Arguments against it examined. ibid Plan of dividing Canada into two Governments Reasons for and against that Measure ibid ibid. Communications British Fleet; Conjectures on its Destination A Check to the ambitious Catherine If for a Naval Review alone, cenfured Ottoman Court; Juftuff Pacha advanced to the Vizirship 240 ibid ibid ibid 3131/ Contrafted with what it ought to have been Reflections on the Carnage at the Capture of Ifmael Refolutions to attempt another Campaign Northern Powers; their Intention to efpoufe the Ottoman Cause Pruffia; her warlike Preparations Poland; Treaties in Contemplation with Great-Britain and Pruffia A Wish for the Prerogative of Princes in making War to be fettered ibid ibid ibid German Princes; National Affembly interferes with their Fiefs 316 THE ENGLISH REVIEW, For JANUARY 1791. ART. 1. Archeologia Cornu-Britannica; or, An Effay to preferve the ancient Cornish Language: containing the Rudiments of that Dialect, in a Cornish Grammar and Cornish-English Vocabulary, compiled from a Variety of Materials which have been inacceffible to all other Authors. Wherein the British Original of fome Thoufand English Words in common Ufe is demonftrated; together with that of the Proper Names of most Towns, Parifbes, Villages, Mines, and Gentlemen's Seats and Families, in Wales, Cornwall, Devonshire, and other Parts of England. By William Pryce, M.D. of Redruth, Cornwall, Author of Mineralogia Cornubienfis. Dilly, 1790. ΤΗ HIS long and wordy title may feem to fuperfede the neceffity, of any analyfis of the work in our review of it. But we fhall go on to note from the author himself, or (as he modeftly ftyles himfelf) the editor,' from what quarters he has derived his materials. And we shall thus give our readers an opportunity of judging, by the only fpecimens that can be given from a vocabulary and a grammar, of the manner as well as matter of the whole. The author fets out with an affertion, that the dialect in Cornwall muft certainly have obtained that purity, for which 'it is celebrated, from its immediate introduction by the Phe'nician navigators.' But this is hiftorically falfe. The Phenicians had no communication with the main land of Britain, at all. ENG. REV. VOL. XVII. JAN. 1791. A all. They traded only to the Sylley ifles. Nor did they introduce the British language, even into them. They found the Britons there, speaking the British language. And the intercourfe of the Phenicians with the Britons there, does not appear to have given a fingle word to their language. Yet hence we may eafily account,' adds our author, for the fimilarity exifting between the Cornifh and Armoric-British; for the coafts of Bretagne, Normandy, and Picardy, are oppofite to the fhores of Cornwall, Devon, &c. fo that the first com•mercial discoverers of those lands, in their failing up the Britifh channel, had equal opportunities of communicating their Græcian and Roman dialects of the Syriac root.' This is in the fame strain of historical falseness, as the pofition before. But it is expanded into extravagance and absurdity here. That any commercial adventurers, in failing up the British channel,' fhould communicate' their own language to both the oppofed fhores, when they never traded with them; fhould introduce' their own language into the countries of both, when they never planted any colonies among them; and fhould do both, when they never failed up the British channel at all: is fo very abfurd and extravagant, that we cannot but notice it. Indeed the voyages of the Phenicians to the Sylley Ifles, feem to have turned the brains of our Cornish and Irish antiquaries. Dr. Borlase included Cornwall in the objects of the Phenician voyages, becaufe forfooth! it looks like an ifland as feen from Sylley; when what the Phenicians vifited were really islands, and defcribed by Strabo, the best describer of thofe voyages, as exactly ten in number. The Irish have gone farther, and made the Phenicians the original colonifts of Ireland. Dr. Stukeley had made them previously the original colonists of Britain. But, all the while, thefe Phenicians were no natives of Phenicia, were only the Carthaginian fettlers in the ifle of Cadiz, went only to the Sylley Ifles, and only stayed there to fhip a cargo of tin. On fuch flight foundations, does the infaniens fapientia' of antiquarianifm rear up its monftrous piles of building! Forgetting that all hiftorical reasonings must be fquared with a mathematical exactness, to the few facts of hiftory; they take only the general groundwork of history, and then wander away into the wilderness of romance for particulars. The Honourable Daines Barrington has been hitherto thought to have been the laft man, who heard the Cornish language actually spoken. But his Dolly Pentreath' is furvived by others, it appears. And the honour of hearing the last words' of expiring Cornish, is reserved for fome perfon hereafter. There is, fays Dr. Pryce, a colloquial refemblance to this day fubfifting betwixt the Cornish on the fouth-western 6 ' margin 'margin of the county, and their oppofite neighbours at Morlaix and other parts of Bas Bretagne, where the low French • and the Cornish seem almost one and the fame dialect. If I • had not been otherwife well apprized of this fact, yet my opinion would have been confirmed, by what I have heard from a very old man now living at Moufhole, near Penzance,' the very village of Dolly Pentreath herself; who, I believe, is at this time the only perfon capable of holding half an hour's converfation on common fubjects, in the Cornish tongue.' And Dr. Pryce additionally informs us in another place thus: as for the vulgar Cornish, it is fo confined to the extremeft corner of the county, and thofe ancient perfons, who fill pretend to jabber it, are even there fo few; the fpeech itself is fo corrupted; and the people too, for the most part, are fo illiterate; that I cannot but wonder at my patience, and affume fome merit to myself for my finC gular industry, in collecting the words which I have accumulated from oral intelligence; efpecially, as hardly any of the • perfons whom I have confulted, could give a tolerable account of the orthography, much lefs of the etymology or derivation, C of those words which they ufe.' ( Our author, however, had more refpectable fources of intelligence. So habitually inattentive were they,' he tells us concerning his countrymen, that many years after the difcoIvery of this art,' of printing, they never adverted to the prefervation of the manuscripts in their language; so that the ' only manuscript extant was that found in the Cotton Library, now about 800 years old; from which time, no other manuscript appears till about the fifteenth century, when we < meet with one, which exhibits three ordinalia or interludes, taken from Holy Writ, 1. De origine Mundi, 2. Of the Paffion of our Lord, 3. Of the Refurrection. The originals of thefe are all in the Bodleian Library, as likewife one ordinale, of the Creation of the World, and the Deluge, by William Jordan ' of Hellaston, Anno 1611. The fifth and last book is a poem < entitled Mount Calvary, on the Paffion and Refurrection of our • Lord and Saviour. This manufcript, written on vellum, was given by Mr. Anftis, garter king at arms, to Mr. Lhuyd; but when or by what author it was written, is wholly uncer'tain; though this copy, by the hand-writing, may also be at'tributed to the fifteenth century.' This laft is faid afterwards, to be the beft of the whole in the Cornifh tongue.' But where the original is, we are not told. We suppose it however to be equally with the others, in the Bodleian Library; depofited there, by Mr. Lhuyd; and inspected there, by Dr. Pryce. And we heartily wish them to be all published. We rather wonder at Dr. Pryce not publishing them. They formed, |