ch is said to be very
expressive and copious, and is, probably, one of the most ancient languages
in the world, obtained once in most of the western regions of Europe. It
was the language of Gaul, of Great Britain, of Ireland, and very probably,
of Spain also; till, in the course of those revolutions which by means of
the conquests, first, of the Romans, and afterwards, of the northern
nations, changed the government, speech, and, in a manner, the whole face
of Europe, _this tongue was gradually obliterated_; and now subsists only
in the mountains of Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, and among the wild
Irish. For the Irish, the Welsh, and the Erse, are no other than different
dialects of the same tongue, the ancient Celtic."--_Blair's Rhetoric_,
Lect. IX, p. 85.

[47] With some writers, the _Celtic_ language is _the Welsh_; as may be
seen by the following extract: "By this he requires an Impossibility, since
much the greater Part of Mankind can by no means spare 10 or 11 Years of
their Lives in learning those dead Languages, to arrive at a perfect
Knowledge of their own. But by this Gentleman's way of Arguing, we ought
not only to be Masters of _Latin_ and _Greek_, but of _Spanish, Italian,
High- Dutch, Low-Dutch, French_, the _Old Saxon, Welsh, Runic, Gothic_, and
_Islandic_; since much the greater number of Words of common and general
Use are derived from _those Tongues_. Nay, by the same way of Reasoning we
may prove, that the _Romans_ and _Greeks_ did not understand their own
Tongues, because they were not acquainted with _the Welsh, or ancient
Celtic_, there being above 620 radical _Greek_ Words derived from _the
Celtic_, and of the Latin a much greater Number."--_Preface to Brightland's
Grammar_, p. 5.

[48] The author of this specimen, through a solemn and sublime poem in ten
books, _generally_ simplified the preterit verb of the second person
singular, by omitting the termination _st_ or _est_, whenever his measure
did not require the additional syllable. But his tuneless editors have, in
many instances, taken the rude liberty both to spoil his versification, and
to publish under his name what he did not write. They have given him _bad
prosody_, or unutterable _harshness of phraseology_, for the sake of what
they conceived to be _grammar_. So _Kirkham_, in copying the foregoing
passage, alters it as he will; and alters it _differently_, when he happens
to write some part of it twice: as,

"That morning,