A PHILOLOGICAL STUDY.

POL.-What do you read, my lord?
HAM.-Words, words, words.

THE rules which form the grammar of any particular language, so far as they differ from those of any other, are occasioned by accidental and temporary circumstances. Probably for this reason these rules have been treated by our ablest scholars and authors under the head of the history of language rather than the science of language. Sir John Stoddard says that in order to understand the English grammar we must have a knowledge of universal grammar as well as of the history of language. He says that universal grammar disregards that which is peculiar to the speech of this or that individual tribe, race, or nation, and considers only what is common to man in all ages and countries, both as to an arrangement of his thoughts and feelings with a view to their communication to others, and also as to the bodily organs or instruments with which the Almighty has furnished us for the purpose of such communications.

His work on "Glossology, or the Historical Relations of Languages," dwells at length on the possibility and probability of forming from the existing languages a universal language. His investigations into the science and philosophy of language are learned and varied in the extreme. They are, however, of too speculative a character to be of

much assistance to those who wish to understand the practical principles of Philology.

The English language is wholly free from that labyrinth of cases, moods, and tenses, common to the Greek and Latin.

There are but few terminations in its verbs, and none at all in its adjectives, save for the expression of the degrees of comparison. There is no language better suited for the formation of derivatives from their roots. It has none of the untranslatable idiomatic expressions of the French, the German, the Spanish, and the Italian.

One of its chief beauties is its distinction of gender, or the modification of its nouns to denote the distinction of sex through gender.

The French, for instance, have no neuter gender. Their two articles, masculine le, and feminine la, one or the other is prefixed to their substantive nouns to denote their gender, and as a natural consequence the most perplexing difficulties must inevitably follow. Beau in their language is of the masculine gender, and yet the fair sex are called le beau sexe. Vossius says that gender is properly a distinction of sex, but it is improperly attributed to those things which have not sex, and only follow the nature of things having sex in so far as the agreement of substantive with adjective. Sex is properly expressed in reference to male and female, as Pythagoras and Theona; ager, a field, therefore, is improperly called masculine, and herba, an herb, is improperly called feminine. But animal is neuter, because it is construed neither way. It never occurred to Vossius that all substantives could be properly classed by gender. Harris says that every substantive is male or female, or both male and female, or neither one nor the other, so that with respect to sexes and their negation, all substantives conceivable are comprehended under this fourfold consideration.

Harris failed to include the common gender in his classification of substantive nouns. Lindley Murray says that there is no such gender, and that the business of parsing can be done without it. Goold Brown agrees with Murray, and says the term "common gender common gender" is applicable to the learned languages, but in the English it is plainly a solecism. Noble Butler has completely overthrown this theory. According to Butler, nouns which are applied to living beings without reference to sex are of the common gender, as parent, cousin, child, sheep, friend, neighbor. The term common gender is a grammatical term, applied the words, and does not imply any common sex.

merely to

We have also what is called the transfer of gender in our own language, and by means of it we are enabled to distinguish between prose and poetry, or between the language of reality and imagination.

For instance, we can give form, distinctness, and beauty to an object by raising that object to the dignity of a person. There are some very fine illustrations of what is meant by the transfer of gender in Milton and in the Bible, though it is well enough to remark that the neuter possessive pronouns were then not generally in use.

If gender were permanently fixed in our language, the following description of thunder, in Milton, would lose half its beauty:

66 "The thunder,

Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps has spent his shafts."

We give below a quotation from Milton in which gender is applied with singular force and beauty to the idea of form :

"His form had yet not lost

All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined.”

But perhaps the finest example that can be given of the transfer of gender occurs in a description of night in the Book of Wisdom : "While all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, Thine Almighty word leaped down from Heaven out of Thy royal throne, like a fierce man of war into a land of destruction."

There is a great disposition on the part of a certain class of philologists to do away with the use of the words sung and sprung.

Richard Savage has been charged with ignorance for the use of sprung and sung, instead of sprang and sang, in the lines,

"From liberty each noble science sprung A Bacon brightened and a Spenser sung. But we do not know of any reason why sprung and sung should not be considered correct words. Worcester, in his large lexicon, says that sprang and sang are obsolescents, and Webster admits them partially so.

Dr. Bullion, Hallock, Pinneo, Brown, Kirkham, and, best of all, Noble Butler, prefer sung and sprung to sang and sprang. In Butler's list of irregular verbs in which the past tense and the auxiliary perfect participle are alike in form, we have:-Imperfect, or present infinitive, sing; past indicative, sung; auxiliary perfect participle, sung. The word sang is placed at the right of the column of past indicatives to indicate that sung is the choicest word, and the one most in use. Shone is thus placed before shined.

We have in the same list :-Imperfect, or present infinite, spring; past, sprung; auxiliary perfect, sprung. So likewise string, strung, strung, and swing, swung, swung. Some grammarians prefer drank to drunk for the participle of drink. At one time drank was used occasionally by good writers, but according to Mr. Butler it is only employed by writers of an inferior class. The best authors

say

"Toasts” were drunk, and not "Toasts were drank. We have a correct use of the word in Coleridge's lines, "He on honey dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise."

The following examples have been furnished me by Mr. Butler from the advanced proof-sheets of his new gramma:

"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have ate, and drunk, and lived in social intercourse with him.”—Dr. Johnson. "The toast is drunk with a good deal of cheering."-Dickens. “Claret equal to the best which is drunk in London.”—Macaulay. "O'Doherty's health being drunk.”—Prof. Wilson.

"The health of King James was drunk with loud acclamations.”. Macaulay.

"He had drunk largely."-Thackeray.

"Wine was more generally drunk than now."-Hawthorne.
"I have not drunk a glass of wine for twelve months."-Hood.

Probably enough examples have been given to show that drunk is preferred to drank by our best writers.

Goold Brown, Pinneo, and some other grammarians, set down bear, to carry, and bear, to bring forth, as two distinct verbs, the former with the participle borne, and the latter with the participle born. These authors are supported in their theory by Dr. Webster, who says that "a very useful distinction is observed by good authors, who in the sense. of produced or brought forth write this word born, but in the sense of carried write it borne." It is true enough that in the sense of carried the participle is borne; but surely in the sense of produced the participle is not born.

We do not say the tree has born fruit, but the tree has borne fruit; nor that the mother has born children, but borne children. Born is never used in the active voice, and never in the passive when followed by the preposition by.