1864. | (i BAS 
REVIEWS. 
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.* 
Tuer Science of Language is in one point of view the youngest of the 
sciences. ‘Though we can scarcely imagine a period at which this 
subject was not studied in an empirical manner, still, as a science 
resting on induction and logic, it has existed but a few years. Thus it 
is scarcely possible to state a period at which the history of Philology 
should begin, but it is only of late years that anything like scientific 
arrangements or definite laws have been discovered. 
As before geology was studied scientifically, many a collector pos- 
sessed a museum containing curiosities from his own neighbourhood, 
illustrating a particular class of rocks, so before philology (or Lin- 
euistics, as Mr. Marsh would call it) had arrived at well-ascertained 
laws or systematic classification, many a student of one or two lan- 
euages had collected specimens of “fossil history and fossil poetry ” 
dug from the mines of dusty books, even preserved from the rubbish- 
heaps lying at his doors, all which material will one day be arranged 
and labelled and inserted in catalogues, causing their language to 
become to the learned “a dictionary of faded metaphors.” 
The man who seems to have been the first to recognize the neces- 
sity of extensive induction before general laws could be discovered 
was Leibnitz, the contemporary of Newton. In order to place this 
study on a really philosophical basis, he entreated all those who had 
any chance of assisting him—such as missionaries, travellers, &c.—to 
collect the elements of whatever strange dialects it might be their 
fortune to meet with. Leibnitz possessed the advantage, not common 
to great thinkers, of being intimate with some of the leading political 
characters of his day, and amongst others with the Czar, Peter the 
Great. To the Emperor of all the Russias this philosopher pointed 
out the immense advantage that might be derived at small cost to the 
Russian Government, if he would cause the numerous dialects of the 
various races under his rule to be committed to writing. No imme- 
diate fruit resulted from this advice, but nearly a hundred years later 
the Empress Catharine took up the idea, and devoted a considerable 
amount of time to the work of compiling a Comparative Dictionary. 
For this purpose she procured lists of words, not only from her own 
enormous dominions, but by means of ambassadors from various parts 
* «Lectures on the Science of Language’ delivered at the Royal Institution of 
Great Britain in February, March, April, and May, 1863. Second Series. By 
Max Miller, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford ; Correspondant de l'Institut 
de France. London: Longmans, 1864. 
* Philological Papers.’ By J. A. Picton, F.S.A., President of the Literary and 
Philosophical Society of Liverpool, 1864. Printed for private circulation only. 
