in the Composition of Nouns and Adjectives. 67 
source of their language was unknown, and who looked for a so- 
lution of all their difficulties in the only remaining source, name- 
ly, the language and literature of the Greeks *. 
Had we been fortunate enough to have received this great 
work in its original state, we should not have, for so long a pe- 
riod, so utterly misunderstood the early history, antiquities, and 
constitution of Rome. But this, like many other works, more 
useful than amusing, have miserably suffered under the knife of 
the abbreviator, that most efficient member of the Society for 
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, who, in his anxiety to dif- 
fuse, has often succeeded in draining the real sources. 
First, oné Festus Pomreivs, a man known to us by this bad 
deed alone, but who is supposed by learned men to have lived 
under one of the Christian Emperors, undertook to republish 
the work of Verrius Fiaccus on the following principles: “ It 
is my intention, in selecting from the great number of his books, 
to omit all words already dead and buried, and often, as he con- 
fesses himself, of no [present] use and authority, and to reduce all 
the rest, as briefly as possible, into a very few books +.” If this 
work had reached us, mangled and imperfect as it must have 
been after such a process, our loss would not have been so great 
as it really is; for Frsrus had evidently some knowledge of his 
subject, and a great wish fairly to represent the sentiments of his 
principal, without either sneering at what he did not understand, 
or misrepresenting that which he did not like. But we have 
only the shadow of the shade. For, in the eighth century, one 
* The Roman who had recourse to the Greek language alone, for a solution of 
his difficulties, was.as helpless as the English scholar, who, neglecting the Anglo- 
Saxon, expects to find all the necessary knowledge in Latin and French. 
+ “ Cum propositum habeam ex tanto librorum ejus numero intermortua jam 
et sepulta verba, atque ipso sepe confitente nullius usus aut auctoritatis, preeterire, 
et reliqua quam brevissime redigere in libros admodum paucos.”—Fxrstus, under 
the word Profanum, Delph. ed. Vatr. p. 554. 
12 
