Blair Collection > Celtic studies

PKEFACE.
The history of the variation of opinion about the Celtic lan-
guages would make a curious and instructive chapter of literary-
history. Their relationships with other languages, like those
of the peoples who spoke them with other branches of the
human race, depended rather upon the dictates of passion than
of reason. There was indeed but little room in most cases for
the exercise of the reason, because those who theorized about the
Celtic languages were generally wholly ignorant of them, or,
at least, knew them very imperfectly, and in their most modem
and corrupt forms. The rudest tongue is dear to those whose
first thoughts were expressed in it. The pride which the Irish
or Welsh take in their language is legitimate, and the exagger-
ated estimate which they may sometimes form of the beauties
and powers of their respective dialects can readily be pardoned.
But the same indulgence cannot be extended to writers who
contribute to bring science into discredit, and contempt upon
the language and literature of a people, and therefore upon the
people themselves, by fanciful and baseless speculations. It
matters not whether, like Vallancey's, these speculations tended
to exalt the Celtic language, or, Uke Pinkerton's, to degrade
it: both are injurious to the growth of tnie learning. Indeed,
the foiTQcr are the worse, because passages like the following,
written by Mr. Pinkerton, could only degrade the author: " The
mythology of the Celtse (which is yet to be discovered !) re-
sembled in all probability that of the Hottentots or others, the
rudest savages, as the Celtse anciently were, and are little better
at present, being incapable of any progress in society". I have
called up the literary shade of Pinkerton from the oblivion into
which he has sunk, not because these old opinions are now of
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