Whatever may be asserted on the subject, it is difficult to
conceive that the "ladies of Constantinople," in the reign of the last
Caesar, spoke a purer dialect than Anna Comnena[262] wrote, three
centuries before: and those royal pages are not esteemed the best models
of composition, although the princess [Greek: glo~ttan ei~)chen A)KRIBOE
A)ttikisou/san].[263] In the Fanal, and in Yanina, the best Greek is
spoken: in the latter there is a flourishing school under the direction
of Psalida.

There is now in Athens a pupil of Psalida's, who is making a tour of
observation through Greece: he is intelligent, and better educated than
a fellow-commoner of most colleges. I mention this as a proof that the
spirit of inquiry is not dormant among the Greeks.

The Reviewer mentions Mr. Wright,[264] the author of the beautiful poem
_Horae Ionicae_, as qualified to give details of these nominal Romans and
degenerate Greeks; and also of their language: but Mr. Wright, though a
good poet and an able man, has made a mistake where he states the
Albanian dialect of the Romaic to approximate nearest to the Hellenic;
for the Albanians speak a Romaic as notoriously corrupt as the Scotch of
Aberdeenshire, or the Italian of Naples. Yanina, (where, next to the
Fanal, the Greek is purest,) although the capital of Ali Pacha's
dominions, is not in Albania, but Epirus; and beyond Delvinachi in
Albania Proper up to Argyrocastro and Tepaleen (beyond which I did not
advance) they speak worse Greek than even the Athenians. I was attended
for a year and a half by two of these singular mountaineers, whose
mother tongue is Illyric, and I never heard them or their countrymen
(whom I have seen, not only at home, but to the amount of twenty
thousand in the army of Vely Pacha[265]) praised for their Greek, but
often laughed at for their provincial barbarisms.

I have in my possession about twenty-five letters, amongst which some
from the Bey of Corinth, written to me by Notaras, the Cogia Bachi, and
others by the dragoman of the Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last
governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of
their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from
private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but in the true
antique character.

The Reviewer proceeds, after some remarks on the tongue in its past and
present state, to a paradox (page 59) on the great mischief the
knowledge of his own lang