gentilise, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. Man A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle a man of reflection. The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New Church, as it is called, appears to be a miscellany of Calvinism and Quakerism; but it is hard to understand it. MAY 7, 1830. Horne Tooke.—“ Diversions of Purley.”—Harris's “ Hermes.”*—Gender of the Sun in German. ORNE TOOKE was pre-eminently a ready-witted man. He had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no progression or development. All that is worth anything (and that is but little) in the "Diversions of Purley" is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, but there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet ; at last, a quarto volume, believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet. It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so divine a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language, or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the "Hermes," was dealing not very profoundly, it is true-with the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is a very dif ferent thing. In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. I must say, all that decantata fabula about the genders of the sun and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in the PlattDeutsch of the north of Germany there were only two definite articles-die for masculine and feminine, and das for neuter. Then it was die sonne, in a masculine sense, as we say with the same word as article, the sun. Luther, in constructing the Hoch-Deutsch (for really his miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the fundamental act of construction of the literary German), took for his distinct masculine article the der of the Ober-Deutsch, and thus constituted the three articles of the present High German, der, die, das. Naturally, therefore, it would then have been, der sonne; but here the analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed, and as sonne had the arbitrary feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its old article die, which, originally including masculine and feminine both, had grown to designate the feminine only. To the best of my recollection, the Minnesingers and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine; and, since Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the classical gender affixed to the sun so much that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or some other synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my doubts, whether, upon more accurate investigation, it can be shown that there ever was a nation that con 1 sidered the sun in itself, and apart from language, as the feminine power.1 The moon does not so clearly demand a feminine, as the sun does a masculine sex: it might be considered negatively or neuter;-yet if the reception of its light from the sun were known, that would have been a good reason for making her feminine, as being the recipient body. As our the was the German die, so I believe our that stood for das, and was used as a neuter definite article. The Platt-Deutsch was a compact language like the English, not admitting much agglutination. The OberDeutsch was fuller and fonder of agglutinating words together, although it was not so soft in its sounds. MAY 8, 1830. Horne Tooke.-Jacobins.-Women.*-Godwin.* HORNE TOOKE said that his friends might, if they pleased, go as far as Slough, he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, have you a moral right to walk arm in arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving him your countenance, prevent his being taken up? The history of all the world tells us, that immoral means will ever intercept good ends. Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible; but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, and morals, and domestic happiness into the hands of the aristocrats. Thank God 1 Among Coleridge's Poems will be found an epigram, "On the Curious Circumstance that in the German Language the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine." that they did so. England was saved from civil war by their enormous, their providential, blundering. Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings and the convictions of the whole matronage of his country? The women are as influential upon such national interests as the men. Horne Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. Godwin; who, nevertheless, had that in him which Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good deal of Tooke at one time he left upon me the impression of his being a keen, iron man. Poetry.* I MAY 9, 1830. .*—Persian and Arabic Poetry-Book of Job.*-Milesian Tales. -Ezekiel.* MUST acknowledge I never could see much merit in the Persian poetry, which I have read in translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it, and but a glimmering of fancy. It is, in fact, so far as I know, deficient in truth. Poetry is something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. Arabian Nights' Tales are a different thing-they are delightful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a good deal of Greek fancy in them. No doubt we have had a great loss in the Milesian Tales.1 The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. The The Milesiacs were so called, because written or composed by Aristides of Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in that rich and luxurious city. Harpocration cites the sixth book of this collection. Nothing, I believe, is now known of the age or history of this Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid : and afterwards, Junxit Aristides Milesia crimina secum Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nec obfuit illi Fasti, ii. 412-43. Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the profundity, of that passage in Ezekiel,1 "Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest." I know nothing like it. MAY 11, 1830. Sir T. Monro.-Sir S. Raffles.-Canning. IR THOMAS MONRO and Sir Stamford Raffles were ST both great men; but I recognize more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says otherwise. I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of's. Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire and also from the incident mentioned in the Plutarchian life of Crassus, that after the defeat at Carrhæ, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by, if history has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a case) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of Seleucia, and a portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal of such infamous compositions, c. 32. The immoral character of these tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly established; they were the Decameron and Heptameron of antiquity.-H. N. Ć. Chap. xxxvii. v. 3.-H. N. C. |