vulgar speech, have departed as far as might be, and we find them using many words respecting things to which the more ancient language was accustomed never to apply them. In regard to writers we have the evidence of ancient monuments-in regard to popular speech, although testimonies are awanting, one may be allowed to have suspicion, for it is a thing essentially inconstant, and bound by no certain laws. In the New Testament, the practice of writers, both older and more recent, should be accurately distinguished from the vulgar mode of speech-for if this distinction be not attended to, the sources of the former cannot be investigated. Fischer, Sturzius, and others, have collected many things relating to this pointthere remain others which have not yet been adverted to. But it is the common fault of interpreters-I except only those two individuals-that, in explaining the practice of the sacred writers, they very seldom consider whether those from whom they adduce the parallel passages are approved writers, or authors belonging to the later period, and by no means preserving the purity of Greek diction. Hence they often assign to a word a meaning which, according to the practice of the time, it cannot bear. We have already adduced examples-to these some others may be added, in which the traces of the later usage have not yet been taken notice of. It is said by almost all the masters of Attic speech, that pán was applied, not to a grandmother, but to a mother. Phrynichus, p. 52, observes :-μάμμην, τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἢ μητρὸς μητέρα οὐ λέγουσιν οἱ ἀρχαῖοι, ἀλλὰ τίτθην· μάμμην μὲν οὖν καὶ μάμμιον τὴν μητέρα. ἀμαθες οὖν τὴν μάμμην ἐπὶ τῆς τίτθης λέγειν. (The ancients do not use μάμμη, but riren, to denote the female parent of a father or mother, but apply the former and also páμov to the mother herself. It is an ignorant thing, therefore to use μáun for a grandmother.) Dionys. Ael. in Eustath. Moeris, p. 258, Thom. Mag. p. 846, Helladius in Phot. Bibl. p. 1579. Schol. on Aristoph. Acharnens. 39, Photius, p. 180. Hesychius and Suidas, who interpret the word by rng τῶν γονέων and τοῦ πατρὸς ἢ μητρὸς μήτης, have an eye to the usage of the New Testament, and are not to be regarded as explaining the Attic way of speaking. The same may be said of Pollux, who, in Onomast. iii. 17, says, de Targòs ǹ unrgòs μήτης τήθη· καὶ τὴν μάμμην δὲ, καὶ μάμμαν, ἐπὶ ταύτης Tagaλrov (A grandmother, by the father's or mother's side, is τήθη; and μάμμη and μάμμα are to be taken in the same application)—words which, I think, are to be judged of in reference rather to the author's own times than to more ancient ones. By Paul the word is applied to a grandmother, 2 Tim. i. 5-a mode of speaking adopted only by the zooí. Comp. Plut. V. i. p. 797 and 804. V. ii. p. 704, Philo, p. 601, Joseph. p. 351. Pollux rightly observes, v. 32, that the word εὐχαριστεῖν is applied only ἐπὶ τῷ διδόναι χάριν, οὐκ ἐπὶ τῷ εἰδέναι —to giving grace, not to acknowledging it; with which the opinions of other grammarians respecting this word coincide-Phrynich. p. 8, suxagioreñ oùdeis τῶν δοκίμων εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ χάριν εἰδέναι (None of the approved writers said εὐχαριστεῖν, but χαριν εἰδέναι), Thom. Mag. p. 913. Many passages have been collected by Kypkius, Alberti, and others--but the authors they adduce are of the later age, and insufficient to set aside the unfavourable judgment of grammarians. mosthenes used this word in the former sense, Pro Corona, p. 122-the authors of the New Testament, in the latter, Matth. xv. 36. Luke xvii. 16, 2 Cor. i. 11. It is also said by grammarians, that Bgex has by none of the Attics been applied to rain-an idea which was expressed by E. Phrynichus, p. 126, Thom. Mag. p. 171. βρέχει, οὐδεὶς τῶν ἀρχαίων εἶπεν ἐπὶ ὑετοῦ, ἀλλὰ δει (None of the ancients said of rain, Bgex, but ), Phavor. Phrynichus indeed adduces Teliclidas, a comedian, as having used De Bgex in this sense, but he seems to have been in doubt respecting the real author of the play from which the example is quoted. Indeed I have not found the word used with this meaning by any approved prose author. A passage of Anacreon," which Trillerus has made use of to invalidate the authority of Magister, completely coincides with the rule of the grammarians; for in that passage, Beexqua and Bgaysia are taken in a passive sense-a use of the verb to which they do not appear to have objected. There remains a passage of Pindar," where the active form is, in one case, applied to snow. But every one is aware that poets had one way of speaking, and prose writers another. I omit other particulars, which cannot be explained without an extensive apparatus. n Od. iii. v. 12. Βρέχομαι δὲ, κἀσέληνον Κατὰ νύκτα πεπλάνημαι (I am exposed to the rain, and have lost my way in the moonless night); and shortly after, v. 26, (Once upon a time, the great king of gods showered golden snows upon a city). |