OLD NORTHERN LITERATURE. BY GEORGE P. MARSH. An.. ་ ', SINCE the revival of letters in Europe the st of language has held a prominent place every enlightened system of education, and the creation of an original national literature has been every where accompanied by the culture and improvement of the vernacular tongue. Indeed, the predominant traits of national literature stand in the relation of both cause and effect to the character of the national language; for thought, like light, partakes of the hue of the medium through which it is transmitted, and the genius of every literature is so far determined by the idiom of the language which is its vehicle, that the literary productions of nations having a common speech are seldom or never distinguished from each other by well-defined characteristic traits, while, on the other hand, the form and spirit of every language is, to a great extent, fashioned and moulded by the intellectual character of its greatest writers. Unwritten and uncultivated tongues usually abound in dialects. In nations whose language has never been reduced to writing, every district has its peculiarities of accent or vocabulary. These change, from generation to generation, and the local dialects of regions separated by political divisions, or natural boundaries, soon become distinct tongues. But when alphabetical writing is once adopted, this process of divergence is usually arrested. Some great national writer adopts the dialect of his own province, or another better adapted to the artificial forms which distinguish written from spoken language, or, with more comprehensive genius, selects from many, and combines into a harmonious whole the elements of picturesque and poetical, discursive, or narrative expression, which are scattered among them all. The dialect thus selected or formed now becomes the classical standard of the language, while the others, unless, as in the rare case of the Grecian dialects, also illustrated by rival genius, sink to the humble rank of vulgar patois, and in process of time become entirely extinct. INTRODUCTORY. For a century past, philological studies have not only been more universally cultivated, but they have taken a new direction, and have been pursued for new purposes. Formerly, the Greek and Latin languages, distinguished as the Humanities, literæ humaniores Kar' ε§ox, were alone thought indispensable to a finished education, because they were the vehicles of the best models of every species of literary composition, and men learned Greek and Latin, merely that they might be able to read the works of the poets, the philosophers, the dramatists, the orators, and the historians of Athens and of Rome, who were supposed to have reached the highest point of attainable excellence in every department of intellectual exertion, and the greatest minds of modern Europe were content to admire and imitate what, by common consent, the most favored genius could never hope to rival. It is a fact well worthy of notice in this connection, that the mighty intellects, who led the way in the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, while cherishing the highest admiration for the master spirits of antiquity, were yet sufficiently independent to strike out for themselves new forms of literary effort, to be judged only by new canons of criticism, though doubtless with many misgivings as to the success of these untried labors. Rude dialects were softened, polished, enriched, made flexible, and taught to move in numerous verse. New rhythms, metres, and prosodiacal combinations were invented, assonance and rhyme introduced, and their laws defined, and a new machinery was employed and adapted to wholly original poetical forms. The explanation of this phenomenon is to be found in the general fact, that every period marked by the successful resistance of man to arbitrary power has been conspicuous for great literary activity and excellence. For the greater part of the fourteenth century the papacy was under a cloud, and men breathed freer during the great struggle between the crown and the tiara. The study of Grecian and Roman literature served rather to stimulate than to discourage attempts at equal excellence, and the fourteenth century is almost as memorable an era in literary history, as that which immediately followed the final emancipation of human intellect by Luther. Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer were akin in spirit to Wickliffe. Great original writers are reformers in all ages, and among the names that shed lustre on the literature of the periods we have noticed, there is not one, whose writings did not either directly advocate, or indirectly promote the principles, which finally gave character to the Protestant reformation. The conflicting interests of the throne and the hierarchy were at length reconciled, according to the usual practice of robbers, by a division of the spoil. Temporal supremacy was conceded to the crown, and the church was invested with plenary jurisdiction over the action of the human mind. It now became the mutual interest of these two powers to sustain the authority of each other. The prerogatives of the throne were defended, and majesty was consecrated, by ecclesiastical sanctions, and the civil power authorized its judges to confirm, and lent its execution ers to fulfil, the sentences of the church. The pope, indeed, could no longer dethrone kings, but he was compensated by the unlimited power of worrying heretics. In the thirteenth century, Innocent III. deposed John of England, but his successors, in the fifteenth, enjoyed no higher oblation than the incense from the roasting of Huss, and the hecatombs of Torquemada. The sovereign pontiffs now found leisure to turn their attention to enslaving the power of thought, as well as enchaining the freedom of conscience. The fifteenth century was, consequently, almost entirely barren in manifestations of original intellectual power, and ancient mind acquired an ascendency over submissive modern intellect, from which ages of free discussion and active rivalry have scarcely yet fully emancipated us. The invention of printing, the discovery of America, the Reformation, and the almost uninterrupted succession of political revolutions, which have followed that great event, have kept the energies of the human mind constantly upon the stretch, literary activity has opened a thousand new fields, and almost every European nation can now boast an original and independent literature. The objects of philological pursuits, as a branch of general education, are two-fold. The one makes the study of languages a means of the acquisition of language, or, in other words, it makes the knowledge of other tongues subserve the purpose of aiding us in acquiring a more thorough understanding and more perfect command of our own; the other views the knowledge of foreign tongues simply as a key to the intellectual treasures of which they are the depositories. We shall at present concern ourselves with the subject, only in the former of these aspects. The value of etymology, as an auxiliary in the study of living languages, has been disputed, and the extravagances of the etymologists of the seventeenth century have been justly ridiculed, as some of the wildest absurdities into which fanciful and ingenious men have ever been led by the abuse of ill-digested erudition. It is moreover objected, that the ablest linguists have not often been distinguished for superior skill in the use of their vernacular, that many of the best writers of modern times, as well as most of the illustrious authors of classic Greece and Rome, have been ignorant of all languages but their own, and that women, who are usually not conversant with foreign languages, or the speculations of etymologists, generally speak and write the purest English. It is no doubt true, that an exclusive devotion to the study of foreign languages will seriously impair the power of ready and appropriate expression in our maternal tongue; but, on the other hand, it will be generally found, not only that the vocabulary of authors, who are acquainted with but a single language, is exceedingly narrow, but that they confine themselves to a range of subjects, which requires little scope or variety of expression. We are not authorized to impute to ancient writers so great a degree of ignorance of foreign tongues, as is generally assumed. That we find no ostentatious display of philological learning in their works, is indeed quite certain, but we have no means of determining, how far the languages of Egypt, Persia, or Carthage were known to the learned of ancient Europe, or how far the forgotten literature of those countries may have influenced or modified that of Greece or Rome. We however know, that the better literature of Rome is not only informed with the spirit of the Greek writers, but that it borrowed very largely from them, and that a knowledge of the Greek language was thought-by all the scholars of the Augustan age, at leastas indispensable an acquisition as it is by the learned of our own time. Although many Latin words are readily traced to a Greek original, and there is abundant evidence that a large proportion of their respective vocabularies was derived from a common source, yet the etymology of the Latin language must be admitted to be obscure, and it is probable that its exceeding vagueness and want of precision is to be ascribed to that very cause. On the other hand, the Greek primitives are so few, and its rules of derivation and composition are so philosophical, and at the same time so natural, simple and obvious, that every thinking Greek must have been acquainted with the whole physiology, so to speak, of his mother tongue, and the study of that noble language is the very best of etymological exercises. The superior purity of the dialect of refined women is partly constitutional, and partly owing to habits and associations, which protect them from the contagion of those corruptions of language, to which the occupations and duties of men perpetually expose them. But women are usually remarkable rather for a ready and graceful, than for a very extensive command of appropriate language, and the range of their vocabulary is generally as limited as their unhappily restricted educations. If we were required to exemplify the value of etymological knowledge, by citing a conspicuous instance, we should refer to the writings of Coleridge, as at once a proof and an example of the great importance of this study. No writer of any age or country has surpassed, and no other English author has approached, that extraordinary man, in the perfect command of all the resources of his native tongue, and still less in minute, precise, and philosophical accuracy in the use of words, and clearness of distinction between vocables of similar general signification. This accuracy, which makes the works of Coleridge as valuable in philology as in philosophy, is chiefly owing to a gool, though not extensive knowledge of the primitive sources of the English language, and a close and careful attention to the laws of derivation and composition, and he perpetually illustrates and justifies his use of words by a reference to their original and primary signification. But mere etymology, though it may aid us in tracing the sources of words, and in ascertaining the rules of their formation and change, is yet inadequate to teach us the organic laws, which determine the origin, growth, structure and modification of language. We cannot here enter upon the discussion of the idle inquiry, whether the power of speech was one of the original and primitive faculties of man implanted in him by the creative act of his maker, or communicated to him by inspiration or express revelation. Philologists, who deny this supposition, will admit, with Rask and Coleridge, that language, if human in its origin, is not artificial and of human invention, and that there may be a natural relation between the sign and the thing signified, or in other words, that it is not altogether arbitrary and conventional, but is a necessary product of man's original faculties stimulated by the wants of social life. It is, if not a primitive, at least a natural faculty, and being, in some form, a necessary condition for the exercise of those powers which distinguish man from the brute, it is as essential as any other to our conception of the human. We are perhaps not authorized to affirm, that human language is necessarily articulate. The readiness with which savages of different tribes communicate by means of manual signs, and the triumphant success which has attended the efforts to educate deaf-mutes, by teaching written language through the aid of manual signs, seem to prove the contrary. Uneducated deaf-mutes, as well as savages, converse with each other, at first sight, by means of signs, which, though certainly never taught them, are, to a great extent, common to all that unfortunate class. Indeed, the parents and family friends are not the instructors, but the pupils of the infant deaf-mute, in this silent but expressive language, and nature is the great schoolmistress both of her dumb and her speaking children.* If then this supposition To express equality, the relation of fraternity, &c., the deaf-mute places the two fore-fingers side by side. Had Shakspeare observed this, or was it a higher faculty than the power of observation, that suggested to him Fluellen's simile, "'tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers?" in regard to the origin of language is well founded, its conception, growth, and development must be regulated by fixed laws, and though we can imitate none of the creative processes of organic nature, yet there is no apparent reason for doubt ing that those laws may be discoverable. In the present state of philological learning, however, it is not to be expected, that such investigations will enter into the ordinary course of general education, and for the present, all, but the gifted and favored few who belong to the mystic priesthood of nature, must be content to pursue the study of language with humbler aims and for narrower ends. Philological pursuits, considered as an auxiliary to the study of our own tongue, may be cultivated with special reference either to the principles of universal grammar, or to the primitive etymological sources of the particular language which we seek to master. What class of languages, then, has the strongest claims to the attention of the student of English, in these two points of view? The study of living tongues is indispensable, on account of the greater perfection with which they may be acquired, and the more intimate knowledge of the general structure of language which may thus be attained, while the Greek is more powerfully recommended than any other speech, by its philosophical structure, its copiousness, its exact precision and delicacy of discrimination, its flexibility, its admirable polish, its infinite variety, power and picturesqueness of expression, and, in a word, its universality. But the languages of Greece and Rome are emphatically dead. They belong to other men, to other times, as it were, to another and an extinct race of beings, and these relics of ancient mind are to us what the fossilized bones of the mastodon and megalonyx are to the skeletons of our domestic animals. The means for thoroughly understanding these tongues no longer exist. The language of books is always premeditated and artificial. No man speaks, or habitually thinks, as he writes, and the recording of our words or our thoughts is a process of translation. Besides, many of those branches of literature, which, like the historical novel, admit the free use of the colloquial style, and are devoted to the portraiture of men and manners, are of modern origin. Periodical literature the ancients had none, and of their comic drama, and their satirical and epistolary literature, not much has survived. We know little of their statistics, little of the habits of their domestic and familiar life, and silent Pompeii has taught us more of the living Italian of the first century, than all the extant literature of Rome. Of the ordinary style and common topics of familiar conversation, of the social and convivial dialect, the phrases of salutation and compliment, the vocabulary of the market, and the boudoir, the nursery, the kitchen, the technical language of commerce, agriculture, and the mechanic arts, the names of many of the most familiar objects, and numerous other items, which make up the sum of ordinary personal intercourse, most scholars are almost entirely ignorant, and much of this knowledge has perished altogether. We never acquire the same mastery over the dead languages which we often attain over living tongues. We dare not venture upon a new Greek or Latin phrase, nor are we ever so certain that we have possessed ourselves of the true spirit of those languages, as to be quite sure that a new combination of words is allowable. The best modern Latin is a mere cento, a patchwork of dexterously united shreds and fragments not woven by the artist, but supplied from the storehouse of memory, and we do not hesitate to condemn, as unclassical and barbarous, every phrase, every combination of vocables, which we do not remember to have met, or for which the writer cannot produce the authority of precedent. The objection once allowed against new counts, that they were nova impressionis, and not to be found in the Register, is yet valid against new forms of speech in the modern use of the ancient tongues. This slavery to authority indicates an imperfect acquaintance with those languages, and it is quite true, as a learned Englishman complained, that no modern scholar can read Greek as he reads a newspaper." Our want of familiar knowledge and ready command of Greek and Latin is partly owing to the poverty of those branches of ancient literature which introduce us to the every day life of Athens and Rome, but chiefly to the impossibility of making the artificial symbol supply the place of the natural sign. The written characters addressed to the eye are not language. They are symbols by which language is recalled, and are but an artificial substitute for the word, whose true recipient and interpreter is the ear. The Greek characters, or the printed words of any other language learned from books, do not suggest to us the familiar sounds of a known speech, but they are the conventional symbols of ideas, of which articulate words are the proper representatives, and to us are essentially as meaningless as the inscriptions upon an Egyptian obelisk, or the Chinese characters on a tea-chest. To a certain extent, indeed, ideographic writ ing may be expressive, in the same way that manual signs are significant; but this cannot be carried far, and in general the analogies will be as fanciful as those upon which Castel founded the theory of his ocular harpsichord. Castel imagined that he had discovered between the primitive colors the same relations that exist between the tones of the diatonic scale, and he endeavored to make both melody and harmony visible, or to produce upon the eye, by succession and combination of colors, effects analogous to those produced upon the ear by sequence and chord of sounds. What has been incorrectly affirmed of language is true of alphabetical writing, namely that it is entirely arbitrary and conventional, while there does seem to be a natural relation between emotions (and perhaps also external objects) and the articulate sounds by which they are expressed. Without here entering upon the abstruser grounds, which seem to prove that such relation exists, it is sufficient for our present purpose to refer to the personal experience of every scholar. Every linguist will confirm the remark, that in all languages we meet with words, whose signification we seem to recollect rather than to acquire, sounds apparently informed with meaning, recognized almost at once as essentially significant, and as natural exponents of the feelings, the actions, or the objects they represent. So strong is this impression of the superior force of particular words, even in languages with which we are not familiar, that they sometimes rise to the lips, instead of the apparently less appropriate and expressive corresponding words of our own tongue. Recent circumstances have conspired to give a favorable impulse to philological pursuits. The English conquests in the East have opened the mines of oriental lore to the literati of the West. The efforts of Bible and missionary societies have led to the study of numerous barbarous and obscure dialects. The general peace, which, with little interruption, has prevailed throughout Christendom for an entire generation, the increased extent of mercantile enterprise, the prodigious improvement and multiplication of the means of communication between distant nations, and the consequent freer intercourse between all those parts of the world where Christian influence is felt, have combined to render a knowledge of the principal spoken languages of the old world more generally desirable; and at the same time, the facilities for their acquisition have been so greatly improved, that it is now an easier task to rival the polyglot fame of Sir William Jones or Dr. Bowring, than it was to master three or four languages a half century since. The scholars of continental, and especially of Northern Europe, have led the way in the establishment of a new school of philology; and the philosophical study of the comparative anatomy of language, as exemplified in the works of Rask, Grimm, Bopp, Meidinger, and numerous others, has not only facilitated the acquisition of foreign tongues, and at the same time aided the student in attaining to a better knowledge of his own, but it has shed much curious and unexpected light on both psychology and the early history of our race. The success which has attended these enlightened labors gives an earnest of incalculable and yet unforeseen benefits to flow from the continued prosecution of these studies in the spirit in which they have been begun. We may hope that phonology, or the analysis and comparison of articulate sounds, combined with a thorough knowledge of the anatomical structure of the vocal organs and the animal mechanics of speech, will at length be reduced, by long observation and philosophical arrangement and deduction, to the rank of one of the natural sciences. It will then have its nomenclature, its classifications, its laws, and even pronunciation will be taught by books. Though very much has been done for the illustration of phonology, we must yet admit, that it is but in its earliest infancy. Linguists are by no means agreed upon the number or classification of primary sounds, nor is it settled what articulations are simple, and what are compound. Even longs and shorts are not clearly distinguished, sounds are vaguely characterized as open or close, broad or flat, high or low, hard, |