S23 ' 



tural or plausible. One method of confirmation he uses, is, 

 to trace the assigned roots through several languages and 

 regions. Thus he traces one of them — iodh-ar, itJi-ar — 

 through vitrum, — KarriTepog, — margarita — Eridanus — iohar, 

 (borrowed he says by the Arabians from the Phoenicians) — 

 Farsidh (Persia), and the names of some of the islands in the 

 Persian Gulf. He traces idh-on, iodh-on, the roots of Sidon, 

 through Chalcedon, Carchedon, Caledonia, and the Germanic 

 aidstein, whereby he exhibits the meaning of those names 

 also. He traces the roots of Solyma through the region 

 inhabited by the Solymi of Homer, the Sulmo of Italy, and 

 the Saluvii of Gaul, and shows from the accounts concerning 

 those places, that the roots are equally applicable to them. 

 The roots of the Hebrew borrowed word glinnim he traces 

 through Germany, ancient Britain, Campania, and Liguria. 

 Another mode of confirmation he uses is the quotation of, 

 or reference to, various ancient and modern writers, in proof 

 of the applicability of the terms. 



He does not infer from this similarity of language, that 

 the Irish are descended from a colony of Phoenicians, led — ■ 

 not from Tyre or Sidon, or any part of Syria, but — from the 

 shores of the Red Sea, as Irish histories tell us ; the greater 

 part of which histories he imagines to be a tissue of fables, 

 the rather, as they are at variance with the only authentic 

 document relating to ancient Ireland, namely, the geography 

 of Ptolemy. The conclusion he comes to is, that they had a 

 common origin — that there was an ancient language diffused 

 over almost the whole of Europe, and a good part of Asia ; a 

 sort of Pelasgic, which is the chief root of the Greek and 

 Latin, and of most of the modern European languages; and 

 that this ancient language is preserved in greater purity in 

 Ireland than in any other country, on account of its insulated 

 position. He shows that Leibnitz, a man of great sagacity 

 and philological knowlege, made an observation not very 

 dissimilar to this. '* Illud autem notatu dignissimum, per 



