Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/79

Rh Roman. If however it be found in some apparently more ancient tomb or be of a character representing an anterior antiquity, then it would be preferable to seek its solution elsewhere. For this purpose I should then prefer the attempt being sought in the Basque language. Humboldt as I before observed has already advanced a claim for this people representing the Etruscan Iberians as a connecting link between the Celts and the Romans, and he is certainly correct in pointing out the analogy in the names of many places in Italy showing a close resemblance to the Basque. His theory is that the Basques represent the ancient Iberians, a people who he supposes occupied the country before the Celts. In this opinion I do not agree. I think it clear that the word Iberians was only another name for Celts, the former being principally used by Greek and the latter by Roman writers for the same people. It is my purpose on another occasion to show that the Basques are the representatives of an Eastern colony in Spain, just as the Tyrrheni were in Italy, and then the comparison might arise according to the argument advanced in these pages. If however they are representatives of former occupants, still it will be curious to investigate the analogies which certainly exist offering very remarkable considerations for the scholar and the Ethnologist. 1. That there are many words in modern Italian in common with the Basque which are not Latin. 2. That there are many words in Latin which are not referable to Greek, Celtic, or any northern language, but which have in Basque such strongly marked affinities as to prove that some language of which the Basque is the modern representative formed one of the elements of that very mixed and expressive language which grew up with Roman greatness. 3. That Inscriptions are constantly found throughout Spain, bearing characters exactly similar to the Etruscan, which the Basques claim to explain by their language. I have headed these remarks merely as suggestions, but I reserve to myself the right, if hereafter any part of them be thought worthy of being published, to amplify the details and to point out the particular words to which I have here only referred in general terms.

In the discussion which ensued after the reading of this Paper it was stated that Dr. Freund the well known Author of the Latin Dictionary, who was sent by the Prussian government to the Tyrol to enquire into the correctness of the surmises of some connection between Rhætian Dialects and the ancient Etruscan, had reported that no analogy could be discovered.