INTRODUCTION

        For some years it has been known among foreign scholars that Manuscripts in the Basque language, of great value and interest, have long been in the library of the Earl of Macclesfield, at Shirburn Castle, in the County of Oxford. The name of the County subjected Oxonians who visited the Basque provinces to many inquiries about these treasures, and to some reproaches when it became apparent that the MSS. were quite unknown to them. It had to be explained that, owing solely to difficulty of access, the contents of the Shirburn Castle library were less familiar to Oxford scholars than those of many libraries far more remote.

        But it was from Oxford that the first definite information about these MSS. was, in 1884, conveyed to Basque students abroad. Professor Rhys visited Shirburn Castle in September of that year, and published I as full and accurate an account of the Basque MSS. as the shortness of his visit, and his work on other MSS. there, allowed. He was followed soon afterwards by the veteran philologist Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, who described his researches in a letter addressed to the Professor and afterwards made public by him. These two descriptions were used by Professor Vinson in his invaluable work Essai d'une Bibliographie de la Langue Basque (1891); and except on one point, to be explained later, his combination of the two is satisfactory and intelligible.

        Perhaps this is the place where an attempt should be made to account for the existence of the Basque MSS. in the Shirburn collection. The current explanation depends on tradition and conjecture. The Shirburn Castle library contains a large number of Welsh MSS., chiefly transcripts from well-known originals, made by a group of Welsh antiquarians early in the eighteenth century. They all came into the possession of William Jones, F.R.S., father of the celebrated Sir William Jones, and were bequeathed by him to his friend and patron George, the second Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society. The tradition is that the Basque MSS. formed part of this bequest, and it is slightly confirmed by the fact that some leaves of a Welsh MS. are bound in the third volume of the Basque Dictionary.

        In the eighteenth century, and long since, there prevailed a mistaken opinion that the Basque language belonged to the Celtic family. George Borrow started his examination of the language on the assumption that it was Irish. He soon found that this theory was untenable, and he begins one of his chapters with the quaint heading «Basque not Irish». A German scholar in 1807 wrote a long dissertation, in which he compared the Basque, Welsh and Gaelic languages. It is remarkable that he did not learn from the vocabularies which he collected and compared, that the latter two languages have little or no affinity with the former. Such being the state of learned opinion in the last, and the beginning of the present, century, we may conjecture with some probability that the Welsh antiquaries purchased the Basque MSS. under the impression that they had some possible bearing on Celtic studies. Whether they bought them direct from the Basque refugee who wrote them, or whether they obtained them from a bookseller, to whom they had been sold, is a point on which, as yet, we, have no information. The tradition of the source from which they came seems to have existed in the library from the first and is given as unquestionable by the cataloguer of the library in 1860. It would have surprised the Welsh antiquarians to learn that the outlandish MSS., which they probably acquired for a trifle, exceed a thousandfold the rest in value and are among the chief treasures of the library.

        The following is a description of the MSS.:—

        I. A Basque Grammar (press-mark, North Library, 112 H 18).— This is a folio volume of 540 pages. It is written in a careful and legible hand on both sides of the leaf, it contains few erasures or corrections and (unlike the other MSS.) is apparently not a first, but a final copy ready for the Press. The following introductory remarks are worth quoting, because they contain the only indication given of the authorship of the work:—

Gramaire Cantabrique
faite
Par Pierre D'vrte Min. du st Euangile
natif de st Ieandeluz de la Prouince
de Labour dans la Cantabrie francoise

ditte vulgairem^t pais de basque ou

bizcaye. Escalherria ou bizcaya.

        De Toute la Cantabrie francoise ou l'on parle le meilleur basque c'est dans la prouince de Labour qu'on nomme Laphurdi et surtout à st Ieandeluz et a Sara, deux parroisses de cette prouince distantes de deux petites lieues l'une de l'autre, c'est ce que tout le auoue vnanim^t en ce pais la.

        The MS. proceeds to give a description of the Basque Alphabet with minute instructions as to the pronunciation of every letter. This takes twelve pages. On page 13 we have the Pater Noster given in Basque («en tutoyant et sans tutoyer»). On page 14 we have the «Credo».

        From page 15 to page 39 is a set of vocabularies, French-Basque. These have been copied by the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, and are published in the Revue de Linguistique, 1893-94, by the editor, M. Julien Vinson.

        On page 73 the Verbs begin and continue to page 425. Then the Adverbs, Participles, Prepositions, Interjections, Syntax, &c. are briefly treated, not without frequent reference to the Verb. Such a portentous phenomenon is the Basque Verb!

        Page 538 is evidently the end of the treatise (though a leaf, by the mistake of the binder, has been placed after it), for it ends thus—

Soli Deo honor

et Gloria in

saecula saeculorum

Amen.

        This MS. is, philologically, the most important of the trio, for it contains the first independent treatise on the Verb, written many years before Larramendi published his Grammar.

        Whether the wonderful complexity of the verbal forms has any importance or not remains to be seen, but it is a reproach to the curiosity of philologists that the earliest attempt at an exhaustive treatise on the subject should remain unpublished.

        II. A Latin-Basque Dictionary.— This is a fragment, being carried on only to the word commotus. Formerly this fragment was unbound in twenty-six parcels or bundles. Now it is bound in five volumes, each about 2 inches thick. The following is a synopsis of the volumes:—

                I. 112 H 13. page 553. 1-5. a ab / amoenare

                II. 112 H 14. page 508. 6-11. amandatio / astrepere alicui

                III. 112 H 15. page 450. 12-16. astricte / caduciter

                IV. 112 H 16. page 476. 17-21. caducum / cholera

                V. 112 H 17. page 470. 22-26. cholericus / commotus

        At the beginning of Vol. I we have in Latin twelve prefatory observations on the Verb beginning «Duo genera verborum». (These I have copied, and they are published in the Revue de Linguistique of July 15, 1893.)

        On leaf 3 the Dictionary begins thus (the same words being written and afterwards erased on a later leaf):—

Dictionarium

Latino-Cantabricum

Dicçionario Latignescára

vel

Latignescarazca Dicçionariöa

vel

Dicçionário Latignescarázcoa.

        This is a huge phrase-book rather than a Dictionary, and contains a vast number of words which must be of interest to Basque scholars. It is probably founded upon some old Latin-French work, which we hope to discover.

        III. The MS. of the Old Testament Translation is a folio volume of 138 leaves, 12'5 inches in height by 8 in breadth. It bears the press mark North Library, 1 F 3. It contains the whole of Genesis, but ends abruptly (on folio 131) in the middle of the sixth verse of Exodus xxii; the remaining pages are blank. It is written on both sides of the leaf, in double column, in a bold, plain hand. It is the opinion of all who have examined the MSS. that they are written by the same hand, and that the date of the writing is about 1700. The Translation and the Dictionary are not (as has been said before) as carefully written as the Grammar and are remarkable for the number of erasures which occur. The divisions of words at the end of a line are very frequent and quite arbitrary, as is also the spelling. The headings of the chapters begin with a large capital letter, sometimes ornamented with a flourish. Proper names begin, sometimes with a small, sometimes with a capital letter. The folios are numbered at the right-hand top corner, but one or two numbers have been cut off by the binder.

        Besides the original MS. there is in Lord Macclesfield's library a transcript of the version, made in 1807 by the Rev. Samuel Greatheed, F.S.A. It is contained in two small volumes with the press-marks North Library, 1 G 15 and 16. The first volume contains the whole of Genesis, the second contains as much of Exodus as D'Urte translated, also the Latin dissertation on the Basque verb which is prefixed to the Dictionary, followed by some «notes and observations on the grammar of the Cantabrian or Basque language». These last are the composition of Greatheed, and are chiefly based on Larramendi's well-known grammar.

        The existence of these two volumes has led to a slight confusion in the description of the MS. given by M. Vinson in his Bibliographie. Prince L.-L. Bonaparte mentioned the transcript only, and said nothing of the MS., which Professor Rhys had previously described. An attempt to combine their two accounts could not fail to mystify the reader. Greatheed's transcript is generally accurate and was made before the MS. was bound, so that it has been of considerable use to the Editor, where terminal letters in the original have been cut off or obscured.

        At this point it is natural to inquire whether anything is known of the life and history of Pierre D'Urte, the author of the Grammar, the laborious translator and scribe of the Dictionary and Old Testament fragment. It is to be regretted that, notwithstanding long and diligent search, there is very little certain information about him. His brief mention of himself, at the commencement of the Grammar, informs us that he was a native of St. Jean de Luz and a Protestant. For no Roman Catholic priest would describe himself as «Min. du St. Euangile», nor would he choose for his translation (as D'Urte can be proved to have chosen) the Geneva Version of the Bible. The writer also uses language, in casually discussing the derivation of the name of his native town, which only a rather aggressive Protestant could have used. It has therefore been supposed that he was one of the ministers of the reformed church, who, after the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes sought refuge in England from the religious persecution which assailed them at home. I have been fortunate enough, with the assistance of Mr. R. L. Poole, to discover a reference which gives this supposition the authority of an established fact.

        The passage is as follows:—

        Pierre Durte de St. Jean de Luz, prêtre converti, assisté a Londres (15 l.) avec sa femme et son enfant, 1706.

        No further discovery, however, has rewarded a diligent search. In the Library of the Guildhall, London, I have examined the original receipts for charity bestowed on Huguenot and other refugees, but the name D'Urte is not to be found within the necessary period. In Agnew's magnificent work, containing numerous lists of ministers and other refugees, the name (as far as I have been able to observe) does not occur at all. Many influential members of the Huguenot Society who have made the history of refugees in England their special study, have lent me their best assistance. The portion of the Wake MSS. at Christ Church relating to refugees has been carefully examined, but all without result. Yet it seems almost impossible that a man of such ability and industry should not have received recognition, of which some record might be found.

        It has been stated that he returned to France and there associated with Larramendi at Bayonne, but the supposed authority for this is at present inaccessible. The probability is that he died in England.

        On the other side of the Channel (as might be expected) there is more material for his identification in early life, but even here there is much to be desired and nothing which positively enables us to recognize the man.

        M. Vinson has ransacked the municipal records of the Basque country, and the result of his investigations will be best given in his own words.

        Dans les anciens registres de l'état civil de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, dont les premiers ne contiennent que des actes de baptême, on trouve plusieurs fois, au milieu du XVIIe siècle, le nom d'Urthe, écrit d'ailleurs de différentes façons: Vrthe, Vrte, Ourte. Le 16 février 1640 fut baptisé un Jean d'Urthe (l'acte porte d'Urthisjan), fils de Joamperitz d'Urthe et de Marijan (sic) d'Etcheverry. Le 11 septembre 1643, le même Joamperitz d'Urthe servait de parrain à un fils d'une Marthe d'Urthe, sa soeur sans doute, femme d'un certain Vzu. A la date du 28 janvier 1657, fut célébré le baptême de Jeanne, fille de Joannis d'Urte (sic) et de Domiñs de Lapitzague; le parrain fut un certain Betry Canonier. Le 2 janvier 1664, fut baptisé «Petri, fils de Joannis Dourte et de Marie de Camiño, sa femme» qui «naquist hier»; le parrain était «Betry Canonier». Le 13 février 1668, baptême d'un autre «fils de Joannis d'Urthe et Marie de Camiño» ayant pour «parrain Petry de Lissardy et marraine Maria d'Urthe». Le 14 avril 1669, nouveau baptême d'un «Betry d'Ourte, fils de Ioannis d'Ourte, charpantier (sic) et Marie de Camiño, maison de Delostenea»; le parrain fut «Betry d'Ourte, escolier, demeurant en sa maison de Betry Esqueraren Semearen Etchea». A la date du 27 mai 1670, fut enterrée une «Jeanne d'Ourte» morte dans la maison de «Paponenea». Le 18 septembre 1670, Joannis d'Urthe, charpentier, demeurant maison Delostenea, assistait au convoi funèbre de son beau-père Betry de Camiño. De 1671 à 1678, jean d'Urte et Marie de Camiño eurent plusieurs autres enfants: François d'Ourte, baptisé le 18 janvier 1671; Estebenny (Etiennette) d'Ourte, le 17 février 1672; Marie d'Urte, le 28 décembre 1673, ayant pour marraine Marie d'Urte; Jean d'Ourte, le 19 juin 1675, ayant pour parrain Jean d'Ourte, charpentier de Ciboure. Mais ils en perdirent plusieurs; nous trouvons, en effet, les actes de sépulture de «l'enfant de Jean d'Urthe» le 9 décembre 1671, «l'enfant de J. d'Urthe» le 25 mai 1672, «un enfant de J. d'Urthe» le 1^er août 1672, et, le 10 juin 1673, de «Marguerite d'Urte, fille de Jean d'Urte et de Marie Camiño» dont le convoi a été suivi par «Betry Canonier, capitaine, beau-frère de Jean d'Urte, demeurant à Betry Esqueraren».

        Tels sont les actes que j'ai rencontrés en parcourant les registres des années 1640 a 1678; il m'avait paru que c'est vraisemblement pendant cette période qu'a dû naître Pierre d'Urthe, le correspondant de D. Wilkins; mais il est possible que les registres contiennent d'autre actes qui m'aient échappé.

        Il y aurait là trois ou quatre Pierre d'Urte. Quel est celui qui nous intéresse? Probablement l'écolier qui était parrain en 1669. Celui-ci serait-il le Betry de 1664, frère du nouveau-né, ou un autre frère Betry plus âgé, ou un cousin germain? Ce qui ferait supposer que la première hypothèse est la bonne, c'est que le jeune écolier de 1669 est indiqué comme demeurant dans la maison «Betri Esqueraren Semearen Etchea», qui est celle de son oncle et parrain Betry Canonier, «capitaine». Cet enfant aurait donc été, en quelque sorte, adopté par son oncle qui lui aurait fait donner une éducation supérieure à celle que pouvaient recevoir les enfants d'un charpentier.

        Quoi qu'il en soit, il semble résulter des divers actes rapportés ci-dessus que Joamperitz (Jean Pierre) d'Urte et Marianne d'Etcheverry ont eu au moins deux fils et une fille; que l'un de ces fils, Jean, charpentier, s'était établi à Ciboure; que l'autre, aussi charpentier et nommé aussi Jean, était resté à Saint-Jean-de-Luz, maison Delostenea; enfin que ce dernier, marié à Marie de Camiño, aurait eu plusieurs enfants, dont trois fils, appelés tous les trois «Pierre», nés en 1664, 1668, et 1669. Le premier de ces «Pierre» est très probablement l'auteur des manuscrits de Lord Macclesfield.

        The mention above of the correspondent of D. Wilkins brings us to the latest notice of Pierre D'Urte which we a have been able to find. In D. Wilkins' preface to a book published in 1715, containing versions of the Lord's Prayer in many languages, we read—

        Cantabricam secundam, sive stylo Incolarum S^t Iohannis de Luz, Dominus Petrus d'urte, Cantaber ex oppido S Iohannis de Luz in provincia nuncupata Labour in Biscaja oriundus conscripsit.

        D'Urte made his translation from the French Geneva Bible. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt. The edition, which I have used for comparison, was published at Geneva in 1588. (It differs in some respects from the earlier edition used by Liçarrague for his famous translation of the New Testament in 1571.) With the later edition D'Urte's Basque translation corresponds in every particular. Wherever the French version varies from the Vulgate or other versions, the Basque follows the variation. Every mistake, mistranslation, misprint, misspelling is reproduced. But to make assurance doubly sure, there is another similarity. The French edition has long summaries of the con tents of the chapters which are (I believe) peculiar to it. These appear clause for clause in D'Urte's translation.

        Of the merits of the translation only a competent Basque scholar, probably only a native Basque, can form a trustworthy opinion. But that it has great merits is evident to the merest novice. It is accurate, easy and flowing; it does not fall below the standard of the original in the grandest and most pathetiks passages; yet it has quaint touches of simplicity and almost of humour, of which an instance may be quoted later.

        A question at once arose as to its intelligibility in the district for which it was written. Here was a document in the Labourdin dialect written about 200 years ago; it was an interesting experiment to try how far it could be understood by present speakers of the Labourdin dialect, especially in the parishes which the translator mentions as famous for the excellence of their Basque. Fortunately in one of these parishes ­Sare— resides the well-known writer on Basque legends and history, the Rev. Wentworth Webster. He gladly undertook the experiment, and to him I sent a copy of the translation. He placed it in the hands of a Basque-speaking neighbour, and was able to report: «My neighbour, a native Basque, has been through the MS.; he tells me that he can understand every word of it». I am bound to add that the opinion of the merits of the translation was not as high as I could have wished, but this opinion I can claim as an involuntary testimony to the value of the work. The points alleged against it were its naturalness and frequent use of borrowed words. «I could have done as well myself» was the unconscious praise of a local critic. When languages are strong, and have no fear of extinction, they are wonderfully hospitable to borrowed words, but when they become moribund and doubtful of the security of their tenure, a purism of diction is adopted and a literary style demanded which never characterized the languages in their best periods.

        I have seen this in modern Welsh writings. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English words with Welsh terminations were freely admitted by the best writers, but now there is a reaction against such hospitality; obsolete words are resuscitated and new ones coined, so that the style of many literary Pharisees is so pure as to be quite unintelligible to their countrymen. This is also the case with modern Basque. I will quote one instance. It might be thought that the Roman word «centurion» had established its position in all the languages of Southern Europe. It is used by Liçarrague and other translators. But in the most recent translation of the Holy Gospels it is discarded, and a word correctly formed from the Basque numeral, ehuntari, which has probably never been current, is introduced.

        Another apology for the severe judgement of Sare critiks is this, that the dialect of the inland village has always been purer than that of the seaport of which Pierre D'Urte was a native. Only those who are familiar with the Basque country can tell how few miles' distance is necessary to alter entirely the language of the people.

        Yet another apology for the mixed nature of the diction may be offered. The translation was made from the French, and it was natural that a French word known to be familiar to the inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz should be admitted, even where the Basque equivalent is preferable. Besides, some words such as Eternel had the mint-mark of Protestant acceptance and could not be omitted.

        Second only to the judgement of the natives is the verdict of scholars who have devoted much study to the Basque language. Foremost among these is M. Julien Vinson, who has been long considered a weighty authority on the Basque language and literature. The following quotations are from his letters which have reached me from time to time. «I maintain that the language of D'Urte is an excellent one, clear, nice, exact, grammatically correct, and most superior to Liçarrague's as a dialect-type. His verbal forms are curious and interesting. His style is always intelligible». «The Basque of St. Jean de Luz was always mixed with Spanish and foreign words». «I am more and more of opinion that the translation is good and the language excellent». «I wrote lately to some competent men in the Basque country perfectly acquainted with the particulars of St. Jean de Luz dialect. They told me [with regard to the use of certain words]... so that I conclude that D'Urte is most generally right and correct».

        M. W. I. van Eys, the author of a well-known Basque Dictionary and Grammar and other works, writes, «I have attentively read several chapters of Genesis, and I believe the text will be perfectly intelligible for any French Basque».

        M. le docteur F. Larrieu writes, «Les mots dans la traduction des chapitres de la Genèse D'Urte sont très compréhensibles et la traduction en est généralement assez bonne».

        The purists who object to the translator's free use of foreign words, have invented the theory that the work was written in England after the exile had partially forgotten his native tongue. I think it will be found on examining the text that there is internal evidence to show that he was more of a Basque than a Frenchman. He frequently mistakes or mistranslates French words. I will give three instances, all from Genesis. In chapter xii. 10 occur the words «There was a famine in the land», for which is given the extraordinary translation Bañan Emaztebat ethorri izan zen herrira, «now there came a woman to the land». I have ventured to suggest that in an old French Bible he mistook the word «famine» for famme or femme. Those who doubt the probability of this conjecture are unable to give any other reason for the mistake.

        Again, in the preceding chapter, verse 31, «Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law». The French for this last relation is belle fille, which is translated alaba ederra «beautiful daughter», though elsewhere the usual equivalent erraña is given.

        Once more, the riches of the patriarch Isaac are in chapter xxvi. 14 exemplified by the number of his slaves. In the French version the word «serfs» is used, which the translator seems to have taken for cerfs and renders by Orkhaitz «deer».

        The last two instances were brought to my notice by M. Vinson.

        Perhaps I may here give one quaint instance of Basque simplicity. Abraham among the Basques is considered a person of great gravity and dignity, he is the hero of some of the most famous of the «Pastorales», and nothing would be more incongruous than to represent him as indulging in levity or merriment. So when the translator has to render the words «Abraham fell on his face and laughed», he uses a strong diminutive and allows the patriarch to indulge only in hirritxobat «a tiny little laugh —a ghost of a laugh».

        It is premature to make confident assertions about the diction of the translation; the text will now be minutely examined by scholars familiar with the language, and much may be discovered of which we have no suspicion. But up to the present time only one word has been spoken of as absolutely obsolete. It is the word ozar «a large dog», and occurs only once, Exodus xi. 7. Other words may have slightly changed their meaning in the two centuries which have passed since the translation was made. For instance, the word txahal is said to mean in modern Basque «a calf». The translator uses it for full-grown kine such as those in Pharaoh's dream.

        It would be satisfactory if we could decide whether the translation was made in France or England. It was hoped that a minute examination of the paper, on which it is written, would have settled the question. But experts have been consulted and tell us that the paper is of Dutch or Flemish manufacture, the water-mark being the Belgian lion. Dutch paper seems to have been commonly used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France and England. The manuscript seems to have been hurriedly written, though the writing is generally clear and regular. The numerous erasures and abrupt termination seem to indicate that it was not prepared for the Press. But there are practically no omissions. Every word is translated except in a few passages, and it is curious that in three of these the translator has failed to give the equivalents of common objects of country life. In Genesis xxx. 37 he does not attempt to translate «green poplar and hazel»; in Exodus v. 12 he leaves blank the word for «stubble», and in Exodus ix. 32 he does not give the word for «rye». He was not a countryman, but the native of a small seaport full of fishermen and sailors.

        When I first thought of copying and editing this MS., it was with the hope of issuing a popular edition to be circulated among the French Basques. I thought that it would be easy to get some religious Society to undertake the expense and trouble of conveying to the Basques a gift intended for them two hundred years ago. But when the Delegates of the University Press kindly consented to produce the work in their series of «Anecdota», I felt that something more must be done, and that the MS. must be reproduced in a form which would make it a trustworthy document for the use of students of the Basque language.

        I was told and I hoped that this would only be a step towards the attainment of my original object, that the best preparation for a popular edition was the publication of a text for the criticism and approval of scholars. I therefore approached a well-known Society with a view to the ultimate publication of this fragment in a popular form, and I soon received the sufficiently commercial reply that there was «no market». On this subject I think that there are a few words which ought to be said.

        The Basques (as is well known) are a strictly Roman Catholic people, and therefore are not enthusiastic for the study and dissemination of the Holy Scriptures. But they are enthusiastic for their language, and resent the slight which they think has been cast upon it by our religious societies. It is not unusual to hear such language as this: «You English have given the Bible to people whose language has had to be reduced to writing for the purpose: you have never given it to us».

        There is some justice in this complaint; we have done very little for them, and that little has not always been done with knowledge and intelligence, without which even the best intentions may be mischievous. It will be admitted that the first point for, disseminators of the Bible in a foreign country to ascertain is, whether a good translation already exists in the language of the people whom they are anxious to benefit.

        Such an edition of the New Testament exists in Basque. It was made by Liçarrague in 1571, under the patronage of Jeanne d'Albret, and was produced in a style which indicates that no expense was spared on the work, and that a considerable number of copies must have been issued. If this translation had been widely circulated, it might have produced on the Basque an effect somewhat similar to that wrought upon the Welsh language by Bishop Morgan's Bible a few years later. It would have given the Basques a standard of literary style, and might have broken down the partition of rival dialects which now separate provinces and districts one from another. Unfortunately the hostility of the Roman Church to a free circulation of the Holy Scriptures was fatal to this end, and doubtless many copies were destroyed. Less than thirty are supposed to exist at the present time and most of these are exiled from their native land.

        A friendly critic tells me that the hostility of the authorities of the Roman Church is probably exaggerated, and he attributes the paucity of copies to natural causes. He reminds me that of Dechepare's poems, which were published in 1545, twenty-six years before the Translation, only one copy survives. To this criticism I reply that the publication of the poems was a private venture, that the edition was certainly very small, and that, in the character of several passages in it, there are excellent and far more creditable reasons why the Roman clergy should have suppressed that work also.

        It has been necessary to give this brief account of the noble work of Liçarrague, to enable the reader to form some opinion of the policy since adopted. About 1825 the British and Foreign Bible Society took a step in the right direction. The copy of Liçarrague preserved in the Bodleian was made the basis of an edition of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. As Liçarrague wrote as long ago as 1571 many archaisms had to be corrected, his verbal forms also are peculiar and had to be accommodated to modern usage. One thousand copies of this Gospel were issued. This revision of a Labourdin text was, however, made by a man who was acquainted with only the Navarrese dialect; and is consequently very defective.

        Of course there was an attempt to suppress this work when it reached the Basque country, and there is a story of one Bishop who succeeded in collecting 800 copies for burning. This, however, did not discourage the Society, and in 1828, 1000 copies of the Gospels with the Acts of the Apostles, and 1000 copies of the whole New Testament were published.

        These were widely circulated, and there is evidence that a considerable effect was produced on the Basques in the neighbourhood of Bayonne. Subsequently, probably soon after 1828, another edition of 1000 copies was issued, but I cannot ascertain the exact date.

        It is easy to criticize such a book, but the answer to criticism is that it is not in the first edition that perfection can be expected. Every succeeding edition, in the hands of proper editors, would be more acceptable than its predecessor. Words found to be unintelligible would be altered, and the diction generally modified to suit the requirements of the time. But here is an instance of work begun on right lines and abandoned!

        I cannot find that any considerable effort to benefit the French Basques was again made until Prince L.-L. Bonaparte came to England.

        No one interested in the Basques can speak of the Prince except in terms of the utmost respect. They are under a deep debt to him; he was almost the first to bring their language and literature before the learned world, and to excite an interest in their country which has never flagged. But it may be said without any depreciation or disrespect, that no more unsafe adviser could have been selected by those who wished to produce versions of Holy Scripture which should be Widely intelligible among the Basques. He was a specialist in dialects; the more peculiar a dialect was, the narrower the limits were within which it was spoken, the more it excited his interest and regard. If we look at the British Museum Catalogue of his works, we are astonished at the industry and versatility of the man. In English alone he has investigated all the provincial varieties of speech; he has publications in the dialects of Cornwall, Craven (Yorkshire), Durham, Dorset, Wiltshire, Lowland Scotch, Cumberland, &c. In France, Spain, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, he sought out and studied all forms of patois, and extended his researches to other than European languages. But he specially delighted in the complexities of Basque. It would be tedious to enumerate the various dialects and sub-dialects he discovered. His plan was to publish in each a small edition of one of the shortest books of the Old Testament; The Song of Solomon, Ruth, Jonah were his favourite selections.

        Of course he was obliged to have the assistance of natives, and in the choosing of these he was not always fortunate. At least one whole edition had to be recalled after publication on account of its incorrectness. In the more important dialects he printed a Gospel, usually that of St. Matthew or St. Luke; in the Labourdin dialect, with the aid of Captain Duvoisin, he achieved the great work of publishing a translation (based on a French version of the Vulgate) of the whole Bible (1859). From this translation the British and Foreign Bible Society has published the editions of the Gospels of St. Mark and St. John which are now on sale. The value of these editions must depend upon the merits of the Duvoisin Bible, which is too large a subject to enter on here, but it is understood that their circulation has not been successful. Until this translation appeared, no considerable portion of the Old Testament is known to have been published in Basque. Even this has never reached the Basque people. The edition must have been very small and the book is now exceedingly rare and expensive. Except in public libraries and in the collections of the wealthy it is not to be found.

        Although it has been available for thirty-five years, scarcely any use has hitherto been made of it for the Old Testament. Yet the publication of the Old Testament ought to be attempted, and is the natural preparation for the New. It would probably meet with less opposition from the authorities of the Roman Church and would be gladly read by the peasantry, who are now dependent on Epitomes of Scripture History, some of them admirably written, but lacking the interest of a continuous narrative.

        I have indicated above that any criticism of the Basque Bible as a whole is beyond my powers, but a few remarks may be made about the small portion of it which is coincident with the Translation now issued. The more recent version seems to suffer from the purism of style to which I have already drawn attention, and to be inferior to the older one in ease, naturalness, and vigour. It would have been difficult to excel a version, the style of which is said by good judges to be equal, if not superior, to that of Liçarrague. Enough has already been said about the intelligibility of D'Urte's Translation. It seems therefore clear that a popular edition ought to be published. It may secure circulation and even command a «market»; on the other hand it may be too late, and the number of Basque readers may now be too small for its success. It carries with it a romantic interest which may excite attention; at any rate the experiment should be tried. If no Society will undertake the task, an appeal should be made to private enterprise.

        Some explanation or perhaps apology may be offered for the form in which the Translation is printed. It has already met with criticism and even with ridicule. It has been said that rigorous reproduction of every [...]