Pelasgia, who (lib. ii. c. 56.) uses the expression ts vūv Ελλάδος, προτέρον δὲ ΠΕΛΑΣΓΙΗΣ καλευμένης : and lib. viii. And τ. 44. Πελασγῶν ἐχόντων τὴν νῦν Ἑλλάδα καλεομένην. this testimony of Herodotus, he confirms by an appeal to Thucydides, at p. 8. But all these quotations, with the exception of one, which the Reviewer thinks objectionable, are suppressed: and instead of them, a reference is made to Herodotus, i. 58. a chapter relating merely to the language of the Pelasgi, and which is fully considered in another place, though the Reviewer has there passed it over in silence. The quotation which he thinks objectionable, is taken from Strabo, lib. v. p. 220, where he says, that the race of the Pelasgi, xarà τ Е^^^^А ΠΑΣΑΝ ἐπιπόλασε, where Dr. M. construes ΕΛΛΑΔΑ IIAZAN the whole of Greece, but which the Reviewer, p. 344, construes the whole of Hellas; and taking Hellas in the confined sense in which it was used by Homer, argues, that Strabo meant the reverse of what Dr. Marsh supposes. Now that neither Herodotus nor Thucydides, nor any other Greek writer after their time, used 'Exλas in any other sense than that of Greece in general, is a thing so notorious, that we wonder how any scholar could suppose the contrary. Besides, if he had consulted Strabo himself, he would have seen from what follows the quoted passage, that Strabo could not in that place attach any other meaning to the word 'Exas, than that which is usually attached to it. For he establishes his position, that the Pelasgi extended themselves κατὰ τὴν Ἑλλάδα πᾶσαν, by observing, in the next page, that beside Thessaly, they occupied also Arcadia, with the whole of Peloponnesus; also Epirus, Attica, Lesbos, Imbros, Lemnos, &c. Yet the Reviewer pretends, that Strabo confined the Pelasgi to a district of Thessaly. And, what is still more strange, he so far forgets himself at p. 346, as to assert the very thing against which he had previously argued. For he there says of the Pelasgi, that they were once diffused over the whole of Greece."

66

Having finished his criticisms on such of the quotations as he thought proper to select from the first seven pages, he proceeds. at one bound to a quotation in the thirty-eighth page, without giving his readers the least intimation, that the passage there quoted, was quoted for a purpose totally different from that to which the other quotations were applied. And how can any reader know, whether a quotation is applicable or not, unless he knows why it is quoted? The passage was quoted in the second chapter, which relates to the language of the Pelasgi: it was introduced for the purpose of explaining the relation, which is known to subsist between the Greek and Latin languages, and which Latin writers themselves ascribe to the intervention of the

Pelasgi.

Pelasgi. Dr. Marsh accordingly quotes the account, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus, has given of the migration of the Pelasgi from Thessaly, in the time of Deucalion. And having previously quoted another passage relative to a supposed former migration, to which Dionysius himself (as Dr. M. observes) appeared to attach no credit, he says of the passage quoted in p. 38, that "no exception could be taken to the account of the second migration, which was from Thessaly." But, says the Reviewer, p. 344, "To us it appears just as credible as the history of Brute." He further says:

"It was impossible that this account could have descended to posterity in any other way than tradition, the uncertainty of which will appear from considering that these Pelasgi evacuated Italy in less than two hundred years, and returned into Attica,” &c.

Now if we were to ask the Reviewer by what means he knows that the Pelasgi evacuated Italy within two hundred years after their arrival there, he can say only-by tradition. He objects therefore to the account of Dionysius, because it is founded on tradition, and yet appeals to tradition himself. He adopts as a ground of his objection, the very principle to which he objects. Whether all the circumstances attending the migration of the Pelasgi to Italy, as given by Dionysius, are true or false, is a matter of no importance. Nor does Dr. M. undertake to vouch for all these circumstances, though the Reviewer has strained the words to a sense, which, we are clearly of opinion, was not întended. Whoever impartially attends to the reasons, which he gives in p. 37, why he believed in the migration of the Pelasgi from Thessaly to Italy, in the time of Deucalion, will see that he had merely the migration itself in contemplation. Whether -they landed at this or at that port of Italy, or even whether they went by land or by sea, is quite immaterial to the purpose, for which the quotation is made. Nor does the reality of this migration depend merely on the account of Dionysius. The same thing is asserted also by Strabo, to whom the Reviewer attaches some importance. It is asserted also by Pliny, and from both of these writers quotations are given at p. 89, which the Reviewer has left unnoticed. Nay, the Reviewer himself must believe in the fact of the migration, or it is absurd to say that "these Pelasgi evacuated Italy in less than two hundred years." If therefore the story, that the Thessalian Pelasgi arrived in Italy, is no less absurd, than the story of Brute arriving in England, the Reviewer has involved himself in that absurdity.

Next comes the sweeping condemnation, that Dr. Marsh con siders all the Greek historians as being of equal credibility. The injustice of this charge is evident from the care which Dr. Marsh

appears

appears to us to have taken in comparing and collating the seve ral accounts in the Greek writers, especially in the first chapter. Though we would sooner believe in the facts, which Herodotus and Thucydides relate from their own knowledge, we would not reject every thing, which had been preserved only by tradition: for in that case the annals of the world would be reduced to a very narrow compass. Facts preserved only by tradition, if they are not improbable in themselves, and serve to explain other facts of which there is no doubt, are not at once to be rejected, merely because they are not recorded by contemporaneous writers. The Reviewer undoubtedly believes in the story of •Pisistratus, who is said to have brought the poems of Homer, into the state in which we now have them. But the most learned and the most acute defender of this position can produce for it no authority, which is not later than the time of Pisistratus himself, by at least five hundred years. See Wolf's Prolegomena, § xxxiii. note a. He even believes (as appears from p. 348.) that the Iliad and Odyssey were first committed to writing in a later age, than that of Homer himself. But it surely requires a much stronger faith, to believe in this unattested and incredible fact, a fact never suspected either by Herodotus or by Aristotle, than to believe even in the minute circumstances attending the migration of the Thessalian Pelasgi to Italy. Nay, the story of Brute himself is more easy to be credited for it is at least within the limits of possibility: whereas it is not within the limits of possibility, that two poems, containing together nearly thirty thousand verses, should be transmitted as a whole to posterity viva voce.

We will now proceed to the observations of the Reviewer on the chapter which relates to the language of the Pelasgi.

He seems very indignant that Dr. Marsh should presume to differ in opinion from Herodotus and Thucydides, in asserting that the language of the Pelasgi was Greek. Now, when we find that even Herodotus acknowledges (lib. i. c. 57.) that he could not say with certainty what language the Pleasgi spake, and that he attempts only to draw some probable conclusion from arguments which he adduces in the same chapter, Dr. Marsh may surely, with all due deference to Herodotus, examine whether the reasons which he assigns will bear him out in his conclusion. He has examined those reasons; and shown that they did not warrant the inference which Herodotus has drawn: nor has the Reviewer attempted to show that they do warrant the inference. Thucydides indeed has merely repeated what Herodotus had said before: he calls the Pelasgi vos BápBagov : but he has assigned no new reason for the opinion. Dr. Marsh has here shewn the difficulties to which the opinion leads he

has

has shown, that we must either admit that the Pelasgi spake Greek (not indeed such polished Greek as was spoken by Thucydides) or that we shall involve ourselves in endless contradic

And he corroborates the conclusion, that the Pelasgi spake Greek, by showing that the similarity of the Greek and Latin languages was owing to the intervention of the Pelasgi. But though the chapter relating to the language of the Pelasgi occupies nearly forty pages, and is replete with quotations, the Reviewer thinks that he has confuted all the arguments there adduced, by a few scattered animadversions in pp. 346, 347. But as the Reviewer himself at length conducts his readers to the very same conclusion, which had been drawn by Dr. Marsh himself, and which the Reviewer had affected to contradict, those remarks, we fear, must have been made merely for the sake of animadversion. And so they will be found on examination. The following may serve as a specimen. Herodotus, in the chapter where he discusses the question, whether the Pelasgi spake Greek, feels himself reduced to a difficulty in consequence of his conclusion, that they did not speak Greek. This difficulty is owing to the fact which he himself acknowledges in the same chapter (i. 57.) of τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος ἐὸν Πελασγικόν. then the Athenians were a race of Pelasgi, and retained the name till they took the title of "Exλnves, either the Athenians spake Greek before they were called "Exλnves, or it cannot be true, that the Pelasgi did not speak Greek. To help himself out of this difficulty, Herodotus has no other resource than the following supposition with regard to the Athenians: "Aμa T μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε. On this Dr. Marsh observes, that

"A whole nation, all at once forgetting, their former language, and learning a new one, is a phenomenon, of which history affords no example. The μstaßon ; “Eλana, of which Herodotus speaks, was a change only in name. It was nothing more than μεταβολὴ ἐς 'ONOMA Exov: for a change of inhabitants at Athens, in consequence of any conquest by the Hellenes, which alone could have produced such a change in the language, there is a thing of which we have never heard."

On this passage, the Reviewer observes:

"We are not reduced, as Dr. Marsh supposes, to the absurdity of a whole nation all at once forgetting its former language, and learning a new one. Nor do the words of Herodotus, quoted in p. 29, imply any such thing. On the contrary, they seem to indicate a gradual change; thyhor μetéμadi, unlearned their old language, and learned a new one.””

દર

And in p. 347, he represents this change as so gradual, that we have at least a scope of ten centuries in which we may suppose it to have gone on." Here we have an admirable specimen of the Reviewer's mode of construing Greek. In consequence of the ascendancy, which the family of Hellen acquired in Greece (which was not till after the Trojan war) the inhabitants of Greece in general, among the rest therefore the inhabitants of Attica, assumed the title of "Exλnves. There was a μεταβολή is "Exλnvas. But says Herodotus, the Athenians being a Pelasgic nation AMΑ τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν ΓΛΩΣΣΑΝ μετέμαθε. Now we have always been accustomed to construe 'AMA" together with" or " at the same time with." But the Reviewer has discovered a new meaning for it: instead of expressing what happens at the same time, it expresses in his Lexicon, what may require ten centuries to make it happen. There was necessarily some determinate period, when the Athenians first assumed the title of "Exλnvas; and we know from Thucydides, that this period was later than that of the Trojan

war.

At the same time with their becoming "Exλves (says Herodotus, to extricate himself from a difficulty) they unlearned the γλῶσσα Πελασγική, and learnt the γλῶσσα Ελληνική. But if after the μεταβολὴ ἐς Ἕλληνας, ten centuries elapsed before the Athenians spake the γλῶσσα Ελληνική, they might have spoken the Pelasgic language after Athens had been taken by the Romans. Such are the absurdities to which the Reviewer exposes himself in attempting to expose his author.

We will now shew, that the Reviewer himself, notwithstanding his endeavour to contradict the author, has concluded with an argument, which though alleged for the purpose of confuting the author's opinion serves only to confirm it.

"It is worthy of remark that both the Arcadians and Lacedæmonians, who were distinctly of Pelasgian origin and who had less intercourse with foreigners than any other tribes of Greece, retained in their dialects so many barbarisms as to render them scarcely intelligible to the inhabitants of Attica."

The Reviewer here produces some examples of those barbarisms of which his first example is 2égetgov for Bdgalgov, and his second exλ for faλw. But do not these very examples prove, that the Pelasgi spake Greek? Would any man infer, that English was not spoken in Somersetshire, because the common people in that country say zee for see, and zay for say? But if it would be absurd to say that English was not spoken in Somersetshire, because the common people of that country pronounce see, and say, as if those words begun with Z, is it not equally absurd to say, that the Arcadians did not speak Greek, because

VOL.IV. DECEMBER, 1815.

S s

they