and sections, which must compose the architectural system of so elaborate a work, seeing that the whole edifice itself is hitherto a great idea, in nubibus, as regards our own language. The French, as we have observed, have little more to boast of. And, in fact, the Germans and the Italians, of all nations the two who most cordially hate and despise each other, in this point agree that they only have constructed many preparatory works, have reared something more than mere scaffolding towards such a systematic and national monument.

1. It is painful and humiliating to an Englishman, that, whilst all other nations show their patriotism severally in connexion with their own separate mother tongues, claiming for them often merits which they have not, and overlooking none of those which they have, his own countrymen show themselves ever ready, with a dishonourable levity, to undervalue the English language, and always upon no fixed principles. Nothing to ourselves seems so remarkable as that men should dogmatise upon the pretensions of this and that language in particular, with out having any general notions previously of what it is that constitutes the value of a language universally. Without some preliminary notice, abstractedly, of the precise qualities to be sought for in a language, how are we to know whether the main object of our question is found, or not found, in any given language offered for examination? The Castilian is pronounced fine, the Italian effeminate, the English harsh, by many a man who has no shadow of a reason for his opinions beyond some vague association of chi

valaresque qualities with the personal bearing of Spaniards; or, again, of special adaptation to operatic music in the Italian; or (as regards the English), because he has heard, perhaps, that the letter s, and crowded clusters of consonants and monosyllabic words prevail in it.

Such random and fantastic notions would be entitled to little attention; but, unfortunately, we find that men of distinguished genius-men who have contributed to sustain and extend the glory of this very English language, are sometimes amongst its notorious depreciators. Addison, in a wellknown passage of his critical essays, calls the English, in competition with the Greek language, brick against marble. Now, that there is a vocal* beauty in the Greek, which raises it in that particular point above all modern languages, and not exclusively above the English, cannot be denied; but this is the lowest merit of a language being merely its sensuous merit (to borrow a word of Milton's); and, beyond all doubt, as respects the higher or intellectual qualities of a language, the English greatly excels the Greek, and especially in that very case which provoked the remark of Addison; for it happens, that some leading ideas in the Paradise Lostideas essential to the very integrity of the fable, cannot be expressed in Greek; or not so expressed as to convey the same thought impregnated with the same weight of passion. But let not our reverence for the exquisite humour of Addison, and his admirable delicacy of pencil in delineating the traits of character, hide from us the fact that he was a very thought

less and irreflective critic; that his criticisms, when just, rested not upon principles, but upon mere fineness of tact; that he was an absolute ignora mus as regarded the literature of his own country; and that he was a mere bigot as regarded the antique literature of Pagan Greece or Rome. In fact, the eternal and inevitable schism between the Romanticists and the Classicists, though not in name, had already commenced in substance; and where Milton was not free from grievous error and consequent injustice, both to the writers of his country and to the language, how could it be expect ed that the far feebler mind of Addison, should work itself clear of a bigotry and a narrowness of sympathy as regards the antique, which the discipline and training of his whole life had established? Even the merit of Addison is not sufficient to waive his liability to one plain retort from an offended Englishman-viz. that, before he sighed away with such flagrant levity the pretensions of his native language, at all events, it was incumbent upon him to show that he had fathomed the powers of that language, had exhausted its capacity, and had wielded it with commanding effect. Whereas, we all know that Addison was a master of the humble and unpretending English, demanded, or indeed suffered by his themes; but for that very reason little familiar with its higher or impassioned move

ments.

2. But Addison, like most other critics on languages, overlooked one great truth, which should have made such sweeping undervaluations impossible as applied to any language; this truth is that every language, every language at least in a state of culture and developement, has its own separate and incommunicable qualities of superiority. The French itself, which, in some weighty respects, is amongst the poorest of languages, had yet its own peculiar merits-not attainable or approachable by any other. For the whole purposes of what the French understand by the word causer, for all the delicacies of social intercourse, and the nuances of manners, no language but the French possesses the requisite Vocabulary. The word causer itself is an illustration. Marivaux and other novelists, tedious enough otherwise, are mere repertories of phrases un

translatable-irrepresentable by equivalents in any European language. And some of our own fashionable English novels, which have been fiercely arraigned for their French embroidery as well as for other supposed faults, are thus far justifiable that, in a majority of instances, the English could not have furnished a corresponding phrase with equal point or piquancy-sometimes not at all.

3. If even the French has its function of superiority, so, and in a higher sense, have the English and other languages more decidedly northern. But the English, in particular, has a special dowry of power in its doubleheaded origin. The Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of functions, the Latin another. Mean-time, it is a great error on the part of Lord Brougham (and we remember the same error in others) to direct the student in his choice of words towards the Saxon part of the language by preference. Nothing can be more unphilosophic, or built on more thorough misconception of the case. Neither part of the language is good or bad absolutely, but in its relation to the subject, and according to the treatment which the subject is meant to receive. It is an error even to say that the Saxon part is more advantageously used for cases of passion. Even that requires further limitation. Simple narration, and a pathos resting upon artless circumstances, elementary feelings,-homely and household affections, these are most suitably managed by the old indigenous Saxon vocabulary. But a passion which rises into grandeur, which is complex, elaborate, and interveined with high meditative feelings, would languish or absolutely halt, without aid from the Latin moiety of our language. Coleridge remarks-that the writings of all reflective or highly subjective poets, overflow with Latin and Greek polysyllables, or what the uneducated term "dictionary words."

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4. Again, if there is no such thing in rerum natura as a language radically and universally without specific powers; if every language, in short, is and must be, according to the circumstances under which it is moulded, an organ sui generis, and fitted to sustain with effect some function or other of the human intellect,—so, on the other hand, the very advantages of

a language, those which are most vaunted, become defects under opposite relations. The power of running easily into composition, for instance, on which the Germans show so much fierté, when stating the pretensions of their own mother tongue, is in itself injurious to the simplicity and natural power of their poetry, besides being a snare, in many cases, to the ordinary narrator or describer, and tempting him aside into efforts of display which mar the effect of his composition. In the early stages of every literature, not simplicity (as it is thought) but elaboration and complexity, and tumid artifice in the structure of the diction, are the besetting vices of the poet: witness the Roman fragments of poetry anterior to Ennius. Now the fusile capacity of a language for running into ready coalitions of polysyllables aids this tendency, and almost of itself creates such a tendency. 5. The process by which languages grow is worthy of deep attention. So profound is the error of some men on this subject, that they talk familiarly of language as of a thing deliberately and consciously "invented" by the people who use it. A language never was invented by any people; that part which is not borrowed from adjacent nations arises under instincts of necessity and convenience. We will illustrate the matter by mentioning three such modes of instinct in which has lain the parentage of at least three words out of four in every language. First, the instinct of abbreviation, prompted continually by hurry or by impatience. Secondly, the instinct of onomatopeia, or more generally, the instinct of imitation applied directly to sounds, indirectly to motion, and by the aid of analogies more or less obvious applied to many

other classes of objects. Thirdly, the instinct of distinction-sometimes for purposes of necessity, sometimes of convenience. This process claims by far the largest application of words in every language. Thus, from propriety (or the abstract idea of annexation between two things by means of fitness or adaptation), was struck off by a more rapid pronunciation and a throwing back of the accent, the modern word, property, in which the same general idea is limited to appropriations of pecuniary value; which, however, was long expressed by the original word propriety, under a modified enunciation. So again, major as a military designation, and mayor as a civil one, have split off from the very same original word by varied pronunciations. And these divergencies into multiplied derivatives from some single radix, are, in fact, the great source of opulence to one language by preference to another. And it is clear that the difference in this respect be tween nation and nation will be in a compound ratio of the complexity and variety of situations into which men are thrown (whence the necessity of a complex condition of society to the growth of a truly fine language)—in the ratio, we say, of this complexity on the one hand; and, on the other, of the intellectual activity put forth to seize and apprehend these fleeting relations of things and persons. Whence, according to the vast inequalities of national minds, the vast disparity of languages.

6. Hence we see the monstrosity of claiming a fine or copious language, for any rude or uncultivated, much more for any savage people, or even for a people of mountaineers, or for a nation subsisting chiefly by hunting, or by agriculture and rural life exclu

sively, or in any way sequestered and monotonous in their habits. It is philosophically impossible that the Gaelic, or the Hebrew, or the Welsh, or the Manx, or the Armoric, could, at any stage, have been languages of compass or general poetic power. In relation to a few objects peculiar to their own climates, or habits, or superstitions, any of these languages may have been occasionally gifted with a peculiar power of expression; what language is not with regard to some class of objects? But a language of power and compass cannot arise except amongst cities and the habits of luxurious people. "They talked," says John Paul, speaking of two rustic characters, in one of his sketches, "they talked, as country people are apt to talk, concerning-nothing." And the fact is, universally, that rural occupations and habits, unless counteracted determinately by intellectual pursuits, tend violently to torpor. Social gatherings, social activity, social pleasure these are the parents of language. And there is but the one following exception to the rule-That such as is the activity of the national intellect in arresting fugitive relations, such will be the language resulting; and this exception lies in the mechanical advantages offered by some inflexions compared with others for generating and educing the possible modifications of each primitive idea. Some modes of inflexions easily lend themselves, by their very mechanism, to the adjuncts expressing degrees, expressing the relations of time, past, present, and future; expressing the modes of will, desire, intention, &c. For instance, the Italians have terminal forms, ino, ello, acchio, &c., expressing all gradations of size above or below the ordinary standard. The Romans, again, had frequentative forms, inceptive forms, forms expressing futurition and desire, &c. short-hand expressions performed the office of natural symbols, or hieroglyphics, which custom had made universally intelligible. Now, in some cases this machinery is large, and therefore extensively auxiliary to the popular intellect in building up the towering pile of a language; in others it is

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meagre, and so far it is possible that, from want of concurrency in the mechanic aids, the language may, in some respects, not be strictly commensurate to the fineness of the national genius.

7. Another question, which arises upon all languages, respects their degrees of fitness for poetic and imagi native purposes. The mere question of fact is interesting; and the question as to the causal agency which has led to such a result is still more so. In this place we shall content ourselves with drawing the reader's attention to a general phenomenon which comes forward in all non-poetic languagesviz. that the separation of the two great fields, prose and poetry, or of the mind, impassioned or unimpassioned, is never perfectly accomplished. This phenomenon is most striking in the Oriental languages, where the common edicts of government or provincial regulations of police assume a ridiculous masquerade dress of rhetorical or even of poetic animation. But amongst European languages this capital defect is most noticeable in the French, which has no resources for elevating its diction when applied to cases and situations the most lofty or the most affecting. The single misfortune of having no neuter gender, by compelling the mind to distribute the colouring of life universally; and by sexualising in all cases, neutralises the effect, as a special effect, for any case. To this one capital deformity, which presents itself in every line, many others have concurred. And it might be shown convincingly, that the very power of the French language, as a language for social intercourse, is built on its impotence for purposes of passion, grandeur, and native simplicity. The English, on the other hand, besides its double fountains of words, which furnishes at once two separate keys of feeling, and the ready means of obtaining distinct movements for the same general passion, enjoys the great advantage above southern languages of having a neuter gender, which, from the very first establishing a mode of shade, establishes, by a natural consequence, the means of creating light, and a more potent vitality.