54 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE, 



In his Lectures on The Science of Language (1st Series, Lecture 

 II J, Max Mtiller remarks "that it is not in the power of man 

 either to produce or prevent a continuous change in language. * 

 * "^ Language cannot be changed or moulded by the taste, the 

 fancy or the genius of man. * * * Language exists in man, 

 and it lives in being spoken. * * * ^ language as long as it 

 is spoken by anybody lives and has its substantive existence." Cor- 

 nish is no longer spoken. In 1860 Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, 

 in company with the Vicar of the Parish of St. Paul, Cornwall, 

 erected a monument to the memory of Dorothy Pentreath, who died 

 in 1778, and who is said to have been the last person that could 

 converse in Cornish. In the preface to his Glossary of Cornish 

 names. Dr. Bannister remarks, on the authority of Polwhele, that 

 Williard Bodenner, who died about the year 1794 at a very advanced 

 age, could " converse with old Dolly," and " talked with her for 

 hours together in Cornish." Whether Dolly Pentreath was tlie last 

 person who spoke Cornish or not, it is admitted that about the close 

 of the last century, Cornish ceased to be a spoken language. 



It is beside the purpose of this paper to examine the question, as 

 to what place or places may have been included under the designa- 

 tion, Gassiterides. The author of an article on Cornwall in the 

 Encyclopcedia Britannica affirms " that there can be no doubt that 

 Cornwall and Devonshire are referred to under the general name of 

 the C assiterides or the Tin Islands." In adverting to the Sciliy Isles 

 in his Celtic Britain (p. 44-47), Rhys states that " they have been 

 sometimes erroneously identified with the Cassiterides of ancient 

 authors. * * * There is not a scrap of evidence, linguistic or 

 other, of the presence of Phoenicians in Britain at any time." 

 Warner, in his Tour Through Cornwall, which was published in 

 1809, contends (p. 199) "that it is a fact irrefragably established 

 that the Phoenician colonists of Gades trafficked to the south-western 

 coast of Cornwall from high antiquity." Betham, in his Gael and 

 Gymhri ip. 64), asserts "that the Phoenicians were called so, because 

 they were a nation of sailors or mariners, as the word Phenice inti- 

 mates — -felne, a ploughman, and oice, water — a plougher of the sea." 

 A wide divergence of opinion thus prevails as to the relation of the 

 Phoenicians to the south-west of England in the far off centuries. 

 Betham contends that the word Sclllies or Scelegs is derived from 

 seal, noisy, and uag, rocks ; and that, accordingly, the signification is 



