[508] M. d’Abbadie collected with great care, as opportunity offered, vocabularies, more or less extensive, of a vast number of the languages of this region of Africa. His collections, also, on the natural history and geography, as well as on the religious and social condition of the country, are most extensive and valuable. The work in which he is understood to be engaged upon the subject, is looked for with much interest.
[509] When M. d’Abbadie, in one of his letters to the Athenæum, first alluded to the Ilmorma, its existence, as a distinct language, was absolutely denied.
[510] One of the writers on the Basque Grammar, Manuel de Larramendi, entitles his book, Impossible vencido, (“The Impossible Overcome,”) 8vo. Salamanca, 1729. Some idea, though a faint one, of the difficulty of this Grammar, may be formed from the number and names of the words of a Basque verb. They are no less than eleven; and are denominated by grammarians, the Indicative, the Consuetudinal, the Potential, the Voluntary, the Necessary (coactive,) the Imperative, Subjunctive, Optative, Penitudinary (!) and Infinitive.—The variety of tenses in Basque also, is very great. But it should be added that the structure of these moods and tenses is described as singularly philosophical, and full of harmony and of analogy.
[511] Letter of M. d’Abbadie, May 6, 1855.
[512] Manavit, p. 109.
[513] Olaszhoni es Schweizi Vtazas Irta Paget Janosné Wesselenyi Polyxena, 1842, vol. I., p. 180. Mr. Watts’s Memoir, p. 121.
[514] This book is in the Library Catalogue, p. 138.
[515] Letter of June 6, 1855.
[516] Volume X. (1842.) p. 227—279-80.
[517] Christmas Holidays at Rome. By the Rev. Ingraham Kip, edited by the Rev. W. Sewell, p. 175.