LATE OF WITH ETHNOLOGICAL DISSERTATIONS AND NOTES. BY R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S., FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, MEMBER OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL LONDON: TAYLOR, WALTON, AND MABERLY, UPPER GOWER STREET, AND IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1851. THE methods of ethnological investigation in the present volume are best collected from the text. The result is a Germany of very different magnitude from that of the usual commentators. If this be unsatisfactory, there is still some gain to the cause of scholarship. The extent to which migrations may be unnecessarily assumed, or reasonably dispensed with, is measured; so that, to draw a comparison from the exact sciences, an ethnological work without great migrations is like a geometry without axioms. The extent of the difficulties and assumptions of the existing belief as to the magnitude of ancient Germany may also be measured. The value I put upon the great writers of Germany on the same subject-Zeuss, Grimm, Niebuhr-is not thus measured. I rarely mention except to differ with them. As a set-off to this, I may add that, it is almost wholly by means of their own weapons that they are combated. Whether the present work took its present form, or that of a translation of Zeuss's learned and indispen * sable work, with an elaborate commentary, was a mere question of convenience. To it I am under the same obligations as the learner of a language is to his grammar, his lexicon, or his text-book; and it is not saying too much to add that nineteen out of twenty of the references and quotations are Zeuss's. What applies to Zeuss applies, in a less degree, to Grimm and Niebuhr. Nevertheless, though the materials are the same, the structure is as different as a ship is from a barn, or vice versa, both built from the same forest. That the present results have taken a completely definite and systematic form is more than I think. Everything in ethnology is a balance between conflicting difficulties, and I can only hope that I have approached a full and complete exhibition of the ethnology of ancient Germany. Perhaps, too, the work is rather a commentary upon the geographical part of the Germania, than on the Germania itself the purely descriptive part relating to the customs of the early Germans being passed over almost sicco pede. The real difficulties lay in the geography, and the classificational portion of the ethnology; besides which it is there where I worked with the most confidence. The chief texts are given in full. To have fol Die Deutschen und Die Nachbarstämme. The Deutsche Mythologie, of Grimm, is quoted as D. M. lowed them up with the same amount of commentary as is attached to the text of Tacitus, would have trebled the size of the work. In the case of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus there has been an additional reason for giving the chief passages at large. The evidently heterogeneous character of their notices and remarks is intended to exhibit, in a practical point of view, their value as authorities. In one respect I may appear to have understated the case that can be made out by the advocates of what may be called the German theory in its broadest form. One of the strong arms of their argument is, the etymological deduction of names like Suevi, Lygii, &c., from supposed German roots. Specimens of these derivations may be found incidentally throughout the work. In the eyes of such readers as they satisfy, I have done less than justice to the views of their devisers. But, if the samples* in question be (as they are believed to be) fair specimens of the whole, I have but little fear that the neglect of them will lay me open to the charge of keeping back any very valid arguments on the opposite side. It should be added that the order in which the different geographical and national names of the Epilegomena are taken is what may be called logical, i.e., those populations which illustrate each other, and which are subject to the same lines of criticism, are grouped together, sometimes (but not often) to the violation of geographical proximity, and ethnological In the words Saxon, Frank, Dulgibini, Nuithones, and others. |