NOTES.

(Note 1 to Sonnet 8.-Page 9.)

What language the Immortals speak, or that may be their medium of intercommunication, is one of those mysterious secrets which will probably never be revealed to man on this side the grave. But the world has heard several pleasant discussions as to which was the original language of mankind. Until the time of Leibintz it was generally believed that Hebrew claimed this honor. People become so accustomed to their own language, that it requires an effort of the understanding to doubt that it is not the original language of all mankind. Goropius, in 1580, maintained that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise. Andie Kempe writes that God spoke to Adam in Swedish, Adam answered in Danish, and the serpent spoke to Eve in French. Two hundred years ago, a discussion upon the point took place in the Metropolitan Chapter of Pampeluna. Though the Chapter would not affirm that Basque was the original language of mankind, they held that it was impossible to bring forward any serious or rational objection against its having been the only language spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise.

In the present condition of the science of Language, which may be said to have sprung into existence within the last fifty years, we cannot prove that all tongues are derived from one and the same original. But our present researches seem to me to favor such theory, although certainly there are many deep scholars who hold that the great families of language must have sprung from different centres. We cannot as yet establish a common origin of the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian families of language, though there seems good ground for connecting the two first of these by a common link of paternity, different as are their structures and grammars. And the principles of induction warrant an a priori probability that further knowledge will continually result in wider classification. Who could have anticipated that the dialects of India and Iceland, the Sanskrit of the Vedas and modern English, would be resolved into the common parentage of the great Aryan family; who could have foretold a common bond among some 120 languages which compose the great Turanian family? Yet these triumphs have been already achieved, and if we look to the origin of language, we shall be still more justified in indulging the sanguine hope of hereafter solving satisfactorily much that is at present mysterious and confused.

Languages become fixed and permanent in their grammar, at different stages; they receive their permanent form by the art of writing, by religion, laws, and poetry. In the Chinese, which has been arrested, frozen, or petrified as it were, in the rudest stage, we find a language without inflections, without compounds, made up of monosyllabic roots, each root having an actual value and signification. This is the Radical or monosyllabic stage of language.

In the Turanian, we have a more advanced stage, the agglutinative, where words are formed of compound roots; where one only need retain its primitive signification, the other sinking into a mere conventional form. The most advanced condition was preserved when the Aryan language became permanent, and here, though the words used are formed of roots, the roots have so withered, that neither the one nor the other has preserved its radical independence. This is the Inflectional stage. Though here roots are ground down into mere inflexions, it is clear that it is by endeavouring to recover the roots, of which there has been a gradual decay ever since the process of compounding two or more roots commenced, that we must search for the original form of speech. Every inflectional language was once agglutinative, every agglutinative was once radical or monosyllabic.

It is precisely here that the study of Sanskrit has so wonderfully helped us in tracing to a common source the whole Aryan family of tongues.

But how or why these roots came originally to signify the meaning of which each is so prolific a parent, we may never now be able to discover. We may trace back the Latin Aratrum to the Sanskrit root Ar, but why Ar should signify to plough, why the act of ploughing should be expressed by the root Ar, why Si should represent to shake; Ma, to measure; Re, to run, and the like, is probably lost to us for ever, since we cannot enter into the feelings or re-occupy the position of those mortals who first assigned to acts and things these and other particular representatives. That roots did not arise from any resemblance between the sound and the object; as a general principle, is clear from the comparatively small numbers of roots in which any such working origin is found, and I must confess that to my own mind, no theory yet advanced carries with it conviction. The onomatopatic, I have above alluded to. The Interjectional, is that which refers speech to the expression of joy, sorrow, pain, surprize, fear, indignation, contempt, &c., from which every other noun was elaborated. But language begins where interjections end, and as Horne Tooke remarks, "The dominion of speech is based on the downfall of Interjections. Voluntary exclamations are only employed when the suddenness and vehemence of some affection or passion returns men to their natural state, and makes them for a moment forget the use of speech."

That language is not due to any conventional source is, I think, clear. The very idea of men meeting to agree upon a common form of speech is refuted by the fact, that, in order to admit of the preliminary discussion, language must already have been in so advanced a stage as altogether to have superseded the necessity for any such clumsy intervention. That language is of divine origin, in the sense of the Theologians, that of being bestowed on man, if not in its perfection, yet by an inspiration, partakes of what has been justly called that "indolent philosophy which refers whatever we do not understand to miracle." It is further opposed by the account in Genesis; for though God called the beasts before Adam, it was he who named them. God is said to have called &c., to see how he would name them, a passage which appears to me to point to the belief that God gave the faculty of speech, and man taught himself the use of it.

Neither do I feel able to give my adhesion to the theory that roots are phonetic types, and that as every thing in Nature, when struck, has its distinctive sound, so each impression from without, when first made on the mind of man, was constantly responded to by its vocal expression from within, though this

faculty has been since blunted by non-use. There is a faulty analogy here; each wood, metal, &c. struck and giving out a different sound, is a different subject. But the mind, though one, is here supposed to give out thousands of different tones according to the thing which strikes it.

The faculty is divine; the growth of language must, I think, have been gradual, though probably marvellously rapid at the outset. The tendency of the language of civilized nations is to become stationary, but in Siberia, Africa, and Siam, two or three generations among savage and illiterate tribes suffice to entirely alter the national dialect. When images and things were for the first time crowding on the stranger man, to whom all was novel, the rapidity with which he fixed his nomenclature must have been immense. Every root expresses a general idea. Adam Smith is correct when he says, that each noun was in its original application a particular, and not a general term. Some particular cave must have been so called before the same name was applied to other caves, but Leibintz is equally right in saying that, before the application of the particular or proper name, there must have been a generalization of the idea of hollow, and that before cave we have the root cav, a hollow thing. Language is but the outward and visible sign, marvellous as it is, of the inward and spiritual faculty of Abstraction, the forming of general ideas, or, in other words, of reason, and herein it is especially the distinguishing mark between man and brute. As such, its importance becomes immeasurably enhanced and magnified, and may well incite us to search back till we find, if not the language of the Gods in the remarkable passage which heads my Sonnet, the ‘μία γλώσσα Αθανατοῖσι ; at any rate the voice of that Epoch when the world was of one language and one speech."

(Note 2 to Sonnet 12.-Page 13.)

It is not my purpose to decry the study of the Greek and Latin languages. They open vast funds of thought for the student, they are an ever recurring source of delight in advancing age, they are as good a medium as any other for that training of the mind in the growth, which is one of the main ends of general education, and as Charles V. said, a man is as many times a man as he knows languages. What is called a practical, as opposed to a liberal, education too frequently produces a hard narrow-minded character, and as I do not, on the one hand, advocate the theory of words against things, so on the other, I am not the champion of things against words. My complaint is, that our method of teaching Greek and Latin is too prolix, and that if a portion of the time now devoted to learning how to write Greek and Latin hexameters and pentameters, Saphics, Alcaics and Iambics, were given up to Mathematics, the physical sciences, and modern languages, the years at present dedicated to polite education, say from 7 to 21, would suffice to teaching quite as much Latin and Greek as nearly ninety-nine out of every hundred men require, while they would obtain a large store of rudimentary knowledge of those subjects, which, under our pent system, a man is compelled to instruct himself in, after his general education is supposed to be completed, if he wishes to hold his own in average society.

(Note 3 to Sonnet 20.-Page 24.)

Compare Milton's description of Belial. This principle was first adopted by the Stoics. See Aristotle's Rhetoric, 2-24 fin. See Aristotle's Nubes v.

886 et seq, and Plato Phil. p. 58. Pythagoras was the first who made a boast of his ability τὸν ἥττονα λόγον κρείττονα ποιεῖν. Gorgius, according to Plato, held Rhetoric to be the highest art: dpíσtη tŵv texvôv. Like Carneades of the new Academy, in later days, they were prepared to argue for and against any given subject. Carneades astonished the Romans by his orations for and against Justice. It was this double dealing which raised such a feeling against the Greek philosophy among the elder Romans of the day, who looked upon the philosophers much as the Athenians regarded Socrates, as the corrupters of youth. Euripides is conspicuous for his sophistic arguments in support of the most manifestly fallacious propositions. See also Lactantius, Div. Inst. 14.

(Note 4 to Sonnet 29.-Page 36.)

Though 'Loripidem rectus derideat, Æthiopum albus' is true all the world over, yet of all countries, England is probably the most remarkable for its spirit of supercilious exclusiveness, and this vice culminates at Oxford. It is a snobbish feeling which sets down every stranger into whose society chance throws us, as a snob. Our insular position favours the growth of this habit; travel and observation of the World in foreign countries are the best remedy. We all remember the old joke of the Oxford student drowning in the Isis, calling upon another Oxonian to save him, which the latter replied he should have been happy to have attempted, but that he had not had the honor of an introduction. A handsome face is generally felt to be a letter of recommendation at the first blush, though even Phaedrus might remind us,

Formosos sæpe inveni pessimos,

Et turpi facie multos cognovi optimos.'

Still, beauty makes its way direct to the heart. We all pride ourselves on our fancied skill in physiognomy. 'Vultus est animi index.' Vultus animi janua et tabula' says Cicero: Pythagoras used to examine the countenances of his students, and we know that Socrates prognosticated a fair mind from a fair form. So loth are we to believe that an ill-favoured person can be worthy or agreeable, that Martial has hit off our foible in a happy Epigram,

'Crine ruber, niger ore, brevis pede, lumine loso,

Rem magnam prostas, Zoile, si bonus es.'

and we may admit that there is an indescribable fascination in the mere posses sion of bodily advantages.

'Moribus et forma conciliandus amor," says that Doctor Amorum, Ovid; Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus, chimeth in Master Virgil: and we shall all do well at least to suspend our judgments. Multo melius ex sermone, quam lineamentis, de moribus hominum judicamus,' was Cato's rule. The Pharisee thanks God that he is not as other men are: the charitable will check the first risings of disgust or dislike, when thrown into the society of an illfavoured person, and remember that there is a jewelled eye set even in the toad. It is much a matter of habit; and a good habit is as easy of acquirement as a bad. It is practice, as Aristotle tells us, that creates the habit. The traveller sickens at the leprous beggar, Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes,' laid out on the roadside to awaken his pity; the surgeon stops to examine and make a note of him as an interesting case. "Commend not a man for his