156 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



verbs and their feveral accidents would be fo multiplied, that they 

 could not be comprehended in the memory nor readily ufed. 



From this ufe of the three great arts of language, I think I have 

 fhown, that the art of language chiefly confifls in preventing that 

 multiplication of words which Vv'ould render the language uniit for 

 ufe; and that, therefore, thofe, who do not know the ufe that is made 

 of thefe three arts, do not know what the art of language is. 



In this great art of language, the antient languages, and particular- 

 ly the Greek, very much excel the modern: For in Englifli we mark 

 the cafes of nouns by particles, or prepofitions, as we may call them, 

 of unpleafant found, and, as they recur fo often, fatiguing to the ear, 

 ("uch as of, to, from, and by, by which we fupply the want of fledion 

 in our nounsj and, in the tenfes of our verbs, we fupply the want of 

 fledion by auxiliary verbs, fuch as am, have, /hall, or •will, &c. 



Of the three great arts of language I have mentioned, whicii 

 produce fo many new words deduced from old words, the mod 

 fruitful in that production is the lafl mentioned of the three, name- 

 ly fledion, of which the produdion in the Greek verb is won- 

 derful; for, from a fingle theme of a Greek verb, without reckon- 

 ing any of its derivatives or compounds, there are produced about 

 1300 words, as I have faid in a preceding volume of this work*. This 

 may appear at firft fight incredible, efpecially as it is produced by 

 one only of the three great arts 1 have mentioned, that is fledion. 

 But we fliould confider that this one art produces, in the verb, all 

 the variety of conjugations, voices, and tenfes, 1 which lafl are vari- 

 ed fo much by the three numbers and the three perfons), and, laftly, 

 by the variety of participles and their numbers and cafes. And there 

 is one variety, befides, in the Greek verb, that I have not yet men- 

 tioned. 



• Vol. IV. p. 119. 



