Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/39

20 does deserve some credit for having published the vocabulary at all, and the service that he did in so doing may be the better estimated by a knowledge of the fact that it was very considerably through the medium of Pryce's publication that Dr. Edwin Norris obtained the acquaintance with Cornish necessary to enable him to bring out his valuable edition of the early Cornish dramas. It is strange that so much abuse has been heaped upon Pryce, while Davies Gilbert has escaped with comparative freedom, in spite of a villainously careless edition of a number of scraps of Cornish (printed at the end of his edition of the play of The Creation), gathered entirely from Tonkin's MS., the Gwavas MS., or the Borlase MS., and inserted, with notes and all, without a word of acknowledgment, and in such a manner as to lead one to think that the translation and notes at any rate were his own doing. Pryce certainly took the trouble to correct his proofs, and Davies Gilbert could hardly have attempted to do so. Moreover, if Pryce's preface be read carefully, it will be seen that he by no means claims the whole credit for himself, but gives plenty of it, though perhaps not enough, to Gwavas, Tonkin, Lhuyd, and Borlase. The impression left by the preface is that Pryce was a more or less intelligent editor who added a little of his own, the amount of which he exaggerated.

In 1746 Captain (afterwards Admiral) the Hon. Samuel Harrington, brother of Daines Barrington the antiquary, took a sailor from Mount's Bay, who spoke Cornish, to the opposite coast of Brittany, and found him fairly able to make himself understood. In 1768 Daines Barrington himself writes an. account of an interview with the celebrated Mrs. Dolly Pentreath, popularly, but erroneously, supposed to have been the last person who spoke the language. He also contributed to Archœologia, in 1779, a letter received in