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But besides this half-voluntary distortion f our natural faculty of speech, the injudicious methods by which reading is taught do very much to fix, as well as to originate, a formal, monotonous and unnatural intonation. The habit of mechanical inexpressive delivery, once contracted, is almost incurable; and it is a trite observation that so simple a thing as a clear, appropriate and properly intoned and emphasized pronunciation, in reading aloud, is one of the rarest as well as most desirable of social accomplishments. Few persons are able, when the eye is fixed upon a printed or written page, or even in reciting what they have learned by heart, to modulate the voice, as they would do in the unpremeditated conversational utterance of their own thoughts in the same words; and the difference between our modes of reading and speaking is not confined to the modulation of the period, but extends itself to single words, so that it is extremely common, especially among persons not much practised in reading aloud, to use one system of orthoepy in conversation, and quite another in reading. But the evil habits we contract in our school exercises are productive of further mischief. They are highly injurious to the physical organs of speech. And this is one reason why clergymen, who, in the religious services of most sects, read much aloud, are so much more frequently annoyed with bronchial affections, than lawyers and political orators, who use the voice much more, and with louder and more impassioned articulation, but who for the most part speak extemporaneously, and with a more natural delivery.

As has been already observed, the classes of words and of vocal modulations which we have been considering belong to, if they do not constitute, the language of passion, and therefore it is, as we have already hinted, equally a rule of

morality and good taste to practise great caution and circumspection in the employment of them.

What are called expletives in rhetorical treatises are grammatically allied to the interjections, though widely differenced from them by the want of meaning, which the interjection is never without. I can hardly agree with Webster in his definition of the expletive, and still less in the statement with which he concludes it. "The expletive," says Webster, "is a word or syllable not necessary to the sense, but inserted to fill a vacancy or for ornament. The Greek language abounds with expletives." So far as the word answers no other purpose than to "fill a vacaney," it is properly expletive, but if it be appropriate and graceful enough to deserve the name of an "ornament," it is not superfluous, and therefore is not an expletive. In most cases, indeed, the vacancy filled by words of this class is not merely a defect of continuity in the syntax, but it indicates a positive want of thought, and ignorant and illogical persons are naturally very prone to interlard their discourse with these fragmentary expressions. The frequent use of interjections, expletives and vague or unmeaning phrases of all kinds, is therefore inadmissible, in a really elegant and graceful conversational style; and though I hope the caution is superfluous, I should not do justice to my subject, were I to omit to express my full concurrence in the condemnation which, for intellectual as well as social and moral reasons alike, persons of culture award to the employment of profane language; a vice eminently ungraceful in itself, and vulgarizing in its influence. "Othes," says King James, "are but a use, and a sinne clothed with no delight nor gaine, and therefore the more inexcusable in the sight of men."

The remark with which Webster accompanies his defini tion of the word expletive, namely, that the Greek language abounds in such, is in my opinion as erroneous as the definition is defective. The Greeks, like the modern Italians, were an exceedingly excitable and impressible people, and like them, they used a great number of interjections. We certainly are far from being able to discover the precise force of these; still less can we find equivalents for them in a language which, like ours, is spoken by a graver and more reserved people, and therefore possesses fewer words of this class; but with regard to the numerous particles and other words which Webster apparently classes among expletives, we are not authorized to infer that they were superfluous to the sense of the passages where they occur, barely because we do not see the necessity of them. The supposition is contrary to all we know of the habits of the Greek mind, and it is much safer to presume that they had a meaning and a force, which our imperfect knowledge of the niceties of the language forbids us to appreciate, than to believe that Plato, and Aristotle, and Xenophon thought so inconsecutively as to be obliged to fill the interstices of their mental structures with insignificant rubbish.

In commencing the study of foreign languages, we meet with many words, to which dictionaries assign no distinct meaning, and which appear superfluous to the sense of the period, and therefore to be expletives. But further study generally shows us that they, however difficult to define in themselves, have, nevertheless, an important influence on the sense of the period, by strengthening, moderating, or otherwise qualifying, the signification of leading words. The German, as well as the Greek, is rich in these particles, and the exist ence of the German as a living speech enables foreigners to

acquire a much clearer comprehension of these, at first sight insignificant, elements than is possible in the case of a language, which, like the Greek, survives only as a written tongue.

The Greek and Latin languages are remarkably distinguished from each other in the number and the character of the interjections; and it will in general be found that the use and signification of the interjections employed in any language furnishes a very tolerable key to the character of the people who speak it. The modern Italians have inherited from their Roman ancestors a great number of elliptical passionate phrases, which are employed in this way, and the frequent introduction of the names of the heathen deities, together with those of the Virgin Mary and the saints, in their ejaculatory exclamations, produces a ludicrous effect upon a stranger. One of these has even found its way into German and English. In the comedies and other light literature of both, in the last century, it is of frequent occurrence, and if we can judge from them, it was very current in fashionable society, though probably few of the fine ladies, who so often exclaimed, O, gemini! (jiminy or jemini,) knew that the phrase was a Latin invocation of the divine brothers, Castor and Pollux.*

*The Italian diamine! is a different word, in diaboli nomine!

LECTURE XIV.

THE NOUN, ADJECTIVE AND VERB.

Ir is not disputed, that in the genesis of language the in-, terjection, even if not technically a part of speech, and the onomatopoetic or imitative words, must be regarded as the primary linguistic utterances, but grammatical physiologists differ much with respect to the order of succession in the other principal parts of speech. Presented in the usual form of a historical problem, the inquiry is an idle one, for the noun, whether substantive or adjective, and the verb, can be conceived of as existing only as members of a period or proposition, and therefore the noun supposes the verb, and the verb the noun. With the exception of the Lautgeberden, or vocal-gestures, and the imitative sounds, words are as essentially and necessarily social as man himself, and a single word can no more spring into spontaneous life, or exist in isolation, than can the intelligent being who uses it. We know external objects only by their sensuous properties and their action, and we must necessarily suppose all names of objects to have been primarily descriptive, because we can imagine no possible ground of a name, but the ascription of a quality or an act as characteristic of the object named. It

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