941 Hieroglyphical Fragments. 



either a positive or a negative assertion. At the same time, it 

 must be allowed that a picture of King George the Fourth's 

 coronation, with the date 19 July 1821, could scarcely be con- 

 sidered otherwise than as asserting a historical truth ; and if 

 any emblem of Truth were attached to it, or if it were deposited 

 among the records of other historical facts, it would be equiva- 

 lent to the expression, " George IV. crowned in July 1821," 

 which scarcely wants the verb was to convert it into a positive 

 assertion of a fact. 



Strictly speaking, however, there seems to be no direct mode 

 of supplying the want of the verb is or was iii pure hierogly- 

 phical writing; and if any such sign was employed in the 

 Egyptian or the old Chinese hieroglyphics, its introduction 

 must have been arbitrary or conventional ; like the employment 

 of a postulate in mathematics. Every other part of a language 

 appears capable of being reduced, with more or less circumlo- 

 cution, to the form of a noun substantive ; and the English 

 language appears to approach to the Chinese in the facility 

 with which all the forms of grammar may be shaken off. 



There is, however, often occasion, in such cases, for a certain 

 degree of metaphor approaching to poetical latitude ; and hence 

 it may happen that the least literary nations are sometimes the 

 most poetical. It is, in fact, impossible to exclude metaphor 

 altogether from the most prosaic language ; and it is frequently 

 difficult to say where metaphor ends and strict logical prose 

 begins j but by degrees the metaphor drops, and the simple 

 figurative sense is retained. Thus we may say liquid ruby 

 with the same exact meaning as crimson wine; and yet ruby 

 would never be called an adjective, though employed merely to 

 express the colour : in coral lips, however, the coral, first used 

 metaphorically, is converted by habit into an adjective, and the 

 expression is considered as synonymous with labri corallini. 



The general custom in English is to place the figurative 

 substantive, used as an adjective by comparison, or by abstrac- 

 tion, before the name which retains its proper sense : thus a 

 chestnut horse is a chestnut like or chestnut coloured horse ; 

 a horse chestnut is a coarse kind of chestnut: and in this 

 manner we are enabled to use almost every English noun sub- 

 stantive as an adjective, by an ellipsis of the word like, which. 



