P.S.—I open this note, which was written from my dictation by my
secretary, Mrs. Forth, to assure myself that her inexperience has been
guilty of no error in matters of so much delicacy and importance. I have
detected no mistake of moment, and begin to hope that the important step
of matrimony to which I was guided by your example may not have been a
rash experiment.
* * * * *
_From the Rev. Mr. Casaubon to James Forth_, _Esq._, _Professor of
Etruscan_, _Oxford_.
DEAR MR. FORTH,—Your letter throws considerable light on a topic which
has long engaged my earnest attention. To my thinking, the _Cab_ in
_Cabiri_ = CAV, “hollow,” as in _cavus_, and refers to the Ark of Noah,
which, of course, before the entrance of every living thing according to
his kind, must have been the largest artificial hollow or empty space
known to our Adamite ancestors. Thus the Cabiri would answer, naturally,
to the Patæci, which, as Herodotus tells us, were usually figured on the
prows of ships. The Cabiri or Patæci, as children of Noah and men of the
“great vessel,” or Cave-men (a wonderful anticipation of modern science),
would perpetuate the memory of Arkite circumstances, and would be
selected, as the sacred tradition faded from men’s minds, as the guides
of navigation. I am sorry to seem out of harmony with your ideas; but it
is only a matter of seeming, for I have no doubt that the Etruscan
Involuti are also Arkite, and that they do not, as Max Müller may be
expected to intimate, represent the veiled or cloudy Dawns, but rather
the Arkite Patriarchs. We thus, from different starting-places, arrive
at the same goal, the Arkite solution of Bryant. I am aware that I am
old-fashioned—like Eumæus, “I dwell here among the swine, and go not
often to the city.” Your letters with little numerals (as _k_2) may
represent the exactness of modern philology; but more closely remind me
of the formulæ of algebra, a study in which I at no time excelled.
It is my purpose to visit Cambridge on June 3, to listen to a most
valuable address by Professor Tösch, of Bonn, on Hittite and Aztec
affinities. If you can meet me there and accept the hospitality of my
college, the encounter may prove a turning point in Mythological and
Philological Science.—Very faithfully yours,