Lhuyd, a celebrated and profound antiquary, remarks, Arch. Brit. page 35. "It is a common error in etymology to endeavor the deriving all the radical words of our western European languages from the Latin and Greek; or indeed to derive constantly the primitives of any one language from any particular tongue. When we do this, we seem to forget that all have been subject to alterations; and that the greater and more polite any nation is, the more subject, (partly for improvement, and partly out of a luxurious wantonness) to new model their language. We must therefore necessarily allow, that whatever nations were of the neighborhood and of one common origin with the Greeks and Latins, when they began to distinguish themselves for politeness, they must have preserved their languages (which could differ from theirs only in dialects) much better than they; and consequently no absurdity to suppose a great many words of the language, spoken by the old aborigines, the Osci, the Læstrigones, the Ausonians, Ænotrians, Umbrians and Sabines, out of which the Latin was composed, to have been better preserved in the Celtic than in the Roman. "Lingua Hetrusca, Phrygia, Celtica (says the learned Stiernhelm) affines sunt omnes; ex uno fonte derivatæ. Nec Græca longe distat, Japheticæ sunt omnes; ergo et ipsa Latina. Non igitur mirium est innumera vocabula dictarum Linguarum communia esse cum Latinis." And that being granted, it must also be allowed that the Celtic (as well as all other languages) has been best preserved by such of their colonies, as, from the situation of their country, have been the least subject to foreign invasions. Whence it proceeds that we always find the ancient languages are best retained in mountains and islands."
The result of this doctrine is, that the primitive Celtic was preserved, in greatest purity, in Britain, before the Roman and Saxon conquests, and since those periods, in Wales and Cornwall. Hence the affinity between the Hebrew and British, which will afterward appear.
Wallis remarks that it is doubtful whether many words in the English and German languages are derived from the Latin, or the Latin from the Teutonic, or whether all were derived from the same stock. "Multas autem voces, quæ nobis cum Germanis fere sunt communes, dubium est an prisci olim Teutones a Latinis, an hi ab illis, aut denique utrique ab eodem commune fonte, acceperint."----Gram. Cap. 14.