SS. Hieroglyphical Fragments. 



to take up, in order to see what kind of information could be 

 possessed by a person notoriously and professedly ignorant of 

 the origin and relations of the language which he attempts to 

 teach ; and, in short, what kind of light could be diffused by 

 an apostle of darkness. Blunders, and some of them ridiculous 

 enough, must, of course, be found in the works of such a person, 

 but most of them are such as every schoolboy might correct ; 

 and there really is so much of sagacity in some of Mr. Cob- 

 bett's remarks on the errors of others, that they well deserve the 

 attention of such as are ambitious to write or speak with perfect 

 accuracy. 



I shall not attempt to enter into a regular criticism of this 

 Grammar ; I shall merely make a few miscellaneous observa- 

 tions, as they have occurred to me in reading it, several of 

 which would be equally applicable to the best of the existing 

 works of a similar nature. 



In Letter III we are told that long and shorty though adjec- 

 tives, do not express qualities, but merely dimension or dura- 

 tion ; from a singular misconception of the proper sense of the 

 word quality. We find, in Letter IV, the rule given by most 

 grammarians, though not by all, that the article A becomes 

 AN, when it is followed by any word beginning with a vowel ; 

 but it is surely more natural to follow the sound than the spell- 

 ing, and, as we should never think of saying an youthful bride, 

 it seems equally incorrect to say an useful piece of furniture ; 

 for the initial sound is precisely the same. In the same manner 

 A unit and a European^ seems to sound more agreeable than 

 AN ; and the best speakers appear to adopt this custom. 



Letter VIII gives us a rule for doubling the last letter of a 

 verb in the participle if an accent is on the last syllable : but it 

 should be observed that the L is doubled, whether accented or 

 not, as in caballing, travelled^ levelled, cavilled, controlled. 

 The same letter contains a '^ List of verbs, which, by some 

 persons, are erroneously deemed irregular," and which have 

 been so deemed from the time of our German and Saxon an- 

 cestors, though Mr. Cobbett thinks it would be more philoso- 

 phical to conjugate them regularly. Thus we may see at once 

 ihsX freeze may as well give us frozen, asfrieren gives the Ger- 

 mans gefroren ; that hang may make hung or hanged, accord- 



