66 GRAMMAR OF THE LANGUAGE 



by Dr B. S. Barton's " New Views of the Origin of the Tribes 

 and Nations of America." The object of the learned au- 

 thor at first was to supply the deficiency of the great phi- 

 lological monument which the empress Catharine had begun 

 as far as related to the languages of America. Happy would 

 it have been if he had not suffered his imagination to draw 

 him away from that simple but highly useful design ! But 

 he conceived that by comparing the American with the 

 Asiatic languages he could prove the origin of our Indians 

 from the nations which inhabit the opposite coast of Asia ; 

 and thus he sacrificed the real advantage of science to the 

 pursuit of a favourite theory. He has nevertheless brought 

 together, in a comparative view, fifty-two select words in 

 about thirty or forty of our aboriginal idioms; by which he 

 has shewn, that he might, if he pleased, have completed 

 professor Pallas's Vocabulary, as far as it could have been 

 done at that period, when we had not the means that have 

 been obtained since. His was the first attempt to collect 

 and compare to some extent* specimens of our Indian lan- 

 las had given the corresponding terms in the African and American lan- 

 guages. But M. Jankiewitsch took upon himself to alter the whole plan 

 of Pallas's work, and, instead of pursuing the original system, which was 

 to give the same Russian word in the different languages in due succes- 

 sion, he made an alphabetical catalogue of exotic words, which he ex- 

 plained into Russian, and in which he mixed all nations and languages 

 together, with a view to shew how the same sounds received different 

 meanings in different idioms. The empress was displeased, and the 

 edition was suppressed. A few copies, however, have gone abroad, one of 

 which is in the library of the American Philosophical Society. 



M. Jankiewitch did wrong in not following the plan of his predecessor, 

 whose work he thus left incomplete, when its completion was the very 

 object which was entrusted to his care. He should first have executed his 

 task: he might afterwards have published a vocabulary on his own sys- 

 tem, which would have been a useful counterpart to the other. Indeed 

 these two parts seem essential to a good comparative vocabulary, pre- 

 cisely as in a dictionary of two languages there must be a part beginning 

 with each and explaining the words of each into the other. 



* Relandus, in tlie third volume of his dissertations, published voca- 

 bularies of nine American languages, extracted from different authors. 

 They are the Brazilian, Chilese, Peruvian, Poconchi, Caribbee, Mexican. 

 Massachusetts which he calls Virginian, Algonkin, and Huron. 



