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 [Greek: kataphyge] 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.