i899-*oo Transactions 95 



Of course we allow to Milton a first-class poet's license ; but 

 it is difficult to imagine how the unhappy couple, in their all too 

 brief summering in Paradise, had acquired such an exuberance of 

 verbosity. This line of Milton's may possibly have given rise to 

 a frivolous explanation I have seen suggested of the origin of 

 language, according to which, Adam and Eve having fallen out, 

 ' ' one word led to another ' ' with the result that language was 

 formed. 



What seems truly miraculous in language, as we know it, is its 

 wonderful power of adapting itself to all phases of human 

 thought, to every movement of affirmation, denial, or enquiry, to 

 the expression of every posture and attitude of the mind and 

 every variety and degree of emotion. All that Dry den has said 

 in his famous ode on the power of music ma}^ be applied to the 

 power of simple words. They rouse to anger and awaken desire 

 and draw forth compassion ; they soothe and they disturb ; they 

 create awe and provoke to laughter ; they come with hope and 

 healing in their wings or send the chill of death into the heart. 

 "Great is their range," as Homer has said, "hither and 

 thither. ' ' The mind in its growth has ' ' woven the garment that 

 we see it by." 



There is reason to fear that the study of grammar, as it 

 is pursued in our schools, does not place the mind at a favor- 

 able point of view for understanding the philosophy of language. 

 It is amusing sometimes to hear the Turveydrops of linguistic 

 propriety discussing questions of pronunciation, accent and 

 grammar as if there were some infallible Beau Brummell to set 

 the fashion in these things, and whose dictum only required to be 

 known to set all such questions at rest. Professor Sweet, in his 

 recent book on " The Study of Languages, " says that, when he 

 is asked whether it is allowable, for example, to speak of "an 

 elegant supper," or to say of a sick person " he was bad last 

 night," he is accustomed to answer that English is a free 

 language. He observes also that ' ' foreigners' English often pre- 

 sents the curious spectacle of a language constructed on strict 

 grammatical principles, but with hardly a single genuinely 

 English sentence in it " — a remark which foreigners could doubt- 

 less retort on the English when the latter try to write in another 

 language, and have the luck, which will not often happen, to be 



