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Inaugural Lecture 1 On the study of Medicine 15 On the study of Language 27
On the Doctrine of the Caesura in the Greek senarius 68 On the use of the signs of Accent and Quantity as guides to the pronunciation of words derived from the classical Languages 74
On the Meaning of the word ????? 81
Notice of works on the Provincialisms of Holland 85
On the subjectivity of certain classes in Ethnology 138 General principles of philological classification and the value of groups, with particular reference to the Languages of the Indo-European Class 143 Traces of a bilingual town in England 152 On the Ethnological position of certain tribes on the Garrow hills 153 On the transition between the Tibetan and Indian Families in respect to conformation 154 On the Affinities of the Languages of Caucasus with the monosyllabic Languages 156 On the Tushi Language 168 On the Name and Nation of the Dacian king Decebalus, with notices of the Agathyrsi and Alani 175 On the Language of Lancashire under the Romans 180 On the Negrito Languages 191 On the general affinities of the Languages of the oceanic Blacks 216 Remarks on the Vocabularies of the Voyage of the Rattlesnake 223 On a Zaza Vocabulary 242 On the Personal Pronouns and Numerals of the Mallicollo and Erromango Languages, by the Rev. C. Abraham 245 On the Languages of the Oregon Territory 249 On the Ethnography of Russian America 266 Miscellaneous contributions to the Ethnography of North America 275 On a short Vocabulary of the Loucheux Language, by J. A. Isbister 299 On the Languages of New California 300 On certain Additions to the ethnographical philology of Central America, with remarks on the so-called Astek Conquest of Mexico 317 Note upon a paper of the Hon. Captain Fitzroy on the Isthmus of Panama 323 On the Languages of Northern, Western and Central America 326
PAEDEUTICA.
INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, OCTOBER 14, 1839.
Instead of detaining you with a dissertation upon the claims and the merits of our Language, it may perhaps be better to plunge at once into the middle of my subject, and to lay before you, as succinctly as I am able, the plan and substance of such Lectures as, within these walls, I promise myself the honour of delivering. For I consider that the vast importance of thoroughly understanding, of comprehending, in its whole length, and breadth, and height, and depth, the language which we all speak, we all read, and we all have occasion to write--the importance also of justly and upon true grounds, valuing the magnificent literature of which we are the inheritors--I consider, I say, that the vast importance of all this is sufficiently implied by the simple single fact, that, in this Institution, the English Language, with the English Literature, is recognized as part and parcel of a liberal education. It may also be assumed, without further preface, that every educated man is, at once, ambitious of writing his own Language well; of criticizing those who write it badly; and of taking up his admiration of our National Literature, not upon Trust but upon Knowledge.
The English Language is pre-eminently a mixed Language. Its basis indeed is Saxon, but upon this basis lies a very varied superstructure, of Danish and of Norman-French, of Modern French and of Greek, of Classical Latin and of the Latin of the Middle Ages imported at different periods and upon different occasions. Words from these languages are comprehended by the writer just in the proportion that he comprehends their origin and their derivation. Hence it is that the knowledge of isolated words is subordinate to the formation of a style; and hence it is that the rules for their investigation are akin to the rules of Rhetoric.
This however is but a small part of what may be our studies. It is well to know how Time affects Languages, and in what way it modifies them. It is well to know how one dialect grows out of another, and how its older stages differ from its newer ones. It is well if we can perceive that these variations are in no wise arbitrary; but it is better still if we can discover the laws that regulate them. Yet all this is but a knowledge of the changes that words undergo, a knowledge of the changes in their form, and a knowledge of the changes in their meaning. Now these points are points of Etymology, the word being used in its very laxest and its largest sense; and points of Etymology must, in no wise, be neglected or undervalued.
Lectures upon these questions will form the Etymological part of a course; and Lectures upon Prose Composition the Rhetorical part of one; whilst the two, taken together, will give a course upon the English Language, in contradistinction to one upon the English Literature.
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