PRINCIPAL WORDS. Schwester; Got. swistar; Fränk. suestar. The st in the middle was changed into r, as in honor, honos, honestus. LAWS, &c. Goth. reiki, recke; Old Prus. reikis, from regen, richten-to make straight, to lead; hence in many compounded words, Theodoricus, Fähn-rich, &c. &c. Reich; Swed. riki; Dan. rign. Sinistans was the Burgundian and Visigothic name for high-priests and old men, from sineigo, senex; also among the Alem. according to Amm. Marcel. Seniscallus was the oldest and first of the Servants. COMMENT. do not find either Sanskrit, Persian, Greek or Latin from fero. Puer and waic (? Eol. még) comes therefore under the same remark as we have made upon parens: we do not entirely understand them; all that we know is, that there is every certainty of parens and frater belonging to very different roots; unless parens in Old Latin were farens, which we have hitherto never seen asserted. At any rate we protest against puer-n. Whence came the n? The roots are the same, but only consist in either language of s-rs-s: the t has nothing to do with them, nor was st ever changed into;s was very often. Rex connects itself no doubt with opey, rectus; Anglo-Saxon, Doubts have been thrown upon the derivation of senatus from senex, but we think that this passage removes them. Lex. Leg. In Swedish and Gothic, laws are named Lagen, formed from Legen, to lay foundations, as Gesetz in German, from Setzen ; AngloSaxon, Lah, Laga; Isl. Lag, Laug, Log; Dan. Low; Eng. Law. Many would derive it from legere, lesen (to read); but partly this word in its first meaning was legen, and partly people had laws long before they could read. very Lucumones. Lucomon. Among the Tuscans, and in Mantua, men of dignity, the presidents of the Curia. In Anglo-Saxon Lahman, Lawgiver. According to Verel, Lagman, Lagmadur, Governor of a Province; so Denelage, Law of the Danes. Pers. Chargah; Teut. place of meeting, Church. In Kero, Chirichu; Danish, Kirke; Swed. Kyrka, probably from Kören, an out-chosen society. In Rome, the place of meeting of the dignitaries; in Germany, of the religious community. The derivation of Old High Dutch kyrihha and Anglo-Saxon cyrice, from cëósan, ceás, coren, is right; it thus immediately represents the Greek xxλnoia, the called or chosen portion. We have thus given, together with our own comments, a portion (a small one only) of Professor Jäkel's work. If in general we appear to differ widely from him, it must be borne in mind that we have generally selected as the object of our comment the word which appeared to need correction as stated by him: his examples, in this part of his work, extend from page 36 to 126; and after having thus given the resemblances in form between the Latin and German languages, and always, whether right or wrong, asserted the derivation of the Latin from the German, he proceeds to the second part of his argument, viz. the similarity of their inflections and conjugations. Upon the first of these we wish to bestow a few words, because we think that Jäkel has adopted a dangerous heresy, which his authority will help to spread. It was early observed that in Danish and Swedish the article was in certain cases appended to the word; that this occurred when a definite sense was to be given to it, and that then the noun assumed a very different appearance from its plain indefinite form. The Professor, therefore, assumes that this occurred in Gothic and Latin also, and that the whole of the theory of declension depends upon this addition of the article-a conclusion eminently false. He first gives the three following paradigms of the definite article: and pretexting that the substantive declensions would be too long in examining, gives only the paradigm of the Gothic adjective as a convincing proof of the origin of the inflection, viz. the final addition of the definite article. Then asserting that the same thing occurs in Greek by the mere addition of ős, %, %, the true articulus postpositivus (apрov úπотα * In Gothic s generally becomes ≈ (not ts) in the middle of words. σόμενον), he instances the nouns ἀετ-ός, τιμή, ῥόδον and ἄλλο. We might object to the relative is, and not the usual ó, ǹ, tó being made to correspond with sa, so, pata; but as he does his best to confound them, we suspect he was desirous of getting rid of this distinction: he therefore assumes that after a time the Greeks forgot that they had already appended one article to their noun, and so found it necessary to use a second; and supposes that the same thing might take place in German. This he illustrates at some length in modern German, and proceeds to apply his theory to the Latin, which he supposes to have had us, is, a, um for its article. So pisc-is, reg-s (rex), dent-s (dens), nomens (nomen), &c. &c., fruct-us, veh-a (via). It may also at times be er, when it is is not the contracted wair, vir.* To this principle generally we object on two grounds: first, because it leaves the question just where it stood before; for if the adjective and noun have only their inflections by the addition of the relative pronoun, the forms of the pronoun itself equally require to be accounted for; because, in short, the origin of the -amma in the dat. s. of the adjective, and the dat. sing. of the pronoun or article, is equally obscure; and because the general form must have been common to both: we therefore say, not that blind-amma was so formed because the pronoun was pumma, but that both blind-amma and p-amma were so formed because -amma was in Gothic the form of the dative case. Neither Professor Jäkel, nor we, can tell why it was so; nor can we tell a bit more why cel signified to be over: just as little do we know why the oak had not the leaves of the tea tree, or the Teuton the thick lips and woolly hair of the Ethiopian: how the life in the man, the sap in the tree, and the principle of language in the tongue have developed themselves into their existing form, we know not. Our second objection is equally fatal; it is connected with the last, and runs thus; that in order to make out the derivation of the declension from the pronoun, he keeps what is the sign of case of both, and throws away the pronoun itself, the p, which contains its root: had he found blind-pamma, &c. it would have strengthened his case, but blind-þamma he never did, nor could find: the case of the Greek appears to make more strongly for him, because the os is apparently without a * We hope we have got rid of this wairer, which we are sorry to see the Professor adopt. It is never to be forgotten that throwing away consonants can only be resorted to when there is no other possible method of explanation, and then only when a comparison of the same word in other languages warrants it: we cannot doubt that ʼn has been left out in Anglo-Saxon sidh, journey, because we have Goth. sinps; nor in AngloSaxon sodh because Old Nor. sannr, Anglo-Saxon gos because Old High Dutch kans, Lat. anser, Sansk. hams-a, cycnus. ? Does not this loss of a consonant always lengthen the vowel? VOL. X. NO. XX. F F consonant; but we beg to restore the important aspirate, to read the word ős, Hos, and to ask if in the added syllable of inflection, which he asserts to consist of this only, he finds the working of this breathing, this letter H?-He does not. In considering the forms of the Greek and Latin verb, i. e. the personal forms and such of the tenses as are formed by an additional syllable, he makes use of the personal verb of being, in the same way as he before made use of the pronoun. To this we answer as we did before: "Whence came the forms of the personal verb itself?" It is evident that the same secret law which determined them determined the forms of other verbs also. We shall not take to pieces, bit by bit, the various verbs of being which contribute in all these languages to make up the one in use, but content ourselves with the observation, that generally in this method of addition the root is thrown away, and the form only remaining, this (which would have equally been the form of the verb under examination) is called, for the system's sake, the substantive verb. The portion of his work which embraces from page 156 to 231, is a historical inquiry into the peoples that made up the Latin nation, and a philological investigation of their names. This lies without our province, and in general we avoid such canvassing of names, because we never feel that we have sure footing at first. We will not, therefore, prejudge our author here, but leave him to better scholars, and those who are more deeply versed in the history of the world's migrations. And with this we take leave both of the Professor and our readers: we do not profess much originality in what we have addressed to them, but we hope and believe that a good deal of it is new to Englishmen, and that it will thus be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable to them. Above all, we know that what we have laid down is true: of our own etymological comments the learned in these matters may judge: of the correctness of the principles on which our comments rest we cannot admit a doubt; we have tried them long and carefully. And here a word or two to young etymologists must not be omitted: we warn them against theorizing too soon; it is a delightful occupation, and one to which the constitution of the mind leads us of necessity; but at one time it is ruinous, while later employed it leads to great and useful conclusions. Generalization implies a previous knowledge of individual cases, and we therefore implore such as seriously incline to these studies, and who feel within themselves that they may thus profitably lay out their talents for the advantage of themselves and of the world, to walk with caution, and to doubt well; to rest in hope of seeing at some future time |
