THE ETRUSCAN QUESTION, 91 



of the mixed character of the language and of the people, to deter- 

 mine the affinity of the Basques or of their language. After a 

 lengthened i-eview of all the sources of information, he says : — " La 

 toponymie ancienne de I'Espagne, la numismatique dite iberienne, le 

 droit coutumier, et les pretendus chants heroiques, ne jettent done, 

 jusqu' au present, aucune lumiere sur I'origine des Basques. Les 

 moyens d'information sont limites a I'histoire positive, a I'anthropo- 

 logie, et a la philogogie comparee. Ces trois sciences constatent 

 luianimement que les Basques sont uu peuple fort m^langd." M. 

 Blabe plainly points out the great difficulty in determining the 

 affinity of the Basques themselves. The undecided relations of the 

 Basques and of their lai:iguage has hitherto deterred Etruscologists, 

 and would naturally deter any ordinary scholar ; but Prof. Campbell's 

 ingenuity can adapt itself to the most advei'se circumstances, . r ])er- 

 haps we should be moi-e correct in saying that he is quite unconscious 

 of these difficulties. But he has not only determined that Etruscan 

 is Basque, but also that it is syllabic, and therefore he has found it 

 necessary to reject all the bilinguals. "The bilingual inscriptions," 

 he says, " present many difficulties. In some cases I doubt their 

 being bilinguals at all, as the Etruscans used chai-acters hardly differ- 

 ing from the Latin." Prof Campbell is evidently ignorant of the 

 relation between the Etruscan and Latin alphabets. We saall pre- 

 sently tell him something about this relation, but in the meantime 

 does he not see that the existence of even only one bilingual inscrip- 

 tion is sufficient to give us the characters of the letters 1 How many 

 Rosetta stones, or how many Behistun inscriptions, would Prof. 

 Campbell wish? The very scant in.scription on the boss of Tarkon- 

 demos, consisting of only seven words, in the bilingual of Hittite 

 and Persian cuneiform, has afforded Prof. Sayce a key by which he 

 has been able not only to determine the value of the letters, but even 

 to read some of the Hittite inscriptions. Prof Campbell, if con- 

 sistent, must reject all the bilingual inscriptions. But these Etruscan 

 bilinguals present many difficulties to Prof. Campbell, simply because 

 they will not fall in with his hyyjothesis. He believes that Basque 

 is Turanian, and as he has determined that Etruscan is Basque, it 

 must therefore be Turanian also. But he imagines also that the 

 Turanian languages are syllabic, and he concludes that as Etruscan 

 is Turanian, it must also be syllabic, and now we begin to catch some 

 idea of his meaning when he says : — " I have the honour to report 



