and Prákrit, Zend and Persian, Latin and French. But, even were the old mines exhausted, the science of language would create its own materials, and, as with the rod of the prophet, smite the rocks of the desert to call forth from them new streams of living speech. The rock inscriptions of Persia show what can be achieved by our science. I do not wonder that the discoveries due to the genius and the persevering industry of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last, not least, of Rawlinson, should seem incredible to those who only glance at them from a distance. Their incredulity will hereafter prove the greatest compliment that could have been paid to these eminent scholars. What we now call the Cuneiform inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I., Darius II., Artaxerxes Mnemon, Artaxerxes Ochus (of which we have several editions, translations, grammars, and dictionaries), was originally a mere conglomerate of wedges, engraved or impressed on the solitary monument of Cyrus in the Murgháb, on the ruins of Persepolis, or the rocks of Behistún, near the frontiers of Media, and the precipice of Van, in Armenia. When Grotefend attempted to decipher them, he had first to prove that these scrolls were really inscriptions, and not mere Arabesques or fanciful ornaments. He had then to find out whether these magical characters were to be read horizontally or perpendicularly, from right to left, or from left to right. Lichtenberg maintained that they must be read in the same direction as Hebrew. Grotefend, in 1802, proved that the letters followed each other, as in Greek, from left to right. Even before Grotefend, Münter and Tychsen had observed that there was a sign to separate the words. This is of course an immense help in all attempts at deciphering inscriptions, for it lays bare at once the terminations of hundreds of words, and, in an Aryan language, supplies us with the skeleton of its grammar. Yet consider the difficulties that had still to be overcome before a single line could be read. was unknown in what language these

It

inscriptions were composed; it might have been a Semitic, a Turanian, or an Aryan language. Aryan language. It was unknown to what period they belonged, and whether they commemorated the conquests of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, or Sapor. It was unknown whether the alphabet used was phonetic, syllabic, or hieroglyphic. It would detain us too long were I to relate how all these difficulties were removed one after the other; how the proper names of Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes, and of their god Ormusd, were traced; how from them the values of certain letters were determined; how with an imperfect alphabet other words were deciphered which clearly established the fact that the language of these inscriptions was Ancient Persian; how then, with the help of the Zend, which represents the Persian language previous to Darius, and, with the help of the later Persian, a most effective cross fire was opened; how even more powerful ordnance was brought up from the Arsenal of the ancient Sanskrit ; how outpost after outpost was driven in, a practical breach effected, till at last the fortress had to surrender and submit to the terms dictated by the Science of Language.

I should gladly on some future occasion give you a more detailed account of this glorious siege and victory. At present I only refer to it to show how, in all quarters of the globe, and from sources where it would least be expected, new materials are forthcoming that would give employment to a much larger class of labourers than the Science of Language can as yet boast of. The inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the records in the caves of India, on the monuments of Lycia, on the tombs of Etruria, and on the broken tablets of Umbria and Samnium, all these wait to have their spell broken by the student of language. If, then, we turn our eyes again to the yet unnumbered dialects now spoken by the nomad tribes of Asia, of Africa, of America, and of the islands of the Pacific, no scholar need be afraid for some generations to come

that there will be no language left to him to conquer.

There is another charm peculiar to the Science of Language, or one, at least, which it shares only with its younger sisters: I mean, the vigorous contest that is still carried on between great opposing principles. In Astronomy, the fundamental laws of the universe are no longer contested, and the Ptolemæan system is not likely to find new supporters. In Geology, the feuds between the Vulcanists and Neptunists have come to an end, and no unprejudiced person doubts at the present moment whether an Ammonite be a work of nature, or a flinthead a work of art. It is different in the Science of Language. There, the controversies about the great problems have not yet subsided. The questions whether language is a work of nature or a work of art, whether languages had one or many beginnings, whether they can be classified in families or not, are constantly starting up, and scholars, even while engaged in the most minute inquiries, must always be prepared to meet the enemy. This, no doubt, may sometimes be tedious, but it has this good effect: it leads us to examine carefully the ground on which we take our stand, and keeps us alive, even while analysing mere prefixes and suffixes, to the grandeur and the sacredness of the issues that depend on these minutiæ. The foundations of our science do not suffer from such attacks ;-on the contrary, like the coral cells built up quietly and patiently from the bottom of the sea, they become more strongly cemented by the whiffs of spray that are dashed across.

Emboldened by the indulgent reception with which I met in this place, when first claiming some share of public sympathy in behalf of the Science of Language, I venture to-day to come again before you with a course of lectures on the same subject-on mere words, on nouns, and verbs, and particles and I trust you will again, as you did then, make allowance for the inevitable shortcomings of one who has to address you with a foreign accent,

and on a subject foreign to the pursuits of many of the supporters of this Institution. One thing I feel more strongly than ever-namely, that without the Science of Language, the circle of the physical sciences, to which this Intitution is more specially dedicated, would be incomplete. The whole natural creation tends towards man: without man, nature would be incomplete and purposeless. The Science of Man, therefore, must form the crown of all the natural sciences. And, if it is language by which man differs from all other created things, the Science of language has a right to hold that place which I claimed for it when addressing for the first time the members and supporters of this Institution. Allow me to quote the words of one whose memory becomes more dear and sacred to me with every year, and to whose friendship I owe more than I could here say. Bunsen, when addressing, in 1847, the newly-formed section of Ethnology at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, said :

hand, if man is the apex of the creation, if he is the end to which "all organic formations tend from the very beginning; if man is at once "the mystery and the key of natural "science; if that is the only view of "natural science worthy of our age"then ethnological philology, once esta"blished on principles as clear as the "physiological are, is the highest branch "of that science for the advancement of "which this Association is instituted. "It is not an appendix to physiology "or to anything else; but its object is,

cipal objects of the Science of Language, to determine its limits, and to lay before you a general map of the ground that had been explored with more or less success during the last fifty years. That map was necessarily incomplete. It comprehended not much more than what in an atlas of the ancient world is called "Orbis Veteribus Notus," where you distinguish names and boundaries only in those parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa which formed the primeval stage of the great drama of history; but where, beyond the Hyperboreans in the North, the Anthropophagi in the West, and the Ethiopians in the South, you see but vaguely shaded outlines the New World beyond the Atlantic existing as yet only as the dream of philosophers.

:

It was at first my intention, in the present course of lectures, to fill out, in greater detail, the outlines of that map. Materials for this are abundant and steadily increasing. The works of Hervas, Adelung, Klaproth, Balbi, Prichard, and Latham, will show you how much more minutely the map of languages might be coloured at present than the ancient geographical maps of Strabo and Ptolemy. But I very soon perceived that this would hardly have been a fit subject for a course of lectures. I could only have given you an account of the work done by others of explorations made by travellers or missionaries among the black races of Africa, the yellow tribes of Polynesia, and the red-skins of America. I should have had simply to copy their descriptions of the manners, customs, laws, and religions of these savage tribes, to make abstracts of their grammars and extracts from their vocabularies. This would necessarily have been work at second-hand, and all I could have added of my own would have been to criticize their attempts at classifying some of the clusters of languages in those distant regions, to point out similarities which they might have overlooked, or to protest against some of the theories which they had propounded without sufficient evidence. All who have had to examine the accounts of new languages, or families of languages, pub

lished by missionaries or travellers, are aware how not only their theories, but their facts, have to be sifted, before they can be allowed to occupy even a temporary place in our handbooks, or before we should feel justified in rectifying accordingly the frontiers on the great map of the languages of mankind. Thus I received but the other day some papers, printed at Honolulu,1 propounding the theory "that all those tongues which "we designate as the Indo-European languages have their true root and origin "in the Polynesian language." "I am certain," the author writes, "that this "is the case as regards the Greek and Sanskrit; I find reason to believe it "to be so as to the Latin and other more modern tongues-in short, as "to all European languages, old and "young." And he proceeds: "The "second discovery which I believe "I have made, and with which the "former is connected, is that the study "of the Polynesian language gives us "the key to the original function of "language itself, and to its whole "mechanism."

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Strange as it may sound to hear the language of Homer and Ennius spoken of as an offshoot of the Sandwich Islands, mere ridicule would be a very inappropriate and very inefficient answer to such a theory. It is not very long ago that all the Greek and Latin scholars of Europe shook their heads at the idea of tracing the roots of the classical idioms back to Sanskrit, and even at the present moment there are still many persons who cannot realize the fact that, at a very remote, but a very real period in the history of the world, the ancestors of the Homeric poets and of the poets of the Veda must have lived together as members of one and the same race, as speakers of one and the same language. There are other theories not less startling than that which would make the Polynesian the primitive language of mankind. I received lately a Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages, printed at the Cape,

1 "The Polynesian," Honolulu, Sept. 27, Oct. 7, Oct. 11, 1862.-Essay by Dr. J. Rae.

2

written by a most learned, accurate, and ingenious scholar, Dr. Bleek.1 In it he proves that, with the exception of the Bushman tongue, which has not yet been sufficiently studied, the great mass of African languages is to be reduced to two families. He shows that the Hottentot is a branch of the North African class of languages, and that it was separated from its relatives by the intrusion of the second great family, the Kafir languages, which occupy (as far as our knowledge goes) the whole remaining portion of the South African continent, extending on the eastern side from the Keiskamma to the equator, and on the western side from 32° southern to about 8° northern latitude. But the same author claims likewise (page 2) a very prominent place for the African idioms, in the general history of human speech. "It is, "perhaps, not too much to say," he writes, (page viii. Preface) "that similar "results may at present be expected from "a deeper study of such primitive forms "of language as the Kafir and the Hot"tentot exhibit, as followed, at the "beginning of this century, the dis"covery of Sanskrit, and the compara"tive researches of Oriental scholars. "The origin of the grammatical forms, "of gender and number, the etymology "of pronouns, and many other questions "of the highest interest to the philologist, "find their true solution in Southern "Africa."

But, while we are thus told by some scholars that we must look to Polynesia and South Africa, if we would find the clue to the mysteries of Aryan speech, we are warned by others that there is no such thing as an Aryan or Indo-Euro

A Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages, by W. H. T. Bleek, Ph.D.,

1862.

2" Since the Hottentot race is known only as a receding one, and traces of its existence extend into the interior of South Africa, it may be looked upon as fragment of the old and properly Ethiopic population, stretched along the mountain-spine of Africa, through the regions now occupied by the Galla; but cut through and now enveloped by tribes of a different stock."-T. C. Adamson, in Journal of the American Oriental Soc., vol. iv., p. 449. 1859.

pean family of languages, that Sanskrit has no relationship with Greek, and that comparative philology is but a dream of continental professors. How are theories and counter-theories of this kind to be treated? However startling and paradoxical in appearance, they must be examined before we can either accept or reject them. "Science," as Bunsen3 said, "excludes no suppositions, however strange they may appear, which are not in themselves absurd—viz., "demonstrably contradictory to its own. "principles." But by what tests and rules are they to be examined? They can only be examined by those tests and rules which the science of language has established in its more limited areas of research. "We must

"begin," as Leibnitz said, "with study"ing the modern languages which are "within our reach, in order to compare "them with one another, to discover "their differences and affinities, and

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then to proceed to those which have

'preceded them in former ages; in order "to show their filiation and their origin, "and then to ascend step by step to the "most ancient of tongues, the analysis of "which must lead us to the only trust"worthy conclusions." The principles of comparative philology must rest on the evidence of the best known and the best analysed dialects, and it is to them that we must look, if we wish for a compass to guide us through the most violent storms and hurricanes of philological speculation.

I thought it best, therefore, to devote the present course of lectures to the examination of a very limited area of speech to English, French, German, Latin, and Greek, and, of course, to Sanskrit-in order to discover or to establish more firmly some of the fundamental principles of the Science of Language. I believe there is no science from which we, the students of language, may learn more than from Geology. Now in Geology, if we have once acquired a general knowledge of the successive strata that form the crust of the earth, and of the faunas and floras pre3 L. c. p. 256.

sent or absent in each, nothing is so instructive as the minute exploration of a quarry close at hand, of a cave or a mine, in order to see things with our own eyes, to handle them, and to learn how every pebble that we pick up points a lesson of the widest range. I believe it is the same in the Science of Language. One word, however common, of our own dialect, if well examined and analysed, will teach us more than the most ingenious speculations on the nature of speech and the origin of roots. We may accept it, I believe, as a general principle, that what is real in modern formations, is possible in more ancient formations; that what has been found to be true on a small scale, may be true on a larger scale. Principles like these, which underlie the study of Geology, are equally applicable to the study of Philology, though in their application they require, no doubt, the same circumspectness which is the great charm of geological reasoning.

1

We

Let us examine a few instances. have not very far to go in order to hear such phrases as, "he is gone a-hunting, a-fishing," instead of the more usual, "he is gone out hunting, fishing," &c. Now the fact is, that the vulgar or dialectic expression, "he is gone a-hunting," is far more correct than "he is gone hunting." Ing, in our modern grammars, is called the termination of the participle present, but it does not exist as such in Anglo-Saxon. In Anglo-Saxon the termination of that participle is ande or inde (Gothic, ands; O.H.G. anter, enter; M.H.G. ende, N.H.G. end.) This was preserved as late as Gower's and Chaucer's time, though in most cases it had already been supplanted by the termination ing. Now what is that termination ing?2 It is clearly used in two different senses, even in modern English. If I say, "a loving child," loving is a verbal adjective. If I say, "loving our neighbour is our highest duty," loving is a verbal substantive. Again, there are many substantives in ing, such as a building, a wedding, a

1 Archdeacon Hare, Words corrupted by false Analogy or false Derivation, p. 65.

Grimm, German Grammar, II. 348–365.

meeting, where the verbal character of the substantive is almost, if not entirely, lost.

Now, if we look to Anglo-Saxon, we find the termination ing used

(1.) To form patronymics, for instance, Godvulfing, the son of Godvulf. In the A.S. translation of the Bible the son of Elisha is called Elising. In the plural these patronymics become national names; for instance, Thyringas, the descendants of Thyr, the Thuringians. Many of the geographical names in England and Germany were originally such patronymics. Thus we have the villages3 of Malling, of Billing, &c., or in compounds, Mallington, Billingborough. In Torrington there may be a trace of the Thyrings or Thuringians, the sons of Thor; in Walshingham, the memory of the famous race of the Walsings may have been preserved, to which Siegfried belonged, the hero of the Nibelunge. In German names, such as Göttingen in Hanover, Harlingen in Holland, we have old genitives plural, in the sense of "the home of the Gottings, the home of the Harlings," &c.

(2.) Ing is used to form more general attributive words, such as, ädeling, a man of rank; lyteling, a small man; nîding, a bad man; also the English farthing, a fourth part of a penny.

This ing, being frequently preceded by another suffix, the, we arrive at the very common derivative ling, in such words as darling, hireling, yearling. It has been supposed that the modern English participle was formed by the same derivative, but in A.S. this suffix ing is attached to nouns and adjectives only, and not to verbs.

There was, however, another derivative in A.S., which was attached to verbs to form verbal substantives. This was ung, the German ung. For instance, clansung, cleansing; beácnung, beaconing; &c. These abstract nouns in ung are more numerous in early A.S. than those in ing. Ing, however, began soon to encroach on ung, and at present no

3 Latham, History of the English Language, i. p. 223. Kemble, Saxons in England. 4 Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, p. 14.