Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

CELTIC LANGUAGE. 243
acquainted, both with regard to its terms and even its very-
tones or accent. The productions of the soil may, in many-
instances, he torn up and exported, or the manners and
customs of a people may so change, that the relics which
remain shall baffle the severest scrutiny ; but not so their
language : this remains and descends like their family-features,
and whether neglected or proscribed, long survives all such
treatment. If, in addition to this quality of endurance, the
changes to which any language has been exposed, should be
found in general to have in fact only obeyed a law, then the
investigation becomes, not only more interesting and precise,
but the access to the antiquity of nations by this line is less
affected by the lapse of time than that of any other with which
we are acquainted. A different opinion indeed has been
entertained by some, and we do not forget the idea of
Horace :
" As when the forest with the bending year
First sheds the leaves whicli earliest appear.
So an old race of words maturely dies.
And some, new born, in youth and vigour rise ;
Many shall rise that now forgotten lie,
Others in present credit soon shall die,
If custom will, whose arbitrary sway,
Words, and the forms of language, must obey."
But a simile, however beautiful, is no argument, and better
philologists have entertained a very different opinion from the
poet in this instance. ' I am now convinced,' said the late
Dr Murray, ' that the wildest and most irregular operations
of change in every language obey an analogy which, when it
is discovered, explains the anomaly ; and that, as is common
in the study of all progressive knowledge, a view of the
gradual (and progressive) history of human speech, in any
considerable portion of the world, leads directly to a scientific
acquaintance with its principles, which may be of the highest
use in illustrating obsolete dialects, in preserving the purity