325 



Notes on Dr. Moore's book concerning the Lost Tribes, and the 

 Saxons of the East and of the West. By Rev. AV. Taylor. 



This book— with a startling title" — is perhaps divisible into two 

 books ; the one theological, with a theoretic inquiry after the missing 

 ten tribes of the Beni-Israel ; the other archaeological, and present- 

 ing some singular views and statements, as to rock-inscriptions in 

 the laCh character, which Dr. Moore regards as exclusively Bduddha 

 in kind. These two portions do not appear like homogeneous parts 

 of one whole. It is my impression that Dr. Moore began to write 

 with Chap. 1 1 page 227, or thereabouts ; and that the Chapters 

 preceding were afterwards written, the better to make up a book 

 A full review of the former portion would properly belong to a pro- 

 fessedly religious publication : seeing that the author takes a high 

 religious standing, and dilates on prophecy, whether fulfilled or un- 

 fulfilled, on his own proper and peculiar interpretation ; wherein 

 probably few will follow him. In this, the earlier part, there are 

 some highly poetical and beautiful passages, yet indicating the pre- 

 dominance of a lively, and somewhat heated imagination — not the 

 very best qualification, possibly, for decyphering inscriptions on rocks, 

 or on stone pillars. As regards those inscriptions the whole effort 

 appears to me to be a failure ; for I question if Dr. Moore will carry 

 any well informed reader along with him, throughout his entire 

 course ; and that there are hasty assumptions, on very slender grounds, 

 must strike the attention of any one, who reads with a moderate 

 portion of thought and carefulness. 



In the ethnological and etymological portions of the book, the 

 author appears to me to imitate the worst features in Bryant's 

 Analysis of Ancient Mythology, and Wilford's various disquisitions 

 in the Bengal Asiatic Researches. He even quotes the latter on 

 the Sacce, in the white island — meaning the Saxons in England— as 

 if Wilford had never acknowledged the forgeries of his pundit. In 

 Hindu mythology, and historical romance Dr. Moore is very deficient : 

 for instance there are statement? about Rama that would have 

 scarcely been pardonable at the close of the last century. 



* The lost tribes and the Saxons of the East and of the "West with 

 new views of Buddhism, and translation of rock-records in India, by 



George Moore, M. D. &c. London 1861. 



