( 494 ) 
On one Source of the Non-Hellenic Portion of the Latin Lan- 
guage. By the Rev. Archdeacon Wiiviams, F.R.S. E., Rec- 
tor of the Edinburgh Academy, &c. &c. 
(Read 7th March 1836.) 
Payne Kwnicut, no mean name among philologers, after a 
masterly and convincing proof, that neither ZeNoporus nor 
Aristarcuus, the great critics of the Alexandrian school, could 
be acquitted of the charge of “scarcely credible ignorance” of the 
primitive form of the Homeric language, thus proceeds :— 
“ The grammarians and critics of Alexandria were all guilty 
of the same fault. They never investigated the original sources 
of the language, but classed among anomalous dialects and poetic 
licenses every thing that was not in unison with their own usual 
style of speaking. In their age there existed many clews to the 
inquiry, which have now disappeared, but which, at that time, 
might easily have been found in written records, and in the rude 
and semi-barbarous languages of Italy and other countries adja- 
cent to Greece. Had any one, however, suggested to Art- 
starcuus that the true form and character of the Homeric dia- 
lect was to be extracted from the Latin, Tuscan, or Osean lan- 
guages, he would in my opinion have been as much astonished 
as if he had heard of the claims of the Irish antiquary, who affirmed 
that the Homeric poems had been translated furtively from the 
“ Gaelic into Greek.” 
Whatever might have been the astonishment of AristTarcuus 
on being referred to the rude and semi-barbarous dialects of iso- 
lated and mountainous districts for a resolution of his philological 
difficulties, every man acquainted with the subject knows that the 
' Prolegomena, p. 35. 
