PHILOLOGICAL INQUIRIES. 479 



five praife for antiquity, fo generally bellowed on them 

 (efpecially on the Hebrew) but they are very valuable for 

 their ample writings, by which their affinities with each 

 other, and with many other languages can be known : 

 the Greek, as both copious and ancient, is of particular 

 importance.* — The written reliques of the Celtic, Mo- 

 efo-Gothic, Teutonic, Scytho-Scandian, Anglo-Saxon are 

 fufficiently efteemedj yet as they are all within 1600 

 years, and the greater part much later ; and as the whole 

 is not copious ; we muft not believe that they embrace all 

 theeffential words of the Britifh, Irilh, Gallic, Belgian, 

 Cimbric, and Scandinavian languages ; but that many 

 others arc contained in the printed books and living lan- 

 guages of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Germany 

 and fome Swifs Cantons, Holland and the Netherlands, 

 parts of Ireland and of Scotland, Wales, Brctagnc in 

 France, Cantabria in Spain. "[" — The Ruffian, Polilli and 



Bohemian, 



* I confider them here not as vehicles of hiftorical and fcientific erudition. 

 Homer lived about 900 years before our aera; Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, 

 Ariftoteles, Xenopliou -.vithin the 5th and 6th centuries before it. 



f The Scandir -ivian, Cimbric, and Iflandic hiftorical fragments, called 

 Sagor, and the heroic longs, Skaldequeden, are generally deemed later tlum 

 the 8th century, thoiigh fome might have been compofed much earlier. In 

 Sweden the epit.iphs on the Runejlenar are generally eflimated pofterior to the 

 fourth century : 1 173 of thefe Infcribed Ifonesare reprefented in a work ftykd 

 Bautil, pubhlhsd by the order of the Swediili government in 1 750. The Ulphi- 

 lan Gofpels are commonly rctctTed to the fourth century ; but fome learned 

 philologiifs deem them later by 400 years. The oldeft Anglo-Saxon fpeci- 

 mens are the laws of jEtleibert, king of Kent, made between 561 and 616 : 

 the next are thofe of Ina, king of tlie Weft Saxons, from 712 to 727. The 

 remains of the Swediili, Danifh, and Norwegian laws are more recent ; bat old- 

 er than thofe of the other northern nations. There is great reafon to believe 

 that a part of Sweden had written laws about the year 600, from the adop- 

 tion of feveral thereof in the main body of the prefent general code formed 

 feven hundred years afterward'; which is mentioned in the preface to it. The 

 ^mple fpccimens of Scandinavian and Illandic ^VTitings came in the 13th cen- 

 tury : the celebrated northern hiftorian Sturlefon, born in Iceland, wrote then. 

 The oldeft Irifli manufcriptj cannot be traced beyond the loth century : the 



Britiih 



