A mighty maze! yet not without a plan.’
Plain truth, not person, is my utmost hope,
I tell you truly in the sense of Pope.
Wild signifies a wood, or the place of the higher growth, and is an emblematical expression for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the Υλη, matter or sound of human speech, as ειδος seems to be of its ideal property.
Person is a compound of pêr-son, sweet sound; pêr also signifies any sweet ripe fruit, as figs or figes, according to the Welsh; which perhaps resembles that which gave man the denomination of person, the sound of the apple or afal, and to the fallen angel that tempted Eve, the name of di-afal or devil, the apple God; and figes and vices signify the same thing; the v consonant and digamma being the same, and g being an inflection of the radical c. See person, wood, &c. in the vocabulary.
The fall of man has laid us under a sort of charm, which nothing can remove but a thorough taste of the tree of knowledge, and avoiding its vicious branches as much as possible. Had that great reasoner Mr. Lock been so happy as to attend a little more to the tree of knowledge, instead of intirely rejecting the divine origin of human speech, and innate principles of thinking, he might have reasoned well upon right principles, instead of misleading and confirming us in our errors, as without doubt was his intention.
The learned Hermes, the very best of modern grammarians, whose ingenious performance, had it sooner come to my perusal, might have charmed me out of my present labours, to acquiesce with his opinions, seems to be a little affected by this fort of charm, and perhaps is as much deluded from his subject by the language, learning, and beauties of the Greeks and Romans, as the late author of the short introduction to the English language, by some of our modern barbarisms, the very exceptionable parts of our language.