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PREFACE.IliARLY imbued with a competent knowledge of the Greekand Roman languages, I imbibed, along with them, every possibleprejudice against the Celts. I was, from my infancy, taught toconsider them a parcel of demusavages^ their language an unintelligiblejargon, and their boasted antiquity the raving of a disorderedimagination. Dazzled with the splendour of the classic2^(fgc, I endeavoured to derive every thing from the Greek andRoman languages. I had even gone the hopeful length, of derivingPenpont from Pene Pontus ; Catterthun from Cast? a Thani;Dunnipace from Duni Pads ; Criiden from Cruor Danorum;with a thousand other fooleries of the same kind.About twenty years ago, the treatise now offered io the public,fell into my hands. I was astonished io find that it tore upby the roots the whole philological system, which I had so longheld sacred and invulnerable. The boasted precedency of theGreek and Roman languages now appeared, atleast, doubtful.Determined to probe the matter io the bottom, I devoted my sejriousattention to the history, the antiquities, and language ofthe Celts : the result was, that I found it established by the mostunquestionable authorities that the Celtic language was a dialectof the primary language of Asia; that the Celts were the abo*rigiual inhabitants of Europe, and that they had among them,from the roost remote antiquity, an order of LiieraU named