of the Greek Language, ^2,9 



a language is believed to be in the oral part of it, or the prouuu- 

 ciationj* and a scholar hardly feels satisfied, that he knows a 

 language, till he has learned its pronunciation. But to all specu- 

 lations on this point it is an answer, the force of which every 

 scholar will feel, that could we but bring hefore our eyes the era. 

 tor of Greece, and hear with our own ears the accents of that 

 tongue, which swayed the destinies of his country, we should not 

 stop to inquire, of what use it would be to know the pronunciatioa 

 of the language which fell from it. 



It may, perhaps, be thought that we cannot at this day satis- 

 factorily ascertain the ancient pronunciation of Greek. It must 

 undoubtedly be admitted, that we cannot arrive at all the deli- 

 cate distinctions of accent, (as it is commonly called,) which few 

 hut natives ever acquire, even with the aid of alivinginstructer-^ 

 distinctions, which change from one age to another in all nations. 

 Such alterations have probahly taken place in the successive peri- 

 ods of the Greek language. But, that the general pronunciation 



* *<The Chinese (says Mr- Duponceau) consider the mode of convejino- 



ideas to the mind through the eye, hy means of written signs, as far superior to 

 spoken words which communicate perceptions through the ear. * The people of 

 Fan, saj thej, (meaning the Europeans,) prefer sounds, and what they obtain en- 

 ters bj the ear j the Chinese prefer beautiful characters, and what thej obtain 

 enters by the eye.* * It is, indeed, says Remusaty impossible to express in any 

 language, the energy of those picturesque characters, which exhiliit to the eye, 

 instead of barren and arbitrary sounds, the objects themselves, figured and rep- 

 resented by their most characteristic traits, so that it would require several phras- 

 es to express the signification of a single word.' *' See the learned and philosophy 

 ica^ Memoir on English Phonolo^j, published in the Transactiom of the Philo^ 

 sophical Society at Philadelphia^ by Mr. Duponceau : icho cites^ for the first of 



/< 



usat, p. 56. 



# 



31 



