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were, of all men, too free and too proud to assume or suffer a name that bore the badge of slavery and disgrace on its face. The true etymology of leod is obscure-some deriving it from the Gothic LIUDAN, crescere, which is the most probable root -some from ɛλugos, and some from aaos, to which it corresponds in meaning. Its signification, of coarse or ignorant, is entirely secondary, and arising from the contrast of the manners of the people with the superior morals and education of the clergy. Lay is obviously a direct derivative from the Latin laicus.

In the following etymologies there is a more than usual mixture of truth with error:

"YARE YARD Are the past participles of the Anglo-Saxon verb gyrwan, gyrian, to prepare; and it is formed in the accustomed manner by changing the characteristic letter y to a. YARE means prepared."

"A YARD, to mete or to measure with, (before any certain extent was designated by the word,) was called a metgeard, or mete-gyrd, (Auglo-Saxon,) or mete-yard, i. e. something prepared to mete or to measure with, This was its general name; and that prepared extension might be formed of any proper materials. When it was of wood, it was formerly called a YARD-WAND, i. e. a wand prepared for the purpose. By

common use, when we talk of mensuration, we now omit the preceding word mete, and the subsequent wand; and say singly a YARD."

In connexion with this passage, we insert the following:

"YARD GARDEN.-Yard, in the Anglo-Saxon geard, is the past tense, and therefore (again!) past participle of the verb gyrdan, eingere, to gird, to surround, to enclose and it is therefore applicable to any inclosed place, as court-YARD, church-YARD, &c.

"GARDEN is the same past tense, with the addition of the participial termination EN. I say it is the same, because the Anglo-Saxon g is pronounced indifferently either as our g or y."-P. 508. On these explanations we have to remark :

1. That we admit the connexion between yare and gyrwan; but deny the former to be a past participle. If we mistake not, the past participle of gyrwan is ge-gyrwed. Yare, we allege, corresponds to the primitive gearo, ready,

and gyrwan is the derivative to make ready.

2. We deny yard, a measure, to have any connexion with yare or gyrwan.

3. We admit yard and garden to be connected with gyrdan, but deny them to be past participles.

On some of these words we have a further explanation to offer.

The English garden, or yard, is derived from a Gothic word, which appears in two forms, with two different shades of meaning. GARDS is in Ulphilas a frequent expression for a house. Thus, in the third chapter of Mark, v. 25, YABAI GÅRDS WITHRA SIK GA-DAIL YADA, NI MAG STANDAN SA GARDS YAINS. "If a house against itself is divided, that house may not stand." GARDA, the other form of the word, seems confined to the simple meaning of an enclosure. Thus, John x. 1, SAEI INN NI ATGAGGITH THAIRH DAUR IN GARDAN LAMBE, &c. SAH HLIFTUS IST. "He who goeth not in through the door to the yard or fold of the lambs, &c., he is a thief." But GARDS and GARDA are truly the same word, and mean an enclosure, whether built upon or not; and accordingly we meet with the Gothic AURTI GARDS, a garden, literally an herbyard or wort-yard, and the origin of our orch-yard.

GARDS and GARDA are the Gothic forms of hortus and xogos, as well as of the cognate chors, or cors, a poultry-yard, sheep-fold, or other enclosure for animals. Chors, again, is probably the origin of the word court, which we derive from the Romance languages; so that court and yard are truly the same word dressed in the costume of different countries.

It should be added that these words, though no past participles, are directly connected with the Gothic verb GAIRDAN, to enclose or encircle, which is conjugated GAIRDA, GARD, GAURDANS, and from which our English gird and girdle

are obtained.

It has, till lately, been believed by many etymologists that yard, a rod of measure, Anglo-Saxon gerd, German gerte, was the same word as yard, an enclosure, Anglo-Saxon geard, Ger

man garte, garten; and we have seen

that Tooke thought it a past participle

of gyrwan, to prepare. But all this seems now disproved by the discovery of the Gothic word in one of the UIphilean fragments. The word there answering to the word yard, a rod, is GAZDS, in reference to which it is proper to mention that the Gothic S or Z in certain positions, is in the younger dialects changed into R. Thus AUSO, auris, becomes ear; HAUSYAN, audire, becomes hear; AIZ, aes, becomes ore; BASI, bacca, becomes berry; HUZD, thesaurus, becomes hoard, &c. The same change was common in the progress of language, both in Latin and Greek, as labos, labor; θαρσεως θαρρεω ; παις, puer; quæso, quæro, &c. According to this rule, then, the Gothic GAZDS is the same with the Saxon gerd. GAZDS is used by Ulphilas in the very peculiar sense of a pointed instrument or sting. The passage is in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. xv. verse 55-HWAR IST GAZDS THEINS, DAUTHU? is thy sting, O Death?"

"Where

An examination of old authorities will, we believe, show that yard is primarily applied to a tapering or pointed rod, and obvious illustrations will occur of its being used in the sense of the Greek evrov, stimulus, the word which Ulphilas translates by GAZDS. We have no doubt, there. fore, that GAZDS and gerd or yard are the same words; and from the same source we derive the verb gird, so often used in middle English in the sense of stinging, cutting, or lashing. It is further probable that GAZDS is the origin of gad in gad fly, &c.,

if this word has come to us from a Scandinavian dialect. Goad, though running into somewhat of the same meaning, is quite a different word.

Finally, it would appear that the Gothic GAZDS, while it has produced the English yard, is itself identical with the Latin hasta, according to the principle of permutation established by Rask and Grimm, in the same way as hortus becomes GARDS, and hos tis, GASTS. The different meanings of hasta and yard may be compared.

About the very worst part of Tooke's work is that in which he attempts to explain the origin of nouns ending in th. These, it seems, are all the third persons singular of so many verbs!

"North, i, e. nyrweth or nyrwth, the

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which that planet moneth or complete th its orbit." Fifth,

Sixth,

Ninth, Tenth, &c.

-That unit which fiv-eth, sixeth, nin-eth, ten-eth, twenty

eth, &c., or which maketh up the number five, six, nine, ten, twenty, &c." !!! "Mouth," it is said, is the Gothic "(MATYITH,) that which eateth, the third person of the indicative of MATYAN, metian, edere.”

What says Ulphilas to this, for he should have known? MUNTHS or MUNTH is his word for mouth.

Is this the same as MATYITH? But the Gothic MUNTH is the Anglo-Saxon muth and the English mouth. It would have been just as good if Tooke had said, that mouth Iwas that which muncheth. Again "Tooth, (TAUYITH, Gothic,) that which tuggeth!—the third person singular of the indicative of TAUYAN, (Gothic,) teogan, (Anglo-Saxon,) to tug."

Blunder upon blunder! In the first place, TAUYAN is not the verb to tug. TAU-YAN means to perform. TIUHAN is the word. to tug or draw, and is a cognate of the Latin tooth has nothing to do with either ducere. But, in the second place,

TAUYAN or TIUHAN.

As

MUNTHS gives mouth, so the Gothic TUNTHUS gives tooth. TUNTHUS, it is needless to say, is no verb or part of a verb; it is a masculine noun, declined something like fructus, and a near relation of the La

tin dens. When dens shall be shown to be the third personal singular of ducere, then tooth will be found to answer to tuggeth; but not till then.

In the same way we are told that all abstract nouns ending in th, are the third persons singular of verbs.

Truth is that which one troweth, as true is most falsely stated to be that deareth or hurteth, from derian, Anwhich is trowed. Dearth is that which word from Deore, carus, which is the glo-Saxon, to hurt, (a totally different origin of dearth.) Length, breadth, width, depth, height, are respectively the third persons singular of the indicatives of lengian, extendere; bradan, dilatare; wadan, procedere; dippan, submergere; hæfan, extollere. Now, a word as to these doctrines, in reference particularly to abstract nouns.

Was Tooke ignorant that, in the Gothic, the admitted original of our own tongue, there is a regular termination in ITHA, as a characteristic of nouns expressing abstract qualities; and that these nouns are as regularly declinable as penna or μs, and are of the same gender? What does any man mean by saying that a flexible noun is the third person singular of a verb? Can we speak of such a thing as the genitive plural of a verb's third person singular! Such a system is destructive of all distinctions of gram. mar and of language; and can never be justified by any similarity of sound or appearance. We might as well say that amor, amoris, is the first person singular of the present indicative passive of amo, and means the feeling by which I am loved; or, what would more nearly resemble Tooke's inac curacies, that amator is the third person singular of the same part of the verb, and means the person by whom any one is loved.

But let us look into this a little more narrowly. "Depth," says Tooke, "is the third person singular of dippan, submergere. Height the same part of hæfan, extollere." Now, how stand the facts?

DIUPS is the Gothic adjective for deep; and from this adjective, as we conceive, is derived the abstract declinable feminine noun DI UP-ITHA, depth. This process we take to be the same with that by which in Latin profundus produces profund-itas. There are, indeed, two relative verbs in Gothic —DAUP-YAN, to dip or to baptize, as Ulphilas uses it, and DIUP- YAN, to deepen. The third persons singular of those verbs are respectively DAUPEITH, dippeth, and DIUP-EITH, deepeneth; but these parts of the verbs are no more identical with the feminine flexible noun DIUP-ITHA, than profundat, if there were such a word, would be with profunditas.

Height, again, has nothing earthly to do with hæfan, or, as we take it to be, hebban, (Anglo-Saxon) to heave. HAUHITHA is the Gothic for height, and can have no affinity with the word for heave, which is HAF. YAN. HAUH-ITHA is an abstract noun, derived from HAUHS, high, in the same manner as DIUP-ITHA is from DIUPS, deep.

The termination -ITHA, thus used, has a near resemblance, in import, to

the abstract termination -ness, which is so common in the Saxon languages. In origin, the termination ⚫ITHA, or modern -th, is to be numbered among a large class of terminations characterised by the use of the dental consonants, and which appear in different forms in the different Indo-Germanic tongues. The termination -itas, already mentioned, with those of -ta, -tas, and -tus in Latin, and πότης in Greek, are examples of them. To say that any of them are parts of a verb, is downright driveling or gross error..

It would tire our own patience, as well as that of our readers, if we were longer to continue this weary work. We affirm that what we have already done is a fair sample of what we could do with the rest of the treatise which we are considering, in so far, at least, as it relates to the Teutonic tongues. Every page of it is full of blunders, for which amere tyro in those studies would deserve the birch. The book in this respect is a bag of chaff, and we doubt if it be redeemed by half-a-dozen grains of wheat in its whole bulk. We believe Tooke to have been grossly unskilled in Anglo-Saxon—we are satisfied that he was utterly ignorant of Gothic-yet it was greatly upon a peculiar acquaintance with these tongues that both his pretensions and his reputation were founded.

It is obvious that a writer so shamefully ignorant of what he professed to know, and so incompetent to collect facts of any philological value, must be entitled to no weight in reference to any views in that science that may depend upon induction. Whether any à priori speculations upon grammar are likely ever to be successful, or whether those of Tooke are en titled to any attention, would lead to a still longer enquiry, though perhaps the last question may be already resolved, if, as we think, the specimens of nonsense which we have given are a proof, not merely of want of knowledge, but of want of judg ment. We do not consider that, on the subject of grammar generally, Tooke has stated any views which are not, in the main, to be found in his predecessors; and we are certain that, with a book so defaced with errors in matters of fact, which, upon his own showing, are essentially connected with his theories, the safest course is to sweep it away as utter rubbish, and

begin to build upon a new foundation.

In some respects we would say, without hesitation, that the general principles of Tooke's reasoning are extremely futile. The idea that etymology can supply us with any new or improved conceptions of things in their actual or abstract existence, is truly preposterous. It seems to have been thought by philosophers of a certain school in that day, that an insight into the names of things would make us better acquainted with the things themselves; and, in particular, the materialists seem to have imagined that results of a most important nature, in aid of their own doctrines, were thus to be developed in reference to the mind and its faculties. The absurdity of such a notion may perhaps be most easily shown by asking a naturalist, whether any new discovery in the existing features of animal nature has ever arisen from tracing the verbal origin of the names of objects. Historical facts we may thus learn; we may learn something of the processes of our own species in the development of thought or in the formation or extension of language; but no investigation of names can explain the nature of existing things, or control the observations that we may make on what we ourselves see around us. The earlier races of men, by whom names may have been imposed, had no better means of studying nature than is now possessed by their descendants. Neither are names the express images of things. Not the whole of an object is ever expressed or figured by its appellation, but merely some striking feature or phenomenon is suggested, which is sometimes real, but may sometimes also be only apparent. To say of any object that it is nothing but what its name expresses, is a glaring absurdity. In the name of a rhinoceros we express nothing but the horn in its nose, and in that of a squirrel only its shady tail; but both of these animals have other important qualities, and other animals besides them may have the very qualities which those names import. The cow is said to have her name from her chewing or ruminating; but the cow does other things than ruminate, and many animals ruminate besides the cow. Apros, the Greek word for bread, is said to signify what is prepared; but

NO. CCXCIV. VOL. XLVII.

it is not every thing that answers to the same description that receives the same name. Supposing it were as true as it is certainly false, that bread in English is, as Tooke says, the past participle of the verb to bray, it would not follow that every thing that was brayed was bread; or that Tooke, or any other sophist that Maga might pass through her mortar, would thereby be converted into a quartern loaf. Neither must we suppose that primitive expressions are always correct, any more than they are complete. The terms hippopotamus and walrus, do not prove that the animals so designated are fit instruments of equestrian exercise; nor are we compelled to renounce the Copernican system, because our ancestors spoke of the rising or setting of the sun.

Etymology is interesting and useful, but it is only so as a historical science, and not as a means of discovering essential truth.

We cannot, therefore, conceive how any one could, for a moment, have been swayed by Tooke's notion, that the essence of an object, or idea, was limited by the etymology of its name; that right and truth, for instance, were only what was directed and what was believed, because the words were said to be past participles of regere, to govern, and TRAUAN, to trust. We consider his etymological theory in both cases to be more or less erroneous; but even if it were otherwise, our opinion as to what was justice or what was truth would not be turned away by an etymology from Horne Tooke any more than by a jest from Pontius Pilate.

In the same way, the fact at one time so much founded on in connexion with Tooke's speculations, that words expressing the mind and its operations are generally traceable to a physical idea as their source, is wholly inconclusive as to any abstract result. It might show that the inventors of language had attained something like a complete vocabulary before they directed their attention to spiritual speculations, and then that, in seeking to express their new notions, they resorted to the analogous names of the subtlest physical objects rather than invent a new phraseology. The use of the word vivμa, animus or spiritus, to express the soul, will not prove that our mental essence is a breath or a

2 I

blast. It will scarcely show that the inventors or adopters of those expressions were of that opinion; it merely entitles us to infer that, in labouring to make clear to themselves or to others a new series of ideas more ethereal than they had yet experienced, they illustrated them by names which most nearly represented an existence at once immaterial and animated. But the facts are not in favour of any con clusion that even this modified process is the universal characteristic of language. Many words express imma terial objects, which we cannot trace to any material meaning. Nous, mens, mind, soUL;--what, we ask, are the palpable forms or perceptible images which these words represent? We know of none to which they can with certainty be assigned; and, as they are of great antiquity, we are willing to believe that among our earliest an cestors there were ideas of a supermaterial character, to which they gladly assigned some distinctive appellation.

In every light, therefore, in which we view it, we are inclined to consider the Diversions of Purley as a fallacious or a frivolous book. It is with a mixture of mirth and amazement that we look back to the position it used to occupy; when even those who felt it

to be wrong and ridiculous, could only qualify themselves to appear as its opponents by first paying homage to its ingenuity and learning. It reflects little credit on English philology that it should have been so regarded then; and it is not much to our praise now, that it should still be named in works of science of a respectable character, and named without censure, or even with eulogium and deference. Its au thority and influence have done much harm to us as philologists, both in our reputation and in our progress. It has lowered the high name which England once could boast in Teutonic philology. It has blinded us to better guides-it has led us upon a false track, and lulled us into a delusive security. It has palsied our better efforts and aspirations, like a nightmare upon our breasts. Let us escape from the slavish fear or silly superstition that has tyrannized over us; let us shake the incubus from his hold, and hail with gladness the beaming of a better day, in which, under fairer auspices, we shall pur sue, with reverential zeal and humble diligence, some of the worthiest and most mysterious subjects of knowledge that the study of man can open to our understandings.

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