sage instructor, who tells him, that though every thing which is ordered and commanded is right and just, and ought to be obeyed; yet that as one thing may be ordered by the government, and another by the laws of God and human nature, it is for the individual to look for what is right in what is commanded by the higher, in opposition to that which is ordered by the meaner, authorities. And thus out of the etymology of the word right, he furnishes a practical lesson of polity, grounded upon what he calls the rights of man, and on which we have already delivered our sentiments.

But according to this grammatical metaphysician, RIGHT is not more obsequious to the etymology of the word, than TRUTH, which in the abstract sense in which we have been so long understanding it, he fairly etymologizes out of existence. Sir Francis, willing to take up with nothing that does not repose upon a good etymological foundation, puts this short question to the philosopher. What is truth? Upon which Mr. Tooke, after some pleasant allusions to the scriptures, in which we shall not follow him, betakes himself to his oracle and expounds its etymology. "Like the other words, true is also a past participle of the verb TKANAN, Theopan, confidere, to think, to believe firmly. This past participle was anciently written trew, which is the regular past tense of trow. As the verbs to blow, to crow, to know, to throw, give us in the past tense blew, crew, knew, threw. True, as we now write it, or trew, as it was formerly written, means simply and merely, that which is trowed; and, instead of its being a rare commodity on earth, except only in words, there is nothing but truth in the world. That every man, in his communication with others, should speak that which he troweth, is of so great importance to mankind, that it ought not to surprize us, if we find the most extravagant and exaggerated praises bestowed upon truth. But truth supposes mankind: for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is, therefore, no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth: for the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another. To speak truth may be a vice as well as a virtue: for there are many occasions where it ought not to be spoken."

We have heard it said that there is a seeming philosophy in this reasoning. To us it seems nothing better than flat nonsense. Is there nothing then proceeding from God which may be called absolutely true? Is there nothing which may be called abso

lutely true in the necessary relations of ideas? Nothing immutably true in the properties of figures? Nothing in science, nothing in feeling, nothing in the consequences of actions, nothing in reason, nothing in revelation true, because the word truth is derived from an Anglo-saxon word, which means only a confident belief or persuasion?

After this specimen of Mr. Tooke's powers of philosophical investigation and close thinking, we confess we are not sorry that he did not find time to execute his threat of applying "his system of language," as he hinted to his docile pupil he had thoughts of doing, "to all the different systems of metaphysical (i. e. verbal) importance." We certainly should not have been among the uso, but have endured the chagrin of seeing all our contemporaries outstrip us in the recondite mysteries of the new science, content to bring up the rear of the great intellectual march, and to remain the least endowed among the votaries of science.

But we would not be suspected of dealing harshly with Mr. Tooke. We certainly are among those who appreciate his labours highly for the sake of the valuable lights which he has occasionally thrown upon a very abstruse and difficult subject; we wish we could forget the use which he has made of a grammatical treatise as a vehicle for his angry passions, and his inveterate hostility towards the government of his country, and the dispensers of its laws. We can more easily forget his lofty appreciation of his own merit, and his disdain of his great predecessors in the same department of literature. His strong prejudices in favour of the parent language of his country, if they provoke a smile, it ought surely to be a smile bordering upon approbation. It is rather pleasant to observe the precipitance with which he decides, from the frequency of similar words in the Saxon and Latin languages, that the founders of the Roman state were from the north of Europe instead of the north of Asia, not reflecting that those who served as mercenaries in the Roman armies, and learned their religion from Romish priests, must have been tenacious, indeed, of the purity of their native tongue to have abstained from engrafting Roman words into their barbarous dialect.

We shall not easily find in any author more sensible observations on the advantages of abbreviations in general, and of the defective manner in which they have been adopted into our own language. "A short, close, and compact method of speech,'

(6

says Mr. Tooke, answers the purpose of a map upon a reduced

scale: it assists greatly the comprehension of our understanding: and in general reasoning frequently enables us, at one glance, to take in very numerous and distant relations and conclusions,

which would otherwise totally escape us. Our ancient tongue, he observes, was very destitute of abbreviations in the manner of signification of words; and our early authors being pressed by the defect, endeavoured to remedy it. They perceived that other languages were possessed of the abbreviations of which they were in want: they did not stop to consider the nature and origin of them, and the manner of their adoption: they did not give themselves the trouble of investigating the contrivance which was the parent of them, in order to proceed in the same manner; with their own language, and by similar methods to procure for it similar conveniences: but they took a much shorter course: they seized the terms themselves, and engrafted them on the discordant stocks of a heterogeneous dialect. The consequence has been, that our roots belong to one language, while our derivatives are taken from another; that the defects of our tongue have been supplied at the expence of its uniformity; and that our dialect is a medley rather than a language." We should have been heartily glad to have found the good sense and discriminative observation by which the above passage is distin guished, extending its character over the whole work, but alas! his stormy politics are perpetually disturbing the peaceful region of literature, and frightening his muse out of her senses. may add too, that what portion of good sense his politics left him, was further abridged by his petulant vanity.

We

Our readers, we trust, will pardon us for thus introducing a criticism of the diversions of Purley in a review of à biographical sketch of the author's public life; but as the production of that work was by far the most important act of his life, and is that exertion of his powers by which alone he will probably be known to posterity, we thought it due to the public, and to those principles and objects which gave existence to the British Review, to offer our opinion candidly and unreservedly on its merits.

But we cannot yet forsake the subject till we have bestowed a few observations on the credit which has been given to it for the perfect novelty of its theory. As a discovery it has usually been classed with the invention of the mariner's compass, the art of printing, or the circulation of the blood. Now, although we are very ready to acknowledge that the system has been enlarged, illustrated, and improved in the hands of this grammarian; yet we think that the merit of the first discovery can by no means be allowed him without doing great injustice to others. That language was originally composed only of nouns and verbs, and that these were the only necessary parts of speech, is an opinion of very ancient date. Towards the end

of the Platonicæ Questiones of Plutarch, the same opinion is maintained and illustrated with great correctness and elegance of expression. The same remark will be found both in G. J. Vossius and in Professor Schultens. (See Schultens, sect. 5, and G. J. Vossius de arte Gramm. lib. 3, cap. 1.) The instance which first originated the whole scheme in the mind of Mr. Tooke, appears to have been the palpable and beautiful etymology of our word if, which we have seen is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb signifying to give. Now both Skinner and Junius give us the same etymology, as Mr. Tooke is himself forced to acknowledge. Thus Skinner: "If (in agro Linc gif) ab A.S. Li si hoc a verbo Lipan dare. q. d. dato." How near also Skinner was to a similar mode in deriving unless and but, may be seen under those respective words in his glossary.

Mr. Tooke has no greater claim to originality in respect to his treatment of adjectives, which he considers as nothing but inflections of nouns and verbs, and therefore denies them any place among the parts of speech, or the essential constituents of language. What are usually called adjectives and participles, are only verbs or nouns with adjective terminations. We shall find in Wallis the same position expressed nearly in the same terms. Adjectivum respectivum nihil aliud est quam ipsa vox substantiva adjective posita." And again, "Quodlibet substantivum adjective positum degenerat in adjectivum." We do not, however, dispute the merit of Mr. Tooke in the application of this principle of exposition to our own language, and in the great propriety and pertinence of his remarks upon the practice of adopting the adjectives and participles of other languages, where these abreviations have been found ready to our hands,instead of abbreviating our own vernacular words, in imitation of what had been done in foreign dialects. Thus he says, while boy, man, woman, mind, birth, life, &c. are our own words, the adjectives are of foreign origin, as infantine, puerile, virile, human, female, feminine, mental, natal, vital, &c.

That the particles are only elliptical abbreviations, or the fragments and vestiges of other words and phrases, and particularly corrupted from verbs, and, therefore, to be regarded as having a basis of meaning, is a discovery of the most interesting and beautiful kind; but the merit of it does not rest with Mr. Tooke. Hoogeveen, in his prefatory discourse on the doctrine of the Greek particles, expresses himself in substance as follows: "That the origin of the Greek, as well as that of other languages, was at first entirely simple, nature herself leads us to suppose; and the probability is, that the first

voμaleles framed words to express things and actions alone, without particles; which, however great their power of affecting sentences in various ways, yet are not to be considered as absolutely necessary. This priority of verbs and nouns being admitted, we easily come at the origin of particles. Those nouns and verbs which the most ancient people introduced in a regular construction at full length in their discourses, succeeding ages, for the sake of brevity, have inserted in a mutilated state, leaving them in part to be understood, and retaining only the vestiges and traces of the words and sentences themselves. So that in truth, particles were originally nothing but nouns and verbs, for example-Σωκρατες εφιλοσοφεί Πλάτων φιλοσοφημένα Expayer, Here we have two sentences opposed to each other, and the opposition is clear. But if it were thought necessary to express the opposition, the manner of doing it would have been thus: Σωκρατες εφιλοσοφει, αλλά οι αλλα λεξω, Πλατων τα φιλοσοφεμενα εγραψεν. With the words αλλά οι άλλα λέξω the sentence is rendered full and complete, and in this manner, no doubt, the remotest ages expressed themselves. Those who followed, omitted λew for the sake of brevity, and retained a^^, which word alone came thus to signify an opposition between the sentences, and the place of its accent being changed, was converted into a particle.

Instances of the full form of expression will be found in many of the ancients, and in some not very ancient writers who were not particularly studious of brevity. Thus in Hom. II. 1. 2, v. 261.

Αλλο δε τοι έρεω, συ δ' ενι φρεσι βαλλει σῇσιν.

So in Xenophon's Cyropedia, 1. 8, p. 211, where the speaker in passing to a different point, Και άλλο δε σοι ἐρῶ.

Thus also the particle Ei, if, the same writer derives from the third person of the verbs Ew and E. From w, when the sense is alooy, shewing the procedure of the consequence from the premisses in the process of the argument, as ei "Avgwos γέγονε θνητὸς ἐςι; but when it is to be understood in the way of argumentative interrogation, it seems rather deducible from su sum, and then it must be understood as implying the same thing as i ws in the Dutch and English vernacular phrase " het zoo," "is it so," or the Latin dato.

A similar account is given by Hoogeveen of many of the other particles, and though he may be, and we believe is, often wrong, and trifling in his conjectures, yet whether right or wrong, the principle of the etymology is the same.

The real truth is, that Mr. Horne Tooke is entitled to the