthen the vowel? The editors of the work in question seem to think that it does, and, much more consistent than scholars in general, hesitate to throw it back upon the preceding syllable, which is short also. Metrists have no such objection; their practice being to say Cassíope without detriment to the vowel. The entomologists, then, are the more consistent.

They are, however, more consistent than they need be. If an accent is wanted, it may fall on the shortest of all possible syllables. Granting, however, that Cassiópe (whether the o be sounded as in nōte or nōt) is repugnant to metre, and Cassíope to theory, what is their remedy? It is certainly true that Cássiope is pronounceable. Pope writes—

No man reads this miscéllanies; few read it míscellánies. The mass say mis´cellanies. Doing this, they make the word a quadrisyllable; for less than this would fall short of the demands of the metre. They also utter a word which makes Cas´siope possible. Is Cássiope, however, the sound? Probably not. And here authors must speak for themselves:—

"Take, e. g., Cassiope and Corticea: in words like the former of these, in which the last syllable is long, there is no greater difficulty of pronunciation in laying the stress upon the first syllable than upon the second."

True! but this implies that we say Cássiopé. Is -e, however, one bit the longer for being accented, or can it bear one iota more of accent for being long? No. Take -at from peat, and -t from pet, and the result is pe—just as long or just as short in one case as the other.

The same power of accenting the first syllable is "particularly the case in those words in which the vowel i can assume the power of y. Latin scholars are divided as to the proper accentuation of mulieres, Tulliola, and others: though custom is in favour of mulíeres, mul´ieres appears to be more correct." Be it so. Let mulieres be múlyeres. What becomes, however, of the fourth syllable? The word is no quadrisyllable at all. What is meant is this:—not that certain quadrisyllables with two short vowels in the middle are difficult to accentuate, but that they are certain words of which it is difficult to say whether they are trisyllables or quadrisyllables.

For all practical purposes, however, words like Cassiope are quadrisyllables. They are, in the way of metre, choriambics; and a choriambic is a quadrisyllable foot. They were pronounced Cassíope, &c., by English writers of Latin verses—when Latin verses were written well.

Let the pronunciation which was good enough for Vincent Bourne and the contributors to the Musæ Etonenses be good enough for the entomologists, and all that they will then have to do is not to pronounce cratægum like stratagem, cardamines like Theramenes, and vice versâ. Against this, accent will ensure them—accent single-handed and without any sign of quantity—Cardamínes, Therámenes, cratæ´gum, strátagem.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
APRIL 11, 1845.

The words σάρος and sarus are the Greek and Latin forms of a certain term used in the oldest Babylonian chronology, the meaning of which is hitherto undetermined. In the opinion of the present writer, the sarus is a period of 4 years and 340 days.

In the way of direct external evidence as to the value of the epoch in question, we have, with the exception of an unsatisfactory passage in Suidas, at the hands of the ancient historians and according to the current interpretations, only the two following statements:—

1. That each sarus consisted of 3600 years (ἔτη).

2. That the first ten kings of Babylon reigned 120 sari, equal to 432,000 years; or on an average 43,200 years apiece.

With data of this sort, we must either abandon the chronology altogether, or else change the power of the word year. The first of these alternatives was adopted by Cicero and Pliny, and doubtless other of the ancients—contemnamus etiam Babylonios et eos qui e Caucaso cœli signa observantes numeris et motubus stellarum cursus persequuntur; condemnemus inquam hos aut stultitiæ aut vanitatis aut impudentiæ qui CCCCLXX millia annorum, ut ipsi dicunt, monumentis comprehensa continent.—Cic. de Divinat., from Cory's Ancient Fragments. Again—e diverso Epigenes apud Babylonios DCCXX annorum observationes siderum coctilibus laterculis inscriptas docet, gravis auctor in primis: qui minimum Berosus et Critodemus CCCCLXXX annorum.—Pliny, vii. 56. On the other hand, to alter the value of the word ἔτος or annus has been the resource of at least one modern philologist.

Now if we treat the question by what may be called the tentative method, the first step in our inquiry will be to find some division of time which shall, at once, be natural in itself, and also short enough to make 10 sari possible parts of an average human life. For this, even a day will be too long. Twelve hours, however, or half a νυχθήμερον, will give us possible results.

Taking this view therefore, and leaving out of the account the 29th of February, the words ἔτος and annus mean, not a year, but the 730th part of one; 3600 of which make a sarus. In other words, a sarus=1800 day-times and 1800 night-times, or 3600 half νυχθήμερα, or 4 years+340 days.

The texts to which the present hypothesis applies are certain passages in Eusebius and Syncellus. These are founded upon the writings of Alexander Polyhistor, Apollodorus, Berosus, and Abydenus. From hence we learn the length of the ten reigns alluded to above, viz. 120 sari or 591 years and odd days. Reigns of this period are just possible. It is suggested, however, that the reign and life are dealt with as synonymous; or at any rate, that some period beyond that during which each king sat singly on his throne has been recorded.

The method in question led the late Professor Rask to a different power for the word sarus. In his Ældste Hebraiske Tidregnung he writes as follows: "The meaning of the so-called sari has been impossible for me to discover. The ancients explain it differently. Dr. Ludw. Ideler, in his Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 207, considers it to mean some lunar period; without however defining it, and without sufficient closeness to enable us to reduce the 120 sari, attributed to the ten ancient kings, to any probable number of real years. I should almost believe that the sarus was a year of 23 months, so that the 120 sari meant 240 natural years." p. 32. Now Rask's hypothesis has the advantage of leaving the meaning of the word reign as we find it. On the other hand, it blinks the question of ἔτη or anni as the parts of a sarus. Each doctrine, however, is equally hypothetical; the value of the sarus, in the present state of our inquiry, resting solely upon the circumstance of its giving a plausible result from plausible assumptions. The data through which the present writer asserts for his explanation the proper amount of probability are contained in two passages hitherto unapplied.

1. From Eusebius—is (Berosus) sarum ex annis 3600 conflat. Addit etiam nescio quem nerum ac sosum: nerum ait 600 annis constare, sosum annis 60. Sic ille de veterum more annos computat.—Translation of the Armenian Eusebius, p. 5, from Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, p. 439: Paris, 1841.

2. Berosus—σάρος δέ ἐστιν ἕξακόσια καὶ τρισχίλια ἔτη, νῖ ρος δὲ ἕξακόσια, σώσσος ἑξήκοντα.—From Cory's Ancient Fragments.

Now the assumed value of the word translated year (viz. 12 hours), in its application to the passages just quoted, gives for the powers of the three terms three divisions of time as natural as could be expected under the circumstances.

1. Σώσσος.—The sosus=30 days and 30 nights, or 12 hours × 60, or a month of 30 days, μὴν τριακονθήμερος. Aristotle writes—ἡ μὴν Λακωνικὴ ἕκτον μέρος τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ, τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν ἡμέραι ἑξήκοντα.—From Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum, p. 23. Other evidence occurs in the same page.

2. Νῆρος.—The nerus=10 sosi or months=the old Roman year of that duration.

3. Σάρος.—The sarus=6 neri or 60 months of 30 days each; that is, five proper years within 25 days. This would be a cycle or annus magnus.

All these divisions are probable. Against that of 12 hours no objection lies except its inconvenient shortness. The month of 30 days is pre-eminently natural. The year of 10 months was common in early times. In favour of the sarus of five years (or nearly so) there are two facts:—

1. It is the multiple of the sosus by 10, and of the nerus by 6.

2. It represents the period when the natural year of 12 months coincides for the first time with the artificial one of 10; since 60 months=6 years of 10 months and 5 of 12.

The historical application of these numbers is considered to lie beyond the pale of the present inquiry.

In Suidas we meet an application of the principle recognised by Rask, viz. the assumption of some period of which the sarus is a fraction. Such at least is the probable view of the following interpretation: ΣΆΡΟΙ—μέτρον καὶ ἁριθμὸς παρὰ Χαλδαίοις, οἳ γὰρ ρκ´ σάροι ποιοῦσιν ἐνιαυτοὺς βσκβ´, οἳ γίγνονται ιε´ ἔνιαυτοὶ καὶ μῆνες ἕξ.—From Cory's Ancient Fragments[3].

In Josephus we find the recognition of an annus magnus containing as many ἔτη as the nerus did: ἔπειτα καὶ δι' ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν εὐχρηστίαν ὧν ἐπενόουν ἀστρολόγιας καὶ γεωμὲτριας πλέον ζῇν τὸν Θεὸν αὐτοῖς παρασχεῖν ἅπερ οὐκ ἧν ἀσφαλῶς αὐτοῖς προειπεῖν ζήσασιν ἑξακοσίους ἐνιαυτούς· διὰ τοσοῦτον γὰρ ὁμέγας ἐνιαυτὸς πληροῦται.—Antiq. i. 3.

The following doctrine is a suggestion, viz. that in the word sosus we have the Hebrew שֵש = six. If this be true, it is probable that the sosus itself was only a secondary division, or some other period multiplied by six. Such would be a period of five days, or ten ἔׁτηׁ (so-called). With this view we get two probabilities, viz. a subdivision of the month, and the alternation of the numbers 6 and 10 throughout; i. e. from the ἔτος[4] (or 12 hours) to the sarus (or five years).

---

After the reading of this paper, a long discussion followed on the question, how far the sarus could be considered as belonging to historical chronology. The Chairman (Professor Wilson) thought there could be no doubt that the same principles which regulated the mythological periods of the Hindoos prevailed also in the Babylonian computations, although there might be some variety in their application.

1. A mahayuga or great age of the Hindoos, comprising the four successive yugas or ages, consists of 4,320,000 years.

2. These years being divided by 360, the number of days in the Indian lunar year, give 12,000 periods.

3. By casting off two additional cyphers, these numbers are reduced respectively to 432,000 and 120, the numbers of the years of the saroi of the ten Babylonian kings, whilst in the numbers 12,360 and 3600 we have the coincidence of other elements of the computation.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

Van den Bergh, Taal. Mag. ii. 2. 193-210.

Groningen.—Laurman, Proeve van kleine taalkundige bijdragen tot beter kennis van den tongval in de Provincie Groningen.—Groningen 1822.

J. Sonius Swaagman, Comment: de dialecto Groningana, etc.: una cum serie vocabulorum, Groninganis propriorum.—Groning. 1827.

Zaamenspraak tusschen Pijter en Jaap dij malkáár op de weg ontmuiten boeten Stÿntilpoorte.—Groninger Maandscrift, No. 1. Also in Laurman's Proeve.

Nieuwe Schuitpraatjes.—By the same author, 1836.

List van Groningsche Woorden.—By A. Complementary to the works of Laurman and Swaagman. With notes by A. de Jager.—Taalkundig Magazijn, second part, third number, pp. 331—334.

Groninsch Taaleigen door.—J. A. (the author of the preceding list). Taalkundig Magazijn, iv. 4. pp. 657—690.

Raize na Do de Cock.—Known to Van den Bergh only through the newspapers.

Subdialects indicated by J. A. as existing, (a) on the Friesland frontier, (b) in the Fens.

L. Van Bolhuis.—Collection of Groningen and Ommeland words not found in Halma's Lexicon; with notes by Clignett, Steenwinkel, and Malnoe. MS. In the library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Over-ijsel.—J. H. Halbertsma, Proeve van een Woorden boekje van het Overijselsch.—Overijsselschen Almanak voor Oudheid en Letteren, 1836.

M. Winhoff, Landrecht var Auerissel, tweeee druk, met veele (philological as well as other) aanteckeningen door J. A. Chalmot.—Campen, 1782.

T. W. Van Marle, Samensprôke tusschen en snaak zoo as as der gelukkig néèt in te menigte zint en en heeren-krecht déè gien boe of ba zê, op de markt te Dêventer van vergange vrijdag.—Overijselschen Almanak, &c. ut supra.

Over de Twenthsche Vocalen en Klankwijzigingen, door J. H. Behrens.—Taalkundig Magazijn, iii. 3. pp. 332-390. 1839.

Twenther Brutfteleed.—Overijsselschen Almanak.

Dumbar the Younger (?).—Three lists of words and phrases used principally at Deventer. MS. In the library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Drawings of twelve Overijssel Towns. Above and beneath each a copy of verses in the respective dialects. MS. of the seventeenth century. Library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Gelderland.—H. I. Swaving, Opgave van eenige in Gelderland gebruikelijke woorden.—Taalkundig Magazijn, i. 4. pp. 305.

Ibid.—Ibid. ii. 1. pp. 76-80.

Opmerkingen omtrent den Gelderschen Tongval.—Ibid. ii. 4. pp. 398-426. The fourth section is devoted to some peculiarities from the neighbourhood of Zutphen.

N. C. Kist, Over de ver wisslingvan zedetijke en zinnelijke Hoedanigheden in sommige Betuwsche Idiotismen.—Nieuwe Werken der Maatsch. van Nederl. Letterkund. iii. 2. 1834.

Staaltje van Graafschapsche landtal.—Proeve van Taalkundipe Opmerkingen en Bedenkingen, door T. G. C. Kalckhoff.—Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen for June 1826.

Appendix to the above.—Ibid. October 1826.

Het Zeumerroaisel: a poem. 1834?—Known to Van den Bergh only through the newspapers. Believed to have been published in 1834.

Et Schaassen-riejen, en praotparticken tussen Harmen en Barteld.—Geldersche Volks-Almanak, 1835. Zutphen Dialect.

De Öskeskermios.—Geldersche Volks-Almanak, 1836. Dialect of Over Veluwe.

Hoe Meister Maorten baordman baos Joosten en schat deevinden.—Geldersche Volks-Almanak, 1836. Dialect of Lijm.

Opgave van eenige in Gelderland gebruikelijke woorden ae.—H. I. Swaving.—Taalk. Mag. iv. 4. pp. 307-330.

Aanteekeningen ter verbetering en uitbreiding der opmerkingen omtrent den Geldersehen Tongval.—Taal. Mag. iii. 1. pp. 39-80.

A. Van den Bergh.—Words from the provincial dialects of the Veluwen; with additions by H. T. Folmer.—MS. Library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Handbook, containing the explanation and etymology of several obscure and antiquated words, &c. occurring in the Gelderland and other neighbouring Law-books.—By J. C. C. V. H[asselt].—MS. Library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Holland.—Scheeps-praat, ten overlijden van Prins Maurits van Orange.—Huygens Korenbloemem, B. viii. Also in Lulofs Nederlandsche Spraakkunst, p. 351; in the Vaderlandsche Spreekwoorden door Sprenger van Eyk, p. 17, and (with three superadded couplets) in the Mnemosyne, part x. p. 76.

Brederoos Kluchten.—Chiefly in the Low Amsterdam (plat Amsterdamsch) dialect.

Hooft, Warenar met den pot.

Suffr. Sixtinus.—Gerard van Velsen. Amst. 1687.

Bilderdijk, Over een oud Amsterdamsch Volksdeuntjen.—Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, 1808. Reprinted, with an appendix, at Leyden 1824.

Bilderdijk, Rowbeklag; in gemeen Zamen Amsterdamschen tongval.—Najaarsbladen, part i.

Gebel, Scheviningsch Visscherslied.—Almanak voor Blijgeestigen.

1. Boertige Samenspraak, ter heilgroete bij een huwelijk.

2. Samenspraak over de harddraverij te Valkenburg en aan heet Haagsche Schouw.

3. Boertige Samenspraak tusschen Heeip en Jan-buur.—These three last-named poems occur in Gedichten van J. Le Francq van Berkhey, in parts i. 221, ii. 180, ii. 257 respectively.

Tuist tusschen Achilles en Agamemnon. Schiutpraatje van eenen boer; of luimige vertaling van het 1^e Boek der Ilias, by J. E. Van Varelen.—Mnemosyne, part iv. Dordrecht, 1824.

The same by H. W. and B. F. Tydeman in the Mnemosyne, part iv. Dordrecht, 1824.

Noordhollandsch Taaleigen, door Nicolas Beets.—Taalk. Magaz. iii. 4. pp. 510—516, and iv. 3. pp. 365-372.

List of words and phrases used by the Katwijk Fishermen.—MS. Library of the Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Dictionary of the North-Holland Dialect; chiefly collected by Agge Roskan Kool.—MS. Ibid.

Zealand.—Gedicht op't innemen van sommige schansen en de sterke stad Hulst, &c. 1642. Le Jeune; Volkszangen, p. 190.

Brief van eene Zuidbevelandsche Boerin, aan haren Zoon, dienende bij de Zeeuwsche landelijke Schutterij. Zeeuwsche Volks-Almanak, 1836.

Over het Zeeuwsche Taaleigen, door Mr. A. F. Sifflé,—Taalkundig Magazijn i. 2. 169—171.

Notes upon the same, by Van A. D, J[ager].—Ibid. p. 175—177.

Taalkundige Aanteekeningen, door Mr. J. H. Hoefft.—Ibid. 1. 3. 248—256.

Collection of words used in Walcheren.—MS. Library of Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Collection of words used in States-Flanders.—MS. Ibid.

North brabant.—J. H. Hoefft, Proeve van Bredaasch taaleigen, &c.—Breda 1836.

J. L. Verster, Words used in the Mayoralty of Bosch.—MS. Library of Maatschappij van Nederlandsche Letterkunde.

Jewish.—Khootje, Waar binje? hof Conferensje hop de vertrekkie van de Colleesje hin de Poortoegeesche Koffy' uyssie, hover de gemasqwerde bal ontmaskert.—Amsterd.

Lehrrhede hower de vrauwen, door Raphael Noenes Karwalje, Hopper Rhabbijn te Presburg; in Wibmer, de Onpartijdige.—Amst. 1820, p. 244.

Negro[5].—New Testament.—Copenhagen, 1781, and Barby, 1802.

The Psalms.—Barby, 1802.

---

FROM
THE CLASSICAL MUSEUM OF 1846. VOL. 3.

The following train of thought presented itself to the writer upon the perusal of Mr. James Yates's learned and interesting work entitled Textrinum Antiquorum or an account of the art of weaving among the ancients. With scarcely a single exception the facts and references are supplied from that work so that to the author of the present paper nothing belongs beyond the reasoning that he has applied to them.

This statement is made once for all for the sake of saving a multiplicity of recurring references.

The negative assertions as well as the positive ones are also made upon the full faith in the exhaustive learning of the writer in question.

Now the conviction that is come to is this, that no tribe, nation or country ever existed which can be shewn to have borne, either in the vernacular or in any neighbouring language, the name Seres, Serica, or Terra Serica or any equivalent term, a conclusion that may save some trouble to the inquirers into ancient geography.

The nation called Seres has never had a specific existence under that name. Whence then originated the frequent indications of such a nation recurring in the writings of the ancients? The doctrine, founded upon the facts of Mr. Yates and laid down as a proposition; is as follows.—

That the name under which the article silk was introduced to the Greeks and Romans wore the appearance of a Gentile adjective and that the imaginary root of the accredited adjective passed for the substantive name of a nation. Thus, in the original form seric, the -ic had the appearance of being an adjectival termination, as in Medic-us Persic-us &c.; whilst ser- was treated as the substantive name of a nation or people from whence the article in question (i. e. the seric article) was derived. The Seres therefore were the hypothetical producers of the article that bore their name (seric). Whether this view involves more improbabilities than the current one will be seen from the forthcoming observations.—

1. In the first place the crude form seric was neither Latin nor Greek, so that the -ic could not be adjectival.

2. Neither was it in the simpler form ser- that the term was introduced into the classical languages so that the adjectival -ic might be appended afterwards.—

3. The name in question whatever might have been its remote origin was introduced into Greece from the Semitic tongues (probably the Phoenician) and was the word שריק in Isaiah XIX. 9. where the יק (the -ic) is not an adjectival appendage but a radical part of the word. And here it may be well to indicate that, except under the improbable supposition that the Hebrew name was borrowed from the Greek or Latin, it is a matter of indifference whether the word in question was indigenous to the Semitic Languages or introduced from abroad, and also that is a matter of indifference whether silk was known in the time of the Old Testament or not. It is sufficient if a term afterwards applied to that article was Hebrew at the time of Isaiah. Of any connection between the substance called שריק and a nation called Seres there is in the Semitic tongues no trace. The foundation of the present scepticism originated in the observation that the supposed national existence of the Seres coincided with the introduction of the term seric into languages where ic- was an adjectival affix.—

As early as the Augustan age the substantive Seres appears by the side of the adjective Sericus. In Virgil, Horace and Ovid the words may be found and from this time downwards the express notice of a nation so called is found through a long series of writers.—

Notwithstanding this it is as late as the time of Mela before we find any author mentioning with detail and precision a geographical nationality for the Seres. "He (Mela) describes them as a very honest people who brought what they had to sell, laid it down and went away and then returned for the price of it" (Yates p. 184). Now this notice is anything rather than definite. Its accuracy moreover may be suspected, since it belongs to the ambiguous class of what may be called convertible descriptions. The same story is told of an African nation in Herodotus IV. 169.

To the statement of Mela we may add a notice from Ammianus Marcellinus of the quiet and peaceable character of the Seres (XXIII. 6.) and a statement from the novelist Heliodorus that at the nuptials of Theagenes and Chariclea the ambassadors of the Seres came bringing the thread and webs of their spiders (Aethiop. X. p. 494. Commelini).

Now notices more definite than the above of the national existence of the Seres anterior to the time of Justinian we have none whilst subsequently to the reign of that emperor there is an equal silence on the part both of historians and geographers. Neither have modern ethnographers found unequivocal traces of tribes bearing that name.

The probability of a confusion like the one indicated at the commencement of the paper is increased by the facts stated in p. 222. of the Textrinum. Here we see that besides Pausanias, Hesychius, Photius and other writers give two senses to the root ser- which they say is (1.) a worm (2.) the name of a nation. Probably Clemens Alexandrinus does the same νῆμα χρυσοῦ καὶ σῆρας Ἰνδικοὺς καὶ τοὺς περιέργους βόμβυκας χαίρειν ἐῶντας. A passage from Ulpian (Textrinum p. 192) leads to the belief that σῆρας here means silk-worm. Vestimentorum sunt omnia lanea lineaque, vel serica vel bombycina.

Finally the probability of the assumed confusion is verified by the statement of Procopius αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ μέταξα ἐξ ἧς εἰώθασι τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἐργάζεσθαι, ἣν πάλαι μὲν Ἥλληνες Μηδικὴν ἐκάλουν, τανῦν δὲ σηρικὴν ὀνομάζουσιν. (De Bell. Persic. I. 20.).

Militating against these views I find little unsusceptible of explanation.—

1. The expression σηρικα δερματα of the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei means skins from the silk country.

2. The intricacy introduced into the question by a passage of Procopius is greater. In the account of the first introduction of the silk worm into Europe in the reign of Justinian the monks who introduced it having arrived from India stated that they had long resided in the country called Serinda inhabited by Indian nations where they had learned how raw silk might be produced in the country of the Romans (Textrinum p. 231). This is so much in favor of the root Ser-being gentile, but at the same time so much against the Seres being Chinese. Sanskrit scholars may perhaps adjust this matter. The Serinda is probably the fabulous Serendib.

In the countries around the original localities of the silk-worm the name for silk is as follows—

It is the conviction of the present writer that a nation called Seres had no geographical existence.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

FEBRUARY 9, 1844.

It is considered that the evidence of any local connection between the Cimbri conquered by Marius, and the Chersonesus Cimbrica, is insufficient to counterbalance the natural improbability of a long and difficult national migration. Of such a connection, however, the identity of name and the concurrent belief of respectable writers are primâ facie evidence. This, however, is disposed of if such a theory as the following can be established, viz. that, for certain reasons, the knowledge of the precise origin and locality of the nations conquered by Marius was, at an early period, confused and indefinite; that new countries were made known without giving any further information; that, hence, the locality of the Cimbri was always pushed forwards beyond the limits of the geographical areas accurately ascertained; and finally, that thus their supposed locality retrograded continually northwards until it fixed itself in the districts of Sleswick and Jutland, where the barrier of the sea and the increase of geographical knowledge (with one exception) prevented it from getting farther. Now this view arises out of the examination of the language of the historians and geographers as examined in order, from Sallust to Ptolemy.

Of Sallust and Cicero, the language points to Gaul as the home of the nation in question; and that without the least intimation of its being any particularly distant portion of that country. "Per idem tempus adversus Gallos ab ducibus nostris, Q. Cæpione et M. Manlio, malè pugnatum—Marius Consul absens factus, et ei decreta Provincia Gallia." Bell. Jugurth. 114. "Ipse ille Marius—influentes in Italiam Gallorum maximas copias repressit." Cicero de Prov. Consul. 13. And here an objection may be anticipated. It is undoubtedly true that even if the Cimbri had originated in a locality so distant as the Chersonese, it would have been almost impossible to have made such a fact accurately understood. Yet it is also true, that if any material difference had existed between the Cimbri and the Gauls of Gaul, such must have been familiarly known in Rome, since slaves of both sorts must there have been common.

Cæsar, whose evidence ought to be conclusive (inasmuch as he knew of Germany as well as of Gaul), fixes them to the south of the Marne and Seine. This we learn, not from the direct text, but from inference: "Gallos—a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit." Bell. Gall. i. "Belgas—solos esse qui, patrum nostrûm memoria, omni Galliâ vexatâ, Teutones Cimbrosque intra fines suos ingredi prohibuerunt." Bell. Gall. ii. 4. Now if the Teutones and Cimbri had moved from north to south, they would have clashed with the Belgæ first and with the other Gauls afterwards. The converse, however, was the fact. It is right here to state, that the last observation may be explained away by supposing, either that the Teutones and Cimbri here meant may be a remnant of the confederation on their return, or else a portion that settled down in Gaul upon their way; or finally, a division that made a circle towards the place of their destination in a south-east direction. None of these however seem the plain and natural construction; and I would rather, if reduced to the alternative, read "Germania" instead of "Gallia" than acquiesce in the most probable of them.

Diodorus Siculus, without defining their locality, deals throughout with the Cimbri as a Gaulish tribe. Besides this, he gives us one of the elements of the assumed indistinctness of ideas in regard to their origin, viz. their hypothetical connexion with the Cimmerii. In this recognition of what might have been called the Cimmerian theory, he is followed by Strabo and Plutarch.—Diod. Sicul. v. 32. Strabo vii. Plutarch. Vit. Marii.

The next writer who mentions them is Strabo. In confirmation of the view taken above, this author places the Cimbri on the northernmost limit of the area geographically known to him, viz. beyond Gaul and in Germany, between the Rhine and the Elbe: τῶν δὲ Γερμάνων ὡς εἶπον, ὁὶ μὲν προσάρκτιοι παρηκοῦσι τῷ Ὠκεανῷ. Γνωρίζονται δ' ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκβολῶν τοῦ Ῥήνου λαβόντες τὴν ἀρχὴν μέχρι τοῦ Ἄλβιος. Τούτων δὲ εἰσὶ γνωριμώτατοι Σούγαμβροί τε καὶ Κίμβροι. Τὰ δὲ πέραν τοῦ Ἄλβιος τὰ πρὸς τῷ Ὠκεανῷ ἄγνωστα ἡμῖν ἐστιν. (B. iv.) Further proof that this was the frontier of the Roman world we get from the statement which soon follows, viz. that "thus much was known to the Romans from their successful wars, and that more would have been known had it not been for the injunction of Augustus forbidding his generals to cross the Elbe." (B. iv.)

Velleius Paterculus agrees with his contemporary Strabo. He places them beyond the Rhine and deals with them as Germans:—"tum Cimbri et Teutoni transcendere Rhenum, multis mox nostris suisque cladibus nobiles." (ii. 9.) "Effusa—immanis vis Germanarum gentium quibus nomen Cimbris et Teutonis erat." (Ibid. 12.)

From the Germania of Tacitus a well-known passage will be considered in the sequel. Tacitus' locality coincides with that of Strabo.

Ptolemy.—Now the author who most mentions in detail the tribes beyond the Elbe is also the author who most pushes back the Cimbri towards the north. Coincident with his improved information as to the parts southward, he places them at the extremity of the area known to him: Καῦχοι οἱ μείζονες μέχρι τού Ἀλβίου ποταμοῦ· ἐφεξῆς δὲ ἐπὶ αὔχενα τῆς Κιμβρικῆς Χερσονήσου Σάξονες, αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν Χερσόνησον· ὑπερ μὲν τοὺς Σάξονας, Σιγουλώνες ἀπὸ δυσμῶν· εἶτα Σαβαλίγγιοι εἶτα Κόβανδοι, ὑπὲρ οὓς Χάλοι· καὶ ἔτι ὑπερτάτους δυσμικώτεροι μὲν Φουνδούσιοι, ἀνατολικώτεροι δὲ Χαροῦδες, πάντων δὲ ἀρτικώτεροι Κύμβροι.—Ptolemæi Germania.

Such is the evidence of those writers, Greek or Roman, who deal with the local habitation of the Cimbri rather than with the general history of that tribe. As a measure of the indefinitude of their ideas, we have the confusion, already noticed, between the Cimbri and Cimmerii, on the parts of Diodorus, Strabo, and Plutarch. A better measure occurs in the following extract from Pliny, who not only fixes the Cimbri in three places at once, but also (as far as we can find any meaning in his language) removes them so far northward as Norway: "Alterum genus Ingævones, quorum pars Cimbri Teutoni ac Chaucorum gentes. Proximi Rheno Istævones, quorum pars Cimbri mediterranei." (iv. 14.) "Promontorium Cimbrorum excurrens in maria longe Peninsulam efficit quæ Carthis appellatur." Ibid. "Sevo Mons (the mountain-chains of Norway) immanem ad Cimbrorum usque promontorium efficit sinum, qui Codanus vocatur, refertus insulis, quarum clarissima Scandinavia, incompertæ magnitudinis." (iv. 13.) Upon confusion like this it is not considered necessary to expend further evidence. So few statements coincide, that under all views there must be a misconception somewhere; and of such misconception great must the amount be, to become more improbable than a national migration from Jutland to Italy.

Over and above, however, this particular question of evidence, there stands a second one; viz. the determination of the Ethnographical relations of the nations under consideration. This is the point as to whether the Cimbri conquered by Marius were Celts or Goths, akin to the Gauls, or akin to the Germans; a disputed point, and one which, for its own sake only, were worth discussing, even at the expense of raising a wholly independent question. Such however it is not. If the Cimbri were Celts, the improbability of their originating in the Cimbric Chersonese would be increased, and with it the amount of evidence required; since, laying aside other considerations, the natural unlikelihood of a large area being traversed by a mass of emigrants is greatly enhanced by the fact of any intermediate portion of that area being possessed by tribes as alien to each other as the Gauls and Germans. Hence therefore the fact of the Cimbri being Celts will (if proved) be considered as making against the probability of their origin in the Cimbric Chersonese; whilst if they be shown to be Goths, the difficulties of the supposition will be in some degree diminished. Whichever way this latter point is settled, something will be gained for the historian; since the supposed presence of Celts in the Cimbric Chersonese has complicated more than one question in ethnography.

Previous to proceeding in the inquiry it may be well to lay down once for all as a postulate, that whatever, in the way of ethnography, is proved concerning any one tribe of the Cimbro-Teutonic league, must be considered as proved concerning the remainder; since all explanations grounded upon the idea that one part was Gothic and another part Celtic have a certain amount of primâ facie improbability to set aside. The same conditions as to the burden of proof apply also to any hypotheses founded on the notion of retiring Cimbri posterior to the attempted invasion of Italy. On this point the list of authors quoted will not be brought below the time of Ptolemy. With the testimonies anterior to that writer, bearing upon the question of the ethnography, the attempt however will be made to be exhaustive. Furthermore, as the question in hand is not so much the absolute fact as to whether the Cimbri were Celts or Goths, but one as to the amount of evidence upon which we believe them to be either the one or the other, statements will be noticed under the head of evidence, not because they are really proofs, but simply because they have ever been looked upon as such. Beginning then with the Germanic origin of the Cimbro-Teutonic confederation, and dealing separately with such tribes as are separately mentioned, we first find the

Ambrones.—In the Anglo-Saxon poem called the Traveller's Song, there is a notice of a tribe called Ymbre, Ymbras, or Ymbran. Suhm, the historian of Denmark, has allowed himself to imagine that these represent the Ambrones, and that their name still exists in that of the island Amron of the coast of Sleswick, and perhaps in Amerland, a part of Oldenburg.—Thorpe's note on the Traveller's Song in the Codex Exoniensis.

Teutones.—In the way of evidence of there being Teutones amongst the Germans, over and above the associate mention of their names with that of the Cimbri, there is but little. They are not so mentioned either by Tacitus or Strabo. Ptolemy, however, mentions a) the Teutonarii, b) the Teutones: Τευτονοάριοι καὶ Ουίρουνοι—Φαραδεινῶν δὲ καὶ Συήβων, Τεύτονες καὶ Ἄμαρποι. Besides this, however, arguments have been taken from a) the meaning of the root teut=people (þiuda, M. G.; þeód, A. S.; diot, O. H. G.): b) the Saltus Teutobergius: c) the supposed connection of the present word Deut-sch=German with the classical word Teutones. These may briefly be disposed of.

a.) It is not unlikely for an invading nation to call themselves the nation, the nations, the people, &c. Neither, if the tribe in question had done so (presuming them to have been Germans or Goths), would the word employed be very unlike Teuton-es. Although the word þiud-a=nation or people, is generally strong in its declension (so making the plural þiud-ôs), it is found also in a weak form with its plural thiot-ûn=Teuton-. See Deutsche Grammatik, i. 630.

b.) The Saltus Teutobergius mentioned by Tacitus (Ann. i. 60) can scarcely have taken its name from a tribe, or, on the other hand, have given it to one. It means either the hill of the people, or the city of the people; according as the syllable -berg- is derived from báirgs=a hill, or from baúrgs=a city. In either case the compound is allowable, e. g. diot-wëc, public way, O. H. G.; thiod-scatho, robber of the people, O. S.; þëód-cyning, þeod-mearc, boundary of the nation, A. S.; þiód-land, þiód-vëgr, people's way, Icelandic;—Theud-e-mirus, Theud-e-linda, Theud-i-gotha, proper names (from þiud-): himil-bërac, velt-përac; friðu-përac, O. H. G.; himinbiörg, valbiörg, Icelandic (from báirgs=hill)—ascipurc, hasalpurc, saltzpurc, &c., O. H. G. (from baúrgs=city). The particular word diot-puruc=civitas magna occurs in O. H. G.—See Deutsche Grammatik, iii. p. 478.

c. Akin to this is the reasoning founded upon the connection (real or supposed) between the root Teut- in Teuton-, and the root deut- in Deut-sch. It runs thus. The syllable in question is common to the word Teut-ones, Teut-onicus, Theod-iscus, teud-iscus, teut-iscus, tût-iske, dût-iske, tiut-sche, deut-sch; whilst the word Deut-sch means German. As the Teut-ones were Germans, so were the Cimbri also. Now this line of argument is set aside by the circumstance that the syllable Teut- in Teut-ones and Teut-onicus, as the names of the confederates of the Cimbri, is wholly unconnected with the Teut- in theod-iscus, and Deut-sch. This is fully shown by Grimm in his dissertation on the words German and Dutch. In its oldest form the latter word meant popular, national, vernacular; it was an adjective applied to the vulgar tongue, or the vernacular German, in opposition to the Latin. In the tenth century the secondary form Teut-onicus came in vogue even with German writers. Whether this arose out of imitation of the Latin form Romanice, or out of the idea of an historical connection with the Teutones of the classics, is immaterial. It is clear that the present word deut-sch proves nothing respecting the Teutones. Perhaps, however, as early as the time of Martial the word Teutonicus was used in a general sense, denoting the Germans in general. Certain it is that before his time it meant the particular people conquered by Marius, irrespective of origin or locality.—See Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, i. p. 17, 3rd edit. Martial, xiv. 26, Teutonici capilli. Claudian. in Eutrop. i. 406, Teutonicum hostem.

The Cimbri.—Evidence to the Gothic origin of the Cimbri (treated separately) begins with the writers under Augustus and Tiberius.

Vell. Paterculus.—The testimony of this writer as to the affinities of the nations in question is involved in his testimony as to their locality, and, consequently, subject to the same criticism. His mention of them (as Germans) is incidental.

Strabo.—Over and above the references already made, Strabo has certain specific statements concerning the Cimbri: a.) That according to a tradition (which he does not believe) they left their country on account of an inundation of the sea. This is applicable to Germany rather than to Gaul. This liability to inundations must not, however, be supposed to indicate a locality in the Cimbric Chersonese as well as a German origin, since the coast between the Scheldt and Elbe is as obnoxious to the ocean as the coasts of Holstein, Sleswick and Jutland. b.) That against the German Cimbri and Teutones the Belgæ alone kept their ground—ὥστε μόνους (Βέλγας) ἀντέχειν πρὸς τὴν τῶν Γερμάνων ἔφοδον, Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων. (iv. 3.) This is merely a translation of Cæsar (see above) with the interpolation Γερμάνων. c.) That they inhabited their original country, and that they sent ambassadors to Augustus— καὶ γὰρ νῦν ἔχουσι τὴν χώραν ἣν εἶχον πρότερον καὶ ἕπεμπσαν τῷ Σεβαστῷ ιἑρώτατον παρ' αὐτοῖς, λέβητα, αἰτούμενοι φιλίαν καὶ ἀμνηστίαν τῶν ὑπουργμένων· τυχόντες δὲ ὧν ἠξίουν ἀφῇραν. (B. i.) Full weight must be given to the definite character of this statement.

Tacitus.—Tacitus coincides with Strabo, in giving to the Cimbri a specific locality, and in stating special circumstances of their history. Let full weight be given to the words of a writer like Tacitus; but let it also be remembered that he wrote from hearsay evidence, that he is anything rather than an independent witness, that his statement is scarcely reconcileable with those of Ptolemy and Cæsar, and that above all the locality which both he and Strabo give the Cimbri is also the locality of the Sicambri, of which latter tribe no mention is made by Tacitus, although their wars with the Romans were matters of comparatively recent history. For my own part, I think, that between a confusion of the Cimbri with the Cimmerii on the one hand, and of the Cimbri with the Sicambri on the other, we have the clue to the misconceptions assumed at the commencement of the paper. There is no proof that in the eyes of the writers under the Republic, the origin of the Cimbri was a matter of either doubt or speculation. Catulus, in the History of his Consulship, commended by Cicero (Brutus, xxxv.), and Sylla in his Commentaries, must have spoken of them in a straightforward manner as Gauls, otherwise Cicero and Sallust would have spoken of them less decidedly. (See Plutarch's Life of Marius, and note.) Confusion arose when Greek readers of Homer and Herodotus began to theorize, and this grew greater when formidable enemies under the name of Sicambri were found in Germany. It is highly probable that in both Strabo and Tacitus we have a commentary on the lines of Horace—

"Eumdem (with the Chauci, Catti, and Cherusci) Germaniæ sinum proximi Oceano Cimbri tenent, parva nunc civitas, sed gloria ingens: veterisque famæ lata vestigia manent, utrâque ripâ castra ac spatia, quorum ambitu nunc quoque metiaris molem manusque gentis, et tam magni exitus fidem—occasione discordiæ nostræ et civilium armorum, expugnatis legionum hibernis, etiam Gallias affectavêre; ac rursus pulsi, inde proximis temporibus triumphati magis quam victi sunt." (German. 38.)

Justin.—Justin writes—"Simul e Germaniâ Cimbros—inundâsse Italiam." Now this extract would be valuable if we were sure that the word Germania came from Justin's original, Trogus Pompeius; who was a Vocontian Gaul, living soon after the Cimbric defeat. To him, however, the term Germania must have been wholly unknown; since, besides general reasons, Tacitus says—"Germaniæ vocabulum recens et nuper additum: quoniam, qui primum Rhenum transgressi Gallos expulerint, ac nunc Tungri, tunc Germani vocati sint: ita nationis nomen, non gentis evaluisse paullatim, ut omnes, primum a victore ob metum, mox a seipsis invento nomine Germani vocarentur." Justin's interpolation of Germania corresponds with the similar one on the part of Strabo.

Such is the evidence for the Germanic origin of the Cimbri and Teutones, against which may now be set the following testimonies as to their affinity with the Celts, each tribe being dealt with separately.

The Ambrones.—Strabo mentions them along with the Tigurini, an undoubted Celtic tribe—Κατὰ τὸν πρὸς Ἄμβρωνας καὶ Τωϋγενοὺς πόλεμον.

Suetonius places them with the Transpadani—"per Ambronas et Transpadanos." (Cæsar, § 9.)

Plutarch mentions that their war-cries were understood and answered by the Ligurians. Now it is possible that the Ligurians were Celts, whilst it is certain that they were not Goths.

The Teutones.—Appian speaks of the Teutones having invaded Noricum, and this under the head Κέλτικα.

Florus calls one of the kings of the Teutones Teutobocchus, a name Celtic rather than Gothic.

Virgil has the following lines:—

Now this word cateia may be a provincialism from the neighbourhood of Sarraste. It may also (amongst other things) be a true Teutonic word. From what follows it will appear that this latter view is at least as likely as any other. The commentators state that it is vox Celtica. That this is true may be seen from the following forms—Irish: ga, spear, javelin; gaoth, ditto, a dart; goth, a spear (O'Reilly); gaothadh, a javelin; gadh, spear; gai, ditto; crann gaidh, spear-shaft (Begly)—Cornish: geu, gew, gu, gui=lance, spear, javelin, shaft (Pryce)—Breton: goas, goaff (Rostremer).

The Cimbri—The Teutones.—Of either the Cimbri separately or of the Cimbri and Teutones collectively, being of Gallic origin, we have, in the way of direct evidence, the testimonies exhibited above, viz. of Sallust, Cicero, Cæsar, Diodorus. To this may be added that of Dion Cassius, who not only had access to the contemporary accounts which spoke of them as Gauls, but also was enabled to use them critically, being possessed of information concerning Germany as well as France.

Of Appian the whole evidence goes one way, viz. that the tribes in question were Gauls. His expressions are: πλεῖστον τι καὶ μαχιμώτατον—χρῆμα Κελτῶν εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ τὴν Γαλατίαν εἰσέβαλε. (iv. 2.) In his book on Illyria he states that the Celts and Cimbri, along with the Illyrian tribe of the Autariæ, had, previous to the battle against Marius, attacked Delphi and suffered for their impiety. (Ἰλλυρ. δ. 4.)

Quintilian may be considered to give us upon the subject the notions of two writers—Virgil, and either Cæsar or Crassus. In dealing, however, with the words of Quintilian, it will be seen that there are two assumptions. That either Cæsar or Crassus considered the Cimbri to be Gauls we infer from the following passage:—"Rarum est autem, ut oculis subjicere contingat (sc. vituperationem), ut fecit C. Julius, qui cum Helvio Manciæ sæpius obstrepenti sibi diceret, jam ostendam, qualis sis: isque plane instaret interrogatione, qualem se tandem ostensurus esset, digito demonstravit imaginem Galli in scuto Mariano Cimbrico pictam, cui Mancia tum simillimus est visus. Tabernæ autem erant circum Forum, ac scutum illud signi gratiâ positum." Inst. Orat. vi. 3. 38. Pliny tells the story of Crassus (39. 4.). Although in this passage the word upon which the argument turns has been written galli, and translated cock, the current interpretation is the one given above.—Vid. not. ed. Gesner.

In the same author is preserved the epigram of Virgil's called Catalecta, and commented on by Ausonius of Bordeaux. Here we learn that T. Annius Cimber was a Gaul; whilst it is assumed that there was no other reason to believe that he was called Cimber than that of his being descended from some slave or freedman of that nation:—"Non appareat affectatio, in quam mirifice Virgilius,

Cimber hic fuit a quo fratrem necatum hoc Ciceronis dictum notatum est; Germanum Cimber occidit."—Inst. Orat. viii. 3. cum not.

Undoubtedly the pronunciation here ridiculed is that of the Gauls, and it is just possible that in it is foreshadowed the curtailed form that the Latin tongue in general puts on in the present French. Again, the slave whose courage failed him when ordered to slay Caius Marius is called both a Gaul and a Cimbrian by Plutarch, as well as by Lucan. In the latter writer we have probably but a piece of rhetoric (Pharsalia. lib. ii.)

Amongst tribes undoubtedly Gallic the Nervii claimed descent from the Teutones and Cimbri. The passage of Tacitus that connects the Nervii with the Germans connects them also with the Treveri. Now a well-known passage in St. Jerome tells us that the Treveri were Gauls:—Νέρβιοι ἠσαν δὲ Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων ἀπόγονοι.—Appian, iv. 1. 4. "Treveri et Nervii circa adfectationem Germanicæ originis ultrò ambitiosi sunt, tamquam, per hanc gloriam sanguinis, a similitudine et inertiâ Gallorum separentur." German. 28. Finally, in the Life of Marius by Plutarch we have dialogues between the Cimbri and the Romans. Now a Gallic interpreter was probable, but not so a German one.

Such are the notices bearing upon the ethnography of the Cimbri. Others occur, especially amongst the poets; of these little or no use can be made, for a reason indicated above. Justin speaks of embassies between Mithridates and the Cimbri. Suetonius connects the Cimbri with the Gallic Senones; he is writing however about Germany, so that his evidence, slight as it is, is neutralized. Theories grounded upon the national name may be raised on both sides; Cimbri may coincide with either the Germanic kempa=a warrior or champion, or with the Celtic Cymry=Cambrians. Equally equivocal seem the arguments drawn from the descriptions either of their physical conformation or their manners. The silence of the Gothic traditions as to the Cimbri being Germanic, proves more in the way of negative evidence than the similar silence of the Celtic ones, since the Gothic legends are the most numerous and the most ancient. Besides this, they deal very especially with genealogies, national and individual. The name of Bojorix, a Cimbric king mentioned in Epitome Liviana (lxvii.), is Celtic rather than Gothic, although in the latter dialects proper names ending in -ric, (Alaric, Genseric) frequently occur.

Measuring the evidence, which is in its character essentially cumulative, consisting of a number of details unimportant in themselves, but of value when taken in the mass, the balance seems to be in favour of the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones being Gauls rather than Germans, Celts rather than Goths.

An argument now forthcoming stands alone, inasmuch as it seems to prove two things at once, viz. not only the Celtic origin of the Cimbri, but, at the same time, their locality in the Chersonese. It is brought forward by Dr. Pritchard in his 'Physical History of Mankind,' and runs as follows:—(a.) It is a statement of Pliny that the sea in their neighbourhood was called by the Cimbri Morimarusa, or the dead sea=mare mortuum. (b.) It is a fact that in Celtic Welsh mor marwth=mare mortuum, morimarusa, dead sea. Hence the language of the Cimbric coast is to be considered as Celtic. Now the following facts invalidate this conclusion:—(1.) Putting aside the contradictions in Pliny's statement, the epithet dead is inapplicable to either the German Ocean or the Baltic. (2.) Pliny's authority was a writer named Philemon: out of the numerous Philemons enumerated by Fabricius, it is likely that the one here adduced was a contemporary of Alexander the Great; and it is not probable that at that time glosses from the Baltic were known in the Mediterranean. (3.) The subject upon which this Philemon wrote was the Homeric Poems. This, taken along with the geography of the time, makes it highly probable that the original Greek was not Κίμβροι, but Κιμμέριοι; indeed we are not absolutely sure of Pliny having written Cimbri. (4.) As applied to Cimmerian sea the epithet dead was applicable. (5.) The term Morimarusa=mare mortuum, although good Celtic, is better Slavonic, since throughout that stock of languages, as in many other of the Indo-European tongues (the Celtic and Latin included), the roots mor and mori mean sea and dead respectively:—"Septemtrionalis Oceanus, Amalchium eum Hecatæus appellat, a Paropamiso amne, qua Scythiam alluit, quod nomen ejus gentis linguâ significat congelatum, Philemon Morimarusam a Cimbris (qu. Cimmeriis) vocari scribit: hoc est mare mortuum usque ad promontorium Rubeas, ultra deinde Cronium." (13.)

One point, however, still remains: it may be dealt with briefly, but it should not be wholly overlooked, viz. the question, whether over and above the theories as to the location of the Cimbri in the Cimbric Chersonese, there is reason to believe, on independent grounds, that Celtic tribes were the early inhabitants of the peninsula in question? If such were actually the case, all that has preceded would, up to a certain point, be invalidated. Now I know no sufficient reasons for believing such to be the case, although there are current in ethnography many insufficient ones.

1. In the way of Philology, it is undoubtedly true that words common to the Celtic tribes occur in the Danish of Jutland, and in the Frisian and Low German of Sleswick and Holstein; but there is no reason to consider that they belong to an aboriginal Celtic tribe. The à priori probability of Celts in the peninsula involves hypotheses in ethnography which are, to say the least, far from being generally recognized. The evidence as to the language of aborigines derived from the significance of the names of old geographical localities is wanting for the Cimbric Chersonese.

2. No traditions, either Scandinavian or German, point towards an aboriginal Celtic population for the localities in question.

3. There are no satisfactory proofs of such in either Archæology or Natural History. A paper noticed by Dr. Pritchard of Professor Eschricht's upon certain Tumuli in Jutland states, that the earliest specimens of art (anterior to the discovery of metals), as well as the character of the tumuli themselves, have a Celtic character. He adds, however, that the character of the tumuli is as much Siberian as Celtic. The early specimens of art are undoubtedly like similar specimens found in England. It happens, however, that such things are in all countries more or less alike. In Professor Siebold's museum at Leyden, stone-axes from tumuli in Japan and Jutland are laid side by side, for the sake of comparison, and between them there is no perceptible difference. The oldest skulls in these tumuli are said to be other than Gothic. They are, however, Finnic rather than Celtic.

4. The statement in Tacitus (German. 44.), that a nation on the Baltic called the Æstii spoke a language somewhat akin to the British, cannot be considered as conclusive to the existence of Celts in the North of Germany. Any language, not German, would probably so be denoted. Such might exist in the mother-tongue of either the Lithuanic or the Esthonian.

It is considered that in the foregoing pages the following propositions are either proved or involved:—1. That the Cimbri conquered by Marius came from either Gaul or Switzerland, and that they were Celts. 2. That the Teutones and Ambrones were equally Celtic with the Cimbri. 3. That no nation north of the Elbe was known to Republican Rome. 4. That there is no evidence of Celtic tribes ever having existed north of the Elbe. 5. That the epithet Cimbrica applied to the Chersonesus proves nothing more in respect to the inhabitants of that locality than is proved by words like West Indian and North-American Indian. 6. That in the word cateia we are in possession of a new Celtic gloss. 7. That in the term Morimarusa we are in possession of a gloss at once Cimmerian and Slavonic. 8. That for any positive theory as to the Cimbro-Teutonic league we have at present no data, but that the hypothesis that would reconcile the greatest variety of statements would run thus: viz. that an organized Celtic confederation conterminous with the Belgæ, the Ligurians, and the Helvetians descended with its eastern divisions upon Noricum, and with its western ones upon Provence.

JANUARY 1859.

(1)

In this paper the notice of the Monumentum Ancyranum is omitted. It is CIMBRIQVE ET CHRIIDES ET SEMNONES ET EJVSDEM TRACTVS ALII GERMANORVM POPVLI PER LEGATOS AMICITIAM MEAM ET POPVLI ROMANI PETIERVNT. This seems to connect itself with Strabo's notice. It may also connect itself with that of Tacitus. Assuming the CHARIIDES to be the Harudes, and the Harudes to be the Cherusci (a doctrine for which I have given reasons in my edition of the Germania) the position of the Cimbri in the text of Tacitus is very nearly that of them in the Inscription. In the inscription, the order is Cimbri, Harudes, Semnones; in Tacitus, Cherusci, Cimbri, Semnones. In both cases the 3 names are associated.

(2)

I would now modify the proposition with which the preceding dissertation concludes, continuing, however, to hold the main doctrine of the text, viz. the fact of the Cimbri having been unknown in respect to their name and locality and, so, having been pushed northwards, and more northwards still, as fresh areas were explored without supplying an undoubted and unequivocal origin for them.

I think that the Ambrones, the Tigurini, and the Teutones were Gauls of Helvetia, and South Eastern Gallia, and that the alliance between them and the Cimbri (assuming it to be real) is primâ facie evidence of the latter being Galli also. But it is no more.

That the Cimbri were the Eastern members of the confederation seems certain. More than one notice connects them with Noricum. Here they may have been native. They may also have been intrusive.

Holding that the greater part of Noricum was Slavonic, and that almost all the country along its northern and eastern frontier was the same, I see my way to the Cimbri having been Slavonic also. That they were Germans is out of the question. Gauls could hardly have been so unknown and mysterious to the Romans. Gaul they knew well, and Germany sufficiently—yet no where did they find Cimbri.

The evidence of Posidonius favours this view. "He" writes Strabo "does not unreasonably conceive that these Cimbri being predatory and wandering might carry their expeditions as far as the Mæotis, and that the Bosporus might, from them, take its name of Cimmerian, i. e. Cimbrian, the Greeks calling the Cimbri Cimmerii. He says that the Boii originally inhabited the Hercynian Forest, that the Cimbri attacked them, that they were repulsed, that they then descended on the Danube, and the country of the Scordisci who are Galatæ; thence upon the Taurisci," who "are also Galatæ, then upon the Helvetians &c."—Strabo. 7, p. 293.

For a fuller explanation of the doctrine which makes the Cimbri possible Slavonians see my Edition of Prichard's origin of the Celtic nations—Supplementary Chapter—Ambrones, Tigurini, Teutones, Boii, Slavonic hypothesis &c.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,

FEBRUARY 8, 1850.

The current opinion, that a great portion of the area now occupied by Slavonians, and a still greater portion so occupied in the ninth and tenth centuries, were, in the times of Cæsar and Tacitus, either German, or something other than what it is found to be at the beginning of the period of authentic and contemporary history, has appeared so unsatisfactory to the present writer, that he has been induced to consider the evidence on which it rests. What (for instance) are the grounds for believing that, in the first century, Bohemia was not just as Slavonic as it is now? What the arguments in favour of a Germanic population between the Elbe and Vistula in the second?

The fact that, at the very earliest period when any definite and detailed knowledge of either of the parts in question commences, both are as little German as the Ukraine is at the present moment, is one which no one denies. How many, however, will agree with the present writer in the value to be attributed to it, is another question. For his own part, he takes the existence of a given division of the human race (whether Celtic, Slavonic, Gothic or aught else) on a given area, as a sufficient reason for considering it to have been indigenous or aboriginal to that area, until reasons be shown to the contrary. Gratuitous as this postulate may seem in the first instance, it is nothing more than the legitimate deduction from the rule in reasoning which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily. Displacements therefore, conquests, migrations, and the other disturbing causes are not to be assumed, merely for the sake of accounting for assumed changes, but to be supported by specific evidence; which evidence, in its turn, must have a ratio to the probability or the improbability of the disturbing causes alleged. These positions seem so self-evident, that it is only by comparing the amount of improbabilities which are accepted with the insufficiency of the testimony on which they rest, that we ascertain, from the extent to which they have been neglected, the necessity of insisting upon them.

The ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is primâ facie evidence of a similar ethnological condition at a previous one. The testimony of a writer as to the ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is also primâ facie evidence of such a condition being a real one; since even the worst authorities are to be considered correct until reasons are shown for doubting them.

It now remains to see how far these two methods are concordant or antagonistic for the area in question; all that is assumed being, that when we find even a good writer asserting that at one period (say the third century) a certain locality was German, whereas we know that at a subsequent one (say the tenth) it was other than German, it is no improper scepticism to ask, whether it is more likely that the writer was mistaken, or that changes have occurred in the interval; in other words, if error on the one side is not to be lightly assumed, neither are migrations, &c. on the other. Both are likely, or unlikely, according to the particular case in point. It is more probable that an habitually conquering nation should have displaced an habitually conquered one, than that a bad writer should be wrong. It is more likely that a good writer should be wrong than that an habitually conquered nation should have displaced an habitually conquering one.

The application of criticism of this sort materially alters the relations of the Celtic, Gothic, Roman and Slavonic populations, giving to the latter a prominence in the ancient world much more proportionate to their present preponderance as a European population than is usually admitted.

Beginning with the south-western frontier of the present Slavonians, let us ask what are the reasons against supposing the population of Bohemia to have been in the time of Cæsar other than what it is now, i. e. Slavonic.

In the first place, if it were not so, it must have changed within the historical period. If so, when? No writer has ever grappled with the details of the question. It could scarcely have been subsequent to the development of the Germanic power on the Danube, since this would be within the period of annalists and historians, who would have mentioned it. As little is it likely to have been during the time when the Goths and Germans, victorious everywhere, were displacing others rather than being displaced themselves.

The evidence of the language is in the same direction. Whence could it have been introduced? Not from the Saxon frontier, since there the Slavonic is Polish rather than Bohemian. Still less from the Silesian, and least of all from the Bavarian. To have developed its differential characteristics, it must have had either Bohemia itself as an original locality, or else the parts south and east of it.

We will now take what is either an undoubted Slavonic locality, or a locality in the neighbourhood of Slavonians, i. e. the country between the rivers Danube and Theiss and that range of hills which connect the Bakonyer-wald with the Carpathians, the country of the Jazyges. Now as Jazyg is a Slavonic word, meaning speech or language, we have, over and above the external evidence which makes the Jazyges Sarmatian, internal evidence as well; evidence subject only to one exception, viz. that perhaps the name in question was not native to the population which it designated, but only a term applied by some Slavonic tribe to some of their neighbours who might or might not be Slavonic. I admit that this is possible, although the name is not of the kind that would be given by one tribe to another different from itself. Admitting, however, this, it still leaves a Slavonic population in the contiguous districts; since, whether borne by the people to whom it was applied or not, Jazyg is a Slavonic gloss from the Valley of the Tibiscus.

Next comes the question as to the date of this population. To put this in the form least favourable to the views of the present writer, is to state that the first author who mentions a population in these parts, either called by others or calling itself Jazyges, is a writer so late as Ptolemy, and that he adds to it the qualifying epithet Metanastæ (Μετανάσται), a term suggestive of their removal from some other area, and of the recent character of their arrival on the Danube. Giving full value to all this, there still remains the fact of primary importance in all our investigations on the subject in question, viz. that in the time of Ptolemy (at least) there were Slavonians on (or near) the river Theiss.

At present it is sufficient to say that there are no à priori reasons for considering these Jazyges as the most western of the branch to which they belonged, since the whole of the Pannonians may as easily be considered Slavonic as aught else. They were not Germans. They were not Celts; in which case the common rules of ethnological criticism induce us to consider them as belonging to the same class with the population conterminous to them; since unless we do this, we must assume a new division of the human species altogether; a fact, which, though possible, and even probable, is not lightly to be taken up.

So much for the à priori probabilities: the known facts by no means traverse them. The Pannonians, we learn from Dio, were of the same class with the Illyrians, i. e. the northern tribes of that nation. These must have belonged to one of three divisions; the Slavonic, the Albanian, or some division now lost. Of these, the latter is not to be assumed, and the first is more probable than the second. Indeed, the more we make the Pannonians and Illyrians other than Slavonic, the more do we isolate the Jazyges; and the more we isolate these, the more difficulties we create in a question otherwise simple.

That the portion of Pannonia to the north of the Danube (i. e. the north-west portion of Hungary, or the valley of the Waag and Gran) was different from the country around the lake Peiso (Pelso), is a position, which can only be upheld by considering it to be the country of the Quadi, and the Quadi to have been Germanic;—a view, against which there are numerous objections.

Now, here re-appears the term Daci; so that we must recognise the important fact, that east of the Jazyges there are the Dacians (and Getæ) of the Lower, and west of the Jazyges the Daci of the Upper Danube. These must be placed in the same category, both being equally either Slavonic or non-Slavonic.

a. Of these alternatives, the first involves the following real or apparent difficulty, i. e. that, if the Getæ are what the Daci are, the Thracians are what the Getæ are. Hence, if all three be Slavonic, we magnify the area immensely, and bring the Slavonians of Thrace in contact with the Greeks of Macedonia. Granted. But are there any reasons against this? So far from there being any such in the nature of the thing itself, it is no more than what is actually the case at the present moment.

b. The latter alternative isolates the Jazyges, and adds to the difficulties created by their ethnological position, under the supposition that they are the only Slavonians of the parts in question; since if out-lyers to the area (exceptional, so to say), they must be either invaders from without, or else relics of an earlier and more extended population. If they be the former, we can only bring them from the north of the Carpathian mountains (a fact not in itself improbable, but not to be assumed, except for the sake of avoiding greater difficulties); if the latter, they prove the original Slavonic character of the area.

The present writer considers the Daci then (western and eastern) as Slavonic, and the following passage brings them as far west as the Maros or Morawe, which gives the name to the present Moravians, a population at once Slavonic and Bohemian:—"Campos et plana Jazyges Sarmatæ, montes vero et saltus pulsi ab his Daci ad Pathissum amnem a Maro sive Duria ... tenent."—Plin. iv. 12.

The evidence as to the population of Moravia and North-eastern Hungary being Dacian, is Strabo's Γέγονε ... τῆς χόρας μερισμὸς συμμένων παλαιοῦ· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Δάκους προσαγορεύουσι, τοὺς δὲ Γέτας, Γέτας μὲν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον κεκλιμένους, καὶ πρὸς τὲν ἕω, Δάκους δὲ τοὺς εἰς τἀνάντια πρὸς Γερμανίαν καὶ τὰς τοῦ Ἴστρου πήγας.—From Zeuss, in vv. Getæ, Daci.

In Moravia we have as the basis of argument, an existing Slavonic population, speaking a language identical with the Bohemian, but different from the other Slavonic languages, and (as such) requiring a considerable period for the evolution of its differential characters. This brings us to Bohemia. At present it is Slavonic. When did it begin to be otherwise? No one informs us on this point. Why should it not have been so ab initio, or at least at the beginning of the historical period for these parts? The necessity of an answer to this question is admitted; and it consists chiefly (if not wholly) in the following arguments;—a. those connected with the term Marcomanni; b. those connected with the term Boiohemum.

a. Marcomanni.—This word is so truly Germanic, and so truly capable of being translated into English, that those who believe in no other etymology whatever may believe that Marc-o-manni, or Marchmen, means the men of the (boundaries) marches; and without overlooking either the remarks of Mr. Kemble on the limited nature of the word mearc, when applied to the smaller divisions of land, or the doctrine of Grimm, that its primary signification is wood or forest, it would be an over-refinement to adopt any other meaning for it in the present question than that which it has in its undoubted combinations, Markgrave, Altmark, Mittelmark, Ukermark, and the Marches of Wales and Scotland. If so, it was the name of a line of enclosing frontier rather than of an area enclosed; so that to call a country like the whole of Bohemia, Marcomannic, would be like calling all Scotland or all Wales the Marches.

Again, as the name arose on the western, Germanic or Gallic side of the March, it must have been the name of an eastern frontier in respect to Gaul and Germany; so that to suppose that there were Germans on the Bohemian line of the Marcomanni, is to suppose that the march was no mark (or boundary) at all, at least in an ethnological sense. This qualification involves a difficulty which the writer has no wish to conceal; a march may be other than an ethnological division. It may be a political one. In other words, it may be like the Scottish Border, rather than like the Welsh and the Slavono-Germanic marches of Altmark, Mittelmark and Ukermark. At any rate, the necessity for a march being a line of frontier rather than a large compact kingdom, is conclusive against the whole of Bohemia having been Germanic because it was Marcomannic.

b. The arguments founded on the name Boiohemum are best met by showing that the so-called country (home) of the Boii was not Bohemia but Bavaria. This will be better done in the sequel than now. At present, however, it may be as well to state that so strong are the facts in favour of Boiohemum and Baiovarii meaning, not the one Bohemia and the other Bavaria, but one of the two countries, that Zeuss, one of the strongest supporters of the doctrine of an originally Germanic population in Bohemia, applies both of them to the firstnamed kingdom; a circumstance which prepares us for expecting, that if the names fit the countries to which they apply thus loosely, Boiohemum may as easily be Bavaria, as the country of the Baiovarii be Bohemia; in other words, that we have a convertible form of argument.

(1)

Too much stress is, perhaps, laid on the name Jazyges. The fact of the word Jaszag in Magyar meaning a bowman complicates it. The probability, too, of the word for Language being the name of a nation is less than it is ought to be, considering the great extent to which it is admitted.

(2)

The statements respecting Bohemia are over-strong. Some portion of it was, probably, Marcomannic and German. The greater part, however, of the original Boio-hem-um, or home of the Boii, I still continue to give to the country of the Boian occupants—Baio-var-ii=Bavaria; the word itself being a compound of the same kind as Cant-wære=inhabitants of Kent. (See Zeuss in v. Baiovarii).

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

MARCH 8, 1850.

The portion of the Slavonic frontier which will be considered this evening is the north-western, beginning with the parts about the Cimbric peninsula, and ending at the point of contact between the present kingdoms of Saxony and Bohemia; the leading physical link between the two extreme populations being the Elbe.

For this tract, the historical period begins in the ninth century. The classification which best shows the really westerly disposition of the Slavonians of this period, and which gives us the fullest measure of the extent to which, at that time at least, they limited the easterly extension of the Germans, is to divide them into—a. the Slavonians of the Cimbric peninsula; b. the Slavonians of the right bank of the Elbe; c. the Slavonians of the left bank of the Elbe; the first and last being the most important, as best showing the amount of what may be called the Slavonic protrusion into the accredited Germanic area.

a. The Slavonians of the Cimbric Peninsula.—Like the Slavonians that constitute the next section, these are on the right bank of the Elbe; but as they are north of that river rather than east of it, the division is natural.

The Wagrians.—Occupants of the country between the Trave and the upper portion of the southern branch of the Eyder.

The Polabi.—Conterminous with the Wagrians and the Saxons of Sturmar, from whom they were separated by the river Bille.

b. Slavonians of the right bank of the Elbe.—The Obodriti.—This is a generic rather than a specific term; so that it is probable that several of the Slavonic populations about to be noticed may be but subdivisions of the great Obotrit section. The same applies to the divisions already noticed—the Wagri and Polabi: indeed the classification is so uncertain, that we have, for these parts and times, no accurate means of ascertaining whether we are dealing with sub-divisions or cross-divisions of the Slavonians. At any rate the word Obotriti was one of the best-known of the whole list; so much so, that it is likely, in some cases, to have equalled in import the more general term Wend. The varieties of orthography and pronunciation may be collected from Zeuss (in voce), where we find Obotriti, Obotritæ, Abotriti, Abotridi, Apodritæ, Abatareni, Apdrede, Abdrede, Abtrezi. Furthermore, as evidence of the generic character of the word, we find certain East-Obotrits (Oster-Abtrezi), conterminous with the Bulgarians, as well as the North-Obotrits (Nort-Abtrezi), for the parts in question. These are the northern districts of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, from the Trave to the Warnow, chiefly along the coast. Zeuss makes Schwerin their most inland locality. The Descriptio Civitatum gives them fifty-three towns.

In the more limited sense of the term, the Obotrits are not conterminous with any German tribe, being separated by the Wagri and Polabi. Hence when Alfred writes Norðan Eald-Seaxum is Apdrede, he probably merges the two sections last-named in the Obotritic.

Although not a frontier population, the Obotrits find place in the present paper. They show that the Wagri and Polabi were not mere isolated and outlying portions of the great family to which they belonged, but that they were in due continuity with the main branches of it.

Varnahi.—This is the form which the name takes in Adam of Bremen. It is also that of the Varni, Varini, and Viruni of the classical writers; as well as of the Werini of the Introduction to the Leges Angliorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum. Now whatever the Varini of Tacitus may have been, and however much the affinities of the Werini were with the Angli, the Varnahi of Adam of Bremen are Slavonic.

c. Cis-Albian Slavonians.—Beyond the boundaries of the Duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, the existence of Germans on the right bank of the Elbe is nil.

With Altmark the evidence of a Slavonic population changes, and takes strength. The present Altmark is not German, as Kent is Saxon, but only as Cornwall is, i. e. the traces of the previous Slavonic population are like the traces of the Celtic occupants of Cornwall, the rule rather than the exception. Most of the geographical names in Altmark are Slavonic, the remarkable exception being the name of the Old March itself.

The Slavono-German frontier for the parts south of Altmark becomes so complex as to require to stand over for future consideration. All that will be done at present is to indicate the train of reasoning applicable here, and applicable along the line of frontier. If such was the state of things in the eighth and ninth centuries, what reason is there for believing it to have been otherwise in the previous ones? The answer is the testimony of Tacitus and others in the way of external, and certain etymologies, &c. in the way of internal, evidence. Without at present saying anything in the way of disparagement to either of these series of proofs, the present writer, who considers that the inferences which have generally been drawn from them are illegitimate, is satisfied with exhibiting the amount of à priori improbability which they have to neutralize. If, when Tacitus wrote, the area between the Elbe and Vistula was not Slavonic, but Gothic, the Slavonians of the time of Charlemagne must have immigrated between the second and eighth centuries; must have done so, not in parts, but for the whole frontier; must have, for the first and last time, displaced a population which has generally been the conqueror rather than the conquered; must have displaced it during one of the strongest periods of its history; must have displaced it everywhere, and wholly; and (what is stranger still) that not permanently—since from the time in question, those same Germans, who between A.D. 200 and A.D. 800 are supposed to have always retreated before the Slavonians, have from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1800 always reversed the process and encroached upon their former dispossessors.

(1)

The details of the Slavonic area to the south of Altmark are as follows.

Brandenburg, at the beginning of the historical period, was Slavonic, and one portion of it, the Circle of Cotbus, is so at the present moment. It is full of geographical names significant in the Slavonic languages. Of Germans to the East of the Elbe there are no signs until after the time of Charlemagne. But the Elbe is not even their eastern boundary. The Saale is the river which divides the Slavonians from the Thuringians—not only at the time when its drainage first comes to be known, but long afterwards. More than this, there were, in the 11th and 12th centuries, Slavonians in Thuringia, Slavonians in Franconia—facts which can be found in full in Zeuss vv. Fränkische und Thüringische Slawen—(Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme).

Saxony brings us down to the point with which the preceding paper concluded viz: the frontier of Bohemia. This was in the same category with Brandenburg. In Leipzig Slavonic was spoken A. D. 1327. In Lusatia it is spoken at the present moment. When were the hypothetical Germans of all these parts eliminated, or (if not eliminated) amalgamated with a population of intruders who displaced their language, not on one spot or on two, but every where?

If the Slavonians of the time of Charlemagne were indigenous to the western portion of their area, they were, a fortiori, indigenous to the eastern. At any rate, few who hold that the German populations of Bohemia, Mecklenburg, Luneburg, Altmark, Brandenburg, Saxony, Silesia, and Lusatia are recent, will doubt their being so in Pomerania.

In his Edition of the Germania of Tacitus the only Germans east of the Elbe, Saale and the Fichtel Gebirge, recognised by the present writer are certain intrusive Marcomanni; who (by hypothesis) derived from Thuringia, reached the Danube by way of the valley of Naab, and pressed eastward to some point unknown—but beyond the southern frontier of Moravia. Here they skirted the Slavonic populations of the north, and formed to their several areas the several Marches from which they took their name.

As far as we have gone hitherto we have gone in the direction of the doctrine that the Slavonians of Franconia, Thuringia, Saxony, Altmark, Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Holstein, and Brandenburg &c. were all old occupants of the districts in which they were found in the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries; also that the present Czekhs of Bohemia and Moravia, the present Serbs of Lusatia and Brandenburg, the present Kassubs of Pomerania, and the present Slovaks of Hungary represent aboriginal populations. We now ask how far this was the case with the frontagers of North-eastern Italy, and the Slavonians of Carinthia and Carniola. The conclusion to which we arrive in respect to these will apply to those of Bosnia, Servia, and Dalmatia.

That the Carinthians and Carniolans were the descendants of the Carni of the Alpes Carnicæ would never have been doubted but for the following statements—"The Krobati who now occupy the parts in the direction of Delmatia are derived from the Unbaptized Krobati, the Krovati Aspri so-called; who dwelt on the otherside of Turkey, and near France, conterminous with the Unbaptized Slaves—i. e. the Serbi. The word Krobati is explained by the dialect of the Slaves. It means the possessors of a large country"—Constantinus Porphyrogeneta—De Adm. Imp. 31. ed. Par. p. 97.

Again—"But the Krobati dwelt then in the direction of Bagivareia" (Bavaria) "where the Belokrobati are now. One tribe (γενεὰ) separated. Five brothers led them. Clukas, and Lobelos, and Kosentes, and Muklô, and Krobatos, and two sisters, Tuga and Buga. These with their people came to Delmatia—The other Krobati stayed about France, and are called Belokrobati, i. e. Aspri Krobati, having their own leader. They are subject to Otho the great king of France and Saxony. They continue Unbaptized, intermarrying" (συμπενθερίας καὶ ἀγάπας ἔχοντες) "with the Turks"—c. 30. p. 95.—The statement that the Kroatians of Dalmatia came from the Asprocroatians is repeated. The evidence, however, lies in the preceding passages; upon which it is scarcely necessary to remark that bel=white in Slavonic, and aspro=white in Romaic.

So much for the Croatians. The evidence that the Servians were in the same category, is also Constantine's.—"It must be understood that the Servians are from the Unbaptized Servians, called also Aspri, beyond Turkey, near a place called Boiki, near France—just like the Great Crobatia, also Unbaptized and White. Thence, originally, came the Servians"—c. 32. p. 99.

In the following passages the evidence improves—"The same Krobati came as suppliants to the Emperor Heraclius, before the Servians did the same, at the time of the inroads of the Avars—By his order these same Krobati having conquered the Avars, expelled them, occupied the country they occupied, and do so now"—c. 31. p. 97.

Their country extended from the River Zentina to the frontier of Istria and, thence, to Tzentina and Chlebena in Servia. Their towns were Nona, Belogradon, Belitzein, Scordona, Chlebena, Stolpon, Tenen, Kori, Klaboca—(c. 31. p. 97. 98). Their country was divided into 11. Supan-rics (Ζουπανιας).

They extended themselves. From the Krobati "who came into Dalmatia a portion detached themselves, and conquered the Illyrian country and Pannonia" (c. 30 p. 95).

The further notices of the Servians are of the same kind. Two brothers succeeded to the kingdom, of which one offered his men and services to Heraclius, who placed them at first in the Theme Thessalonica, where they grew homesick, crossed the Danube about Belgrade, repented, turned back, were placed in Servia, in the parts occupied by the Avars, and, finally, were baptized. (c. 32. p. 99.)

It is clear that all this applies to the Slavonians of Croatia, Bosnia, Servia, and Slavonia—i. e. the triangle at the junction of the Save and Danube. It has no application to Istria, Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria. Have any writers so applied it? Some have, some have not. More than this, many who have never applied it argue just as if they had. Zeuss, especially stating that the Slavonic population of the parts in question was earlier than that of Croatia, still, makes it recent. Why? This will soon be seen. At present, it is enough to state that it is not by the direct application of the passage in Porphyrogeneta that the antiquity of the Slavonic character of the Carinthians, Carniolans, and Istrians is impugned.

The real reason lies in the fact of the two populations being alike in other respects. What is this worth? Something—perhaps, much. Which way, however, does it tell? That depends on circumstances. If the Croatians be recent, the Carinthians should be so too. But what if the evidence make the Carinthians old? Then, the recency of the Croatians is impugned. Now Zeuss (vv. Alpenslawen, Carantani, and Creinarii) distinctly shews that there were Slavonians in the present districts before the time of Heraclius—not much before, but still before. Why not much? "They came only a little before", inasmuch as Procopius "gives us nothing but the old names Carni, and Norici". But what if these were Slavonic?

The present meaning of the root Carn- is March, just as it is in U-krain. In a notice of the year A. D. 974 we find "quod Carn-iola vocatur, et quod vulgo vocatur Creina marcha", the Slavonic word being translated into German. Such a fact, under ordinary circumstances would make the Carn- in Alpes Carn-icæ, a Slavonic gloss; as it almost certainly is. I do not, however, know the etymologist who has claimed it. Zeuss does not—though it is from his pages that I get the chief evidence of its being one.

Croatia, Bosnia, and Servia now come under the application of the Constantine text.

Let it pass for historical; notwithstanding the length of time between its author and the events which it records.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the high probability of Crobyzi, a word used in Servia before the Christian æra, being the same as Krobati.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the chances that it is only an inference from the presence of an allied population on both sides of Pannonia.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the leadership of the five brothers (one the eponymus Krobatos) and the two sisters.

Let it do this, and then let us ask how it is to be interpreted. Widely or strictly? We see what stands against it viz: the existing conditions of three mountainous regions exhibiting the signs of being the occupancies of an aboriginal population as much as any countries on the face of the earth.

What then is the strict interpretation? Even this—that Heraclius introduced certain Croatians from the north into the occupancies of the dispossessed Avars apparently as military colonies. Does this mean that they were the first of their lineage? By no means. The late emperor of Russian planted Slavonic colonies of Servians in Slavonic Russia. Metal upon metal is false heraldry; but it does not follow that Slave upon Slave is bad ethnology.

With such a full realization of the insufficiency of the evidence which makes Bohemia, Carinthia, Servia &c. other than Slavonic ab initio, we may proceed to the ethnology of the parts to the west, and southwest—the Tyrol, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg. In respect to these, we may either distribute them among the populations of the frontier, or imagine for them some fresh division of the population of Europe, once existent, but now extinct. We shall not, however, choose this latter alternative unless we forget the wholesome rule which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily.

Let us say, then, that the southern frontier of the division represented by the Slavonians of Carniola was originally prolonged until it touched that of the northernmost Italians. In like manner, let the Styrian and Bohemian Slaves extend till they meet the Kelts of Gaul. With this general expression I take leave of this part of the subject—a subject worked out in detail elsewhere (Edition of Prichard's Eastern origin of the Celtic Nation, and The Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes,—Native Races of the Russian Empire &c.).

The northern and eastern frontiers of the Slavonians involve those of (1) Ugrians, (2) the Lithuanians.

In respect to the former, I think a case can be made out for continuing the earliest occupancy of the populations represented by the Liefs of Courland, and the Rahwas of Estonia to the Oder at least; perhaps further. This means along the coast. Their extent inland is a more complex question. The so called Fin hypothesis in its full form is regarded, by the present writer, as untenable. But between this and a vast extension of the Fin area beyond its present bounds there is a great difference. It is one thing to connect the Basks of Spain with the Khonds of India; another to bring the Estonians as far west as the Oder, or even as the Elbe. It is one thing to make an allied population occupant of Sweden, Spain, and Ireland; another to refer the oldest population of western Russia to the stock to which the eastern undeniably belongs. This latter is a mere question of more or less. The other is a difference, not of kind, but of degree. With this distinction we may start from the most southern portion of the present Ugrian area; which is that of the Morduins in the Government of Penza. Or we may start from the most western which is that of the Liefs of Courland. What are the traces of Fin occupancy between these and the Vistula and Danube—the Vistula westward, the Danube on the South. How distinct are they? And of what kind? We cannot expect them to be either obvious or numerous. Say that they are the vestiges of a state of things that has passed away a thousand years, and we only come to the time of Nestor. Say that they are doubly so old, and we have only reached the days of Herodotus; in whose time there had been a sufficient amount of encroachment and displacement to fill the southern Governments of Russia with Scythians of Asiatic origin. The Britons were the occupants of Kent at the beginning of our æra. How faint are the traces of them. We must regulate, then, our expectations according to the conditions of the question. We must expect to find things just a little more Ugrian than aught else.

From that part of Russia which could, even a thousand years ago, exhibit an indigenous population we must subtract all those districts which were occupied by the Scythians. We do not know how much comes under this category. We only know that the Agathyrsi were in Hungary, and that they were, probably, intruders. We must substract the Governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Taurida at the very least—much of each if not all. That this is not too much is evident from the expressed opinions of competent investigators. Francis Newman carries the Scythia of Herodotus as far as Volhynia, and, in Volhynia, there were Cumanian Turks as late as the 11th century. Say, however that the aborigines were not Fins. At any rate they were not the ancestors of the present Russians—and it is the original area of these that we are now considering. In the North there were Fins when Novorogod, and in the East Fins when Moscow, was founded. In Koursk, writes Haxthausen, there is a notable difference in the physiognomy of the inhabitants; the features being Fin rather than Slavonic.

I now notice the name of Roxolani. Prichard and, doubtless, others besides see in this a Fin gloss, the termination -lani being the termination -lainen in Suomelainen, Hamelainen and several other Fin words, i. e. a gentile termination. It does not follow from this that the people themselves were Fins. It only follows that they were in a Fin neigbourhood. Some one who spoke a language in which the form in -lain- was used to denote the name of a people was on their frontier, and this frontier must have been South of that of the Roxolani themselves—else how did it come to the ears of the Greeks and Romans? If this were not the case, then was the name native, and the Roxolani were Ugrian. In either case we have a Fin gloss, and a Fin locality suggested by it. Now the country of the Roxolani either reached, or approached, the Danube.

In the account of Herodotus a population named Neuri occupied a marshy district at the back of the Scythian area; probably the marshes of Pinsk. This is, perhaps, a Fin gloss. The town of Narym in the Ostiak country takes its name from the marshes round it.

The Lithuanian language avoids the letter f.—using p. instead; sometimes m. The Greek φιλεω is mylu in Lithuanic. The name, then, that a Fin locality would take in the mouth of a Lithuanian would not be Finsk but Minsk, or Pinsk, and these are the names we find on what I think was, at one time, the Finno-Lithuanic frontier.

I should add that the Kour- in Kour-sk seems to be the Kour- in Kour-land, the Kor- in Kor-alli (a Fin population of the Middle Ages), and the Car- in the eminently, and almost typically, Fin Karelians.

This is not much in the way of evidence. Much or little, however, it is more than can be got for any other population. Much or little it is got at by a very cursory investigation. No special research has been instituted. No tumulus has been appealed to. No local dialect has been analysed. No ordnance map has been pored over. All this will, doubtless, be done in time, and if, when it has been done, no confirmation of the present doctrine be found, the propounder will reconsider it. If the evidence point elsewhere he will abandon it. At present he brings the early Fin frontier to Minsk and Pinsk:

There it touched that of the Lithuanians. To make these the most eastern members of the Sarmatian stock is, at the first view, to fly in the face of the testimony of their present position. They are, in one sense, the most western. The Germans of Prussia touch them on the side of Europe. Between them and the Fins of Asia, the vast Russian area of the Governments of Smolensko, Novogorod &c. intervene. Speaking laxly, one may say that all Russia lies beyond them. Nevertheless, it is with the Fins of Estonia that they are also in contact; whilst the explanation of the German and Russian contact is transparently clear. The Germans (as a matter of history) cut their way through whole masses of Slavonians in Pomerania, before they reached them; so displacing the Slavonians to the west of them. The Russians (again a matter of history) pressed up to them by a circuit from the south and west. The Lithuanians have kept their position—but one population has stretched beyond, and another has pressed up to them. Their language is eminently akin to the Sanskrit. Their physiognomy is the most Fin of any thoroughly European population.

There were no Slavonians, in situ, to the East of the Lithuanic area; none originally. By encroachment and change of place there are, in later times, many. There are, as aforesaid, all the Russians of the present moment. The question, however, before us is the original area, the primordial situs.

The westward extension of the Lithuanians is a matter upon which I do not press the details. I think that the Vistula may have been to them and the Slavonians what the Rhine was to the Gauls and Germans. The main question is how far can we bring them south? What justifies us in making them reach the Carpathians? At present we find them in Livonia, Courland, East Prussia, Vilna, and Grodno; but further south than Grodno nowhere; nowhere, at least, with the definite characteristics of name and language. Every inch that is given them south of Grodno must have its proper evidence to support it.

The Gothini of Tacitus are the first population that we may make Lithuanic. What says Tacitus? They were not Germans; their language proved this. They were not Sarmatians. The Sarmatians imposed a tribute upon, as on men of another stock—tributa ut alienigenis imponunt. The Quadi did the same. If neither Germans nor Sarmatians what were they? Members of a stock now extinct? The rule against the unnecessary multiplication of causes forbids us to resort to this supposition. Do so once and we may always be doing it. Were they Fins? Say that they were, and what do we gain by it? We may as well prolong the Lithuania area from Grodno as the Fin from Pinsk. Nay, better. That Grodno is Lithuanian we know. That Pinsk was Fin we infer. Were they Scythians? We know of no Scythians beyond the Maros; so that the reasoning which told against the Fin hypothesis tells equally against the Turk. Beyond the Germans, the Slavonians, the Fins, the[6]Turks, and the Lithuanians we have nothing to choose from; and I submit that the minimum amount of assumption lies with the population last named.

Now comes the name of their Language. The Language of the Gothini was Gallica—Osos Pannonica, Gothinos Gallica arguit non esse Romanos. I have given reasons elsewhere (Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological notes) for translating Gallica Gallician,—not Gallic. Say, however, that the latter is the better translation; Gothini would still be the name of the people.

There is a country, then, of the Gothini sufficiently far south to be in contact with the Quadi and Sarmatæ—the Quadi in Moravia and Upper Hungary, the Sarmatæ in the parts between the Theiss and the Danube. Gallicia meets these conditions. It was a mining country. Gallicia is this. It was on the Upper Vistula—probably at its head-waters. At the mouth of the same river the name re-appears, in that of the Gothones, Guttones, Gythones &c. of the Amber country. These were either the nearest neighbours of the Aestyii, or the Aestyii themselves under a name other than German—for Aestyii is an undoubted German gloss, just like Est- in Est- onia.

Are we justified in identifying these two populations on the strength of the name? No. What we are justified in doing, however, is this. We are justified in placing on the frontier of both a language in which the root Goth- was part of a national name.

At the beginning of the historical period these Gothones were the Lithaunians of East Prussia, and their neighbours called them Guddon. They were the congeners of those Lithuanians whose area, even now, extents as far south as Grodno.

It is easy to connect the Gothones with Grodno; but what connects Grodno with Gothinian Gallicia? What can connect it now? All is Polish or Russian. What are the proofs that it was not so from the beginning? The following—the populations between Grodno and the frontier of Gallicia, appear, for the first time in history in the 13th century; but not as Poles, nor yet as Russians, but as Lithuanians—"cum Pruthenica et Lithuanica lingua habens magna ex parte similitudinem et intelligentiam"—"lingua, ritu, religione, et moribus magnam habebat cum Lithuanis, Pruthenis et Samogitis" (the present Lithuanians of East Prussia) "conformitatem".

We cannot bring these quite down to Gallicia; and this is not to be wondered at. The first notice we have of them is very nearly the last as well. The narrative which gives us the preceding texts is the narrative of their subjugation and extinction.

What was the name of this people? I premise that we get it through a double medium, the Latin, and the Slavonic—the latter language always being greatly disguised in its adaptation to the former. The commonest form is Jaczwingi (Lat.) Jatwyazi (Slavonic); then (in documents) Getuin-zitæ, a word giving the root Gothon-. Finally, we have "Pollexiani Getharum seu Prussorum gens".

Such are the reasons for connecting the Gothini of the Marcomannic frontier with the Gothini of the Baltic, and also for making both (along with the connecting Jaczwingi) Lithuanians. This latter point, however, is unessential to the present investigation; which simply considers the area of the Slavonians. For the parts north of the Carpathians, it was limited by a continuous line of Gothini, Getuinzitæ, and Gothones. Whatever those were they were not Slavonic.

Such is the sketch of the chief reasons for believing that originally the Vistula (there or thereabouts) was the boundary of the Slavonians on the North East; a belief confirmed by the phenomena of the languages spoken, at the present moment, beyond that river. They fall into few dialects; a fact which is prima facie evidence of recent introduction. The Polish branch shews itself in varieties and subvarieties on its western frontier; the Russian on its southern and south-eastern. The further they are found East and North, the newer they are.

I may add that I find no facts in the special ethnology of the early Poles, that complicate this view. On the contrary, the special facts, such as they are, are confirmatory rather than aught else of the western origin and the eastern direction, of a Polish line of encroachment, migration, occupancy, displacement, invasion, or conquest. Under the early kings of the blood of Piast (an individual wholly unhistoric), the locality for their exploits and occupancies is no part of the country about the present capital, Warsaw; but the district round Posen and Gnesen; this being the area to which the earliest legends attach themselves.

Where this is not the case, where the Duchy of Posen or Prussian Poland does not give us the earliest signs of Polish occupancy, the parts about Cracow do. At any rate, the legends lie in the west and south rather than in the east; on the Saxon or the Bohemian frontier rather than the Lithuanic.

The Slavonic area south of the Carpathians gives us a much more complex question—one, indeed, too complex to investigate it in all its bearings.

That there were both Slavonians and Lithuanians in Dacia, Lower Mœsia, Thrace, and, even, Macedon is nearly certain—and that early. Say that they were this at the beginning of the historical period. It will, by no means, make them aboriginal.

Such being the case I limit myself to the statement that, at the beginning of the historical period, the evidence and reasoning that connects the Thracians with the Getæ, the Getæ with the Daci, and the Daci with the Sarmatian stock in general is sufficient. Whether it makes them indigenous to their several areas is another question. It is also another question whether the relationship between them was so close as the current statements make it. These identify the Getæ and Daci. I imagine that they were (there or thereabouts) as different as the Bohemians and the Lithuanians—the Getic Lithuanians, and the Dacian (Daci=Τζαχοι) Czekhs; both, however being Sarmatian.

I also abstain from the details of a question of still greater importance and interest viz: the extent to which a third language of the class which contains the Slavonian and Lithuanic may or may not have been spoken in the parts under notice. There was room for it in the parts to the South of the Fin, and the east of the Lithuanic, areas. There was room for it in the present Governments of Podolia, and Volhynia, to say nothing of large portions of the drainage of the Lower Danube. The language of such an area, if its structure coincided with its geographical position would be liker the Lithuanic and the most eastern branch of the Slavonic than any other Languages of the so-called Indo-European Stock. It would also be more Sarmatian than either German or Classical. Yet it would be both Classical and German also, on the strength of the term Indo-European. It would be the most Asiatic of the tongues so denominated; with some Ugrian affinities, and others with the languages in the direction of Armenia, and Persia. It would be a language, however, which would soon be obliterated; in as much as the parts upon which we place it were, at an early date, overrun by Scythians from the East, and Slavonians from the West. When we know Volhynia, it is Turk, and Polish,—anything but aboriginal. Such a language, however, might, in case the populations who spoke it had made early conquests elsewhere, be, still, preserved to our own times. Or it might have been, at a similarly early period, committed to writings; the works in which it was embodied having come down to us. If so, its relations to its congeners would be remarkable. They would only be known in a modern, it only in an ancient, form. Such being the case the original affinity might be disguised; especially if the transfer of the earlier language had been to some very distant and unlikely point.

I will now apply this hypothetical series of arguments. It has long been known that the ancient, sacred, and literary language of Northern India has its closest grammatical affinities in Europe. With none of the tongues of the neighbouring countries, with no form of the Tibetan of the Himalayas or the Burmese dialects of the north-east, with no Tamul dialect of the southern part of the Peninsula itself has it half such close resemblances as it has with the distant and disconnected Lithuanian.

As to the Lithuanian, it has, of course, its closest affinities with the Slavonic tongues of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Servia, as aforesaid. And when we go beyond the Sarmatian stock, and bring into the field of comparison the other tongues of Europe, the Latin, the Greek, the German, and the Keltic, we find that the Lithuanic is more or less connected with them.

Now, the botanist who, found in Asia, extended over a comparatively small area, a single species, belonging to a genus which covered two-thirds of Europe (except so far as he might urge that everything came from the east, and so convert the specific question into an hypothesis as to the origin of vegetation in general) would pronounce the genus to be European. The zoologist, in a case of zoology, would do the same.

Mutatis mutandis, the logic of the philologue should be that of the naturalist. Yet it is not.

1. The area of Asiatic languages in Asia allied to the ancient Language of India, is smaller than the area of European languages allied to the Lithuanic; and—

2. The class or genus to which the two tongues equally belong, is represented in Asia by the Indian division only; whereas in Europe it falls into three divisions, each of, at least, equal value with the single Asiatic one.

Nevertheless, the so-called Indo-European languages are deduced from Asia.

I do not ask whether, as a matter of fact, this deduction is right or wrong. I only state, as a matter of philological history, that it is made, adding that the hypothesis which makes it is illegitimate. It rests on the assumption that it is easier to bring a population from India to Russia than to take one from Russia to India. In the case of the more extreme language of which it takes cognisance this postulate becomes still more inadmissible. It assumes, in the matter of the Keltic (for instance), that it is easier to bring the people of Galway from the Punjab, than the tribes of the Punjab from Eastern Europe. In short, it seems to be a generally received rule amongst investigators, that so long as we bring our migration from east to west we may let a very little evidence go a very long way; whereas, so soon as we reverse the process, and suppose a line from west to east, the converse becomes requisite, and a great deal of evidence is to go but a little way. The effect of this has been to create innumerable Asiatic hypotheses and few or no European ones. Russia may have been peopled from Persia, or Lithuania from Hindostan, or Greece from Asia, or any place west of a given meridian from any place east of it—but the converse, never. No one asks for proofs in the former case; or if he do, he is satisfied with a very scanty modicum: whereas, in the latter, the best authenticated statements undergo stringent scrutiny. Inferences fare worse. They are hardly allowed at all. It is all "theory and hypothesis" if we resort to them in cases from west to east; but it is no "theory" and no "hypothesis" when we follow the sun and move westwards.

Let the two lines be put on a level, and let ethnographical philology cease to be so one-sided as it is. Let the possibility of a Western origin of the Sanskrit language take its natural place as the member of an alternative hitherto ignored. I do not say what will follow in the way of historical detail. I only say (in the present paper at least) that the logic of an important class of philological questions will be improved. As it stands at present, it is little more than a remarkable phenomenon in the pathology of the philological mind, a symptom of the morbid condition of the scientific imagination of learned men.

Turning westwards we now take up the Slovenians of Carinthia and Styria on their western frontier, not forgetting the southermost of the Czekhs of Bohemia. How far did the Slavonic area extend in the direction of Switzerland, Gaul, and Italy?

In the Tyrol we have such geographical names as Scharn-itz, Gshnitz-thal, and Vintsh-gau; in the Vorarlberg, Ked-nitz and Windisch-matrei. Even where the names are less definitely Slavonic, the compound sibilant tsh, so predominant in Slavonic, so exceptional in German, is of frequent occurrence. This, perhaps, is little, yet is more than can be found in any country known to have been other than Slavonic.

Again—a Slavonic population in the Vorarlberg and Southern Bavaria best accounts for the name Vind-elicia.

If the Slavonians are aboriginal, and if the Czekhs are the same, the decisive evidence that, within the historical period, they have both receded is in favor of their respective areas having originally been greater than they are at present. Such being the case, we may bring them both further south and further west. How far? This is a question of minute detail, not to be answered off-hand. The rule of parsimony, however, by which we are forbidden to multiply stocks unnecessarily, carries them to the frontier of the Gauls in one direction, and the Italians on the other.

If so, there may have been Slavonians on the frontier of Liguria. More than this the Rhæti may have been Slavonic also. But many make the Etruscans Rhætian. Is it possible however, that even the Etruscans were Slavonic?

I know of numerous opinions against their being so. I know of no facts.

---

OBSERVATIONS LAID BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SECTION, AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, HELD AT BIRMINGHAM 1849.

So far from the Gothi and Getæ being identical there is no reason to believe that any nation of Germany ever bore the former of these two names until it reached the country of the population designated by the latter. If so, the Goths were Gothic, just as certain Spaniards are Mexican and Peruvian; and just as certain Englishmen are Britons i.e. not at all.

The Goths of the Danube, etc. leave Germany as Grutungs and Thervings, become Marcomanni along the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, on the Lower Danube (or the land of the Getæ), and Mœsogoths (from the locality in which they become Christian) in Mœsia.

What were the Goths of Scandinavia? It is not I who am the first by many scores of investigators to place all the numerous populations to which the possible modifications of the root G—t apply in the same category. I only deny that that category is German. Few separate the Jutes of Jutland, from the Goths of Gothland. Then there is the word Vitæ; which is to Gut-, as Will-iam is to Gul-ielmus, a form that was probably Lithuanic.

If J+t, as it occurs in the word Jute, be, really, the same as the G+t in Got or Goth, we have a reason in favour of one of the earlier Danish populations having been Lithuanic.

The four islands of Sealand, Laaland, Moen, and Falster formed the ancient Vithesleth. This division is of considerable import; since the true country of Dan, the eponymus of the Danes, was not Jutland, nor yet Skaane, nor yet Fyen. It was the Four Islands of the Vithesleth:—"Dan—rex primo super Sialandiam, Monam, Falstriam, et Lalandiam, cujus regnum dicebatur Vithesleth. Deinde super alias provincias et insulas et totum regnum."—Petri Olai Chron. Regum Daniæ. Also, "Vidit autem Dan regionem suam, super quam regnavit, Jutiam, Fioniam, Withesleth, Scaniam quod esset bona."—Annal. Esrom. p. 224.

That the Swedes and Norwegians are the newest Scandinavians and that certain Ugrians were the oldest, is undoubted. But it by no means follows that the succession was simple. Between the first and last there may have been any amount of intercalations. Was this the case? My own opinion is, that the first encroachments upon the originally Ugrian area of Scandinavia were not from the south-west, but from the south-east, not from Hanover but from Prussia and Courland, not German but Lithuanic, and (as a practical proof of the inconvenience of the present nomenclature) although not German, Gothic.

Whether these encroachments were wholly Lithuanic, rather than Slavonic as well, is doubtful. When the archæology of Scandinavia is read aright, i. e. without a German prepossession, the evidence of a second population will become clear. This however, is a detail.

The Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in, as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.

Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in blood, and known by the same name as the older inhabitants of the country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the Baltic, the essential part of whose name was Goth-; the -n- being, probably, and almost certainly, an inflexion.

Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate island of the Baltic. With such a series of Goth-lands, the single error of mistaking the old Getic legends for those of the more recent Germans (now called Goths), would easily engender others; and the most distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being the oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from the Scandinavian Gothland.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
JANUARY 15TH 1857.

Of the nations whose movements are connected with the decline and fall of the Roman empire, though several are more important than the Gepidæ, few are of a greater interest. This is because the question of their ethnological relations is more obscure than that of any other similar population of equal historical prominence. How far they were Goths rather than Vandals, or Vandals rather than Goths, how far they were neither one nor the other, has scarcely been investigated. Neither has their origin been determined. Nor have the details of their movements been ascertained. That the current account, as it stands in the pages of Jornandes Diaconus, is anything but unexceptionable, will be shown in the present paper. It is this account, however, which has been adopted by the majority of inquirers.

The results to which the present writer commits himself are widely different from those of his predecessors; he believes them, however, to be of the most ordinary and commonplace character. Why, then, have they not been attained long ago? Because certain statements, to a contrary effect, being taken up without a due amount of preliminary criticism, have directed the views of historians and ethnologists towards a wrong point.

These, however, for the present will be ignored, and nothing, in the first instance, will be attended to but the primary facts upon which the argument, in its simplest form, depends. These being adduced, the ordinary interpretation of them will be suggested; after which, the extent to which it is modified by the statements upon which the current doctrines are founded will be investigated.

If we turn to Strabo's account of the parts on the north-eastern side of the Adriatic, the occupancies of the numerous tribes of the Roman province of Illyricum, we shall find that no slight prominence is given to the population called Ἰάποδες. They join the Carni. The Culpa (Κολαπις) flows through their land. They stretch along the coast to the river Tedanius; Senia is their chief town. The Moentini, the Avendeatæ, the Auripini, are their chief tribes. Vendos (Avendo) is one of their occupancies. Such are the notices of Strabo, Ptolemy, Appian, and Pliny; Pliny's form of the word being Japydes.

The Iapodes, then, or Japydes, of the authors in question, are neither an obscure nor an inconsiderable nation. They extend along the sea-coast of the Adriatic. They occupy the valley of the Culpa. They are Illyrian, but conterminous with Pannonia.

As Pliny seems to have taken his name from Strabo, the authors just quoted may all be called Greek. With the latest of them we lose the forms Ἰάποδες or Japydes.

As the Roman empire declines and its writers become less and less classical, their geographical records become less systematic and more fragmentary; and it is not till we get to the times of Probus and Maximian that we find any name approaching Ἰάποδες. Probus, however, plants a colony of Gepidæ within the empire (Vopiscus, Vit. Pub. c. 18). The Tervings also fight against the Vandals and Gipedes (Mamertinus in Genethl. Max. c. 17). Sidonius makes the fierce Gepida (Gepida trux) a portion of the army of Attila. Finally, we have the Gepidæ, the Lombards, and the Avars, as the three most prominent populations of the sixth century.

The Gepid locality in the fifth century is the parts about Sirmium and Singidunum—Alt Schabacz and Belgrade—within the limits of Pannonia, and beyond those of Illyricum, i. e. a little to the north of the occupancy of the Iapodes and Japydes of Strabo and Pliny.

There is, then, a little difference in name between Japydes and Gepidæ, and a little difference in locality between the Gepids and Iapodes. I ask, however, whether this is sufficient to raise any doubt as to the identity of the two words? Whether the populations they denoted were the same is another matter. I only submit that, word for word, Japyd and Gepid are one. Yet they have never been considered so. On the contrary, the obscure history of the Japydes is generally made to end with Ptolemy; the more brilliant one of the Gepidæ to begin with Vopiscus. This may be seen in Gibbon, in Zeuss, or in any author whatever who notices either, or both, of the two populations.

There is a reason for this; it does not, however, lie in the difference of name. Wider ones than this are overlooked by even the most cautious of investigators. Indeed, the acknowledged and known varieties of the word Gepidæ itself, are far more divergent from each other than Gepidæ is from Japydes. Thus Gypides, Γήπαιδες, Γετίπαιδες, are all admitted varieties,—varieties that no one has objected to.

Nor yet does the reason for thus ignoring the connexion between Gepidæ and Japydes lie in the difference of their respective localities. For a period of conquests and invasions, the intrusion of a population from the north of Illyricum to the south of Pannonia is a mere trifle in the eye of the ordinary historian, who generally moves large nations from one extremity of Europe to another as freely as a chess-player moves a queen or castle on a chess-board. In fact, some change, both of name and place, is to be expected. The name that Strabo, for instance, would get through an Illyrian, Vopiscus or Sidonius would get through a Gothic, and Procopius through (probably) an Avar, authority—directly or indirectly.

The true reason for the agreement in question having been ignored, lies in the great change which had taken place in the political relations of the populations, not only of Illyricum and Pannonia, but of all parts of the Roman empire. The Japydes are merely details in the conquest of Illyricum and Dalmatia; the Gepid history, on the contrary, is connected with that of two populations eminently foreign and intrusive on the soil of Pannonia,—the Avars and the Lombards. How easy, then, to make the Gepidæ foreign and intrusive also. Rarely mentioned, except in connexion with the exotic Goth, the exotic Vandal, the exotic Avar, and the still more exotic Lombard, the Gepid becomes, in the eyes of the historian, exotic also.

This error is by no means modern. It dates from the reign of Justinian; and occurs in the writings of such seeming authorities as Procopius and Jornandes. With many scholars this may appear conclusive against our doctrine; since Procopius and Jornandes may reasonably be considered as competent and sufficient witnesses, not only of their foreign origin, but also of their Gothic affinities. Let us, however, examine their statements. Procopius writes, that "the Gothic nations are many, the greatest being the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaides. They were originally called the Sauromatæ and Melanchlæni. Some call them the Getic nations. They differ in name, but in nothing else. They are all whiteskinned and yellow-haired, tall and good-looking, of the same creed, for they are all Arians. Their language is one, called Gothic." This, though clear, is far from unexceptionable (B. Vand. i. 2). Their common language may have been no older than their common Arianism.

Again, the Sciri and Alani are especially stated to be Goths, which neither of them were,—the Alans, not even in the eyes of such claimants for Germany as Grimm and Zeuss.

Jornandes writes: "Quomodo vero Getæ Gepidæque sint parentes si quæris, paucis absolvam. Meminisse debes, me initio de Scanziæ insulæ gremio Gothos dixisse egressos cum Berich suo rege, tribus tantum navibus vectos ad citerioris Oceani ripam; quarum trium una navis, ut assolet, tardius vecta, nomen genti fertur dedisse; nam lingua eorum pigra Gepanta dicitur. Hinc factum est, ut paullatim et corrupte nomen eis ex convitio nasceretur. Gepidæ namque sine dubio ex Gothorum prosapia ducunt originem: sed quia, ut dixi, Gepanta pigrum aliquid tardumque signat, pro gratuito convitio Gepidarum nomen exortum est, quod nec ipsum, credo, falsissinum. Sunt enim tardioris ingenii, graviores corporum velocitate. Hi ergo Gepidæ tacti invidia, dudum spreta provincia, commanebant in insula Visclæ amnis vadis circumacta, quam pro patrio sermone dicebant Gepidojos. Nunc eam, ut fertur, insulam gens Vividaria incolit, ipsis ad meliores terras meantibus. Qui Vividarii ex diversis nationibus acsi in unum asylum collecti sunt, et gentem fecisse noscuntur."

I submit that this account is anything but historical. Be it so. It may, however, be the expression of a real Gothic affinity on the part of the Gepids, though wrong in its details. Even this is doubtful. That it may indicate a political alliance, that it may indicate a partial assumption of a Gothic nationality, I, by no means, deny. I only deny that it vitiates the doctrine that Japydes and Gepidæ are, according to the common-sense interpretation of them, the same word.

The present is no place for exhibiting in full the reasons for considering Jornandes to be a very worthless writer, a writer whose legends (if we may call them so) concerning the Goths, are only Gothic in the way that the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth are English, i. e. tales belonging to a country which the Goths took possession of, rather than tales concerning the invaders themselves.

It is suggested then, that the statements of Procopius and Jornandes being ignored, the common-sense interpretation of the geographical and etymological relations of the Iapodes and Gepidæ—word for word, and place for place—be allowed to take its course; the Gepidæ being looked upon as Illyrians, whatever may be the import of that word; occupants, at least, of the country of the Iapodes, and probably their descendants.

Thus far the criticism of the present paper goes towards separating the Gepidæ from the stock with which they are generally connected, viz. the German,—also from any emigrants from the parts north of the Danube, e. g. Poland, Prussia, Scandinavia, and the like. So far from doing anything of this kind, it makes them indigenous to the parts to the north-east of the head of the Adriatic. As such, what were they? Strabo makes them a mixed nation—Kelt and Illyrian.

What is Illyrian? Either Albanian or Slavonic; it being Illyria where the populations represented by the Dalmatians of Dalmatia come in contact with the populations represented by the Skipetar of Albania.

The remaining object of the present paper is to raise two fresh questions:—

1. The first connects itself with the early history of Italy, and asks how far migrations from the eastern side of the Adriatic may have modified the original population of Italy. Something—perhaps much—in this way is suggested by Niebuhr; suggested, if not absolutely stated. The Chaonian name, as well as other geographical and ethnological relations, is shown to be common to both sides of the Gulf. Can the class of facts indicated hereby be enlarged? The name, which is, perhaps, the most important, is that of the Galabri. These are, writes Strabo, a "people of the Dardaniatæ, in whose land is an ancient city" (p. 316). Word for word this is Calabri—whatever the geographical and ethnological relations may be. Without being exactly Iapodes, these Calabri are in the Iapod neighbourhood.

Without being identical, the name of the Italian Iapyges (which was to all intents and purposes another name for Calabri) is closely akin to Iapodes; so that, in Italy, we have Calabri called also Iapyges, and, in Illyria, Iapodes near a population called Galabri.

More than this, Niebuhr (see Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography, v. Japygia) suggests that Apulia may be Iapygia, word for word. The writer of the article just quoted demurs to his. At the same time the change from l to d is, at the present moment, a South Italian characteristic. The Sicilian for bello was beddo. On the other hand, this is a change in the wrong direction; still it is a change of the kind required.

The evidence that there was a foreign population in Calabria is satisfactory—the most definite fact being the statement that the Sallentines were partly Cretans, associated with Locrians and Illyrians. (See Calabria.)

Again, this district, wherein the legends concerning Diomed prevailed, was also the district of the Daunii, whom Festus (v. Daunia) connects with Illyria.

I suggest that, if the Calabri were Galabri, the Iapyges were Iapodes. Without enlarging upon the views that the definite recognition of Illyrian elements in Southern Italy suggests, we proceed to the next division of our subject.

2. Is there any connexion between the names Iapod-es and Iapet-us? The answer to this is to be found in the exposition of the criticism requisite for such problems. Special evidence there is none.

The first doctrine that presents itself to either the ethnologist or the historian of fiction, in connexion with the name Iapetus, is that it is the name of some eponymus—a name like Hellen, or Æolus, Ion, or Dorus. But this is opposed by the fact that no nation of any great historical prominence bears such a designation. Doubtless, if the Thracians, the Indians, the Ægyptians, &c. had been named Iapeti, the doctrine in question would have taken firm root, and that at once. But such is not the case.

May it not, however, have been borne by an obscure population? The name Greek was so born. So, at first, was the name Hellen. So, probably, the names to which we owe the wide and comprehensive terms Europe, Asia, Africa, and others. Admit then that it may have belonged to an obscure population;—next, admitting this, what name so like as that of the Iapodes? Of all known names (unless an exception be made in favour of the -gypt in Æ-gypt) it must be this or none. No other has any resemblance at all.

Who were on the confines of the non-Hellenic area? Iapyges on the west; Iapodes on the north-west. The suggested area was not beyond the limits of the Greek mythos. It was the area of the tales about Diomed. It was the area of the tales about Antenor. It was but a little to the north of the land of the Lapithæ, whose name, in its latter two-thirds, is I-apod. It ran in the direction of Orphic and Bacchic Thrace to the north. It ran in the direction of Cyclopæan and Lestrygonian Sicily to the west. It was on the borders of that terra incognita which so often supplies eponymi to unknown and mysterious generations.

Say that this suggestion prove true, and we have the first of the term Iapodes in Homer and Hesiod, the last in the German genealogies of the geography of Jornandes and in the Traveller's Song—unless, indeed, the modern name Schabacz be word for word, Gepid. In the Traveller's Song we get the word in a German form, Gifþe or Gifþas. The Gifþas are mentioned in conjunction with the Wends.

In Jornandes we get Gapt as the head of the Gothic genealogies:—Horum ergo (ut ipsi suis fabulis ferunt) primus fuit Gapt, qui genuit Halmal; Halmal vero genuit Augis, &c. Now Gapt here may stand for the eponymus of the Gepidæ, or it may stand for Japhet, the son of Noah. More than one of the old German pedigrees begins with what is called a Gothic legend, and ends with the book of Genesis.

To conclude: the bearing of the criticism upon the ethnology of the populations which took part in the destruction of the Roman empire, is suggestive. There are several of them in the same category with the Gepidæ.

Mutatis mutandis: every point in the previous criticism, which applies to the Gepidæ and Iapydes, applies to the Rugi and Rhæti. Up to a certain period we have, in writers more or less classical, notices of a country called Rhætia, and a population called Rhæti. For a shorter period subsequent to this, we hear nothing, or next to nothing, of any one.

Thirdly, in the writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, when the creed begins to be Christian and the authorities German, we find the Rugi of a Rugi-land,—Rugi-land, or the land of the Rugi, being neither more nor less than the ancient province of Rhætia.

Name, then, for name, and place for place, the agreement is sufficiently close to engender the expectation that the Rhæti will be treated as the Rugi, under a classical, the Rugi as the Rhæti, under a German, designation. Yet this is not the case. And why? Because when the Rugi become prominent in history, it is the recent, foreign, and intrusive Goths and Huns with whom they are chiefly associated. Add to this, that there existed in Northern Germany a population actually called Rugii.

For all this, however, Rugiland is Rhætia, and Rhætia is Rugiland,—name for name and place for place. So, probably, is the modern Slavonic term Raczy.

---

FROM
THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE FOR MAY 1853.

To the investigator who believes in the unity of the human species, whether he be a proper ethnologist, or a zoologist in the more current signification of the term, the phænomena exhibited by the numerous families of mankind supply ninetenths of the data for that part of natural history which deals with varieties as subordinate to, and as different from, species. The history of domestic animals in comprehensiveness and complexity yields to the history of the domesticator. Compare upon this point such a work as G. Cuvier's on the Races of Dogs, with Dr. Prichard's Natural History of Man. The mere difference in bulk of volume is a rough measure of the difference in the magnitude of the subjects. Even if the dog were as ubiquitous as man, and consequently as much exposed to the influence of latitude, and altitude, there would still be wanting to the evolution of canine varieties the manifold and multiform influences of civilization. The name of these is legion; whilst the extent to which they rival the more material agencies of climate and nutrition is getting, day by day, more generally admitted by the best and most competent inquirers. Forms as extreme as any that can be found within the pale of the same species are to be found within that of the species Homo. Transitions as gradual as those between any varieties elsewhere are also to be found. In summing up the value of the data supplied by man towards the natural history of varieties, it may be said that they are those of a species which has its geographical distribution everywhere and a moral as well as a physical series of characteristics. Surely, if the question under notice be a question that must be studied inductively, Man gives us the field for our induction.

Before I come to the special point of the present notice and to the explanation of its somewhat enigmatical heading, I must further define the sort of doctrine embodied in what I have called the belief of the unity of our species. I do not call the upholder of the developmental doctrine a believer of this kind. His views—whether right or wrong—are at variance with the current ideas attached to the word species. Neither do I identify with the recognition of single species the hypothesis of a multiplicity of protoplasts, so long as they are distributed over several geographical centres. The essential element to the idea of a single species is a single geographical centre. For this, the simplest form of the protoplast community is a single pair.

All this is mere definition and illustration. The doctrine itself may be either right or wrong. I pass no opinion upon it. I assume it for the present; since I wish to criticize certain terms and doctrines which have grown up under the belief in it, and to show, that, from one point of view, they are faulty, from another, legitimate.

It will simplify the question if we lay out of our account altogether the islands of the earth's surface, limiting ourselves to the populations of the continent. Here the area is continuous, and we cannot but suppose the stream of population by which its several portions were occupied to have been continuous also. In this case a population spreads from a centre like circles on a still piece of water. Now, if so, all changes must have been gradual, and all extreme forms must have passed into each other by means of a series of transitional ones.

It is clear that such forms, when submitted to arrangement and classification, will not come out in any definite and wellmarked groups, like the groups that constitute what is currently called species. On the contrary, they will run into each other, with equivocal points of contact, and indistinct lines of demarcation; so that discrimination will be difficult, if not impracticable. If practicable, however, it will be effected by having recourse to certain typical forms, around which such as approximate most closely can most accurately and conveniently be grouped. When this is done, the more distant outliers will be distributed over the debateable ground of an equivocal frontier. To recapitulate: varieties as opposed to species imply transitional forms, whilst transitional forms preclude definite lines of demarcation.

Yet what is the actual classification of the varieties of mankind, and what is the current nomenclature? To say the least, it is very like that of the species of a genus. Blumenbach's Mongolians, Blumenbach's Caucasians, Blumenbach's Æthiopians,—where do we find the patent evidence that these are the names of varieties rather than species? Nowhere. The practical proof of a clear consciousness on the part of a writer that he is classifying varieties rather than species, is the care he takes to guard his reader against mistaking the one for the other, and the attention he bestows on the transition from one type to another. Who has ever spent much ethnology on this? So far from learned men having done so, they have introduced a new and lax term—race. This means something which is neither a variety nor yet a species—a tertium quid. In what way it differs from the other denomination has yet to be shown.

Now if it be believed (and this belief is assumed) that the varieties of mankind are varieties of a species only, and if it cannot be denied that the nomenclature and classification of ethnologists is the nomenclature and classification of men investigating the species of a genus, what is to be done? Are species to be admitted, or is the nomenclature to be abandoned? The present remarks are made with the view of showing that the adoption of either alternative would be inconsiderate, and that the existing nomenclature, even when founded upon the assumption of broad and trenchant lines of demarcation between varieties which (ex vi termini) ought to graduate into each other, is far from being indefensible.

Man conquers man, and occupant displaces occupant on the earth's surface. By this means forms and varieties which once existed become extinct. The more this extinction takes place, the greater is the obliteration of those transitional and intermediate forms which connect extreme types; and the greater this obliteration, the stronger the lines of demarcation between geographically contiguous families. Hence a variational modification of a group of individuals simulates a difference of species; forms which were once wide apart being brought into juxtaposition by means of the annihilation of the intervening transitions. Hence what we of the nineteenth century,—ethnologists, politicians, naturalists, and the like—behold in the way of groups, classes, tribes, families, or what not, is beholden to a great extent under the guise of species; although it may not be so in reality, and although it might not have been so had we been witnesses to that earlier condition of things when one variety graduated into another and the integrity of the chain of likeness was intact. This explains the term subjectivity. A group is sharply defined simply because we know it in its state of definitude; a state of definitude which has been brought about by the displacement and obliteration of transitional forms.

The geographical distribution of the different ethnological divisions supplies a full and sufficient confirmation of this view. I say "full and sufficient," because it cannot be said that all our groups are subjective, all brought about by displacement and obliteration. Some are due to simple isolation; and this is the reason why the question was simplified by the omission of all the insular populations. As a general rule, however, the more definite the class, the greater the displacement; displacement which we sometimes know to have taken place on historical evidence, and displacement which we sometimes have to infer. In thus inferring it, the language is the chief test. The greater the area over which it is spoken with but little or no variation of dialect, the more recent the extension of the population that speaks it. Such, at least, is the primâ facie view.

A brief sketch of the chief details that thus verify the position of the text is all that can now be given.

1. The populations of South-eastern Asia, Mongol in physiognomy and monosyllabic in speech, have always been considered to form a large and natural, though not always a primary, group. Two-thirds of its area, and the whole of its frontier north of the Himalayas, is formed by the Chinese and Tibetans alone. These differ considerably from each other, but more from the Turks, Mongols, and Tongusians around. In the mountainous parts of the Assam frontier and the Burmese empire, each valley has its separate dialect. Yet these graduate into each other.

2. Central Asia and Siberia are occupied by four great groups, the populations allied to the Turk, the populations allied to the Mongol, the populations allied to the Mantshu, and the populations allied to the Finns. These are pretty definitely distinguished from each other, as well as from the Chinese and Tibetans. They cover a vast area, an area, which, either from history or inference, we are certain is far wider at present than it was originally. They have encroached on each and all of the populations around, till they meet with families equally encroaching in the direction of China and Tibet. This it is that makes the families which are called Turanian and Monosyllabic natural groups. They are cut off, more or less, from each other and from other populations by the displacement of groups originally more or less transitional. The typical populations of the centre spread themselves at the expense of the sub-typicals of the periphery until the extremes meet.

3. The circumpolar populations supply similar illustrations. Beginning with Scandinavia, the Lap stands in remarkable contrast with the Norwegian of Norway, and the Swede of Sweden. Why is this? Because the Northman represents a population originally German,—a population which, however much it may have graduated into the type of the most southern congeners of the Lap, is now brought into contact with a very different member of that stock.

4. This phænomenon repeats itself in the arctic portions of America, where the Algonkin and Loucheux Indians (Indians of the true American type) come in geographical contact, and in physiological contrast, with the Eskimo. Consequently along the Loucheux and Algonkin frontiers the line of demarcation between the Eskimo and the Red Indian (currently so-called) is abrupt and trenchant. Elsewhere, as along the coast of the Pacific, the two classes of population graduate into each other.

5. The African family is eminently isolated. It is, however, just along the point of contact between Africa and Asia that the displacements have been at a maximum. The three vast families of the Berbers, the Arabs and the Persians, cannot but have obliterated something (perhaps much) in the way of transition.

6. The Bushmen and Hottentots are other instances of extreme contrast, i. e. when compared with the Amakosah Caffres. Yet the contrast is only at its height in those parts where the proof of Caffre encroachment is clearest. In the parts east of Wallfisch Bay—traversed by Mr. Galton—the lines of difference are much less striking.

Such are some of the instances that illustrate what may be called the "subjectivity of ethnological groups,"—a term which greatly helps to reconcile two apparently conflicting habits, viz. that of thinking with the advocates of the unity of the human species, and employing the nomenclature of their opponents.

---

WITH
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN CLASS.

READ BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
28TH FEBRUARY 1849.

In respect to the languages of the Indo-European class, it is considered that the most important questions connected with their systematic arrangement, and viewed with reference to the extent to which they engage the attention of the present writers of philology, are the three following:—

1. The question of the Fundamental Elements of certain Languages.—The particular example of an investigation of this kind is to be found in the discussion concerning the extent to which it is a language akin to the Sanskrit, or a language akin to the Tamul, which forms the basis of certain dialects of middle and even northern India. In this is involved the question as to the relative value of grammatical and glossarial coincidences.

2. The question of the Independent or Subordinate Character of certain Groups.—Under this head comes the investigation, as to whether the Slavonic and Lithuanic tongues form separate groups, in the way that the Slavonic and Gothic tongues form separate groups, or whether they are each members of some higher group. The same inquiry applies to the languages (real or supposed) derived from the Zend, and the languages (real or supposed) derived from the Sanskrit.

3. The question of Extension and Addition.—It is to this that the forthcoming observations are limited.

Taking as the centre of a group, those forms of speech which have been recognised as Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic), from the first recognition of the group itself, we find the languages derived from the ancient Sanskrit, the languages derived from the ancient Persian, the languages of Greece and Rome, the Slavonic and Lithuanic languages, and the languages of the Gothic stock; Scandinavian, as well as Germanic. The affinity between any two of these groups has currently been considered to represent the affinity between them all at large.

The way in which the class under which these divisions were contained, as subordinate groups, has received either addition or extension, is a point of philological history, which can only be briefly noticed; previous to which a difference of meaning between the words addition and extension should be explained.

To draw an illustration from the common ties of relationship, as between man and man, it is clear that a family may be enlarged in two ways.

a. A brother, or a cousin, may be discovered, of which the existence was previously unknown. Herein the family is enlarged, or increased, by the real addition of a new member, in a recognised degree of relationship.

b. A degree of relationship previously unrecognised may be recognised, i. e., a family wherein it was previously considered that a second-cousinship was as much as could be admitted within its pale, may incorporate third, fourth, or fifth cousins. Here the family is enlarged, or increased, by a verbal extension of the term.

Now it is believed that the distinction between increase by the way of real addition, and increase by the way of verbal extension, has not been sufficiently attended to. Yet, that it should be more closely attended to, is evident; since, in mistaking a verbal increase for a real one, the whole end and aim of classification is overlooked.

I. The Celtic.—The publication of Dr. Prichard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, in 1831, supplied philologists with the most definite addition that has, perhaps, yet been made to ethnographical philology.

Ever since then, the Celtic has been considered to be Indo-European. Indeed its position in the same group with the Iranian, Classical, Slavono-Lithuanic, and Gothic tongues, supplied the reason for substituting the term Indo-European for the previous one Indo-Germanic.

2. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Armenian is Indo-European. Perhaps the wellknown affinity between the Armenian and Phrygian languages directed philologists to a comparison between the Armenian and Greek. Müller, in his Dorians, points out the inflexion of the Armenian verb-substantive.

3. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the old Etruscan is Indo-European.

4. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Albanian is Indo-European.

5. Since the fixation of the Celtic, Indo-European elements have been indicated in the Malay.

6. Since the fixation of the Celtic, Indo-European elements have been indicated in the Laplandic.

7. Since the fixation of the Celtic, it has been considered that the Ossetic is Indo-European.

8. Since the consideration of the Ossetic as Indo-European, the Georgian has been considered as Indo-European likewise.

Now the criticism of the theory which makes the Georgian to be Indo-European, is closely connected with the criticism of the theory which makes the Ossetic and the Malay to be Polynesian; and this the writer reserves for a separate paper. All that he does at present is to express his opinion, that if any of the seven last-named languages are Indo-European, they are Indo-European not by real addition, in the way of recognised relationship, but by a verbal extension of the power of the term Indo-European. He also believes that this is the view which is taken, more or less consciously or unconsciously, by the different authors of the different classifications themselves. If he be wrong in this notion, he is at issue with them as to a matter of fact; since, admitting some affinity on the part of the languages in question, he denies that it is that affinity which connects the Greek and German, the Latin and Lithuanian.

On the other hand, if he rightly imagine that they are considered as Indo-European on the strength of some other affinity, wider and more distant than that which connects the Greek with the German, or the Latin with the Lithuanic, he regrets that such an extension of a term should have been made without an exposition of the principles that suggested it, or the facts by which it is supported; principles and facts which, when examined by himself, have convinced him that most of the later movements in this department of ethnographical philology, have been movements in the wrong direction.

There are two principles upon which languages may be classified.

According to the first, we take two or more languages as we find them, ascertain certain of their characteristics, and then inquire how far these characteristics coincide.

Two or more languages thus taken agree in having a large per-centage of words in common, or a large per-centage of grammatical inflexions; in which case they would agree in certain positive characters. On the other hand, two or more such languages agree in the negative fact of having a small and scanty vocabulary, and an inflexional system equally limited; whilst, again, the scantiness of inflexion may arise from one of two causes. It may arise from the fact of inflexions having never been developed at all, or it may arise from inflexions having been lost subsequent to a full development of the same. In all such cases as these, the principle of classification would be founded upon the extent to which languages agreed or differed in certain external characteristics; and it would be the principle upon which the mineralogist classifies minerals. It is not worth while to recommend the adoption of the particular term mineralogical, although mineralogy is the science that best illustrates the distinction. It is sufficient to state, that in the principle here indicated, there is no notion of descent.

It is well known that in ethnographical philology (indeed in ethnology at large) the mineralogical principle is not recognised; and that the principle that is recognised is what may be called the historical principle. Languages are arranged in the same class, not because they agree in having a copious grammar or scanty grammar, but because they are descended (or are supposed to be descended) from some common stock; whilst similarity of grammatical structure, and glossarial identity are recognised as elements of classification only so far as they are evidence of such community of origin. Just as two brothers will always be two brothers, notwithstanding differences of stature, feature, and disposition, so will two languages which have parted from the common stock within the same decennium, be more closely allied to each other, at any time and at all times, than two languages separated within the same century; and two languages separated within the same century, will always be more cognate than two within the same millennium. This will be the case irrespective of any amount of subsequent similarity or dissimilarity.

Indeed, for the purposes of ethnology, the phenomena of subsequent similarity or dissimilarity are of subordinate importance. Why they are so, is involved in the question as to the rate of change in language. Of two tongues separated at the same time from a common stock, one may change rapidly, the other slowly; and, hence, a dissimilar physiognomy at the end of a given period. If the English of Australia were to change rapidly in one direction, and the English of America in another, great as would be the difference resulting from such changes, their ethnological relation would be the same. They would still have the same affiliation with the same mother-tongue, dating from nearly the same epoch.

In ethnological philology, as in natural history, descent is the paramount fact; and without asking how far the value thus given to it is liable to be refined on, we leave it, in each science, as we find it, until some future investigator shall have shewn that either for a pair of animals not descended from a common stock, or for a pair of languages not originating from the same mother-tongue, a greater number of general propositions can be predicated than is the case with the two most dissimilar instances of either an animal or a language derived from a common origin.

Languages are allied just in proportion as they were separated from the same language at the same epoch.

The same epoch.—The word epoch is an equivocal word, and it is used designedly because it is so. Its two meanings require to be indicated, and, then, it will be necessary to ask which of them is to be adopted here.

The epoch, as a period in the duration of a language, may be simply chronological, or it may be philological, properly so called.

The space of ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand years, is a strictly chronological epoch. The first fifty years after the Norman conquest is an epoch in the history of the English language; so is the reign of Henry the Third, or the Protectorship of Oliver Cromwell. A definite period of this sort is an epoch in language, just as the term of twenty or thirty years is an epoch in the life of a man.

On the other hand, a period that, chronologically speaking, is indefinite, may be an epoch. The interval between one change and an other, whether long or short, is an epoch. The duration of English like the English of Chaucer, is an epoch in the history of the English language; and so is the duration of English like the English of the Bible translation. For such epochs there are no fixed periods. With a language that changes rapidly they are short; with a language that changes slowly they are long.

Now, in which of these two meanings should the word be used in ethnographical philology? The answer to the question is supplied by the circumstances of the case, rather than by any abstract propriety. We cannot give it the first meaning, even if we wish to do so. To say in what year of the duration of a common mother-tongue the Greek separated from the stock that was common to it and to the Latin is an impossibility; indeed, if it could be answered at once, it would be a question of simple history, not an inference from ethnology: since ethnology, with its palæontological reasoning from effect to cause, speaks only where history, with its direct testimony, is silent.

We cannot, then, in ethnological reasoning, get at the precise year in which any one or two languages separated from a common stock, so as to say that this separated so long before the other.

The order, however, of separation we can get at; since we can infer it from the condition of the mother-tongue at the time of such separation; this condition being denoted by the condition of the derived language.

Hence the philological epoch is an approximation to the chronological epoch, and as it is the nearest approximation that can possibly be attained, it is practically identical with it, so that the enunciation of the principle at which we wish to arrive may change its wording, and now stand as follows,—Languages are allied, just in proportion as they were separated from the same language in the same stage.

Now, if there be a certain number of well-marked forms (say three) of development, and if the one of these coincide with an early period in the history of language, another with a later one, and the third with a period later still, we have three epochs wherein we may fix the date of the separation of the different languages from their different parent-stocks; and these epochs are natural, just in proportion as the forms that characterise them are natural.

Again, if each epoch fall into minor and subordinate periods, characterised by the changes and modifications of the then generally characteristic forms, we have the basis for subordinate groups and a more minute classification.

It is not saying too much to say that all this is no hypothesis, but a reality. There are real distinctions of characteristic forms corresponding with real stages of development; and the number of these is three; besides which, one, at least, of the three great stages falls into divisions and subdivisions.

1. The stage anterior to the evolution of inflexion.—Here each word has but one form, and relation is expressed by mere juxtaposition, with or without the superaddition of a change of accent. The tendencies of this stage are to combine words in the way of composition, but not to go further. Every word retains, throughout, its separate substantive character, and has a meaning independent of its juxtaposition with the words with which it combines.

2. The stage wherein inflexions are developed.—Here, words originally separate, and afterwards placed in juxtaposition with others, as elements of a compound term, so far change in form, or so far lose their separate signification, as to pass for adjuncts, either prefixed or postfixed to the main word. What was once a word is now the part of a word, and what was once Composition is now Derivation, certain sorts of Derivation being called Inflexions, and certain Inflexions being called Declensions or Conjugations, as the case may be.

3. The stage wherein inflexions become lost, and are replaced by separate words.—Here case-endings, like the i in patr-i, are replaced by prepositions (in some cases by postpositions), like the to in to father; and personal endings, like the o in voc-o, are replaced by pronouns, like the I in I call.

Of the first of these stages, the Chinese is the language which affords the most typical specimen that can be found in the present late date of languages—late, considering that we are looking for a sample of its earliest forms.

Of the last of these stages the English of the year 1849 affords the most typical specimen that can be found in the present early date of language—early, considering that we are looking for a sample of its latest forms.

Of the second of these stages we must take two languages as the samples.

1. The Greek.—Here we have the inflexional character in its most perfect form; i. e., the existence, as separate words, of those sounds and syllables that form inflexions is at its maximum of concealment; i. e., their amalgamation with the primary word (the essence of inflexion) is most perfect.

2. The Circassian, Coptic, or Turkish.—In one of these (it is difficult to say which) the existence as separate words of those sounds and syllables which form inflexions, is at its minimum of concealment; i. e., their amalgamation with the primary word (the essence of inflexion) being most imperfect.

This classification is, necessarily, liable to an element of confusion common to all classifications where the evidence is not exactly of the sort required by the nature of the question. The nature of the question here dealt with requires the evidence of the historical kind, i. e., direct testimony. The only evidence, however, we can get at is indirect and inferential. This engenders the following difficulty. The newest language of (say) the languages of the secondary formation may be nearer in chronology, to the oldest language of the third, than to the first formed language of its own class. Indeed, unless we assume the suspension of all change for long epochs, and that those coincide with the periods at which certain languages are given off from their parent stocks, such must be the case.

Now, although this is a difficulty, it is no greater difficulty than the geologists must put up with. With them also there are the phenomena of transition, and such phenomena engender unavoidable complications. They do so, however, without overthrowing the principles of their classification.

The position of a language in respect to its stage of development is one thing,—the position in respect to its allied tongues another.

Two languages may be in the same stage (and, as such, agree), yet be very distant from each other in respect to affiliation or affinity. Stage for stage the French is more closely connected with the English, than the English with the Mœso-Gothic. In the way of affiliation, the converse is the case.

Languages are allied (or, what is the same thing, bear evidence of their alliance), according to the number of forms that they have in common; since (subject to one exception) these common forms must have been taken from the common mother-tongue.

Two languages separated from the common mother-tongue, subsequent to the evolution of (say) a form for the dative case, are more allied than two languages similarly separated anterior to such an evolution.

Subject to one exception. This means, that it is possible that two languages may appear under certain circumstances more allied than they really are, and vice versâ.

They may appear more allied than they really are, when, after separating from the common mother-tongue during the ante-inflexional stage, they develop their inflexions on the same principle, although independently. This case is more possible than proved.

They may appear less allied than they really are, when, although separated from the common mother-tongue after the evolution of a considerable amount of inflexion, each taking with it those inflexions, the one may retain them, whilst the other loses them in toto. This case also is more possible than proved.

Each of these cases involves a complex question in philology:—the one the phenomena connected with the rate of change; the other the uniformity of independent processes.

These questions are likely to affect future researches more than they have affected the researches hitherto established. Another question has affected the researches hitherto established more than it is likely to affect future ones. This is the question as to the fundamental unity, or non-unity of language. Upon this the present writer has expressed an opinion elsewhere. At present he suggests that the more the general unity of the human language is admitted, the clearer will be the way for those who work at the details of the different affiliations. As long as it is an open question, whether one class of languages be wholly unconnected with others, any connection engenders an inclination to arrange it under the group previously recognised. I believe that this determined the position of the Celtic in the Indo-European group. I have great doubts whether if some affinity had been recognised from the beginning, it would even have stood where it now does. The question, when Dr. Prichard undertook his investigations, was not so much whether the Celtic was in the exact ratio to any or all of the then recognised European languages in which they were to each other, but whether it was in any relation at all. This being proved, it fell into the class at once.

The present writer believes that the Celtic tongues were separated from their mother-tongue at a comparatively early period of the second stage; i. e., when but few inflexions had been evolved; whilst the Classic, Gothic, Lithuano-Slavonic (Sarmatian), and Indo-Persian (Iranian) were separated at comparatively late periods of the same stage, i. e., when many inflexions had been evolved.

Hence he believes that, in order to admit the Celtic, the meaning of the term Indo-European was extended.

Regretting this (at the same time admitting that the Celtic tongue is more Indo-European than any thing else), he believes that it is too late to go back to the older and more restricted use of the term; and suggests (as the next best change), the propriety of considering the Indo-European class as divided into two divisions, the older containing the Celtic, the newer containing the Iranian, Classical, Sarmatian, and Gothic tongues. All further extensions of the term he believes to be prejudicial to future philology; believing also that all supposed additions to the Indo-European class have (with the exception, perhaps, of the Armenian) involved such farther extension.

---

READ AT THE
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 1853.

It is well-known that the termination -by as the name of a village or town is a sign of Danish occupancy. At the present time it means town in Scandinavia; and Christiania or Copenhagen is called By, or Byen, = the town, capital, or metropolis. The English form is -ton. When an Angle said Newton, a Dane said Newby. The distribution of the forms in -by has already commanded much attention; so that it is not the intention of the present writer to say much about it.

Along, however, with this form go others: e. g.

&c. &c.

In like manner the Roman castra becomes—

In English chester or cester, in Danish caster and caistor. Contrast the forms Tadcaster, Lancaster &c. with Chester, or Bicester and this difference becomes apparent.

Now the river Ouse in the parts about Wansford separates the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton—in the former of which no place ending in -by is to be found, and all the castra are chester; as Godmanchester. In Northamptonshire, on the other hand, the Danish forms in -by are common, and the castra are caistor, or caster. All the Danish is on one side. Nothing is Danish on the other. The river has every appearance of having formed a frontier. On it lay the Roman station of Durobrivis—with, probably, castra on each side. At any rate, there are, at the present moment, two villages wherein that term appears. On the Huntingdon side is the village of Chesterton (English). On the Northampton side is that of Caistor (Danish).

---

READ AT THE
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE HELD AT YORK 1844.

The affinities of the Garrow language, a language which Klaproth in his Asia Polyglotta leaves unplaced, are with the Tibetan.

The bearings of this will be found in the next notice.

This was written before I had seen Brown's Tables—wherein the affinity is virtually, though not directly affirmed.

---

BRITISH ASSOCIATION—BIRMINGHAM 1849.

The remarks of Mr. Hodgson on the Kooch, Bodo, and Dhimal, along with some of Dr. Bird's on the monosyllabic affinities of the Tamulian languages have an important bearing on this question. So have the accounts of the Chepang and Garo tribes. The phenomena are those of transition.

We have a practical instance of this in the doctrine laid down by Mr. Hodgson in his valuable monograph. In this, he makes the Bodo a Tamulian i. e. a member of the same family with the hill-tribes of India and the Dekhan; meaning thereby the aborigines of India, contrasted with the populations to which he ascribes the Sanskrit language and the Hindu physiognomy. In the Tamulian form there is "a somewhat lozenge contour, caused by the large cheek-bones"—"a broader flatter face"—"eyes less evenly crossing the face in their line of picture"—"beard deficient"—"with regard to the peculiar races of the latter" (i. e. the Tamulians) "it can only be safely said that the mountaineers exhibit the Mongolian type of mankind more distinctly than the lowlanders, and that they have, in general, a paler yellower hue than the latter, amongst whom there are some (individuals at least) who are nearly as black as negroes.—The Bodo are scarcely darker than the mountaineers above them—whom they resemble—only with all the physiognomical characteristics softened down.—The Kols have a similar cast of face."

This is the evidence of a competent observer to the fact of the Bodo &c. being, more or less, what is called Mongol; all the more valuable because he had not, then, recognized their language as monosyllabic. Meanwhile he never separates them from the Kols &c. but always connects the two. In other words, he gives us so much evidence to the fact of the Kols &c. being, more or less, Mongol also. But the Kols are the aborigines of India; whilst the Bodo are Tibetan.

Recent researches have a tendency to make the Kols less Tamul and more Tibetan than they were held to be in 1849.

---

READ AT THE
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT
CAMBRIDGE 1845.

Taking the samples of the Georgian, Lesgian, Mizhdzhedzhi, and Circassian classes as we find them in the Asia Polyglotta and comparing them with the specimens of the monosyllabic languages in the same work, in Brown's Tables, and in Leyden's paper on the Indo-Chinese Languages, we find the following coincidences.[7]

• English, sky
• 1. Circassian, whapeh, wuafe
• 2. Aka, aupa
• Khamti, fa
• English, sky
• 1. Absné, kaukh
• Altekesek, hak
• 2. Akush, kaka
• Burmese, kydukkhe
• English, sky
• 1. Tshetshentsh, tulak
• 2. Koreng, talo
• Khoibu, thullung
• English, sun
• 1. Georgian, mse
• Mingrelian, bsha
• Suanic, mizh
• 2. Kuan-chua, zhi
• Sianlo, suu
• English, fire
• 1. Absné, mza
• Circassian, mafa
• 2. Khamti, fai
• Siam, fai
• Aka, umma
• Aber, eme
• Burmese, mi
• Karyen, me
• Manipur, mai
• Songphu, mai
• Kapwi, &c., mai
• English, day
• 1. Tshetshentsh, dini
• Ingúsh, den
• Kasikumuk, kini
• 2. Koreng, nin
• Jili, tana
• Singpho, sini
• English, day
• 1. Andi, thyal
• 2. Garo, salo
• English, moon
• 1. Georgian, twai=month
• Suanic, twai
• 2. Moitay, ta
• English, star
• 1. Kasikumuk, zuka
• 2. Garo, asake
• Jili, sakan
• Singpho, sagan
• English, hill
• 1. Kasikumuk, suntu
• 2. Chinese, shan
• English, earth
• 1. Absné, tshullah
• Altekesek, tzula
• 2. Kapwi, talai
• Khoibu, thalai
• English, earth
• 1. Andi, zkhur
• 2. Mishimi, tari
• English, earth
• 1. Dido, tshedo
• 2. Koreng, kadi
• English, snow
• 1. Lesgian, asu
• Circassian, uas
• Abassian, asse
• 2. Chinese, siwe
• English, salt
• 1. Lesgian[8](3), zam
• 2. Chinese, yan
• English, salt
• 1. Kabutsh, tshea
• Dido, zio
• Kasikumuk, psu
• Akush, dze
• 2. Tibetan, tsha
• English, dust
• 1. Tshetshentsh, tshen
• 2. Chinese, tshin
• English, sand
• 1. Avar, tshimig
• 2. Tibetan, bydzoma
• English, sand
• 1. Circassian, pshakhoh
• 2. Chinese, sha
• English, leaf
• 1. Tshetshentsh, ga
• Ingush, ga
• 2. Chinese, ye
• English, tree
• 1. Mizjeji, che
• Circassian, dzeg
• 2. Chinese, shu
• English, stone
• 1. Andi, hinzo
• 2. Siamese, hin
• English, sea
• 1. Georgian, sgwa
• 2. Chinese, shuy=water
• Tibet, çi=do
• Môn, zhe=do
• Ava, te=do
• English, river
• 1. Anzukh, or kyare
• Avar, hor, khor
• 2. Champhung, urai
• English, river
• 1. Abassian, aji
• 2. Tibetan, tshavo
• English, river
• 1. Altekesek, sedu
• Absné, dzedu
• 2. Songphu, duidai
• English, water
• 1. Kasikumuk, sin
• Akush, shen
• Kubitsh, tzun, sin
• 2. Singpho, ntsin
• Jili, mchin
• Manipur, ising
• English, water
• 1. Absné, dzeh
• 2. Songphu, dui
• Kapwi, tui
• Tankhul, tu
• English, water
• 1. Mizjeji, chi
• 2. Garo, chi
• English, rain
• 1. Andi, za
• Ingush, du
• Abassian, kua
• 2. Chinese, yu
• English, summer
• 1. Tushi, chko
• Mizjeji, achke
• 2. Chinese, chia
• English, winter
• 1. Anzukh, tlin
• Andi, klinu
• Kasikumuk, kintul
• Akush, chani
• Absné, gene
• 2. Tibetan, r gun
• Chinese, tung
• English, cow
• 1. Circassian, bsa
• 2. Tibetan, r shu
• English, dog
• 1. Avar, choi
• Andi, choi
• Dido, gwai
• Kubitsh, koy
• Circassian, khhah
• 2. Chinese, keu
• Tibetan, kyi
• English, horse
• 1. Lesgian, tshu
• Circassian, tshe, shu
• 2. Tibetan, r dda
• English, bird
• 1. Avar, hedo
• 2. Tankhul, ata
• English, bird
• 1. Andi, purtie
• 2. Abor, pettang
• Aka, put'ah
• English, fish
• 1. Avar, tshua
• Circassian, bbzheh
• 2. Khamti, pa
• Siamese, pla
• Aka, ngay
• Abor, engo
• Burmese, nga
• Karyen, nga
• Singpho, nga
• Songphu, kha
• Mishimi, ta
• Maram, khai
• Luhuppa, khai
• Tankhul, khi
• Anam, khi
• English, flesh
• 1. Kabutsh, kho
• Abassian, zheh
• 2. Chinese, shou
• Tibetan, zhsha
• English, egg
• 1. Tshetshentsh, khua
• 2. Khamti, khai
• Siamese, khai
• English, egg
• 1. Kabutsh, tshemuza
• 2. Mishimi, mtiumaie
• English, egg
• 1. Akush, dukhi
• 2. Garo, to`ka
• English, son
• 1. Mizjeji, ua, woe
• 2. Tibetan, bu
• English, hair
• 1. Kasikumuk, tshara
• 2. Jili, kara
• Singpho, kara
• English, hair
• 1. Avar, sab
• Anzukh, sab
• Tshari, sab
• 2. Burmese, shaben
• Manipur, sam
• Songpho (6), sam
• English, hair
• 1. Tshetshentsh, kazeresh
• 2. Karyen, khosu
• Tankhul, kosen
• English, head
• 1. Georgian, tawi
• Lazic, ti
• Suanic, tchum
• 2. Chinese, teu, seu
• Anam, tu ď u
• Ava, kang (5)
• English, head
• 1. Andi, mier, maœr
• 2. Assam, mur
• English, head
• 1. Absné, kah, aka
• Altekesek, zeka
• 2. Karen, kho
• Manipur, kok
• Taukhul, akao
• English, mouth
• 1. Lesgian, kall
• 2. Chinese, keu
• Anamese, kau
• Tibetan, ka
• English, mouth
• 1. Tushi, bak
• 2. Teina, pak
• English, mouth
• 1. Georgian, piri
• Mingrelian, pidehi
• Suanic, pil
• 2. Ava, parat (4)
• English, mouth
• 1. Kubitsh, mole
• 2. Khoibu, mur
• Maring, mur
• English, mouth
• 1. Andi, kol, tkol
• Lesgian (3), kaal
• 2. Manipur, chil
• English, eye
• 1. Andi, puni
• 2. Chinese, yan
• English, ear
• 1. Avar, een, ain, en
• Anzukh, in
• Tshari, een, ein
• Andi, kanka, andika
• 2. Burmese, na
• Karen, naku
• Singpho, na
• Songphu, anhukon
• Kapwi, kana
• Koreng, kon
• Maram, inkon
• Champhung, khunu
• Luhuppa, khana
• Tankhul, akhana
• Koibu, khana
• English, tooth
• 1. Lesgian (3), sibi
• Avar, zavi
• Circassian, dzeh
• 2. Tibetan, so
• Chinese, tshi
• English, tongue
• 1. Circassian, bbse
• Absné, ibs
• 2. Tibetan, rdzhe
• Chinese, shi
• English, foot
• 1. Kasikumuk, dzhan
• 2. Khamti, tin
• English, foot
• 1. Mizjeji (3), kog, koeg
• 2. Manipur, khong
• Tankhul, akho
• English, foot
• 1. Andi, tsheka
• Kubitsh, tag
• Jili, takkhyai
• 2. Garo, jachok
• English, foot
• 1. Georgian, pechi
• 2. Maplu, pokâ=leg
• English, finger
• 1. Mingrelian, kiti
• Moitay, khoit=hand
• 2. Play, kozu=do
• English, hand
• 1. Georgian, chéli
• Lazic, ieh
• Mingrelian, ché
• Suanic, shi
• 2. Chinese, sheu
• English, hand
• 1. Andi, katshu
• Kabutsh, koda
• 2. Khoibu, khut
• Manipur, khut
• English, blood
• 1. Absné, tsha, sha
• Tshetshentsh, zi
• Ingús, zi
• 2. Singpho, sai
• Songpho, zyai
• Kapwi, the
• Maram, azyi
• Champhung, azi
• Luhuppa, ashi
• Tankhul, asu
• English, blood
• 1. Dido, é
• 2. Manipur, i
• Koibu, hi
• Maring, hi
• English, blood
• 1. Tshetshentsh, yioh
• Circassian, tlih
• 2. Chinese, chine
• English, skin
• 1. Circassian, ffeh
• 2. Chinese, pi
• English, skin
• 1. Dido, bik
• 2. Tibetan, shbagsbba
• English, bone
• 1. Tshetshentsh, dyackt
• Ingúsh, tekhh
• Akúsh, likka
• Tshari, rekka
• 2. Khamti, nuk
• Siamese, kraduk
• English, great
• 1. Georgian, didi
• Mingrelian, didi
• 2. Canton, ta
• Kuan-chua, ta, da
• Tonkin, drai
• Cochin-chinese, dai
• Tibet, çe
• Ava, kyi (5)
• Play, du
• Teina, to
• English, bad
• 1. Mingrelian, moglach
• Suanic, choya
• 2. Chinese, go gok
• Môn, kah
• Ava, makaung (4)
• —— gye (2)
• English, warm
• 1. Ingush, tau
• 2. Tibetan, dzho
• English, blue
• 1. Mizjeji (3), siene
• 2. Chinese, zing
• Tibetan, swongbba
• English, yellow
• 1. Circassian, khozh
• 2. Abassian, kha
• Chinese, chuang
• English, green
• 1. Avar, ursheria
• Anzukh, ordjin
• Ingush, send
• 2. Tibetan, shjanggu
• English, below
• 1. Georgian, kwewrt, kwerno
• 2. Ava, haukma
• Yo, auk
• Passuko, hoko
• Kolaun, akoa
• English, one
• 1. Lesgian, zo
• Akush, za
• Andi, sew
• Dido, zis
• Kasikumuk, zabá
• Mizjeji, tza
• Abassian, seka
• 2. Tibetan, dzig
• English, three
• 1. Georgian, sami
• Lazic, jum
• Mingrelian, sami
• Suanic, semi
• 2. Canton Chinese, sam
• Kuanchua, san
• Tonkin, tam
• Tibetan, sum
• Môn, sum
• Ava, thaum
• Siam, sum
• English, four
• 1. Abassian, pshi ba
• 2. Tibetan, bshi
• Chinese, szu
• English, five
• 1. Georgian, chuthi
• Lazic, chut
• Mingrelian, chuthi
• Suanic, wochu'si
• 2. Ava, yadu
• English, six
• 1. Tshetshentsh, yatsh
• Ingush, yatsh
• Tushi, itsh
• 2. Tibetan, dzhug
• English, nine
• 1. Circassian, bgu
• 2. Tibetan, rgu
• Chinese, kieu
• English, ten
• 1. Circassian, pshe
• Abassian, zheba
• 2. Tibetan, bdzhu
• Chinese, shi

The limited amount of the data must be borne in mind. As has been stated, no vocabularies beyond those of the four works enumerated were used. Had the comparison been more extended, the evidence of the Tibetan affinities of the languages under notice would have been stronger. That this would have been the case has since been proved.

In 1849, just before the publication of my Varieties of Man, I found from my friend Mr. Norris that, upon grammatical grounds, he had come to the same conclusion. A reference to the, then, recently published contributions of Rosen satisfied me that this was the case. The following is an abstract of his exposition of the structure of (1) the Iron, and (2) the Circassian.

(1)
IRON.

The Declension of Substantives is as follows;

The Comparative Degree is formed by the addition of -dar; as chorz=good, chorz-dar=better.

The pronouns of the two first persons are as follows;

1. Az=I. Defective in the oblique cases. Man or ma, defective.

2. Di=Thou. Defective in the nominative singular.

The signs of the persons of the verbs are -in, -is, -i; -am -ut`, -inc`; e. g.

The addition of the sound of t helps to form the Irôn preterite. I say helps, because if we compare the form s-ko-t-on=I made, with the root kan, or the form fé-qus-t-on=I heard, with the root qus, we see, at once, that the addition of t is only a part of an inflection.

Beyond this, the tenses become complicated; and that because they are evidently formed by the agglutination of separate words; the so-called imperfect being undoubtedly formed by affixing the preterite form of the word to make. The perfect and future seem to be similarly formed, dele from the auxiliary=be; as may be collected from the following paradigms.

1.

2.

Root, k`an=make.
Preterite,=s-k`o-t-on,[10] s-k`o-t-ai, s-k`o-t-a=feci, fecisti, fecit.

3.

Root, kus=hear.

INDICATIVE.

CONJUNCTIVE.

IMPERATIVE.

Infinitive, qus-in.

Participles, qus-ag, qus-gond, qus-in-ag.

(2)
CIRCASSIAN.

In the Absné dialect ab=father, ácĕ=horse; ab ácĕ=father's horse, (verbally, father horse). Here position does the work of an inflection.

The use of prepositions is as limited as that of inflections, sara s-ab ácĕ ist`ap I my-father horse give, or giving am; abna amus`w izbt=wood bear see-did=I saw a bear in the wood; awinĕ wi as`wkĕ=(in) house two doors; ácĕ sis`lit=(on) horse mount I-did.

Hence, declension begins with the formation of the plural number. This consists in the addition of the syllable k`wa.

In the pronouns there is as little inflection as in the substantives and adjectives, i. e. there are no forms corresponding to mihi, nobis, &c.

1. When the pronoun signifies possession, it takes an inseparable form, is incorporated with the substantive that agrees with it, and is s- for the first, w- for the second, and i- for the third, person singular. Then for the plural it is h- for the first person, s`- for the second, r- for the third: ab=father;

2. When the pronoun is governed by a verb, it is similarly incorporated.

3. Hence, the only inseparable form of the personal pronoun is to be found when it governs the verb. In this case the forms are:

In sa-ra, wa-ra, ha-ra, s`a-ra, the -ra is non radical. The word u-bart` is a compound.

The ordinal=first is achani. This seems formed from aka=one.

The ordinal=second is agi. This seems unconnected with the word wi-=two; just as in English, second has no etymological connection with two.

The remaining ordinals are formed, by affixing -nto, and (in some case) prefixing -a; as

In the Absné verbs the distinction of time is the only distinction denoted by any approach to the character of an inflection; and here the change has so thoroughly the appearance of having been effected by the addition of some separate and independent words, that it is doubtful whether any of the following forms can be considered as true inflections.

Root, C'wis`l=ride

The person and number is shown by the pronoun. And here must be noticed a complication. The pronoun appears in two forms:—

1st. In full, sara, wara &c.

2nd. As an inseparable prefix; the radical letter being prefixed and incorporated with the verb. It cannot, however, be said that this is a true inflexion.

In respect to the name of the class under notice I suggested in 1850 the term Dioscurian from the ancient Dioscurias. There it was that the chief commerce between the Greeks and Romans, and the natives of the Caucasian range took place. According to Pliny, it was carried on by thirty interpreters, so numerous were the languages. The great multiplicity of mutually unintelligible tongues is still one of the characteristics of the parts in question. To have used the word Caucasian would have been correct, but inconvenient. It is already mis-applied in another sense, i. e., for the sake of denoting the so-called Caucasian race, consisting, or said to consist, of Jews, Greeks, Circassians, Scotchmen, ancient Romans, and other heterogeneous elements.

In his paper on the Mongolian Affinities of the Caucasians, published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1853) Mr. Hodgson has both confirmed and developed the doctrine here indicated—his data on the side of Caucasus being those of the Asia Polyglotta, but those on the side of Tibet and China being vastly augmented; and that, to a great extent, through his own efforts and researches.

Upon the evidence of Mr. Hodgson I lay more than ordinary value; not merely on the strength of his acumen and acquirements in general, but from the fact of his ex-professo studies as a naturalist leading him to over-value rather than under-value those differences of physical conformation that (to take extreme forms) contrast the Georgian and Circassian noble with the Chinese; or Tibetan labourer. Nevertheless, his evidence is decided.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
FEBRUARY THE 15TH. 1858.

So little light has been thrown upon the languages of Caucasus, that a publication of the year 1856, entitled Versuch über die Thusch-Sprache, by A. Schieffner, may be allowed to stand as a text for a short commentary.

The Tushi is a language belonging to the least known of the five classes into which Klaproth, in his Asia Polyglotta, distributes the languages of Caucasus: viz. (1.) the Georgian. (2.) the Osset or Iron. (3.) the Lesgian. (4.) the Mizhdzhedzhi. And (5.) the Tsherkess or Circassian. It is to the fourth of these that the Tushi belongs; the particular district in which it is spoken being that of Tzowa, where it is in contact with the Georgian of Georgia; from which, as well as from the Russian, it has adopted several words.

The data consist in communications from a native of the district, Georg Ziskorow, with whom the author came in contact at St. Petersburg. They have supplied a grammatical sketch, a short lexicon, and some specimens in the way of composition, consisting of translations of portions of the Gospels, and two short tales of an Arabic or Persian rather than a truly native character. They are accompanied by a German translation.

Taking the groups as we find them in Klaproth, we may ask what amount of illustration each has received in respect to its grammar. In respect to the vocabularies, the Asia Polyglotta gives us specimens of them all.

The Georgian has long been known through the grammar of Maggi, published upwards of two centuries ago. The researches of Rosen on its several dialects are quite recent. Of the Iron there is a copious dictionary by Sjögren, and a short sketch of its grammar by Rosen. The alphabet is Russian, with additions. Rosen has also given a grammatical sketch of the Circassian: This, however, as well as his notice of the Osset, is exceedingly brief. Of the Lesgian we have no grammar at all; and of the Mizhdzhedzhi, or Tshetshent group, the first grammatical sketch is the one before us.

The alphabet is the ordinary Roman modified; the work being addressed to the Russians rather than the natives, and to the European savans in general rather than to the Russians. Otherwise the Georgian alphabet might have been used with advantage; for it is especially stated that the Georgian and Tushi sound-systems are alike. The modifications to which our own alphabet has been subjected, are those that Castrèn has made in his Samoyed grammar and lexicon. So that we may say that it is in Castrèn's Samoyed mode of writing that Schieffner's Tushi grammar and lexicon are exhibited.

In respect to the general relations of the language, the evidence of the work under notice is confirmatory (though not absolutely) of the views to which the present writer has committed himself, viz.—(1.) that the languages of Caucasus in general are so nearly mono-syllabic as to be with fitness designated pauro-syllabic; (2.) that the distinction drawn by Klaproth between the Mizhdzhedzhi and Lesgian groups is untenable; both belonging to the same class, a fact by which the philologic ethnography of Caucasus is, pro tanto, simplified. Upon the first of these points Schieffner writes, that the avoidance of polysyllabic forms has introduced all manner of abbreviations in the language; upon the second, that the little he has seen of the Lesgian grammar induces him to connect it with the Tshetshents. It should be added, however, that in respect to its monosyllabic character, he maintains that the shortness of many of its words is due to a secondary process; so that the older form of the language was more polysyllabic than the present.

Of the chief details, the formation of the cases of the nouns comes first. The declension of the personal pronouns is as follows. With a slight modification it is that of the ordinary substantive as well.

That some of these forms are no true inflexions, but appended prepositions; is speedily stated in the text. If so, it is probable that, in another author or in a different dialect, the number of cases will vary. At any rate, the agglutinate character of the language is indicated. The numerals are—

This as a word the author connects with the word tqo=also, overagain (auch, wiederum), as if it were 10 doubled, which it most likely is. In like manner tqeexç is one from twenty=undeviginti:—

The commonest signs of the plural number are -i and -si, the latter=is in Tshetshents. The suffixes -ne and -bi, the latter of which is found in Lesgian, is stated to be Georgian in origin. No reason, however, against its being native is given.

In verbs, the simplest form is (as usual) the imperative. Add to this -a, and you have the infinitive. The sign of the conditional is ḥe or ḥ; that of the conjunctive ḷe or ḷ.

The tenses are—

(1.) Present, formed by adding -a or -u to the root: i. e. to the imperative form, and changing the vowel.

(2.) Imperfect, by adding -r to the present.

(3.) Aorist, formed by the addition of -r to the

(4.) Perfect; the formation of which is not expressly given, but which is said to differ from the present in not changing the vowel. However, we have the forms xet=find, xeṫi=found; (perf.) xetin=found (aorist). From the participle of the perfect is formed the

(5.) Pluperfect by adding -r.

(6.) The future is either the same as the present, or a modification of it.

I give the names of those moods and tenses as I find them. The language of the Latin grammar has, probably, been too closely imitated.

The first and second persons are formed by appending the pronouns either in the nominative or the instructive form. That an oblique form of the pronoun should appear in the personal inflexion of verbs is no more than what the researches of the late Mr. Garnett, with which we are all so familiar, have taught us to expect. At the same time, the extent to which the instructive and nominative forms are alike must be borne in mind. Let either be appended; and, when so appended, undergo (under certain conditions) certain modifications, and a double origin is simulated. That this is the case in the instances of the work under notice is by no means asserted. The possibility of its being so is suggested.

The participle of the present tense is formed in -in; as dago=eat, dagu-in=eating.

The participle of the preterite ends in -no; as xac̣e=hear, xac̣-no=heard.

There are auxiliary verbs, and no small amount of euphonic changes; of which one, more especially, deserves notice. It is connected with the gender of nouns. When certain words (adjectives or the so-called verb substantive) follow certain substantives, they change their initial. Thus ḥaṫxleen wa=the prophet is, ḥaṫxleensi ba=the prophets are, waṡo wa=the brother is, waṡar ba=the brothers are.

Again—naw ja=the ship is, nawr ja=the ships are; bstiuno ja=the wife is, bstee da=the wives are.

This is said to indicate gender, but how do we know what gender is? The words themselves have neither form nor inflexion which indicates it. Say that instead of gender it means sex, i. e. that the changes in question are regulated by natural rather than grammatical characters. We still find that the word naw is considered feminine—feminine and inanimate. This, however, is grammatical rather than natural, sex—"das weibliche Geschlecht wird bey unbelebten Gegenständen auch im Plural durch j-, bei belebten durch a ausgedrückt." Then follow the examples just given. How, however, do we know that these words are feminine? It is submitted that the explanation of this very interesting initial change has yet to be given. It recalls, however, to our memory the practice of more languages than one, the Keltic, the Woloff, the Kafre, and several other African tongues, wherein the change is initial, though not always on the same principle.

So, also, the division of objects into animate and inanimate recalls to our mind some African, and numerous American, tongues.

Such is the notice of the first of the Mizhdzhedzhi or Tshetshents (we may say Lesgian) forms of speech of which the grammatical structure has been investigated; a notice which suggests the question concerning its affinities and classification.

The declension points to the Ugrian, or Fin, class of languages; with which not only the Tshetshents, but all the other languages of Caucasus have long been known to have miscellaneous affinities. The resemblance, however, may be more apparent than real. The so-called cases may be combinations of substantives and prepositions rather than true inflexions, and the terminology may be more Ugrian in form than in reality. Even if the powers of the cases be the same, it will not prove much. Two languages expressing a given number of the relations that two nouns may bear to each other will, generally, express the same. Cases are genitive, dative and the like all the world over—and that independent of any philological affinity between the languages in which they occur. The extent to which they are also Caritive, Adessive and the like has yet to be investigated.

The Ugrian affinities, then, of the Tshetshents are indirect; it being the languages of its immediate neighbourhood with which it is more immediately connected. In the way of vocabularies the lists of the Asia Polyglotta have long been competent to show this. In the way of grammar the evidence is, still, far from complete. The Georgian, to which Maggi gives no more than six cases, has a far scantier declension than the Tushi, at least as it appears here. The Circassian, according to Rosen, is still poorer.

In the verbs the general likeness is greater.

In the pronouns, however, the most definite similarity is to be found; as may be seen from the following forms in the Circassian:—

Ab=father.

To which add—

The amount of likeness here is considerable. Over and above the use of s for the first person singular, the s' in the second person plural should be noticed. So should the b and r in the Circassian u-bart; both of which are plural elements in the Tushi also.

Finally (as a point of general philology), the double forms of the Tushi plurals wai and tx̣o suggest the likelihood of their being exclusive and inclusive; one denoting the speaker but not the person spoken to, the other both the person spoken to and the person who speaks; plurals of this kind being well known to be common in many of the ruder languages.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
APRIL 17TH 1854.

The text of Herodotus places the Agathyrsi in Transylvania (there or thereabouts). (See F. W. Newman On Scythia and the surrounding Countries, according to Herodotus, Philological Society's Proceedings, vol. i. p. 77.)

The subsequent authors speak of them as a people who painted (tattooed?) their bodies; the usual epithet being picti.

The same epithet is applied to the Geloni; also a population of the Scythia of Herodotus.

For accurate knowledge the locality of the Agathyrsans was too remote—too remote until, at least, the date of the Dacian wars; but the Dacian wars are, themselves, eminently imperfect in their details, and unsatisfactory in respect to the authorities for them.

There is every reason, then, for a nation in the locality of the Agathyrsi remaining obscure—in the same predicament (say) with the Hyperborei, or with the occupants of Thule.

But there is no reason for supposing the obliteration of the people so called; nor yet for supposing a loss of its name, whether native or otherwise.

Hence, when we get the details of Dacia we may reasonably look out for Agathyrsi.

How far must we expect to find their name unmodified? This depends upon the population through whom the classical writers, whether Latin or Greek, derived it. Now it is submitted, that if we find a notice of them in the fifth century A. D., and that in an account relating to Dacia and Pannonia, the medium has, probably, been different from that through which Herodotus, amongst the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, obtained his accounts. The details of this difference of medium are not very important, and the discussion of them would be episodical to the present paper, if not irrelevant. It is enough to remark, that a difference of medium is probable; and, as a consequence thereof, a difference in the form of the name.

This is preliminary and introductory to the notice of the following passage of Priscus, to whom we owe the account of one of the embassies to Attila—Ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἧρχε τῶν Ἀκατζίρων καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἐθνῶν νεμομένων τὴν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον Σκυθικέν. Another form (also in Priscus) is Ἀκατίροι. They are specially called Akatiri Hunni. Jornandes' form is Acatziri.

Place for place, this gives us the Agathyrsi of Herodotus as near as can be expected; and, name for name it does the same: the inference being that the Akatziri of Priscus are the descendants of the Agathyrsi of Herodotus. Of course, evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction, or change of name on the part of the population in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence, however, has not been produced, nor has the present writer succeeded in finding, though he has sought for it.

Descendants then of the Agathyrsi, and ancestors of the Akatziri may have formed part of the population of Dacia when Domitian and Trajan fought against Decebalus; a part that may have been large or small, weak or powerful, homogeneous with the rest of Dacia or different from it. Assuming it to have been different, it may still have supplied soldiers—even leaders. Decebalus himself may as easily have belonged to the Agathyrsan part of Dacia as to any other. A very little evidence will turn the balance in so obscure a point as the present.

Now, no German and no Slavonic dialects give us either the meaning of the name Decebalus or any name like it. It stands alone in European history. Where does it appear? In the history of the Turks. The first known king of the Turks bears the same name as the last of the Dacians. Dizabulus (Διζαβούλος) was that khan of the Turks of Tartary to whom Justinian sent an embassy when the Avars invaded the Eastern empire.

This (as is freely admitted) is a small fact, if taken alone; but this should not be done. The cumulative character of the evidence in all matters of this kind should be borne in mind, and the value of small facts measured by the extent to which they stand alone, or are strengthened by the coincidence of others. In the latter case they assume importance in proportion to the mutual support they give each other; the value of any two being always more than double that of either taken singly.

On the other hand, each must rest on some separate substantive evidence of its own. To say that Decebalus was an Agathyrsan because the Agathyrsans were Turks, and that the Agathyrsans were Turks because Decebalus was one of them, is illegitimate. There must be some special evidence in each case, little or much.

Now the evidence that the Agathyrsi were Turks lies in the extent to which (a) they were Scythians (Skoloti), and (b) the Scythians (Skoloti) were Turks;—neither of which facts is either universally admitted or universally denied. The present writer, however, holds the Turk character of the Agathyrsi on grounds wholly independent of anything in the present paper; indeed, the suggestion that the Acatziri are Agathyrsi is, not his, but Zeuss'.—(See Die Deutschen and die Nachbarstämme, v. Bulgari, p. 714.)

If Agathyrs- be Akatzir- in some older, what is the latter word in any newer form?—for such there probably is. Word for word, it is probably the same as Khazar, a denomination for an undoubtedly Turk tribe which occurs for the first time in Theophanes:—Τοῦρκοι ἀπὸ τῆς ἐώας οὓς Χαζάρους ὀνομάζουσιν. This is A. D. 626. Whether, however, the same populations were denoted is uncertain. There are certain difficulties in the supposition that they were absolutely identical.

It is not, however, necessary that they should be so. There might be more than one division of a great stock, like the Turk so called. Nay, they might have been populations other than Turk so designated, provided only that there were some Turk population in their neighbourhood so to call them. More than this. The word may be current at the present moment, though, of course, in a modified form. Suppose it to have been the Turk translation of pictus; or rather, suppose the word pictus to be the Latin translation of Agathyrs- (Akatzir-): what would the probable consequence be? Even this, that wherever there was a painted (or tattooed) population in the neighbourhood of any member of the great Turk stock, the name, or something like it, might arise. Be it so. If the members of the same Turk stock lay wide apart, the corresponding painted or tattooed populations lying wide apart also might take the same name.

The details suggested by this line of criticism may form the subject of another paper. In the present, the author hazards a fresh observation—an observation on a population often associated with the Agathyrsi, viz. the Geloni. Seeing that we have such forms as Unni (the Greek form is Οὖννοι, not Οὗννοι) and Chuni (=Huns); Arpi and Carpi; Attuarii and Chattuari, &c.; and seeing the affinity between the sounds of g and k; he believes that the word Geloni may take another form and begin with a vowel (Elôni, Alôni). Seeing that their locality is nearly that of the Alani of a latter period; seeing that the middle syllable in Alani (in one writer at least) is long—ἀλκήεντες Ἀλαῦνοι; seeing that Herodotus, who mentions the Geloni, knows no Alani, whereas the authors who describe the Alani make (with one exception about to be noticed) no mention of the Geloni, he identifies the two populations, Geloni and Alani, or vice versâ. He deduces something more from this root l—n (λ—ν). Let the name for the Alans have reached the Greeks of the Euxine through two different dialects of some interjacent language; let the form it took in Greek have been parisyllabic in one case, whereas it was imparisyllabic in the other, and we have two plurals, one in -οι, as Γέλωνοι, Ἄλαυνοι, Ἄλανοι, and another in -ες, as Γέλωνες, Ἄλαυνες, Ἄλανες,—possible, and even probable, modifications of the original name, whatever that was. Now, name for name, Αλανες comes very near Ελληνες; and in this similarity may lie the explanation of the statement of Herodotus as to the existence of certain Scythian Greeks (ἑλληνες Σκυθαι)—iv. 17. 108.

If so these Scythian Greeks were Alans.

The exception, indicated a few lines above, to the fact of only one author mentioning both Geloni and Alani, is to be found in Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 2. 13. 14). The passage is too long to quote. It is clear, however, that whilst his Alani are spoken of from his own knowledge, his Geloni are brought in from his book-learning, i. e. from Herodotus.

Note 1.

Evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction or change of name on the part of the populations in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence has not been produced &c.—The fuller consideration of the question involved in this statement is to be found in Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography vv. Hunni, Scythia, and Sarmatia.

Note 2.

The details suggested by this line of criticism &c.—These are to the effect that in the word Agathyrsi we get an early Turk gloss, of which the history is somewhat curious. It exists, at the present moment in England, having come via Hungary. It exists in Siberia, on the very frontier of the America.

It is the English word Hussar=Khazar. Here we have it in its abbreviated form.

It is the Siberian word Yukahir, Yukazhir, or Yukadzhir.

The "native name of the Yukahiri of Siberia is Andon Domni. The Koriaks call them Atal. Their other neighbours are the Turk Yakuts. Hence it is probable that it is to the Yakut language that the term Yukahir (also Yukadzhir) is referrible. If so, its probable meaning is the same as the Koriak Atal, which means spotted. It applies to the Yukahiri from their spotted deerskin dresses.

Now, south of these same Yakuts, who are supposed to call the Andon Domni by the name Yukahiri (or Yukadzhiri), live a tribe of Tungusians. These are called Tshapodzhir—but not by themselves. By whom? By no one so probably as by the Yakuts. Why? Because they tattoo themselves. If so, it is probable that Yukadzhir and Tshapodzhir are one and the same word; at any rate, a likely meaning in a likely language has been claimed for it.

Let it, then, be considered as a Turk word, meaning spotted, tattooed, painted,—provisionally. It may appear in any part of the Turk area, provided only, that some nation to which one of the three preceding adjectives applies be found in its neighbourhood. It may appear, too, in any state of any Turk form of speech. But there are Turk forms of speech as far distant from the Lena and Tunguska as Syria or Constantinople; and there are Turk glosses as old as Herodotus. One of these the present writer believes to be the word Agathyrsi, being provided with special evidence to shew that the nation so called were either themselves Turks or on a Turk frontier. Now, the Agathyrsi are called the picti Agathyrsi; and it is submitted to the reader that the one term is the translation of the other—the words Agathyrs (also Akatzir), Yukadzhir, and Tshapodzhir, being one and the same."—From the author's Native Races of the Russian Empire.

---

READ
BEFORE THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE.
8TH JANUARY, 1857.

In the present paper, advantage is taken of the local character of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, to make the name of the county serve as a special text for a general subject. What applies to Lancashire applies to any county in Roman England.

The doctrine is as follows—that in Lancashire particularly, and in England in general, the predominant language for the first five centuries of our era was not Latin but British.

The writer is so far from laying this down as a novelty, that he is by no means certain, that it may not be almost a truism. He is by no means certain, that there is a single one of those to whom he addresses himself, who may now hold, or even have held, the opposite opinion. He is fully aware that excellent authorities have maintained both sides of the question. He is only doubtful as to the extent to which the one doctrine may preponderate over the other.

If the question were to be settled by an appeal to the history of the more influential opinions concerning it, we should find that, in a reference to the earliest and the latest of our recent investigators, Dr. Prichard would maintain one side of the question, Mr. Wright another. The paper of the latter, having been printed in the Transactions of the Society, is only alluded to. The opinion of Dr. Prichard is conveyed in the following extract—"The use of languages really cognate must be allowed to furnish a proof, or at least a strong presumption, of kindred race. Exceptions may indeed, under very peculiar circumstances, occur to the inference founded on this ground. For example, the French language is likely to be the permanent idiom of the negro people of St. Domingo, though the latter are principally of African descent. Slaves imported from various districts in Africa, having no common idiom, have adopted that of their masters. But conquest, or even captivity, under different circumstances, has scarcely ever exterminated the native idiom of any people, unless after many ages of subjection; and even then, vestiges have perhaps always remained of its existence. In Britain, the native idiom was nowhere superseded by the Roman, though the island was held in subjection upwards of three centuries. In Spain and in Gaul, several centuries of Latin domination, and fifteen under German and other modern dynasties, have proved insufficient entirely to obliterate the ancient dialects, which were spoken by the native people before the Roman conquest. Even the Gypsies, who have wandered in small companies over Europe for some ages, still preserve their original language in a form that can be everywhere recognised."[13]

Upon the whole, I think that the current opinion is in favour of the language of Roman Britain having been Latin; at any rate I am sure that, before I went very closely into the subject, my own views were, at least, in that direction. "What the present language of England would have been, had the Norman conquest never taken place, the analogy of Holland, Denmark, and many other countries enables us to determine. It would have been as it is at present. What it would have been had the Saxon conquest never taken place, is a question wherein there is far more speculation. Of France, of Italy, of Wallachia, and of the Spanish Peninsula, the analogies all point the same way. They indicate that the original Celtic would have been superseded by the Latin of the Conquerors, and consequently that our language, in its later stages, would have been neither British nor Gaelic, but Roman. Upon these analogies, however, we may refine. Italy was from the beginning, Roman; the Spanish Peninsula was invaded full early; no ocean divided Gaul from Rome; and the war against the ancestors of the Wallachians was a war of extermination."[14]

In these preliminary remarks we find a sufficient reason for going specially into the question; not, however, as discoverers of any new truth, nor as those who would correct some general error, but rather, in a judicial frame of mind, and with the intention of asking, first, how far the actual evidence is (either way) conclusive; next, which way (supposing it to be inconclusive) the presumption lies; and thirdly, what follows in the way of inference from each of the opposing views.

What are the statements of the classical writers, subsequent to the reduction of Britain, to the effect that the Romans, when they conquered a Province, established their language? I know of none. I know of none, indeed, anterior to the Britannic conquest. I insert, however, the limitation, because in case such exist, it is necessary to remember that they would not be conclusive. The practice may have changed in the interval.

Is there anything approaching such a statement? There is a passage in Seneca to the effect "that where the Roman conquers there he settles."

But he conquered Britain. Therefore he established his language. Add to this that where he established his own language, there the native tongue became obliterated. Therefore the British died off.

If so, the Angles—when they effected their conquest—must have displaced, by their own English, a Latin rather than a British, form of speech.

But is this the legitimate inference from the passage in question? No. On the contrary, it is a conclusion by no means warranted by the premises. Nevertheless, as far as external testimony is concerned, there are no better premises to be found.

But there is another element in our reasoning. In four large districts at least,—in the Spanish Peninsula, in France, in the Grisons, and in the Danubian Principalities—the present language is a derivative from the Latin, which was, undoubtedly and undeniably, introduced by the Roman conquest. From such clear and known instances, the reasoning to the obscure and unknown is a legitimate analogy, and the inference is that Britain was what Gallia, Rhætia, Hispania, and Dacia were.

In this we have a second reason for the fact that there are many who, with Arnold, hold, that except in the particular case of Greece, the Roman world, in general, at the date of the break-up of the Empire, was Latin in respect to its language. At any rate, Britannia is reasonably supposed to be in the same category with Dacia—a country conquered later.

On the other hand, however, there are the following considerations.

I. In the first place the Angle conquest was gradual; so gradual as to give us an insight into the character of the population that was conquered. Was this (in language) Latin? There is no evidence of its having been so. But is there evidence of its having been British? A little. How much, will be considered in the sequel.

II. In the next place the Angle conquest was (and is) incomplete; inasmuch as certain remains of the earlier and non-Angle population still exist. Are these Latin? Decidedly not; but on the contrary British,—witness the present Britons of Wales, and the all but British Cornish-men, who are now British in blood, and until the last century were, more or less, British in language as well.

But this is not all. There was a third district which was slow to become Angle, viz.: part of the mountain district of Cumberland and Westmoreland. What was this before it was Angle? Not Roman but British.

Again—there was a time when Monmouthshire, with (no doubt) some portion of the adjoining counties, was in the same category in respect to its non-Angle character with Wales. What was it in respect to language? Not Roman but British.

Again—mutatis mutandis. Devonshire was to Cornwall as Monmouth to Wales. Was it Roman? No—but, on the contrary, British.

Now say, for the sake of argument, that Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland were never Roman at all, and consequently, that they prove nothing in the question as to the introduction of the Latin language. But can we say, for even the sake of argument, that Devon and Monmouth were never Roman? Was not, on the contrary, Devon at least, exceedingly Roman, as is shewn by the importance of Isca Danmoniorum, or Exeter.

Or, say that the present population of Wales is no representative of the ancient occupants of that part of Britain, but, on the contrary, descended from certain immigrants from the more eastern and less mountainous parts of England. I do not hold this doctrine. Admitting it, however, for the sake of argument—whence came the present Welsh, if it came not from a part of England where British, rather than Latin, was spoken? There must have been British somewhere; and probably British to the exclusion of Latin.

The story of St. Guthlac of Croyland is well-known. It runs to the effect that being disturbed, one night, by a horrid howling, he was seriously alarmed, thinking that the howlers might be Britons. Upon looking-out, however, he discovered that they were only devils—whereby he was comforted, the Briton being the worse of the two. Now the later we make this apocryphal story, the more it tells in favor of there having been Britons in Lincolnshire, long after the Angle conquest. Yet Lincolnshire (except so far as it was Dane,) must have been one of the most Angle portions of England. In France, Spain, Portugal, the Grisons, Wallachia or Moldavia, such devils as those of St. Guthlac would have been Romans.

As the argument, then, stands at present, we have traces of the British as opposed to the Angle, but no traces of the Latin in similar opposition.

Let us now look at the analogies, viz: Spain, (including Portugal,) France, Switzerland and the Danubian Principalities; in all of which we have had an aboriginal population and a Roman conquest, in all of which, too, we have had a third conquest subsequent to that by Rome—even as in Britain we have had the triple series of (A) native Britains, (B) Roman conquerors, (C) Angles.

What do we find? In all but Switzerland, remains of the original tongue; in all, without exception, remains of the language of the population that conquered the Romans; in all, without exception, something Roman.

In Britain we find nothing Roman; but, on the contrary, only the original tongue and the language of the third population.

I submit that this is strong primâ facie evidence in favour of the Latin having never been the general language of Britain. If it were so, the area of the Angle conquest must have exactly coincided with the area of the Latin language. Is this probable? I admit that it is anything but highly improbable. The same practicable character of the English parts of Britain (as opposed to the Welsh, Cornish, and Cumbrian) which made the conquest of a certain portion of the Island easy to the Romans as against the Britons, may have made it easy for the Angles as against the Romans; and vice versa, the impracticable character of Wales, Cornwall, and Cumberland, that protected the Britons against their first invaders, may have done the same for them against the second. If so, the two areas of foreign conquest would coincide. I by no means undervalue this argument.

It is almost unnecessary to say that the exact conditions under which Britain was reduced were not those of any other Roman Province.

In respect to Spain, the Roman occupancy was early, having begun long before that of Northern and Central Gaul, having begun during the Punic wars, and having become sufficiently settled by the time of Augustus to command the attention of Strabo on the strength of the civilization it had developed. In Spain, then, there was priority in point of time to account for any extraordinary amount of Roman influences.

Gaul, with the exception of the earlier acquisitions in the Narbonensis, was the conquest of one of the most thorough-going of conquerors. The number of enemies that Cæsar slaughtered has been put at 1,000,000. Without knowing the grounds of this calculation, we may safely say that his campaigns were eminently of a destructive character.

The conquerors of the Breuni, Genauni, and similar occupants of those parts of Switzerland where the Rumonsch Language (of Latin origin) is now spoken, were men of similar energy. Neither Drusus nor Tiberius spared an enemy who opposed. Both were men who would "make a solitude and call it peace."

That Trajan's conquest of Dacia was of a similar radical and thorough-going character is nearly certain.

Now, the evidence that the conquests of the remaining provinces were like those of the provinces just noted, is by no means strong. At the same time, it must be admitted that the analogy established by four such countries as Gaul, Spain, Switzerland, and Moldo-Wallachia is cogent. What was the extent to which Africa, Pannonia, Illyricum, Thrace, and the Mœsias were Romanized? Of Asia? I say nothing. It was sufficiently Greek to have been in the same category with Greece itself, and in Greece itself we know that no attempts were made upon the language.

Africa was Latin in its literature; and, at a later period, pre-eminently Latin in its Christianity. But the evidence that the vernacular language was Latin is nil, and the presumptions unfavourable. The Berber tongue of the present native tribes of the whole district between Egypt and the Atlantic is certainly of high antiquity; it being a well-known fact, that in it, several of the names in the geography of classical Africa are significant. Now this is spread over the country indifferently. Neither does it show any notable signs of Latin intermixture. Neither is there trace, or shadow of trace, of any form of speech of Latin origin throughout the whole of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers or Morocco.

In Pannonia and Illyricum, the same absence of any language of Latin origin is manifest. Pannonia and Illyricum have had more than an average amount of subsequent conquerors and occupants—Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Slavonians, Hungarians, Germans. That the Slovak, however, in the north, and the Dalmatian forms of the Servian in the south, represent the native languages is generally admitted—now, if not long ago. These, then, have survived. Why not, then, the Latin if it ever took root?

In respect to Thrace, it is just possible that it may have been, in its towns at least, sufficiently Greek to have been in the same category with Greece proper. I say that this is just possible. In reality, however, it was more likely to be contrasted with Greece than to be classed with it. One thing, however, is certain, viz.:—that the country district round Constantinople was never a district in which Latin was vernacular. Had it been so, the fact could hardly have been unnoticed, or without influence on the unequivocally Greek Metropolis of the Eastern Empire.

If the doctrine that Thrace may have been sufficiently Greek to forbid the introduction of the Latin be doubtful, the notion that the Mœsias were so is untenable. Yet the Latin never seems to have been vernacular in either of them. Had it been so, it would probably have held its ground, especially in the impracticable mountains and forests of Upper Mœsia or the modern Servia. Yet where is there a trace of it? Of all the Roman Provinces, Servia or Upper Mœsia seems to be the one wherein the evidence of a displacement of the native, and a development of a Latin form of speech, is at its minimum, and the instance of Servia is the one upon which the analogous case of Britain best rests.

The insufficiency of the current reasons in favour of the modern Servian being of recent introduction have been considered by me elsewhere.

Now comes the notice of a text which always commands the attention of the ethnological philologue, when he is engaged upon the Angle period of our island's history. It refers to the middle of the eighth century, the era of the Venerable Beda, from whose writings it is taken. I give it in extenso. It runs "Hæc in presenti, juxta numerum librorum quibus lex divina scripta est, quinque gentium linguis, unam eandemque summæ veritatis et veræ sublimitatis scientiam scrutatur et confitetur; Anglorum, videlicet, Brittonum, Scottorum, Pictorum et Latinorum quæ meditatione scripturarum, cæteris omnibus est facta communis".[15]

That the Latin here is the Latin of Ecclesiastical, rather than Imperial, Rome, the Latin of the Scriptures rather than classical writers, the Latin of a written book rather than a Lingua Rustica, is implied by the context.

Should this, however, be doubted, the following passage, which makes the languages of Britain only four, is conclusive—"Omnes nationes et provincias Brittanniæ, quæ in quatuor linguas, id est Brittonum, Pictorum, Scottorum et Anglorum divisæ sunt, in ditione accepit."[16]

It is the first of these two statements of Beda's that the following extract from Wintoun is founded on.

Cronykil, I. xiii, 39.

But the Latin of the scriptures may have been the Latin of common life as well. Scarcely. The change from the written to the spoken language was too great for this. What the latter would have been we can infer. It would have been something like the following "Pro Deo amur et pro Xristian poblo et nostro commun salvament d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et poder me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in ajudha et in cadhuna cosa, si com om per dreit son fradre salvar dist, in o quid il me altresi fazet: et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai uni, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit."

This is the oath of the Emperors Karl and Ludwig, sons of Charlemagne, as it was sworn by the former in A. D. 842. It is later in date than the time of Beda by about a century; being in the Lingua Rustica of France. Nevertheless, it is a fair specimen of the difference between the spoken languages of the countries that had once been Roman Provinces and the written Latin. Indeed, it was not Latin, but Romance; and, in like manner, any vernacular form of speech, used in Britain but of Roman origin, would have been Romance also.

The conclusion which the present notice suggests is—

That the testimony of authors tells neither way.

That the presumptions in favour of the Latin which are raised by the cases of Gaul, Spain, Rhætia, and Dacia, are anything but conclusive.

That the inferences from the earliest as well as the latest data as to the condition of English Britain, the inferences from the Angle conquest, and the inferences from the present language of Wales, are decidedly against the Latin.

I may, perhaps, be allowed to conclude by a reference to a paper already alluded to, as having been laid before the present Society, by Mr. Wright. This is to the effect, that the Latin reigned paramount not only in England, but in Wales also, under the Roman dominion; the present Welsh being of recent introduction from Armorica.

That the population was heterogeneous is certain, the Roman Legionaries being, to a great extent, other than Roman. It is also certain that there was, within the island, at an early period, no inconsiderable amount of Teutonic blood. It is certain, too, that the name Briton had different applications at different times.

If so, the difference between Mr. Wright and myself, in respect to the homogeneousness or heterogeneousness of the Britannic population, is only a matter of degree.

In respect to the particular fact, as to whether the British or Latin language was the vernacular form of speech, we differ more decidedly. That the British was unwritten and uncultivated is true; so that the exclusive use of the Latin for inscriptions is only what we expect. The negative fact that no British name has been found inscribed, I by no means undervalue.

The preponderance, however, of a Non-British population, and the use of the Latin as the vernacular language, are doctrines, which the few undoubted facts of our early history impugn rather than verify.

The main difficulty which Mr. Wright's hypothesis meets—and it does meet it—lies in the fact of the similarity between the Welsh and Armorican being too great for anything but a comparatively recent separation to account for. Nevertheless, even this portion of what may be called the Armorican hypothesis, is by no means incompatible with the doctrine of the present paper. The Celtic of Armorica may as easily have displaced the older Celtic of Britain (from which, by hypothesis, it notably differed) as it is supposed to have displaced the Latin.

I do not imagine this to have been the case; indeed I can see reasons against it, arising out of the application of Mr. Wright's own line of criticism.

I think it by no means unlikely that the argument which gives us the annihilation of the British of the British Isles, may also give us that of the Gallic of Gaul. Why should Armorica have been more Celtic than Wales? Yet, if it were not so, whence came the Armorican of Wales? I throw out these objections for the sake of stimulating criticism, rather than with the view of settling a by no means easy question.

---

The dates of the four papers on this part of the world shew that the first preceded the earliest of the other three by as much as four years; a fact that must be borne in mind when the philological ethnography of New Guinea and the islands to the south and east of it is under notice. The vocabularies of each of the authors illustrated in papers 2 and. 3, more than doubled our previous data—Jukes' illustrating the language of islands between New Guinea and Australia, Macgillivray's those of the Louisiade Archipelago.

That there was a hypothesis at the bottom of No. 1 is evident. Neither is there much doubt as to the fact of that hypothesis being wrong.

I held in 1843 that, all over Oceania, there was an older population of ruder manners, and darker colour than the Malays, the proper Polynesians, and the populations allied to them; that, in proportion as these latter overspread the several islands of their present occupancy the aborigines were driven towards the interior; that in Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea &c. the original black race remained unmolested.

This view led to two presumptions;—both inaccurate;

1. That the ruder tribes were, as such, likely to be Negrito;

2. That the Negrito tongues would be allied to each other.

The view, held by me now, will be given in a future notice.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

FEBRUARY 10, 1843.

By the term Negrito is meant those tribes of the Asiatic and Australian islands, who, in one or more of their physical characters, depart from the type of the nations in their neighbourhood and approach that of the African. The word is more comprehensive than Arafura, Andaman, or Papuan, and less comprehensive than Negro.

Of the Negrito localities the most western are—

The Andaman Islands.—A Vocabulary, collected by Lieutenant R. H. Colebrooke, appears in the Asiatic Researches, vol. iv. p. 410. The native name is Mineopie. An historical notice of them appears as early as the ninth century, in the Travels of the Two Arabians, translated by Renaudot.

The Nicobar and Carnicobar Islands.—In the largest of these it is stated that, in the interior, blacks are to be found. The current assertion concerning the language of the rest of these islands is, that the Carnicobar is Peguan, and the Nicobar Malay.—Asiatic Researches, iii. 303.

Malacca.—The Samangs of the interior are Negrito. For the single Vocabulary of their language, see Crawfurd's Indian Archipelago, or Klaproth's Nouveau Journal Asiatique, xii. 239, where Crawfurd's Vocabulary is reprinted without acknowledgement. The Orang Benua are not Negrito; neither are the Jokong Negrito. For thirty words in the latter language, see Thomas Raffles in Asiatic Researches, xii. 109. In this list twelve words are shown by Raffles to be Malay, and Humboldt states the same of two more. The other sixteen may or may not be of Negrito origin. The Samangs are the Orang Udai.—Humboldt, Über die Kawi-Sprache.

Sumatra.—The Battas of Sumatra are Malay, not Negrito (Marsden's Sumatra, p. 203, and Rienzi's Oceanie, vol. i.). The Sumatran of Parkinson's Journal (p. 198) is the Arabic of Acheen. The true Negritos of Sumatra seem to be,

1. The Orang Cooboo.—These are stated to be pretty numerous between Palembang and Jambee.—Marsden's Sumatra, p. 35.

2. The Orang Googoo,—who are described by the Sumatrans of Laboon as being more Orang Utang than man.—Marsden's Sumatra, p. 35. Specimens of the Orang Googoo (Gougon) Rienzi states to have seen. He says that they come from Palembang and Menangcaboo, and he calls them Pithecomorphi.

For an historical notice as early as 960 A. D., probably referring to the Blacks of Sumatra, see Klaproth in Nouveau Journal Asiatique, xii. 239.

Borneo.—The Biajuk of Borneo is not Negrito but Malay (Crawfurd's Indian Archipelago); neither are the Dyacks Negrito. The statement of Marsden and Leyden is, that the Dyacks are whiter than the rest of the natives of Borneo; and the remark of more than one voyager is, that the Dyacks of Borneo look like South Sea Islanders in the midst of a darker population. Are the Marut, Idongs, Tidongs, or Tirungs of the north of Borneo Negrito? In Rienzi's Oceanie there is a Borneo Vocabulary which is headed Dyack, Marut and Idaan, the three terms being treated as synonyms. Of this Vocabulary all the words are Malay. That there are Negritos in Borneo is most probable, but of their language we possess but one word, apün, father[17] (and that more than doubtful); whilst of their name we know nothing; and in respect to their locality, we have only the statement of Kollf, that in the north of Borneo Blacks are to be found on the Keeneebaloo mountain; a statement, however, slightly modified by the fact of his calling them Idaans or Maruts (see Earl's translation of the Voyage of the Doorga, p. 417). Compare the name Idaan in Borneo, with the name Orang Udai, applied to certain rude tribes in Malacca.

The Sooloo Islands.—There are positive statements that the Sooloos contain Negritos. They also contain Malays; as may be seen in a Sooloo vocabulary in Rienzi's Oceanie, vol. i.

The Manillas.—The Isola de Negros testifies its population by its name. Hervas calls it the Papua of the Philippines. In Panay are the blackest of the Philippine Negritos. Rienzi would term them Melanopygmæi. In Bohol, Leyté and Samar, there are Negritos (Lafond Lurcy, ii. 182.); also in Cayagan (Lafond Lurcy, ii. 182.); also in Capul or Abac (Hervas). For the two main islands there are,—1st. In Mindanao, two wild tribes inhabiting the interior, the Bantschilen and the Hillunas. The proof of these two tribes being Negrito is the strongest for the Hillunas. They are the Negros del Monte of the Spaniards (Hervas, Catalogo delle Lingue; Adelung, i. 601). Near Marivèles are the Igorots or Ætas (Agtas of Hervas); and of these we have late and positive evidence, first to the fact of their being Negrito, and next to the difference of their language from the Tagal.—(Lafond Lurcy.) Secondly, in Luçon, the Zambalen of Adelung are Negrito. These are the Blacks of Pampango. The Blacks inhabiting the other parts of the island are called Ygelots; and Mount St. Mathew, near Manilla, is one of their well-known localities, and the Illoco mountains another. Here they were visited by Lafond Lurcy. They were all alike, and all under four feet six (French measure). Italonen, Calingas, and Maitim are the names under which the Philippine Blacks have been generally described. Agta and Maitim are said to be indigenous appellations.—Hervas.

Formosa.—The Formosan language is Malay. In the interior, however, are, according to the Chinese accounts,—1, the Thoufan; 2, the Kia-lao; 3, the Chan tchaó chan; 4, the Lang Khiao,—aboriginal tribes with Negrito characters, each speaking a peculiar dialect.—Klaproth, Recherches Asiatiques.

The Loochoo Islands.—The current Loochoo language is Japanese (Klaproth, Rech. Asiat.). But besides this, Adelung mentions from Père Gaubil and Gosier, that three other languages are spoken in the interior, neither Japanese nor Chinese; and we are now, perhaps, justified in considering that, in these quarters, the fact of a language being aboriginal, is primâ facie evidence of its being Negrito.

Java.—Here the evidence of an aboriginal population at all is equivocal, and that of Negrito aborigines wholly absent. For the Kalangs, see Raffles's History of Java. The dark complexions on the island Bali show the darkness, not of the Negrito, but of the Hindoo; such at least is the view of Raffles opposed to that of Adelung (Mith. i.). There is no notice of Blacks in Ende (otherwise Floris), in Sumbawa, or in Sandalwood Island.

Savoo.—If the Savoo of modern geographers be the Pulo Sabatu of Dampier, then there were, in Dampier's time, Blacks in Savoo. The Savoo of Parkinson's Journal is Malay.

Timor.—In this island Negritos were indicated by Peron. Freycinet describes them. Lafond Lurcy had a Timor black as a slave. Of their language he gives four words:—manouc, bird; vavi, woman; lima, five; ampou, ten. All these are Malay.

Ombay.—In Freycinet's Voyage the natives of Ombay are described as having olive-black complexions, flattened noses, thick lips, and long black hair. In Arago[18] we find a short vocabulary, of which a few words are Malay, whilst the rest are unlike anything either in the neighbouring language of Timor (at least as known by Raffles's specimens), or in any other language known to the author. Upon what grounds, unless it be their cannibalism, the Ombaians have been classed with the New Zealanders, is unknown. The evidence is certainly not taken from their language.

Between Timor and New Guinea we collect, either from positive statements or by inference, that, pure or mixed, there are Negritos in at least the following islands:—1, Wetta; 2, Kissa?; 3, Serwatty?; 4, Lette?; 5, Moa?; 6, Roma?; 7, Damma; 8, Lakor?; 9, Luan; 10, Sermatta; 11, Baba; 12, Daai; 13, Serua; 14, the Eastern Arroos; 15, Borassi. (Kollf's Voy.; Earl's Translation.)

The language of the important island of Timor-Laut is Malay. From a conversation with the sailor Forbes, who was on the island for sixteen years, the author learned that there are in Timor-Laut plenty of black slaves, but no black aborigines.

Celebes.—In the centre of Celebes and in the north there are Negritos: the inhabitants call them Turajas, and also Arafuras: they speak a simple dialect and pass for aborigines. (Raffles, History of Java.) Of this language we have no specimen. Gaimard's Menada is the Menadu of Sir Stamford Raffles, and Raffles's Menadu is Malay. (Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 191.) The remark made by the collector of this Menadu Vocabulary was, that those who spoke it were whiter than the true Bugis, and that they looked like South-Sea Islanders, a fact of value in a theory of the Dyacks, but of no value in the enumeration of the Negritos.

Bourou, Gammen, Salawatty, Battenta.—For each of these islands we have positive statements as to the existence of Negritos.

Gilolo.—In Lesson's Natural History the inhabitants of Gilolo are classed with those of Gammen, Battenta, &c., as Negritos. The same is the case in the Mithridates, where the inference is, that in all the Moluccas, with the exception of Amboyna and Ternati, Negritos are to be found in the interior. For Guebé see the sequel.

The Teetees.—The Teetee Islands of Meares, the Jauts or Aeauw of the Mithridates, sixteen in number, are Negrito. (Meares, Voyage, Adelung.)

Oby.—According to Adelung this island is Negrito.

The object of what has gone before is less to state where Negritos are to be found than where they are to be looked for. Hence many of the above notices indicate the probable rather than the actual presence of them; and those statements concerning the Molucca localities that are taken from systematic books (and as such at secondhand) are all subject to one exception, viz. the fact that the tribes described as Arafura, although in current language Negrito, are not necessarily so. An instance of this has been seen in the so-called Arafura of Menadu. The same applies to the so-called Arafura of Ceram, (Handboek der Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië. P. P. Roorda van Eysinga. Amsterdam 1841; indicated by Mr. Garnett,) which is Malay. In the quarters about to be given in detail the evidence is less exceptionable.

New Guinea.—Here there is little except Negritos; and here we meet with the name Papua. What is said of the Papuas must be said with caution. Physical conformation being the evidence, there are in New Guinea two nations, if not more than two:—1. Those of the North, with curly hair, which are subdivided into the pure Papuas, and the Papuas that are looked upon as a cross with the Malay (Quoy, Gaimard and Lesson in the French Voyages). 2. Those of the South, with lank hair, called by the French naturalists Arafuras. The author was unable to determine who were meant by the Alfakis of Quoy (Durville's Voyage, iv. 746). To the language of these Alfakis are possibly referable the ten words of Lesson. These are the numerals, and, they are as might be expected, Malay. For the South of New Guinea we have not so much as a single vocabulary or a single word.

Waigioo.—The Waigioo and New Guinea have been frequently confounded; we have therefore deferred speaking of the latter until we could also deal with the former. Without going into the conflicting evidence, we may state that there are two Vocabularies wherein arm is kapiani, and three wherein arm is bramine. Of the first division we have—1st, the Vocabularies of the Uranie and Physicienne Corvettes, under Freycinet, in 1817, 1818, 1819, as given in Arago's (the draughtsman's) Narrative, p. 275, English translation; and 2ndly, the Undetermined Vocabulary of Dentrecasteaux. Dentrecasteaux, whilst at Boni in Waigioo, saw some strangers who spoke a language very different from the inhabitants of that island; he considered that they came from New Guinea. Now this language is the Waigioo of Arago[19]; whilst the Waigioo of Dentrecasteaux is the Papua of Arago. Among the Vocabularies of the second class we have Gaimard's Rawak Vocabulary, stated especially (Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, vol. ii. p. 153.) to have been collected at Rawak in Waigioo in 1818: here arm is bramine. Now a vocabulary (that will soon be mentioned) of the New Guinea Papuan of Port Dorey was collected during the expedition of the Astrolabe by the same naturalist, M. Gaimard. With this vocabulary Gaimard's Rawak coincides, rather than with Arago's Waigioo and Dentrecasteaux's Undetermined Vocabulary. This makes the third vocabulary for these islands. The fourth is Gaimard's Port Dorey Vocabulary (Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 146.). The fifth, Dentrecasteaux's (or La Billardière) Waigioo Vocabulary. This represents the same language as those last-mentioned, inasmuch as in it arm is bramine not kapiani. The sixth vocabulary is the Utanata, from Dutch authorities (vide Trans. Geogr. Soc). This akin to the Lobo Vocabulary.—Ibid. The next is Forest's Vocabulary. See Forest's Voyage to New Guinea. Such are the data for New Guinea and Waigioo. Dalrymple's Vocabulary will be noticed in the sequel.

Guebé.—The Guebé Vocabulary of the Astrolabe (Philologie, ii. 157) is the Guebé of Freycinet's Voyage in 1818, when it was collected by Gaimard, The Guebé of Arago (under Freycinet) also approaches the Guebé of Gaimard. According to D. Durville the Guebé is Papuan. The author however considers it Malay, though there was some resemblance to the Papuan, inasmuch as many Malay terms were common to both these dialects.

From New Guinea westward and southward the Negritos are no longer isolated. The following are Negrito Islands, or Negrito Archipelagos:—

1. New Britain; 2. New Hanover; 3. New Ireland; 4. Solomon's Islands; 5. Queen Charlotte's Archipelago; 6. Louisiade Archipelago; 7. Isles of Bougainville; 8. Bouka; 9. New Georgia; 10. Admirality Isles,—York, Sandwich, Portland; 11. Santa Cruz Archipelago; 12. Arsacides; 13. Espiritu Santo, or New Hebrides,—Mallicollo, Erromango, Tanna, Erronan, Annatom; 14. New Caledonia; 15. Warouka, Bligh's and Banks's Island.—Astrolabe. The Ticopian is not Negrito but Polynesian.—Voyage de l'Astrolabe.

Fiji Islands.—In the Fiji Islands the physical character of the natives is half Negrito and half Polynesian. Here is the Negrito limit to the east; that is, of Negrito tribes as existing at the present moment.

The languages of the list just given are known to us through the following Vocabularies.

New Ireland &c.—Gaimard's Carteret Harbour Vocabulary.—Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 143.

Durville's Port Praslin Vocabulary, incorporated with Gaimard's Carteret Bay Vocabulary.—Ibid.

Dalrymple's so-called New Guinea Vocabulary. The word so-called was used because, unless there were natives of New Ireland on the coast of New Guinea, Dalrymple's Vocabulary is a representative of the Papuan. It coincides with those of Durville and Gaimard from New Ireland: it was collected by Schouten and Le Maire. It is also the New Guinea of De Brosses.

Vocabularies of four small islands are given by Dalrymple and De Brosses, viz. of Moses Island, Moa, Hoorn Island, and Cocos Island. These are the vocabularies of Reland (Diss. xi.), referred to by Adelung.

Manicolo.—In Queen Charlotte's Archipelago, or perhaps among the Solomon Islands, lies an island in name resembling one of the New Hebrides. Durville called it Vanikoro, but Captain Dillon assures me that the true name is Manicolo. Of the language spoken here we have a vocabulary collected by Gaimard in three dialects; the Vanikoro, the Tanema, and the Taneanou. Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 164.

Mallicollo.—Cook's Island is Mallicollo. A glossary occurs in Cook's Voyages.

Tanna.—A single vocabulary in Cook's Voyages.

New Caledonia.—A short vocabulary in Cook. A longer one in Dentrecasteaux and La Billardière.

Of the Fiji we have a few words by Cook, a long vocabulary by Gaimard (Astrol. Phil. ii. 136), Port regulations, and MS. Scripture translations, which afford us full and sufficient samples of the language. To deal with this as Negrito the Polynesian element must be eliminated.

In the way of Ethnography Madagascar is Asiatic; since its language, as has been known since the time of Reland, is Malay. For this island the evidence of physical character gives two or more races, but the evidence of language only one.

Australia.—In this island we have vocabularies for the following localities: (1.) Murray Island; (2.) Caledon Bay; (3. 4.) Endeavour River; (5.) the Burrah Burrah tribe; (6.) Limestone Creek; (7.) Port Macquarie; (8.) Port Jackson; (9.) Menero Downs; (10.) Jervis Bay; (11.) Hunter's River, vide Threlkeld's Grammar; (12, 13, 14, 15.) Adelaide,—one of these being Teichelmanns and Schürmann's Grammar; (16.) Gulf St. Vincent; (17, 18, 19, 20.) King George's Sound; (22.) Grey's Vocabulary; and a few others.

Van Diemen's Land.—Here, as in Australia, everything is Negrito. In the way of Vocabularies, we have for the North,—(1.) Gaimard's Port Dalrymple Vocabulary, taken down from the mouth of a Van Diemen's Land woman at King George's Sound, with an Englishman as an interpreter.—Voy. Astr. Phil. ii. 9. In the South we have (2.) Cook's Vocabulary, collected in Adventure Bay, S. E. of Van Diemen's Land,—nine words. (3.) Dentrecasteaux's, or La Billardière's Vocabulary. (4.) Allan Cunningham's Vocabulary, collected in 1819 at Entrance Island. (5.) Dr. Lhotsky's Vocabulary, derived from Mr. M'Geary, and representing the language of Hobart's Town.—Journ. Geo. Soc. ix. Besides these, there is a Vocabulary procured by Mr. Robert Brown when in Australia. It nearly represents the same state of language as Dentrecasteaux's Vocabulary.

Besides these remarks, another class of facts should be indicated. In the south of Japan, and in the Marianne Isles, there are statements that Blacks have been:—Père Cantova (in Duperrey and Freycinet), and Adelung (Mithr. i.). From Rienzi also we learn a statement of Lütke's, viz. that in Pounipet, one of the Carolines, there are abundance of Blacks at this moment. These may be indigenous. The hypothetical presence of Negritos may account also for certain peculiarities of the Polynesian of the Tonga Islands. There are traces of them in the Navigator's Archipelago. Crozet (see Pritchard's Phys. Hist.) mentions Negritos in New Zealand, and Cook speaks to a tradition of aboriginal Negritos in Tahiti.

Such are the notices of the Oceanic Negritos in respect to their distribution and the amount of evidence afforded by the specimens of their language. The current opinion is, that over a certain area Blacks of a certain race or races were aborigines. This opinion there is no reason to disturb or to refine upon; the general question is as to the unity or the multiplicity of these races; but the more specific object of the present paper is to ascertain how far that question is decided by the comparison of their languages. The safe way is to ascend in the classification, and to begin with determining the uniformity of speech over limited areas, and within natural boundaries. The most convenient locality to begin with is—

New Guinea.—That four out of the seven New Guinea Vocabularies (supposing them to have been collected independently of each other) represent either dialects of one language, or else languages closely allied, appears on the first comparison. These vocabularies are,—a) Gaimard's Rawak; b) Gaimard's Port Dorey; c) Arago's Papua; and d) Dentrecasteaux's Waigioo. To these Forest's Vocabulary (supposing always that his words have not been incorporated in the vocabularies that came after him) approaches more closely than to the other two.

Of the two remaining vocabularies the Lobo comes nearer to Forest than the Utanata does. Neither, however, coincide with Forest, as Forest coincides with the first four: nor yet do they coincide so closely with each other.

Again:

New Ireland.—As far as we have vocabularies for evidence, the language of New Ireland is one.

For the affinities of the dialects of Moa, Moses Island, Cocos Island, Hoorn Island, to those of New Ireland, see Dalrymple's Island Voyages, ad fin. That the differences in Manicolo are those of dialect, may be seen from Gaimard's Vocabulary.

Australia.—That the Australian languages are one, at least in the way that the Indo-European languages are one, is likely from hence-forward to be admitted. Captain Grey's statement upon the subject is to be found in his work upon Australia. His special proof of the unity of the Australian language is amongst the imprinted papers of the Geographical Society. The opinions of Threlkeld and Teichelmann go the same way. The author's own statements are as follows:—

(1.) For the whole round of the coast there is, generally speaking, no vocabulary of sufficient length that, in some word or other, does not coincide with the vocabulary of the nearest point, the language of which is known to us. If it fail to do this it agrees with some of the remoter dialects. Flinder's Carpentarian, compared with the two vocabularies of the Endeavour River, has seventeen words in common. Of these, three (perhaps) four coincide. Eye, meal, C.; meul, E. R.: hair, marra, C.; morye, E. R.: fingers, mingel, C.; mungal bah, E. R.: breast, gummur, C.: coyor, E. R.

Endeavour River.—Two vocabularies.—Compared with the vocabularies generally of Port Jackson, and the parts south and east of Port Jackson:—Eye, meul, E. R.; milla, L. C.: nose, emurda, E. R.; morro, L. C.: ears, mulkah, E. R.; moko, P. Macquarie: hair, morye, E. R.; mundah, B. B.: breast, coyor, E. R.; kowul, P. J.: fingers, mungal bah, E. R.; maranga, B. B.: elbow, yeerwe, E. R.; yongra, Menero Downs: nails, kotke, E. R.; karungun? P. J.: beard, wollar, E. R.; wato, Jervis's Bay; wollak, Port Maquarie. The number of words submitted to comparison was twenty-two.

Menero Downs (Lhotsky), and Adelaide (G. W. Earl).—Thirteen words in common, whereof two coincide.

Adelaide (G. W. Earl) and Gulf St. Vincent (Astrolabe).

Gulf St. Vincent (Astrolabe) and King George's Sound (Nind and Astrolabe); fifty words in common.

(2.) The vocabularies of distant points coincide; out of sixty words in common we have eight coincident.

(3.) The most isolated of the vocabularies; e. g. the Carpentarian, if compared with the remaining vocabularies, taken as a whole, has certain words to be found in different and distant parts of the island.

The following is a notice of certain words coinciding, though taken from dialects far separated:

In the way of grammatical inflection we find indications of the same unity. We find also differences upon which we should be careful against laying too much stress. The inflection of the number is an instance of the difference. In South Australian—tinyara, a boy; tinyarurla, two boys; tinyar-anna, boys. In Western Australia—yago, a woman; yago-mun, women; goolang, a child; goolang-gurrah, children (gurra, many); doorda, a dog; doorda-goodjal, two dogs; doorda boula, many dogs (boula, many). Here there is a difference where we generally find agreement, viz. in the inflectional (or quasi-inflectional) expression of the numbers. The difference, however, is less real than apparent. The Australian is one of those languages (so valuable in general philology) where we find inflections in the act of forming, and that from the agglutination not of affixes, suffixes and prefixes, but of words. In other terms, inflection is evolving itself out of composition. The true view then of different forms for the same idea is not that the inflections are unlike, but that the quasi-inflectional circumlocutions differ from each other in different dialects. There is no inflectional parallel between two men in English and ἀνθρώπω in Greek.

Van Diemen's Land, South.—For the south of Van Diemen's Land the language seems radically one. The following is what Cook has in common with Dentrecasteaux (or La Billardière) and Allan Cunningham.

Lhotsky's Vocabulary stands more alone. With the Vocabulary of 1803 and Dentrecasteaux's Vocabulary, it has but three (or two) coincidences:—tongue, mina Lh.; mene, Voc. of 1803: water, lugana, Lh.; lia, Voc. 1803: drink, lugana, Lh.; laina, Voc. 1803. With Allan Cunningham's Vocabulary it has fourteen words in common and three coincident:—nose, minerana, Lh.; meoun, A. C.: tongue, mina, Lh.; mim, A. C.: fire, lope, Lh.; lope. A. C.. Brown and Cunningham coincide a little more than Cunningham and Lhotsky. It is perhaps safe to say, that for the South of Van Diemen's Land the language, as represented by its vocabularies, is radically one.

Van Diemen's Land, North.—In Lhotsky's Vocabulary seven words are marked W, four E, and one S, as being peculiar to the western, eastern and southern parts of the island. One of the four words marked E is found in the Port Dalrymple Vocabulary, being the only word common to the two, e. g. wood, mumanara, E.; moumra, Port Dalrymple. The coincidence of the North and South is as follows:—

About thirty-five words are common to Lhotsky and the Vocabularies of Brown and Dentrecasteaux. From the foregoing observations we may conclude that for the whole of Van Diemen's Land (as far as represented by the Vocabularies) the language is radically one.

Such are the groups as spread over limited areas and confined within natural boundaries. The affinity of speech between different islands is another question.

Preliminary to this we must eliminate the Malay from the Negrito. The full knowledge that this has been done imperfectly invalidates all that we have arrived at; so that, once for all, it may be stated, that what is asserted respecting the amount of words common to two localities is asserted subject to the condition of their being true Negrito and not Malay.

Andaman and Samang.—Few words in common; one coincident, and that borrowed in all probability from a third language.

New Guinea and Waigioo. By Waigioo is meant the Waigioo of Arago, and the Undetermined Vocabulary of Dentrecasteaux. They have about forty words in common, and the following are coincident:—

New Guinea and New Ireland.—Forest and Dalrymple:—fish, een, F.; hissou, D. Mal.: fire, for, F.; eeff, D. Mal.: sand, yean, F., coon, D.: sun, ras, F.; nass, D: star, mak, F.; maemetia, D. Dalrymple and Utanata.—Upwards of twenty-five words in common:—Earth, taar, D.; tiri Mal.; Ut.: eat, nam nam, D.; nemuka, Ut.: tongue, hermangh, D.; mare, Ut. Dalrymple and Lobo.—About thirty words in common:—arms, pongliman, D.; nimango, Ut., Mal: belly, balang, D.; kanborongo, Ut.: tongue, hermangh, D.; kariongo, Ut.

Port Praslin and Carteret Bay (taken together), and Utanata and Lobo (taken together).—For the sake of comparison, the whole of the words that the two (or four) Vocabularies have in common are exhibited, and by their side the equivalents in Latin and in Greek.

With thirty-seven words in common, the two Negrito languages have seventeen coincident; with thirty-seven words in common; the two classical languages have nine coincident. The evidence, therefore, of the affinity of the Papua and New Ireland is stronger than of the Latin and Greek, as determined from identical data.

New Ireland and Manicolo.—The Port-Praslin and Carteret Bay Vocabularies being dealt with as one for New Ireland, and the three dialects being treated as one for Manicolo, we have, out of twenty-eight words in common, the following coinciding:—yes, io, P. P.; io, C. B.; io, Manic.: eye, mata, P. P.; matak, C. B.; mala, maleo, mataeo, Man., Mal.: banana, ounn C. B.; pounha, ounra, ounro, Man., Mal.: canoe, kouan, C. B.; naoure, goia, koure, Manic, Mal.: tooth, ninissai, P. P.; insik, C. B.; indje, Tanean: testes, puen, P. P.; boua bouinini, boua ini, Man.: beard, kam-bissek, C. B. (incam besser, Dalr.); oungoumie, vingoumie, Man., Mal.: breast, boroick, C. B.; berenhenham, Man.; ear, palalignai, P. P.; pralen, C. B.; manbalenhi, Manic.; hair, nihouge, D.; anaoko, Man.

Manicolo and Mallicollo.—Eighteen words in common, the following coincident:—Bread-fruit, baloe, Man.; barabe, Mall.: cocoa-nut, venoure, Man.; naroo, Mall.: eye, mataeo, Man.; maitang, Mall., Mal.: ear, tagnaini, Man.: talingan, Mall., Mal.: bird, menouka, Man.; moero, Mall., Mal.: head, batcha, Man.; basaine, Mall.: hog, boi boi, Man.; brrooas, Mall., Mal.: no, tae, Man.; taep, Mall.: water, ouine, Man.; ergour, Mall.: drink, kanou, nanou, Man.; nooae, Mall.

Mallicollo and Tanna.—Sixteen words in common:—cocoa-nuts, naroo, Mall.; nabooy, Tann.: drink, noaee, Mall.; nooee, Tann., Mal.: eye, maitang, Mall.; manee maiuk, Tann., Mal.: ears, talingan, Mall.; feeneenguk, Tann., Mal.: bird, möeroo, Mall.; manoo, Tann., Mal.: hog, brrooas, Mall.; boogas, Tann., Mal.: navel, nemprtong, Mall.; napeerainguk, Tann.: teeth, reebohn, warrewuk, Mall.; raibuk, Tann.; water, ergour, Mall.; namawarain, Tann.: woman, rabin, Mall.; naibraan, Tann., Mal.

Tanna and Mallicollo (taken together) and New Caledonia.—Neither with Mallicollo or Tanna alone, nor with Mallicollo and Tanna taken together, as compared with New Caledonia, do we find more words coincident than the following:—Cocoa-nut, naroo, M.; nabooy, T.; neeoo, N. Cal., Mal.: drink, noaee, M.; nooee, T.; oondoo, N. Cal.: head, noogwanaium, T.; garmoin (Cook), vangue, (L. B.), N. Cal.: yams, oofe, Tann.; oobe, N. Cal., Mal.: yes, eeo, Tann.; elo, N. Cal.: no, taep, Mall.; nda, N. Cal.

Next in order comes the comparison between the Vocabularies of Van Diemen's Land and South Australia.

Port Dalrymple and King Georges Sound (Nind and Astrol.):—Wound, barana, P. D.; bareuk, N.: wood, moumbra, P. D.; pourn, N.: hair, kide, P. D.; kaat, N.: thigh, degagla, P. D.; tawal, N.: kangaroo, taramei, P. D.; taamour, N.: lips, mona, P. D.; mele, K. G. S.: no, poutie, P. D.; poualt, poort, K. G. S.: egg, komeka, P. D.; kierkee, K. G. S.: bone, pnale, P. D.; nouil, K. G. S. (bone of bird used to suck up water) N.: skin, kidna, P. D.; kiao? K. G. S.: two kateboueve, P. D.; kadjen, K. G. S. (N.). Fifty-six words in common.

Port Dalrymple and Gulf St. Vincent.—Mouth, mona, P. D.; tamonde, G. S. V. (a compound word, since taa is mouth, in K. G. S.): drink, kible, P. D.; kawe, G. S. V.: arm, anme, P. D.; aondo (also shoulder), G. S. V.: hawk, gan henen henen, P. D.; nanno, G. S. V.: hunger, tigate, P. D.; takiou, G. S. V.: head, eloura: P. D.; ioullo, G. S. V.: nose, medouer[20], P. D., modla, G. S. V.: bird, iola, pallo, G. S. V.: stone, lenn parenne, P. D.; poure? G. S. V.: foot, dogna, P. D.; tenna, G. S. V.: sun, tegoura[21], P. D.; tendo, G. S. V. Seventy words in common.

Port Dalrymple and Jervis's Bay.—Wound, barana, P. D.; karanra, J. B.: tooth, iane, P. D.; ira, J. B.: skin, kidna, P. D.; bagano, J. B.: foot, dogna, P. D.; tona[22], J. B.: head, eloura, P. D.; hollo, J. B. Fifty-four words in common. What follows is a notice of some miscellaneous coincidences between the Van Diemen's Land and the Australian.

Such is the similarity amongst the Negrito languages, as taken in their geographical sequence, and as divided into three groups. Between the Andaman and Samang there is no visible similarity or coincidence. From New Guinea to New Caledonia there is a series of coincidences; and there is also similarity between the Australian and Van Diemen's Land. But it is far from following that, because languages will form groups when taken in geographical succession, they will also form groups when the sequence or succession shall be interrupted. Tested by another method there is an affinity as follows:

---

Notwithstanding doubtful words certain, it seems that there is evidence of the most unlike of the languages between Waigioo and New Caledonia (inclusive) being not more unlike than the most dissimilar of the Indo-European tongues. That this statement may be enlarged seems probable by the following parallels:—

The author concluded his paper with the following observations:—

1. For all that is known to the contrary, the Negrito tongues of Sumatra, Borneo, Timor, the Moluccas, Formosa and several smaller islands of whose languages we have no specimens; may be in any relation whatever to any other language, and to each other.

2. The Andamanee and Samang may be in any relation to any other Negrito tongue, or to each other, beyond that of mere dialect.

3. The languages hitherto known of New Guinea, New Ireland, the Solomon's Isles, New Caledonia, Tanna, and Mallicollo, are related to each other, at least as the most different languages of the Indo-European tribe are related.

4. The known languages of Australian are related to each other, at least in the same degree.

5. The Van Diemen's Land and Australian are similarly related.

6. Classified in divisions equally general with the Indo-European, the Negrito dialects (as far as they are known by their vocabularies) cannot fall into more than four, and may possibly be reducible to one; the data being up to a certain point sufficient to determine radical affinities, but nowhere sufficient to determine radical differences.

7. The ethnographical division, according to physical conformation, coincides with the ethnographical division according to language, only so far as the former avoids the details of classification. With the minute subdivisions of the French naturalists the latter coincides least.

8. The distinction between the Negritos and the Malays seems less broad when determined by the test of language, than it does when measured by physical conformation.

9. The notion of the hybridism of the Papuas, arising from the view of their physical conformation, is in a degree confirmed by the nature of their language; although even the physical evidence is not absolute, i. e. on a par with that respecting the hybridism of the Griquas and Confusos.

10. With two[24] (if not more) Negrito tribes, whereof the evidence of language is wholly wanting, physiological differences indicate a probability of difference of language, equal to the difference between any two Negrito languages of which we have specimens.

11. Even in the physiological classifications we are far from being sure that the whole number of Negrito tribes has been described.

Note A.

Note B.

Andaman—The Andaman Language is monosyllabic, and allied to the Burmese of the opposite continent.

Nicoaar &c.—The statement that there are Blacks in the Nicobar Islands is inaccurate. The tribes further from the coast are the rudest. In the Nicobar vocabulary of the Voyage of the Galathea (Steen Bille—Galathea's Reise omkring Jorden), the language most especially represented is that of the island Terressa; the words from Nancovry being marked N, and those from Cariecobar C. N. No difference, beyond that of dialect, is recognized as existing between them. At the same time it is, by no means, certain, that every form of speech belonging to the Archipelago is known to us.

Samang &c.—The statement that these are the Orang Udai is inaccurate. For further notice of the Samang see Newbold's Indian Archipelago; a work not known to me when my paper was written. The ethnology of the Orang Benua is fully illustrated in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago. They are all Malay.

Sumatra.—This island gives us certain tribes ruder than others—not blacker; at any rate no Negritos.

The same applies to Borneo; where there is plenty of barbarism but nothing Negrito.

The same to the Sulu Archipelago.

The Manillas.—Specimens of four of the so-called Negrito languages are to be found in Steen Bille's Voyage of the Galathea (Vol. III.); headed, (1) Umiray, (2) St. Miguel; (3) St. Matheo and (4) Dumagat. They evidently belong to the same group as the Tagal.

Formosa and Loocho.—The criticism that applies to Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago applies here.

For Timor, Ombay &c. see the next paper.

The language of the Arru islanders is not mentioned; indeed in 1843 no specimens of their language had been published. Since, however, a good account of them has been given by Windsor Earl. Their language contains much in common with the languages of the islands to the west of them, whilst in physical appearance they approach the Papuans. They present, in short, transitional characters—Journal of Indian Archipelago, and The Papua Races.

New Britain &c.—For Louisiade forms of speech see the next paper but one; for those of New Caledonia &c. see the fourth.

The Fijis.—The language of the Fijis is Polynesian.

Cocos Island.—The vocabulary of the island so-named seems to me to be that of Ticopia; and, as such, anything but Negrito.

In Braim's Australia we find specimens of five Tasmanian forms of speech. The additions to the philology of Australia since 1843 are too numerous to find place in a notice like the present. The fundamental unity of all the languages of that continent is, now, generally recognized.

Of the Micronesian Islanders (natives of the Marianne and Caroline Archipelagos) some tribes are darker than others. They chiefly occupy the coral, as opposed to the volcanic, formations. The same is the case with the supposed Negritos of Polynesia.

---

For philological purposes it is convenient to arrange the Blacks of the Asiatic and Oceanic Islands under five divisions.

I. The Blacks of the Andaman Islands.—These are, comparatively speaking, isolated in their geographical position; whilst the portion of the continent nearest to them is inhabited by races speaking a monosyllabic language.

II. The Blacks of the Malay area.—With the exception of Java, all the larger, and many of the smaller Malay Islands, as well as the Peninsula of Malacca, are described as containing, in different proportions, a population which departs from the Malay type, which approaches that of the Negro, which possesses a lower civilization, which generally inhabits the more inaccessible parts of the respective countries, and which wears the appearance of being aboriginal to the true Malay population. These tribes may be called the Blacks of the Malay area.

III. The Papuan Blacks of New Guinea.—Under this head may be arranged the tribes of New Guinea, New Ireland, the New Hebrides, Tanna, Erromango, Annatom, New Caledonia, &c.

IV. The Blacks of Australia.

V. The Tasmanian Blacks or the Blacks of Van Diemen's Land.

I. The Andaman Blacks will not be considered in the present note.

II. With respect to the languages of the Blacks of the Malay area, it may be stated unequivocally, that the dialects of each and every tribe for which a vocabulary has been examined, are Malay.

A. Such is the case with the Samang, Jooroo, and Jokong vocabularies of the Peninsula of Malacca.—See Craufurd's Indian Archipelago, Asiatic Researches, xii. 109, Newbold's British Settlements in Malacca.

B. Such is the case with every vocabulary that has been brought from Sumatra. The particular tribe sufficiently different from the Malay to speak a different language has yet to be found.

C. Such is the case with the eight vocabularies furnished by Mr. Brooke from Borneo; notwithstanding the fact that both the Dyacks and the Biajuks have been described as tribes wilder and more degraded than the Malay: in other words, as tribes on the Negro side of the dominant population.

D. Such is the case with every vocabulary brought from any of the Molucca, Key, Arru, or Timorian Islands whatsoever; no matter how dark may be the complexion, or how abnormal the hair, of the natives who have supplied it.

E. Such is the case with the so-called Arafura vocabularies of Dumont Durville from Celebes, and of Roorda van Eysinga from Amboyna and Ceram.

F. Such is the case with the languages of the Philippine Islands. In no part of the great Malay area has the difference between the higher and lower varieties of the population, been more strongly insisted on, and more accurately explained than here. Yet the testimony of the early Spanish Missionaries, as to the fundamental identity of the Black with the other languages is unanimous; and, to put the matter further beyond doubt, the few words of the Igorot negroes, near Marivèles, which are supplied by Lafond Luray, who visited them, are Malay also.

Now, on these grounds, and laying the Andaman Islands out of the question, it may be safely predicated, that, until we reach either New Guinea, or Australia, we have no proofs of the existence of any language fundamentally different from the Malay; whatever may be the difference in physical appearance of those who speak it.

III. For New Guinea, and the islands Waigioo, and Guebé, I have found only ten short vocabularies, and these only for the north-western districts. One of these, the Guebé, of the voyage of the Astrolabe, although dealt with by Mr. Durville as Papuan, is Malay. The rest, without any exception, have a sufficient portion of Malay words to preclude any argument in favour of their belonging to a fresh class of languages. On the other hand, the commercial intercourse between the Papuans and Malays precludes any positive statements as to the existence of a true philological affinity.

From New Guinea, westward and southward, we have for the localities inhabited by the black tribes with curly hair, the following vocabularies.

1. For New Ireland.

A. Gaimard's Carteret Harbour Vocabulary—Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 143.

B. Durville's Port Praslin Vocabulary. Ibid.

C. Dalrymple's, so called, New Guinea Vocabulary, collected by Schouten and Le Maire, given also by De Brosses.

2. For Vanikoro—Gaimard's Vocabulary in three dialects, the Vanikoro, the Tanema, and the Taneanou—Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Philologie, ii. 164.

3. Mallicollo—Cook's Vocabulary.

4. Tanna—Ditto. Also a few words marked G. Bennet, in Marsden's Miscellaneous Works.

5. Erromango—a few words by Bennet, in Marsden.

6. Annatom—Ditto.

7. New Caledonia—A short Vocabulary in Cook. A longer one in Dentrecasteaux and La Billardiere.

All these languages, although mutually unintelligible, exhibit words common to one another, common to themselves and the New Guinea, and common to themselves and the Malay. See Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. i. no.[26] 4.

IV. The Blacks of Australia are generally separated by strong lines of demarcation from the Blacks of New Guinea, and from the Malays. Even on the philological side of the question, Marsden has written as follows—"We have rarely met with any negrito language in which many corrupt Polynesian words might not be detected. In those of New Holland or Australia, such a mixture is not found. Among them no foreign terms that connect them with the languages even of other papua or negrito countries can be discovered; with regard to the physical qualities of the natives it is nearly superfluous to state, that they are negritos of the more decided class."—p. 71.

In respect to this statement, I am not aware that any recent philologist has gone over the data as we now have them, with sufficient care to enable him either to verify or to refute it. Nevertheless, the isolation of the Australian languages is a current doctrine.

I believe this doctrine to be incorrect; and I am sure that, in many cases, it is founded on incorrect principles.

Grammatical differences are valued too high; glossarial affinities too low. The relative value of the grammatical and glossarial tests is not constant. It is different for different languages.

In 1844, I stated, at York, that from three true Malay localities, and in three true Malay vocabularies, I had found Australian and Tasmanian and Papuan words, viz:—

1. In the Timboran dialect of the Sumbawan.
2. In the Mangerei dialect of Flores.
3. In the Ombayan of Ombay.

1. Arm = ibarana, Ombay; porene, Pine Gorine dialect of Australia.

2. Hand = ouiue, Ombay; hingue, New Caledonia.

3. Nose = imouni, Ombay; maninya, mandeg, mandeinne, New Caledonia; mena, Van Diemen's Land, western dialect; mini, Mangerei: meoun, muidge, mugui, Macquarie Harbour.

4. Head = imocila, Ombay; moos, (= hair) Darnley Island; moochi, (= hair) Massied; immoos, (= beard) Darnley Islands; eeta moochi, (= beard) Massied.

5. Knee = icici-bouka, Ombay; bowka, boulkay (= forefinger) Darnley Islands.

6. Leg = iraka, Ombay; horag-nata, Jhongworong dialect of the Australian.

7. Bosom = ami, Ombay; naem, Darnley Island.

8. Thigh = itena, Ombay; tinna-mook (= foot) Witouro dialect of Australian. The root, tin, is very general throughout Australia in the sense of foot.

9. Belly = te-kap-ana, Ombay; coopoi, (= navel) Darnley Island.

10. Stars = ipi-berre, Mangarei; bering, birrong, Sydney.

11. Hand = tanaraga, Mangarei; taintu, Timbora; tamira, Sydney.

12. Head = jahé, Mangarei; chow, King George's Sound.

13. Stars = kingkong, Timbora; chindy, King George's Sound, Australia.

14. Moon = mang'ong, Timbora; meuc, King George's Sound.

15. Sun = ingkong, Timbora; coing, Sydney.

16. Blood = kero, Timbora; gnoorong, Cowagary dialect of Australia.

17. Head = kokore, Timbora; gogorrah, Cowagary.

18. Fish = appi, Mangarei; wapi, Darnley Island.

Now as the three dialects have all undoubted Malay affinities, the statement of Marsden must be received with qualifications.

V. Concerning the language of Van Diemen's Land; I venture upon the following statements, the proofs which I hope, ere long, to exhibit in extenso.

α. The Language is fundamentally the same for the whole island; although spoken in not less than four dialects mutually unintelligible.

β. It has affinities with the Australian.

γ. It has affinities with the New Caledonian.

A fourth proposition concerning the Tasmanian language exhibits an impression, rather than a deliberate opinion. Should it, however, be confirmed by future researches it will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia that have so often been insisted on. It is this—that the affinities of language between the Tasmanian and the New Caledonian are stronger than those between the Australian and Tasmanian. This indicates that the stream of population for Van Diemens ran round Australia rather than across it.

The following affinities occur between the vocabularies published in the present volume and the Malay and Monosyllabic dialects; and they are the result of a very partial collation.

1. Blood = mam, Darnley Island; muhum, South Jooroo dialect of Malacca; mau, Anamitic of Cochin China.

2. Nose = peet, Darnley Island; peechi, Massied; pih, Chinese; pi, Kong Chinese.

3. Face = awop aup, Murray Islands; eebu = (head) Cape York, Massied; oopoo = (head) Tahiti; epoo, Sandwich Islands; aopo, Easter Island.

4. Hair = moos, Darnley Island; mooche, Massied; maow, Chinese.

5. Country = gaed; Darnley Island; kaha, Ternati.

6. Black = gooli, Darnley Island; houli, Tongataboo.

7. Hand = tag, Darnley Island; tangh, Madagascar; tong, Jooro; tay, Anamitic. A current Malay root.

8. Fish = wapi, Darnley Island; iba, Poggy Isles off Sumatra. Also in other Malay dialects.

9. Flame, fire = bae, Darnley Island; api, Flores, or Ende; fai, Siamese; ffoo, Kong Chinese.

10. Hair = yal, Massied; eeal, Cape York; yal, Port Lihou; houlou, Tongataboo.

11. Teeth = dang, Massied; danga, Cape York; dang, Port Lihou; dang'eta, Gunong-talu of Celebes; wahang, Menadu; rang, Anamitic.

The evidence upon which I rest my belief of the fundamental unity of the three philological groups of the Malay, Papua, and Australian languages, is, of the sort called cumulative; and it is the only evidence that our present data will afford us.

Believing, however, in such a fundamental unity, the problem to be solved by further researches on the vocabularies from either Torres Strait or the South of New Guinea, is the problem as to the particular quarter from which New Holland was peopled—whether from New Guinea, or from Timor. Such a problem is not beyond the reach of future philologists.

In the fifth volume of Dr. Prichard's valuable work, I find that Mr. Norris has indicated points of likeness between the Australian dialects, and the Tamul languages of Southern India.

Such may be the case. If, however, the statements of those philologists who connect on one side the Tamul, and on the other the Malay, with the Monosyllabic languages, be correct, the two affinities are compatible.

The error of presuming the ruder tribes to be Negrito is apparent in the notice of the Sumatra, and Borneo tribes. They should have no place in a list of Negritos at all.

The gist of the paper lies in the suggestions to break down (1) the lines of demarcation between the Australians, Tasmanians, and Papuans on one side, and the Malays &c. on the other, and (2) those between the Malay and Monosyllabic tongues.

---

APPENDIX TO MACGILLIVRAY'S VOYAGE OF THE HMS RATTLESNAKE. 1852.

In the way of comparative philology the most important part of the Grammar of the Australian languages is, generally, the Pronoun. That of the Kowrarega language will, therefore, be the first point investigated.

In the tongues of the Indo-European class the personal pronouns are pre-eminently constant. i. e., they agree in languages which, in many other points, differ. How thoroughly the sound of m runs through the Gothic, Slavonic, and Iranian tongues as the sign of the pronoun of the first person singular, in the oblique cases; how regularly a modification of t, s, or th, appears in such words as tu, συ, thou, &c.! Now this constancy of the Pronoun exists in most languages; but not in an equally palpable and manifest form. It is disguised in several ways. Sometimes, as in the Indo-European tongues, there is one root for the nominative and one for the oblique cases; sometimes the same form, as in the Finlandic, runs through the whole declension; sometimes, as when we say you for thou in English, one number is substituted for another; and sometimes, as when the German says sie for thou, a change of the person is made as well. When languages are known in detail, these complications can be guarded against; but where the tongue is but imperfectly exhibited a special analysis becomes requisite.

Generally, the first person is more constant than the second, and the second than the third; indeed, the third is frequently no true personal pronoun at all, but a demonstrative employed to express the person or thing spoken of as the agent or object to a verb. Now, as there are frequently more demonstratives than one which can be used in a personal sense, two languages may be, in reality, very closely allied, though their personal pronouns of the third person differ. Thus the Latin ego = εγω; but the Latin hic and ille by no means correspond in form with ὁς, αὐτος, and ἐχεινος. This must prepare us for not expecting a greater amount of resemblance between the Australian personal pronouns than really exists.

Beginning with the most inconstant of the three pronouns, viz., that of the third person, we find in the Kowrarega the following forms:—

3.

In the two first of these forms the du is no part of the root, but an affix, since the Gudang gives us the simpler forms nue and na. Pale, the dual form, occurs in the Western Australian, the New South Wales, the South Australian, and the Parnkalla as follows: boola, bulo-ara, purl-a, pud-lanbi = they two.

2.

Here the root is limited to the syllable ngi, as shewn not less by the forms ngi-pel, and ngi-tana, than by the simple Gudang ngi = thou.

Ngi, expressive of the second person, is common in Australia: ngi-nnee, ngi-ntoa, ni-nna, ngi-nte = thou, thee, in the W. Australian, N. S. Wales, Parnkalla, and Encounter Bay dialects.

Ngi-pel is probably thou + pair. A priori this is a likely way of forming a dual. As to the reasons a posteriori they are not to be drawn wholly from the Kowrarega tongue itself. Here the word for two is not pel but quassur. But let us look further. The root p-l, or a modification of it, = two in the following dialects; as well as in the Parnkalla and others—pur-laitye, poolette, par-kooloo, bull-a, in the Adelaide, Boraipar, Yak-kumban, and Murrumbidge. That it may stand too for the dual personal pronoun is shewn in the first of these tongues; since in the Adelaide language purla = ye two. Finally, its appearance amongst the pronouns, and its absence amongst the numerals, occurs in the Western Australian. The numeral two is kardura; but the dual pronoun is boala. The same phenomenon would occur in the present English if two circumstances had taken place, viz., if the Anglo-Saxon dual wi-t = we two had been retained up to the present time amongst the pronouns, and the word pair, brace, or couple, had superseded two amongst the numerals.

Lastly, the Western Australian and the Kowrarega so closely agree in the use of the numeral two for the dual pronoun, that each applies it in the same manner. In the third person it stands alone, so that in W. Australian boala, and in Kowrarega pale = they two, just as if in English we said pair or both, instead of they both (he pair); whilst in the second person, the pronoun precedes it, and a compound is formed; just as if in English we translated the Greek σφωι by thou pair or thou both.

1.

Here the plural and dual are represented, not by a modification of the singular, but by a new word; as different from nga as nos is from ego. The tu, of course, is non-radical, the Gudang form being ngai.

Nga, expressive of the first person, is as common as ngi, equivalent to the second. Thus, nga-nya, nga-toa, nga-i, nga-pe = I, me, in the W. Australian, N. S. Wales, Parnkalla, and Encounter Bay dialects.

Now, the difference between the first and second persons being expressed by different modifications (nga, ngi,) of the same root (ng), rather than by separate words, suggests the inquiry as to the original power of that root. It has already been said that, in many languages, the pronoun of the third person is, in origin, a demonstrative. In the Kowrarega it seems as if even the basis of the first and second was the root of the demonstrative also; since, by looking lower down in the list, we find that i-na = this, che-na = that, and nga-du (nga in Gudang) = who. Ina and chena also means here and there, respectively.

The dual form albei reappears in the Yak-kumban dialect of the River Darling where allewa = we two. Arri = us, is also the first syllable in the Western Australian form arlingul = we; or, rather it is ar-lingul in a simpler and less compounded form. In a short specimen of Mr. Eyre's from the head of the Great Australian Bight, the form in a appears in the singular number, ajjo = I and me. The root tana = they, is not illustrated without going as far as the Western Australian of Mr. Eyre. Here, however, we find it in the compound word par-tanna = many. Its original power is probably others; and it is most likely a widely diffused Australian root.

The pronouns in question are compound rather than simple; i. e. instead of nga = me, and ngi = thee, we have nga-tu and ngi-du. What is the import and explanation of this? It may safely be said, that the termination in the Australian is not a termination like the Latin met in ego-met, inasmuch as this last is constant throughout the three persons (ego-met, tute-met, se-met), whereas, the former varies with the pronoun to which it is appended (nga-tu, and ngi-du). I hazard the conjecture that the two forms correspond with the adverbs here and there; so that nga-tu = I here, and ngi-du = thou there, and nu-du = he there. In respect to the juxta-position of the simple forms (ngai, ngi, and nue) of the Gudang with the compound ones (nga-tu, ngi-du, and nu-du) of the Kowrarega, it can be shewn that the same occurs in the Parnkalla of Port Lincoln; where Mr. Eyre gives the double form ngai and nga-ppo each = I or me.

Now, this analysis of the Kowrarega personals has exhibited the evolution of one sort of pronoun out of another, with the addition of certain words expressive of number, the result being no true inflexion but an agglutination or combination of separate words. It has also shewn how the separate elements of such combinations may appear in different forms and with different powers in different dialects of the same language, and different languages of the same class, even where, in the primary and normal signification, they may be wanting in others. The first of these facts is a contribution to the laws of language in general; the second shews that a great amount of apparent difference may be exhibited on the surface of a language which disappears as the analysis proceeds.

In rude languages the Numerals vary with the dialect more than most other words. We can understand this by imagining what the case would be in English if one of our dialects counted things by the brace, another by the pair, and a third by the couple. Nevertheless, if we bear in mind the Greek forms θαλασσα and θαλαττα, we may fairly suppose that the Kowrarega word for two, or quassur, is the same word with the Head of Australian Bight kootera, the Parnkalla kuttara, and the W. Australian kardura, having the same meaning.

The difference, then, between the numerals of the Australian languages—and it is undoubtedly great—is no proof of any fundamental difference of structure or origin. It is just what occurs in the languages of Africa, and, in a still greater degree, in those of America.

The extent to which the numeration is carried is a matter of more importance. Possibly a numeration limited to the first three, four, or five numbers is the effect of intellectual inferiority. It is certainly a cause that continues it. As a measure of ethnological affinity it is unimportant. In America we have, within a limited range of languages, vigesimal systems like the Mexican, and systems limited to the three first units like the Caribb. The difference between a vigesimal and decimal system arises simply from the practice of counting by the fingers and toes collectively, or the fingers alone, being prevalent; whereas the decimal system as opposed to the quinary is referrible to the numeration being extended to both hands, instead of limited to one. Numerations not extending as far as five are generally independent of the fingers in toto. Then as to the names of particular numbers. Two nations may each take the name of the number two from some natural dualism; but they may not take it from the same. For instance, one American Indian may take it from a pair of skates, another from a pair of shoes. If so, the word for two will differ in the two languages, even when the names for skate and shoe agree. All this is supported by real facts, and is no hypothetical illustration; so that the inference from it is, that, in languages where a numeral system is in the process of formation, difference in the names of the numbers is comparatively unimportant.

The extent to which the numerals vary, the extent to which they agree, and the extent to which this variation and agreement are anything but coincident with geographical proximity or distance, may be seen in the following table:—

The Verb now requires notice. In languages in the same stage of development with the Australian the usual analysis, as shewn by the late Mr. Garnett in his masterly papers on the structure of the verb, is as follows: 1. The root. 2. The possessive pronoun. 3. A particle of time—often originally one of place.

A rough illustration of this is the statement that such a word as dormivi = sleep—my—then (or there). To apply this doctrine to the Kowrarega with our present data, is unsafe. Still, I am inclined (notwithstanding some difficulties) to identify the pa of the Present tense with the bu in kai-bu = now, and the n of the preterite with the n of che-na = there.

The double forms of the Past tense (one in n, and another in m) are at present inexplicable. So are the double forms of the Imperative, viz. the one in r, and the one in e. It may, however, be remarked, that wherever the Imperative ends in e, the Preterite has the form in m; thus, pid-e = dig, pid-ema = dug. The only exception is the anomalous form peneingodgi = dived. This prepares the future grammarian for a division of the Kowrarega Verbs into Conjugations.

The last class of words that supply the materials of comment are the Substantives. Herein, the formation of the plural by the addition of le, probably occurs in several of the Australian tongues. I infer this from many of those words which we find in the vocabularies of languages whereof the grammar is unknown, and which are expressive of naturally plural objects ending in li, la, or l.

1. Star (stars)—pur-le, pi-lle, poo-lle, in Parnkalla, Aiawong, and Yak-kumban.

2. Fire (flames)—ka-lla, gad-la, in W. Australian and Parnkalla.

3. Head (hair)—kur-le, Encounter Bay. Here we learn from the forms kar-ga, from the Head of the Great Australian Bight, and ma-kar-ta, from Adelaide, that the l is foreign to the root.

4. Hands—marrow-la in the Molonglo dialect; and contrasted with marra in the Adelaide.

This, however, is merely a conjecture; a conjecture, however, which has a practical bearing. It suggests caution in the comparison of vocabularies; since, by mistaking an inflexion or an affix for a part of the root, we may overlook really existing similarities.

Father Anjello's very brief grammatical sketch of the Limbakarajia language of Port Essington[27] exhibits, as far as it goes, precisely the same principles as Mr. Macgillivray's Kowrarega; indeed, some of the details coincide.

Thus, the Limbakarajia personal pronouns are—

• I = nga-pi.
• Thou = noie.
• He, she, it = gianat.
• We = ngari.
• We two = arguri.
• Ye = noie.
• They = ngalmo.

Here the pi in nga-pi is the po in the Aiawong nga-ppo; the gian in gian-at being, probably, the in in the Kowrarega ina = that, this. Ngalmo, also, is expressly stated to mean many as well as they, a fact which confirms the view taken of tana.

As for the tenses of the verbs, they are evidently no true tenses at all, but merely combinations of the verbal root, and an adverb of time. In Limbakarajia, however, the adverbial element precedes the verbal one. In Kowrarega, however, the equivalent to this adverbial element (probably a simple adverb modified in form so as to amalgamate with its verb, and take the appearance of an inflexion) follows it—a difference of order, sequence, or position, upon which some philologists will, perhaps, lay considerable stress. On the contrary, however, languages exceedingly similar in other respects, may differ in the order of the parts of a term; e. g. the German dialects, throughout, place the article before the noun, and keep it separate: whereas the Scandinavian tongues not only make it follow, but incorporate it with the substantive with which it agrees. Hence, a term which, if modelled on the German fashion, should be hin sol, becomes, in Scandinavian, solen = the sun. And this is but one instance out of many. Finally, I may add that the prefix apa, in the present tense of the verb = cut, is, perhaps, the same affix eipa in the present tense of the Kowrarega verbs.

Another point connected with the comparative philology of Australia is the peculiarity of its phonetic system. The sounds of f and s are frequently wanting. Hence, the presence of either of them in one dialect has been considered as evidence of a wide ethnological difference. Upon this point—in the case of s—the remarks on the sound systems of the Kowrarega and Gudang are important. The statement is, the s of the one dialect becomes ty or tsh (and ch) in the other. Thus the English word breast = susu, Kowrarega; tyu-tyu, Gudang, and the English outrigger float = sarima, Kowrarega; charima, Gudang,—which of these two forms is the older? Probably the Gudang, or the form in ty. If so, the series of changes is remarkable, and by attending to it we may see how sounds previously non-existent may become evolved.

Thus—let the original form for breast be tutu. The first change which takes place is the insertion of the sound of y, making tyu-tyu; upon the same principle which makes certain Englishmen say gyarden, kyind, and skyey, for garden, kind, and sky. The next change is for ty to become tsh. This we find also in English, where picture or pictyoor is pronounced pictshur, &c. This being the change exhibited in the Gudang form tyutyu (pr. choochoo, or nearly so), we have a remarkable phonetic phenomenon, viz. the existence of a compound sound (tsh) wherein s is an element, in a language where s, otherwise than as the element of a compound, is wanting. In other words, we have a sound formed out of s, but not s itself; or (changing the expression still further) we have s in certain combinations, but not uncombined. Let, however, the change proceed, and the initial sound of t be lost. In this case tsh becomes sh. A further change reduces sh to s.

When all this has taken place—and there are many languages wherein the whole process is exhibited—the sound of a hitherto unknown articulation becomes evolved or developed by a natural process of growth, and that in a language where it was previously wanting. The phenomenon, then, of the evolution of new simple sounds should caution us against over-valuing phonetic differences. So should such facts as that of the closely allied dialects of the Gudang and Kowrarega differing from each other by the absence or presence of so important a sound as that of s.

The comparative absence, however, of the sound of s, in Australian, may be further refined on in another way; and it may be urged that it is absent, not because it has never been developed, or called into existence, but because it has ceased to exist. In the Latin of the Augustan age as compared with that of the early Republic, we find the s of words like arbos changed into r (arbor). The old High German, also, and the Icelandic, as compared with the Meso-Gothic, does the same. Still the change only affects certain inflectional syllables, so that the original s being only partially displaced, retains its place in the language, although it occurs in fewer words. In Australian, where it is wanting at all, it is wanting in toto: and this is a reason for believing that its absence is referrible to non-development rather than to displacement. For reasons too lengthy too exhibit, I believe that this latter view is not applicable to Australian; the s, when wanting, being undeveloped. In either case, however, the phonetic differences between particular dialects are the measures of but slight differences.

Now—with these preliminary cautions against the overvaluation of apparent differences—we may compare the new data for the structure of the Kowrarega and Limbakarajia with the received opinions respecting the Australian grammars in general.

These refer them to the class of agglutinate tongues, i. e. tongues wherein the inflections can be shewn to consist of separate words more or less incorporated or amalgamated with the roots which they modify. It may be said that this view is confirmed rather than impugned.

Now, what applies to the Australian grammars applies also to Polynesian and the more highly-developed Malay languages,—such as the Tagala of the Philippines, for instance; and, if such being the case, no difference of principle in respect to their structure separates the Australian from the languages of those two great classes. But the details, it may be said, differ undoubtedly; and this is what we expect. Plural numbers, signs of tense, and other grammatical elements, are evolved by means of the juxtaposition of similar but not identical elements, e. g. one plural may be formed by the affix signifying many; another, by the affix signifying with or conjointly; one preterite may be the root plus a word meaning then; another the root plus a word meaning there. Futures, too, may be equally evolved by the incorporation or juxtaposition of the word meaning after, or the word meaning to-morrow. All this makes the exact coincidence of the details of inflection the exception rather than the rule.

This doctrine goes farther than the mere breaking-down of the lines of demarcation which separate classes of languages like the Australian from classes of languages like the Malayo-Polynesian. It shews how both may be evolved from monosyllabic tongues like the Chinese or Siamese. The proof that such is really the case lies in the similarity of individual words, and consists in comparative tables. It is too lengthy for the present paper, the chief object of which is to bring down the inferences from the undoubtedly great superficial differences between the languages of the parts in question to their proper level.

In respect to the vocabularies, the extent to which the analysis which applies to the grammar applies to the vocables also may be seen in the following instance. The word hand Bijenelumbo and Limbapyu is birgalk. There is also in each language a second form—anbirgalk—wherein the an is non-radical. So, also, is the alk; since we find that armpit = ingamb-alk, shoulder = mundy-alk, and fingers = mong alk. This brings the root = hand to birg. Now this we can find elsewhere by looking for. In the Liverpool dialect, bir-il = hand, and at King George's Sound, peer = nails. The commonest root, = hand in the Australian dialects, is m-r, e. g.

All this differs from the Port Essington terms. Elbow, however, in the dialects there spoken, = waare; and forearm = am-ma-woor; wier, too, = palm in Kowrarega.

To complete the evidence for this latter word being the same as the m-r of the other dialects and languages, it would be necessary to shew, by examples, how the sounds of m and w interchange; and also to shew (by examples, also) how the ideas of elbow, forearm, and hand do so. But as the present remarks are made for the sake of illustrating a method, rather than establishing any particular point, this is not necessary here; a few instances taken from the names of the parts of the human body being sufficient to shew the general distribution of some of the commoner Australian roots, and the more special fact of their existence in the northern dialects:

---

---

---

---

---

---

The Miriam Vocabulary belongs to a different class, viz. the Papuan. It is a dialect of language first made known to us through the Voyage of the Fly, as spoken in the islands Erroob, Maer, and Massied. Admitting this, we collate it with the North Australian tongues, and that, for the sake of contrast rather than comparison. Here, the philologist, from the extent to which the Australian tongues differ from each other, notwithstanding their real affinity, is prepared to find greater differences between an Australian and a Papuan language than, at the first glance, exists. Let us verify this by reference to some words which relate to the human body, and its parts.

Few Australian vocabularies are thus similar—a fact which may be said to prove too much; since it may lead to inference that the so-called Papuan tongue of Torres Strait is really Australian. Nevertheless, although I do not absolutely deny that such is the case, the evidence of the whole body of ethnological facts—e. g. those connected with the moral, intellectual, and physical conformation of the two populations—is against it.

And so is the philology itself, if we go further. The Erroob pronouns are,

all of which are un-Australian.

Are we then to say that all the words of the table just given are borrowed from the Australian by the Papuans, or vice versâ? No. Some belong to the common source of the two tongues, pit = nose being, probably, such a word; whilst others are the result of subsequent intercourse.

Still, it cannot absolutely be said that the Erroob or Miriam tongue is not Australian also, or vice versâ. Still less, is it absolutely certain that the former is not transitional between the New Guinea language and the Australian. I believe, however, that it is not so.

The doubts as to the philological position of the Miriam are by no means diminished by reference to the nearest unequivocally Papuan vocabulary, viz. that of Redscar Bay. Here the difference exceeds rather than falls short of our expectations. The most important of the few words which coincide are

On the other hand, the Redscar Bay word for throat, kato, coincides with the Australian karta of the Gudang of Cape York. Again, a complication is introduced by the word buni-mata = eyebrow. Here mata = eye, and, consequently, buni = brow. This root re-appears in the Erroob; but there it means the eyeball, as shewn by the following words from Jukes' Vocabulary.

Probably the truer meaning of the Redscar Bay word is eyeball.

No inference is safer than that which brings the population of the Louisiade Archipelago, so far, at least, as it is represented by the Vocabularies of Brierly Island and Duchateau Island, from the eastern coast of New Guinea. What points beyond were peopled from Louisiade is another question.

For the islands between New Ireland and New Caledonia our data are lamentably scanty; the list consisting of—

1. A short vocabulary from the Solomon Isles.
2. Short ones from Mallicollo.
3. The same from Tanna.
4. Shorter ones still from Erromanga and
5. Annatom.
6. Cook's New Caledonian Vocabulary.
7. La Billardiere's ditto.

The collation of these with the Louisiade has led me to a fact which I little expected. As far as the very scanty data go, they supply the closest resemblance to the Louisiade dialects, from the two New Caledonian vocabularies. Now New Caledonia was noticed in the Appendix to the Voyage of the Fly (vol. ii. p. 318) as apparently having closer philological affinities with Van Diemen's Land, than that country had with Australia; an apparent fact which induced me to write as follows: "A proposition concerning the Tasmanian language exhibits an impression, rather than a deliberate opinion. Should it, however, be confirmed by future researches, it will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia that have so often been insisted on. It is this—that the affinities of language between the Tasmanian and the New Caledonian are stronger than those between the Australian and Tasmanian. This indicates that the stream of population for Van Diemen's Land ran round Australia, rather than across it." Be this as it may, the remark, with our present scanty materials, is, at best, but a suggestion—a suggestion, however, which would account for the physical appearance of the Tasmanian being more New Caledonian than Australian.

The chief point of resemblance between the Louisiade and the New Caledonian is taken from the numerals. In each system there is a prefix, and in each that prefix begins with a labral letter—indeed the wa of New Caledonia and the pahi of Louisiade seem to be the same roots.

The Redscar Bay numerals are equally instructive. They take two forms: one with, one without, the prefix in ow, as recorded by Mr. Macgillivray.

This system of prefix is not peculiar. The Tanna and Mallicollo numerals of Cook are—

Here, although the formations are not exactly regular, the prefixion of an initial syllable is evident. So is the quinary character of the numeration. The prefix itself, however, in the Tanna and Mallicollo is no labial, as in the Louisiade and New Caledonian, but either k or a vowel.

The next fact connected with the Louisiade vocabularies is one of greater interest. Most of the names of the different parts of the body end in da. In the list in question they were marked in italics; so that the proportion they bear to the words not so ending was easily seen. Now it is only the words belonging to this class that thus terminate. Elsewhere the ending da is no commoner than any other.

What does this mean? If we look to such words as mata-da = eyes, sopa-da = lips, maka-da = teeth, and some other naturally plural names, we should infer that it was a sign of number. That this, however, is not the case is shewn by the equivalents to tongue, nose, and other single members where the affix is equally common. What then is its import? The American tongues help us here.

Now in these, and in numerous other American tongues, the prefix is the possessive pronoun; in other words, there is a great number of American languages where the capacity for abstracting the thing possessed from the possessor is so slight as to make it almost impossible to disconnect the noun from its pronoun. I believe, then, the affixes in question have a possessive power; and am not aware that possessive adjuncts thus incorporated have been recognised in any of the languages for these parts; indeed, they are generally considered as American characteristics.

How far does their presence extend? In the New Caledonian vocabulary of La Billardiere we find it. The names of the parts of the body all take an affix, which no other class of words does. This is gha, guai, or ghai, or other similar combination of g with a vowel. In Van Diemen's Land, an important locality, we find the following series of words, which are submitted to the judgment of the reader.

Here the termination na appears elsewhere, as in memana = fight, nabagee-na = sun; but by no means so frequently; nor yet with such an approach to regularity.

Here however, it must not be concealed that the termination ka, or ga, occurs in other words, such as tenal-ga = laugh, tar-ga = cry, teiri-ga = walk, lamunika = see. These, however, are verbs; and it is possible (indeed probable) that the k or g is the same as in the preceding substantives, just as the m in su-m and εἰ-μι is the m in meus, me, and ἐμι. Still, this will not apply throughout; e. g. the words like lalli-ga = kangaroo, para-ka = flower, and others.

Here, the number of other words ending in na is very considerable; so considerable that, if it were not for the cumulative evidence derived from other quarters, it would be doubtful whether the na could legitimately be considered as a possessive affix at all. It may, however, be so even in the present instance.

To these we may add two lists from the Lobo and Utanata dialects of the south-western coast of New Guinea.

Finally, we have the long, and evidently compound forms of the Corio, Colack, and other Australian dialects; long and evidently compound forms which no hypothesis so readily explains as that of the possessive adjunct; a phenomenon which future investigation may shew to be equally Oceanic and American.

The vocabularies of the Rattlesnake are (1) Australian, (2) Papuan.

The former were for the parts about Cape York, i. e. the Northernmost part of Australia, and also the part nearest the Papuan area. The Kowrarega was the form of speech best illustrated.

The Papuan vocabularies were for the Louisiade Archipelago; wholly new as data for a very important and interesting area.

The following paper, connected with the remarks on the incorporation of the possessive pronoun with certain substantives, though on an Asiatic language may find place here.

---

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

MAY THE 23RD.

The following vocabulary is one taken by Dr. H. Sandwith from a Kurd of the Zaza tribe, one of the rudest of the whole Kurd family, and one for which we have no philological specimens.

The meaning of the termination-min has been explained by Pott and Rödiger in their Kurdische Studien. It is the possessive pronoun of the first person = my = meus = ἐμὸς, &c.; so that sèrè-min = caput-meum (or mei), and pie-min = pater-meus (or mei).

So little was the Zaza who supplied Dr. Sandwith with the list under notice able to conceive a hand or father, except so far as they were related to himself, or something else, and so essentially concrete rather than abstract were his notions, that he combined the pronoun with the substantive whenever he had a part of the human body or a degree of consanguinity to name. It is difficult to say how far this amalgamation is natural to the uncultivated understanding, i. e. it is difficult to say so on à priori grounds. That the condition of a person applied to for the purpose of making a glossary out of his communications is different from that under which we maintain our ordinary conversation, is evident. Ordinary conversation gives us a certain number of words, and a context as well. A glossary gives us words only, and disappoints the speaker who is familiar with contexts.

If this be true, imperfect contexts, like the combinations pie-min, &c. should be no uncommon occurrences. Nor are they so. They are pre-eminently common in the American languages. Thus in Mr. Wallace's vocabularies from River Uapes the list run thus:—

similar illustrations being found in almost every American glossary.

In his Appendix to Macgillivray's Voyage of the Rattlesnake, the present writer has pointed out instances of this amalgamation in the languages of the Louisiade. He now adds, that he has also found it in some of the samples of the ordinary Gipsy language of England, as he has taken it from the mouth of English Gipsies.

He considers it to be a personal rather than a philological characteristic, certain individuals having a minimum amount of abstracting power, and such individuals being inordinately common amongst the American Indians.

---

BY THE REVEREND C. ABRAHAM.

COMMUNICATED WITH REMARKS
TO THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY
by Dr. R. G. LATHAM.

April 22. 1853.

Since these vocabularies were laid before the Society, a "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific," by Capt. J. E. Erskine, R, N., has been published. This shows the sources of the preceding lists; since the bishop of New Zealand accompanied the expedition, and succeeded in taking back with him, on his return; some youths for the purposes of education.

The class to which these vocabularies belong has never been, sufficiently for the purposes of publication, reduced to writing, nor is any member of it known to scholars in general, in respect to its grammatical structure. This, however, will probably not be the case much longer, since Capt. Erskine has placed the materials for the study of the Aneitum (Annatom) language in the hands of Mr. Norriss, who is prepared for its investigation. Neither has the class been wholly neglected. A grammar of the Tanna (an allied language) was drawn up by Mr. Heath, but it has not been published, and is probably lost. Dr. Pritchard, who had seen extracts from it, writes, that it contained a trinal as well as a singular, a dual, and a plural number. The present list elucidates this. The trinal number (so-called) of the Mallicolo is merely the personal pronoun plus the numeral 3; each element being so modified as to give the appearance of an inflection.

The following tables exhibit the numerals of certain other islands in the neighbourhood. They are taken from Captain Erskine's work, in which reference is made to a "Description of the Islands in the Western Pacific Ocean, by A. Cheyne." This has not been examined by the present writer.

Mr. Abraham's Mallicolo represents the same language with the Mallicolo vocabulary of Captain Cook's Voyages, with which it pretty closely agrees.

His Erromango is more peculiar. Sikai = six = the Mallicolo sukai, which is, itself, nearly the sikai = one. The -ring in suku-ring, too, is the Mallicolo rima. This we know, from the analogies of almost all the languages of Polynesia and the Indian Archipelago, to be the word lima = hand. Hence e-rima (Mallicolo), hand, and suku-ring (Erromango) = one hand. The vat in menda-vat is the Mallicolo -bats in e-bats, the Malay am-pat = four. Du-ru is the Mallicolo e-ry, there being in each case a prefixed syllable. The analysis of tesal and saitavan is less clear. Neither is it certain how ngaraodlen = ten. The other numerals are compounds. This, perhaps, is sufficient to show that the difference between the numerals of the Mallicolo and Erromango is a difference of a very superficial kind. So it is with the Tana, Fotuna, and the first Uea specimens. We must always remember that the first syllable is generally a non-radical prefix.

In the Tana of the preceding table, the words for 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, seem to be merely the words for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 repeated, and something of the same kind appears in the first Uea. Perhaps the representation may be imperfect. At any rate the Tanna of Cook's Voyage runs—

The same appears in the Balad of New Caledonia. Now Cooks New Caledonian runs—

The Yengen and Lifu vocabularies are not so different but that the lu and kun of the one = the luk and yen of the other, as well as the lo and kiuu of the second Uea, and the roo and gen of the Balad.

The importance of these non-radical syllables in the numerals has been indicated by the present writer in the appendix to Mr. M'Gillivray's 'Voyage of the Rattlesnake.' There we find several well-selected specimens of the languages of the Louisiade archipelago. The fact of certain affinities between these and the New Caledonian is there indicated. Each has its prefix. In each the prefix is a labial.

Now the Tana and Mallicolo tongues have a prefix also, but this is not a labial. It is rather a vowel or k (guttural or palatal). Here lies a difference—a difference of detail. Yet the same change can now be shown to be within the pale of the New Caledonian itself, as may be seen by comparing par-roo and par-gen (pah-gen?) with he-luk and he-yen.

The change from r to l creates no difficulty. In one of the Tana vocabularies one = li-ti, in another r-eedee.

These points have been gone into for the sake of guarding against such exaggeration of the differences between the languages of the parts in question as the apparent differences in the numerals have a tendency to engender.

---