Now it is obvious that objects, delineated with the intention of representing the originals to the eye by their form, must necessarily be nouns substantive; and that the picture, containing no verb whatever, can scarcely be said to constitute [p094] either a positive or a negative assertion. At the same time, it must be allowed that a picture of King George the Fourth’s coronation, with the date 19 July 1821, could scarcely be considered otherwise than as asserting a historical truth; and if any emblem of Truth were attached to it, or if it were deposited among the records of other historical facts, it would be equivalent to the expression, “George IV. crowned in July 1821,” which scarcely wants the verb was to convert it into a positive assertion of a fact.
Strictly speaking, however, there seems to be no direct mode of supplying the want of the verb is or was in pure hieroglyphical writing; and if any such sign was employed in the Egyptian or the old Chinese hieroglyphics, its introduction must have been arbitrary or conventional; like the employment of a postulate in mathematics. Every other part of a language appears capable of being reduced, with more or less circumlocution, to the form of a noun substantive; and the English language appears to approach to the Chinese in the facility with which all the forms of grammar may be shaken off.
There is, however, often occasion, in such cases, for a certain degree of metaphor approaching to poetical latitude; and hence it may happen that the least literary nations are sometimes the most poetical. It is, in fact, impossible to exclude metaphor altogether from the most prosaic language; and it is frequently difficult to say where metaphor ends and strict logical prose begins; but by degrees the metaphor drops, and the simple figurative sense is retained. Thus we may say liquid ruby with the same exact meaning as crimson wine; and yet ruby would never be called an adjective, though employed merely to express the colour: in coral lips, however, the coral, first used metaphorically, is converted by habit into an adjective, and the expression is considered as synonymous with labri corallini.
The general custom in English is to place the figurative substantive, used as an adjective by comparison, or by abstraction, before the name which retains its proper sense: thus a chestnut horse is a chestnut like or chestnut coloured horse; a horse chestnut is a coarse kind of chestnut: and in this manner we are enabled to use almost every English noun substantive as an adjective, by an ellipsis of the word like, which, [p095] if inserted entire or abridged, would make a real adjective of the word, as warlike, friendly. But this omission of the termination, like other figures of speech, is easily forgotten in the ordinary forms of language; and the Germans, as well as the English, make use of almost all their substantives in the place of adjectives, though they are more in the habit of continuing them into single long words. When, however, the substantives are so used, they generally become by abstraction real adjectives: for we seldom think of a chestnut, in speaking of the colour of a horse; but the idea of a light brown coat, with an ugly pale-red mane and tail, and a fidgety temper, is very likely to occur to us: and in a horse chestnut the idea of a horse is out of the question; we only think of a coarse fruit which a man cannot eat: so that the true sense, in both these instances, is that of a quality; but coral lips and ivory hands are rather elliptical expressions, composed of two substantives, which might fairly be represented hieroglyphically by the assistance of a branch of coral and an elephant’s tusk. But to describe an abstract quality by any hieroglyphic character, representative of form only, would be generally impossible: colours might be imitated, if we supposed coloured figures to be employed; but other simple ideas, such as those of sound or touch, could never be immediately presented to the eye; and some circuitous invention would always be required for their representation.
Horne Tooke has shewn, with considerable felicity of illustration, that all the parts of speech may be resolved into the noun and the verb; but he has not pointed out so clearly that every verb may be resolved into a noun and the single primitive verb is or was, which, in this sense, may be said to be the only essential verb in any language; as we find, indeed, in the Coptic, that almost every noun becomes a verb, either by the addition of PE, or sometimes even without it. Thus, the morning BLUSHES is synonymous with the morning IS red; he loves justice, with he IS a lover of justice; and I AM an Englishman, with the person now speaking IS an Englishman. But this must be understood of is, was, or will be, in all its tenses; the idea of time, if expressed, being an essential part of the verbal sense.
I confess that some of these reflections have occurred to me in looking over a very singular work, which I had the curiosity [p096] to take up, in order to see what kind of information could be possessed by a person notoriously and professedly ignorant of the origin and relations of the language which he attempts to teach; and, in short, what kind of light could be diffused by an apostle of darkness. Blunders, and some of them ridiculous enough, must, of course, be found in the works of such a person, but most of them are such as every schoolboy might correct; and there really is so much of sagacity in some of Mr. Cobbett’s remarks on the errors of others, that they well deserve the attention of such as are ambitious to write or speak with perfect accuracy.
I shall not attempt to enter into a regular criticism of this Grammar; I shall merely make a few miscellaneous observations, as they have occurred to me in reading it, several of which would be equally applicable to the best of the existing works of a similar nature.
In Letter III we are told that long and short, though adjectives, do not express qualities, but merely dimension or duration; from a singular misconception of the proper sense of the word quality. We find, in Letter IV, the rule given by most grammarians, though not by all, that the article A becomes AN, when it is followed by any word beginning with a vowel; but it is surely more natural to follow the sound than the spelling, and, as we should never think of saying an youthful bride, it seems equally incorrect to say an useful piece of furniture; for the initial sound is precisely the same. In the same manner A unit and A European, seems to sound more agreeable than AN; and the best speakers appear to adopt this custom.
Letter VIII gives us a rule for doubling the last letter of a verb in the participle if an accent is on the last syllable: but it should be observed that the L is doubled, whether accented or not, as in caballing, travelled, levelled, cavilled, controlled. The same letter contains a “List of verbs, which, by some persons, are erroneously deemed irregular,” and which have been so deemed from the time of our German and Saxon ancestors, though Mr. Cobbett thinks it would be more philosophical to conjugate them regularly. Thus we may see at once that freeze may as well give us frozen, as frieren gives the Germans gefroren; that hang may make hung or hanged, according [p097] to its sense, as in German we have hienge from hangen, and hängte from hängen, to execute. For sling and slung, we have authority in schlingen, geschlungen, for spring and sprung in springen and gesprungen; for swollen, swam or swum, and swung, in geschwollen, geschwommen, and geschwungen. And it is quite clear from these examples that “the bad practice of abbreviating, or shortening,” has nothing to do with the matter.
In Letter XIV we have a very distinct examination of a rule in punctuation which has been commonly adopted by good printers, without so distinct a description of its foundation. “Commas are made use of when phrases, that is to say ‘portions’ of words, are ‘throwed’ into a sentence, and which are not absolutely necessary to assist in its grammatical construction.” In a word, two commas are very nearly equivalent to the old fashioned parenthesis. Again, “the apostrophe ought to be called the mark not of elision, but of laziness and vulgarity;” a remark made in truly classical taste, which might have been extended with perfect propriety to the subject of the next paragraph, the Hyphen, the insertion of which is, to make it uncertain whether the words united by it are one word or two. He goes on admirably in the next page. “Notes, like parentheses, are interrupters, and much more troublesome interrupters, because they generally tell a much longer story. The employing of them arises, in almost all cases, from confusion in the mind of the writer. He finds the matter too much for him. He has not the talent to work it all up into one lucid whole; and, therefore, he puts part of it into Notes” . . . . . “Instead of the word and, you often see people put &. For what reason I should like to know. But to this & is sometimes added a c; thus, &c. And is, in Latin, et, and c is the first letter of the Latin word caetera, which means the like, or so on. This abbreviation of a foreign word is a most convenient thing for such writers as have too much indolence or too little sense to say fully and clearly what they ought to say. If you mean to say and the like, or, and so on, why not say it? . . . The abbreviation is very frequently made use of without the writer having any idea of its import.” But it is surely a mischievous maxim, never to “think of mending what you write. Let it go. No [p098] patching; no after painting.” On the other hand he is right in protesting “against the use of what, by some, is called the dash. Who is to know what is intended by the use of these dashes? . . . . It is a cover for ignorance as to the use of points; and it can answer no other purpose.”