100 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



think unparalleled in the history of language, and surely he forgets 

 that he has all along translated Rako as a noun and not as a post- 

 position. He continues: "Here Rakone seems to signify "acknowl- 

 edging," " p .ying respect to." We very much wonder, that with 

 Prof. Campbell's pi'ofound knowledge of Basque, he has not discovered 

 that in Basque no word begins with R. When we began to read 

 " Etruria Capta " we were rather surprised at frequently meeting with 

 words beginning with R, and to find even allusions to them in the notes 

 without any appai'ent consciousness of their irregularity ; we turned 

 over page after page of Basque to find a word beginni g with R, but 

 without success. We again consulted our Dictionary, and under the 

 heading R we found the following : " Cette letti'e R n'est en usage, 

 au commencement des mots Basques, que pour les noms propres tels 

 que Rome, Rambouillet, et encore dans' le langage familier, les Basques 

 diront Erroma, et non Roma. II est a croire que le suppression de la 

 consonne R com me initiale des mots a pour cause certaines difficultes 

 que son articulation semble offrir d' abord." Humboldt says : '' No 

 word in Basque commences with R. The Basques always place an e 

 before foreign words of this category, an 1 then double the R. And in 

 certain cases, as in the words edastea and erastea, there is a dialectic 

 change of d and r. But they always say erregue — roi " M. Blabe, 

 the most competent authority, says : " Je conviens que le Basque n' 

 a point en propre de mots commen9ants par r et que lorsqu' il donne 

 I'hospitalitd dans son glossaire a des mots ou r est en tete, il a soin 

 de les faire precdder d'une voyelle. Sur le versant Nord des Pyrenees 

 occidentales cette voyelle est un a — arraya la race," arrichina resine. 

 De V autre cot^ des Pyr^n^es les Basques disent aussi arrocher — rocher. 

 Cependant ils prefixent plus volontiers 1' e — errisina, resine, errabia, 

 rage. Peutetre en bien cherchant trouvera-t-on quelques mots ou 

 ces prefixes a et e seraient remplac^s par i. Aussi selon les pays, 

 viz. : se dit arrosa ou irrisa." We do not see how we can reconcile 

 Prof. Campbell's constant use of the R with the plain tsstimony of 

 these eminent Basque scholars. 



From the fii-st page to the last of " Etruria Capta " any affinity 

 between languages is based on mere similarity of sound. Prof. Camp- 

 bell never once points to any similarity in grammatical forms ; yet 

 it is on this alone that any such affinity can be proved. Nay, he 

 even makes a virtue of his rejection of grammatical forms, and he 

 says : " I have set forth the fact that, various as are the grammatical 



