comprehensiveness of the subject, as he understands it. We are not satisfied with the conclusion to which we fear he would lead many of his readers, that classical studies might be dispensed with, as a means of introducing the learner immediately and readily to a knowledge of universal Grammar; at the same time he has shown that such an analysis of all the forms and historical relations of our vernacular tongue, would be a task of hardly less difficulty than that now imposed on those who follow those methods so long pursued in all the best English and European schools.

Dr. Latham says, "Our native language is the best instrument in disciplinal study, simply because it is our native language." The reason of this is, that before the system of any language can be profitably studied, we must acquire a certain quantity of its details. In the attempt to obtain the principles of General or Universal Grammar from the study of a foreign language, the theory is swamped by the practice," and in the attempt to do two things at once, one is done badly.

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The merits of our native language as a disciplinal study, depend, in the opinion of Dr. Latham, "on the chronological extent of the language embraced or used for this purpose. "There are two stages in Languages through which all sooner or later make their way- some sooner than others. The Latin may serve as an illustration. In the time of Augustus, it expressed the relations of Time and Place, its cases and tenses, by Inflection. In the time of Dante there was little inflection, but an abundance of auxiliary verbs and prepositions. In all Languages the inflectional stage comes first. There are languages that remain for an indefinite time in their earlier stage. Others again there are, with which we never come in contact till they have proceeded to their later stage. But languages of this latter kind, are of subordinate value to the Etymologist. He values most those seen in the two stages, so that he may watch the breaking up of one, the constitution of the other, and the transition intermediate to the two states."

"Our own language (the Anglo Saxon being borne in mind) comes under the conditions that constitute a good and sufficient language for disciplinal study in Etymology. It can be studied in two stages. When we come to the time of the Conquest we must acquire a new language. The breaking-up of the Latin is not more a study by itself, than is the study of the breaking-up of the Gothic. For in this stock of Tongues, not only did the Saxon pass into the English, but the Mæso-Gothic, Scandinavian and the Frisian, each gave origin to some new Tongue. Considering not the English only, but the whole range of allied Languages forming the Gothic stock, we have a magazine of processes and principles, which not only equals the Classical stock,

but exceeds even the Greek branch of it. Let the Greek and Latin be learned for their own sake; and by those who have the privilege to appreciate them. One might think that the works of Homer and Demosthenes, of Lucretius, Cicero, and Cæsar, were a sufficient reason for turning with diurnal and nocturnal hands the copies that exhibit them. But let us not be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or Greek Accidence for the sake of learning Universal Grammar." Whatever may be thought of the soundness of the views of Dr. Latham we cannot but admire the enthusiasm of the man in entering upon a course of studies in which he had few associates and almost no predecessors among his own countrymen at the outset of his own career as a Professor of English Philology. He says in the preface to the second edition of his great work on the English Language, "In 1840, so little had been done by Englishmen for the English language, that in acknowledging my great obligations to foreign scholars, I was only able to speak of what might be done by my own countrymen. Since then, however, there has been a good beginning of what is likely to be done well. My references to the works of Messrs. Kemble Garnet and Guest, show that my authorities are now as much English as German. And this is likely to be the case. The details of syntax, the illustrations drawn from our provincial dialects, the minute history of individual words, and the whole system of articulate sounds can, for the English, only be done safely by an Englishman; or, to speak more generally, can, for any language, only be dealt with properly by the grammarian whose mother tongue is that language.

Dr. Latham admits that there are not wanting among the older works of English authors, some valuable contributions to what he terms "Gothic philology." But he regards them as forerunners of a brighter day, as suggesting general methods of study, rather than making explorations themselves in the vast field of learning which was to them as yet untraversed. "I should be sorry to speak as if, beyond the writers of what may be called the modern school of philology, there was nothing for the English grammarian both to read and to study. The fragments.of Ben Jonson's English Grammar are worth the entireties of many later writers. The work of Wallis is eminently logical and precise. The voice of a mere ruler of rules is a sound to flee from; but the voice of a truly powerful understanding is a thing to be heard on all matters. It is this which gives to Cobbett and Priestly, to Horne Tooke as a subtle etymologist, and to Johnson as a practical lexicographer, a value in literary history which they never can have in grammar. It converts unwholesome doctrines into a fertile discipline of thought."

It is a matter of some surprise to us that no mention is made

of at least one eminent English philologist on this side the Atlantic. The fruits of the ripe scholarship of Dr. Webster in all the varied learning that was needed to write the best dictionary of the English tongue, had been nearly all gathered before the accession of Dr. Latham to his professorship, and before he had published any of his valuable works on the same subjects which had been well nigh exhausted by the great American lexicographer. The Herculean task of accomplishing what Dr. Webster undertook is not comprehended by those who are unacquainted with all that he did. We wish that his "Synopsis of the principal words in twenty languages arranged in classes under their primary elements or letters," might at length be published. It was the result of the hard toil of ten years of study, performed by a master mind in the exercise of its best powers. The scholars of Europe may not be aware of the merit due to the original researches, and successful and untiring industry of. the American philologist, but they will always, whether consciously or not, be indebted to his labors in the department of English Literature. They would welcome as a rich addition to the stores of English and Anglo-Saxon philology, this unpublished work of Dr. Webster.

The work of which Dr. Latham speaks in the highest praise is the Deutsche Grammatik of Grimm, which he says is the work, not of an age, nor of a century, but, like the great history of Thucydides, a κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί.

It is the magazine from whence all draw their facts and illustrations. Still, Grimm has not exhausted any part of his great subject except that which pertains to the proper German. His exhibition of the grammar of other kindred tongues is capable of improvement.

The first edition of Dr. Latham's most extensive work, on "the English Language," was published in 1841. The last (third) edition was issued in 1850, and is so much enlarged as to be almost a new treatise. The aim of the author seems to have been to write a complete treatise on all that pertains to the history of the forms of the English language, and thus to show the indebtedness of our noble tongue to all the "languages, tongues, and people,"—who have each in the progress and revolutions of the ages contributed their part to make our vernacular speech what we now find it to be. Of course the general ethnological relations of the language form a very considerable and a very important part of the work to the general scholar. He goes back to the earliest records of the Anglican and Saxon races long before any thing that is properly English became British. This leads him to treat of the different immigrations of various Germanic tribes into the British Islands, and of the relations of the populations to each other, which coming from

localities remote from each other in the Father-land, mixed and became homogeneous in the first periods of veritable British history.

After giving an account of the dialects of the Saxon area, with the extent and frontiers of that area, and also of what is called the Old-Saxon, Dr. Latham proceeds to treat of the affinities of the English with the languages of Germany and Scandinavia. In this connection he gives the philological significations of the terms German, Dutch, Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon, and the Icelandic or Old Norse, which have a different meaning and extent than when used as civil or political designations. Thus he says, that the "present term Icelandic is given to the language of Iceland, not because Iceland was the country that produced, but because it is the country that has preserved it." It was the language of the Norse or Norwegians who colonized that remote Island, and have retained till now the early language of the mother country.

In the second part of his work, Dr. Latham proceeds to give a minute analysis of all the historical and logical elements of the English language, in which he shows what is due to Northern nations of Europe, and what to the classical stock, and what are the points of difference between the English and Low-land Scotch dialects.

In the proper history of the language, as to its external relations, and in respect to the origin of its words and forms, Dr. Latham has devoted nearly one fourth of his entire work. We venture to say that nowhere else will the reader find the subject more fully or more satisfactorily treated.

In the third part of his work Dr. Latham treats of that which with most other writers on English Grammar is, "the beginning" of the subject, viz., Sounds, Letters, Pronunciation, and Spelling. Whatever pertains to the nature of articulate sounds and the modes of representing them and their combinations, whatever belongs to the Euphony and transposition of letters, to Quantity and Accent, to the principles of Orthoëpy, and the general principles of Orthography, is here exhibited, together with a historical sketch of the English Alphabet. Those who would be glad to see the so-called reform of " Phonetics" introduced, would do well to study the processes by which our language is made to exhibit so many departures from the conditions of a perfect orthography. They will derive some good lessons from Dr. Latham's method of treating this and all other topics by a process which is historical as well as logical. Throughout all his work, the strictly grammatical portions not excepted, this mixed method is employed. He aims to show the way in which words and inflections have been used, not less than to show by the logical method how they OUGHT TO BE USED.

Indeed the à priori method of argument is deemed by our author as unreliable in philological discussions. It is rather on historical investigation" that the whole induction of modern philology rests."

"There is a limit in logical regularity which language is perpetually overstepping; just as there is a logical limit which the reasoning of common life is perpetually overstepping, and just as there is a physiological limit which the average health of men may depart from. This limit is investigated by the historical method; which shows the amount of latitude in which language may indulge, and yet maintain its great essential of intelligibility. Nay, more, it can show that it sometimes transgresses the limit in so remarkable a manner, as to induce writers to talk about the corruption of a language, or the pathology of a language. Yet it is very doubtful whether all languages, in all their stages, are not equally intelligible, and, consequently, equally what they ought to be, viz., mediums of intercourse between man and man; whilst, in respect to their growth, it is almost certain that so far from exhibiting signs of dissolution, they are, on the contrary, like the Tithonus of mythology, the Strulbrugs of Laputa, or such monsters as Frankenstein, very liable to the causes of death, but utterly unable to die. Hence in language, whatever is, is right; a fact, which taken by itself, gives great value to the historical method of inquiry, and leaves little to à priori considerations of logic."

We wish we could copy entire, Dr. Latham's history of the English Alphabet, which he shows to be, not English or Romanic in reality, but in all its essential features the same with the Greek and Hebrew. The forms of the letters since the first invention of writing, the greatest of all arts the wit of man ever devised, have indeed changed. A few new symbols have in the progress of ages been added by one nation or dropped by another; but as to the nature of the symbols of writing, their signification, the order of alphabetical arrangement, and even in respect to the names used for the symbols, there is a real and wonderful resemblance between the alphabets of the modern nations and the alphabet of the Hebrew language, which some believe to have been given to the Jews by God himself, and to have been thus the parent alphabet of at least all the Semitic and Occidental languages.

In the department of Etymology, the method pursued by Dr. Latham will be regarded by all those who read his extended discussions on that subject as widely different from what we find in other works hitherto written. He has realized Dr. Johnson's definition of the term Etymology in giving us first, the "descent of a word from its original, the deduction of formations from the radical word, and the analysis of compounds into primitives;"