_Why saith the Italian Signior cy, the Spaniard cy Sennor? Because the one puts that behind, the other puts before._ And because you are so happy in some Translations, I pray return me these two verses in English, _Occidit heu tandem multos quæ occidit amantes, Et cinis est hodie quæ fuit ignis heri._ My occasions make me to take off my Pen. I am, _etc._ OF LANGUAGES And particularly of the Saxon Tongue. TRACT VIII SIR, The last Discourse we had of the Saxon Tongue recalled to my mind some forgotten considerations. Though the Earth were widely peopled before the Flood, (as many learned men conceive) yet whether after a large dispersion, and the space of sixteen hundred years, men maintained so uniform a Language in all parts, as to be strictly of one Tongue, and readily to understand each other, may very well be doubted. For though the World preserved in the Family of _Noah_ before the confusion of Tongues might be said to be of one Lip, yet even permitted to themselves their humours, inventions, necessities, and new objects, without the miracle of Confusion at first, in so long a tract of time, there had probably been a Babel. For whether _America_ were first peopled by one or several Nations, yet cannot that number of different planting Nations, answer the multiplicity of their present different Languages, of no affinity unto each other; and even in their Northern Nations and incommunicating Angles, their Languages are widely differing. A native Interpreter brought from _California_ proved of no use unto the Spaniards upon the neighbour Shore. From _Chiapa_, to _Guatemala_, _S. Salvador_, _Honduras_, there are at least eighteen several languages; and so numerous are they both in the Peruvian and Mexican Regions, that the great Princes are fain to have one common Language, which besides their vernaculous and Mother Tongues, may serve for commerce between them. And since the confusion of Tongues at first fell onely upon those which were present in _Sinaar_ at the work of _Babel_, whether the primitive Language from _Noah_ were onely preserved in the Family of _Heber_, and not also in divers others, which might be absent at the same, whether all came away and many might not be left behind in their first Plantations about the foot of the Hills, whereabout the Ark rested and _Noah_ became an Husbandman, is not absurdly doubted.