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when we find him deliberately and reiteratedly falsifying so plain a fact, for the paltry and idle object of giving France a superiority over England in a point of very secondary importance, and which no one ever before dreamt of claiming for her, we are disgusted at the meanness of both the falsehood and its purpose; and we begin to doubt whether we have not been too charitable in attributing to ignorance only all his other misrepresentations. We shall, therefore, not waste our time in exposing him further; although every page of his work would afford subject for censure.

If it should occur to our readers that the points to which we have adverted are trifling, and that perhaps in more important subjects he is better worth attention, we beg leave to assure them it is not so ;-that, as in his hands trifles become important matters, so the most important matters become trifles. He never looks beyond the surface; and most certainly knows as little of England as his Ordonnances of July show that he did of France. Indeed, it seems to us somewhat presumptuous, and certainly not in very good taste, that a person just expelled from his own country for knowing nothing about it-for having mistaken her laws, her wants, her wishes, and her temper-should-pour passer le tems-erect himself into the judge of the temper, wants, wishes, and laws of another people, to whose shores he escaped as a fugitive-with no one individual of whom he had any previous acquaintance-one word of whose language he does not understand

whose manners he has not learned-and whose merits and whose errors he is, and ever will be, equally incapable of appreciating.

We fancy we see poor Gulliver, escaped from his shipwreck, reading political lectures to the people of Brobdignag. If the worthy gentleman has-as we a little suspect-published all this trash, derogatory (under a very flimsy veil) of the country which has afforded him refuge and hospitality, in the hope of propitiating the Men of July, and facilitating his return to France, we wish him success; and it is very probable he may succeed! The antiEnglish tone of his book will recommend him to the great body of his countrymen; and the want of observation, of argument, of talent, and of every thing statesmanlike which it exhibits, will wonderfully soften his political adversaries. M. Dupin or M. Guizot will not fear the opposition of the Baron d'Haussez; and, for ourselves, if it be in the book of fate that France and England should be again at war, we shall heartily wish to see him in his old office of Minister of Marine.

ART.

ART. VII.-Grimm's Deutche Grammatik. Gottingen. 18221831. 3 vols. pp. 2840.

SUCH is the dry and naked title of one of the most interesting and instructive works that ever issued from the German press. Unappalled either by the inconceivable labour of the task, or by the fear of being thought tedious, but working steadily forwards from the very letters, the illustrious scholar, Grimm, has here given us, under the modest title of a German grammar, a thorough history not only of his own language, but of that of every descendant of the Gothic stock throughout Europe, tracing, at the same time, every inflection in every dialect through every intermediate stage up to the earliest period of which any literary monuments remain! We have thus the ready means of comparing on any point the Gothic, the German of the ninth and of the thirteenth centuries as well as of the present time, the old Saxon, Anglo-Saxon and English, the old and modern Dutch, the ancient Scandinavian, and modern Danish and Swedish languages; and the whole is enriched throughout with the relations that exist between these and the more remotely connected languages,-the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin,-even the Celtic, and the Sclavonic,-which are made out in a manner that does the highest credit to Grimm's acuteness and sound judgment; those between the Gothic and Latin being particularly worthy of attention.

It is in works of this nature that Germany is pre-eminent among the European nations; and it is long since those who are interested in philological researches have made a valuable acquisition, or one more fit to wipe out from their favourite study the reproach which has been somewhat speciously cast on it, that it is a science où la voyelle ne fait rien, et la consonne fort peu de chose.' Even where Grimm does not himself propose any suggestion as to the origin of words, he does what is frequently a greater benefit to science, in placing clearly before us all the facts that bear upon the point, and thus enabling us to form our own judgment. It is not our intention to enter into a detailed examination of the work; we would merely point out one or two of the topics which appeared to us most remarkable, or deserving of further notice than has been given to them by our author. The first six hundred pages of the book are taken up with a minute examination of the letters in each of the dialects which come under consideration-and here we must commend the example Grimm has shown in abolishing the use of the Gothic characters; there is no more reason for our employing them, than for our using the Roman capitals in printing Latin; the common type was equally unknown to both nations, and the use of the uncouth Gothic letters both increases the difficulty to the reader, and adds to the expense of printing, without affording any coun

tervailing

tervailing advantage. Indeed, the example might be extended even to the oriental languages with very great benefit; if, for instance, the Sanscrit were printed in European characters, we are convinced that a large class of persons would acquire at least its rudiments, who are now deterred from similar studies by the formidable difficulty of a new character looking them in the face at the very outset.

The general examination of the various alphabets closes with a valuable chapter containing a summary view of the relations that exist between the corresponding letters of each alphabet, from which our author concludes

"That although the vowels are apt to waver, and admit of various influences, there is nothing capricious in their variations, which take place according to deeply seated, though hitherto undiscovered rules. The vowels may be considered as the necessary colouring or spirit of all words, the breath without which they cannot exist. It is the vowel that individualizes the word; its form, its species, so to say, rests on the consonants. With these the relations are much surer and more lasting dialects, whose vowels for the most part differ, frequently retain the same consonants. Accordingly, we find that in Greek and Latin, as well as in the Teutonic languages, the liquids—l, m, n, r— remain essentially unaltered in corresponding words. Their fluent nature enables them to sink into their places after every convulsion. The same is, in general, true of the breathings-h, 8, v-whose connexion with each other is shown partly by their effecting the same changes upon the preceding vowels-partly by the interchange between h and v; and w, h, and s; and the contact of the assibilation with the aspiration (th, ts, z). H and v, the softest of all consonants, occasionally drop off entirely, especially before liquids.'-vol. i. p. 586.

The other consonants, comprising the labials p, b, f, linguals t, d, th, and gutturals k, g, ch, follow a different rule. They are divided into the above three classes, according to the organ that is employed to pronounce them, and in passing from one dialect to another we frequently find that they vary, but in such a manner that, in corresponding situations, the organic nature of the sound remains constant. Thus, if we have a labial at the beginning of a Latin word frater, we shall still have a labial at the beginning of the English brother; but in Latin it is the aspirate f, in English the medial b. So with the linguals, the Latin tenuis t in tres answers to the English aspirate th in three, and to the German medial d in drei; in each case, however, the organic nature of the initial consonant remains unvaried, it is always a lingual that precedes the r. The result of Grimm's observations upon this subject has been the discovery of a very remarkable law, according to which these changes of letter, seemingly so capricious, take place. If we suppose these classes of consonants to have a natural tendency to change their aspirates into medials, medials into tenues,

and

and tenues into aspirates, in passing from an older to a newer dialect, the old High German will be one step farther advanced than the Gothic in the order of these changes, and the Gothic one step farther than the Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit; the latter languages thus bearing exactly the same relation to the Gothic that the Gothic bears to the old High German.

The consequence of these variations will be seen more clearly from the following table of the corresponding letters in the languages above-mentioned, which is applicable alike to labials, linguals, and gutturals

[blocks in formation]

In applying this rule, we should observe, that in the labial class P, B, F, in old High German the medial B has been supplanted by V (BH), which in other languages is frequently confounded with it. In the same dialect we find an instance of the H passing into S, and the aspirate of the lingual rank is represented by Z (=TS). Amongst the gutturals the Latin and Gothic have no aspirate CH, and its place is supplied in Latin by H, and in Gothic sometimes by G and sometimes by H. Here, too, the old high German medial G sometimes passes into an H.

Bearing these observations in mind, we may develop the preceding table in the following manner, the letters in the same horizontal line answering to each other :

[blocks in formation]

where we shall find that the changes of consonants are the same with those laid down in the table. It is easy to perceive of what importance this rule is to etymology, as a test of the truth of any supposed deviation. Thus

'Words in which two changes of consonant agree with the rule (TpExε, thragjan-Toder, fotjus) are doubly certain; those in which one consonant agrees and the other varies are suspicious; still more suspicious are those in which the consonants remain unaltered in the three languages. In this case either all relationship fails-as (AngloSaxon) päds, paduas, aboç, dolor: or else one language has bor. rowed from the other; thus scriban is scribere itself, frucht is fructus. Hence we see that, in examining derivations of words, we have less to inquire into the resemblance of the consonants than into the order of their descent in the above series, an order which allows neither of inversion nor of alteration. Thus, if in an old High German word we find a p, and in the same position in the corresponding Gothic word a b, and in the Latin an f, we may conclude that the three words descend from a common stock, of which each language possesses its peculiar derivative unborrowed from either of the others. If, on the contrary, we find an ƒ in High German answering to a b in Gothic, and Р in Latin, the order in which these letters appear is contrary to that pointed out by the table, although, abstractedly considered, they are truly related. The Greek 7 requires a Gothic th, but the Gothic t, instead of a Greek 0, requires ad; and thus the identity of the words depends upon their outward unlikeness.'

This rule is, of course, obscured by partial exceptions, amongst which we may mention the constant tendency of the three tenues -p, t, k-to supplant each other: as Taws, pavo-tevte, quinque -pedder (Welsh), TɛTtapa, quatuor—ños, equus.

We must now pass over a mass of important matter to arrive at the pronouns, the origin of many of the most interesting objects of research in all languages. In the ancient Teutonic dialects the formations from this source are peculiarly abundant, though most of them have fallen out of use in modern speech. Nothing can be more complete than the account given by Grimm of these derivative particles, their origin and employments. But the stocks themselves from which they are derived, namely, the interrogative or relative and demonstrative pronouns, seem deserving of further attention than he has bestowed upon them. We are left entirely in the dark as to the nature of that meaning which is common to each of these classes; of that mode of signification which decides whether a given word is a relative or a demonstrative.

We perceive at once, on hearing any of the words who, which, where, when, that there is something in their meaning that is common to all of them; something which gives them what we

call

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