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THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. 216.]

AUGUST 1, 1811.

[1 of VOL. 32.

At long as chose who write are ambitious of making Converts, and of giving their Opinions a Maximum of Influence and Celebrity, the most extenfively circulated Mifcellany will repay with the greatest sffect the Curiofity of thafe who read either for Amusement or Iphruction.—JOHNSON.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

A

SIR,

LTHOUGH a constant reader of your valuable miscellany, it was only yesterday that I had the pleasure of attentively perusing your Magazine for May last, containing the enquiries of Pædagogus, respecting several modern Greek publications.

Having had an opportunity, during a considérable stay, which I made a few years ago in the immediate neighbouthood of Greece, to pay particular attention to the language spoken at present by its inhabitants, I am able to assure Padagogus, that all the dictionaries to which he alludes, profess in fact to treat of the same tongue, the new Greek, and Romaic, (as it is generally called by the Greeks themselves) being in no wise different from the Eolo-Doric. The two last works mentioned by him are both known to me, as very faulty and incomplete; that, in particular, published in the Greek and Italian, being little more than a mere vocabulary. The best dictionary of the language in question is, that quoted by your correspondent under. the title of Λέξικον τῆς Διύλο δωρικής γλώσσας, 1.A and was published about two years ago at Venice, under the superintendance (if I am not greatly mistaken) of Mr. Coray, now residing at Paris.

Having thus endeavoured to satisfy your correspondent's curiosity, permit me to unite with him in regretting, that, whilst philological investigation seems to be so laudably on the stretch for new ditcoveries, both at home and abroad, the language at present in use among the descendants of a mation, whose works have opened a wider field for etymological criticism, than perhaps those of any other, seems to be entirely overlooked, or scarcely regarded worthy of common

notice.

Twenn is, as Pædagogus justly observes, derived from the substantive agd (which is still in use amongst the moderns), and sig. nifies present.

MONTHLY MAG. No. 216.4

Travellers have been so much in the habit of crying down the "jargon" of the modernGreeks, and grave reviewers* persist so fondly in stigmatizing it as a jumnble of half a dozen languages, current in the south-east of Europe, that I fear it will scarcely be credited on my bare assurance, that so far from this being the case, the language used at present in Greece is neither more nor less than a combination of the ancient Eolic and Doric dialects, with such occasional variations as may naturally be expected to intrude themselves into every language, during the lapse of a series of centuries. In speaking thus, I do not pretend to assert that all the Greeks of our day, without exception, speak a pure and unmixed olo-Doric; neither do I presume to tax such travellers as have pronounced the present language of Greece to be a corrupt jargon, with an intention to deceive, In the first case it must be remembered, that literature is but at a low ebb in Greece; that, although exceptions may be found to the contrary, the general education of the modern Greeks is too contracted to permit them to bestow that labour on the cultivation (perhaps I should say, purification) of their mother tongue, which is of more importance to them to be employed elsewhere, and that perhaps but few, comparatively speaking, are even aware of the real origin of their present dialect; and, secondly, it may be urged in partial vindication of the assertion of many tourists, that, in most sea-ports, and particularly such as lie contiguous to other countries, which of course are the easiest to be visited by strangers, a greater confusion of tongues is likely to be found, than in the interior of the country itself, which but few have attempted to penetrate without still adhering to those prejudices which they conceived against its language, on first entering the frontiers.

I have myself taken some pains to

See a late Number of the Edinburgh Review. Art. Traduction de Strabon, Α

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