from the Greeks:* when, in short, in the very last year, we have a divine, I believe of some celebrity, bringing this very study to bear upon the Mosaic history, by completely overlooking all its modern results, and considering the Teutonic, Greek, and Semitic, as forming the three principal ethnographic reigns; telling us that the construction of the three great families of language, the Oriental, the Western, and the Northern, is actually so distinct, that a new wonder arises from the perfect adequacy of each to perform all the purposes of human communication:'t when we see so many others amongst us, whom it would be long to enumerate, pertinaciously clinging to the old dreams of Hebrew etymologies, "Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda;' we cannot but feel that the reproach made against us is but too well grounded, that we have neglected to keep pace with the progress of this science upon the continent; and be keenly mor. tified when we meet, instead of amendment, another repetition of what has heretofore justified the charge." Another able English writer makes the following admissions, in respect to the low state of philological studies in England: "The philological researches of the last and the present age, more especially those of the Germans, have already so entirely revolutionized what before constituted this department of schol arship, and at the same time enlarged its boundaries so enormously, that much time must elapse before the mass of even what may be called accomplished readers can be expected to come, in a tolerable state of preparation, to the analysis of such a work as that now on our table. [Jäkel's Germanischer Ursprung der Lateinischen Sprache und des Römischen Volkes.] It is as if a new sense had been conferred on us; we are still puzzled and dazzled. In this country [England] in particular, very few minds have grappled effectually with these brilliant nov elties to the general run even of the students in our Universities they remain the objects of at best a distrustful wonder."§ "See A Specimen of the Conformity of the European Languages, particularly the English, with the Oriental Languages.' By Stephen Weston, B. D. Lond. 1802." +"Divine Providence: or, the Three Cycles of Revelation,' by the Rev. G. Croly, LL.D. Lond. 1834. c. xxii. p. 301. Nothing can be more incorrect than the description which follows this passage of the characteristics of each family so formed." Dr. Wiseman's Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion. London; and reprinted at Andover, U. States, 1837. § Quart. Rev. vol. xlvi, p. 337. The remarks of another learned Englishman, too, on another occasion, are not less emphatic and severe : 66 Etymology and philology" says he, "do not seem to thrive on British ground. We were indebted to a foreigner (Junius) for the first systematic and comprehensive work on the analogies of our tongue; and it is humiliating to think how little real improvement has been effected in the two centuries that have since elapsed. We have manifested the same supineness in other matters connected with our national literature. We have allowed a Bavarian to print the first edition of the Old Saxon Evangelical Harmony-the most precious monument of the kind next to the Moso-Gothic Gospels-from English Manuscripts. In like manner we are indebted to a Dane for the first printed text of Beowulf, the most remarkable production in the whole range of Anglo-Saxon literature; and we have to thank another Dane for our knowledge of the principles of Anglo-Saxon versification, and for the only grammar of that language which deserves the name. We have had, it is true, and still have, men who pride themselves on their exploits in English philology; but the best among them are much on a par with persons who fancy they are penetrating into the profoundest mysteries of geology, while they are only gathering up the pebbles that lie on the earth's surface. We admit that Horne Tooke dug more deeply than his competitors, and by not means without success; but, for want of practical knowledge, he often labored in the wrong vein, and as often failed to turn the right one to the utmost advantage.' Such, then, are the duties that lie before us, and such are our means of performing them in a manner which we hope will ultimately be, in some degree, beneficial to our fellow men-the great end of all our intellectual labors. But some persons, whose attention has not been particularly directed to this subject, may be ready to ask, in the current formula of the day, what utility is to be derived from these extended studies of the languages and literature of the globe? The important purposes to which these researches into language would be subservient, were, I believe, first distinctly pointed out by the great Leibnitz-one of those rare men to whom we may apply the title of a universal genius. * Quart. Rev. vol. liv, p. 299. "We are far from intending to include all our Anglo-Saxon scholars of the present day in this censure. We admired and sincerely regret Mr. Conybeare. Some others of them-especially Mr. Kemble, and Mr. Thorpe-have also done good service in this department, and we sincerely hope they will live to do a great deal more." In his earliest publication on the subject, a century ago, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Academy of Berlin, he justly observed that, "as the remote origin of nations goes back beyond the records of history, we have nothing but their languages to supply the place of historical information." By way of illustration, allow me here to remind you that we are all sensible how very easy it is to distinguish a foreigner, when he attempts to speak our own language. Every one will recollect the example mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, where the pronunciation of a single word was made the decisive test of national character: "The men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay, then said they unto him, Say now shibboleth; and he said sibboleth, for he could not frame to pronounce it right: Then they took him and slew him."* When, therefore, we have so simple and yet so certain a test of the affinities and differences of nations, how impor tant it becomes to collect and compare specimens of as many languages as possible, with a view to the early history of the various races of the globe. These researches have already established affinities, which were never suspected, between remote nations. Who, for example, would once have expected to find the most striking resemblances between the Sanscrit of India and the Greek of Attica, both in words and grammatical forms; or between the languages of Persia and of the Teutonic nations in the north of Europe? Who knew any thing about the Gipsies, till an examination of their language proved them to be of East Indian origin, instead of Egyptian, as their name once led the learned to believe? Who can doubt of the common origin of the natives of the Sandwich Islands and those of the Society Islands, who speak the same language, in substance, although the two groups are twenty-five hundred miles apart, and those people had no other means of intercourse over the Pacific Ocean, than their frail canoes? Or, who would for a moment hesitate to decide from language alone, even if we did not know the fact from other sources also, that the mixed race of the Pitcairn Islanders, notwithstanding their tawny skins and savage physiognomy, had English blood in their veins, when their nautical cry, from their canoes,— "Give us a rope"-electrified the first English navigators that visited their island? And-not to fatigue you with other illustrations-if in the remotest ages of futurity, all historical records of the settlement of the colonies of America from our mother country shall be extinguished, and only some slight vestige of the language shall be preserved in monuments on each side of the Atlantic Ocean-even no more than the inscription of a single grave stone, or the legend of a single coin-who at that period will doubt that the people of Old and New England were of the same family? Applying these illustrations to some of the unsettled cases occurring in ancient history, we may, for example, ask (with an able English writer)-Who knows any thing certain about the Pelasgi? And who does not perceive, that two connected sentences of their language would tell us more clearly what they really were, than all that has hitherto been written about them?* In addition to what has already been said, bearing upon this question, it may be farther observed, generally, that languages are the depositories of all knowledge; and, to adopt the views of an able writer already cited, literature has an over-ruling influence on the affairs of active life, on the fate of nations, and on the progressive character of ages. In past periods, he adds, men of letters constituted a body altogether cut off from the rest of the world; a separation which had an injurious effect upon all classes. But at the present day it is otherwise; and the struggle of all after knowledge, in the investigation of truth, is the noblest struggle which it is in the power of man to make.† A learned French writer also observes, that "words are the bond of society, the vehicle of knowledge, the basis of the sciences, the depositories of the discoveries of a nation, of its knowledge, its cultivation, its ideas. The knowledge of words, therefore, is an indispensable means of acquiring the knowledge of things." By means of languages, he adds, we are enabled to read the history of our fellow men, in past ages, and in all the quarters of the globe. But the farther question may still be asked, of what positive utility will it be to us, to read the history of our fellow *Quart. Rev. vol. liv, p. 296. Schlegel's Lectures on Hist. of Literature, Lect. i. men of those past ages and distant regions? It may be demanded, with much plausibility, of what practical benefit will it be to us, in the present age of the world, to know what was done by our fellow men two thousand, or two hundred, years ago-to study the elegancies and refinements of Grecian and Roman society, or the more simple and homely characteristics of our ancestors, who first founded the American colonies to acquaint ourselves with the singular manners and customs of barbarous and civilized nations of more recent periods and distant countries-to spend our time in surveying the rude Islanders of the Pacific Ocean, or the sterner natives of our own Continent, or that extraordinary phenomenon among nations, which has been strikingly characterized as "the tame and immovable civilization of China."* Of what actual advantage can it be to us, to know how the daily business of life was transacted in the slumbering cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii? It may be admitted, indeed, that it is highly gratifying to a liberal curiosity, to travel over the same streets, and visit the same dwellings that were trodden by Roman footsteps eighteen centuries ago; to examine the domestic implements which were actually used by Roman housekeepers; to read the identical manuscripts which once served for the instruction of some Roman scholar; to see and handle the same morsel of bread and the same flask of wine, which were perhaps just raised to Roman lips and suddenly dashed from them in the terrors of that awful catastrophe which has been the means of their preservation, to our times, untasted and unconsumed. But still the question will again be coldly asked-of what utility is this knowledge? To which the answer, as in many other cases, must ultimately be-because a natural desire for such knowledge has been implanted in man by his Creator for wise purposes; and, when philosophy attempts to reason down this desire, nature rebels; and no man is willing to throw aside, as useless, these and a thousand other particulars of the past generations of his race, although he cannot demonstrate their direct applicability to any common purpose that would in popular language be denominated practically useful. With all these incentives before us-the love of learning, for its own sake-the reputation of our beloved country, to * Sir James Mackintosh's Introductory Lecture on the Law of Nations. |