T. GATAKER, Jux. 213 one of the ablest philologists of the age. His work is entitled, " Thomae Gatakeri Londinatis de Novi Testamenti stylo Dissertatio : qua viri doctissimi Sebastiani Pfochenii de Linguze Grzecze Novi Testamenti puritate, in qua Hebraismis giro vulga finguntur quam plurimis larva detrahi dicitur diatribe ad examen revocatur ; Scriptorumque qua sacrorum qua profanorum loca aliquam multa obiter explicantur atque illustrantur. Cum indicibus necessaries," 1648. The author tells us, in the first chapter of his Dissertation, that, meeting with the treatise of Sebastian Pfochenius, a German divine, published in 1629, he read it with great attention, and found it very weighty inmatter, and abundantly full of good literature. Notwithstanding this, he found many of the author's sentiments repugnant to his own, and in his judgment not agreeable to truth. He saw likewise that many learned and great men were censured without cause, and sometimes represented as speaking a language very different from what he took to be their real sentiments. These observations induced him to examine a multitude of questions started in that treatise, or that which naturally flowed from them, in which he shews his candour to be every way equal to his skill in criticism. He does not use harsh expressions or hard names, but contents himselfwith discovering mistakes, and shewing the grounds of them. In following this method, he opens a field of very curious and instructive learning, and shews such quickness of penetration, such soundness of judgment, and such compass of reading, as are truly admirable. He begins by refuting a principle that Pfochenius had assumed, viz. that the Greek, Latin, German, &c. are original tongues whereas, in Mr. Gataker's opinion, it is very difficult to know which are original, but with repect to the Latin he maintains that it is not. He shews from the authority, both of ancient and modern writers, that it was a compound of several languages spoken by the Sabines, Oscans, and other old inhabitants of Italy, but more especially of Greek ; and to demonstrate this more effectually, he takes the first five lines of Virgil, one of the purest and most elegant of the Latin poets, and proves that there is scarcely a single word in them which is not derived from the Greek. Thus he saps the very foundation of Pfochenius's system, by making it evident, that there canbe no assurance of the purity of any language, in the sense in which he understands it. In the fifth chapter he states Pfochenius's three principal questions, first, whether the text of the New Testament be truly Greek, or not different from that used by profane
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