Mr Kavanagh seems by and by to have found out that "there are no such words as substantives or nouns; that is to say, words standing for substances, or representing substances in any manner." He discovered that such words, and indeed all words, are, whether it be true or not, sounds to our ears not altogether new. We had a notion that, at least, the term noun, nom, and nomen, meant properly a name, but of course Mr Kavanagh must know better. We must decline, however, to follow him through his explanation on this footing of the real presence.
But then comes an announcement of undoubted originality, "that all words called substantives are but names in the fourth degree of comparison; that is to say, in a degree above the one commonly called the superlative." We durst not doubt that Mr Kavanagh is here right; but, for persons of slow perception like ourselves, we should have liked to see a little more fully explained what are the first, second, and third degrees of comparison of those names, of which hat, stick, thing, hand, foot, &c., are the fourth degrees. Discoverers should bear a little with beginners; and we suggest that, in a second edition, a full table should be given of what we desiderate.
The view thus taken of nouns, leads, it seems, to important results, and, in particular, enables us to explain what Mr Kavanagh had been puzzling himself about for half his lifetime—the meaning of the expressions, "This is John's book," and "this is a book of John's." We had always thought that the first of these phrases was plain sailing, and that the second meant, "this a book of John's books—or, one of John's books," ex libris Joannis. But these simple suppositions cannot satisfy men of science, who require a discovery to explain what other men think they understand without one:—
"We can now account for what has hitherto puzzled all grammarians, namely, the double possessive. This book of John's means, this book of all John's; that is, this book forming a part of all John's, of all things belonging to John."
"And how rich and full the meaning of this new possessive! What an image it brings before the mind, compared to the wretched meaning our ignorance of this noble science has hitherto taught us to allow it to have! This book is John's, means, we have been told, this book is John's book. How frivolous, how poor, compared to, 'this book is part of all things corporeal and ideal belonging to John.' How useless this repetition of the same word book! and how incorrect! since if John possessed only one book, and that we said, 'this book of John's is better than mine,' we were immediately stopt, as we cannot say, this book of John's book is better than mine. But now we know that this book of John's, &c., means, 'this book is a part of all John's,' &c."
Our discoverer thereafter proceeds to analyse the personal terminations of verbs, of which he seems to give an elucidation highly satisfactory to himself, and which, we hope, will be equally so to his readers. It is obviously of oriental origin, being analogous to the astronomical theory of the elephant and tortoise, by which the Hindoos are said so clearly to account for the support of our terrestrial planet. "Love, lovest, loveth, or loves," &c., have been formed by combining the root with the inflections of the auxiliary verb, to have. He gives a very distinct table by which
"We see that love hast has been shortened to lovest; love has, to loves; love hath to loveth; love had to loved; and love hadst to lovedst. The ha has been omitted throughout, as, love [ha]st; love [ha]s; love [ha]th; love [ha]d; love [ha]dst."
This is remarkably ingenious, and it must be from a very unphilosophical curiosity that ignorant persons like ourselves are tempted to ask how Mr Kavanagh explains the origin of the inflections have, hast, hath, had, &c. We have been accustomed to regard these terminations, though in a contracted form, as having the same origin as those of other verbs; and we doubt if it would command general acquiescence to say that "hath" was a compound of "have hath." But these are probably foolish doubts, only showing the small progress of our scientific enlightenment; and we feel assured that they would occur to no one who was once fully imbued with Mr Kavanagh's principles.
A similar theory is applied by Mr Kavanagh with equal success to the Latin system of conjugation; but we think it better to refer our readers to the book itself, than weaken its effect by any attempt at an abstract of it. We cannot, however, resist quoting Mr Kavanagh's account of the advantages to which his theories directly tend.
"And this inquiry has led me to the most important of all my discoveries; since it not only showed me the original of the endings of the Latin verbs, but also those of the several declensions of Latin nouns, adjectives, pronouns, participles, &c., with their several cases, genders, numbers, &c. And this knowledge will not only apply to the Latin language, but of course to all the languages in the world. From this I have been also led to discover the real nature of a pronoun, and how words have been made in the beginning of time, and how they have increased from a single letter, or at most from two, to all which they have at present: by which means we may see the state of languages at different periods of the world, even such as they must have been ages before the building of the tower of Babel; which knowledge will, it is presumed, throw great light on the ancient history of the world, since men must, in the composition of words, have ever made allusion to things already known, and such as might serve to explain the words they made. Thus is it even in our own times, and thus has it ever been. I intend towards the end of this work to give numerous instances of how words were at first formed, and the various forms they bore at different times; so that no doubt may remain on any man's mind, either as to the truth of this, the most important part of my discovery, or as to the advantages which may, from our following it up, arise from it."