Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

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lent hont, is still mainly used in a sense not
temporal but local. The history of the
English word near affords another very
simple illustration of the same principle.
Originally confined to the domain of space^
it now deals also, not only with time, but
with all the vicissitudes of mind 3.nd /ate.
The time, as I write, may be 7iear the hour
of dinner, or the chop nearly done to a
turn. A man may be near death, or nearly
blind, or near perfection, even as, by pro-
cess of the same philological phenomenon,
he may, in our living vernacular English,
be next-door to a devil. The Breton word
for near, still used in Bretagne as a prepo-
sition or adverb of place, bears to us in
Scotch Gaelic a suggestion of somewhat
similar significance. The Breton tost, near,
French pres, Latin prope, has for compara-
tive tostoch, propius, and for the superlative
tosta, proxime. The strength of the third
consonant in tost will be, doubtless, to some
an insuperable barrier to its alliance with
the Old Gaelic toiseach, beginning, primus,
princeps. None the less, however, may