Wet le de tesi dan de innigots Redeneerbunet van hart end verstand LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & CO. Want, daar wij de zaken-zelve niet dan door zekere hare hoedanigheden kennen, zoo moeten wij ons wel by het gene zij voor ons kennelijk hebben bepalen, en dus wordt in daad en wezen het voorwerp der Taal tot niets dan abstractien van hoedanigheden beperkt. BILDERDIJK. As we can only know things by their qualities, so is our conception things necessarily confined to that which is perceptible to us in them; and thus the object of all language is, in fact and essence, limited wholly and solely to ABSTRACTIONS of qualities. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE 10 THE SECOND VOLUME, The present Volume was ready for the press at the same time with the other; but circumstances, of no interest to any one but the Publisher, have prevented its appearance till now, One of the critics who have favoured the first Volume with their notice, rebukes it for being an illusive, unsatisfactory developement of our PROVERBS; ignorantly (I will not suppose intentionally) mistating the expressed object of this ESSAY, in which not only no one PROVERB is contained, but in which no such subject is even alluded to, by the title or in any one paragraph in any of its pages, In the very first page of the Volume, “ Phrases and Sayings, which, by their literal form, do not bear out the meaning they are used in, and terms not yet satisfactorily acounted for," are announced as the object of this Essay. How, then, can the illustration of PROVERBS be foisted in as any part of the design, unless through sheer ignorance or purposed misrepresentation, Of the term PROVERB, I am in charity bound to suppose the above critic is the only Englishman who does not know the meaning, or else I should |