ART. IV.-The Etruscans and their Language.

(1.) Ueber die Sprache der Etrusker. Von W. CORSSEN. Erster Band. Leipzig: Teubner. 1874.

(2.) Etruscan Researches. By ISAAC TAYLOR, M.A. London: Macmillan and Co. 1874.

(3.) Peruvia Scythica. By ROBERT ELLIS, B.D. London: Trübner and Co. 1875.

(4.) Etruscan Inscriptions Analysed, Translated, and Commented upon. By the EARL OF CRAWFORD AND BALCARRES. Murray. 1873.

THE multiplication of books on an insoluble riddle is simply an evil. If the works thus put together be marked by a profusion of abstruse learning, and by an exuberance of illustration which extends the argument to thousands of pages, the evil becomes unbearable for beings who cannot expect their powers of reading to be extended much beyond three score years and ten. The curiosity which prompts philologists or historians to pry into the secrets of a dead language, and to discover the origin of the people who spoke it, may be natural; but it were better that the secret should remain unknown than that time should be wasted in the perusal of elaborate treatises, unless it can be distinctly shown at the outset that there is strong primâ facie evidence of the soundness of the theories set forth in them. Unless the theory of Dr. Corssen should be established, it must be set down as one of the sources which, from time to time, have flooded the world with streams of profound but useless learning. It is the crowning achievement of the school in which, during the last hundred years, a host of Italian scholars have

*

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to say that this article was written before the death of the great scholar, whose conclusions with regard to the Etruscan language it calls into question. These conclusions have been deliberately offered to the world, to be accepted or rejected on their merits, and Dr. Corssen would not have wished them to be regarded otherwise. His great learning and his untiring perseverance must call for the respect of all critics, as it has our own; but we pay little honour to his industry or his scholarship by glossing over or putting out of sight whatever may be unsound or extravagant in his arguments and their results, if the facts should call for such criticism. We make no apology, therefore, for publishing the article substantially as it was written.

laboured to no great purpose. In one thousand and nine pages Dr. Corssen has examined fully the Etruscan alphabet, laid the foundation for his Etruscan grammar, and proved to his own satisfaction that the Etruscan language is an Italic dialect. The undertaking is to be completed in another volume, leaving to the student the task of working his way through, perhaps, two thousand large octavo pages, filled with tolerably close print.

During the last two years at least three attempts have been made by other writers to solve the same enigma, and these attempts have in some quarters been summarily dismissed as worthless, with the announcement that the great master of the subject was preparing the work which would explode their theories, and set the question at rest for ever. At length the master has spoken, and for those who are ready to accept his conclusions, through faith in the vast range of his learning and the confidence of his utterances, the result may be all that they could desire. Whether it be equally so for those who feel bound to exercise their own judgment, we shall presently see.

Of these recent attempts, we may take first that of Lord Crawford, in whose hands the speech of the Etruscans turned out to be very fair High Dutch, or Gothic; and, to some slight extent, it can scarcely be denied he had grounds for setting off in the direction in which he journeyed. The Etruscans were, in his belief, a people exceedingly unlike the Latins, and the points of unlikeness seemed to be as strong in their language as in all other characteristics. The existence of these differences was affirmed by all the ancient writers who have touched upon the subject; and the fact that in its earlier days the Etruscan people occupied ground on the north as well as on the south side of the Po, seemed to prove that the course of their migrations had been from the north-east southwards. Starting thus with the idea that they may therefore have been a Teutonic people, Lord Crawford fitted the Gothic or Dutch key to the lock, and fancied that it turned smoothly and readily in the wards. In taking this course, he was supported by the authority of Dr. Prichard, whose caution withheld him from any stronger expression of opinion than that the Indo-European character of their lan

Lord Crawford's High Dutch Theory.

407

guage might be regarded as ' tolerably well established.' He had further the countenance of Dr. Donaldson, who looked upon the Etruscan language as a Pelasgian idiom, corrupted by contact with Umbrian, and partly a relic of the oldest Low German or Scandinavian dialects. From Dr. Donaldson Lord Crawford differed only in thinking that it belonged rather to the High German, or, as he might prefer to put it, to the Gothic stock; and strong in the confidence thus inspired, he proceeded at once to scrutinise some of the many Etruscan inscriptions, which seem likely to call forth commentaries in the proportion of a volume to each letter. With him, happily, the task was, by comparison, simple and easy. In one of the few bilingual inscriptions which are practically of any value, the Latin words, Q. Folnius A. F. Pom. Fuscus,' appear as the equivalent of the Etruscan 'aelche phulni aelches kiarthialisa.' Here the latter was transmuted into Teutonic by regarding the prænomen Quintus or Quinctius as a name of the same class with Fabius, Lentulus, and others taken from fruits and vegetables, and by treating the mysterious Pom. as an abbreviation for Pomum Cydonium, or the quince-apple, signified by the Etruscan Aelche. But this Aelche is only another form of Quintus, kvdovios, or Quince, for the possessive of the German quette would be quettisch; and as t and I are, he argues, interchangeable, quettisch would become quellisch. The Teutonic tendency to drop the q in words beginning with that letter, would reduce it to uellisch, or, to put it otherwise, to the Etruscan Aelsch, or Aelch. The metronymic kiarthialisa is found to be not less pliant. It is translated by the Latin Fuscus, and when the two suffixes are rejected, the remaining kiarthi is readily identified with the Teutonic Schwarz, the corresponding epithet Thapirnal, represented by the Latin Niger, answering in the same way to the German Zauber. Nor is he less successful elsewhere. The Etruscan Kahatial, translated by the Latin Caphatia natus, Violens,' resolves itself into the High Dutch heftig, the Etruscan Capys, yú, 'a hawk,' being closely connected with hab-en, cap-ere, to 'seize.' The results with the Etruscan Unata and Andas and the Latin Otacilius are less obvious, but in the end not less satisfactory; and finally, even the unintelligible κóyğ öμπağ,

which dismissed the spectators at the Eleusinian mysteries, is found, like the Cansha om Pachsa of the Brahman, to be the very simple Teutonic command, Gang zu ambachs, 'Go 'about your business.' The way seemed, indeed, to be delightfully clear. The key seemed to open the wards of every lock as if by magic; and when Lord Crawford was confronted with the formidable dice of Toscanella, of which we must speak again by-and-by, he was at no loss to transliterate the six monosyllables found on their facets into an invocation of good luck to the player.

But our admiration of the ingenuity with which these twistings of words are effected is followed by a more sober feeling of distrust when we remember that, if we are at liberty to make our own choice of the terms to be interpreted, anything may be made to mean anything. It is, manifestly, premature to run off into the lexicon of general words, until we have clearly established the affinities of two or more languages by means of their numerals, their pronouns, and their inflexions and suffixes. When this has been done, the next step is not to take words from the vocabulary at random, but to confine ourselves in the first instance to words denoting kinship and agnation, the limbs of the body, domestic and agricultural implements, and then to the verbs denoting our most ordinary sensations and actions. If we cannot see our path clearly with the numerals and pronouns, it may be safely said that very little will be gained by moving in other directions. No such method is followed by Lord Crawford, whose book must therefore be dismissed as at best a creditable specimen of plausible guesswork. Nor is it necessary here to discuss the Armenian hypothesis of Mr. Robert Ellis. His theory that Etruscan is an Aryan dialect, with a set of numerals supplied from Turanian languages, involves the assertion of a startling anomaly, which cannot be accepted as fact until it can be shown that no simpler explanation is forthcoming.

But the conditions of the problem, it might fairly have been thought, were changed with the publication of Mr. Isaac Taylor's Etruscan Researches.' In this volume we find no repetition of efforts which are to establish the hypotheses either of Lord Crawford, Donaldson, or Prichard. In his

Mr. Taylor's Etruscan Researches.

409

belief, every theory which connected Etruscan with any family of Aryan languages had been tried and found wanting; and he felt that the only course open to him was an examination of the one great stock with some branch of which it was at the least possible that it might be found akin. The conclusions to which this examination brought him are honestly avowed at the outset the evidence on which they are based is not less honestly exhibited at every step: and whatever be the value of the results which he has attained, we have no hesitation in saying that nothing less than a careful scrutiny of the facts adduced should satisfy those who care to meddle in the discussion at all. We must add further that we have nowhere met with a more candid admission of the degrees of value to be assigned to each portion of the evidence.

Nor can we stop short even here. The time is past for mystification and dogmatism in the matter of dialectic affinities. Scholars of the most moderate pretensions are well aware that where two dialects are akin essentially, this kinship, if the key to it be once found, will be brought out with sufficient clearness without resort to the phonetic twistings which reduce philology to mere legerdemain; and that if the question is to be determined by reference to mere single words, languages which have nothing to do with each other may easily be proved to be identical. There is seemingly no end to the accidental resemblances which may be found in words which, denoting the same thing, belong to wholly alien languages. The Camden Professor of History at Oxford long ago satisfied himself that the English dame represented the Accadian dav or dam, the Lycian lada reappearing likewise in the English lady. By this process the Quichua huasi may be identified with the English house, the Basque etche with the Greek oikos, the Latin vicus, and the Teutonic wick, the Nepalese dhim with the Greek and Latin dóuos and domus. Long lists of such symphonic words may be found in the Peruvia Scythica' of Mr. Robert Ellis, nor do we set down all attempts to multiply such instances as intrinsically absurd, if the object be to gather evidence which may prove that Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian languages alike spring ultimately from one and the same source, or may show that any such theory is inadmissible. To adduce the Accadian dam as the representative of the English