220 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



think I have clearly proved in ihe Firft Volume of the Origin and 

 Progrefs of Language *. 



The faculty of imitation in the matter of Language, as it appears 

 in our children, is not unworthy of the attention of the philofopher. 

 I have already fliown how difficult an art fimple articulation is t» 

 But there is a great deal more in language befides the mechanifm of 

 articulation ; for there is the proper ufe of the words, the changes of 

 thefe woids made hy the various cafes of nouns and tenfes of verbs, 

 andlaftly, there is the compofition of the words in fyntax. All this is 

 not eafy to be learned in Engliih, more difficult ftill in French, and 

 moft difficult of all in the Greek and Latin, and particularly in the 

 Greek, where, befides the cafes of nouns, fo various in their ter- 

 minations, there are fo many changes of verbs and participles in 

 their feveral voices, moods, tenfes, perfons and numbers, that I have 

 heard it computed they amount to above 2000 in a fingle verb. And 

 I am perfuaded it is true with rcfped to fome of the Homeric verbs, 

 which are ufed both circumfledcd and barytoned and alfo as verbs 

 in — fjLi, and with all that variety of flexion and termination, which 

 makes his language much more various, and rich in analogy, than 

 any other language, even in Greek. To a philofopher it muft ap- 

 pear wonderful that our children, at the age of nine or ten, if 

 they have been brought up among people that fpeak w^ell, fliould 

 have learned to fpeak accurately and correctly by imitation mere- 

 ly, without the knowledge of the art of language, or the capa- 

 city of acquiring any art or fcience whatever. But how much 

 more wonderful muft have been the cafe of a boy at Athens, who, 

 at fo early an age, could have learned to fpeak a language the moft 

 difficult, as well as the fineft, that I believe ever w^as invented, with 

 a variety, not only of articulation, but of rhythms and tones, fo 



greatj 



• Second Edition, Book ill. Cap. vi. 

 f See Page 42. 



