THE POPULAE EDUCATOR. 



two identical. Grammar is only ono branch of the tree. Im- 

 portant as grammar is, it is scarcely the most important of the 

 branches which combine to form the knowledge of a language. 

 Grammar is only a means to an end. It is a pathway to the 

 temple. The temple itself is the treasure of great thoughts 

 which constitutes the literature, and which we have termed the 

 productions of a language. It is for this treasure that a lan- 

 guage is worth the labour of study ; and in regard to literary 

 treasures, no language will repay attention more fully than the 

 English. 



From what has been said, it is also clear that the grammar 

 of a language is to be learnt in its literature. Grammar is no 

 arbitrary thing. ' Its rules are not inventions. Its forms are 

 not optional. They are both merely general statements of facts 

 facts ascertained by the careful perusal of what we term 

 classical authors ; that is, authors of high and universal repute. 

 The office of grammar is t make a systematic report of the 

 usages observed in writing by the great minds of a nation. 

 Hence grammar is a science of imitation. The grammarian, 

 like the sculptor, takes a model, and having studied its parts 

 and qualities, endeavours to reproduce the whole. Authority, 

 in consequence, is the great principle recognised in grammar. 

 The authority of such men as Macaulay, Mackintosh, Addison, 

 Dryden, Shakespeare, is, in grammar, paramount and supreme. 

 What they do we must follow, and we must follow it because 

 it is their practice. Their words, their forms of speech, their 

 constructions must be ours. They are our masters, wo their 

 scholars. They give laws, we obey the laws they give. Scarcely 

 less than implicit and unqualified ought the obedience to be ; 

 for grammar merely declares what is customary, and what is 

 customary in a language is known by what is customary among 

 its best writers. 



Let it bo observed that it is the English language that we are 

 about to study. t Consequently it is the qualities and the laws 

 of that language that it will be our business to ascertain. If 

 we were studying Sanscrit or Hebrew, then the qualities and the | 

 laws of the Sanscrit and the Hebrew would be the object of our 

 search. Disregarding them, we are equally to disregard the quali- i 

 ties and the laws of the Latin. The best of Latin grammars 

 would bo a very bad English grammar, and a usage in Latin is 

 no authority for the introduction into English of a similar usage. 

 The principles now set forth determine the mode of our pro- 

 ceeding. We have no intention to copy forms and rules from the 

 writings of former grammarians, or to arbitrarily devise forms 

 and rules. We shall rather take the language as it is, and inquire 

 into its qualities and laws. Beginning with the simplest enun- 

 ciations of thought, we shall .^d the student to analyse them, 

 and from such analysis to deduce for himself the fundamental 

 facts and principles of the English tongue. This process must 

 be gone through three times : first, in regard to the forms of 

 the language or its grammar ; secondly, u regard to the pro- 

 ductions of the language or its literature : and thirdly, as an j 

 appendage to the last, in regard to the origr. and progress of the j 

 language or its history. If the reader attentively accompany j 

 us over this extended field, he will posse js a full as well as j 

 accurate acquaintance with the English lang aage. 



Language is the expression of thought by means of articulate 

 sounds, as painting is the expression of th ught by means of 

 form and colour. The relations which subsist between our 

 thoughts, when carefully analysed and set forth systematically, 

 give rise to logic. The laws and conditions under which the ex- 

 pression of our thoughts takes place form the basis of grammar. 

 The logician has to do with states of the intellect, the gram- 

 marian is concerned with verbal utterances. 



A cursory attention to the subject will su^ce to prove that j 

 there are laws of speech. There is, indeed, no province of the 

 universe of things but is subject to law. Each object has its 

 own mode of existence, which, in conjunction v. ith the sphere of 

 circumstances which surround it, gives rise co the laws and 

 conditions by which it is controlled. Accordingly, language 

 takes its laws from the organs by which sound is made articulate, 

 from the culture of the intelligent beings by whom these organs 

 are employed, from the purposes for which speech is designed, 

 and from even the medium and other outward influences in 

 union with which these purposes are pursued. 



Were there no such laws the science of grammar could not 

 exist. The sciences are in each case a systematic statement of 

 generalised facts in other words, of definite laws ; and grammar 



rests on phenomena clearly ascertained, invariable in themselves, 

 capable of being distinctly stated, and equally capable of being 

 wrought into a system of general truths. 



If the conditions under which thought became speech had 

 been in all cases the same, there would only have been one lan- 

 guage on the face of the earth. Descending as mankind did 

 from a common progenitor, the various tribes would have spoken 

 a common tongue. But at Babel the builders were " scattered 

 abroad," and became subjected to outward influences of the 

 most diversified character, and engaged in the most varied 

 kinds of life. Men's pursuits were different almost from the 

 first. Climate and soil change with every change of locality. 

 And both original endowments and the degree of culture super- 

 induced by external influences, or what may be termed indirect 

 education, would be as diverse as the tribes, not to say the indi- 

 viduals of which the species consisted. All these diversified 

 influences would speedily beget varieties in speech which time 

 would increase and harden into different languages. 



From this diversity there arise two kinds of grammar the 

 universal and the particular. Universal grammar is formed by 

 studying language in general, by passing in review the several 

 languages which exist (or most of them), and selecting and 

 classifying those facts which are common to all. Particular 

 grammar is the result of the study of any ono given language. 

 By a careful consideration of the usages of the best English 

 writers wo discover what constitutes English grammar. If, 

 after wo have ascertained the laws of a number of separate lan- 

 guages, wo then compare our discoveries one with another, and 

 mark and systematise what we find common to them all, we 

 compose a treatise on general grammar. Particular grammar 

 resembles the anatomy of the human frame, and limits its teach- 

 ings to one set of objects. Universal grammar is like com- 

 parative anatomy, which treats of the general laws of animal 

 life, as deduced from a minute study of the animal kingdom in 

 general. 



It is with particular grammar that we are here concerned ; 

 of the grammar of our nation namely, the English we have 

 to treat. 



Grammar and logic, or the laws of expression and the laws of 

 thought, are, we have seen, closely connected together in the 

 nature of things. Not easily, then, can they be sundered in 

 manuals of instruction. If separate, they are related sciences ; 

 as being related to each other, they may afford mutual light 

 and aid. Requiring separate treatment, they each give and 

 receive illustration. Grammar assists the logician to put hia 

 thoughts into a lucid form ; and logic assists the grammarian 

 to make his utterances correspond to the exact analogy of his 

 thoughts. No one can be a perfect grammarian who is entirely 

 without logic ; and no logician who neglects grammar can 

 successfully convey his ideas to others. 



But in a manual which proposes to handle the subject of 

 grammar, and of English grammar, reference to logic must be 

 tacit and latent ; it may be felt, it must not be displayed. Yet, 

 in at least one or two terms will our obligation to logic be more 

 positive and outward, for we shall borrow from that science such 

 words as subject, attribute, predicate, and the like ; and this be- 

 cause these terms, when once their import is understood, afford 

 facilities for explanation far greater than the ordinary terms 

 employed in English grammars. In these cases, however, and 

 in other things in which wo shall depart from what is usual, we 

 shall also supply the customary views and the ordinary terms. 



As the English language, like other languages, was spoken 

 before its laws were formed into a systematic treatise called a 

 grammar, so the real facts of the language, in their primary and 

 their model form, exist and are to be looked for ID the every-day 

 speech of well-educated persons. Hence the speech of educated 

 persons is of authority in grammar no less than the language of 

 the best authors. Nay, we seem likely to find a language in 

 its greater purity when wo take it from the lips of educated 

 persons generally than when we derive it from the somewhat 

 artificial shapes which it assumes in the learned or the popular 

 volume. If so, " household words " are good for grammar as 

 well as for practical wisdom. And so it is in the nursery we 

 may look for the English tongue in a form the most simple and 

 yet the most idiomatic. Of all teachers of English grammar 

 the best is a well-educated English mother. Hence it is evident 

 that a nursery, in a cultivated English home, is the best school 

 of English grammar. As a matter of fact, it i<= in such schools 



