PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 
vol. viii. 1872-73. No. 86. 
Ninetieth Session. 
Monday , 16^ December 1872. 
Sir ALEXANDER GRANT, Bart., Vice-President, 
in the Chair. 
The following Communications were read : — 
1. On the Philological Genius and Character of the 
Neo-Hellenic Dialect. By Professor Blackie. 
The Author showed by a historical review of the fortunes of 
Greece, through the Middle Ages, and under the successive in- 
fluences of Turkish conquest and Turkish oppression, how the Greek 
language had escaped corruption to the degree that would have 
caused the birth of a new language in the way that Italian and the 
other Roman languages grew out of Latin. He then analysed the 
modern language, as it existed in current popular literature before 
the time of Coraes, that is, from the time of Theodore Ptochopro- 
dromus to nearly the end of the last century, and showed that the 
losses and curtailments which it had unquestionably suffered in the 
course of so many centuries, were not such as materially to impair 
the strength and beauty of the language, which in its present state 
w r as partly to be regarded as a living bridge betwixt the present and 
the past, and as an altogether unique phenomenon in the history of 
human speech. 
VOL. VIII. 
