90 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



of the Basques, they have, from a very early period, been largely 

 affected by foreign influences. No part of Europe has so changed 

 masters as Spain. Phoenicians. Celts, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, 

 Visigoths, Alans, Moors, and the Romance nations have at one time 

 or other held Spain, and have influenced the Basques, and these at 

 the present day present physiological characteristics so diversified as 

 to baiHe all attempts at ethnological classification ; and the Basque 

 language is perhaps the most corrupt of all languages. The writer 

 of the article on the Basques, in the Encyclopedia Brittannica, a 

 work Prof. Campbell is fond of consulting, says : " Foreign words 

 are easily assimilated, but with modifications to suit the Basque ear." 

 If Prof. Campbell was resolved on proving the afiinity of the Etrus- 

 cans with the Basques, he ought to have positively assured himself, 

 that in using individual words, it was really in each case a Basque 

 word of which he had got hold ; for to prove the affinity of the 

 Basque and Etruscan by means of Greek or Latin, Gothic or Romance 

 wox'ds, however perfectly incorporated into the Basque, would be an 

 absurdity ; and we shall presently show that this is one of the 

 absurdities in which Prof. Campbell has rather freely indulged. 



But there is another difficulty. The Etruscan inscriptions are 

 perhaps none of them later than the second century B.C., but the 

 earliest examples of Basque literature are of the fifteenth century, 

 except a short charter granted to the commune of Daviles in 1150, 

 3 Tom OS chant des Cantabra. Now imder any circumstances there 

 must be great difficulty in proving the afiinity of languages whose 

 literatures ai-e separated by not less than seventeen centuries, but 

 the difficulty becomes insuperable when it is remembered that one of 

 the languages has been subjected to very great foreign influences. 

 We quote from M. Blab^, the greatest authority on the Basque : — 

 " L'idiome Basque s'est tellement modifie depuis le XV ieme siecle, 

 qu'il est toujours tres dificile, quand il n'est pas ab olument impossi- 

 ble, d'expliquer les premieres textes connus qui remontent a cette 

 ^poque." If the changes have been so great within three centuries, 

 during which time the language has acquired, we should suppose, 

 some degree of fixity through a printed literature, and when it has 

 been comparatively free from foreign influence, what changes must 

 have taken place in the sevent en centuries when the country was 

 constantly changing masters, and there was no literature to fix the 

 language. M. Blab^ ])oints out that it is impossible, just on account 



