Germans, the Anatolians, the Arabians, and the Africans (not to mention the Italians, the Spa

the English and Latin languages must occur to every body very frequently; and to shew a like affinity between the English and the Greek, I shall copy fifty examples, as contained, but not very well selected, in an old book called Camden's Remains, p. 32. The author truly adds, that many more might be found, if a man would be idle enough to gather them;" and I shall premise what he says by way of introduction to them, as it is possible he might have intended to insinuate by it the same thing, as I have been more broadly stating.

"If it be any glory," says he, "which the French and Dutch do brag of, that many words in their tongues do not differ from the Greeke, I can shew you as many in the English; whereof 1 will give you a few for a taste, as they have offered themselves in reading; but withal, I trust that you will not gather by consequence that we are descended from the Grecians. Who doth not see identity in these words, as if the one descended from the other?

niards, and the French, whom, as well as the English, we are modestly required to believe in a

condition of utter barbarismin those times little removed from astate of nature) should have been

suffered by thosesurrounding nations to acquire a paramount influence and authority over them.

For my own part, I cannot bring my mind to conceive that languages, in which such chefs-d'auvres were composed as exist in the Greek and Latin, could, if ever they were spoken at all, ever afterwards have become dead languages; any more than I can think it possible that the power of the Greeks or the Romans, situate where those people are supposed to have been, could have been such as in the classic writers they are enigmatically described (the nega tive of which Polybius in his General History very often strongly hints,) or that the countries of England, France, Spain, &c. should either have been unpeopled at those or (which, in my view, amounts, as to the present point, to the same thing) enveloped in clouds of barbarism. word, I consider the heroes and other characters of

times,

In a

the

ancient compositions, to have been only so many præclara nomina, as ancient authors frequently call them,

or

great representative names of things, persons, and countries, abundantly greater than themselves.

All

The former supposition is infinitely more probable in itself; andthat probability will be greatly in

All that I have thus rapidly said of Greece and Rome applies as strongly to Egypt; and indeed a very slight survey of the geographical position of Egypt must make it manifest, that it never could have subsisted at all, even as a colony, much less become capable of founding such stupendous monuments of art as remain there, unless under the protection of some great maritime power. It is very certain that each of the points thus hastily touched, merits of itself a dissertation in detail: but even the little which I have here stopped to say, may throw light and borrow light from what follows hereafter: the truth of these matters appearing indeed more plainly, when many of them are judged together, than when taken singly. I conclude, therefore, these preliminary observations with this remark, that the suppositions above stated, combined with others perfectly consistent and collateral to them, would serve to explain a thousand prodigies, to solve a thousand enigmas and to remove a thousand difficulties, which are found in. all the ancient authors and remains of art; whereas, without them it is impossible to understand almost any of those monuments of genius; and, without them, we are called upon to give implicit belief to such wild conceits as

creased, when, upon turning to the other great poem of Homer, the Odyssey, we find an account of a war nearly similar to that of the Iliad, with a graft therein by way of episode, containing a detailed account of India, China, Tartary, and America, countries with which, from their distance from Europe and the singularity of their institutions or productions, it must in all periods of time, have been highly desirable to be made acquainted. In the narrow compass within which the following treatise is comprized, which, with a few corrections, is only a reprint of one of those mentioned in the preface

phoenixes, singing grasshoppers, and other still greater extravagances.-The dissertation from which the above extract is taken contains also the following passage. "The other genuine poems of Milton (not to speak of the Paradise Regained or the Samson Agonistes which are unworthy of his name) can never be understood, but by a similar supposition of the personages introduced into them filling for the most part representative characters; and the same may be asserted with equal truth of the plays of Shakspeare." It is presumed that ample proof of the last assertion has already been given in the preceding volumes.