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
Graeco-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" [Greek: chalkis], named by men [Greek: kymindis] (_Il._ 14.
291.); and "the giant" [Greek: Briareos], instead of [Greek: Aigaion]
(_Il._ 2. 403.); and "the Xanthus, [Greek: Xanthos], instead of [Greek:
Skamandros]; and, which is more remarkable still, "the hillock" on the
plain of Troy, the [Greek: sema polyskarthmoio Myrines], while men named
it [Greek: Batieia] (_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.