5

:
80 THE HISTORY
much antienter tlian the Welsh, shows beyond all
contradiction the necessity of this language for
retrieving the knowledge of the Celtic religion
and learning. Camden and others have long since
taken notice of the agreement between the present
British and those old Gallic words collected by
learned men out of Greec and Roman authors
and the industrious Mr. Edward Lhuyd, late
keeper of the Museum at Oxford, perceiv'd this
affinity between the same words and the
even before he study'd that language,
Irish,
by the demonstration
I gave him of the same in all the said
instances. Nor does he deny this agreement in
the comparative Etymologicon he afterwards made
of those languages, where he quotes Camden and
Boxhornius affirming it about the Gallic and British;
hut there being, says he*, no Vocabulary extant,
meaning no doubt in
print, of the Irish, or
antient Scottish, they coud not collect that language
therewith, which the curious in those studies ivill now
find to agree rather more than ours, with the Gaulish.
That it does so, is absolute fact, as will be
seen by hundreds of instances in this present work.
I am aware that what I am going to say wdll sound
very oddly, and seem more than a paradox ;
but I
deserve, ray lord, and shall be content with your
severest censure, if, before you have finish'd reading
these sheets, you be not firmly of the same
mind yourself;
namely, that, without the know-
* In the preface to his Archaohgia BrUamica, pag. J.