THEOPHYLACT.
282. Maltese Dialect.
—Is it more reasonable to assign the Arabic character of the Maltese dialect to the fact of its early occupation by the Hebrew-speaking Phœnicians, or to the subsequent Saracen occupation? or may its difference from Hebrew and from Arabic be explained by the circumstances of its history, as having been twice, at two very different periods, occupied by invaders belonging to two branches of the same stock? Bochart, Canaan, i. 26., says that the name "Melete" is Hebrew, meaning refugium; and Diodorus Siculus, v. cap. 12., uses the term καταφυγή concerning it so pointedly, that it would almost seem as though he knew that to be the reason why the Phœnicians gave it its name.
THEOPHYLACT.
283. Hobbes's "Leviathan" (Vol. iv., p. 314.).
—You have inserted my inquiry respecting the frontispiece to Hobbes's Leviathan; I should also be glad to know the interpretation put by any of your readers on the various other symbols in that plate. They are, on one side of the title, a castle, a crown, a cannon, a pile of arms, and a field of battle, in compartments one below another; and on the other side, a church, a mitre, a thunderbolt, a collection of implements marked syllogism, dilemma, &c., and a tribunal.
I have my own view of the meaning of each part of this, which is at your service when required.
W. W.
Cambridge.