200 Essay Introductory to the Archceology of the TVest of England. 



changes it attained its present orthography and signification, and how far 

 or under what modifications it has been admitted into other languages or 

 dialects. 



Words record the advances cf memory, reason, and imagination, the 

 three great faculties of the human mind, under the pursuits of history, 

 science, and art. The ideas at first represented by them were simple, and 

 their number limited ; and their gradual progress from these primitives to 

 secondary and compound vvords, forms an important branch of Philology ; 

 for it should be remembered, that words represent facts concerning the 

 habits and manners of mankind, and that the analytical study of a vocabu- 

 lary is the study of the progress of the human mind. 



With respect to the practical advantage of Philology, it is well known 

 to all who have paid attention to the degree in wliich language penetrates 

 the understanding of that very numerous class of persons, whose education 

 has not made them familiar with the meaning of words whose primitives 

 are adopted from a foreign tongue, that whoever wishes to be perfectly 

 understood by that class must employ the words of the mother tongue of 

 the country, else the words will rather be interpreted by the general sense 

 of the sentence, than the sense by the words. 



Each primitive in the native tongue being significant, its compounds will 

 be significant also, however far they may be carried } whereas the terms, 

 which the superior art or science of foreign nations may have introduced, 

 will remain but obscurely comprehended by the less educated class, and 

 will not therefore in their, that is in common, parlance, be very prolific in 

 further compounds. 



Thus in England, words of Saxon etymology are understood at once by 

 the people ; they are grasped with a strength and conviction of their 

 meaning, but rarely yielded even to the most familiar words of Greek, or 

 even of Latin pedigree. 



Concerning tiie elucidation of those earlier ages of national history, 

 upon which the ligiit of history had not dawned, or which it has but ob- 

 scurely illuminated, all evidence becomes of augmented value, and that of 

 Philology is peculiarly important. Excepting the evidence, at present in- 

 complete, derived from the consideration of the external physical characters 

 of the human frame, language is the chief, if not the only monument of 

 their origin retained b/ each race of mankind j and it is one, which though 

 subject to very considerable mutations, yet, being universal, aftbrds a clue 

 towards the estimation of their history, and one, the mutations of which, how- 

 ever considerable, are reducible to rule j and wherever a sufficient degree of 

 attention has been paid to those mutations. Philology has assumed the form 

 and stability of an inductive science. It was only the wildness and ab- 

 surdity of conjectural philologers, that brought that science into its former 

 disrepute, and in a great measure blinded mankind to its exceeding im- 

 portance. 



