THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

JULY, 1860.

ART. I. MARSH ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Lectures on the English Language. By GEORGE P. MARSH. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

DESPITE the travellers' tales, all true hearts beat most fondly for home. So there is no draught so sweet as that from the Old Oaken Bucket. Let it down into the "well of English undefiled," and it brings us up a sparkling draught, of which the euphuist tourist knows nothing. As Mr. Marsh's pretty motto puts it:

:

"What! crave ye wine, when ye have Nilus to drink of?"

And in all matters of language, men of feeling and of sense are of the mind of the Syrian, that Abana and Pharpar are better than all the rivers of Israel.

Yet it must be confessed that the popular illustration of our language has in many instances fallen into hands wholly unfit for it. What is called English grammar in the schools is apt to give only a prejudice against the name. It proves of no assistance to the student in his use of his own language. It does not even suggest to him the method of studying it, nor so much as tell him what there is to study. True, the school treatises upon it are sometimes abridged from the more elaborate studies of writers of some merit. But in these cases, the abridgment is often made by omitting what is interesting, and of course important, and retaining only that VOL. LXIX. - 5TH S. VOL. VII. NO. I.

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which the student ought to know without book, and which, because unimportant, is uninteresting. The study of the English language is generally confined, in our best and worst schools alike, to memory-work over such abridgments. To this fact we are disposed to refer the general impression, that the study of our own language is so difficult as to be wellnigh impracticable and impossible.

Bearing this impression in mind, Mr. Marsh has made these lectures pre-eminently popular; adapting them with the most patient care to readers not acquainted with any language but English. While he pleads well for the study of the classical tongues, of Anglo-Saxon, of Sanscrit, and of the best modern Continental languages, he still maintains the ground, that a thorough and even philosophical knowledge of English may be gained by students who have had no such advantages. This position will seem paradoxical perhaps, but it is well sustained, and, as we believe, proved. And although this volume contains, particularly in the notes, a world of illustrations from the author's immense erudition, collected from the study of every available Aryan language this side of Sanscrit, and from those of the Semitic families as well, the book is still wholly intelligible and thoroughly interesting to any person who knows no more of foreign languages than Benjamin Franklin did when he expressed himself in what is almost the best English that was ever written down.

When we speak of Mr. Marsh's immense erudition, we express our ruling feeling whenever we lay down this volume. We are not surprised that one living man should have known all the recondite facts which are here arranged together. The wonder is that at any moment, or in any year of his life, one man can re-collect them and arrange them in their precise places in the study of this grand organized living being which we call the English language. The extent and accuracy of Mr. Marsh's studies were early known in America. Before the Icelandic language had attracted the attention in Europe which it deserved from its early development, from its singular peculiarities, and from its fortunate freedom from influences of Southern tongues during the last six centuries, Mr. Marsh had been engaged upon it. His collection of Icelandic

books, as we remember it near twenty years since, was the largest and best in the world, lacking indeed only a few volumes to make it an absolutely complete exhibition of everything printed in that remarkable literature. Meanwhile, with the strong good sense which has more than once marked the people of Vermont, his neighbors preferred to be represented in the American Congress by this scholar, known already in all the homes of learning, to any advantage which they might derive from sending there one of the partisan Tapers or Tadpoles of the place or day. Nothing is more charming than the worth of learning and letters even in the chaos of Washington. And Mr. Marsh did good work there for every one, in the Congress Library, and in the plans which he and Mr. Choate laid out and carried through for the Smithsonian Library. Although these plans proved too great for this nation or its commonplace rulers to comprehend, and the libraryfund has gone the way of most funds at Washington, their value was recognized so long as their authors were there to maintain them. But the government having occasion to employ Mr. Marsh in foreign service, with the feeling perhaps that it would have at least one Foreign Minister who could speak a foreign language, sent him, so thoroughly read in the literature of the North of Europe, to be our representative at Constantinople. "They builded better than they knew," if we are right in supposing that to this fortunate appointment we owe the illustrations drawn from Oriental sources in these Lectures on the English Language.

Mr. Marsh was appointed Professor of the English Language in Columbia College, New York, two or three years ago. An admirable plan was then proposed, which we trust may be loyally carried out until it is an accepted institution of the city of New York. It aimed at elevating this College from that rank of an academy of young men with which most of our colleges are satisfied, by arranging some systems of Lectures to be delivered to men and women from the community at large. The College under this system becomes an essential part of the training which a large city gives to all who live in it. Among the first of these courses. which were called "Post-graduate Lectures" although the word "post-graduate"

was in no dictionary, and they were delivered to many persons who had never graduated at all-were the thirty Lectures on the English Language now before us. We cannot but regard it as singularly fortunate that these new arrangements for education have been so auspiciously begun.

After a valuable Introductory Lecture, which states the general object of the course, Mr. Marsh enters on the discussion, first, of the origin of speech, and then of that of the English language. In this chapter is a great deal of curious information, new to most readers, with regard to the little tribes to whom we are apt to give the indefinite names of Angles and Saxons. We do not, however, dwell on these opening chapters, because we have to call the attention of our readers at some length to the more essential parts of the volume.

It will be remembered that Mr. Marsh addresses " persons of liberal culture, who have not made the English language a matter of particular study, talk, or observation." Early in his course, therefore, he discusses the practical uses of etymology, and the value of different foreign helps to the knowledge of English. Of these foreign helps, of course, the knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin tongues gives by far the most essential part; and here we have this striking comparison of the value of these two:

"Further study would teach an intelligent foreigner that he had overrated the importance and relative amount of the foreign ingredients; that many of our seemingly insignificant and barbarous consonantal monosyllables are pregnant with the mightiest thoughts and alive with the deepest feeling; that the language of the purposes and the affections, of the will and of the heart, is genuine English born; that the dialect of the market and the fireside is Anglo-Saxon; that the vocabulary of the most impressive and effective pulpit orators has been almost wholly drawn from the same pure source; that the advocate who would convince the technical judge, or dazzle and confuse the jury, speaks Latin; while he who would touch the better sensibilities of his audience, or rouse the multitude to vigorous action, chooses his words from the native speech of our ancient fatherland; that the domestic tongue is the language of passion and persuasion, the foreign, of authority, or of rhetoric and debate; that we may not only frame single sentences, but speak for hours, without employing a single imported word; and finally, that we possess the entire volume