gave up the inflections with comparative reluctance. It is accordingly evident that what might be perfectly true of a period of the language as spoken in one part of the country might be absolutely false of the language as spoken in another part, at the same point of time. This shows at once the difficulty that will always exist of making general statements which shall be perfectly accurate; and, in the present state of our knowledge, of making any statements that can be deemed thoroughly trustworthy.

In his remarks upon the proportion of the Romance element in English, Mr. Sweet seems to us still more out of the way; and as this is a topic upon which much nonsense is constantly vented, it may be well to give the subject a little notice. It must first be premised that it is somewhat difficult to tell precisely what is meant in the passage here referred to. "When we speak," says Mr. Sweet, "of the proportion of Romance elements in English, we mean the English of every day life, not of dictionaries and technical works." The question naturally arises, To which class does our literature, in the strict sense of the word literature, properly belong? Is, for instance, the English of Shakspeare and Milton the English of dictionaries and technical works, or the English of every day life? It can hardly be said to belong to the former; it would be a most happy tribute to every day life if it could be truly ascribed to the latter. In fact, while the phrase "the language of every day life" is a correct enough one under certain circumstances, and conveys in a general way a sufficiently clear idea, it is wholly out of place as the basis of any scientific argument, from the utter lack of any definiteness and precision attending it. When we set out to express the simplest wants and necessities of our being, the language of every day life is to all intents and purposes the same for every rank and condition. But when once we have ascended from these topics, it immediately begins to diverge. The language of every day life of an educated man is altogether different from that of an ignorant man; but certainly a scholar has no business on that ground to attribute any superiority to the latter, or to speak of it as being an example of "unconscious, unsophisticated development." With us, necessarily, the more a man knows, the wider the circle of

his intellectual sympathies, the more he addresses the understanding and not the feelings, the more he will be called upon to use the Romance element of our tongue. But, necessarily, there can be nothing but indefiniteness in any discussion upon the language of every day life, not only because it differs widely in the mouths of different persons, but because there is no one who can call completely to mind, or make a complete list of, the stock of words which now constitute, or may have constituted, his vocabulary. It is only in a general way even that he can say that he uses the Saxon element in preference to the Romance. It is of the written language alone that we can speak with certainty, for there alone are to be found the precise facts from which precise inferences can be drawn; and of course, when we begin to compare the proportion of Romance and of Saxon elements in our tongue, we are in duty bound to take that portion of its literature which exhibits the fullness, scope, and power of the language in the highest degree. These characteristics are necessarily found best in the writings of its greatest authors. No other test can justly be applied.

Fortunately this work has been done for us to a certain extent, by a scholar in whom we can have confidence. Mr. Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English Language," has given us the result of his investigations of the proportion of the elements. existing in our tongue, as exhibited in those cases in which the total vocabulary has been collected. Necessarily there are two methods of computation. The first is to make a comparison of the entire stock of words used in any one work, or by any one author; the second, of the proportion habitually employed in it or by him. In the latter case the Saxon element must always largely predominate, from the constant repetition of the numerous particles, pronouns, auxiliaries, and common words, which are of Teutonic origin. But when we come to examine the total number of words found, the two elements are at once seen to be nearly equally represented. "In the vocabulary of the English Bible," says Mr. Marsh, "sixty per cent. are native; in that of Shakspeare, the proportion is very nearly the same, while of the stock of words employed in the poetical works of Milton, less than thirty-three per cent. are Anglo-Saxon." And in a note he points out that conclusions based on data so in

significant in amount as those given by Turner are entitled to no confidence whatever. Picked passages are selected from an author as representative of his language, and not entire works varying in subject and purpose. Yet it is only by this latter method that any test can fairly be made. And this consideration forces us to say that a note of Mr. Sweet to the paragraph under discussion is neither ingenious nor ingenuous. "By one-side arguments like these," he says, in speaking of the language of dictionaries and technical works, "it would be easy to prove that Modern German is quite as mixed as English ;" and to make good his statement he quotes a very short passage from an author whose name is not given, who, if not writing a technical treatise, is at least writing here on a technical subject. In this he points out a large number of Romance words. Of course this is the merest travesty of an argument, as no proper comparison can ever be made, save between the two literatures, using literature in its strict sense. A man of Mr. Sweet's high attainments and ability does not need to be told that in regard to vocabulary, English and German can never be put upon the same footing. In the close intercourse now existing between nations, languages will borrow more or less from one another, will borrow, to a large extent even, terms that are not needed. But the difference in this respect between these two tongues, while it is a simple one, is also a fundamental one. A German author may make use of Romance words: an English author

must.

Necessarily, a writer can with us become conspicuous by the employment of a specially Latinized diction, as he can of a Saxon; and of the two the latter is not only at this period preferred, but, it seems to us, should on principle be always preferred, where the subject is such as to admit of it without the loss of clearness. But in the use of neither element can we get along without words belonging to the other, and any attempt to do so, beyond a certain legitimate point, serves simply to sacrifice both perspicuity and sense and to cripple expression. It has been and still is a favorite amusement of some persons to heap together a mass of Latin derivatives, generally very uncommon and often unheard-of ones, stuff them into the same sentence, and present that as a

fair sample of a Latinized diction. The practice began in the sixteenth century, and has been kept up ever since. One illustration will suffice. Cockeram appended to one of the editions of his dictionary (1639) a second part consisting of a list of common words, explained, as he says, by a more "refined and elegant speech;" by the use of which a person not satisfied with saying to his friend, "If you'll allow me, I'll wake you early, and then we'll take a walk together," might refine his speech as follows: "If you'll approbate, I will matitutinally expergify you, and then we will obambulate together." It is hardly necessary to say that no such sentence as this, or any resembling this in character, was ever seriously spoken by one human being to another; and yet men of straw of this kind are constantly set up to be knocked over, by unfledged purists who fancy that in so doing they are making themselves the champions of English undefiled. The latest serious performance in this line that we have met with is by Mr. Kington Oliphant, who in his work entitled "Standard English," furnishes us with an illustration of the practice; in his case not only a harmless amusement, but also a suitable achievement, coinciding as it does closely with numerous absurd opinions of his own of all kinds advanced in his book. Certainly the belief that the Romance element of our tongue is not as much English as the Saxon element, can safely be left to scientific philologers like himself and Mr. Freeman.

ARTICLE VII.-CHRISTIAN CLASSICS.

The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. Edited for Schools and Colleges. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1874.

THIS book is the first Greek author, we believe, in the series of "Christian Greek and Latin writers," edited for school and college use. It contains the first book and selections from the second, third, fourth, and fifth, of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, with intermittent notes, and a geographical and historical index. This index is taken bodily from Dindorf's edition, without omitting the parts which have nothing to do with the selected passages of text, and the assertion at the head of it, "Fecit Gulielmus Dindorfius," hardly agrees with his own statement that he has taken Schwegler's index, "paucis mutatis." The unevenness of the notes-on three-fifths of the text there are only nine pages of notes, and part of that is mere titles of chapters--is explained in the preface as due to a desire "to please both those who like to have their classes use the nude text, and those who like many explanations and grammatical references." There is a third class, including most teachers, we should hope, of those who like judicious notes in plenty, which may help and stimulate the student to thorough preparation of a lesson by himself, whose wishes this book fails to meet. In both selections and comments there is an evident lack of critical scholarship. It will seem sufficient proof of this that the selections include the letter of King Abgarus to the Saviour, without a hint in the notes as to its genuineness; and the answer of Jesus with a note calling attention to coincidence of phrase with his language in John's gospel, but whether to suggest genuineness or forgery is not indicated. In general, too, there is nothing in the notes to inform the student as to the peculiarities of the period of the Greek language shown in Eusebius- so far as they indicate he might be reading the Greek of Herodotus or Demosthenes or Arrian.

Leaving now this particular book, we propose to take the opportunity of expressing an opinion about the plan of the series