of grammar, I could not but speak of its authors.  The writer who looks broadly at the past and the present, to give sound instruction to the future, must not judge of men by their shadows.  If the truth, honestly told, diminish the stature of some, it does it merely by clearing the sight of the beholder.  Real greatness cannot suffer loss by the dissipating of a vapour.  If reputation has been raised upon the mist of ignorance, who but the builder shall lament its overthrow?  If the works of grammarians are often ungrammatical, whose fault is this but their own?  If all grammatical fame is little in itself, how can the abatement of what is undeserved of it be much?  If the errors of some have long been tolerated, what right of the critic has been lost by nonuser?  If the interests of Science have been sacrificed to Mammon, what rebuke can do injustice to the craft?  Nay, let the broad-axe of the critic hew up to the line, till every beam in her temple be smooth and straight.  For, “certainly, next to commending good writers, the greatest service to learning is, to expose the bad, who can only in that way be made of any use to it.” [17] And if, among the makers of grammars, the scribblings of some, and the filchings of others, are discreditable alike to themselves and to their theme, let the reader consider, how great must be the intrinsic worth of that study which still maintains its credit in spite of all these abuses!

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

“Tot fallaciis obrutum, tot hallucinationibus demersum, tot adhuc tenebris circumfusum studium hocce mihi visum est, ut nihil satis tuto in hac materia praestari posse arbitratus sim, nisi nova quadam arte critica praemissa.”—­SCIPIO MAFFEIUS:  Cassiod.  Complexiones, p. xxx.

1.  The origin of things is, for many reasons, a peculiarly interesting point in their history.  Among those who have thought fit to inquire into the prime origin of speech, it has been matter of dispute, whether we ought to consider it a special gift from Heaven, or an acquisition of industry—­a natural endowment, or an artificial invention.  Nor is any thing that has ever yet been said upon it, sufficient to set the question permanently at rest.  That there is in some words, and perhaps in some of every language, a natural connexion between the sounds uttered and the things signified, cannot be denied; yet, on the other hand, there is, in the use of words in general, so much to which nature affords no clew or index, that this whole process of communicating thought by speech, seems to be artificial.  Under an other head, I have already cited from Sanctius some opinions of the ancient grammarians and philosophers on this point.  With the reasoning of that zealous instructor, the following sentence from Dr. Blair very obviously accords:  “To suppose words invented, or names given to things, in a manner purely arbitrary, without any ground or reason, is to suppose an effect without a cause.  There must have always been some motive which led to the assignation of one name rather than an other.”—­Rhet., Lect. vi, p. 55.