LANG 
PRerecydes Syrtis the philofopher, and a multitude of 
other perfons of the fame profellion, whom it would be 
fuperfluous to mention upon the prefent occafion. 
The Aiolfc and Doric were originally cognate dialects. 
When the Dorians invaded Peloponnefus and fettled in 
that peninfula, they incorporated with the H£olians, and 
their two dialefts blended into one produced the new Do¬ 
ric. The original Dores inhabited a rugged mountainous 
region about Offa and Pindus, and fpoke a rough unpo- 
liflied language fimilar to the foil which they inhabited. 
Andreas Schottus, in his Obfervations on Poetry, lib. ii. 
cap. 50. proves, from an old manufcript of Theocritus, 
that there were two dialects of the Doric tongue, the one 
ancient and the other modern ; that this poet employed 
the Ionic and the modern Doric ; that the old Doric dialefl 
was rough and cumbrous ; but that Theocritus adopted 
the new, as being more foft and mellow. A prodigious 
Humber of poets and philofophers wrote in this dialed!, 
fuch as Epicharmus the poet; Ibycus the poet of Rhe- 
gium ; Corinna the poeteft of Thefpis, or Thebes, or Co¬ 
rinth, who bore away the prize of poetry from Pindar 5 
Erynna a poetefs of Lefbos ; Mofcus the poet of Syracufe; 
Sappho the poetefs of Mitylene; Pindarus of Thebes, the 
prince of lyric poets; Archimedes of Syracufe, the re¬ 
nowned mathematician ; and almolt all the Pythagorean 
philofophers. Few' hillorians wrote in that dialed! ; or, if 
they did, their works have not fallen into our hands. 
Moll of the hymns lung in temples of the gods were com- 
poled in Doric ; a circuinftance which evinces the anti¬ 
quity of that dialed!, and which, at the fame time, proves 
its affinity to the oriental liandard. 
After that the Greek tongue was thoroughly polilhed 
by the Heps which we have endeavoured to trace, con- 
fcious of the fuperior excellency of their own language, 
the Greeks, in the pride of their heart, ftigmatized every 
nation which did not employ their language with the con¬ 
temptuous title of barbarians. Such was the delicacy of 
their pampered ears, that they could not endure the un¬ 
tutored voice of the people whom they called SagGagotpwv cu. 
This extreme delicacy produced three very pernicious ef- 
fedis. ill. It induced them to metamorphofe, and fome- 
times even to mangle, foreign names, in order to reduce 
their found to the Grecian liandard.. 2d. It prevented 
their learning the languages of the eall, the knowledge of 
which would have opened to them an avenue to the re- 
■eords, annals, antiquities, laws, cultoms, &c. of the peo¬ 
ple of thofe countries, in comparifon of whom the Greeks 
themfelves were of yelterday, and knew nothing. By this 
unlucky bias, not only they, but even we who derive all 
the little knowledge of antiquity we poflefs through the 
channel of their writings, have fullered an irreparable in¬ 
jury. By their transformation of oriental names, they 
have in a manner Hopped the channel of communication 
between the hiltories of Europe and Alia. This appears 
evident from the fragments of Ctefias’s Perfian hillory, 
from Herodotus, Xenophon, and all the other Grecian 
writers who have occafion to mention the intercourfe be¬ 
tween the Greeks and Periians. 3d. It deprived them of 
all knowledge of the etymology of their own language, 
without which it was impoffible for them to underhand 
its words, phrafeology, and idioms, to the bottom. We 
mentioned Plato’s Cratylus above. In that dialogue, the 
divine philofopher endeavours to inveliigate the etymo¬ 
logy of only a few Greek words. His deductions are ab- 
folutely childilh, and little fuperior to the random con¬ 
jectures of a fchool-boy. Varro, the moll learned of all 
the Romans, has not been more fuccel'sful. Both Hum¬ 
bled on the very threlhold of that ufeful fcience; and a 
l'cholar of very moderate proficiency in our days knows 
more of the origin of thefe two noble languages, than the 
greatell adepts among the natives did in theirs. The de¬ 
rivation of the Greek primitives from the oriental tongues 
will, in general, fet afide as nugatory and erroneous the 
derivations of the ancient fcholialts, and of thofe modern 
lexicographers who have adopted their explanations. 
UAGE 179- 
Thefe fcholiafis and grammarians arc valuable as ex¬ 
pounders of the Greek text; but, as they were apparently 
ignorant of the oriental tongues, the account which they 
give of the w’ords thence derived are often frivolous in 
the extreme- It is neceffary to juftify this atfertion by a 
few examples. AitMuria,, a hedge or fence, occurs in Theo¬ 
critus, Idyl. i. 47. and the fcholiaft derives it from aiy.a, 
blood ; becaufe thofe who pafs through fuch a fence are 
made to bleed. This derivation, nugatory as it appears, 
is adopted by Hedericus in his Lexicon ; whereas its ori¬ 
gin is the Hebrew amez, to itrengthen, to feeure, 
and thence applied to a hedge, which by furrounding de¬ 
fends a place. On the fame principle x/,7ro?, a garden, the 
origin of which neither Hedericus nor any of the ancient 
fcholialts, we believe, have attempted to unfold, is bor¬ 
rowed from Fpp, /iopk, to furround ; hence the term de¬ 
noted a place lurrounded or fecured as a garden is. Len- 
nep indeed derives it from hutto*,, breath, a word quite 
foreign to the purpofe. The word j 3 ov^ua, a fountain, 
(Theocritus, Idyl. vii. 10.) is derived by the fcholiaft 
from the particle {Sou , an ox, and g.w, to flow, becaufe it 
refembles the noitrils of an ox ; whereas l 3 o'jgna is evi¬ 
dently the Hebrew baar, or "pQ bur, a fountain. 
The Greek fcholia, annexed to every author, abound with 
fuch puerilities as the above ; nor is the Etymologicum 
Magnum to be excepted, though the Greek lexicogra-. 
pliers have fought for no better or more rational guides in 
their inquiries after the origin of the words which they 
explain. Hemtterufe, Valckenaer, Ruhnken, Villoifon, 
Lennep, Scheid, are indeed juftly celebrated among mo¬ 
dern critics for their refearches into the origin and mean¬ 
ing of the Greek tongue. Their theories contain many 
valuable obfervations on the analogy by which that lan¬ 
guage grew from comparatively few radicals to its prefent 
complicated form ; but their fyftem of etymologies ap¬ 
pear to us, for the mol! part, fanciful and erroneous; be¬ 
caufe in no inflanee, or at leal! in very few inftances, have 
they fought the Greek terms in the languages of the Eat!,, 
whence afl'uredly they had been derived. Hemtterufe de¬ 
rives ©eos, Deus, from the verb Sew, to run, to difpofe 5. 
while its real origin, in our opinion, is the Hebrew and. 
Arabic zae, pronounced in the latter language dhao, 
to fliine. The Chaldeans reprefented the Supreme Good 
under the figure of light; and to this reprelentation the 
facred writer feems to allude, when he fays that God is 
light. Scheid derives -rsga?, an omen, from te^w, tero, to 
wear, becaufe omens, lays he, oblerant, quaf, five fupore 
perccllant, enecent que morlales. But the word is the He¬ 
brew ■m teer, a bird, divination, which was taken from 
birds. The fame writer will have tekSw, or t esQa, to eat, 
to have come from tevu, or nivui, to llretch, though far 
more naturally it points to the Perfian "U”T, dend, a tooth; 
and hence tivSu primarily meant, to cut with the teeth. 
The Hebrew “inih zer, to fliine, to fcorch, gave birth to 
dry ; but Villoifon fooliflily derives it from |ew, ra- 
dcre. The fame critic as wifely traces |tAo» to the fame 
root, becaufe, fays he, Lignum ft ad radendum aptum. Bus 
its origin is evidently Pti/K, a grove, hence wood, 
and by dropping the fir It vowel leXoi/, and by tranfpofi- 
tion aXccij, a grove, or foretl. This is a fair fpecimen of 
the manner in which thefe etymologiits have, by certain 
analogies, founded on their own fancies rather than on 
the real Hrufture of the Greek tongue, yoked together 
under one common root words the mod foreign to each 
other. 
The ancient Greeks had no accentual marks. They 
learned thofe modifications of voice by practice from their 
infancy; and we are allured by good authority, that in 
pronunciation they obferve them to this day. The accen¬ 
tual marks are faid to have been invented by a famous 
grammarian, Ariftophanes of Byzantium, keeper of the 
Alexandrian library under Ptolemy Philopater, and Epi- 
phanes, who was the firit likewife who is fuppofed to have 
invented punctuation. Accentual marks, however, were 
not in common ufjs till about the feventh century at 
whicli 
