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ively called by Müller the Bow-wow theory), which he thus states and refutes :

"It is supposed that man, being as yet mute, heard the voices of birds and dogs and cows, the thunder of the clouds, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of the forest, the murmurs of the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. He tried to imitate these sounds; and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the objects from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea, and elaborated language." "Our answer is, that though there are names in every language formed by mere imitation of sound, yet these constitute a very small proportion of our dictionary. They are the playthings, not the tools, of language, and any attempt to reduce the most common and necessary words to imitative roots ends in complete failure." "There are of course some names, such as cuckoo, which are clearly formed by an imitation of sound. But words of this kind are, like artificial flowers, without a root. They are sterile, and are unfit to express any thing beyond the one object which they imitate."

The number of objects, indeed, which could receive their designation in this way is very small. Examples chosen to illustrate it are nearly always the names of animals which utter some well-known cry, or else bells, drums, or the like, the characteristic feature of which is the sound. But if language, which is sound, can only imitate, it obviously has no means of expressing the objects of any sense but that of hearing, nor any act but that of sounding; and only one verb is possible, viz. "to sound." And as we have found the verbal idea to be the primitive, this theory manifestly falls to the ground at once, since none of the essential and fundamental ideas-" to go," "to stand," "to see," "to strike," " to hold"-could possibly receive their designation by it. In truth, however, the words formed on this principle betray themselves at once in most languages as exceptional words, and so proclaim the Bow-wow theory not to be the correct one for the great body of the language. They generally find it necessary to declare their imitative character by reduplication of the root: thus, in the designations of sounds in Chinese given by Müller, "the cock crows, kiao kiao; the. wild-goose cries, kao kao; the wind and rain sound, siao siao; bells sound, tsiang tsiang," &c. And so in the Aryan languages: KÓKKU, cuculus, cuckoo; Germ. Uhu, Lat. ulula, the owl; emo; tintinnabulum; turtur; and in languages of quite different origin, as in Galla, bilbila, a bell.

This theory being inadequate to the explanation of the origin of the great body of roots, the Interjectional (styled by Müller the Pooh-pooh) theory is stated and rejected:

"Does not man utter cries, and sobs, and shouts, according as he is affected by fear, pain, or joy? These cries or interjections were re

presented as the natural and real beginnings of human speech." "But these interjections are only the outskirts of real language. Language begins where interjections end. There is as much difference between a real word, such as 'to laugh,' and the interjection 'ha, ha !' between I suffer' and 'oh,' as there is between the involuntary act and noise of sneezing and the verb 'to sneeze.'

Both these theories were more popular formerly, before the rise of comparative grammar, than they ever can be with those who understand the achievements of this science. For the chief temptation to them was given by an apparent expressiveness in the sounds themselves of which many words are composed; and this expressiveness frequently vanishes altogether when the word is traced to its etymon.

"Who does not imagine that he hears in the word 'thunder' an imitation of the rolling and rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their god Thor playing at ninepins? Yet.... the root is tan, to stretch. In Sanskrit the sound 'thunder' is expressed by the same root tan; but in the derivatives tanyu, tanyatu, and tanayitnu, thundering, we perceive no trace of the rumbling noise which we imagine we perceived in the Latin tonitru and the English thunder. The same root tan, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are any thing but rough and noisy. The English tender, the French tendre, the Latin tener, are derived from it." "Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French sucre, sucré ? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called 'sarkhara, which is any thing but sweetsounding."

And so with regard to the Interjectional theory :

"It is said that the idea of disgust takes its rise in the senses of smell and taste, in the first instance probably in smell alone; that in defending ourselves from a bad smell we are instinctively impelled to screw up the nose, and to expire strongly through the compressed and protruded lips, giving rise to a sound represented by the interjections 'faugh! foh! fie! From this interjection it is proposed to derive not only such words as foul and filth, but, by transferring it from natural to moral aversion, the English fiend, the German Feind. If this were true, we should suppose that the expression of contempt was chiefly conveyed by the aspirate f, by the strong emission of the breathing with half-opened lips. But fiend is a participle from a root fian, to hate, in Gothic fijan; and as a Gothic aspirate always corresponds to a tenuis in Sanskrit, the same root in Sanskrit would at once lose its expressive power. It exists in fact in Sanskrit as piy, to hate, to destroy; just as friend is derived from a root which in Sanskrit is pri, to delight."

So far the result obtained is purely negative; and it might be said, "If this is all you linguists can do, you leave us in a worse state of ignorance respecting the origin of language than

we were in before: you pull down the theories which we had carefully built up, and which based language on faculties which actually do prompt man to utterances bordering on language,the power of imitation, and the sensations of fear, joy, and pain,and you give us nothing in their place." If this were strictly true, it would nevertheless be a great advance towards knowledge to have proved that these two theories of "Bow-wow" and "Pooh-pooh" are contradicted by facts as regards the great body of a language. For they really sink the first men to the condition of brutes. Brutes have the imitative faculty, which is the essence of "Bow-wow," and experience the same sensations which produce "Pooh-pooh." But whereas brutes perceive individual things, man perceives first what is general (verbal ideas), under which he ranges the various individual things that attract his notice, and names them accordingly. Why the primitive Aryan said gå for 'to go,' sthú for 'to stand,' and not vice versa, we cannot explain fully, this must be confessed; we regard these syllables not as imitative, nor as an involuntary outburst of feeling occasioned by the act of going or standing, but as signs which have been acknowledged and accepted to designate these acts. That man should speak is a necessary consequence of his thinking; and it is utterly unphilosophical to imagine a period of mutism, during which his thoughts had not yet found any means of communication, or were gradually elaborating a language. It is even contrary to evidence; for we know that if an Englishman find himself cast on a desert island with a savage, where each is absolutely necessary to the other, a medium of communication will soon be established. In such a case, it is a chance which language will be adopted: if the savage catches at the meaning of the Englishman's verb 'to go' before the latter has discovered the savage's equivalent to it, the English word will be adopted by both; and if at the same time the Englishman has found out the word used by his companion for 'to eat' before the latter has discovered the English word, the savage's word will be adopted; and thus their means of communication will be a sort of patchwork of terms mutually intelligible. Surely something like this must have been the origin of all language; except that in the former case each party had possessed a language before, of which he had had to give up a part, in return for a corresponding part of his companion's which he adopted. In the beginning of all things we must suppose men trying to express the notion of eating,' 'going,' &c., each with his own syllable, until one understood what the other meant; and the word which was thus apprehended became fixed, was accepted by both parties as the designation of the act, and became, in short, the first word of a language. When the smallest start has been made, the further progress is incalculably

swift; so eager is man for communication with his neighbour, that a single common point gained becomes the nucleus of a whole field; the reasoning or abstracting faculty forms designations for numberless things from the single root to eat;' and when its capabilities can be extended no further, the same process is repeated with some other root, till then unknown; and the process becomes easier each time, from the previous settlement of a certain number of words: we all know how greatly communication with people whose language we do not know is facilitated if we know only half a dozen words of it. The original settlement of roots must therefore have been a tentative process: the number that were actually adopted was very small, consisting only of those which succeeded in making themselves generally intelligible, from a vast, nay. an infinite, number which may have been tried by individuals, but which, failing of the great end of all language, intelligibility to others, dropped off. Have we not noticed infants deliberately invent words and use them perseveringly, till, finding they cannot make them understood, they give them up as a bad job?* Should it be objected that we, after all, make it a matter of chance why each root obtained the meaning which it assumed, we shall not dispute the point. If we are clear upon this point,-that the possession of clear thought, the generalizing faculty, and the conception of personality, which distinguish man from the brutes, rendered speech a necessity, and likewise furnished the form in which it must develop itself so soon as it had received the least start,-then we have assigned the whole course of language as something existing to the domain of reason, and can afford to admit that it was at the outset a matter of indifference, and, as such, liable to be determined mainly by chance, what syllable should be adopted to denote 'to go,'' to eat,' and the rest.

* Yet Müller says, “It shows a want of appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of articulate speech." "Children, in learning to speak, do not invent language. Language is there ready made for them." "It is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would invent a language. It would be impossible, unnatural, and illegal to try the experiment; and without repeated experiments, the assertions of those who believe and those who disbelieve the possibility of children inventing a language of their own are equally valueless." To us it appears that, in the gradual advances made by infants towards intelligible speech, we have the process of the origin of all language daily repeated before our ears. The language that an English child first utters is not English; and months or years pass before he casts off the words of his infancy. The nurse often has extreme difficulty in discovering the meaning of some word of the child's own formation which obviously has to him a welldefined meaning. As he has intercourse with others besides his nurse, and perceives that they do not understand his speech, he finds it necessary to acquire the proper English words. This is exactly the process which we assume as the origin of all language: the terms which made themselves most generally understood supplanted those of limited range-the infantine terms, as it were.

We do not find quite so explicit a statement by Dr. Müller of his opinion on this subject, although this seems to be the legitimate tendency of his previous arguments; he merely says that the original roots are "phonetic types produced by a power inherent in human nature." But when he adds,

"There is a law, which runs through nearly the whole of nature, that every thing which is struck rings. Each substance has its own peculiar ring. . . . . It was the same with man, the most highly organized of nature's works,"

we think he has introduced (" as an illustration only, and not as an explanation") something entirely irrelevant. What the sound given forth by unorganized metal plates or wires, when struck from without, has in common with the utterances given forth by the organized human frame, from an impulse within, we are at a loss to conceive. C. F. Becker's conception of language as a natural organism of the human frame, though it does not explain, nay simply refuses to explain, is far more just than this illustration, which compares it with unorganized matter.

We must now take leave of Dr. Müller, and of a work full of learning and of genius, which has the happy art of presenting a scientific and abstruse subject in a form which neither renders it inaccessible to persons of ordinary cultivation, nor abandons the scientific mode of discussion,-a work which has been long wanted both on the Continent and in England, and which has been executed with such wisdom and care, that it will probably long remain the chief authority on the Science of Language.

ART. VII.-STREET BALLADS.

FOR several years the fact that the street ballad-singer is disappearing from amongst us, has been forcing itself more and more on the unwilling minds of ourselves, and the few others who, from some strange and perverse idiosyncrasy, take an interest in this ancient if no longer honourable profession. His decline has latterly, we fear, been more rapid than that of any of his brethren of the streets. We can still make pretty sure, in several places well known to us, of coming across patterers in the exercise of their varied vocations, and can, by diverging a few hundred yards from our accustomed walk, acquire the privilege of investing the sum of one penny sterling in the purchase of five golden sovereigns, a 107. bank-note, a composition for the instant removal and obliteration of dirt spots, grease spots, blood spots, and every other spot or stain to which mortal clothes are heirs, or some other equally advantageous bargain. Not seldom we

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