GRAMMAR. 



llicrc were but two fc-Kcs, tliere fiiould have been two genders, . 

 liiafculiiic.aud fcminuic, iioims meaning males being ranked 

 under the former claf;;, thofe meaning females under the latter ; 

 while the nailer or neither gender comprehended the names of 

 inanir.iate things, or fueh animals as had tlieir fex not dif- 

 cernible, or not necelTury to be dillinguillied. But unfor- 

 tunately the termination of nouns beeame a mark of gender 

 independent of their fignilication ; and thus nouns were con- 

 fidered as mafculine, feminine, or neuter, as tliey happened to 

 have the ending"; which cuftom ufually aiTigned to eith.er of 

 ihcfe three clail'es. The Hebrew tongue, in its primitive pu- 

 rity, appears to liave been exempt from this unhappy embar- 

 vafhnent, and the only languages known to us which have 

 maintained the empire of common fenfe again II the caprice ot 

 cuftom are the En;;lilh, the Perfian, and the Bengalefe. In 

 Greek and Latin the dictates of reafun liave fo far prevailed 

 as to caufe all tliofe nouns, whatever be their terminations, 

 which mean males and females, to be deemed mafculine and 

 feminine ; while the names of inanimate objedls only are de- 

 termined by the .termination. In other languages, inch as 

 the Arabic, French, and Italian, this ablurdity has been car- 

 ried much farther, the names of inanimate objects being 

 faid to have gender : the neuter, which is only the negative of 

 fex, is excluded ; and the learner has his memory loaded with 

 the gender of noims which really meant things without lex, 

 and tl:is without any one advantage to counterbalance fo much 

 fruitlefs trouble, and fuch glaring facrilice of common 

 fene. 



The Englifn language, as conforming to nature in rc- 

 gai-d to the diflindtions of gender, has greatly the advantage 

 over other tongues : wlien rifing to the rhetorical and poetical 

 ilile it addreffes the fancy by perfonilication. This figure is 

 elfential to poetry. In order to intereft the imagination, the 

 fubjecT; of difcourfe, when inanimate, muft be invefted with 

 the form; and attributes of living beings. Now, when things 

 are thus perfonified or fpoken of as perfons, tiiey muft be 

 reprefented as mnk or femah: May they be made either ? 

 Or IS there any analogy to give one the preference over the 

 other ? Let us hear what Mr. Harris ( Herm. p. 44. ) 

 fays on this fnbjecl. Having obferved that iome nouns are 

 of fuch a gender from having fuch a termination, he thus 

 proceeds : " In others we may imagine a more fubtle kind of 

 reafoning, a reafoning which difcerns even in things witliout 

 fex a dillant analogy to that great natural diftinftion which, 

 according to Milton, animates the world. In this view we 

 may conceive thofe fubftantives to have been confidered as 

 mafculine, which were confpicuous for the attributes of im- 

 parting or communicating, or which were by nature aftive, 

 ilrong, and efficacious, and that indiferiminately whether to 

 good or to ill, or which had claim to eminence either laudable 

 or otherwife. The feminine, on the contrary, were fuch as 

 were confpicuous for the attributes either of receiving, of 

 containing, or of producing and bringing forth ; or which 

 had more of the paffive in their nature than of the aftive ; or 

 which were pecuharly beautiful and amiable ; or which had 

 refpeft to fuch excefles as were rather feminine tlian mafcu-. 

 line." On this principle the fun, as imparting light, is maf- 

 culine ; the m«/3«, as receiving it, feminine. 'i^\\ejly, or elha; 

 time, death, the ocean, the Supreme Being are all mafculine; 

 while the carth,J].vp, cily, virtue, religion, are feminine. And 

 yet Mt. Tooke roundly pronounces this reafoning fallacious. 

 " As for Mr. Harris's poetical authorities, the Mufes are 

 bitter bad judges in matters of philofophy. Befides, that 

 Reafon is an arrant defpot, who, in his own dominions, admits 

 of no authority but his own. And he is particularly un- 

 fortynate. in the very outfet : for his very firit inftancc-. 



\.\\e fun and the moon, deftroy the whole fubtlety of this kind 

 of reafoning. For Mr. Harris ought to h.avf known- that in 

 many Afiatic languages, and in all the nf)rthcrn languages of 

 this part of the globe which we inhabit, and particularly 

 in our mother language, the Anglo-Saxon, fun is feminine, 

 and moon is mafculine," vol. i. p. 54. The author of the 

 learned treatife on grammar in the Eucyclop. Britannica, 17, 

 reftingno doubt on the authority of Mr. Tooke, thus pro- 

 nounces on the reafoning of Mr. Harris ; " Such fpecula- 

 tions are wholly fanciful ; and the principle on which they 

 proceed are overturned by an appeal to fatls. Many of the 

 fubftantives that in one language have mafculine names, have 

 in others names that are feminine, whtcli could not be the 

 cafe, were this niattcr regulated by rcff/in or luiturc.'' 



The languages from which the objeAion to Mr. Harris's 

 theory is deriv.ed are net regulated in regard to the diftinttion 

 of gender by reafon or nature. And facls borrowed from 

 them are not furely to be admitted as conclufive againil a 

 principle in a language which is regulated by reafon and na- 

 ture. Mr. Harris deduced his theory from the Englifh, 

 though he has applied it with perhaps more fancy than truth 

 to fome inftances in the clafiical languages. Our own tongue,, 

 as making all things neuter which have no life, admits the 

 operation of fancy in perfonifying inanimate objcfts ; and 

 where perfonification is admitted, the analogy to the natural 

 dillinttion of the fexes muft neceftarily be admitted alfo. 

 But, Mr. Tooke ?nd his abettor fay, it is fanciful be- 

 caufe it does not obtain in other tongues. Their argument 

 is briefly this : — 'i'he fun, by perfonilication, is not made maf- 

 culine in Englifti, where the confideration of gender is 

 founded on realon, beeaufe it is made feminine in Iome lan- 

 guages where the termination, and not reafon, determines the 

 gender. Reafoning of this kind is not only inconclufive, 

 but frivolous ; and the analogy ftated bv Mr. Harris inva- 

 riably and ncceffarily operates on our own tongue, and would 

 have operated in all tongues, if, like the Englifti, they liad 

 conformed to the ftandard of nature ; and we ought no more 

 from their caprice to argue againil the dictates of reafon 

 and analogy, than we ought to deny a regard to the dif- 

 tiniflion of fex in the nouns of one language, . beeaufe the 

 gender of the fame nouns in others is regulated by confi- 

 derations independent of fex. 



When a noun reprefents its objccl as one, it is faid to be in 

 thi^JJngular, and ^/«/W when meaning more than one. This 

 property alfo can hardly be faid to be necefl'ary to nouns, as its 

 place might have been fnpplied with greater accuracy by 

 numerical adjeftives w'hen extended to exprefs numbers, as 

 /TOO men, three mQii, &c. "Bengal-nouns," fays Mr. Hal- 

 hed, in his excellent grammar of that tongue, p. 68. "have 

 neither dual nor plural numbers, I may add that neither is 

 wanted. The dual is found in no modern language, and 

 probably never exifted but in the Arabic and its branches, 

 in the Shanfcrit and in the Greek. That the idea of multi- 

 tude is not confined to the plural number, is clear beyond a 

 doubt, beeaufe ftngnlar nouns are ufed in all languages withi 

 a colleilive fenfe, almoft as frequently as plurals, thus: min 

 love to finely, and man loves to flui'y, are phrafes perfetHy 

 equivalent. So alfo we join to a noun in the lingular num- 

 ber an epithet of indefinite plurality to conve)' a plural 

 meaning : many a man is written by the Bengaleie bchoot ma/>- 

 hoojb. Perliaps it niight be fafely urged that the fingular 

 •number has more occafion for an accurate fpecification than 

 the plural ; at leaft this is the only circumftance which can 

 account for the cxtenfive ufe of the article or reprelentativp 

 of- unity in ir.oft of the modern dialetts of Europe." 



'i'he plural n.uinber in its origin .was no other than a notir. 



