96 Transactions iSgg-'oo 



" strictly grammatical." In fact, on looking into one of my note 

 books, I find that a foreigner has expressed himself very much to 

 the point on this subject. "No foreigner " says M. ly^on Hen- 

 nique in the " R6vue des Rdvues " for i July, 1898, "will ever 

 be able to make entirely his own the special verbal usages of a 

 neighboring people. He may mimic the movement of their lan- 

 guage and write with correctness. He may learn the grammar, 

 but he will lack the power to turn round and violate its rules with 

 ease, grace and perfect assurance. He will not have the spirit of 

 the language, which is the soul of those who spoke it in genera- 

 tions past, a kind of knowledge organically possessed and instinc- 

 tively perpetuated." Professor Sweet expresses the same truth 

 from another point of view when he remarks, in the work already 

 quoted, that ' ' language is only partly rational. ' ' If any language 

 were wholly rational, a foreigner could master it just as he could 

 'master a mathematical treatise. Algebra is the same in all 

 languages. I^ike the British constitution, and historic institutions 

 generally, language is a thing of compromises. Men wanted to 

 convey their thoughts to one another, and they did it the best 

 way they could. From the earliest times to the present moment 

 the race has been laboring to mould language to its requirements, 

 and for the most part with little fear of the schoolmaster before 

 its eyes. The work of language making has to be pretty well 

 advanced before Quintilian appears upon the scene. Analogy is 

 the guiding principle in the process ; but analogy often goes 

 astray , and then philological knots are tied which all the ingenuity 

 and industry of subsequent ages are incompetent to unravel. The 

 accidents of history too have their say. We can tell a language 

 that has had a rich history from its variously intermingled fossil 

 remains and disturbed stratification. I^et us not, therefore, 

 attempt to deal with language as if it were in any sense an 

 absolute system drawn on mathematical lines ; but in all our 

 enquiries respecting it, let us take the historical point of view, 

 seeking for facts in the first place, and afterwards endeavoring to 

 explain them. 



Formal grammar, as we know, makes much, makes every- 

 thing, of the parts of speech and rules of syntax. As regards the 

 former some of us, I am sure, in our young days learned to look 

 upon them as having the fixed unanalysable character of chemical 



