180 CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS 



was distinguished from another by an appropriate 

 term. The stranger never came within his view, 

 but he would read his thoughts, dispositions, and 

 affections, in the air of his countenance, the colour 

 of his lip, or the quivering of his muscles. He had 

 as many words to denote a cloud, a rock, a torrent, 

 or a well, as were the almost endless diversities 

 under which these objects daily presented themselves 

 to his contemplation. Yet this immense nomencla- 

 ture was confided in a great measure to the tablets 

 of memory, and owed its preservation chiefly to the 

 extemporaneous eloquence of an acute though illit- 

 erate people. It was under the tents of the wander- 

 ing shepherds that the language attained its highest 

 cultivation, and where -it was spoken with the 

 utmost purity and elegance. Critics have admitted 

 its remarkable delicacy, its bold and energetic sub- 

 limity, adapted equally to the simple pathos of love 

 and elegy, the piquancy of satire, or the loftiest 

 efforts of popular oratory.* 



The Arabs believe the greater part of their lan- 

 guage has been lost ; a conjecture not altogether 

 improbable, when we reflect on the perishable re- 

 cord to which it was originally intrusted, and how 

 late the art of writing became generally practised 

 among them. That the use of letters Avas known in 

 certain parts of the country many centvu-ies before 

 the Mohammedan era we may infer from the testi- 

 mony of Job (chap. xix. 23, 24), and from the an- 

 cient monuments still extant, said to be in the Ham- 



* Grammarians have calculated that the inflections of a single 

 Arabic root amount at least to 300 or 350. Supposing the prim- 

 itive nouns to be 4000 in number, these multiplied by 300 will 

 yield a product of 1 ,200,000 words ; the forms of which can 

 be determined with as much certainty as if every one of them 

 were actually in use. Perhaps 100,000 vocables may be assumed 

 as the greatest number that has ever been required or employed 

 in any language ; allowing this quantity, however, to be doubled, 

 it follows that, in the Arabic tongue, there still exists a million 

 of words that have never yet been called into practice. 



