shortly perhaps be reduced to still fewer. It is no wonder, therefore, that any language, which extends to eight or ten thousand different tones or terms, should possess many which are common to others besides itself, and exhibit at the same time an assimilation of idea, or at least something which may be strained into an equivalent. But it is less extraordinary still that the English language, which is a compound of Latin, Celtic, and Gothic, with some tincture of Sclavonian, should afford numerous instances of similitude, not only to its parent stocks, but to the original, and, in all probability, oriental fountain, whence even these proceeded, and consequently to all the various dialects which have diverged from it towards Africa and America, as well as Asia and Europe; and we have no doubt, that, were Mr. Allwood, who attempted some time since to trace a similarity of language between the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and what in his own system was supposed to be the remains of the Ammonian or primæval language of mankind, to pursue his investigations, he might, on those distant and newly-discovered shores, find tones and terms correspondent in meaning to many of those in common use among ourselves.

It cannot excite much surprise, therefore, that Persia and Arabia should offer us a much ampler table of vocal and ideal resemblances. The chief texture of the English language is Teutonic; and, independently of the personal connexion which has for ages subsisted between England and many Asiatic countries, the appearance of a considérable number of Persic and Arabic words in the German and other Teutonic dialects was long ago mentioned by Boxhórnius, and has been since enlarged upon by Hinckelman and Wahl; while the origin of the Teutonic tribes has been traced plausibly, at least, by many historians of penetration, to Oriental emigrations. Hence it may naturally be conceived that a considerable variety of terms, which occur in our common speech, and are inserted in our vocabularies, and which our ablest lexicographers, who have seldom been acquainted with Oriental learning, are incapable of deriving, are of strict Oriental etymology. But the misfortune is, that, when the Oriental etymologist has once detected a few legal and unquestionable derivations, he becomes so elate with his success as to push his system to the most ridiculous extreme, and find, like Mr. Whiter, cognate ideas and cognate consonants, in terms which have no more relation to each other, than the braying of the ass and the song of the nightingale.

Of this most easily besetting sin, the author before us is not altogether blameless; and he is the rather betrayed into it by an attempt to introduce a difference between the

conformity and etymology of words-a difference which we readily admit to exist in point of fact, but not in point of. utility. We will now, however, suffer him to speak in his

own terms.

Conformity and etymology are not strictly the same things; and, therefore, objections made to the one do not apply to the other. Etymology is the descent or derivation of a word from its original; or, as it is called by Quintilian, originatio ejus. Conformity is the resemblance of one word to another, having the same radical letters in the same form. In etymology you trace a word to its source, in conformity you see the likeness, but cannot always show its descent. The Persian words, however, in the English language may be accounted for by the intercourse between the Goths and Persians, and the Arabic terms have come to us through the Saxons, of which wittina gemot is one among many notable instances. This cannot be denied; and, therefore, must rest on a solid foundation. But whether there be any ingenuity in difcovering English words in Oriental languages is not for an author to say when the question is about his own work; but so much he may say, that the research, no doubt, will contribute something to show the existence of an original language.' P. V.

The derivation of the very expression here adverted to, wittina gemot, is not so perfectly clear to us, nor does it rest on so solid a foundation as appears to the author himself. We will nevertheless submit its table of genealogy, as the author has drawn it up towards the close of his volume.

جماعت وتد ،

Jema-ati wited

Wittenagemot.

• Jema-ati wited, is an assembly of the chiefs of a nation;

يهود

a synagogue of Jews. Wited in Arabic is a peg driven or fixed in a wall, keeping the building together like a cramp. "And I will fasten him as a nail (n' itad) in a sure place; and they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house." Isaiah, ch. xxii. v. 23. In Arabic is firmiter impegit palum.

In the Koraun, Pharoah is called the lord and master of the nails, Sur. 38, 11. and 89. 3. The nails, that is, the nobles, or pegs, which bind the building together. See Harmer, vol. i. p. 191.

Wittena-gemot, that is properly wited-gemot, was an assembly of the whole nation in Saxon times. See Blackstone's Comment. vol. i. 405. The two words that compose the Saxon term are Arabic, and have no nun in them, and were there a nunnation, it would make witedon, not witena, since dál is a radical, and cannot be dispensed with." P. 188.

The following are, perhaps, fair specimens of etymologi cal affinity.

'Bad is Persian, and means wicked, worn out, good for nothing, a tattered garment, or a bad coat; jamei bad.

جام

as

Brother of faith, brother of poverty, brother of war, brother of suspicion, of sorrow, of softness, and submission. All these forms occur in Persian and Arabic.

This is another word which the Persians have adopted with the Saxons and Germans from one common source of Scythia and Tartary, from whence irruptions were made into the East and West, and the inhabitants were taught the language of their invaders.

The barberry-tree, like the tamarind, crab, and sloe, never ripens its fruit to sweetness, the berry is spinæ acidæ pomum, or the fruit of a sharp thorn, the name is of Arabian growth.

A barber or surgeon is the same in Persian as in English, A barber-surgeon joins the practice of surgery to the trade of barber, and such were all surgeons formerly." P.19.

Lubi in Arabic is a foolish ridiculous fellow. Johnson and Skinner and Junius are all uncertain how this word is to be derived, whether from lapp, or llabe, or lob.' P. 146.

Lemon, says Johnson, is from limon, low Latin; and the low Latin from whence?

From the Persian.

لادن

Laden

Ladanum.

• Laden is the gum-herb lada.

Hubbub, a violent wind raising the dust; from bebou in Arabic, a dust raised and flying in the air. Johnson says, he does not know the etymology of bubbub, unless it be from up, up bobnab!

In many of these instances, however, our author has purposely changed the vowel, where it oceurs, so as to make it better correspond with his own wishes; and, where it does not occur, has selected that which is best adapted to the same purpose. In other examples this licentious variation is more obvious still. Thus, p. 9, he derives the English word reiterating from ", which he deciphers itaret, but which in reality ought to have been spelt atarhet. There can be no doubt that the English term is derived from the Latin iterum, itero; and these again, together with all their affinities, not from the Persian ", but the Hebrew (iter), which, in every sense, implies redundance, excess, repetition. In several of his etymologies or conformities-for we do

not know to which class he refers them he has been compelled to enlist even the indefinite article into his service.

Thus A scheme is paralleled with

اصطبل

askin), p. 8, and) اسکم

A stable with Jol (astabul): and so he might have de

rived, with Dean Swift, Alexander the Great from all eggs under the grate.

The English philologist will stare as widely at other examples, though of a somewhat different kind. Every one knows that less subjoined to words is a mere negative or privative termination; as, friendless, without friends,' dreadless, without dread,' listless, without listening' or attention." Our author, however, derives this last term from the Persian

leslas, and then adds the following observation,

Leslas is slow, tardy, lazy, lolling, loitering. "The lazy-lolling sort of ever listless loiterers that attend no cause, no trust." The derivation in Johnson is from list, desire, and less, but I prefer the Arabic, and he who does not must admire the coincidence.' P. 146.

So that, while list, which cannot be forced into Persian, is derived from one language, listless is derived from another. Our readers, we are persuaded, must by this time admire the author himself much more than the coincidence he adduces.

ART. V.-British Monachism: or, Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England. By Thomas Dudley Fosbrooke, M. A. F.A.S. 2 Vols. 8vo. 14s. Boards. Nr chols and Son. 1802.

THE intention of the present author, to contribute 'somewhat to check that spirit of monachism and popery which has lately been revived,' deserves ample cominendation. We know not by what perversion of intellect the interests of religion have been so confounded in the minds of certain persons--and those not of the lowest class-that they weep over the ruins of papacy in France, as if religion had lost its best support; and seem inclined to contemplate the Reformation, as the greatest calamity that could have been inflicted on the religious world. With the full recollection and acknowledgement that the avarice of Luther and the lust of Henry VIII were the primary causes of that great event, they would rather travel back to all the superstitions and bigotry of popery in the dark ages, than confess that the hand of Providence has been again visible in its overthrow in France, by the agency of republican tyranny. Every attempt, therefore, to induce a more correct way of think