[223] Logopandecteision, or an INTRODUCTION to the Universal Language. Digested into these Six several Books, Neaudethaumata, Chrestasebeia, Cleronomaporia, Chryseomystes, Neleodicastes, and Philoponauxesis. By Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight. Now lately contrived and published, both for his own utilie, and that of all pregnant and ingenious Spirits. Credere quaerenti nonne haic justissima res est? Qui non plura cupit, quam ratio ipsa jubet. Englished thus, To grant him his demands, were it not just? Who craves no more, then [than] reason says he must. London. Printed, and are to be sold by Giles Calvert at the Black Spread Eagle at the west-end of Pauls; and by Richard Tomlins at the Sun and Bible near Pye-corner. 1653.
[224] Eleven genders seem nine more than are necessary, and the use of such a large number suggests to one that in Sir Thomas's Universal Language the distinctions in question were to receive an undue amount of attention. At the same time, fault has been found with our English language for being somewhat defective in accentuating these distinctions; and an attempt to correct this shortcoming, to a certain extent, has been made by Southey in The Doctor. He proposed to anglicise the orthography of the female garment, "which is indeed the sister to the shirt," and then to utilise the hint offered in its new form: thus Hemise and Shemise. In letter-writing every person knows that male and female letters have a distinct character; they should therefore, he thought, be generally distinguished thus, Hepistle and Shepistle. And as there is the same marked difference in the writing of the two sexes, he proposed Penmanship and Penwomanship. Erroneous opinions in religion being promulgated in this country by women as well as men, the teachers of such false doctrine may be divided into Heresiarchs and Sheresiarchs, so that we should speak of the Heresy of the Quakers and the Sheresy of Joanna Southcote's people. The troublesome affection of the diaphragm, which every one has experienced, is, upon the same principle, to be called, according to the sex of the patient, Hecups, or Shecups, which, upon the principle of making our language truly British, is better than the more classical form of Hiccups and Hæcups. In its objective use the word becomes Hiscups or Hercups; and in like manner Histerics should be altered into Herterics, the complaint never being masculine. It is perhaps a little surprising that this suggestion should have lain before the British public for half a century, and have been left unutilised.
[225] Works, pp. 316-318.
[226] Works, pp. 316-318.
[227] Ibid. p. 332.
[228] Scenes and Legends, chap. vii.
[229] A somewhat similar project was described in the Marquis of Worcester's Century of the Names and Scantling of ... Inventions (1663), in which the steam-engine is anticipated. The passage is as follows:—"32. How to compose an universal character, methodical, and easie to be written, yet intelligible in any language; so that if an Englishman write it in English, a Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard, Irish, Welsh, being scholars, yea, Grecian or Hebritian, shall as perfectly understand it in their owne Tongue, as if they were perfect English, distinguishing the Verbs from the Nouns, the Numbers, Tenses, Cases as properly expressed in their own Language as it was written in English."
A writer in Blackwood's Magazine in 1820 affirms that he has good reasons for believing that the above volume was really by Sir Thomas Urquhart, and was dishonestly put forth as the work of the Marquis of Worcester. He does not give us any of his reasons. The style of the little volume bears no resemblance to that of our author, and this fact is of itself almost conclusive proof that Sir Thomas Urquhart had nothing to do with it. The Scottish knight could scarcely open his lips without revealing his identity. It is rather difficult to believe, too, that a manuscript lost by Sir Thomas in the streets of Worcester should have been picked up by the Marquis of Worcester. The coincidence would be a very extraordinary one.
[230] Hear Heine's angry allusions to his early scholastic experiences, in which he suggests another and less honourable origin of the Greek tongue: "Vom Griechischen will ich gar nicht sprechen—ich ärgere mich sonst zu viel. Die Mönche im Mittelalter hatten so ganz Unrecht nicht, wenn sie behaupteten, dass das Griechische eine Erfindung des Teufels sei" (Das Buch Le Grand, vii.).
[231] Sanskrit, Old Persian, Lithuanian, and old Slavonic have the dual both in declension and conjugation, and in the first of these it is used much more frequently than in Greek. Faint traces of it in declension are to be found in Teutonic speech, though in conjugation it is only in the Gothic that the dual is used. In old Gaelic the dual is a regular feature of declension, but not of conjugation.