134 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. VIII. Aug. 13. 'o9. 



sion, " contrat mohatra" i. e. a contract which is a 

 robbery, not a moharka, a proper and legitimate 

 contract. In the Old Testament, two instances of 

 such a paronomasia may be seen in the Hebrew 

 text of a single verse, Is. v. 7., " He looked for 

 mishpat, but, behold, mispuh! for tsdahah, but, 

 behold, is'aA«A/" Thomas Boys. 



Milton's corkesposdence. 

 (2"" S. viii. 47. 90.) 



With Mb. Carbuthers I also entertained some 

 slight misgivings as to whether the person alluded 

 to in Andrew Marvel's letter might not have been 

 Bradshaw instead of Cromwell, and feel inclined, 

 notwithstanding what former biographers have 

 asserted, to coincide with his opinion. The copy 

 of the letter in the Sloane MSS. is accompanied 

 ty another letter from M. Wall to Milton, dated 

 Cansham, May 26, 1659, which has been printed 

 among the poet's prose works by Symmons (vide 

 vol. ii.), and both are attested by J. Owen, who, 

 it appears, was the Rev. James Owen of Rochdale 

 in Lancashire ; and it would be curious to trace 

 the depositary of the originals, presuming them 

 to be still in existence. I have little doubt but 

 ^t the time these copies were made- the originals 

 were in the possession of Elizabeth the widow, 

 nee MinshuU, then resident at Nantwich, or her 

 representatives. An extract from this latter epi- 

 stle is quoted both by Symmons and Birch, and 

 (i7i extenso) is on the subject of the peculiar views 

 held by Milton upon civil and religious liberty, 

 &c. My present inquiry is to know who was Mil- 

 ton's correspondent M. Wall ? and if any of the 

 readers of "N. & Q." can point to the present 

 ■whereabouts of the originals of these two lettei's ? 



I append a Note relating to Milton, written by 

 that indefatigable and gossiping writer W. Cole: 



" Mr. Francis Peck, in his new memoirs of the life of 

 ililton, says that his first disgust against the king and 

 the clergy and universities was on account of a Royal 

 Mandate to Christ's College to chuse Mr. Edward King 

 Fellow of the college in preference to him, which was 

 further heightened by his expulsion or rustication from 

 the college. He afterwards became a zealous Puritan, 

 and joyned with the Presbyterians, but soon grew tired 

 of them and turned Independent, Anabaptist, and then 

 ■Quaker, and is supposed to have died a Deist. In the 

 Northampton 3Iercury of May 19, 1760, is the following 

 ■extempore distich wrote by Dr. Young, author of the 

 Night Thoughts, in answer to a Billet sent by Monsieur 

 de Voltaire, to enquire what the company thought of him 

 after some loose remarks which he had made upon Mil- 

 ton. Dr. Young and Voltaire were then both at Mr. 

 Doddington's seat at Eastbury : — 



" Thou'rt so ingenious, wicked, and so thin. 



That thou art Milton, and his death and sin." 

 Thus translated into Latin bj' the Rev. J. N.*, A.M. : — 

 " Ingenio Scelere et Macie praecellis, in uno 



Jungi Miltonus Peccatura Morsque videntur." 



* Query, if not Mr. Nixon ? 



But whatever were Voltaire's remarks and sentiments 

 when he was in England in relation to Milton, he has 

 exercised a very severe, yet perhaps a very just, criticism 

 upon the Paradise Lost in his Candide, ou VOptimisme, p. 

 240, 241, 242. edit. 1759, 8°, if that dangerous book was 

 wrote by him, and not by Mr. Hall of Yorkshire, whom 

 I remember a Fellow Commoner of Jesus College in Cam- 

 bridge, and who by some, tho' I believe very falsely, was 

 said to be the author of it." 



Cl. Hopper. 



DR. Latham's theory of the indo-european 



LANGUAGES. 



(2"* S. viii. 110.) 



The following extract from an article attri- 

 buted to Professor Max Miiller on " Comparative 

 Philology," in the Edinburgh Revieiv, Oct. 1851, 

 is intended as a reply to Ingir's inquiry : — 



"This gentleman (Dr. Latham), to whom we owe al- 

 ready a history of the English language, embodying the 

 results of Grimm's celebrated Teutonic Grammar, has 

 also thought it necessary in his present work (On the 

 Vaneties of Mail), to avail himself of the results of Com- 

 parative Philologj', and to bring them to bear on the 

 natural history of man. But instead of following Dr. 

 Prichard's excellent work, Researches into the Physical 

 History of 3Ian, which is hy no means antiquated. Dr. 

 Latham has adopted a division of languages which seems 

 to be entirely his own. He divides all the languages of 

 the world into four classes, which he calls aptotic, aggluti- 

 nate, amalgamate, and anaptotic. He admits, however, of 

 onlj- three methods of grammar — the Classical, EngUsh, 

 and Chinese. All the languages, dead or living, are re- 

 ferred to one of these languages with astonishing rapidity. 

 There remains but one family of languages which Dr. 

 Latham considers hypothetical — the * Arian Indo-Ger- 

 mans.' Sanscrit is to him a very doubtful language, still 

 more its modern descendants — Hindi, Bengali, Mahratti, 

 &c. According to him ' the nation that is at one and the 

 same time Asiatic and Indo-Germanic remains to be disco- 

 vered.' This prejudice against Sanscrit is not peculiar to 

 Dr. Latham. It is, or at all events it was, shared by 

 manj' who found it troublesome to learn this new lan- 

 guage. Sanscrit was called a factitious idiom concocted by 

 the Brahmins after the expedition of Alexander into In- 

 dia ; a theory which Schlegel considers as ' happy as that 

 which would account for the Egyptian pyramids as natu- 

 ral crystallisations.' There is another point, however, 

 where Dr. L. seems to have a fair claim on originality. 

 We must quote his own words, because Are might be sus- 

 pected of misrepresenting his opinions. * The criticism, 

 or rather scepticism,' he says, ' which has been extended 

 by others to the ludo-Gangetic languages of Hindostan, 

 is extended by the present Avriter to the Persian.' He 

 afterwards maintains that the language 'of the arrow- 

 headed inscriptions is Sanscrit.' Colonel Rawlinson, Bur- 

 nouf, and Lassen, might have saved themselves their 

 trouble if they had been informed of this before. But Dr. 

 Latham has allowed himself to be misled into a still 

 greater mistake. Colonel Rawlinson, Burnouf, and Las- 

 sen have shown that the Persian branch of the Indo- 

 European stock has preserved, particularly in its oldest 

 literary documents, the Zend Avesta, ancient forms, 

 which occur in the Veda, but have been modified in the 

 more modern Sanscrit. Dr. Latham, not knowing that 

 the language of the cuneiform inscriptions differs from 

 that of the Veda nearly as much as that of Cicero from 

 Homer, has misunderstood this grammatical observation, 



