36s Koikes respecting Xciv Books. 



lines: who is there so audacious, or so foolish, as to pretend 

 to trace the scale of all their possible flivisions, to classify 

 and calculate all ihc effects of the general or partial con- 

 course and reciprocal intluences of all these parts ? What 

 alphabet can there be invented, to represent by simple signs 

 so many new and delicate ideas? What an inexhaustible 

 source of contradictions and endless disputes ! Even at thjB'' 

 present day our knowlf^dge is not extended to the language 

 of iinticat ideas. 



Let us ask for example, between two analogous articula- 

 tions D and T, which is the hard or the soft, the strong or 

 the weak, we shall be told without doubt that T is the 

 hardest; and tiie President de Brosses, Bcauzec, &c., will 

 be quoted : nevertheless, upon opening the excellent Port 

 Royal Greek Gramniar and its numerous abridgments, you 

 find that the T is soft ; and thi's grammar adds, that the 

 consonant which i'^ not soft, btcouics so when we pro- 

 nounce it /oo gc-ii'i'-J- Le Roy, in his Greek Grammar, is 

 also clearly of opinion that T is soii ; and. in order to finish 

 the climax, a learned Greek Grammar lately printed informs 

 us that soft is synonymous with hard. Upon this point, there- 

 fore, and upon many others, the ideas and the language are 

 still to be made and fixed. 



This is a superfluous but a new proof of this truth, so 

 frequently forgotten and incessantly eontirmed by expe- 

 rience, that the human mind is on all occasions forced to 

 acknowledge either irs imbecility or its uncertainty. We 

 find, on the subject of the alphabet, that it is often reduced, 

 particularly when it wishes t<i embrace various languages, to 

 content itself with approximations, probabilities, and hypo- 

 theses ; happy if it can always avoid contradiction and 

 error. 



We shall see therefore without astonishment, that llio 

 learned author of Mithridates has not taken the pains to. 

 employ exotic characters, nor even to appropriate to his 

 use, by necessary additions, the Homan alphabet, the only 

 one he emp1o\'s. He was of opinion that this alpiiabet pro- 

 nounced broad ps the Gernur.is do, is sufficient to rendec 

 in a tolerable manner the value of all the foreign a!phai)cts, 



Wc 



