Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

of the language, he may, according to his instructor's discretion, be encouraged to undertake the making of an index to some con. siderable Greek author; the publication of which index will be a real service to the learned world. While young persons are composing an index only with a view to their own improvement, several of them may very properly be employed in making an index to the same book. But when they employ themselves in the same kind of work with a design of publishing their performances, it may be most advisable that each of them should take a different author: for which reason I beg leave to set down a list of some Greek books to which I have known indexes already composed. Such are the following:

Plato's Select Dialogues. Ed.
Forster.

Longinus. Ed. Pearce. 8vo.
Cebes. Ed. Gronov.

Epictetus.

Ejusdem et Democratis Senten-
Liæ.

Agathemeri Geographica.
Marmora Oxoniensia.'
Olympiodorus de Vitâ Platonis.

Theophrastus de Lapidibus. Ed. Albini Introductio ad Platonis

Hill.

Lycurgus. Ed. Taylor.

Erastosthenes. Ed. Amst. 1688.
Heraclitus de Incredibilibus.

ibid.

Anonymus de Incredibilibus.
ibid.

Porphyrius de Vitâ Pythagora.
Ed. Kuster.

Speusippi Definitiones.
Demophili Similitudines.

Dialogos.

Sallustius de Diis et Mundo.
Secundi Philosophi Sententiæ.
Ed. Fabricii.

Anatolii Fragm. Ed. Fabricü.
Hieroclis AZTELA. Ed. Need-
ham.

Monumentum Adulitanum Pto-
lemæi Euergetæ. Ed. Fa-
bricii.

Juliani Imp. Epistolæ Quatuor.
Ed. Fabricii.

Greek Books already transcribed in order to an Index.

Aristeas
Onosander

Exc. ex Heraclide de Polit.

Soranus de Vitâ Hippocratis..

Phalaridis Epistolæ.

Plutarchi Vitæ. vol. i.

'The Verbal Index to the Marmora Oxoniensia was composed by my learned and very valuable friend Mr. John Loveday, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and has lately been published in the same volume with the Marbles themselves, together with eight Indexes more, composed by the same accurate hand, which may greatly assist in explaining other ancient Monuments.

[blocks in formation]

may,

The preceptor, in examining his scholar's index, need not, as I apprehend, take the trouble of reading the whole of it, but may, in a competent degree, judge whether it be so far exact as is necessary in order to the composer's own improvement, by dipping casually into distant parts of it, and comparing a few of the words with the place in the book to which they are referred: or he vice versa, take a few lines that lie in distant parts of the book, aud see whether the words of those lines are rightly set down in the index. When an index composed by a young person is designed for the press, it will be necessary that some person more intimately acquainted with the Greek language should read over the words of the index before it be published, or that the maker of it should keep

A learned and ingenious Gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Whalley, Master of Christ-church School, London, (one of whose Scholars has, at the age of fifteen, voluntarily composed an Index to Dr. Gale's Anonymous Writer de Incredibilibus, and has transcribed the Excerpta de Politiis for the same purpose,) has enabled me to enlarge the List of Books to which Indexes are begun or designed, by the following passage in a Letter with which he has lately favored me: "Your Index-compilation is certainly a very useful and improving method. I have strongly recommended it to the Boys under my care designed for the University. Into the hands of one I have put Aristotle's Poetics; of another, the last Oxford Edition of Moschus and Bion, by a Gentleman of Christ-church. And to others I propose giving Mounteney's Select Orations of Demosthenes, Aristotle's Ethics by Wilkinson, Plato's Republic in 2 vols. by Massey, who was educated on this foundation," &c.-The Rev. Dr. Hunt, the celebrated Professor of the Hebrew and Arabic Languages, (a Gentleman to whom I have many and singular obligations,) has intimated to me the usefulness of such an Index with regard to the latter of those Languages, if composed for some valuable Arabic

Writer.

it by him, till he is so far improved as to be capable of correcting it himself.

The employment which I have been recommending, if it were only enjoined to persons at school instead of some other task or lesson, and never as an additional exercise, would, I am apt to imagine, be rather acceptable than disagreeable to the generality of them; and, when they have for some time willingly applied themselves to it, there is reason to hope that the sense of the advantage arising from it will incline many to undertake some considerable work of this sort for their farther improvement. Few, I believe, who are really desirous of learning the Greek language, would be deterred from such an attempt by the degree of labor which attends it, were they sensible how much both of labor and time is saved by it in the acquisition of that kind of knowledge. Add to this, that the assistance which every student in the language may hope to receive, (when he is farther improved in it,) from the use of the indexes themselves, is such as a well-disposed person cannot but greatly value, were it only confined to the illustration of the Sacred Writings; for, though this branch of literature ought most particularly to be cultivated by those who are designed for holy orders, there is no profession or rank to which it can justly be thought foreign or unimportant: as the only circumstance that discriminates a clergyman from other men is this; that it is his peculiar employment to teach what it is every man's concern to know.

I am, Dear Sir,

Your very humble Servant,

JAMES MERRICK.
RIC

LETTERS ON THE ANCIENT BRITISH
LANGUAGE OF CORNWALL.

No. V. [Continued from No. XXXIX. p. 172.]

LETTER VIII.

DISGUISE OF WORDS—DIGAMMA,

THE disguise of words, to which I have often had occasion to allude, is a matter of the highest importance in the theory and the structure of language. It is also an object of difficulty, as in their transition from foreign languages the original primitives can be scarcely recognised. It is, however, a long and intricate subject, and which would require to be discussed in a separate treatise, and with the greatest accuracy. It would be thus that many philological affinities, might

be discovered, which are not even supposed to exist. The following observations are rather made with a view to vindicate myself than otherwise, as many of my derivations would perhaps appear fanciful without such an explanation.

1

1. The disguise of some words consists a great deal more in the spelling than in the pronunciation; and thus an Englishman, when he meets with foreign words, will naturally articulate the letters according to his own language, and destroy whatever similarity might have still remained. What can be more different than journal and day, young and juvenis? and yet there can be no doubt of their common origin. This becomes much more probable, when we recollect, that the Roman j and v were pronounced like our English y and w. The Italians have retained the sound of y to their j, as in Jaspide, Jasper, tempj, times; while the Spaniards have nearly diganimated it into an aspirate, as in Boda'os; Junta, A Junta. The variations of Young are Giovane, It.; Joven, Sp.; Jeune, French; and Jeram, Cornish; all of which have the same origin as Juvenis; and though they are totally different, when pronounced in English according to their orthography, yet they evidently retain a certain resemblance as they are pronounced by those different nations.

2. Foreigners will not express the same words alike in writing; but will modify them in some measure according to the sounds, to which they have been accustomed. This accounts for the extraordinary discrepancies of navigators, when they give us the same appellations derived from barbarous and unwritten languages. This is remarkably striking in the imitation of the sounds of animals, and indeed in none more than in the discrepant similarity in the name of the cuckoo ;' KÓKKVĚ; Cuculus; cuculo and cucù, It.; Coucou, Fr.; Cuclillo, Sp.; Cucò, Port.; Gog, Corn. Is it then wonderful, when there is such a variety in expressing a sound, which is annually repeated in the ears of millions, that travellers should disagree in reporting words, which they may have never heard pronounced but once?

3. Foreign words have often in themselves something, which cannot be pronounced in the language of the countries, where they become naturalised. Having never been accustomed to corresponding sounds, the South-Sea Islanders could imitate no nearer the names of Cook and an axe, than tootee and opyss; thus contrary to all the usual substitutions of letters turning the c into a t, and the x into yss; and yet however strange this perversion, and distant the resemblance, there can be no doubt of the derivation. We may also suppose that our navigators, on the other hand, did not corrupt their words less. Even nearer home to us, the French turn the th into d and t and the

The Hebrew word for a cuckoo is, which is thus rendered in our translation; but it may also mean a sea-mew, which I should prefer, as the word bears no analogy whatever to the note of the bird, contrary to what is the case in so many other languages. (Lev. xi. 16.)

w into v; or like the Greeks in Ovipyíλis and Σeßúpos into ou and b, as in ouest, bicétre, &c. ·

4. Another cause of the disguise of foreign words, is when there exists a natural impediment to the pronunciation of the people, I mean when they are called on to imitate sounds which are unknown to their language. An immediate corruption follows; the nearest sounds can only be had recourse to, and the words become totally different from their original, though the constant regularity of their deviation indicates the particular letters which could not be pronounced. Thus some modern nations, unable to articulate the Roman pl, have adopted other letters, as for pluere and plangere, we have piovere, and piangere, It.; llover and llorar, Sp.; and chover and chorar, Port. These nations, therefore, finding this difficulty in the pl, expressed it in the best way they could, and employed those letters, which seemed to their ear to approximate most to the original sound. But nothing can be more dissimilar to the eye, or as read by an Englishman; and I confess, that unless I had paid attention to the subject, I could not have guessed that these letters were substituted for each other. The Greeks and Romans could express the s followed by a consonant, as in oxéλos, spondeo, and in this they are followed by the English, Italians, and Cornish in spunge, spongia, spong; spirit, spirito, speris; star, stella, steren; which in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, make éponge, esponja; esprit, espiritu, espirito, étoile, estrella.

5. Words are not only disguised when they lose or alter some of their letters; but this likewise happens, when the original pronunciation remains the same throughout several languages. Different nations employ different symbols to represent similar sounds. It is thus that what is in fact similar in sound and signification, loses every trace of its former appearance, so that it cannot even be suspected, what it originally was, except by those who have studied the subject. Even many who understand the languages, and are acquainted with the synonyms and their meanings, have no idea that, when they are analysed, they spring from one common origin. It only happens, however, when the languages have corresponding sounds; for if they have not, the words either change their letters as cilium; It. ciglio; or else they retain their form, without any attempt to designate the pronunciation, as in the Italian, certo and cima, which are in French certain and cime. Of different but similarly pronounced symbols, we have major; It. maggiore; giudizio, jugement, judgment. The correspondents of gn in It. compagno, are in the Hebrew up, he upheld; Sp. compañero. Port. companheiro, and the Euglish companion. Again, Vemiglio, It.; bermello, Sp.; vermelho, Port.; and vermillion, French and English, are all nearly symbols of the same sounds. It is therefore plain, without an unnecessary multiplication of examples, that this disguise of the letters is not less common, or less intricate to be discovered, than that of the others, which depend on a combined alteration of the letters and the pronunciation.

6. When the disguise is constant, there is no difficulty in restoring

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »