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better literature of Rome is not only informed with the spirit of the Greek writers, but that it borrowed very largely from them, and that a knowledge of the Greek language was thought-by all the scholars of the Augustan age, at leastas indispensable an acquisition as it is by the learned of our own time. Although many Latin words are readily traced to a Greek original, and there is abundant evidence that a large proportion of their respective vocabularies was derived from a common source, yet the etymology of the Latin language must be admitted to be obscure, and it is probable that its exceeding vagueness and want of precision is to be ascribed to that very cause. On the other hand, the Greek primitives are so few, and its rules of derivation and composition are so philosophical, and at the same time so natural, simple and obvious, that every thinking Greek must have been acquainted with the whole physiology, so to speak, of his mother tongue, and the study of that noble language is the very best of etymological exercises. The superior purity of the dialect of refined women is partly constitutional, and partly owing to habits and associations, which protect them from the contagion of those corruptions of language, to which the occupations and duties of men perpetually expose them. But women are usually remarkable rather for a ready and graceful, than for a very extensive command of appropriate language, and the range of their vocabulary is generally as limited as their unhappily restricted educations.

If we were required to exemplify the value of etymological knowledge, by citing a conspicuous instance, we should refer to the writings of Coleridge, as at once a proof and an example of the great importance of this study. No writer of any age or country has surpassed, and no other English author has approached, that extraordinary man, in the perfect command of all the resources of his native tongue, and still less in minute, precise, and philosophical accuracy in the use of words, and clearness of distinction between vocables of similar general signification. This accuracy, which makes the works of Coleridge as valuable in philology as in philosophy, is chiefly owing to a good, though not

extensive knowledge of the primitive sources of the English language, and a close and careful attention to the laws of derivation and composition, and he perpetually illustrates and justifies his use of words by a reference to their original and primary signification.

But mere etymology, though it may aid us in tracing the sources of words, and in ascertaining the rules of their formation and change, is yet inadequate to teach us the organic laws, which determine the origin, growth, structure and modification of language. We cannot here enter upon the discussion of the idle inquiry, whether the power of speech was one of the original and primitive faculties of man implanted in him by the creative act of his maker, or communicated to him by inspiration or express revelation. Philologists, who deny this supposition, will admit, with Rask and Coleridge, that language, if human in its origin, is not artificial and of human invention, and that there may be a natural relation between the sign and the thing signified, or in other words, that it is not altogether arbitrary and conventional, but is a necessary product of man's orig inal faculties stimulated by the wants of social life. It is, if not a primitive, at least a natural faculty, and being, in some form, a necessary condition for the exercise of those powers which distinguish man from the brute, it is as essential as any other to our conception of the human. We are perhaps not authorized to affirm, that human language is necessarily articulate. The readiness with which savages of different tribes communicate by means of manual signs, and the triumphant success which has attended the efforts to educate deaf-mutes, by teaching written language through the aid of manual signs, seem to prove the contrary. Uneducated deaf-mutes, as well as savages, converse with each other, at first sight, by means of signs, which, though certainly never taught them, are, to a great extent, common to all that unfortunate class. Indeed, the parents and family friends are not the instructors, but the pupils of the infant deaf-mute, in this silent but expressive language, and nature is the great schoolmistress both of her dumb and her speaking children.* If then this supposition

*To express equality, the relation of fraternity, &c., the deaf-mute places the two fore-fingers side by side. Had Shakspeare observed this, or was it a higher faculty than the power of observation, that suggested to him Fluellen's simile, "'tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers?"

in regard to the origin of language is well founded, its conception, growth, and development must be regulated by fixed laws, and though we can imitate none of the creative processes of organic nature, yet there is no apparent reason for doubt ing that those laws may be discoverable. In the present state of philological learning, however, it is not to be expected, that such investigations will enter into the ordinary course of general education, and for the present, all, but the gifted and favored few who belong to the mystic priesthood of nature, must be content to pursue the study of language with humbler aims and for narrower ends.

Philological pursuits, considered as an auxiliary to the study of our own tongue, may be cultivated with special reference either to the principles of universal grammar, or to the primitive etymological sources of the particular language which we seek to master. What class of languages, then, has the strongest claims to the attention of the student of English, in these two points of view?

The study of living tongues is indispensable, on account of the greater perfection with which they may be acquired, and the more intimate knowledge of the general structure of language which may thus be attained, while the Greek is more powerfully recommended than any other speech, by its philosophical structure, its copiousness, its exact precision and delicacy of discrimination, its flexibility, its admirable polish, its infinite variety, power and picturesqueness of expression, and, in a word, its universality. But the languages of Greece and Rome are emphatically dead. They belong to other men, to other times, as it were, to another and an extinct race of beings, and these relics of ancient mind are to us what the fossilized bones of the mastodon and megalonyx are to the skeletons of our domestic animals. The means for thoroughly understanding these tongues no longer exist. The language of books is always premeditated and artificial. No man speaks, or habitually thinks, as he writes, and the recording of our words or our thoughts is a process of translation. Besides, many of those branches of literature, which, like the historical novel, admit the free use of the colloquial style, and are devoted to the portraiture of men and manners, are of modern origin. Periodical literature the ancients had none, and of their comic drama, and their satirical and epistolary

literature, not much has survived. We know little of their statistics, little of the habits of their domestic and familiar life, and silent Pompeii has taught us more of the living Italian of the first century, than all the extant literature of Rome. Of the ordinary style and common topics of familiar conversation, of the social and convivial dialect, the phrases of salutation and compliment, the vocabulary of the boudoir, the nursery, the market, and the kitchen, the technical language of commerce, agriculture, and the mechanic arts, the names of many of the most familiar objects, and numerous other items, which make up the sum of ordinary personal intercourse, most scholars are almost entirely ignorant, and much of this knowledge has perished altogether. We never acquire the same mastery over the dead languages which we often attain over living tongues. We dare not venture upon a new Greek or Latin phrase, nor are we ever so certain that we have possessed ourselves of the true spirit of those languages, as to be quite sure that a new combination of words is allowable. The best modern Latin is a mere cento, a patchwork of dexterously united shreds and fragments not woven by the artist, but supplied from the storehouse of memory, and we do not hesitate to condemn, as unclassical and barbarous, every phrase, every combination of vocables, which we do not remember to have met, or for which the writer cannot produce the authority of precedent. The objection once allowed against new counts, that they were nova impressionis, and not to be found in the Register, is yet valid against new forms of speech in the modern use of the ancient tongues. This slavery to authority indicates an imperfect acquaintance with those languages, and it is quite true, as a learned Englishman complained, that no modern scholar "read Greek as he reads a news

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The Greek characters, or the printed words of any other language learned from books, do not suggest to us the familiar sounds of a known speech, but they are the conventional symbols of ideas, of which articulate words are the proper representatives, and to us are essentially as meaningless as the inscriptions upon an Egyptian obelisk, or the Chinese characters on a tea-chest. To a certain extent, indeed, ideographic writ ing may be expressive, in the same way that manual signs are significant; but this cannot be carried far, and in general the analogies will be as fanciful as those upon which Castel founded the theory of his ocular harpsichord. Castel imagined that he had discovered between the primitive colors the same relations that exist between the tones of the diatonic scale, and he endeavored to make both melody and harmony visible, or to produce upon the eye, by succession and combination of colors, effects analogous to those produced upon the ear by sequence and chord of sounds. What has been incorrectly affirmed of language is true of alphabetical writing, namely that it is entirely arbitrary and conventional, while there does seem to be a natural relation between emotions (and perhaps also external objects) and the articulate sounds by which they are expressed. Without here entering upon the abstruser grounds, which seem to prove that such relation exists, it is sufficient for our present purpose to refer to the personal experience of every scholar. Every linguist will confirm the remark, that in all languages we meet with words, whose signification we seem to recollect rather than to acquire, sounds apparently informed with meaning, recognized almost at once as essentially significant, and as natural exponents of the feelings, the actions, or the objects they represent. So strong is this impression of the superior force of particular words, even in languages with which we are not familiar, that they sometimes rise to the lips, instead of the apparently less appropriate and expressive corresponding words of our own tongue.

Recent circumstances have conspired to give a favorable impulse to philological pursuits. The English conquests in the East have opened the mines of oriental lore to the literati of the West. The efforts of Bible and missionary societies have led to the study of numerous barbarous and obscure dialects. The general

peace, which, with little interruption, has prevailed throughout Christendom for an entire generation, the increased extent of mercantile enterprise, the prodigious improvement and multiplication of the means of communication between distant nations, and the consequent freer intercourse between all those parts of the world where Christian influence is felt, have combined to render a knowledge of the principal spoken languages of the old world more generally desirable; and at the same time, the facilities for their acquisition have been so greatly improved, that it is now an easier task to rival the polyglot fame of Sir William Jones or Dr. Bowring, than it was to master three or four languages a half century since.

The scholars of continental, and especially of Northern Europe, have led the way in the establishment of a new school of philology; and the philosophical study of the comparative anatomy of language, as exemplified in the works of Rask, Grimm, Bopp, Meidinger, and numerous others, has not only facilitated the acquisition of foreign tongues, and at the same time aided the student in attaining to a better knowledge of his own, but it has shed much curious and unexpected light on both psychology and the early history of our race.

The success which has attended these enlightened labors gives an earnest of incalculable and yet unforeseen benefits to flow from the continued prosecution of these studies in the spirit in which they have been begun. We may hope that phonology, or the analysis and comparison of articulate sounds, combined with a thorough knowledge of the anatomical structure of the vocal organs and the animal mechanics of speech, will at length be reduced, by long observation and philosophical arrangement and deduction, to the rank of one of the natural sciences. It will then have its nomenclature, its classifications, its laws, and even pronunciation will be taught by books. Though very much has been done for the illustration of phonology, we must yet admit, that it is but in its earliest infancy. Linguists are by no means agreed upon the number or classification of primary sounds, nor is it settled what articulations are simple, and what are compound. Even longs and shorts are not clearly distinguished, sounds are vaguely characterized as open or close, broad or flat, high or low, hard,

soft, or sharp-different writers using these epithets in very different applications dissimilar sounds are confounded, like sounds distinguished, and even Rask discovers a difference between the English vein and vain, veil and vale.

With the present imperfect helps in phonology, the difficulty in acquiring the true pronunciation of foreign vowelsounds lies rather in the ear, than in the organs of speech. As soon as we are able to appreciate and distinguish the delicate shades of foreign articulation, we can, in general, imitate these new sounds with little difficulty, for there exists between the ear and the vocal organs a sympathy, as mysterious as that which guides the arm of the slinger, in hurling the stone to the mark on which his eye is fixed. One reason why those, who learn a language in the country where it is vernacular, acquire the pronunciation both more readily and more perfectly, is that they hear before they speak, and the ear becomes capable of discriminating between sounds slightly different, before bad habits of articulation are contracted by awkward attempts at imitating accents which the undisciplined ear is unable to appreciate. From the mere force of habits acquired in early life, the tongue continues to discriminate between sounds, which the ear, now grown partially insensible, cannot distinguish, and persons not accustomed to the analysis of sounds, often habitually make distinctions, of which they are totally unconscious. Here, also, we find the explanation of the remarkable fact, that the youngest children always articulate vowel sounds accurately, though they are long in mastering the more obstinate consonants. There are, however, other facts important to be noticed, in accounting for the closeness with which children imitate the accent of those with whom they converse. One is the greater sensibility and delicacy of the organ of hearing in early childhood, and the other is the predominance of the mimetic propensities, which characterize not only children, but many of the ruder tribes of savages; and in this connection, it is interesting to observe, that many travelers have found, in very barbarous races, an almost miraculous aptitude in acquiring sounds foreign from any to which they had been accustomed. It is even said, that they are sometimes able to repeat, with the closest exactness, whole sentences of European languages, after

hearing them a single time pronounced. From these considerations, whose force is confirmed by some experience in our own case, we would earnestly recommend to adult persons commencing the study of a foreign language, to listen long before they attempt to articulate, and to insist that the teacher, and not the pupil, shall read the lessons.

The effect of philological studies, pursued with the liberal and enlarged views which we have noticed, has been a general effort to nationalize and improve, from their own resources, the languages of Europe from Iceland to Greece, and an enlightened and philosophical purism is the aim of the best writers of our day in every European tongue. The not unreasonable fears, which were once en tertained, of the influence of French taste in literature, and of the general prevalence of that language as the common international dialect of Europe, have proved as mistaken as the Gallic dreams of universal empire, and pure nationality in language, thought, and subject is every where the readiest path to literary celebrity. In becoming nationalized, languages tend to become also less flexible, and more difficult both of translation and of acquisition; but on the other hand, the great frequency of translation has contributed to give all the European tongues a greater facility and variety of expression. The ablest and most popular works in every modern cultivated language are translated into all the rest. The provincialisms and Doric idioms of Scott, and the Americanisms of Cooper, have found exponents, if not equivalents, in every European tongue; and on the other hand, English literature has been enriched by translations of most of the valuable works, which have appeared on the continent, since the revival of learning. The Romance languages, though not wanting in copiousness, all partake of the unyielding character of that baldest of cultivated tongues, their common mother the Latin, well characterized by Tegner as "stolt, oböjlig och arm," proud, poor, inflexible, and we meet few good versions in any of them, from languages of a different class. English literature on the contrary, has, from Lord Berners to Freere, always been remarkable for the excellence of its translations, and there are few tongues, with so meagre inflections, which at all approach it in facility of adaptation to foreign forms of thought and speech. The English is

sufficiently flexible to imitate the emasculated delicacy of the Italian, the flippant sentimentality and colloquial ease of the French, the stiff and unbending majesty of the Spanish, and even the Protean variety of the German and the Greek. This advantage it owes less to its structure, than to its piebald and Babylonish composition, a circumstance which, however, renders its nationalization, or improvement from its own stock, nearly impossible. The miscellaneous character of the sources from which the English is derived requires, from those who would thoroughly master it, a wide range of etymological research, and a comprehensive study of both the vocabulary and the idioms of many languages, and, in this point of view, some examination of its composition, structure, and peculiarities may be not without interest. No thinking observer can have failed to notice, that there is in English a perpetual struggle between the constituent elements, and this, in reference not merely to the relative predominance of Saxon and of Latin vocables and syntax, but also to the pronunciation. The Gothic element, for instance, inclines to throw the accent backwards, the Romance, to rest it upon the final or penultimate syllable; the one, to attach the consonant to the preceding vowel, the other, to join it to that which follows. In conversation, we are prone to use Saxon words and Saxon idioms, while in written composition, we affect both a vocabulary and a syntax borrowed from the Latin. This incessant conflict of ingredients and structure, is, perhaps, the principal reason why comparatively few Englishmen are able to command a flow of pure and elegant, and, at the same time, familiar conversational language, a talent, certainly, by no means so rare among those who speak a dialect homogeneous in its origin. Foreigners complain, with reason, of the indistinct utterance of the English, and Tegner satirizes our mother tongue, as a "språk för de stammande gjort," speech for stammerers framed. Much of this nauseous thickness of articulation is at best

a cockney affectation, and fashion has sanctioned the disgusting practice of, as Tegner in the same epigram complains, (en hälft stöter du fram, en hälft sväljer du ner,) sputtering out one half of the word, and swallowing the other. There is, however, a better reason for this pronunciation, so far as it is a legitimate peculiarity of the English tongue. The syllables, which follow the principal accent, are, in all languages, pronounced more rapidly and more indistinctly than those which precede it. This is partly from physical causes, but the principal reason is, that the concluding syllables are, in a large proportion of words, in most languages, mere inflexions, which may be slurred over, or even suppressed, without rendering the speaker less intelligible. What the actual practice of the Greeks, for instance, was in this particular, we have not the means of knowing, but we can easily conceive, that a person familiar with Greek would find little difficulty in understanding a speaker, who should dwell very little on trisyllabic endings in ouɛvor and the like. Although the place of the accent in English is variable, yet in most words, polysyllables especially, it follows the general rule of the Gothic languages, and is thrown far back. There is, however, this difference between the English and the Gothic languages: in the latter, both the roots and the inflexions are usually of one, or, at most, two syllables. Polysyllables are, of course, compound, and there is a distinct secondary accent on the principal syllable of each of the component primitives. Every part of the word is significant, and must be fully articulated, in order to render the whole intelligible. In English, on the other hand, the polysyllables are usually of Latin origin, and, if compound, are of an etymology not obvious to most of those who use them. We follow the analogy of the Gothic languages in accenting the initial syllables; and the latter portion of the word, being either merely a terminal form, or, if otherwise, inexpressive to us, is, very naturally, negligently enunciated.*

The fact that uneducated persons usually clip words, by suppressing the syllables preceding the accent, may seem to be at variance with what we have stated, in regard to the comparative distinctness with which the syllables preceding and those following the accent are pronounced, but we appeal with confidence to the ear of any attentive orthoepist for a confirmation of the truth of our remark. An ingenious female friend suggests to us, that the reason why ignorant persons suppress rather the distinctly uttered initial, than the comparatively inaudible final syllables, is that the latter, even

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