dunbar02
Author: Unknown
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dunbar

Essay II.

On Language, as an Universal Accomplishment In tracing the origin of arts and sciences, it is not uncommon to ascribe to the genius of a few superior minds, what arises necessarily out of the system of man. The efforts of an individual are familiar to the eye. The efforts of the species are more remote from sight, and often too deep for our researches.

The connexion, therefore, of events with an individual, is a more popular idea, while it gratifies an admiration and enthusiasm natural to the human mind. Hence the conduct of historians, who describe the origin of nations. Hence are celebrated among every people, the first inventors of arts, the founders of society, and the institutors of laws and government.

Such revolutions, however, in the condition of the world, are more justly reputed the slow result of situations than of regular design, and have, perhaps, less exercised the talents of superior genius, than those of mankind at large. Usages there surely are of mere arbitrary institution; inventions there surely are which originate with one only, or with a few authors. But other usages and inventions as necessarily refer themselves to the multitude; nor ought the casual exertions of the former to be confounded with the infallible attainments of the species.

Under this precaution, then, let us introduce the question concerning language. Is language, it may be asked, derived to us at first from the happy invention of a few, or to be regarded as an original accomplishment and investiture of nature, or to be attributed to some succeeding effort of the human mind.

The supposed transition of the species from silence to the free exercise of speech, were a transition indeed astonishing, and might well seem disproportioned to our intellectual abilities.

Neither history nor philosophy are decisive upon this point; and religion, with peculiar wisdom, refers the attainment to a divine original. Suitable to this idea, language may be accounted in part natural, in part artificial: in one view it is the work of Providence, in another it is the work of man. And this dispensation of things is exactly conformable to the whole analogy of the divine government. With respect to the organs of speech, what is there peculiar to boast? The same external apparatus is common to us and to other animals. In both the workmanship is the same. In both are displayed the same mechanical laws. And in order to confer on them similar endowments of speech, nothing more seems necessary than the enlargement of their ideas, without any alteration of anatomical texture. In like manner, to divest, or to abridge mankind of these endowments, seems to imply only the degradation of the mental faculties, without any variation of external form.

It is not then supposed that the organs of man alone are capable of forming speech. The voice of some animals is louder, and the voice of other animals is more melodious than his. Nor is the human ear alone susceptible of such impressions. Animals are often conscious of the import, and even recognize the harmony of sound.

thus far there subsists a near equality. Visible signs are likewise possessed in common; and language, in every species, is the power of maintaining social intercourse among creatures of the same order.

By the same medium man is able to converse, in some sort, with the brute creation; and there the various tribes with each other.

But besides some general signs constituted to preserve harmony and correspondence among connected systems, there are others of a more mysterious kind, destined for the use and accommodation of each particular class. In this science the sagacity of the philosopher has hitherto made no discoveries. The mystery of animal correspondence will, probably, be always hid; and it is often no more possible to descend into the recesses of their intercourse, than to open a communication with a higher system.

In the great scale of life, the intelligence of some beings soars, perhaps, as high above man, as the objects of his understanding soar above animal life. Let us then imagine a man in some other planet, to reside among a people of this exalted character.

Instructed in the sounds of their language, as the more docile animals are instructed to articulate ours, he might articulate too, but could acquire no more. He might admire the magnificence of sounds louder or more melodious than he had heard before. But, by reason of a dissimilarity and disposition of ideas, these sounds could never conduct him to the sense; and the secrets of such a people would be as safe in his ears, as ours in the ears of any of our domestic animals.

For the same reasons, if one of superior race were to drop into our world, our language might be, in some respects, impenetrable even to his understanding, because destitute perhaps of some perceptions essential to our meaner system.

Thus each order possesses something peculiar, which is denied to every other; and it belongs to the Author of the universe alone to exhaust that immensity of knowledge which he has diffused in various kind and proportion through the whole circle of being.

Here is an arrangement of Providence coeval with the birth of things; and, considering the similarity of organical texture, the taciturnity of the other animals is a problem to be accounted for, as well as the loquacity of man.

Whence comes it that he alone so far extends the original grant as almost to consider it as his peculiar and exclusive privilege? Between the lower classes and him there subsists one important distinction. They are formed stationary; he progressive.

Had the exact measure of his ideas, as of theirs, been at first assigned, his language must have stood for ever as fixed and immutable as theirs. But time and mutual intercourse presenting new ideas, and the scenes of life perpetually varying, the expression of language must vary in the same proportion; and in order to trace out its original, we must go back to the ruder ages, and, beginning with the early dawn, follow the gradual illuminations of the human mind.

Man, we observe, is at first possessed of few ideas, and of fewer desires. Absorbed in the present object of sense, he seldom indulges any train of reflection on the past; and cares not, by anxious anticipation, to antedate futurity.

All his competitions with his fellows are rather exertions of body than trials of mind. He values himself on the command of the former, and is dextrous in the performance of its various functions. too impatient for flow enterprise; too bold and impetuous for intrigue, he uses the resources of instinct, rather than the lights of the understanding; is scarce capable of abstraction, and a stranger to all the combinations and connexions of systematic thought.

In this situation of the world there is no need for the details of language. The feelings of the heart break forth in visible form: sensations glow in the countenance, and passions flash in the eye. Nor are these silent movements the only vehicles of social intercourse.

Prior to the contexture of language, and the use of arbitrary sign, there is established a mechanical connexion between the feelings of the soul and the enunciation of sound. The emotions of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, commiseration, sorrow, despair, indignation, contempt, joy, exultation, triumph, assume their tones; and independently of art, by an inexplicable mechanism of nature, declare the purposes of man to man. These associations are neither accidental nor equivocal; not formed by compact, or the effect of choice, but are parts of an original establishment, calculated, in the first oeconomy, for all the occasions of social life. And happy surely, in one respect, was this constitution of things, when men were not only devoid of the inclination, but unfurnished with the means of deceit; and sentiment and expression were thus conjoined, by the indissoluble ties of nature.

Such accents and exclamations compose the first elements of a rising language. And in these distant times, when artificial signs have so far supplanted the natural, interjection is a part of speech which retains its primeval character, is scarce articulated in any tongue, and is exempted from arbitrary rule.

After the introduction of artificial signs, the tone and cadence of the natural were long retained; but these fell afterwards into disuse; and it became then the province of art to recal the accents of nature.

The perfection of eloquence is allowed to consist in superadding to sentiment and diction, all the emphasis of voice and gesture. And enunciation, or action, as it is called, is extolled by the most approved judges of antiquity as the capital excellence.

The decisive judgment of Demonsthenes is well known: and the Roman orator, who records that judgment, expatiates himself in almost every page, on that comprehensive language, which, independently of arbitrary appointment, addresses itself to all nations, and to every understanding. [Vide Cic. de Orat. L. w. et passim.]

In a certain period of society, there reigns a natural elocution, which the greatest masters afterwards are proud to imitate, and which art can so seldom supply. At first, the talent of the orator, as of the poet, is an inborn talent. Nor has Demonstheses, or Tully, or Roscius, or Garrick, in their most animated and admired performances, reached, perhaps, that vivacity and force which accompany the rude accents of mankind.

In the same original connexion of things resides the expression of music, or the irresistible tendency of the modulations of sound to stir and agitate the different passions.

[A] Hence the astonishing effect ascribed to music in antient times, and the empire it still maintains, in a peculiar manner, over rude and unpolished nations.

A Writer, [Dr Burney’s Gen. Hist. of Music] who exhausts on his favourite science so much ingenuity and learning, has assigned indeed other causes for the empire of music among the antients, besides its intrinsic excellence. [B]

I oppose not such respectable authority. But though the science of harmony is progressive; though simultaneous harmony, or music in parts, is entirely modern, yet the union of sound and sense is an original union; and the most wonderful effects of that union are prior to the age of refinement.

“The recitative in music, according to the observation of an exquisite judge, [Congreve] is only a more tuneable speaking: it is a kind of prose in music; its beauty consists in coming nearer nature, and improving the natural accents of words by more pathetic and emphatical tones.” The scale of music in different countries is the same; and all the variety of its expression throughout the earth forms but so many dialects of one universal language as unalterable as the human passions.

Such causes then, in the infancy of mankind, operating alone, or with little aid, seemed to supersede all motives to invention; while affairs, however, were gradually approaching towards a different stage.

Next to the impulses of appetite, and the social passions, the talent of imitation displays its force. Nor is this talent the gift of heaven to man alone. He shares it in common with the creatures below him, some of whom avail themselves of its exertions in the pursuit of their prey. That even the musical notes of birds are not altogether innate, but rather acquired by imitation, is a proposition supported by late observations. Yet, in consequence of a predilection, not easily explained, similar or kindred notes appear to be universally characteristic of the same species, varying only in different regions of the globe, like different dialects of the same tongue. One species of birds excels in imitation, and in a variety of note; another in the perfection of musical organs; and hence, by combining the peculiar excellencies of different species, an ingenious naturalist has suggested a method of improving upon the music of the grove. [C]

Among animals, however, the talent of imitation occurs more rarely, or is limited to a few performances, and these resorted to as expedient, rather than as an ultimate end.

But the performances of man are conspicuous, and various, and almost without bounds. He is prompted to imitation from a love of the effect, and, exclusive of all reference to farther end, enters it into the list of his pleasures. Often this secondary pleasure exceeds the primary. And there are few, I imagine, who would reject an entertainment of this sort, on the same principle with Agesilaus of Sparta. When invited to hear a performer who mimicked the nightingale to great perfection, the fasticious king replied “I have heard the nightingale herself.” The entertainment might be unworthy of a king; but it was declined, on a principle that forms an exception to the general taste. And imitation may be justly called the first intellectual amusement congenial with our being: in confirmation of which we might appeal to the first essays of infancy, to the taste for the imitative arts so predominant in youth, and to the earliest compositions of antiquity. [D]

Man alone is capable of imitating every creature, while he is, if I may say so, himself a creature which no other can pretend to imitate. In the indulgence then of this talent, he adopts, as it were, every mode of instinct, and re-echoes every voice in the forest. Even still life attracts his attention; and the application of the same talent to every subject, renders him a master in expression, and ripens his genius while it exercises his mechanical powers.

Thus is he occupied in borrowing not only from his own species, but in transcribing, for his amusement, the appearances of the natural and of the animal world; in collecting materials, without knowing their importance, and in laying, with an active, though undesigned hand, the foundations of all arts and sciences.

This imitative faculty, which, in the school of Aristotle, entered into the definition of man, operates so vigorously on the organs of speech, that, in some cases, sound in general seems to become an object of imitation, without any particular archetype.

Hence the mechanical trials of children in the easier expressions, when their organs are incapable of other articulation. And hence the same sounds run uniformly through all languages, to denote either parent, to whom the earliest expressions are presumed to be addressed.

By such exertions are we rendered capable of indicating, by intelligible signs, the more striking and familiar objects. But to give an additional compass to the powers of speech was reserved for another principle allied to the former, and often undistinguished in its operation, which may be denominated in analogical faculty.

A faculty which has vast power in binding the associations of thoughts, and in all the mental arrangements; but with whose influence on language alone we are at present concerned.

Hitherto language consisted in the voice of instinct, or was drawn by imitation from an actual similarity in the nature of things. Now analogical connexions supply the place of real resemblance. Now instinct borrows aid from imagination; and it is the weakness of this principle which imposes the law of silence, and excludes all possibility of improvement in the animal world.

Here commences the reign of invention, and here perhaps we should stop, and draw the boundary of art and nature.

There is not an object that can present itself to the senses, or to the imagination, which the mind, by its analogical faculty, cannot assimilate to something antecedently in its possession. By consequence, a term already appropriated, and in use, will, by no violent transition, be shaped and adjusted to the new idea. And thus the division and composition of the primary signs will constitute relations in sound, correspondent with those relations, real or imaginary, which subsist among the objects of human knowledge. Thus the language of the Chinese consists of a few words only, which, merely by a variation of tone, become the representatives of all the ideas of that enlightened people.

This mode of proceeding is so conspicuous in our first attempts, that it is with reluctance children adopt a word altogether new, so long as they can assimilate the object to any of their former acquaintance. And it is wonderful to observe with what promptitude, facility, and apparent ingenuity, they can draw such various expression out of their little store. It is accordingly no illiberal entertainment in presenting strange objects to their sight, to wait, by way of experiment, for their own conclusions, and to cause them to distinguish each by names of their own inventions. [E] This would be, perhaps, no improper exercise in training their infant faculties; and it seems to have been upon the same principle that the first of mankind, at the desire and with the approbation of is Creator, was able to name so readily all the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven.

Many subsequent innovations in language may be traced up to the same source; and signs apparently the most arbitrary are either the result of some more refined connexion, or are separated from their primitives by a longer chain of analogy.

By this power the same natural sign, besides its primary, admits of a secondary, and even of various import; and what originally denoted an outward object, is, by a certain subtlety of apprehension, transferred to the qualities of the mind.[F] Thus language becomes figurative; and, without any extension of the vocabulary, takes in the compass of our intellectual ideas. It is this principle likewise which conducts the same sign from the individual to the species, and by the frequent application of it, on similar occasions, confers on it a larger and a larger import, till at last it acquires a general acceptation, without any painful or laborious effort.

This process of the mind accounts for the generation of all the different parts of speech, as might be shewn more particularly in the rise of that essential constituent of language, which by reason of its importance is denominated the verb.

Not only are emotions of different kinds excited by the objects of sense, but the same kind of emotion is wonderfully modified, according to the circumstances of its birth. How various, even in the savage breast, are the modes of love! how various the emotion of fear!

Let us then suppose that the lion and the serpent are considered by the savage as the most hostile and formidable among animals. A certain species of terror would be excited by the approach of the one; a different modification of the same emotion would be excited by the approach of the other.

Now, in the first stage of language, the natural signs of these kindred emotions, it is presumed, would be employed to indicate, and to distinguish the approach of these animals. In the mean while, let it be supposed that the other inhabitants of the forest have received their names. In these circumstances it is abundantly natural for the savage to join the term, indicating the dread of the lion or serpent, with a proper name, in order to notify the approach of any other offensive creature. This term, by an easy extension, will be transferred from offensive to other creatures; and hence, by a gradual transition, even to inanimate objects, till it is charged at length with a general affirmation, and possesses all the power of the verb.[G]

Such steps as these, we may believe, have led to the more regular combinations of sound; and, under this aspect of things, we may conceive language strong indeed, and animated, but probably remaining long without much compass, or coherence, or order. It consisted chiefly of detached phrase. And though every sound formed not a complete sentence, as at the beginning, yet the more artificial arrangements were unknown. Those connective particles which intimate the relations of thought were not yet brought into existence; and the relations themselves were rather insinuated to the understanding than expressed in form. Nor is this abrupt mode of expression unsuitable to the circumstances of the simple ages.

Sentiment, as well as its dress, hung then extremely loose; and men were not accustomed to a chain of reasoning, or to any complex system of thought. Nor is it less comfortable to the experience of our early life, the truest perspective, perhaps, in which to contemplate the rising genius of mankind. In the first dialects of children, the particles are but little attended to, if not totally disregarded. They reject the texture of artificial language, even while they adopt its words, presenting the capital objects in immediate succession, without the intervention of terms which are of a more obscure and abstract original. It is the same mode of proceeding which is so often observable in vehement speakers, who, in the hurry of declamation, or of passion, have no leisure to attend to the rules of grammar, or logic. The language of passion accordingly, which consists of broken periods, has been happily imitated by the poets, and might be here illustrated, were it necessary, by examples from the greatest masters, whose prerogative it is to dispense in favour of nature with the established rules of art.

It is also remarkable in all the antient tongues, that the most important distinctions and relations of objects are indicated by an inflection of the voice, or a slight variation of the same sound, without resorting so often to the little engines which support the modern systems.

Even this inflexion of voice is not always indispensable; and in the oriental tongues no inconveniency is perceived from the want of the genitive case; though there is neither an inflexion, nor any intervening particle to suggest the relation.

Let it not then be imagined, that abstract considerations have entered far into the first formation of speech. Such laborious effort had been ill suited to the genius and circumstances of the first inventors; and even the particles themselves, though of more doubtful origin, have crept into existence, without any severe application of metaphysical force.

Those talents alone exercised by every human creature, in acquiring his first language, have been exercised by the original institutors. In both cases the love of imitation is often the prime mover, without any farther design. Taught by parents, children learn to utter sound, to which afterwards they affix a meaning.

Taught by instinct, men utter sound at the beginning, which the understanding afterwards renders more significant. In both cases, the act of the understanding is posterior to a sort of organical impulse; and in both cases there seems to be less abstraction than is contended for in the schools of philosophy.

Is a man, for example, to be reputed ignorant of the force of particles, because he is incapable to give a metaphysical account of their origin? And if, without metaphysics, he apprehends these particles, why not invent them too?

If we suppose but one of the most obvious relations to be distinctly marked by any particle, that particle will, as it were spontaneously, offer itself upon all similar occasions; and from the law of analogy will be gradually extended in its signification, until it includes under it a vast variety of relation: for it is transferred from object to object in the concrete, without any abstract consideration of its powers.

It is easier for the mind to perceive resemblance, than to specify the minute differences of things. Hence the same particles are used to denote various relations, without our attending to their specific differences. And hence these terms, in all languages, are so liable to be confounded, and carry often a sort of vicarious import, mutually participating of the same powers.

When the analogy loses itself in refinement, new particles are devised, and invested with a different office. And were an ordinary man called upon to define the prepositions, or other little constituents of any modern tongue, without a certain preparation of his faculties, the answer with regard to the greater number would be indefinite, or evasive, or merely negative. This particle, might he say, differs in its import from that other: that other from a third. They severally denote relations altogether dissimilar. It is easier to say what they are not, than what they are.

Should a more explicit answer be required, he refers to others more learned than himself, or involves himself in a labyrinth, in which the primary constructors of language never were involved, and from which the logician or the philologist can hardly extricate him. “The particle says a Writer [Dr S. Johnson] in whom these characters are united, are all nations applied with so great latitude, that they are not easily reducible under any regular scheme of application. This difficulty is not less, nor, perhaps, greater in English than in any other language. I have laboured them with diligence, I hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task,which no man however learned or sagacious has yet been able to perform.” [H]

He must be born then with a texture of brain as strong as that of Johnson: he must be a Hercules in metaphysics, who can declare, in their metaphysical character, the full import of these elements of speech.

Yet the relations of its own thoughts the mind clearly apprehends. The signs of these relations, when once instituted, it apprehends with equal ease. But these relations, clear as the light in the presence of particular objects, in their absence are involved in obscurity.

The vulgar find little difficulty to apprehend the should itself in an embodied state; but it is reserved for the philosopher to apprehend its separate and abstract existence. And as well might it be contended that this sublime apprehension had, in every age, entered into the imagination of our forefathers, as that the nicer relations of thought had exhibited themselves naked to the understanding, and received names in artificial language, disjoined from the other members which compose the body of this complex machine.

With reason therefore we conclude, that the laws of analogy, by one gentle and uniform effect, superseding or alleviating the efforts of abstraction, permit language to advance towards its perfection free from the embarrassments which seemed to obstruct its progress.

In most speculations upon this subject, there reigns a fundamental error. It consists in referring the rise of ideas and the invention of language to a different aera, as if a time had ever been when mankind laboured for utterance, yet sought in vain to open intellectual treasures, and to be exonerated from the load of their own conceptions. Under this impression we are apt to imagine some great projectors in an early age, balancing a regular plan for the conveyance of sentiment, and the establishment of general intercourse. In such circumstances, indeed, they must have revolved in imagination all the subtleties of logic, and entered far into the science of grammar, before its objects had any existence. Profound abstraction and generalization must have been constantly exercised; all the relations of thought canvassed with care, compared with accuracy, and arranged with propriety and with order: a design competent, perhaps, to superior beings, but by no means compatible with the limited capacity of the human mind. Now these difficulties and incumbrances, in a great measure, disappear, by contemplating ideas and language as uniformly in close conjunction; and the changes in the former, and the innovations in the latter, of the same chronological date.

A few ideas, in the ruder ages, are subjected to expression with the same facility, as a greater number in succeeding periods.

And hence speech, in all its different parts, is already formed, when the vocabulary is exceeding scanty, and there is no variety or abundance in any one class. Thus a Grammar even of the Lapland tongue contains all the grammatical parts of speech. [See a Laplandish Grammar, lately published by Mr Leem, Professor of the Lapland tongue] Hence too the ease with which a language is attained in infancy, or early youth, and the difficulty attaining it in maturer age. When the idea and the sign are contemporary attainments, and coincided in their first impressions, they take root together, and serve reciprocally the one to suggest the other.

But where this coincidence is wanting, it becomes more difficult, if not impossible, for the mind to collect its naked thoughts, and subject them afterwards in all their variety to the arbitrary impositions of language.

A more equal oeconomy, therefore, has been maintained by the direction of that principle of analogy to which we so often refer; and the connexion is more easily established, when, from the simplicity and uniformity of savage life, the same signs return so often; when the whole compass of the vocabulary is exhausted upon familiar objects, and almost comprized in the history of a day’s adventures. Thus a vocabulary, consisting of about twenty words, is said to be sufficient, in all their ordinary transactions, for the purposes of some savage nations.

Language then, constructed with such scanty materials, increases with the experience and discernment of mankind.

“Uncultivated people, says a Writer [Burke, on the Sublime and Beautiful] of genius and refinement, are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.” On a more exact survey, the mind discriminates its objects, and breaks the system of analogy by attending to the minute differences of things. As therefore the analogical faculty enlarges the sense of words, the discriminating faculty augments them in number. It breaks speech into smaller divisions, and bestows a copiousness on language by a more precise arrangement of the objects. Thus, by the distribution of our ideas, as well as by the enlargement of the fund, language is constantly enriched; and its barrenness or fertility among a rising people may be always estimated by the number of the objects, and the accuracy with which they are classed.

At a time when utility was almost regarded as the whole of beauty, and perspicuity was the sole aim of speech, nothing superfluous would ever be admitted there. Afterwards the coalition and interferences of different tribes confounded the simplicity of the institution, by the admission of foreign, identical, and supernumerary terms. The love of novelty and variety established their currency: a species of luxury is indulged in the commerce of words. Each simple institution sustained a shock from the collision of contending systems, and out of these jarrings there arose more copious and mixed establishments.

By such causes is language diversified by degrees, in its words, in its texture, and in its idiom. What is at first only a variety of dialects, produces distinct languages in succeeding generations. And, after separation from the fountain, the differences among them become more considerable in proportion to the length of their course. Thus the English, the French, and Italian tongues have borrowed their vocabulary from the Greeks and Romans, while, in their texture, and idiom they are allied to the Celtic and to the Hebrew, or claim a very distant original.

But the consideration of these differences would carry us beyond the limit of the present design, which permits us only to touch on the gradations of a simple institution, referring to those faculties of the mind which appear principally concerned in conducting its successive improvements. In the execution of the enterprise, the mind, no doubt, has exerted collectively, at all times, various powers; but these are exerted in unequal proportion; according to the circumstances of the world; and the order here assigned appeared to our judgement most consonant to the probability of things, to the experience of early life, and to the genius and complexion of the ruder ages.

By such efforts, or at least by efforts competent to the abilities of every society of mankind, some rude system is constructed on the foundations of nature. The superstructure becomes vast and magnificent, like the conceptions of the human mind; but that superstructure is the work of ages, and is as complicated and various, in the different regions of the globe, as the modes of civil life, as the aspect of nature, and as the genius of arts and sciences.

Having therefore considered speech in its lower forms, we proceed to enquire into those superior marks of refinement and art which constitute the criterion of a polished tongue.

NOTES.

Note [A], p. 73

Though the modulations of sound declare in general the feelings of the heart, music imitates the social passion with the happiest success. A distinction which intimates the sociability and generosity of man, and is well illustrated by Dr Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiment.

“When music imitates the modulations of grief, or joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all of the passions which are naturally musical. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and melodious; and they naturally express themselves in periods which are distinguished by regular pauses, and which upon that account are easily adapted to the regular returns of their corresponding airs of a tune. The voice of anger, on the contrary, and of all the passions which are akin to it, is harsh and discordant. Its period too are irregular, sometimes very long, sometimes very short, and distinguished by no regular pauses. It is with difficulty therefore, that music can imitate any of those passions, and the music which does imitate them is not the most agreeable. A whole entertainment may consist, without any impropriety, in the imitation of the social and agreeable passions. It would be a strange entertainment which consisted altogether of the imitations of hatred and resentment.”

Part I. sect. ii, ch. 3

Note [B]

Perhaps the simplicity of antient music contributed to its effect. Perhaps from its union with poetry, it derived its most alluring charms. Yet these arts may, on some occasions, encumber each other, and ought, in the opinion of some good judges, to hold a divided empire. This is a problem in the history of music which an adept in the science is alone capable to decide, and I am ready to adopt that opinion and language of Dr Burney, that “music and poetry, like man and wife, or other associates, are best asunder, if they cannot agree; and, on many occasions, it were to be wished, that the partnership were amicably dissolved.”

The danger at present seems to be, that music in preference to poetry, and instrumental music in preference to vocal, to which it is so far inferior, should usurp an improper dominion in all the politer circles. An observation of Mr Gay to Dr Swift, in the year 1723, relative to the fashionable taste of the metropolis, is now applicable in a much larger extent. “As for the reigning amusements of the town,” says he, “it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass viols, and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds. There is nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an Eunuch, or an Italian woman.

Every body is grown now as great a judge of music as they were in your time of poetry; and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another, now daily dispute about the different styles of Handel, Bononcini, and Attilio. People have now forgot Homer, and Virgil, and Caesar, or, at least, they have lost their ranks; for in London and Westminster, in all polite conversations, Senefino is daily voted the greatest man that ever lived.” The history of the Vestris, at this day, would serve to finish up the picture. They have actually attracted, in the fashionable circles, a degree of admiration and applause, which no orator, in either house of parliament, can hope to command. But this mode of amusement is not the object of our criticism; and, without sufficient to observe, that music is not the only imitative art, which, in the progress of refinement, ceases to be so significant.

N’est il pas singulier, says Mons. l’Abbe Reynal, que dans les premiers ages du monde, & chez les sauvages, la danse soit un art d’imitation, & qu’elle ait perdu ce caractere dans les pays polices, ou elle sembe reduite a une certain nombre de pas executes sans action, sans subjet, sans conduite? Mais il en est es danse comme des langues: elles deviennent abstraites, ainsi que les idees dont elles sont composees.

Tom. vi. p. 27.

Note [C], p. 75.

I Refer the reader to Experiments and Observations on the singing of the Birds, by the Hon. Daines Barrington, inserted in the Philosophical Transactions of the year 1773.

“These experiments”, says Mr Barrington, “may be said to be useful to all those who happen to be pleased with singing birds.

Because, it is clear, that, by educating a bird under several sorts, we may often make such a mixture as to improve the notes which they would have learned in a wild state.

“It results also from the experiment of the linnet being educated under the vengolina, that we may introduce the notes of Asia, Africa, and American into our woods; because, if that linnet had been set at liberty, the nestlings of the next season would have adhered to the vengolina song, who would again transmit it to their descendants.”

The musical notes of birds, if we believe Lucretius, a naturalist as well as a poet, first suggested to man the elements of a science in which he afterwards so far excels them. For the notes of birds, however melodious, are not only destitute of harmony, but deficient in expression, which in music is the capital excellence.

Note [D], p. 77

It is perhaps, not foreign from the subject to observe, that men of genius, though no poets or painters by profession, so often discover, in early life, a proneness to the imitative arts, which yield to more serious occupation in maturer years. Even the masters themselves, in the decline of life, no longer court the muses with equal assiduity. It is then the poet, transformed into the philosopher, abandons his former walk —

Hinc itaque & versus & caetera Iudicra pono.

Plato, who looks down on poetry as a dangerous, or as a frivolous art, had been a favourite with the muses, when he treats with ingratitude, and had composed dithyrambics in his younger days.

The Biography of the English Poets, to which a writer of the first rank in literature now calls the attention of the Public, affords a variety of examples of this predilection in early life.

Cowley and Milton, as well as Pope, “lisped in numbers.” Cowley had read all Spenser, while under twelve, had commenced a poet at thirteen, and an author at fifteen, when his poetical blossoms appeared. In the Comus of Milton, a juvenile production, we behold the dawn of an immortal day.

The author of Gondibert composed a poem on the death of Shakespeare, at the age of ten.

Dr Jortin was a poet in youth, and a critic in maturer age.

Lord Lansdown composed most of his poetical pieces when a perfect child, the correction of which afforded employment to his riper years.

Congreve had made an eminent figure as a dramatic poet before he had passed his twenty-fifth year. “And, among all the efforts of early genius,” says Dr Johnson, “which literary history records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more surpasses the common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.”

Voltaire commenced poet at twelve, composed the Henriade while under twenty-four, and his Brutus, which he regarded “comme sa tragedie la plus fortement ecrite,” at thirty-six.

The present Imperial Laureat, [Metastasio] an appellation which his merit alone might almost extort from his contemporaries, is an astonishing instance of the premature inspiration of the muses. And not to multiply instances among foreign nations, the Poems ascribed to Thomas Rowley, a secular priest of Bristol, who flourished in the fifteenth century, are probably the production of a youth who died Anno 1770, at the age of eighteen, a prodigy of genius; and who, in the opinion of no contemptible judge, would have proved the first of English poets, had he reached the full manhood of his days. “From his childhood’, says Mr Warton, “he was fond of reading and writing verses, and some of this early compositions, which he wrote without any design to deceive, have been judged to be most astonishing productions by the first critic of the present age.”

Waller indeed is recorded a singular instance of a poet, who began late the exercise of a poetic talent. “At an age,” says Lord Clarendon, “when other men used to give over writing verses (for he was near thirty years of age when he first engaged himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so), he surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind, as if a tenth muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry.”

But this evidence is not conclusive; nor is the noble historian perfectly correct in point of fact. For the muse of Waller had even acquired a name in the twenty-fourth year of his age. It is reasonable, however, to expect that the more perfect performances of a great master will be of later date. A correct judgement is a quality so essential to great execution in the imitative arts, that, according to the Abbe du Bos, it is about the age of thirty that the greatest geniuses, whether in poetry or painting, have produced their masterpieces.

But to this Dryden and Milton form eminent exceptions.

Dryden’s latest performances are the best. His fire, says Pope, like the sun’s, shone clearest towards its setting. Addison adorns him with similar praise; and he merited the following encomium from the illustrious patron of his declining age: Not all the blasts of time can do you wrong, Young spite of age, is spite of weakness strong; Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground; You, like Antaeus, from each fall rebound.

The example of Milton is still more astonishing. “It was,”

says the historian, “during a state of poverty, disgrace, and old age, that Milton composed his wonderful Poem, which not only surpassed all the performances of his contemporaries, but all the compositions which had flowed from his pen, during the vigour of his age, and the height of his prosperity. The circumstance is not the least remarkable of all those which attend that great genius.”

Hist. of Eng. vol. vii. p. 345.

Note [E], p. 81.

Omiah, the Otaheitean, circumscribed as a child in the number of his ideas, though in understanding and in years a man, proceeded on similar principles in the acquisition of the English tongue.

The butler he called the king of the bottles, Captain Furneaux was king of the ship, Lord Sandwich was king of all the ships. The whole language of his own country exceeds not a thousand words.

Note [F], p. 82.

Such is the natural order of analogy in the generation of speech. But the reverse order, where words expressive of ideas purely intellectual, are transferred to corporeal objects, is sometimes observable in a cultivated language; instances of which are produced in Melange de Literature par Mons. d’Alembert.

“It has been ingeniously observed,” says a late Author, “that the Metaphor took its rise from the poverty of language. Men, not finding, upon every occasion, words ready made for their ideas, were compelled to have recourse to words analogous, and transfer them from their original meaning to the meaning then required. But though the Metaphor began in poverty, it did not end there. When the analogy was just (and this often happened), there was something peculiarly pleasing in what was both new, and yet familiar; so that the metaphor was then cultivated, not out of necessity, but for ornament. It is thus that clothes were first assumed to defend us against the cold, but came afterwards to be worn for distinction and decoration.”

Harris’s Philological Inquiries, p. 188.

This Writer, who, in matters of taste and criticism, pays an implicit deference to the authority of the Peripatetic School, has commented, in the above passage, on the text of Aristotle, who extols the metaphor as an effort of genius, not to be taught, and in which men of ordinary discernment cannot hope to excel. It is, however, a figure of speech intelligible to all, and which, in the infancy of language, must have been, in some degree, universal.

Swift has been represented as a writer of such perfect simplicity as to reject the metaphor altogether in his compositions. “This is not true,” says his Biographer; “but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice.”

Note [G], p. 84.

“In elucidating this part of speech, it has been well observed by Dr Smith, that “impersonal verbs, which express in one word a complete event, which preserve in the expression that perfect simplicity and unity which there always are in the object and in the idea, and which suppose no abstraction or metaphysical division of the event into its several constituent members of subject and attribute, would, in all probability, be the species of verbs first invented.”

But afterwards, in the progress of language, by the division of every event into its metaphysical elements, impersonal verbs disappear. In modern tongues, accordingly, they are unknown. Yet they make a figure in the languages of antiquity, and especially in the Hebrew, where the radical words, from which all others are derived, are traced up by grammarians to that original.

See Considerations concerning the first Formation of Language, etc.

Note [H], p. 91.

The ill success of all former grammarians antient and modern, has not intimidated a writer in the gloom and solitude of a prison, from undertaking so arduous a task.

See a letter to John Dunning, Esq; by Mr Horne. In this letter the conjunctions of the English tongue are traced up to a source unobserved or unacknowledged by any grammarian. The same analogy is presumed to be universal; and conjunctions, according to this plan, no longer rank among the grammatical elements, but are derived in one uniform manner, in all languages, from the other parts of speech.