Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/38

Rh to deal. He seems to have been a considerable if rather pedantic linguist, being accredited with an acquaintance with Latin, Greek, French, and even Hebrew, and in a translation into Cornish of the letter of King Charles to the people of Cornwall, he made use of his Hebrew knowledge when he failed to remember the exact Cornish word, writing "milcamath" for "war." Among the other members of this little party may be mentioned William Gwavas, John Boson and his brother Thomas, Thomas Tonkin the historian, Oliver Fender, and last (as probably the youngest) Dr. William Borlase, the author of the well-known History of Cornwall. It does not seem that any of these, except Keigwin, troubled themselves much about Cornish literature, but they did good service in the way of preserving words, proverbs, colloquial sentences, etc., and seem to have found great enjoyment in translating various passages of Scripture, songs, etc., into the Cornish that was current in their own day. These being spelt more or less phonetically (as far as the writers knew how to do so), and therefore varying a good deal in orthography, are now of great value in determining the sound of the latest Cornish.

When Lhuyd was at work upon his Cornish Grammar, he received considerable assistance from Keigwin, Gwavas, and Tonkin, and a vocabulary and collection of Cornish fragments compiled by the last two under the title of Archœologia Cornu-Britannica were afterwards printed by Dr. William Pryce in 1790, with Lhuyd's Grammar, under his own name, with the same title. This fraud, if it really deserves so harsh a name, was exposed by Prince L. L. Bonaparte, into whose hands the original MS. of some of it fell; but though it certainly was not right of Pryce to act in this manner, he