196 
remark, though relating only to myself; and this is to 
remind you, that the difficulties of a first course on any 
subject are materially increased, if they co-exist, as they do 
in my own person, with the first time of lecturing at all. 
That facility of communicating information, usually only 
the result of experience, will therefore, I fear, be wanting ; 
but labouring to avoid prolixity, I shall endeavour to be 
full ; and I trust I may escape being superficial, when I 
wish to be brief. The almost necessary failings which, 
with the best endeavours to avoid, will still exist, require 
that consideration, which, on a first course, it is usual 
and becoming to bestow. More than that it would be unbe- 
coming in me to ask, and injustice, both to yourselves 
and the Institution to which I have the honour to belong, 
for you to grant. 
*»* While these last pages have been passing through the press, some 
observations bymyfriend, Mr. Prinsep, Secretary of the Asiatic Society, have 
arrived, " on the very great similarity between the old Sanscrit and the 
Greek character, more palpable the farther we retire into antiquity, the 
older the monuments we have to decipher ; so that we might almost advance, 
that the oldest Greek (that written like the Phoenician from right to left) 
was nothing more than Sanscrit turned topsy turvy." 
The connexion of the Greek with the Phoenician and Samaritan alpha- 
bets has been admitted as a strong evidence, that " the use of letters travelled 
progressively from Chaldea to Phoenicia, and thence along the coasts ot the 
Mediterranean ;" ( Pantographia, p. 107.) The Greek language has besides 
been now indisputably proved to be but a branch of the Sanscrit stem. 
As Mr. Prinsep's arguments are solely those of graphic similitude and 
ocular evidence, he has printed the letters of the two alphabets in parallel 
columns. Of the Greek vowels the majority, and in the consonants every 
one of the letters, "excepting those of after- invention, are represented 
with considerable exactness," by the several corresponding letters of the 
oldest Sanscrit alphabet, " although there is hardly a shadow of resemblance 
between any two in their modern forms." " Whether the priority is to be 
conceded to the Greeks, the Pelasgians, or the Hindoos, is a question 
requiring great research, and not less impartiality, to determine." Journal 
Asiat. Soc. of Bengal, May 1837, p. 391. -e^. t<_ 
