And in Classics we were equal.
NORTH.
You will be convinced of this, Buller, if you recollect what Words express. The mind itself. For all its affections and sensibilities, Talboys, furnish a whole host of meanings, which must have names in Language. For mankind do not rest from enriching and refining their languages, until they have made them capable of giving the representation of their whole Spirit.
TALBOYS.
The pupil of language, therefore, sir—pardon my presumption—before he can recognise the appropriation of the Sign, must recognise the Thing signified?
NORTH.
And if the Thing signified, Talboys, by the Word, be some profound, solemn, and moral affection—or if it be some wild, fanciful impression—or if it be some delicate shade or tinge of a tender sensibility—can anything be more evident than that the Scholar must have experienced in himself the solemn, or the wild, or the tenderly delicate feeling before he is in the condition of affixing the right and true sense to the Word that expresses it?
TALBOYS.
I should think so, sir.
SEWARD.