Page:The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall.djvu/39

19 materials which have been inaccessible to all other authors, wherein the British original of some thousand English words in common use is demonstrated, together with that of the proper names of most towns, parishes, villages, mines, and gentlemen's seats and families, in Wales, Corn- wall, Devonshire, and other parts of England." In his dedication of the above book, he says, that it is "a work intended to rescue from oblivion the original language of a County." It may be useful to give a brief account of what Pryce says respecting the ancient Cornish language. Speaking of the high antiquity of the British lan- guage, " of which the Cornish is most indisputably a very pure dialect " he remarks in the Preface, that " it must be acknowledged, that a local inquiry and disquisition into the antiquity of our Cornish-British language has not been so particularly attended to as it deserves." Pol whole, in his History of Cornwall, &c., has also helped the work of restoration, and his writings contain many of the old Cornish words with observations thereon. In Polwhele's " Historical Views of Devonshire " (p. 187) are remarks on the language of the ancient Britons, and in comparing it with the Phenician the author says, "that its affinity with the Irish is proved beyond all controversy by Yallancey." It will be interesting to compare the Phenician with a language allied to old Cornish, viz : the Irish. In the Pnulus of Plautus, there are certain sentences known to be Punic, and on comparing them with Irish,