422 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[APRIL, 



has been made in establishing the point ; and 

 lie himself has nothing whatever to add. 



The whole question of language is at last 

 brought to a close with a subject not at all 

 coming within the legitimate limits of Mr, S.'s 

 inquiries; but as the dissertation was written, 

 as it must be somewhere inserted, and as no 

 better place presented itself, why should it 

 not be thrust in here? That subject is the 

 Origin of Sanscrit. The discussion is, in 

 our opinion, not merely irrelevant, but un- 

 sound ; it is, however, evidently a favourite 

 with Mr. S., and, so careful and circumspect 

 as he usually is, he is entitled to some indul- 

 gence, if he chooses for once to " break 

 bounds." But we must have a word or two 

 with him upon it. 



The Sanscrit was long ago said to be very 

 like the Greek. This was first started by 

 Halhed, Jones, and Wilkins. They were sur- 

 prised at some resemblances. The Sanscrit 

 has a middle voice, so has the Greek. It has 

 the alpha privativum, so has the Greek 

 aye, and great numbers of words, which, 

 with some twisting, are very like, and some 

 few, with no twisting at all, are quite like the 

 Greek. Then again, the prosody what ? 

 Why Sir William Jones said, almost (he 

 did qualify here, which was not at all in his 

 way) all the measures of the Greeks may 

 be found in it; and what was (he added), re- 

 markable, the language runs very naturally 

 into sapphics, alcaics, and iambics." Now 

 those who know any thing about these Greek 

 measures, well know that even Greek does 

 not run easily into them ; Sir W.Jones himself 

 well knew nobody better that this facility, 

 attained by whom it will, is the laborious re- 

 sult of close and servile imitation, and long and 

 harassingpractice. And who, we ask, has tried 

 the Sanscrit? Not Sir W. Jones himself ; 

 and no one to our knowledge though San- 

 scrt is better known in our days than in his 

 has ever been adventurous enough to make 

 the same remark since. Mr. Stewart, how- 

 ever, relies still more on the extravagant 

 statement of David Brown, Provost of Fort 

 William, to hear whose account, we must 

 suppose the two languages are really one 

 only written perhnps in a different character. 

 But taking these things for gospel at pre- 

 sent, how can the fact be explained ? Had 

 they a common origin or did one steal from 

 the other and if so, which was the thief? 

 We must turn, with Mr.S., to the authority of 

 history. Did not Alexander invade India? 

 Did not his successors found the kingdom of 

 Bactria; and did not that kingdom last for 

 two centuries? and must not the intercourse 

 of that handful of people, hovering on the 

 north-westcorner of India, have been perpe- 

 tual and spreading over the whole continent 

 of India ; and of course, the whole continent 

 of India, unable to retain its own language, be 

 compelled to mould their own by that of the 

 parvenus in the north, if they did not volun- 

 tarily and wholly adopt it ? Mr. S. does not 

 say all this. No ; he says, the Sanscrit 

 was the learned language of the country ; 



that is, it was only the language of the 

 priests, and of the priests only. He does not 

 pretend the language was ever general, or 

 any way common to the people and priests. 

 Then is it less likely, say we, to be borrowed 

 of the Greeks. There were priests before 

 Alexander. Oh, but they wanted a language 

 to talk in among themselves, unintelligible to 

 the people. Had they no such language, then, 

 before ? But how did these priests set about 

 the invention? Why, they took the current 

 language of the country, and gave it the in- 

 flexions, both of verbs and nouns, used by the 

 Bactrian Greeks ; and that not being enough 

 to preclude detection, they smuggled in lots 

 of Greek words, and thus effectually baffled 

 the idiots around them. Very satisfactory ! 

 But what prompted them to invent this 

 precious language at all ? The opportunity 

 of a foreign language in the neighbourhood, 

 tobe sure. But, in sober reason, what, we may 

 ask, do we actually know of the Hindoos and 

 their language, or that of their priests, at the 

 period in which the new language is supposed 

 to have originated ? or how know we, that 

 it never was any thing but the language of 

 the priests, or how know we when it began ? 

 The whole speculation, in a word, is one of 

 the most cobweb construction, and will bear 

 no handling, rough or smooth. The truth is, 

 the more Sanscrit is understood, the greater 

 prove to be, not the resemblances, but the 

 discrepancies. This is the latest opinion. 

 But then what account will you give of the 

 still acknowledged similitude ? Nay, We are 

 not bound ourselves to account, though we 

 feel it our right to sift the accounts of 

 others. 



We come now to IMITATION, of which 

 Mr. S. discourses at length, and as usual, at 

 leisure : first, on the principle or law itself ; 

 then on our propensity to imitation; then on 

 our power; then on some phenomena resol- 

 vable in part into this principle ; and finally 

 on the advantages resulting from this consti- 

 tution of our nature. Of course, he does not 

 speak of imitation in the popular sense ; but 

 of what must be termed instinctive insen- 

 sible imitation the principle by which we 

 make in childhood our first acquisitions 

 in speech, and which, in every period of life, 

 exercises a strong influence over our accent, 

 mode of pronunciation, and forms of expres- 

 sion and if so, we may safely venture to 

 add, over our opinions. The effect of this 

 spontaneous principle is visible in all our 

 assimilations. We insensibly reflect the sor- 

 rows or the smiles of those we meet with; 

 we gape, when others gape; and even if in 

 solitude we conceive the expressions of emo- 

 tion, the effect of the conception is visible in 

 ourselves. The painter cannot transfer the 

 glowing pictures of his imagination to the 

 canvass without exhibiting in his own features 

 the external expression of them. The same 

 is eminently remarkable in musicians. We 

 copy too the voice, tones, accents, &c. of our 

 intimate acquaintance; and from the effects 

 of this principle of our nature, in the private, 



