OP LANGUAGES. 



19 



oblivion, as the Egyptian, Surnerian, and Assyrian have 

 been lately. The difficulty of a scientific study of a living 

 language is on the contrary aggravated by the impossibility 

 of surveying its existence from the beginning to the end. 



With the existence of a language expires also its rhythm 

 and music. Whether artificial prose and poetical compositions 

 written by foreign writers in dead languages, as Greek, Latin, 

 Sanskrit, or Hebrew, however highly they are praised and 

 deserve praise as works of art, would really satisfy the 

 people who spoke those languages is a problem which, 

 however important, will never be solved. But I for one 

 doubt if the Latin verses of Muretus would have been as 

 pleasing to the old Romans as they were to the modern. 

 There exists in every language a peculiar inexpressible 

 charm, which can only be duly appreciated and understood 

 by him who speaks it as his mother tongue, and it is ques- 

 tionable whether any composition in a dead language can 

 possess this singular sweetness. In the same way as people 

 speak their own language without being conscious of its 

 peculiar grammatical construction, so also their national poets 

 compose popular songs and verses in metre and rhyme 

 without being aware of any special rules of rhythm and 

 music. Both grammar and metre belong to a language by 

 nature, and it is therefore as absurd to impose upon a 

 given dialect a foreign grammar, as it is to introduce into 

 a language a strange metre repugnant to its genius. 



To obtain an insight into the internal mechanism of a 

 language is by no means easy, though everybody possesses 

 such a mechanism, inasmuch as he is, as it were, a speaking 

 machine himself. When as a child he begins to speak, he is 

 unable to observe how he learns it, and afterwards it has 

 become quite his second nature to speak ; in fact he speaks, 

 as he walks or eats, from habit. Spoken language applies 

 itself to the ear, while gesture and picture language apply 

 themselves to the eye. The same things make the same 



