Nevertheless, Archdeacon Williams maintains that two languages may have a common vocabulary, but different grammars[[3]]:
"The Latin language, whether from Pelasgic or Achæan influence, adopted at an early period the Hellenic grammar; and, under the skilful hands of the bilingual Ennius, became that polished interpreter of thought, which yields in regularity and majesty to the Greek alone. The Cumri either retained, which is more probable, a still more ancient, or invented a grammar, now peculiar to themselves. This, although it be simple and scientific in the highest degree, is so completely at variance with all the other grammars of the civilised world, that scholars who have to acquire it late in life feel the strongest repugnance to its forms and principles, and are tempted to regard a language more fixed and unchangeable in its principles than any other existing, as more slippery and grasp-escaping than the Proteus of the Grecian mythology."
Since I wrote these extracts, I have been much gratified by the perusal of Archdeacon Williams's Gomer, which I recommend to all interested in this inquiry.
Bibliothecar. Chetham.
Footnote 2:[(return)]
In Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xiii.
In his Gomer he shows that the Latin and Cymraeg display great similarity in the tenses of the substantive verb.
PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE.
Box Sawdust for Collodion.—The following will be of some use to your photographic readers: