general interest among educated men and women in the history and essential character of their native tongue, and to recommend the study of the language in its earlier literary monuments rather than through the medium of grammars and linguistic treatises. The second term would have been devoted to what might be called a grammatical history of English literature, or a careful and systematic examination of the origin and progressive development of English, as exhibited in actual practice by the best native writers. This statement will explain many apparent deficiencies in the Lectures now published, and especially the omission of any notice of the minor dramatists, and of the Scottish dialect and other local peculiarities of English, as well as the small amount of critical discussion upon the diction, style, and literary merits of dif ferent authors. In selecting illustrations, I have chosen to draw attention to the less known fields of our literature, and I have had recourse to works neither so rare as to be inaccessible, nor, though highly deserving, so common as to be familiar, to most readers. Hence I have seldom cited Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, or other authors whose productions are, or ought to be, in every man's hands, though I am aware that they would often have supplied more apposite quotations than those I have employed. In the number of illustrations I have been sparing, and I have introduced only so many as I thought necessary to make my meaning plain, and, in two or three important cases, to establish the point for which I was contending. It would have been easy to make a show of cheap learning by multiplying extracts, but I have preferred, after pointing out sufficient, and I fear for the most part neglected, sources of instruction, to leave to the reader the pleasant and profitable task of seeking authorities for himself. The lectures are addressed to the many, not to the few; to those who have received such an amount of elementary discipline as to qualify them to become their own best teachers in the attainment of general culture, not to the professed grammarian or linguistic inquirer. The many well-edited republications of old English authors which have issued from the Boston press, the learned and valuable labors of Mr. Klipstein in Anglo-Saxon philology, and the admirable elucidations of Shakespeare by Mr. White and other American critics, abundantly prove the existence among us of the knowledge and the taste, the further promotion of which has been my special aim. These studies are, we may hope, soon to receive a new impulse and new aids from the publication of a complete dictionary of the English language-a work of prime necessity to all the common moral and literary interests of the British and American people, and which is now in course of execution by the London Philological Society, upon a plan, and with a command of facilities, that promise the most satisfactory results. I have only to add, that the occasional allusions to the political condition of Europe are to be understood with reference to the time when the Lectures were delivered, and that subsequent events have but strengthened the convictions I have expressed on this important subject. BURLINGTON VERMONT, October 25, 1859. |