\ 
Ee : 446 Recent Literature. _— [May, 
_ letters, the cvatril/o, Brinton often transcribes by g, but when he 
should write Bagahola he writes Bagahola (p. 67). 
Cakchiquel never became a literary language in our sense of 
the term, and consequently its orthography was never regulated 
by anything like steady principles. In the “ Annals” the ortho- 
graphy is about as unsettled as can be. Now in editing texts of 
this description, the first thing to do is to adopt scientific princi- 
= ples deduced from and consistent with the character of the lan- 
guage; to introduce a correct, logical punctuation, to separate 
the prefixed pronouns from their verbs or nouns, ¿if separable, to 
make compound words conspicuous as such aż sight, and to unite 
the tense and modal signs with the verb into one word. On the 
lower margin the editor has to indicate all the readings of the orig- 
E7 inal for which he introduces emendations, according to his system, 
into the text. Of a similar proceeding Brinton has no conception 
whatever, for he reproduces the most flagrant incongruenties, 
which every school-boy might easily correct, in his text, Thus he 
as writes: qui bi, and in other places quibi, keir names (p. 66), chu 
a kahibal and chukahibal, aż the setting (p. 68), Iximche and Yxim- 
a chee (name of the capital, with the old-fashioned Spanish y for 
=. Š p. 166), qari instead of qa ri, and they (p. 68), and many other 
Ac instances sufficient to perplex the student. Besides this, Brinton 
TR as also “ doctored” the manuscript by introducing text-readings 
oi. of his own, for in the introduction (p.63) he says: “ I felt myself free 
_- toexercise in the printed page nearly the same freedom which I fin 
in the manuscript.” He did so, undoubtedly, not only in the In- 
È dian text, but also in French quotations from Brasseur, in which 
- he shows himself fearfully at variance with the accepted French 
o accentuation : p. 197, and still more on p. 206. On p. 206 the 
term 7euvre is twice written 7euvre. Neither has the proof-read- 
ing been thoroughly attended to; p. 168 we find Yaxontik, and 
in the translation Yaxonkik; p. 107, Vookaok, a proper name, 
which is spelt voo kaok on p. 110; p. 66, mahaniok, defore ; in the 
vocabulary the same term is spelt mahanick. Bes 
r all this we are not much surprised at the punctuation 0 
~ the Indian text, for where there is, and ought to be, a period in the 
- translation, Brinton often has a comma or nothing at all in the 
text. On p. 66 paragraph third is subdivided into 1, 1, 0, where 
study Brinton’s “system” of editing and, as he calls it, his “ freedom 
` in the printed page,” as it does to acquire the whole of the Cak- 
_ chiquel language, which cannot by any means be called a very 
difficult one. 
195-208. Being thus bent om cor- 
he has 1, 2, 3 in the translation. It takes just as much time tO — 
: otes, pp. 195 : A 
recting, he nevertheless renders ixkaqahol (p. 67 and often) by aa 
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