281. _Lycian Inscriptions._--I should be glad to hear what attempts have been made, and with what success, to decipher the inscriptions upon the Lycian monuments in the British Museum. Col. Mure, in his _History of Grecian Literature_, vol. i. p. 84., speaks of them as at present unintelligible. The character, he says, is a variety of the Græco-Phoenician. I find several, if not the greater part, of the letters in Gesenius's _Monumenta Phoenicia_, especially Tab. 11. and 12. What is the language in which they are written? And if an aboriginal tongue, over what portion of Asia did the stock to which it belongs extend in the historical period, and what is that stock? Is it to that class of dialects that the language of the Gods, as Homer distinguishes a certain tongue from the language of men, belongs: which called the "night-jar" χαλκίς, named by men κύμινδις (_Il._ 14. 291.); and "the giant" Βριάρεως, instead of Αἰγαίων (_Il._ 1. 403.); and "the Xanthus, Ξάνθος, instead of Σκάμανδρος; and, which is more remarkable still, "the hillock" on the plain of Troy, the σῆμα πολυσκάρθμοιο Μυρίνης, while men named it Βατίεια (_Il._ 2. 813.) I have hitherto been accustomed to consider these names which the gods use to be the old Pelasgian names, assured as I feel that the Pelasgi occupied the north-west corner of Asia Minor before the Greeks (Hellenes) took Troy, which event I have looked upon as one of many in which the energies and [ ... ] of the young and vigorous Hellenic family were successfully exerted against their contemporaries of the other less powerful descendants of the old Pelasgic settlers in that part of the world. But I shall be thankful for the information which others wiser than I can give, even if it be but a theory: accompanied with the _facts_ on which it is based, it will be worth attention. 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 Phoenicians, 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 Phoenicians gave it its name. THEOPHYLACT.