Atlas Eihnographique du Olobe, 



rival. The English literature, like many others, commenced in 

 the twelfth century, by translations and chronicles, and reached its 

 greatest splendour in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

 Rich as varied, it still rivals the literature of the most celebrated of 

 the Continent. Its most ancient records are, a Hymn to the Virgin, 

 by Godric, who died in 1170 ; the translation of the Romance of 

 Brut de Wace, by Layamon or Lazamon ; the Castel of Love of 

 Robert Grosthead, of the first half of the thirteenth century ; and 

 the Chronicle of Robert Gloucester, in the second half of the same 

 century ; the works of Robert Brunne, Chaucer, Adon, John Gower, 

 and Robert Lang eland, author of the celebrated satire called the 

 Visions of Piers Ploughman, all of the fourteenth century. It 

 appears to us, that the four following dialects may be distinguished 

 in the English, subdivided into several sub-dialects and varieties : 

 first, the English, properly so called, which, polished by Chaucer 

 in the fourteenth century, became the written and general language 

 of the nation ; its sub-dialects are that of the Citij of London (the 

 Cockney) (qiuFre\ of Oxford^ of Somerset, the English of Wales, and 

 the English of Ireland; the Joivring, spoken in Berkshire, and the 

 rustic of Suffolk and Norfolk. 2nd. The Northumbrun English, 

 which might also be called the Dano-English, in consideration of 

 the great number of Danish words which it preserves ; which has, 

 as sub-dialects, the Yorkshire, the Lancashire, the Cumberland, and 

 the Westmoreland. 3d. The Scotch, or the Anglo-Scandinavian, 

 in which are distinguishable the Loivland Scotch, formerly spoken at 

 the court of the kings of Scotland, in which James V. composed 

 poems of considerable beauty, Allan Ramsay a pastoral, which by 

 its simplicity and elegance brings to the recollection the Aminta of 

 Tasso, and which Burns has still more recently adorned : the border 

 language, a mixed idiom, spoken on the frontier provinces of 

 Southern Scotland remarkable by its Ballads ; and the Orkney, 

 which is much mixed with Norwegian. 4th. The Ultra-European 

 English, spoken in the British colonies and the United States of 

 America, and the most prevalent language, generally, in the two 

 Americas." 



In the thirty-six tables, the author has distinguished and 

 classed 860 languages, and about 5000 dialects : in addition 

 to this prodigious number methodically arranged in the Atlas, 

 Mr. Balbi names in different chapters of the introduction 

 almost as many more, w^hich, from the want of vocabularies, 

 he has not permitted himself to include in the tables. The 

 General Ethnographical Map of the World, with which the 

 Atlas commences, contains much curious and important mat- 

 ter : it is there seen, that in the present state of our knowledge, 

 the Asiatic languages amount to 153; the European, to 53; 

 the African, to 114; the Polynesian, to 117 ; and the Ame- 

 rican, to 423. 



Each of the tables is preceded by an introduction, in which 



