help of the alphabetic arrangement of vocabularies, to turn over a dozen dictionaries, and gather around a given English word a group of foreign roots which contain more or fewer of the same vocal elements, and exhibit a greater or less analogy of meaning, than to seek the actual history of the word by painful research into the records of travel, and commerce, and political combination, and religious propagandism, and immigration, and conquest, which are the ordinary means of the dissemination of words; but the result obtained by this tedious and unostentatious method are of far greater value, and far deeper philosophical interest, than theories which, by reversing the process, found ethnological descent, and build the whole fabric of a national history, extending through ten centuries, on the Roman orthography of a single proper name belonging to a tongue wholly unknown to the Romans themselves.

case.

In fact, undeniable as are many of the unexpected results of modern linguistic research, the mass of speculative inquirers are, under different circumstances, going beyond the extravagance of the etymologists of the seventeenth century. Of dead or remote languages these latter knew only Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, and they made no scruple to derive any modern word directly from any root, in any of these tongues, which in the least resembles it in form and signification, without at all troubling themselves about the historical probabilities of the Modern philologists have added to the attainments of their predecessors a knowledge of the vocabularies of the Sanscrit, and Celtic, and Sclavonic, not to speak of numerous other dialects; and not only are the root-cellars of all these considered as lawful plunder, whenever a radical is wanted, but, in the lack of historical evidence to show a connection between nations widely separated by space or time, the coincidence of a few words or syllables is held to be sufficient proof of blood-relationship. Hence etymology has become not an aid in historical investigation, but a substitute for it. A shelf of dictionaries is certainly a more cheaply wrought, and is thought a richer mine

of ethnological truth, than a library of chronicles or a magazine of archives; and the most positive testimony of ancient annalists is overruled upon evidence derived from the comparison of a few words, the very existence of which, in the forms ascribed to them, is often a matter of much uncertainty.*

The conjectural speculations of the present day on the general tendencies and fundamental laws of language are even more doubtful than the historical deductions from supposed philological facts. We cannot, indeed, assume to place arbitrary limits to the advance of any branch of human knowledge, and there is no one philological truth which we are authorised to say must for ever remain an ultimate fact, incapable of further resolution or explanation, but there are many phenomena in speech which, in the present state of linguistic science, must be treated as ultimate. With respect to these, it is wise to forbear attempts to guess out their hidden meaning and analogies until we shall discover related facts, by comparison with which we may at length be able safely to generalise.

But in all the uncertainty and imperfection of our knowledge on the subject of English philology, there still remains enough of positive fact to lead us to safe conclusions on the most prominent phenomena of our great grammatical and lexical revolutions; and in a course which, it may be hoped, will serve to some as an introduction to the earnest study, if not of the inflectional forms, yet of the spirit of early English literature, such a general view must suffice.

* Contzen's Wanderungen der Kelten historisch-kritisch dargelegt, 1861, is a remarkable instance of pure historical investigation. With a courage and inindustry rare even in Germany, the author, to use his own words, has endeavoured ' an der Hand der Schriftsteller des Alterthums Schritt vor Schritt voranzugehen, und den das Auge einladenden Weg der Etymologien möglichst zu vermeiden, und hat überhaupt den aus der Sprache geschöpften Belegen nie die erste Stelle eingeräumt, obwohl er die hohe Bedeutung derselben, zumal da wo die Alten schweigen, nirgends verkannt hat.' In researches so conducted, etymology may safely be called in as a critical help in estimating the weight of testimony and in determining questions upon which the historical proofs are conflicting or suspicious; but it is a hysteron-proteron to subordinate the positive evidence of credible witnesses to linguistic deduction.

Among the many ends which we may propose to ourselves in the study of language, there is but one which is common and necessary to every man. I mean such a facility in comprehending, and such a skill in using, his mother-tongue, that he can play well his part in the never-ceasing dialogue which, whether between the living and the living or the living and the dead, whether breathed from the lips or figured with the pen, takes up so large a part of the life of every one of us. For this purpose, the information I shall strive to communicate will be, certainly not in quantity, but in kind, sufficient; and though genius gifted with nice linguistic sense, and rare demonstrative powers, may dispense with such studies as I am advocating and illustrating, I believe they will be found in general the most efficient helps to a complete mastery of the English tongue.

33

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

I. (p. 3.)

CHANGES IN ENGLISH.

I AM far from maintaining that the language of England has at any time become a fixed and inflexible thing. In the adult man, physiological processes, not properly constitutional changes, go on for years before decay can fairly be said to have commenced.

His organs,

indeed, when he passes from youth to manhood, are already fully developed, but, under favourable circumstances, and with proper training, they continue for some time longer to acquire additional strength, power of action and of resistance, flexibility, and, one might almost say, dexterity, in the performance of their appropriate functions. New organic material is absorbed and assimilated, and effete and superfluous particles are thrown off; but in all this there are no revolutions analogous to those by which the nursling becomes a child, the child a man. So in languages employed as the medium of varied literary effort, there is, as subjects of intellectual discourse, practical applications of scientific principle, and new conditions of social and material life multiply, an increasing pliancy and adaptability of speech, a constant appropriation and formation of new vocables, rejection of old and worn-out phrases, and revivification of asphyxiated words, a rhetorical, in short, not a grammatical change, which, to the superficial observer, may give to the language a new aspect, while it yet remains substantially the

same.

The chief accessions to the English vocabulary since the time of Shakespeare have been in the departments of industrial art and of mathematical, physical, and linguistic science. They merely compose

nomenclatures,

as in the case of chemistry, whose new terminology · though it enables us to speak and write of things, the existence and properties of which analysis has but lately revealed to us - has not appreciably affected the structure of the English tongue or the laws of

D

its movement. In the dialect of imaginative composition, in all pure literature, in fact, our vocabulary remains in the main unchanged, except, indeed, as it has been enriched by the revival of expressive words or forms which had unfortunately been suffered to become obsolete.

II. (p. 7.)

THE PAPACY.

This ascription of divine authority and honours to the Pope is of frequent occurrence both in the Chronicle of Froissart, who was an ecclesiastic, and in the writings of secular Continental authors in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it was so well understood to be a homage acceptable to the Bishops of Rome, that even Moslem monarchs appear to have used it in the complimentary addresses of their letters to the pontiff when they had a favour to ask. During the pontificate of Innocent VIII., a son of Mohammed the Conqueror, the accomplished Prince Djem, or Zizim, as he was often called in Europe, who had fled from Turkey after his father's death to escape the certain doom which impended over the head of the brothers of the reigning Sultan, was inveigled into the power of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes by a safe-conduct, and thrown into prison. The mother and sisters of Djem retired to Cairo, and asked the intercession of Abd-ul-Aziz, 'Soldan of Babilon,' for the release of the captive. Abd-ul-Aziz invoked the intervention of Pope Innocent VIII. in a curious epistle, a translation of which is found in Arnold's Chronicle, reprint of 1811, pp. 159, 160. The letter is addressed: 'Unto the most holyest and fauorablist Price in erthe, Vicary and Lieftenant of Cryst, evermore during Lord Innocence the viii., . . . extirpator of synners. . . the stede of God vsing in erthe;' and elsewhere in the letter the pope is styled 'as in a maner a God i erthe, and the sacred brethe of Cryst.'

The subsequent details of this affair are worth adding, as an illustration of the somewhat unfamiliar history of the times. Djem was surrendered by the Grand Master to Innocent VIII., and kept under surveillance during the life of that pontiff. Innocent was succeeded by a more celebrated 'extirpator of sinners,' Alexander VI., who treated the unfortunate prince with greater rigour, and soon received-perhaps invited proposals from Sultan Bayezid II. for his assassination, and from Charles VIII. of France (who wished to use him as an instrument in a war with Bayezid) for his purchase. After some higgling about terms, his Holiness accepted the proposals and the money of both