in the Composition of Nouns and Adjectives. 67 



source of their language was unknown, and who looked for a so- 

 lution of all their difficulties in the only remaining source, name- 

 ly, the language and literature of the Greeks *. 



Had we been fortunate enough to have received this great 

 work in its original state, we should not have, for so long a pe- 

 riod, so utterly misunderstood the early history, antiquities, and 

 constitution of Rome. But this, like many other works, more 

 useful than amusing, have miserably suffered under the knife of 

 the abbreviator, that most efficient member of the Society for 

 the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, who, in his anxiety to dif- 

 fuse, has often succeeded in draining the real sources. 



First, one Festus Pompeius, a man known to us by this bad 

 deed alone, but who is supposed by learned men to have lived 

 under one of the Christian Emperors, undertook to republish 

 the work of Verrius Flaccus on the following principles : " It 

 is my intention, in selecting from the great number of his books, 

 to omit all words already dead and buried, and often, as he con- 

 fesses himself, of no [present] use and authority, and to reduce all 

 the rest, as briefly as possible, into a very few books f." If this 

 work had reached us, mangled and imperfect as it must have 

 been after such a process, our loss would not have been so great 

 as it really is ; for Festus had evidently some knowledge of his 

 subject, and a great wish fairly to represent the sentiments of his 

 principal, without either sneering at what he did not understand, 

 or misrepresenting that which he did not like. But we have 

 only the shadow of the shade. For, in the eighth century, one 



* The Roman who had recourse to the Greek language alone, for a solution of 

 his difficulties, was as helpless as the English scholar, who, neglecting the Anglo- 

 Saxon, expects to find all the necessary knowledge in Latin and French. 



-f- " Cum propositum habeam ex tanto librorum ejus numero intermortua jam 

 et sepulta verba, atque ipso saepe confitente nullius usus aut auctoritatis, praeterire, 

 et reliqua quam brevissime redigere in libros admodum paucos." — Festus, under 

 the word Prqfanum, Delph. ed. Valp. p. 554. 



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