4 The Rev. J. Hamilton on the Punic Passage in Plautus, 



language of the rival nation of another continent, the author of the piece a 

 favourite of the Scipio's and Laelius's of the one, and its hero, if we may so speak, 

 the supposed compatriot and coeval of the Hannibals and Hannos of the other — 

 it is not to be wondered at that the Punic passage, with the different attempts to 

 explicate it, should for a long period from and after the revival of literature, 

 have engaged, and almost agitated the literary world. The wonder rather were, 

 that the interest thus excited should during a long period (that which followed 

 the times of Bochart and his fellows) have surceased; but that the indagation 

 of that erudite period had exhausted, and the authority of Bochart's gigantic 

 scholarship overlaid, if it did not settle, the till then " still vexed" discussion. 



The state of comparative quiescence (rather than acquiescence) by which 

 Bochart's lucubrations were thus followed, was within the last half century 

 disturbed by an attempt, followed by some later attempts of the same kind, to 

 explain the passage on the principle of a supposed affinity between the Punic 

 language and the Irish. The fresh, and of late increased interest thus excited 

 in the discussion, having led the author of this Essay to examine the Punic as it 

 stands in Plautus, and while waiting for a copy he had written for of Bochart's 

 interpretation, to attempt a translation of his own, he found, upon comparison, a 

 considerable discrepancy between them. Having subsequently examined, as he 

 conceives with candour, and certainly with care, the grounds of that discrepancy, 

 he drew up that exposition of his own view, which he now submits to the consi- 

 deration of the Classical and Oriental scholar ; — deeply sensible that the attempt 

 to put forth a new explication of a passage which has tasked, if not baffled, the 

 most erudite and sagacious spirits of their times, must, in place of indulgence, 

 expect rebuke, unless it shall approve itself to the candid scrutiny of scholars, 

 as contributing, however humbly, to meet a desideratum in our erudition, and 

 in some degree helping to " give the sense, and causing to understand the 

 reading." 



The author having begun these prefatory remarks by adverting to the grounds 

 of that interest which the learned have so long continued to take in the Punic pas- 

 sage, cannot conclude them without avowing, that in his view it claims attention 

 upon grounds of a still higher kind — its affinity in language and style with the 

 Hebrew text of Scripture, and the light which it not only receives from but 

 reflects upon certain parallel passages of Holy Writ. 



