A GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE, Spoken and Written; FOR SELF-TEACHING AND FOR SCHOOLS. BY HYDE CLARKE. London: JOHN WEALE, 59, HIGH HOLBORN. MDCCCLIII. 302. C.13. PREFACE. THERE are few tasks more thankless and more open to blame than writing on English Grammar, which is as yet unsettled, and must be so while philology is in its childhood, and so little light has been thrown on the philology of the English tongue. Every one, too, has his own way of thinking on English Grammar; and for the one he has taken, the writer of this book asks the kindly feeling of his readers. He has thought it right to look rather to the spoken than the written tongue, and to seek his standard among that body of the Southern English, with whom English has always been a living tongue, and from among whom our greatest writers and speakers have arisen. To bring forward anything new is to unsettle what has already been done, and is commonly to be shunned, while what is new is not always true; but the writer has, nevertheless, chosen to go on in the fresh path which Horne Tooke and Latham have so well followed, rather than to think that even what they have carried out is all that can be done. As this is a work which will go into the hands of children, and of working men among others, the writer has, so far as he can, put everything in common English, and shunned Latinisms, so that he may be the more readily understood. This, too, is one of a set of grammars, and it has been thought right to bring within it the comparative philology of the several tongues, which otherwise would have had to be given with each grammar. In drawing up this book and the Dictionary which is to follow it, the writer has made use of the collections begun by him two-and-twenty years ago, but he has greatly availed himself of the works of others, and among them those of the following writers:-Ælfric, Ben Jonson, Dr. Wallis, Hickes, Junius, Coles, Skinner, James Harris, Dr. Johnson, Dilworth, Bishop Lowth, Dr. Ash, Bailey, Barretti, Horne Tooke, Priestley, Sheridan, Lindley Murray, Walker, Ruddiman, Noah Webster, Cobbett, Bosworth, David Booth, Alexander Crombie, B. Thorpe, Dr. Latham, Joseph E. Worcester, Goold Brown, Grimm, Bopp, Adelung, Vater, and Raske. THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH TONGUE. SPEECHKNOWLEDGE, or Philology, is one of the branches of Folkknowledge, or Ethnology. Folkknowledge shows us the several stocks to which mankind belong; Speechknowledge, their several ways of speech and the laws which these follow. These branches of learning have only lately sprung up, and are still in their youth. It is, however, now well enough known that all mankind belong to several great stocks or families of races, as the IndoEuropean, the Chinese, the Syro-Arabian, the Americo-Indian; and each of these is again further divided. Thus, under the Indo-European come the Germanic, the Slavonic, the Celtic, and other great families. The Germanic stock again includes or brings together the English, High Dutch, and Scandinavian. The Celtic stock includes the Welsh, Irish, Manx, and Breton. Commonly, the classification for Speechknowledge is the same as for Folkknowledge; but it does not follow that those who speak the same tongue belong to the same stock. Thus, there are Welsh and Irish who speak English, and Bretons who speak French. The groundwork of the classification, however, being taken from the stock or race to which the tongue belongs, it is needful to say something of Folkknowledge, so far as it throws light upon the subject we have in hand. The leading great stocks in Europe are the following: INDO-EUROPEAN; as English, Welsh, Irish, French, Russians, Gipseys. SYRO-ARABIAN; as Jews. The Indo-European is the greatest of these, and the mightiest in the world, although more souls belong to the Chinese stock. The Indo-Europeans reach from Burmah through Western Asia, spreading over Europe and further throughout North and South America; and the European branches are thus divided: GERMANIC: Anglo-Suevian.. English, Americo-English. Old Sarons, Burgundians, Goths, Vandals, Jutes, Frisians of Frieseland, Heligoland, and Jutland. Low Dutch......Low Dutch, or Germans. High Dutch ..High Dutch, or Germans. German Swiss ..Danes and Norwegians. Swedes. Icelanders. .Welsh of Wales. Old Cornish. Bretons of Brittany. ..Irish of Ireland. Irish or Erse of the Scotch Highlands. Manx of the Isle of Man. B |