Onan Universal written Character. 285 
composed ; but its application, in a particular case, 
does not depend on its absolute meaning alone: 
we take into account its place in a sentence, its re- 
 Jation to. other words, and the nature of the subject 
about which the speaker is employed. Thus we say, 
io undo a knot, when we mean to untye it: but we 
also say, to undo a man, when we mean to ruin him, 
The Russians speak of a man’s vuzgovor, when they 
speak of his pronounciation; but they also say, 
delate komou vuigovor, to give aman a rebuke. 
Now as mankind find no inconveniency in this in- 
determinate meaning of words in their own tongue, 
it appears to me, that they will find no great diffi- 
culty in perceiving the meaning of the application 
of prepositions by a writer in a strange language. 
But should any inconveniency arise from this cause, 
I think I may venture to say it would scarcely ex- 
tend beyond the present generation, because an uni- 
form mode of writing would soon introduce an 
uniformity of idiom, or naturalize all foreign 
idioms. : 
It seems unnecessary to enumerate the prepo- 
sitions of the six languages I have mentioned, and 
shew that each of them can be translated into every 
other ;—this I think is obvious ;—I shall only give 
some examples of their use in composition ; ‘and 
thereby, I-hope, I shall establish a point very ne- 
cessary to be ascertained, viz. though compound 
words, used to denote certain things, may be com- 
