"a hundred, an exception in the hundredth will not over"turn it."* There are also Readers who turn with disgust from every thing which has the appearance of subtilty. I cannot deny, that the reasoning of my First Part may occasionally require a somewhat close attention: but the subject, if we would really understand it, seems not to admit the superficial treatment, which the taste of our day would unhappily introduce into science of almost every kind. To throw a veil of mystery over that which in itself is plain and obvious, is indeed culpable: but more injury, I believe, arises to the human mind from the attempt to make all knowledge popular: it is better that the frivolous should remain in ignorance, than that the thinking and inquisitive should not have their faculties duly exerted. If the subject which I have undertaken to discuss, has derived from my method of considering it an obscurity which does not really belong to it, I regret the waste of my own labour, as well as that of the Reader's; but I am much more apprehensive of having failed in that acuteness of distinction, that logical precision, and that depth of research, without which inquiries of this nature cannot be prosecuted to their full extent. The Second Part, accompanied throughout by the Greek Text, would have assumed the form of a new edition of the Greek Testament: I thought it better, however, to trust to the hope, that they who were really interested in the subject, would have the Greek Testament lying open before them, than to increase the bulk of the work by an appen dage which might justly be condemned as of no real use. Mr. Marsh's Letters to Mr. Travis, p. 257. $1. Sundry causes of omission PART I. INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND USES OF THE GREEK ARTICLE. CHAP. I. WE learn from Glass, in his Philol. Sacra, that Julius Cæsar Scaliger called the Greek Article loquacissimæ gentis Aabellum; and that Budæus represents the Attic writers as at one time inserting the Article by a Pleonasm, and at others omitting it by an Ellipsis. This doctrine, while it seems to command assent from the authority of those who have propounded it, is nevertheless so abhorrent from the genius of a philosophical language, like that of the ancient Greeks, that no fallible authority is of sufficient force to rescue it from the consequences of its inherent improbability. If in any language there could be a Part of Speech which without offence to Syntax, might thus be employed or discarded at the pleasure of the speaker, that language might with more reason be supposed to be the French; which has not, like the Greek, the appearance of having been contrived by a synod of philosophers, but might rather be thought to owe its peculiarities to the fashion of the court, and the ha bits of the gay and frivolous. In French, however, the laws respecting their Articles are rigorously observed; and an Englishman, who has not attended to the rules, will probably find, that of the faults which he commits in translating into that language a page of English, those which regard the Articles are not the least considerable part. The nation, therefore, to which in modern times all others are accustomed to impute loquacity, does not employ its Articles as mere Aabella and there is at least a presumption, that among the Greeks the Article was subservient to some graver purpose. He, however, who pretends to determine the uses of the Greek Article, should first endeavour to investigate its nature and origin. Without such an inquiry he may, indeed, A collect from Greek writers something like rules for its insertion or omission; but he will not be able to give them probability and consistency: they will not be of general application; he will be driven to the unsatisfactory solution of Pleonasm and Ellipsis; and he will be compelled to admit, as is done continually, that though the Article is by its nature a Definitive, it is sometimes used to mark indefiniteness, or is wholly without meaning: a doctrine which is countenanced in the excellent Lexicon to the N. T. by Schleusner. Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi. There must be some common principle, by attending to which these opposite uses of the Article may be reconciled to each other and to common sense; there must be, to use the words of Plato,* τὸ νούμενον ἓν εἶναι, ἀεὶ ὂν τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν: and it is worth our while to inquire for it. But first it may be right briefly to examine the principal opinions on the subject. I have often thought, that if Aristotle had left us a treatise on grammar, it would have ranked with the most valuable remains of antiquity: and yet the little which he has said respecting the Article in his Poetics, is so obscure, that Mr. Twining, his very learned translator, confesses his inability to understand it. Aristotle says, that an Article is "a sound "without signification, which marks the beginning or the end "of a sentence, or distinguishes, as when we say, THE word "Onì, THE Word Tg." Whatever be the true interpretation of this passage, I despair of discovering in it any`thing to my present purpose. A great deal of curious matter on the subject of the Article, and indeed on almost every part of the science of Grammar, may be found in Apollonius Dyscolus, a very acute writer, who flourished about the middle of the second century. Of many of his remarks I shall make use hereafter. I * Vol. X. Ed. Bipont. p. 83. † Αρθρον δέ ἐσι φωνὴ ἄσημος, ἣ λόγω ἀρχὴν ἢ τέλος ἢ διορισμὸν δηλοι, οἷον τὸ φημὶ καὶ τὸ περὶ, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα. Mr. Twining observes, "the commentators all tell us, that this means the prepositive and the subjunctive Article; but none of them have clearly and fairly shown us, how the one, because it is placed before a word, marks the beginning of a sentence or discourse, or how the other marks the end of it, because it follows the word to which it belongs. In the sentence before us, for example, in what sense does the subjunctive Article mark the end of the sentence réxos nóg?" I am not sure that Aristotle and his commentators may not mean, that the Nominative of o, as in o veganos for example, must, in the natural order of speaking, precede every thing which can be affirmed of i avigwros, and that in the same natural order the affirmation will be completed, before i gos can be referred to by os in a clause subjoined; in this sense & might be said to mark the beginning of a sentence, as ös will mark the end of it. I know not whether this conjecture deserve any notice: I offer it for the want of something more satisfactory. |