Dionysius of Sicily, who wrote about fifty years before the _Advent_, and who cannot be suspected of much partiality towards our forefathers, calls the land they inhabited by the name of _Irin_.[133] Nor will the circumstance of his applying to it in another place, the variation _Iris_, detract from this fact; as it is evident that he only manufactured this latter, having occasion to use a nominative case which he thought that _Irin_ would not well represent, and so, with the lubricity of a Greek, ever sacrificing sense to sound,[134] he gave birth to a conception which _strangled_ the original.[135] In the _Life of Gildas_, an early and eminent English ecclesiastic, we find it called _Iren_, when the biographer, talking of the proficiency made by his subject in literary pursuits, says that he betook himself to _Ireland_, which he designates as above, in order to ascertain, by communion with kindred teachers, the very utmost recesses of theology and philosophy.[136] Ordericus Vitalis, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,[137] having occasion to mention the _Irish_, calls them by the name of _Irenses_, equivalent to _Iranians_, that is _inhabitants_ of _Iran_, _Iren_, or _Irin_, whichever of them you happen to prefer. And as these are now established as the _basis_ of our general search, I shall address myself without further digression to their syllabic analysis. To do this the more effectually, and at the same time to comprise within one dissertation what otherwise might encroach upon two, it is to be noticed that the country known in the present day as _Persia_, and whither our labours will be directed at no distant hour, was by its _primitive_ inhabitants called _Iran_ also, and spelled as ours, with an initial _E_. The prefixing of this letter, in both instances of its occurrence, whether we regard the _Eastern_ or the _Western_ hemisphere, was neither the result of chance, nor intended as an operative in the import of the term. It was a mere _dialectal_ distinction, appertaining to the court-language of the dynasty of the times, and what is astoundingly miraculous, retains the same appellation, with literal precision, unimpaired, unadulterated, in both countries, up to the moment in which I write. _Palahvi_[138] is the appellation of this courtly dialect in _Persia_, and _Palahver_ is the epithet assigned to it in _Ireland_; and such is the softness and mellifluence of its enchanting tones, and its energy also, that to soothe care, to excite sensibility, or to stimulate heroism, it may properly be designated as “the language of the gods.”