tions, are to be accounted the great polluters of our language.

In the latter periods of its history, the English language has been greatly enriched by supplies from the Greek and Latin. In the ruder times of a country, its language can neither be copious nor polished ; language being the sign of thought, will in its progress equal, but never outrun the progress of intellectual improvement. Had the English, as they emerged from barbarism, been shut up to the resources of their own minds, they might no doubt, in process of time, have formed a language sufficiently philosophical, and capable of dressing to advantage the refined speculations in the various departments of literature and science, with which every English library is now stored: but, fortunately, the most difficult parts of this invention were perfected already; and the learned of our island, had only to turn to their own use the labours of men who had lived before them. The languages of the most polished people perhaps that ever lived, the people of Greece and Rome, being by various causes widely diffused over Europe, opened to the writers of Great Britain, as well as of the surrounding countries, an inexhaustible mine, from which they could extract without difficulty, whatever was necessary to embellish their ideas, or even to give them body and shape. In most instances, a slight change of termination was sufficient to adapt either a Greek or a Latin word

to our mode of flection, and nothing more was necessary to make it English.

Advantages and disadvantages are generally linked together. The facility of transplanting words from the dead languages into English, has furnished pedantry with the means of disfiguring our language, and disgusting every reader of sense. Persons whom nature seems scarcely to have designed for any thing, allured by the fame of authorship, and looking upon themselves as masters of language, because perhaps they have acquired a smattering of French or Latin, devote to literature the hours which ought to be employed in some meaner pursuit, and set themselves up as guides of the public taste. Mistaking etymology for erudition, and erudition for all that constitutes an author, they assume the right of innovation in the republic of letters, as if it were all their own; each of them equalling or excelling Sir Hudibras in that rare faculty, by which

He could coin, or counterfeit
New words with little or no wit;
Words so debased and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch 'em on."

Fortunately, however, our language is now able to repel such attempts by her own strength. The weapons which are necessary to protect her purity, she herself supplies. The genius of our language is now ascertained; we can appeal to its established usage,

and, what is not of less consequence, we can employ the authority of writers of reputation to chastise the temerity of every puerile innovator, and to drive him from the field of letters.

From this cursory view, it appears that the language now spoken in England, is not a primitive, simple language, invented and brought to perfection by one people, in one country; but a compound of modern fabrication, consisting of a great variety of materials, sufficiently motley, irregular and disjointed. Its basis is the ancient Gothic or Teutonic, variously modified by the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, and again united into one mass, with a mixture of Greek, Latin, Celtic, and modern French.

To state fully the advantages and disadvantages, which may be supposed to belong to a language so constructed, would lead to a detail more extensive than is consistent with my design. It is sufficient to remark, that if less compact, and consequently less smooth and harmonious, than simple languages wholly formed within themselves, the English has the advantage in point of copiousness; and, that what it wants in respect of grace, is compensated in respect of variety. It is a language naturally bold and nervous, and, at the same time, remarkable for simplicity of inflection and structure. If then, with this simplicity, it is found, without discrimination of subject, capable of conveying the thoughts of one man to another with clearness and precision, the end of

language is effectually answered. Some have alleged, that the English language is not so proper for poetry and oratory, as the Greek and Latin; but such an allegation is unsupported by proof. Addison says, indeed, that the English language sunk under Milton; but so would the Greek have sunk under Homer, had he written an epic poem on Milton's subject.

English verse, to an English ear, is neither deficient in harmony nor variety. It has been found suitable to every subject to which it has yet been applied, and in no language with which we are acquainted, has so great a diversity of subjects been treated in a poetical manner. We have had orators in the pulpit, in the senate, and at the bar, who, for manly sense and sound argument, have not been surpassed by any of the orators of antiquity, and we may proudly boast,

"That Chatham's language is our mother tongue."

ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

THOUGH men, in every period of society, employ articulate sounds in communicating their thoughts to one another, they have generally made considerable progress in civilization, before language becomes in any degree an object of their attention; and the art of writing has been long practised before grammar has

existed. Indeed, the rules of grammar, like those of any other art, are deduced from practice.

"These rules of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodised."

But though the instrument of thought has been long employed, without any inquiry respecting its nature, we must not hence infer, that such an inquiry is either unnecessary or unimportant.

Between articulate sounds, and those ideas for which we employ them, there is no natural or necessary connexion; otherwise, men in all countries must have used the same sounds to signify the same things.

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet."

The connexion seems wholly arbitrary; nor does there appear to be any principle in the human mind, that should induce men in any given circumstances to prefer, as the sign of an idea, one sound to another. Some are of opinion, that in forming the radical words of language, the inventors endeavoured to make the sounds which they adopted, significant of the things for which they were employed. "We find," says Dr. Blair, " a multitude of words, in all languages, that are evidently constructed upon this principle. A certain bird is termed the cuckoo, from the sound which it emits. When one sort of wind is said said to whistle, and another to roar; when a serpent is said to hiss, a fly to buzz, and falling timber