ought to have had a place in the earlier parts of it; this arose from the fact, that when I commenced printing, I thought I had finished my first volume: but, as it proceeded, I continued my researches, and in consequence met with many new circumstances tending to complete or strengthen my system. Was I to leave them unnoticed? This would have been a kind of infanticide. Their late introduction may injure the work; but my object is not to make a book, but to develop great truths, respecting ancient Language, Religion, and the Origin of Nations.
Sometimes a quotation will be found to contain bad grammar, as for instance, in Book X. Chapter VI. Sect. 11, pp. 716, 717; but I have thought it better to leave it as I found it, than run the risk of making an author say what he did not intend, by my correction. Schoolmasters think such things of consequence. They are certainly better avoided. It is a common practice of our scholars to endeavour to tie down inquirers to the niceties which the old languages acquired when they had arrived at their highest state of perfection, prohibiting any licence, and making no allowance for their uncertain state before grammars or lexicons were written. For instance, Buddha and Buda, between which they now make some very nice distinctions; saying, one is the Planet Mercury, and the other is Wisdom, a distinction adopted evidently in later times. This is the counterpart of the Sun and the planet Mercury of the Greeks, both of which, I shall shew, meant the Sun and the Planet also. The same is the case with the Greek words Ερως and Ερος, one of which I shall be told means hero and the other Love; but which I shall prove must have been originally the same, and each must have had both meanings, before the later Greeks fixed the meaning of every word in their language. These puny criticisms are calculated for nothing but the concealment of truth, and are founded upon a total forgetfulness or ignorance of the principles or history of all languages. This will be discussed much at large in my second volume, but I have thought it right thus slightly to notice it here, in order to assuage the anger of those small critics, in the mean time.
I think it right to make an observation upon an effect of prejudice, which has operated for the concealment of truth in modern times more than almost any other cause whatever, and it is this: it constantly happens that circumstances are met with, to all appearance closely connected with the history of the Jews, and yet in places so remote from Judea, and so unconnected with it, that our inquirers have not been able to admit even the possibility of any connexion having existed between them; and, in order that they might not expose themselves to ridicule for what has appeared even to themselves to be absurd credulity, they have, without any dishonest motive, disguised and corrupted words without number. Thus we find, instead of Solomon,[1] Soleimon and Suleimon; instead of David, Daoud, and, as the learned Dr. Dorn calls it, Davudze; and instead of Jacob, Yacoob, when the name was clearly meant, in the original, to be what we call Jacob.
- ↑ It is true that, properly speaking, neither person ought to have been called Solomon; but, as the same name of a person was originally meant in both cases, they ought both to be represented by the same letters.
