1861.] Sev. A, D^Orsey on the English Language. 307 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 1, 1861. 



The Hev. John Barlow, M.A. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Rev. A. J. D. D'Orsey, B.D. 



English Lecturer at Corpus Chriati College, Cambridge. 



On the Study of the English Language as an Essential Part of a 

 University Course, 



The speaker said, that " A plea for the study of the English 

 Language as an essential part of a University Course," was a subject 

 which, on its first announcement, might seem unsuited to the distin- 

 guished auditory which he had the honour to address. Some might 

 regard it as too literary to be within the range of an institution whose 

 objects were more directly scientific. Others might consider it as a 

 purely professional question, interesting to clergymen, college tutors, 

 and educators of all kinds, but having no claim on the attention of the 

 general public ; and not a few might be found, whom the theme took 

 entirely by surprise, believing it hardly possible that in the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, it should be found necessary to plead for the intro- 

 duction of the study of our own English tongue into our own English 

 Universities. In reply, he urged that the philosophy of language 

 might fairly claim rank as a science. Nor was the question of an 

 extended culture of the mother-tongue one of mere professional 

 importance, for it concerned us all to be able to say what we had 

 to say clearly and forcibly. The absence of such culture in most of 

 our Universities was a fact ; and the results were evident in our com- 

 positions, our speeches, our sermons, our reading of the church service, 

 and even in our conversation. 



The speaker then defined language, not simply as the vehicle of 

 our ideas, but, in Whately's words, as " the instrument of thought." 

 It was the mysterious machinery by which thought was manufactured. 

 "Words were realities, and a knowledge of words correctly taught was a 

 knowledge of facts, for every word was a coin in the currency of 

 human intercourse. The abuse of a thing was no argument against 

 its use ; and if the sciolist or the gpedant had divorced words from 

 ideas, and degraded linguistic studies into mechanical taskwork, that 

 could not fairly be adduced as a proof that such pursuits were no 



