can arrest the sense of the writer. They can pause, and revolve, and compare at their leisure, one passage with another; whereas, the voice is fugitive and passing: you must catch the words the moment they are uttered, or you lose them for ever.

But although these be so great advantages of written Language, that Speech, without Writing, would have been very inadequate for the instruction of mankind; yet we must not forget to observe, that spoken Language has a great superiority over written Language, in point of energy or force. The voice of the living Speaker makes an impression on the mind, much stronger than can be made by the perusal of any Writing. The tones of voice, the looks and gestures which accompany discourse, and which no Writing can convey, render discourse, when it is well managed, infinitely more clear, and more expressive, than the most accurate Writing. For tones, looks, and gestures, are natural interpreters of the sentiments of the mind. They remove ambiguities; they enforce impressions; they operate on us by means of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful instruments of persuasion. Our sympathy is always awakened more by hearing the Speaker, than by reading his works in our closet. Hence, though Writing may answer the purposes of mere instruction, yet all the great and high efforts of eloquence must be made, by means of spoken, not of written, Language.

LECTURE VIII.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE.

AFTER having given an account of the Rise and Progress of Language, I proceed to treat of its Structure, or of General Grammar. The structure of Language is extremely artificial; and there are few sciences in which a deeper or more refined logic is employed, than in grammar. It is apt to be slighted by superficial thinkers, as belonging to those rudiments of knowledge, which were inculcated upon us in our earliest youth. But what was then inculcated before we could comprehend its principles, would abundantly repay our study in maturer years; and to the ignorance of it, must be attributed many of those fundamental defects which appear in writing.

Few authors have written with philosophical accuracy on the principles of General Grammar; and what is more to be regretted, fewer still have thought of applying those principles to the English Language. While the French tongue has long been an object of attention to many able and ingenious writers of that nation, who have considered its construction, and determined its propriety with great accuracy, the Genius and Grammar

of the English, to the reproach of the country, have not been studied with equal care, or ascertained with the same precision. Attempts have been made, indeed, of late, towards supplying this defect; and some able writers have entered on the subject: but much remains yet to be done.

I do not propose to give any system, either of Grammar in general, or of English Grammar in particular. A minute discussion of the niceties of Language would carry us too much off from other objects, which demand our attention in the course of Lectures. But I propose to give a general view of the chief principles relating to this subject, in observations on the several parts of which Speech or Language is composed; remarking, as I go along, the peculiarities of our own Tongue. After which,

I shall make some more particular remarks on the Genius of the English Language.

The first thing to be considered, is the division of the several parts of Speech. The essential parts of Speech are the same in all Languages. There must always be some words which denote the names of objects, or mark the subject of discourse; other words, which denote the qualities of those objects, and express what we affirm concerning them; and other words, which point out their connections and relations. Hence, substantives, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, must necessarily be found in all Languages. The most simple and comprehensive division of the parts of Speech is, into substantives, attributives, and connectives." Substantives, are all the

words which express the names of objects, or the subjects of discourse; attributives, are all the words which express any attribute, property, or action of the former; connectives, are what express the connections, relations, and dependencies, which take place among them. The common grammatical division of Speech into eight parts: nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions; is not very logical, as might be easily shown; as it comprehends under the general term of nouns, both substantives and adjectives, which are parts of Speech generically and essentially distinct; while it makes a separate part of Speech of participles, which are no other than verbal adjectives. However, as these are the terms to which our ears have been most familiarized, and as an exact logical division is of no great consequence to our present

• Quinctilian informs us, that this was the most ancient division. "Tum videbit quod et quæ sunt partes orationis. Quanquam de numero parum convenit. Veteres enim, quorum fuerant Aristoteles atque Theodictes, verba modo, et nomina, et convinctiones tradiderunt. Videlicet, quod in verbis vim sermonis, in nominibus materiam, (quia alterum est quod loquimur, alterum de quo loquimur,) in convinctionibus antem complexum eorum esse judicârunt; quas conjunctiones a plerisque dici scio; sed hæc videtur ex ovvdeoμa magis propria translatio. Paulatim a philosophicis ac maximè a stoicis, auctus est numerus; ac primùm convinctionibus articuli adjecti; post præposi tiones; nominibus, appellatio, deinde pronomen; deinde mistum verbo participium; ipsis, verbis, adverbia." Lib. I. cap, iv.

purpose, it will be better to make use of these known terms than of any other.

*

We are naturally led to begin with the consideration of substantive nouns, which are the foundation of all Grammar, and may be considered as the most ancient part of Speech. For assuredly, as soon as men had got beyond simple interjections, or exclamations of passion, and began to communicate themselves by discourse, they would be under a necessity of assigning names to the objects they saw around them; which, in Grammatical Language, is called the invention of substantive nouns." And here, at our first setting out, somewhat curious occurs. The individual objects which surround us are infinite in number. A savage, wherever he looked, beheld forests and trees. To give separate names to every one of those trees, would have been an endless and impracticable undertaking. The first object was to give a name to that particular tree, whose fruit relieved his hunger, or whose shade protected him from the sun. But observing that though other trees were distinguished from this by peculiar qualities of size or appearance, yet, that they also agreed and resembled one another in certain common qualities, such as springing from a root, and bearing branches and leaves, he formed in his mind some general idea of those common qualities, and ranging all that possessed them under one class of objects, he called that whole class, a tree. Longer experience taught him to subdivide this genus into the several species of oak, pine, ash, and the rest, according as his observation extended to the several qualities in which these trees agreed or differed.

But, still, he made use of only general terms in Speech. For the oak, the pine, and the ash, were names of whole classes of objects; each of which included an immense number of undis

* I do not mean to assert, that among all nations, the first invented words were simple and regular substantive nouns. Nothing is more difficult than to ascertain the precise steps by which men proceeded in the formation of language. Names for objects must, doubtless, have arisen in the most early stages of speech. But it is probable, as the learned author of the Treatise On the Origin and Progress of Language has shown (vol. i. p. 371, 395), that, among several savage tribes, some of the first articulate sounds that were formed denoted a whole sentence rather than the name of a particular object; conveying some information, or expressing some desires or fears, suited to the circumstances in which that tribe was placed, or relating to the business they had most frequent occasion to carry on; as, the lion is coming, the river is swelling, &c. Many of their first words, it is likewise probable, were not simple substantive nouns, but substantives, accompanied with some of those attributes, in conjunction with which they were most frequently accustomed to behold them; as, the great bear, the little hut, the wound made by the hatchet, &c. Of all which the author produces instances from several of the American languages; and it is, undoubtedly, suitable to the natural course of the operations of the human mind, thus to begin with particulars the most obvious to sense, and to proceed from these to more general expressions. He likewise observes, that the words of those primitive tongues are far from being, as we might suppose them, rude and short, and crowded with consonants; but, on the contrary, are, for the most part, long words, and full of vowels. This is the consequence of their being formed upon the natural sounds which the voice utters with the most ease, a little varied, and distinguished by articulation; and he shows this to hold in fact, among most of the barbarous languages which are known.

tinguished individuals. Here then, it appears, that though the formation of abstract, or general conceptions, is supposed to be a difficult operation of the mind; such conceptions must have entered into the very first formation of Language. For, if we except only the proper names of persons, such as Cæsar, John, Peter, all the other substantive nouns which we employ in discourse are the names, not of individual objects, but of very extensive genera, or species of objects; as man, lion, house, river, &c. We are not, however, to imagine, that this invention of general, or abstract terms, requires any great exertion of metaphysical capacity: for, by whatever steps the mind proceeds in it, it is certain, that when men have once observed resemblances among objects, they are naturally inclined to call all those which resemble one another by one common name; and of course to class them under one species. We may daily observe this practised by children, in their first attempts towards acquiring language.

But now, after language had proceeded as far as I havedescribed, the notification which it made of objects was still very imperfect for, when one mentioned to another, in discourse, any substantive noun, such as man, lion, or tree, how was it to be known, which man, which lion, or which tree he meant, among the many comprehended under one name? Here occurs a very curious, and a very useful contrivance for specifying the individual object intended, by means of that part of Speech called the Article.

The force of the Article consists, in pointing, or singling out from the common mass, the individual of which we mean to speak. In English we have two Articles, a and the; a is more general and unlimited; the more definite and special. A is much the same with one, and marks only any one individual of a species that individual being either unknown, or left undetermined; as, a lion, a king. The, which possesses more properly the force of the Article, ascertains some known or determined individual of the species; as, the lion, the king.

Articles are words of great use in speech. In some languages, however, they are not found. The Greeks have but one Article, órò, which answers to our definite, or proper Article, the. They have no word which answers to our Article a; but they supply its place by the absence of their Article: Thus BaoAave signifies, a king; ó Barideve, the king. The Latins have no article. In the room of it they employ pronouns, as hic, ille, iste, for pointing out the objects which they want to distinguish. "Noster sermo," says Quinctilian, says Quinctilian, "articulos non desiderat, ideoque in alias partes orationis sparguntur." This, however, appears to me a defect in the Latin tongue; as Articles contribute much to the clearness and precision of language.

In order to illustrate this, remark what difference there is in the meaning of the following expressions in English, depend

ing wholly on the different employment of the Articles: "The son of a king-The son of the king-A son of the king's." Each of these three phrases has an entirely different meaning, which I need not explain, because any one who understands the language conceives it clearly at first hearing, through the different application of the Articles, a and the. Whereas in Latin, "Filius regis" is wholly undetermined; and, to explain in which of these three senses it is to be understood, for it may bear any of them, a circumlocution of several words must be used. In the same manner, "Are you a king?" "Are you the king?" are questions of quite separate import; which, however, are confounded together in the Latin phrase, " Esne tu rex?" "Thou art a man," is a very general and harmless position; but, "Thou art the man," is an assertion capable, we know, of striking terror and remorse into the heart. These observations illustrate the force and importance of Articles: and, at the same time, I gladly lay hold of any opportunity of showing the advantages of our own language.

Besides this quality of being particularized by the Article, three affections belong to substantive nouns: number, gender, and case, which require our consideration.

Number distinguishes them as one, or many, of the same kind, called the Singular and Plural; a distinction found in all languages, and which must, indeed, have been coëval with the very infancy of language; as there were few things which men had more frequent occasion to express, than the difference between one and many. For the greater facility of expressing it, it has in all languages, been marked by some variation made upon the substantive noun; as we see, in English, our plural is commonly formed by the addition of the letter S. In the Hebrew, Greek, and some other ancient languages, we find, not only a plural but a dual number; the rise of which may very naturally be accounted for, from separate terms of numbering not being yet invented, and one, two, and many, being all, or at least the chief numeral distinctions which men, at first, had any occasion to take notice of.

Gender is an affection of substantive nouns, which will lead us into more discussion than number. Gender being founded on the distinction of the two sexes, it is plain, that in a proper sense, it can only find place in the names of living creatures, which admit the distinction of male and female; and, therefore, can be ranged under the masculine or feminine genders. All other substantive nouns ought to belong to what grammarians call the Neuter Gender, which is meant to imply the negation of either sex. But, with respect to this distribution, somewhat singular hath obtained in the structure of language. For, in correspondence to that distinction of male and female sex which runs through all the classes of animals, men have, in most languages, ranked a great number of inanimate objects also, under