IN

PREPARATORY.

the succeeding series of philologic papers, it is our purpose to ramble. Now, take notice, we give fair warning that such is our intent-our design is formed with malice prepense. We have no notion of plodding through the entire journey on the dusty highway, even though it have the advantage of being the straight and established path. Often will we vault over the fence (of rigid forms), and away through the fields, hat in hand, after some gay etymologic butterfly; or lonely wander mid

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That have their haunts in dale or piney mountains,
Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat'ry depths "

Or, with runic spells, evoke the pagan wanderers from their graves in the visionary Eld. But, while we intend making digressions (di-gredior, i. e. stepping aside), we trust never to get out of sight of the eternal blue empyrean.

This science of Philology that is now working a radical revolution in every domain of literature, is to be regarded as almost exclusively the offspring of our own fecund nineteenth era, and the few years preceding. Lexicography proper is but a century old; for exactly one hundred years ago Samuel Johnson published his, for the times, extraordinary dictionary. Previous to that period, "there was," as he himself remarks,

wherever one turned his attention, complexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principles of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without any settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers (?) of classical reputation or acknowledged authority."

A rare old tract, written by Bishop Hutchinson, and published the early part of last century, presents us with a most vividly lugubrious picture of the state of philology then, and the appliances for the study of the English language. We

"We

quote (capitals, italics, and all): have no Grammar of it (the English tongue) that is taught in any School that we ever heard of. We have no good Dictionary to bring it into Method, with an account of the Derivations, and several Senses and Uses of Words. We have no Collection of its Idioms, Phrases, and right Use of its Particles. The Instructors of our Youth care not to trouble themselves with it; our Clergy think it doth not belong to their Care, though it be the true Key of Knowledge. Our Universities suffer it not to be spoken in their Schools and Theatres; nor hath any Patron of Learning provided one single Professor, who should turn his Thoughts and Care towards that." Now, this is assuredly bad enough; but, before we quit the good old Bishop, let us see how he proposes to supply the deficit. "When we shall have a good Grammar, made plain for the Purpose, and Masters are a little used to it, I do not see but that either Singing or Dancing or Writing-Masters may teach it to either Sex in three months." O, thou Genius of Philology— Singing or Writing or Dancing-Masters! The very object of the science was mistaken.

"Philology," say the Encyclopædias of a few years ago-"A science, or rather assemblage of several sciences, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, antiquities, history and criticism. Philology is a kind of universal literature, conversant about all the sciences, their rise, progress, authors, etc. It makes what the French call the Belles-lettres. In the Universities it is called Humanities." Et prætera nihil! And thus, by a species of all-embracing generalization, it was made to include the omne scibile of letters and philosophy. Even the famous Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française defines philology to be "Erudition qui embrasse diverses parties des belles lettres, et principalement la critique."

Now, however, we have come back to the true Grecian reception of the science, as the love and study of words. A brighter day has dawned for it; and it is beginning to unfold some of its glorious capabilities, and splendidly illustrating many a hitherto dark corner in the world's history.

We have no desire to enter into the abyss of contest and controversy on the subject of the origin of language and other such speculations-for our design lies in another field--but it is absolutely indispensable that we recall a few theories and some established principles on the subject, if we would at all rise to general views of its philosophy. We have, then, as one theory of the origin of language, that which inculcates it as being the immediate gift of the Deity; and then, as antithetical to that (since the poles of all philosophers are antipodal), the famous Orang-outang" theory of Leviathan Hobbes. These we merely state, designing no discussion. And, indeed, the great danger of error in all such theories, as Frederick Von Schlegel well observes, lies in the attempt at the explication of all the immeasurable richness of the phenomena of language in general, by any single hypothesis, or the deriving them from any one origin.

We cannot, however, leave this part of our subject without presenting the reader with a brief account of Dr. Alexander Murray's theory of the formation of language—as an example of the utmost stretch of persiflage to which an empirical philosophy could, in this direction, attain. He is so facile and off-hand in his account of the modus formandi of language, that one would suppose he was really present therat. It is in his rather ambitious "History of European Languages," that he favors us with its development. The burden of the book is that the following nine words are the foundations of language:

1. Ag, Wag, Hwag.

2. Bag, Bwag, Fag, Pag. 3. Dwag, Thwag, Twag. 4. Gwag, Cwag.

5. Lag, Hlag.

6. Mag!

7. Nag, Hnag. 8. Rag, Hrag. 9. Swag!

Delightfully luminous, and as philosophic also! On this foundation he declares "An edifice has been erected of a more useful () and more wonderful [Q. E. D.!] kind than any which have exercised human ingenuity. They were uttered, at first, and probably for several generations, in an insulated manner. The circumstances of the actions were communicated by signs and the variable tones

VOL. IV.-----

of the voice; but the actions themselves were expressed by their suitable monosyllable." And to place this primitive universal language, in a still more distinct light, he tells us that "Bag Wag" meant bring water; "Bag, Bag, Bag," they fought very much. And such he considers " as a just, and not an imaginary specimen of the earliest articulated speech !"*

A very good specimen, indeed, we conceive it to be of the extravagant length to which hastily-adopted à priori reasoning will conduct; but of anything else, a very decidedly bad specimen. The fact is that, à priori, we know just as much about the genesis as we do about the exodus of language-and simply nothing of either. And, in truth, the modifying circumstances in the mechanism of a language are so numerous and so complicated as to blow into shivers the finestspun and most elaborately-woven supposititious system of speech-development. We have no example of a language in exactly its puris naturalibus (fig-leafapron state); so that every position we take in philology other than that which mathematicians call the zetetic, must be hypothetical. This "present editor" has faith in the development of a system of philosophy profounder by far than the Baconian-but yet he is also convinced that, in the present relations of things, the careful investigation of actual facts and phenomena will lead to more satisfactory and more splendid results than any mere hypothesis, brilliant though it be. And this as well in philology as in physics.

Our great modern master philologists all recognize this principle; and in the hands of such scholars as Adelung, Vater, Bopp, J. Grimm, Wilkinson, Goethe, Von Humboldt, the Schlegels, Savigny, C. Ritter, Kopiter, and others, it has given birth to results rivalling in glory the most magnificent discoveries in the realms of Nature. A Champollion has arisen to recall from the dead Past a buried people and a buried tongue-reconstructing a tenuous shadow into a living spirit; and not by the exercise of imagination, but by patient and accurate research, giving to

"An airy Nothing, A local habitation and a name.”

And so, too, at the present day—a Grote

and a Niebuhr have almost revived primeval Greece and Rome; and now the hitherto cloud-involved "Gorgeous East," that birth-place of peoples, and tongues, and faiths, is being forced to render up her embosomed mysteries; the sphinxriddle is being read; riddle-readers are there on the ground, to "expound the runes in the native land of Runic lore". and from crypts and sarcophagi, and runed temples, and gorgeous palaces, the buried treasures of barbaric art are being brought forth to the light of day, and to the eagle glance of investigation, and are being caused to read a story that extends away down to the bosom of the antique by-gone. While on the subject of the East, it may be well for us to recall what it will be absolutely necessary that we keep continually before our minds in all our researches into the chronology and the philosophy of language—namely, that all races and their tongues find their ultimate home in Asia. The recognition of this very principle has created a revolution in philology; for we are too apt to look at the families of man in their scatterings and their isolations, instead of viewing them in their old primal home —which home is undoubtedly to be found on the banks of some of the great Asiatic rivers. Thence, by divergencies northward and southward, eastward and westward, they have come to inhabit every latitude and people every shore.

The legitimate result of the prodigious amount of à posteriori investigation on almost every province of human consciousness, has been to drive us from nearly every formerly-received a priori theory. Instance the sciences of Astronomy and Geology, or the subject we have at present on hand. For example, it is a well-known fact that the former theory, that held Greek to be the parent of the Latin, has been completely disproved; and now, instead of establishing this relationship between them, we know that the latter is but a younger sister of the former, and that they find a common parentage in their mother, the Sanscrit -the faithful parent of so many dialects. Now, not only does there obtain an intimate connection between the Greek and Latin and the Sanscrit, but all the very numerous Gothic or Teutonic tongues have a close analogy therewith; and the widespread branch of Indo-Germanic dialects is clearly referred to the great Oriental genealogical tree. Thus, between

nations the most diverse and locally distant, there exists a close affinity and affiliation; and the gentile kinships that are sometimes educed are such as to astonish one who is not prepared for any wonder. What will be the result when the development of Glossology and Comparative Philology have had their perfect work; when, instead of scattered leaves, and twigs, and branches, we shall have the genealogical tree of the human family and its languages, in all the symmetry of its unity, with its roots reaching deep down to the kingdoms of yore, and its ramifications world-wide-we are unable to determine; but assuredly it will eventuate in the evolution of a far more profound and far more perfect science of Ethnography and philosophy of history than any we as yet have.

The languages of Europe are generally referred to three great families, viz.: the Keltic, Germanic, and Sclavonic;* and thus these linguistic divisions correspond with the three great races who-in their many offshoots-and at different epochs-have peopled the whole of Europe. We would have it distinctly noted, however, that these divisions-which are by no means absolute—have a reference merely local and chronological, that is to say, they stand for the three great streams of population who, at successive periods, migrated from Asia and settled in Europe; the origin being one, albeit the dialectic, idiomatic, and linguistic diversities be infinite. Their geographic position most clearly points to the relative epochs of their entrance into Europe; thus, we have the Keltic race diffusing itself (or driven?) over the extreme western portions; the Gothic or Teutonic-the second stream-occupying the central countries of Europe; and, lastly, the Sclavonic, which inhabits the eastern parts. Of these glottic groups, we have to do, immediately, only with the second; and this only to remind you that the race to which we belong-the Saxonis one of the subdivisions under this great Teutonic family of races. Thus, perchance, our ancestors dwelt on the Ganges, skirted the Caspian Sea, and crossed the Ural mountains; traversed the immense tracts of Russia and central Europe, dwelt in the German forests, ruled in Britannia, and, through us, rule the world. There pulsates within us, even, some of the Berserkir rage of the Vikingr-(and are not traces of it at times