If I have followed in these lectures the better known and more widely
received etymology of the name Goth, I have done so out of no
disrespect to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me
adhuc sub judice. It is this, as far as I understand it. That
'Goth' was not the aboriginal name of the race. That they were
probably not so called till they came into the land of the Getae,
about the mouths of the Danube. That the Teutonic name for the
Ostrogoths was Grutungs, and that of the Visigoths (which he does not
consider to mean West-Goths) Thervings, Thuringer. That on reaching
the land of the Getae they took their name; 'just as the Kentings of
Anglo-Saxon England took name from the Keltic country of Kent;' and
that the names Goth, Gothones, Gothini were originally given to
Lithuanians by their Sclavonic neighbours. I merely state the
theory, and leave it for the judgment of others.

The principal points which Dr. Latham considers himself to have
established, are -

That the area and population of the Teutonic tribes have been, on the
authority of Tacitus, much overrated; many tribes hitherto supposed
to be Teutonic being really Sclavonic, &c.

This need not shock our pride, if proved--as it seems to me to be.
The nations who have influenced the world's destiny have not been
great, in the modern American sense of 'big;' but great in heart, as
our forefathers were. The Greeks were but a handful at Salamis; so
were the Romans of the Republic; so were the Spaniards of America;
so, probably, were the Aztecs and Incas whom they overthrew; and
surely our own conquerors and re-conquerers of Hindostan have shewn
enough that it is not numbers, but soul, which gives a race the power