Part 2

There are two stages in Language. Through these two stages all Languages, sooner or later, make their way; some sooner than others, but all sooner or later. Of this the Latin language may serve as an illustration. In the time of Augustus it expressed the relations of Time and Place, in other words, its Cases and Tenses, by Declension and Conjugation, or, broadly speaking, by Inflexion. In the time of Dante there was little or no Inflexion, but there was an abundance of Auxiliary Verbs, and an abundance of Prepositions in its stead. The expression of Time and Place by independent words superseded the expression by Inflections. Now in all Languages the inflectional stage comes first. This is a Law. There are Languages that stay for ever (at least for an indefinite time) in their earlier stage. Others there are again, that we never come in contact with before they have proceeded to their later one. Languages of this latter kind are of subordinate value to the Etymologist. Those that he values most are such as he sees in the two stages: so being enabled to watch the breaking-up of one, the constitution of the other, and the transition intermediate to the two.

Now our own language (the Anglo Saxon being borne in mind) comes under the conditions that constitute a good and sufficient language as a disciplinal foundation in Etymology. _It can be studied in two stages._ When we come to the Times of the Conquest we must gird up our loins for the acquisition of a new Language.

The Breaking-up of the Latin (I speak for the sake of illustration and comparison) is a study in itself. It is a study complete and sufficient; not, however, more so 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 Mœso-Gothic, the Scandinavian, and the Frisian, each gave origin to some new Tongue; the first to the High German, the second to the Languages of Scandinavia, and the third to the Modern Dutch. The study then of the Languages of the Gothic stock is something more than a sufficient disciplinal foundation in Etymology.[2]

In matters of pronunciation, living Languages have an exclusive advantage. For dead Languages speak but to the eye; and it is not through the eye that the ear is to be instructed.

It is well for the Geologist to classify rocks, and to arrange strata, to distinguish minerals, and to determine fossils; but it is far better if, anterior to this, he will study the Powers of Nature, and the Processes that are their operations: and these he can only study as he sees them in the times wherein he lives, or as he finds them recorded in authentic and undisputed histories. With this knowledge he can criticize, and construct; without it he may invent and imagine. Novel and ingenious he may, perchance, become; but he can never be philosophical, and he can never be Scientific. So it is with the Etymologist. Whenever, in a dead Language, he presumes a Process, which he has looked for in vain in a living one, he outruns his data. The basis of Etymology is the study of existing Processes.

Our Language has had its share; I must hasten to the consideration of our Literature.

The Early Literature of most modern Nations consists of the same elements; of Legends concerning their Saints, of Chronicles, and of Hymns and Romances. Too much of this fell into the hands of the Monks; and these were, too often, the prosaic writers of barbarous Latinity; for Prose (if not in language at least in idea) was, with them, the rule; and Poetry the exception. Such is the general character of the Early Modern Literature; in which, however, our Saxon ancestors were, somewhat (indeed much) more fortunate than their neighbours. Monkish writing was with them an important element; but it was not the only one. They had an originality besides. And the Scandinavians were more fortunate still. The worshippers of Odin and Thor had a _Mythology_; and Mythologies are the Creators and Creations of Poetry. The Norse Mythology is as poetical as the Grecian. I speak this advisedly. Now this Mythology was common to all the Gothic Tribes. The Saxon and the Norse Literatures dealt (each in their degree) with the same materials; they breathed the same spirit; and they clothed it in an allied Language. But the Saxon Mythology is fragmentary; while the Norse Mythology is a whole. For this reason Scandinavian (or Norse) Literature is not extraneous to my subject.

These, the primeval and Pagan times of our ancestors, must claim and arrest our attention; since it is from these that our characteristic modes of Thought (call them Gothic, or call them Romantic) are derived. In the regions of Paganism lie the dark fountains of our Nationality.

Beside this, I consider that, even in the matter of Language, the direct Scandinavian element of the English is much underrated;[3] and still more underrated is the indirect Scandinavian element of the Norman-French. And here, again, when we come to the Conquest, we must grapple with new dialects, irregular imaginations, and mystical and mysterious Mythologies; for the things that have a value in Language, have a value in History also.

Now come, in due order, and in lineal succession, the formation of our Early English Literature, and the days of Chaucer; and then those of Spenser: periods necessary to be illustrated, but which may be illustrated at a future time. And after these the Æra of Elizabeth, fertile in great men, and fertile in great poets; so much so, that (the full view being too extensive) it must be contemplated by instalments and in sections.

There are many reasons for choosing as a subject for illustration the Dramatic Poets of this Period. They stood as great men amid a race of great men; so doing, they have a claim on our attention on the simple solitary grounds of their own supereminent excellence. But, besides this, they are, with the exception of their one great representative, known but imperfectly. Too many of us consider the Age of Elizabeth as the Age of Shakspeare exclusively. Too many of us have been misled by the one-sided partiality of the Shakspearian commentators. These men, in the monomania of their idolatry, not only elevate their author into a Giant, but dwarve down his cotemporaries into pigmies. And who knows not how (on the moral side of the question) their writings are filled even to nauseousness, with the imputed malignity of Ben Jonson? Themselves being most malignant.

This, however, has been, by the labor of a late editor, either wholly done away with, or considerably diluted. Be it with us a duty, and be it with us a labour of love, to seek those commentators who have rescued great men from the neglect of Posterity; and be our sympathies with the diligent antiquarian, who shows that obloquy has originated unjustly; and be our approbation with those who have corrected the errors of Fame, loosely adopted, and but lately laid aside.

Yet here we must guard against a reaction. Malone, and his compeers, valued, or seemed to value, the Elizabethan Drama, just for the light that it threw upon the text of their idol. Gifford, goaded into scorn by injustice, fought the fight on the other side, with strength and with spirit; but he fought it like a partizan; reserving (too much, but as Editors are wont to do,) his admiration and his eulogy for those whom he himself edited. Next came Hazlitt and Charles Lamb; who found undiscovered beauties in poets still more neglected. I think, however, that they discovered these beauties, or at any rate that they exaggerated them, in a great degree on account of their being neglected.

Be there here a more Catholic criticism! be there here eulogies more discriminate! be there here tastes less exclusive!

The Elizabethan Drama is pre-eminently independent, it is pre-eminently characteristic, it is also pre-eminently English. It is deeply, very deeply, imbued, with the colours and complexion of the age that gave it origin. It has much Wisdom, and much Imagination. The last of our Early Dramatists is Shirley. With him terminates the School of Shakspeare. The transition hence is sudden and abrupt. Imagination decays; Wit predominates. Amatory poets write as though they wore their hearts in their heads. Wit is perfected. It had grown out of a degeneracy of Imagination; it will soon be sobered into Sense; Sense the predominant characteristic of the writers under Queen Anne. The school of Dryden passes into that of Pope, Prior being, as it were, intermediate. The Æra of the Charleses comprises two Schools; the School of Cowley, falsely called Metaphysical, with an excess of Fancy, and a deficiency of Taste, and the School of Dryden, whose masculine and fiery intellectuality simulates, aye! and _is_, genius. Tragedy has run retrograde; but Comedy is evolving itself towards a separate existence, and towards its full perfection. The Spirit of Milton stands apart from his cotemporaries; reflecting nothing of its age but its self-relying energy, moral and intellectual.

Now, although, the Schools of Cowley and the Schools of Dryden, differ essentially from that particular section of the Elizabethan Æra, which we have just contemplated, they do not differ, essentially, from another section of that same æra. Be this borne in mind. There are in Literature, no precipitate transitions. The greatest men, the most original thinkers, the most creative spirits stand less alone than the world is inclined to imagine. Styles of composition, that in one generation are rife and common, always exist in the age that went before. They were not indeed its leading characteristics, but still they were existent within it. The metrical Metaphysics of Cowley were the metrical metaphysics of Donne: the versified Dialectics of Dryden may be found, with equal condensation but less harmony, in the Elizabethan writings of Sir John Davies. The section of one age is the characteristic of the next. This line of criticism is a fair reason (one out of many) for never overlooking and never underrating obscure composers and obsolete literature.

The School of Pope, and the School of our own days, are too far in the prospective to claim any immediate attention.

And here I feel myself obliged to take leave of a subject, that continually tempts me to grow excursive.

There are two sorts of lecturers; those that absolutely teach, and those that stimulate to learn; those that exhaust their subject, and those that indicate its bearings; those that infuse into their hearers their own ideas, and those that set them a-thinking for themselves. For my own part, it is, I confess, my aim and ambition to succeed in the latter rather than in the former object. To carry such as hear me through a series of Authors, or through a course of Languages, in full detail, is evidently, even if it were desirable, an impossibility; but it is no impossibility to direct their attention to the prominent features of a particular subject, and to instil into them the imperious necessity of putting forth their own natural powers in an independent manner, so as to read for themselves, and to judge for themselves. Now as I would rather see a man's mind active than capacious; and, as I love Self-reliance better than Learning, I have no more sanguine expectation, than, that instead of exhausting my subject I may move you to exhaust it for yourselves, may sharpen criticism, may indicate original sources, and, above all, suggest trains of honest, earnest, patient and persevering reflection.

NOTES.

NOTE 1, p. 6. l. 24.

To be heard with confidence we must prove that we have anticipated objections. There are those who shew reason for believing that the inflectional elements were once independent roots: in other words (or rather in a formal expression) that a given case = the root+a preposition, and that a given tense = the root+the substantive verb. Now believing that, although two forms may be thus accounted for, the third may have a very different origin, in other words, drawing a difference between _a_ method of accounting for a given part of speech, and _the_ method of so doing, I find that the bearings of the objection are as follows:--

The independent words, anterior to their amalgamation with the root, and anterior to their power as elements in inflection were either, like the present prepositions and the verb substantive, exponents of the relations of Time and Place, or they were, like the present nouns and verbs, names expressive of ideas: and presuming the former to have been the case, the old inflected Languages may have grown out of Languages like our own; and, _vice versa_, Languages uninflected (or at least comparatively so), like our own, may give rise to inflected ones like the Latin: in which case, a Cycle is established, and the assertion concerning the sequence falls to the ground.

Now the assertion concerning the _two_ stages professes to be true only as far as it goes. The fact that certain nations are even now evolving a rudimentary inflection out of a vocabulary of independent roots, gives us, as an etymological phenomenon, a _third_, and an earlier stage of Language; a stage, however, of which cognizance, out of a work on Etymology, would have been superfluous. The independent roots, however, in these Languages coincide, not with the prepositions and the verbs substantive of (comparatively) uninflected Languages, but with their Nouns and Verbs.

To an objector of another sort who should inquire (for instance) where was the Passive Voice in English, or the Definite Article in Latin, the answer would be that the question shewed a misapprehension of the statement in the text, which is virtually this: not that there is either in English or Latin, respectively, Passive Voices, or Definite Articles, but that there are in the two Languages the processes that evolve them. It may also be added, that (an apparent truism) the quantity of Processes depends upon the _capacity_ of the Language. A dialect consisting (as some do) of about ten-score words can _bear_ but a proportionate number of Processes. The truth, however, of the statements in question depends upon this: viz. that all the processes there existing are the processes that exist elsewhere, and that all processes which, with a given increase of Language may at any future time be developed, shall coincide, in kind, with the processes of other Languages.

It may be satisfactory to the Author of the Principles of Geology to discover that his criticism affects other sciences besides his own. Notwithstanding the industry, and acumen of continental critics, it may be doubted whether the Principles of Etymology (as a _Science_) have not yet to be exhibited. I use the word _exhibited_ intentionally. That many Etymologists _apply_ them I am most certain; where, however, do we find them detailed in system, or recognised as tests?

We draw too much upon the Philologists of Germany; and where men draw indefinitely they trust implicitly. I believe that the foundations of Etymology are to be laid upon the study of existing processes; and I grow sanguine when I remember that by no one so well as by an Englishman can these processes be collected. With the exception of the Russian (a doubtful exception) we come in contact with more Languages than any nation under the Sun. Here then we have an advantage in externals. The details of Etymology I can willingly give up to the scholars of the Continent; in these they have already reaped a harvest: but for the _Principles_ of Etymology, I own to the hope that it may be the English School that shall be the first to be referred to and the last to be distrusted. In sketching the outline of a system of Scientific Etymology, I again borrow my analogies from Geology. Its primary divisions would be two: 1stly, The processes that change the _form_ of words, or the _formal_ processes. 2ndly, The processes that change their _meanings_, or the _Logical_ processes. The first of these would be based upon the affinities and interchanges of _sounds_, the second upon the affinities and interchanges of _ideas_: the sciences (amongst others) which they were erected on being, respectively, those of Acoustics and Metaphysics; and the degrees of Etymological probability would then coincide with the correspondence of the two sorts of processes.

Few Etymologists have any conception of the enormous influence of small and common processes, provided that the extent of Language that they affect be considerable. In the very generalizing classification of Languages into Monosyllabic, Triliteral, and Polysynthetic, I put no trust; for I can refer (to my own satisfaction at least) the differences that are generally attributed to an original diversity of composition, to a diversity in the development of processes: in other words, I know of processes which with a given degree of development render the three classes convertible each in the other. With these notions I, of course, take exceptions to the _Principle_ of the classification; for I deny that the _Form_ of a Language is, in any degree, an essential characteristic. The axiom is not _Propter formam Lingua est id quod est_, but _Propter elementa Lingua est id quod est_. The question concerning the Classification in point is analogous to the question concerning the Chemical and the Natural-History Classification in Mineralogy.

NOTE 2, p. 7. l. 22.

Were it not for the admixture of other questions, the present Lecture might have been entitled _The Sufficiency of the English Language as a Disciplinal Study in Grammar and Etymology, irrespective of the fact of its being the native Language of Englishmen_. The appended qualification is in no wise a superfluity. Our native Language is the best instrument in Disciplinal Study simply because it is our native one; and a Pole, a Spaniard, or Hungarian can best lay in their ideas of General Grammar from the special study of the Polish, Spanish, and Hungarian Languages respectively. The very palpable reason for this is that, before we can advantageously study the System of a Language, we must have acquired a certain quantity of the detail of it. Now, in the attempt to collect ideas of General Grammar from the study of a Foreign Language, we shall find that the Theory will be swamped by the Practice; in other words, that, by attempting to do two things at once, we shall do one of them badly. Merely, then, to have predicated in England, of the English Language, that it was a good and sufficient Disciplinal Instrument would have been to have remained silent as to its _abstract_ merits as such.

Of these abstract merits the degree depends upon the chronological extent of Language that we make use of. To get them at their _maximum_ the Two Stages must be taken in: and the Two Stages being taken in, it is more on a par with the Languages of Classical Antiquity, than it has generally been considered to be. Still (considered thus far only) it is inferior to them. For the Greek and Latin, exceeding it in the quantity of original Inflection, have run through an equal quantity of change. Considering, however, not the English only, but the whole range of allied Languages forming the Gothic Stock, the question takes a different shape. As a Magazine of Processes and Principles, the Gothic Stock not only equals the Classical, but exceeds, by far, the Greek Branch of it. The Hebrew from its _quasi_-symbolic form has Disciplinal merits of its own.

Let the Languages of Greece and Italy 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 and Cæsar, were a sufficient reason for turning with diurnal and nocturnal hands the copies that exhibit them. But let us not (as we often are) be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or the Greek Accidence for the sake of learning grammar in general. The self-deception that in taking up Latin and Greek we are studying a Grammar, instead of beginning a Literature, is too often the excuse for concluding our studies just where they might advantageously begin, and for looking with complacency upon limited acquirements just where limited acquirements are pre-eminently of little use.

NOTE 3, p. 8, l. 27.

I feel that the assertion here made requires modifying and explaining. I should be sorry to be supposed to have made it, under the old notion that in any written records of the Saxon Literature there is any ostensible admixture of Danish (_i. e._ Scandinavian); still less do I participate in the belief of the early Gothic Scholars in the existence of their so-called Dano-Saxon Dialect. I recognize, moreover, the criticism that refers the apparent Danish (Scandinavian) element of the East-Anglian, and Northumbrian Glossaries to the original affinity between the extreme Low German and the extreme Scandinavian Dialects: thus making it _indirect_. It was once my opinion (one which I have since modified but not given up) that in the present English, and consequently in the Low Germanic Branch of the Gothic Stock, obscure traces of the great Scandinavian characteristics (_viz._ the existence of a Passive Middle or Reflective Voice, and the peculiar expression of the sense of the Definite Article) could be discovered: but it was not upon this idea that I founded the assertion in the text.

The question has its peculiar difficulties. Words that have long passed for Scandinavian, are continually being detected in the Saxon; so that the Philologist who should say _this word is Scandinavian and not Saxon_ has the difficult task of proving a negative. Again, the point is one upon which no single person's assertion should be received. Hastiness of Induction, in favour of particular Languages, when we know these Languages (as every Language, indeed as every kind of Knowledge, must be known) at the expense of some other, comes upon us unconsciously. The Languages of the Gothic Stock that I know best are those of Scandinavia; the Provincial Dialect of England which I have most studied is that of Lincolnshire, and the neighbouring maritime Counties. Here the preeminence of the Danish (Scandinavian) element being acknowledged, the question is whether it be _Direct_ or _Indirect_. I am free to confess that this circumstance sharpens my sight for the perception (true or false) of direct Danish elements. As a counterbalance, however, the consciousness of it engenders a proportionate self-distrust.

Upon the whole, I would rather that the sentence had run thus: _the Direct Scandinavian element in the English is still to be determined, and here (as in many other places) there is open ground for the original investigator_.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, DELIVERED AT THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL, OCTOBER 1, 1847.

There are certain facts of such paramount importance, that they not only bear, but require, repetition. The common duties of every-day life, and the common rules of social policy, are matters which no moralist states once for all: on the contrary, they are reiterated as often as occasion requires--and occasion requires them very often.

Now it is from the fact of certain medical duties, both on the part of those who teach and those who learn, being of this nature, that, with the great schools of this metropolis, every year brings along with it the necessity of an address similar to the one which I have, on this day, the honour of laying before you.

You that come here to learn, come under the pressure of a cogent responsibility--in some cases of a material, in others of a moral nature--in all, however, most urgent and most imperative.