and if a testimony were needed to the general excellence of this version, an appeal need only be made to the fact that it has maintained its ground for two hundred and thirty years. It has been as highly esteemed by the learned as by the unlearned; and, although many minor particulars might be corrected to advantage, yet the version taken as a whole is admirable. It is impossible to form any estimate of the blessings in result which havǝ flowed from this version: the translators acted in their labour as became the servants of Christ: they knew that it was vain to trust in themselves; and thus, like Tyndale and Coverdale before them, they laid their work before the Lord in prayer and found in so doing that he to whom they trusted was, indeed, faithful."

To all who desire to attain to an exact meaning of any text, these various versions will be found most valuable helps, and more especially when reference is made to the Greek text above. An instance or two will explain this. In John x. 16, occur the words aux and Toiμvn, which Tyndale translates by "fold" and "flock;" while in the five other versions both are incorrectly rendered by "fold" alone. Again: in Hebrews x. 23, we find κατέχωμεν τὴν ὁμολογίαν τῆς ἐλπίδος, which, in five of the versions, is rightly rendered "our hope," but which our authorised version has translated "our faith. Many similar variations will be detected by a comparison of one version with the other, all of which conduce to one end to make the true reading known; and in this consists the great merit of the work and its especial usefulness. We hold it in consequence in the highest estimation: we believe it to be of the most essential service to many for discovering the true sense of Scripture: we think it eminently useful-very efficient for both consolation and instruction-and the most valuable work of its kind that ever came under our observation; and, if ever our authorised translation should again be brought under review, a careful comparison of all the standard versions of Scripture in the principal languages of Christendom would become necessary; and, consequently, such works as those before us prepare men for such a task. And the variations which we discover between version and version serve to show the difficulty of a perfect rendering of the original, even when all the most learned men of the age unite their endeavours. Much more questionable would be the success of any single individual however learned he might be; and we should extremely deprecate any private tampering with the text. If our authorised version is to be improved, it must be undertaken by a body of men not less numerous, nor less learned and orthodox, than those to whom the last revision was committed by King James.

425

ART. VIII-1. Mithridates Minor; or an Essay on Language. By H. WELSFORD, Esq. Longmans. 1848.

2. On the Origin and Ramifications of the English Language. By H. WELSFORD, Esq. Longmans. 1845.

3. The Origin of the English, Germanic, and Scandinavian Languages and Nations. By the Rev. JOSEPH Bosworth, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A. Longmans. 1848.

4. A Compendious Anglo-Saxon and English Dictionary. By the Rev. JOSEPH BOSWORTH, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A. London: Smith. 1848.

IT is a remark of Halbertsma, as quoted by Dr. Bosworth, p. 35, that, "in comparing kindred languages with each other, the scholar will generally start from the point where he was born." But, taking our stand as Englishmen on our own language, the Anglo-Saxon will claim our first attention as the basis of English; and "Anglo-Saxon being one of those languages called 'dead,' a knowledge of its pronunciation cannot be obtained from the people themselves. Of course, therefore, all information in these matters depends upon the written letters, and upon determining the sound of those letters. This, however, is a very difficult task. There is no connexion at all between visible marks and audible sounds: the letters serve more to indicate the genus than the species of the sounds, and use alone can teach us the shades (nuances) of pronunciation." In the Anglo-Saxon there exists also another cause of ambiguity as to the sound of words, arising from the various ways in which the same word is found to have been written; and that not only by different individuals living at distant ages, but even by the same writer, in the same composition, varieties in the orthography are to be found. "This diversity in the spelling of a word is of the greatest importance to one who would ascertain the true pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxon. While the writer is groping about him for proper letters, we guess the sound he wished to express by assuming some middle sound between the letters he employs" (38). To feel the importance of this we need only to recollect a few of the words in the English which have undergone changes either in sound or in the mode of spelling during our own time, and the many words which are spelt alike but sounded differently, or which are sounded alike but spelt with different letters; and we know, as historical facts, that it was the same in Latin and Greek, and in every other language (save ONE) of which we have sufficient remains to institute the comparison; and it is evident that it

must have been so in all these cases, and the more so in proportion as the more ancient languages are examined, and are looked at while in a state of progress from a ruder to a more polished form, or as they belong to a more or less civilized people.

Yet these changes which take place, whether in the spelling or in the sound of words, are not be to regarded as merely arbitrary and without any principle; but they result in general from the reciprocal action of two principles, one of which governs the pronunciation; while the other governs the orthography of languages. The speech of the different families of mankind is their own-they have not borrowed their mother tongue from other nations-this principle governs the pronunciation: the writing of the different families of mankind is not their own, but has been always borrowed: all letters may be traced to some alphabet, and the original alpha-bet is the aleph-beth of the Hebrew language. On this head we must refer again to Halbertsma :

"I fear (says he) that those who credit what I have stated, about the diversity of dialects, will consider these infinite variations as the curse of Babel. They will, however, permit me to say that human speech, in general, has its mechanical rules fixed by the frame of the organs of speech to which all tongues submit. This frame admits modifications to which every nation yields. These modifications admit of farther modifications, to which not only districts but even villages are liable: therefore, every language is, of necessity, what it is, and it is not in the power of fancy or choice to obey or disobey these laws."

It hence follows that it is not correct to say that one language is derived from another, because it only means that two languages are of the same stock-that is, the nation has migrated or has colonized, and its people have carried their own language with them. It does not mean that any people was without a language, and was indebted to another people for teaching them how to speak; but a people which, from simplicity of manners and paucity of ideas, have had a meagre language, may borrow from a more advanced people new words. to express new ideas; and then, in borrowing these words, they would conform them to the idiom of their own tongue which would be only enriching a barren language not adopting a new one. Thus, the English, mported with the Anglo-Saxons from Germany, has borrowed from the Roman, and Greek, and Norman languages; yet has retained its own peculiar character by incorporating and reducing to the same idiom the heterogeneous words which it has borrowed.

;

Of our writing, on the contrary, it is equally certain that nothing is our own, but that all has been borrowed. If Cæsar is to be trusted, the Britons used Greek characters in his day. The Romans, in their long occupation of Britain, naturalized their own form of letters amongst us. Some few Runes came in from the north, not generally, not always independently, but in conjunction with the Anglo-Saxon characters; and these last were in substance Mæso-Gothic, and, therefore, scarcely differed from the written Greek and Roman letters of the same age. The cursive forms which letters afterwards assume is another question, and depends upon the materials which are employed for the purpose; for, as in sculptures on stone, square forms would be preferred as more easily executed on such a substance, so, for writing on paper with pen and ink, the letters would become rounder and flow into each other but, in one respect, the written characters, in being borrowed, confirm the position laid down of the unalterable distinctions which subsist between one spoken language and another; for the letters are borrowed with the conventional sounds attached to them, and applied to those sounds which most nearly resemble the same in the language which borrows them. But it almost invariably happens that the language and the borrowed alphabet cannot be made to agree; for the alphabet is found to have more sounds of one kind and fewer sounds of another kind than those who borrow it require for their own language: as, for instance, the four last letters of the Greek alphabet have been rejected as useless by all the western nations of Europe; and all of them have added to their alphabets some letters unknown in Greece, as C, J, Q, Y, V, W, Z, and F; and some of these letters are either ambiguous or unnecessary in languages which have yet conventionally adopted them.

The Anglo-Saxon, for its dh and th, was led to invent two letters which are peculiarly its own: and the English in using the same letters for such different sounds as that and thing, or Church and Christian, has caused ambiguity, which would have been better avoided by adding other letters to the Roman alphabet to represent these sounds. But, above all our native examples of the inconvenience of restriction to the mere number of letters found in the borrowed alphabet is the Welsh language, which, having great affinity with the Celtic and Asiatic languages, and yet using only Roman letters, is obliged to combine consonants and double them in a strange way, and to press w and y into their service as vowels, in order to express a greater variety of sounds than the simple Roman alphabet is capable of expressing; and they have thus given to the written

language of Wales a very uncouth and barbarous appearance: even the English would have done better if they had enlarged their alphabet, as they would thereby have retained many Anglo-Saxon sounds which have disappeared from our written language, having been softened so as to be scarcely perceived in polite conversation; these are now only to be found distinctly retained in the various provincial dialects; for, as Dr. Bosworth asks-

"Is not the English tongue, as to its descent and substance, still a genuine daughter of the Anglo-Saxon? Does she not bear to this very day some feature of her fair mother, notwithstanding her foreign ornaments? Do not many Anglo-Saxon vowels still exist in Yorkshire, in Scotland, and in other provincial dialects of England? May not the English alone boast of having preserved the true sound of the old etch (th), which has disappeared from the whole continent of Europe, so as not even to leave the means of forming a faint idea of the sound of this consonant without the aid of the English? Why should we consult only the Gothic or the Icelandic, which is still more remote from the Anglo-Saxon? Why should that which is unknown be sought amongst the unknown, rather than in that which is known in the remains of the old sounds of the language? With a competent knowledge of the subject, and fair induction, no source can afford so much light in the pronunciation and other peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon as the English" (78).

Shakespeare, among English authors, is the one from whose writings the largest portion of information is now to be extracted on these points, for his language is at once rich and idiomatic it is rich in the abundance of words, and every variety of expression which the language admits of; and yet never is there any departure from the true idiom of the language-it is correct English both in the words and in the construction throughout; yet, Shakespeare was not learned, in the vulgar sense of the word; but, as Dryden observes in his preface, he was truly learned, for he possessed that knowledge which learning is expected to confer and for which alone it is worth the trouble of pursuit. He studied not mankind or their language "through the spectacles of books:" he consulted his own bosom for human nature, and he looked to living men to learn the language of mankind: and common sense teaches us to do the same in our philological enquiries: we, from living languages which are known, may draw analogies for our guidance in examining the analogies which subsist between the dead languages which are unknown.

And the English language has the peculiarity of having been able to enrich itself by the incorporation of new words, when