naturally. He gives abundance of elements and radicals, indeed; but so great a proportion of them are of his own coinage, or moulded to suit his purpose, that the student has no means of distinguishing what is real from what is fabricated. The burthen of the work is, that the following NINE WORDS are the foundations of language: 1. Ag, Wag, Hwag. 2. Bag, Bwag, Fag, Pag. 3. Dwag, Thwag, Twag. Cwag. 5. Lag, Hlag. 6. Mag. 7. Nag, Hnag.

4. Gwag, 8. Rag,

an

Hrag. 9. Swag!On which (foundation) he says, edifice has been erected of a more useful and wonderful kind than any which have exercised human ingenuity. They were uttered at first, and probably for several generations, in an insulated manner. The circumstances of the actions were communicated by gestures, and the variable tunes of the voice; but the actions themselves were expressed by their suitable monosyllable."-p. 32. All which is further elucidated in Note P, p. 182, where we learn, that in the primitive universal language, BAG WAG meant, Bring water; BAG, BAG, BAG! They fought very much :-and that such he considers "as a just, and not imaginary specimen of the earliest articulated speech."

On the subject of verbals in ing he has another extravagant and ridiculous speculation (vol. i. p. 85.), in which he thus deduces from them our verbals in ON, derived from the Latin and French:

"Under this title also must be noticed all words terminating in N, except derivatives from the participles in ND, NT, or NG, which by corruption have lost their final letters. Derivatives from the Latin or French, which terminate in oN, with a few exceptions, ended in ang, ING, OF ONG, the sign of a present participle'. Indeed there is reason to suspect that they originally stood as follows: REG, to direct, govern: REGIGONGA, a governing, a region ;. ..... RELATIGONG or RELATIGING, a relating. These harsh but significative terminations were softened into on. [Where or when did they exist ?] Such formations are common in the Teutonic dialects, and perfectly agreeable to the established analogies of the language, being similar to the English verbal nouns which end in ing."

But I will not tire the reader with more of these absurdities. Considerable learning is indeed brought forward in the work, to which may be applied a maxim for which I have been accustomed to feel an hereditary respect: "The more learning

1 In vol. ii. p.10, he derives the A.-Sax. adverbs in unga, inga, from the present participle! when no participle in ng existed.

any man hath, the more need he hath of a correct and cautious judgment to use it well, otherwise his learning will only render him the more capable of deceiving himself and others'."

I shall conclude this note by presenting the reader with one more empty speculation on the subject of it. This is from a work which the ingenious author, Mr. Fearn, has named

' Preface to Taylor's Hebrew Concordance, vol. ii.-Dr. Jortin relates the following:-"Somebody said to a learned simpleton, The Lord double your learning, and then-you will be twice the fool that you are now."-Tracts, ii. 533.

Dr. Murray's wonderful discoveries are received with great faith by Mr. Fearn. His system, moreover, is transcribed into Cyclopædias, and a Grammar founded upon it has been published in Scotland, where proposals were circulated for erecting a monument in honour of him.

2 In the present edition, I have to add to these vague speculations of Dr. Murray and Mr. Fearn, some which have appeared in Mr. Richardson's new Dictionary, and which I cannot consider as of any greater value. After informing us, in p. 431 of his Preliminary Essay, that our Present Participle was formerly written ande, ende, &c., and that an is the infinitive termination, as luf-an, Lov-an; he asserts, but without offering any proof, that "Ed adjoined constitutes our simple verb adjective, Lovan-ed, lov-ande. Loving, as it has long been written," he adds, "is composed of the same infinitive Lov-an, ig, of equivalent meaning, having been affixed instead of ed;" [Lov-en-ig ;] and the e having, as in the former case, been "transposed and finally dropt, en-ig has become in-ge, ing." And, at p. 64, he designates Ing "a compound termination, in-ig, .... having the meaning of en (which, at p. 65, he tells us is "one") augmented by y" [13]. It forms, he says, the present participle of verbs; we have also abundance of nouns in this termination." Now all this, which is not proposed as a conjecture, but laid down absolutely, is not only entirely unsupported by evidence, but requires us to shut our eyes to the indisputable fact that ing is found coexisting with ende, though serving a different purpose, for at least six centuries before it began gradually, and only in the English language, to supplant it. "Ling," he says elsewhere, "may be the same syllable with 7 prefixed, I being itself corrupted from dle, a deal or division!"

The zeal which has carried Mr. Richardson through so considerable an undertaking as his Dictionary is much to be commended; and the large collection of examples which his industry has brought together, although most injudiciously arranged, (Quarterly Review, vol. li. p. 172,) must be serviceable to philologists and to future lexicographers; but it is to be regretted that he has been very unsuccessful in making use of the store of materials which he has amassed. This may in part be attributed to the erroneous view which he appears to have taken of the proper object of a Dictionary, which should be, to give faithfully the actual meanings of the words of our language, or the senses in which they are or have been in use, and not such as may suit a preconceived hypothesis or fancied etymology, thus leading those who may

Anti-Tooke; and which, as coming from a declared opponent, should receive some notice here.

"I am a coming,-means, I exist in space-I on-ing (one-ing) comING: In which instance, as in every other, the pronoun, (or noun,)

have to consult it into difficulty and error. Of Johnson's Dictionary Mr. Richardson says "It is needless, and it would be invidious, to accumulate especial instances of failure;-the whole is a failure :" and ne describes it as "a collection of usages from English authors, explained to suit the quotations." It would have been well if Mr. Richardson had given such "explanations as suited the quotations," and were in accordance with usage; his sweeping censure would not then have been more applicable to his own work than to Johnson's, the design of which is to give actual and not imputed meanings. After this utter condemnation of his celebrated predecessor, Mr. Richardson adds, that "no author is known to have undertaken the composition of a new work, nor even to have engaged in the less honour able, but still arduous and even praiseworthy enterprise of remoulding and reforming the old." His contempt for Mr. Todd's labours he had long ago expressed in his Illustrations: and does he consider as beneath his notice, or can he have been ignorant of the existence of Dr. Webster's Dictionary, a work unquestionably much superior to his own, and indeed to every English Dictionary that has yet appeared? in which, whilst abundance of valuable etymological information is supplied, fidelity and accuracy in recording the meanings according to actual usage is not sacrificed in order to accommodate them to a preconceived system or to etymological conjecture.

As the basis of the theory which it seems to be the object of Mr. Richardson's Dictionary to uphold, and which is to be found in his Preliminary Essay, he announces "with no assumption of unfelt diffidence" the following axioms. That all men, in all ages having had the same organs of speech and sense of hearing, every distinct articulate sound had a distinct meaning; that among all people having written lan. guage, each sound has a corresponding literal sign; and that "each letter was the sign of a separate distinct meaning,-of a word previously familiar in speech," p. 5. His principles must, he indeed informs us, p. 36, "be considered as exoteric doctrines intended only for the scholar ('esoteric' he must be supposed to mean: but in the Dictionary exoteric is mixed up with erotic). Whether the philological student will be aided or misled by viewing the subject through such a medium I shall not discuss; but with regard to those who have to consult a dictionary for the real meaning of words, foreigners for instance, strange indeed will be the perplexities into which some of Mr. Richardson's explanations must lead them.-The safe application of " the great first principle" upon which he states that he has proceeded in the explanation of words, "that a word has one meaning, and one only, from which all usages must spring and be derived,—and that in the etymology of each word must be found this single intrinsic meaning," involves in each case previous questions not only as to which is this single intrinsic meaning, but as to the unity of the word under con

which is the sign of the grammatical agent of the adjective action, is, or ought to be, repeated to form the nominative or agent of that action. "In the small variety of names for beginning actions which thus appears, there is perhaps not one that is more logical, although at the same time none more vulgar, or debased, than the phrases I am a COMING,' 'I am a GOING.' Thus, when children or servants or other dilatory persons, are called upon to do any thing which they must commence forthwith, but which they have not yet begun, and proceed to do with hesitation or reluctance, the ordinary reply is, I am a COMING;'-'I am a GOING to do it.' Now it is agreed among etymologists that ▲ means on, and oN means ONE'. Hence the real import of the phrase I am a COMING is-I am on-(onning)—(one-ing)—the ACT OF COMING, -that is (figuratively, and feignedly also,) I am MAKING Myself One WITH THE ACT OF COMING,-which amounts to feigning, 'I am COMING This Moment.'

He is a

"It is equally usual, likewise, to say, He is a FISHING. RIDING, He is a FIGHTING; even during the continuation of either of these actions: in which case, it is plain, the expression is less figurative, or feigned; because the agent is actually at the moment DOING the action, although he cannot be LITERALLY ONE with it."-P. 345.

Whatever the reader may make of all this, I confess that, of the various ways of treating the subject, I must prefer the Baconian mode pursued by Mr. Tooke. As in Physics, so in Philology, we shall attain truth by an accurate investigation of facts and phænomena, and not by ingenious and too often absurd conjectures which are independent of, or opposed to, them. Reasonings on language not deduced from the real hi

sideration; lest what is taken for "a word" should really be two or more distinct words lurking under the appearance of one. And the individuality or identity of a word consists neither in the sound, the spelling, nor the sense,-paradoxical though this may seem, for these all undergo modifications, but in its historical continuity, with regard to which facts must be our guide.-According to Mr. Richardson, Tell and Till are "the same word,"-to raise, the ground, or the voice: so, also, Love and Lift, to pick up: Fear and Fare, to run away. Pref. p. 49. 1 Mr. Fearn here travels too fast for me to keep pace with him. 2 We are told, however, by Dr. Murray, that if Mr. Tooke "had not been misled by some erroneous parts of Locke's philosophy, and the weaker materialism of some unintelligible modern opinions, he would have made a valuable accession to moral as well as grammatical inquiries.”—-Vol. ii. p. 342. For such a writer to bring a charge of "unintelligible opinions" is ludicrous enough. If Locke's philosophy, and what is here called Materialism, kept Mr. Tooke clear of such airy conceits as Dr. Murray's, that at least is something in their favour. See this subject very ably treated in "A Letter on the Immateriality of the Soul, in reply to Mr. Rennel," (Hunter, 1821), ascribed to a clergyman of the Irish church; also in Wallace's "Observations on Lord Brougham's Natural Theology," (Ridgway, 1835.).

story of words are of about the same value as speculations in astronomy or chemistry unsupported by an acquaintance with the phænomena of nature'.

With facts, then, for our guides, we find that we need not have recourse to the remotest ages and to nondescript fictitious dialects in the investigation of the change of termination in our Present Participle and its relation to Verbals in ing; nor to subtile speculations and extravagant assumptions: but that the field of inquiry may be limited to our own language, and nearly to the period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:and I recommend those who have opportunity to note any instances prior to the age of Chaucer where a verbal in ing is used strictly and unequivocally as a Present Participle.

I trust that these notes, and the few that are scattered through the work, will not be thought foreign to its design, whether they coincide with Mr. Tooke, or propose explanations differing from those which he has given. It is one of his great excellencies that he always places honestly and fully before the reader all the data from which his deductions are made; so that even where he may be thought to err he is sure to be instructive.

I have now only to acknowledge with thanks the advice and assistance which I have received in the preparation of this edition from my friends Sutton Sharpe, Esq., and Richard Price, Esq., the able editor of Warton's History of English Poetry; and shall conclude with expressing a wish that the work in its present form may prove acceptable to such as are fond of the studies which it was designed to promote.

Red Lion Court, Fleet Street,

Sept. 29, 1829.

:

RICHARD TAYLOR.

"The wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."-Bacon's Adv. of Learning.