that is well read in Spenser, Hooker, and Shakespeare, not to speak of other great luminaries of that age, and above all, of the standard translation of the Bible (which, however, appropriately belongs to an earlier period), will doubt whether it has gained much in power to expand the intellect or touch the heart.*

Besides the words which express the general subject of the present course, I must here notice certain other terms of art, and apologize for an occasional looseness in the use of them, which the poverty of the English grammatical nomenclature renders almost unavoidable. Our word language has no conjugate adjective, and for want of a native term, English scholars have long employed the Greek derivative, philological, in a corresponding sense. But philology and its derivative adjective have acquired, in the vocabulary of Continental science, a different meaning from that which we give them, more comprehensive in one direction, more limited in another, and, to supply the want which a restriction of their earlier sense has created, linguistic or linguis tics, a term Latin in its radical, Greek in its form, has been introduced. Philology was originally applied in Germany to the study of the classical languages and literature of Greece and Rome, as a means of general intellectual culture. In its present use, it is defined as a "historical science, whose end is the knowledge of the intellectual condition, labors, and products of a nation, or of cognate nations, at particular epochs of general chronology, with reference to the historical development of such nations." † There are, then, not one, namely a Greek and Roman, but many philologies, as many, indeed, as there are distinct peoples, or fam

"I take this present period of our English tung to be the verie height thereof, bycause I find it so excellently well fined both for the bodie of the tung itself, and for the customarie writing thereof, as either foren workmanship can giue it glosse, or as home-wrought hanling can giue it grace. When the age of our people which now vse the tung so well, is dead and departed, there will another succede, and with the people the tung will alter and change; which change in the full haruest thereof maie prove comparable to this, but sure for this which we now vse, it seemeth euen now to be at the best for substance, and the brauest for circumstance, and whatsoever shall become of the English state, the English tung cannot prove fairer than it is at this daie, if it maie please our learned sort so to esteme of it, and to bestow their trauell upon such a subject."-Mulcaster, First Part of the Elementarie, p. 159. A. D. 1582.

+ Heyse: Sprachwissenschaft, ff. 17.

ilies of peoples, whose intellectual characters and action may be known through their languages. In philology thus considered, the study of languages is a means to the end specified in the definition just given. In linguistics, on the other hand, language itself, as one of the great characteristics of humanity, is the end, and the means are the study of general and comparative grammar. Every philology is the physiology of a species in language; linguistics, the comparative anatomy of all the several systems of articulate communication between man and man. Linguistics, as a noun, has hardly become an English word. Philology, as used by most English and American writers, embraces the signification of the two words by which, in Continental literature, the study of language is characterized, according to the methods by which, and the objects for which, it is pursued. The adjectives, philological and linguistic, are employed sometimes interchangeably in the same sense as philology, and sometimes as adjectives conjugate in meaning to the noun language. I shall not attempt, in this course, a strict conformity to Continental usage in the employment of these words, nor, indeed, would it be practicable to do so, until a new adjective shall be coined to relieve one of them of its double meaning; but I shall endeavor so to use them all, that the context or the subject matter will determine the sense which they are intended to bear for the occasion.*

From the distinction here pointed out, it results that philology concerns itself chiefly with that which is peculiar to a given speech and its literature, linguistics with those laws and properties which are common to all languages. Philology is conversant with distinctions; linguistics with analogies. The course of lectures I am commencing is intended to be strictly philological, and I shall introduce illustrations from the field of linguistics only when they are necessary for etymological reasons, or to make the distinguishing traits of English more palpable by the force of

contrast.

* Our English grammatical and philological vocabulary is poor. We have no adjective strictly conjugate to speech, tongue, language, verb, noun, and many other terms of art in this department. Linguistic is a barbarous hybrid, and, in our use, equivocal, as are also the adjectives verbal, nominal, and the like. A native equivalent to the sprachlich of some German writers, corresponding nearly to our old use of philological, as in the phrase, sprachliche Forschungen, where the adjective embraces the meaning both of philological and linguistic, is much wanted.

LECTURE III.

PRACTICAL USES OF ETYMOLOGY.

In the last lecture, the distinction made in recent grammatical nomenclature between philology and linguistics was illustrated by comparing the former to the physiology of a single species, the latter to the comparative anatomy of different species. Etymology, or the study of the primitive, derivative, and figurative forms and meanings of words, must of course have different uses, according to the object for which it is pursued. If the aims of the etymological inquirer are philological, and he seeks only a more thorough comprehension and mastery of the vocabulary of his own tongue, the uses in question, though not excluding other collateral advantages, may be said to be of a strictly practical character; or, in other words, etymology, so studied, tends directly to aid us in the clear understanding and just and forcible employment of the words which compose our own language.* If, on the other hand, the scholar's objects are ethnological or linguistic, and he investigates the history of words for the purpose of tracing the relations between different races or different languages, and of arriving at those general principles of universal grammar which

* Etymological studies for this purpose do not yield equally valuable fruits in all languages. I would instance modern Greek. Very many curious and instructive facis referring to the development and growth of Medieval and Modern Greek will be found in Sophocles's learned Glossary of Later and Byzantine Greek. Cambridge, Mass., 1860, quarto. See Preface to the Glossary, pp. 131-2-3; also App. to Glossary, p. 581.

We commend this work of Sophocles to the attention of English Philhellenes who, with certain distinguished British scholars, believe in the identity of Modern and Classic Greek, and who advise the acquisition of a practical mastery of the modern speech as the best means of becoming thoroughly familiar with the letter and spirit of the ancient tongue. I cannot here assign my reasons at length, but I must express my total dissent from this opinion.

determine the form and structure of all human speech, his studies are indeed more highly scientific in their scope and method, but they aid him little in the comprehension, and, as experience abundantly shows, scarcely at all in the use, of his maternal tongue. But though I admit that philology is of a less rigorously scientific character than linguistics, I by no means concede to the latter any pre-eminence as a philosophic study, or as requiring higher intellectual endowments for its successful cultivation; and it cannot be disputed that, as a means of ethical culture, philology, connecting itself as it does with the whole mental and physical life of man, illustrating as well the inward thought and feeling as the outward action of a nation, has almost as great a superiority over linguistics as has history over pure mathematics. Philological studies, when philology, as explained in the last lecture, was restricted to the cultivation of the languages, literature, history, and archæology of Greece and Rome, were very commonly called literæ humaniores, or, in English, the humanities; and it is the conviction of their value as a moral and intellectual discipline, which has led scholars almost universally to ascribe the origin of this appellation to a sense of their refining, elevating, and humanizing influence. This, however, I think, is an erroneous etymology.* They were called literæ humaniores, the humanities, by way of opposition to the literæ divinæ, or divinity, the two studies, philology and theology, then completing the circle of scholastic knowledge, which, at the period of the introduction of the phrase, scarcely included any branch of physical science. But though the etymology is mistaken, its general reception is an evidence of the opinion of the learned as to the worth and importance of the study, and, now that so many modern literatures have attained to an excellence scarcely inferior to that of classic models,

* I am not here controverting the opinion of Aulus Gellius and other ancient critics concerning the etymology and signification of the term literæ humanæ or humaniores. They were quite right as to the origin and force of the expression as understood and used by themselves and their contemporaries. But in the classic ages theological literature had, properly speaking, no existence; and when in succeeding centuries there sprang up a body of distinctly Christian literature, it became necessary to discriminate between it and the works of heathen authors, and the term litera divine was applied to theological writings, while profane compositions were called litera humana or humaniores with little attention to the original significance of the expression.

their special philologies have even stronger claims upon us than those of ancient lore, because they are not only almost equally valuable as instruments of mental culture, but are more directly connected with the clear intelligence and fit discharge of our highest moral, social, and religious duties.

Etymology is a fundamental branch of all philological and all linguistic study. The word is used in two senses, or rather, the science of etymology has two offices. The one concerns itself with the primitive and derivative forms and significations of words, the other with their grammatical inflections and modifications; the one considers words independently and absolutely, the other in their syntactical relations. In discussing the uses of etymology, I shall confine myself to the first of these offices, or that which consists in investigating the earliest recognizable shape and meaning of words, and in tracing the history of their subsequent changes in form and signification. A knowledge of etymology, to such an extent as is required for all the general purposes of literature and of life, is attainable by aids within the reach of every man of moderate scholastic training. Our commonest dictionaries give, with tolerable accuracy, the etymologies of most of our vocabulary, and where these fail, every library will furnish the means of further investigation. It must be confessed, however, that no English dictionary at all fulfils the requisites either of a truly scientific or of a popular etymologicon. They all attempt too much and too little-too much of comparative, too little of positive etymology. Of course, in a complete thesaurus of any language, the etymology of every word should exhibit both its philology and its linguistics, its domestic history, and its foreign relations, but in a hand-lexicon of any modern tongue, this wide range of linguistic research is misplaced, because it necessarily excludes much that is of more immediate importance to the understanding and the use of the vocabulary. Richardson's, which, however, is faulty in arrangement and too bulky for convenient use as a manual, best answers the true idea of an English dictionary, because it follows, more closely than any other, the history of the words it defines. For the purposes of general use, no foreign roots should be introduced into the etymological part of a dictionary, barely because they resemble, and are presumably cognate with, words of our own language. The selection of such