Che Philologist.

HORNE TOOKE.

To appreciate this subject in all its meaning, let us recall and compare the associations of a Quaker meeting, where impressive silence broods over a human assemblage; a school of mutes, where recourse to signs gives touching evidence of the absolute need of communication; and a Jewish Synagogue, where are chanted the holy records of a primitive faith in the original language which has survived intact the utter dispersion of a race. Thus we realize the natural law of expression, the solemn effect of its voluntary suspension, and the perpetuity of its verbal forms. Nothing is apparently more transient than a word; yet no monument of the past equals in age and authenticity that of language. It is the most reliable medium for transmitting facts. It appears evident that this wonderful instrument, if we may so designate it, began in instinctive sounds. An ingenious Italian grammarian reckons more than twenty natural interjections, expressive of diverse emotions; and these utterances greatly resemble those of the animal creation. In the height of

insanity and fanaticism, in lunatic asylums, among barbarous tribes, and at camp-meetings, are sometimes heard these primitive and brutal attempts at expression; and they seem to point to the lowest source of language. From this to picture-writing the transition is natural; and equally so from the latter to alphabetical signs, which seem to have originated in the abbreviation of hieroglyphics into linear shapes. Vast ingenuity and learning have been expended in the attempt to trace all languages to a common origin; but while the Sanscrit is recognised as the most ancient, other tongues appear to have retained their individuality during an indefinite period, and to have equal claims to an independent source. The Chinese, we may conjecture, indicates the point where picture-writing reached its acme, and with it their civilization became stationary; 'for, although four thousand years old, it has only an alphabet of ideas, not of sounds. The first intelligent process in the art of expression was, doubtless, to give names to visible objects, as Adam did in Paradise. We see the instinct in children and savages. Hence it is generally conceded that the substantive was first-born of the parts of speech, and then the verb.

If we admit the probability that its rudiments were inarticulate sounds, it is obvious that these were modified by local circumstances and physical facts-such as climate and organization. Many of the individual traits of language are directly trace

able to such causes; the contracting of particular muscles, opening and shutting the mouth with more or less freedom, and the greater or less inhalation and exhalation of breath-habits which result from modes of life, the temperature of the atmosphere, and similar causes. These, operating on the first inventors of articulate sounds, gave character to the rest, and partly account for the prevalence of vowels and consonants, the accentuation, and other vocal habitudes. Those who have examined this branch of the subject with nicety, assert that what is causal, is not expressed without gutturals; what is living and moving, always require labials; and what is dead or dormant, dentals-these terms indicating the part enacted by the throat, lips, and teeth, in the process of articulation. An ingenious writer, Kraitzer, says that these elementary articulations are often blended in words, and even in roots, by which is obtainable a knowledge of that notion of the thing which was held at the time the word was appropriated to it. "Out of these primitive or modified sounds," he adds, "many groups and combinations are composed; and to inquire into the laws which regulate the combination of sounds, and the laws for the appropriation of these sounds to the expression of thought, is the first and best discipline of the senses and the mind, and is the only learning of languages worthy the name-a philological science which furnishes the key to all languages.”

The Port Royal Grammar of the seventeenth cen

tury, is usually considered the first practical recognition of anything like a philosophy of language; but to Catherine II. of Russia seems to belong the honour of taking the initiative in the science of philology. She employed two capable savans to prepare a comparative vocabulary of all the languages of the world. Subsequently, two learned Germans published a scientific classification, under the title of Mithridates, held in great esteem, though chiefly familiar to the scholar. Since the commencement of this century, philology has advanced with the greatest rapidity; and many celebrated names might be cited as identified with its successful cultivation. The labourers in this vineyard have repudiated the old idea of a common origin, so pertinaciously held, and shown that the difference in beauty and richness between the various languages is more one of degree than kind, and altogether the result of cultivationthe Greek being, in itself, no more perfect than the Algonquin, only more refined, enlarged, and modified by culture.

At a casual view, there would seem little connexion between the career of politics and the study of languages; and yet, in literary history, they are frequently associated. The facilities that ambassadors enjoy for the investigation of national dialects, and the necessity, in diplomatic intercourse, to consider, with unusual nicety, the significance and application of words, may partly account for the fact that, while the classic tongues have been cultivated

statesmen.

by scholars like Porson, Bentley, and Parr, much of the light which modern research has thrown upon the philosophy of language, has been derived from Sir William Jones and Mackintosh, while in India, studiously examined and illustrated the Asiatic idioms. Sismondi, whose great aim was to be a lucid expositor of universal civil history, availed himself of the collateral aid of philological data. Cobbett wrote a grammar; Lord Kaimes the Elements of Criticism. In our country, Duponceau, a linguist of some note, was by profession devoted to the civil law. Pickering was a legislator and municipal officer. To Gallatin, who was most honourably engaged during the most critical period of our annals in responsible official life, and to Schoolcraft, for many years a government agent on the northern frontier, we are chiefly indebted for accurate information respecting the aboriginal languages. Mezzofanti, the celebrated interlocutor of so many tongues, was a cardinal. But the most remarkable instance of this alliance between politics and philology is that of Horne Tooke. His interest in the latter was doubtless sustained by the natural activity of an ingenious mind; although, with characteristic humour, he insists that his attention was first bestowed upon it in self-defence, and declares, in the preface to his earliest publication, that it was occasioned by his having been made "the victim of two prepositions and a conjunction," which he calls, with a quaint energy, "the abject instruments of his