Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/71

Rh tables especially, and other relics of antiquity. His work is exceedingly valuable for the collection he has left us of ancient inscriptions, but later writers have refused him the merit his cotemporaries awarded. Still there is no question that many of his speculations are well founded, and some other inscriptions discovered since his time appear to me to support his conjectures, and have the semblance of a Greek, though a barbarous Greek, original. As an instance I would especially refer to the inscription on the vase found at Cervetie given with an attempted explanation in Dr. Donaldson's Varronianus p. 126 and others in the same work. On the other hand, French and German scholars generally have contended for the Northern and Celtic origin of the Etruscans, in which several Italian writers have concurred, while some, as was perhaps to be expected from a natural national vanity, argue for an indigenous civilization peculiar to their own land. At the head of these is Micali, whose labors on this subject are entitled to our due acknowledgement, though we cannot assent to his conclusions. Niebuhr suggests that the language or dialect still spoken at Groeden in the Tyrol may represent the ancient Etruscan, in connexion with his theory that they were descended from the people of Rhætia in that country, founded on the denial of Dionysius that they were a Lydian colony. Humboldt supposed them to be a connecting link between the Iberians and Latins, an offset of the great Celtic family. The learned Müller adopts an intermediate opinion. Admitting an primitive population of Etruria, whose origin however he does not venture to decide, he thinks they were mingled with Pelasgian colonies from Lydia. With this opinion I think we cannot but agree, only carrying it further than he has done. But before entering on this argument I take leave to make another digression as to who were the Pelasgi, though neither can this again be justly considered a digression, as the Tyrrhenians being so frequently styled Pelasgi, the two names become so intimately connected that it is necessary to elucidate both points equally. Though so constantly found named as in different places, the Pelasgi have their origin left us in still greater doubt than even the Etruscans. Roman writers have often associated and confounded them with the Greeks. But the Greeks themselves always made a distinction, though they acknowledged with Herodotus that they formed one of the original elements of the population of Greece, so much so that the Hellenes owed their greatness to their coalition with them (i. c. 58). At the same time their language differed so much from the Greek that they classed it barbarian or