HAVING stated the principle upon which I believe the phrases and terms of our language, belonging to the category explained in the above introductory remarks to the first edition of this Essay, are to be accounted for, and given such instances as had then occurred to me, little is left me to add in regard to the subject.

While reviewing the phrases and terms contained in that edition of this Essay for the purpose of the present, I found the adopted test of that principle true to its standard, and its evidence more decisive in proportion as I reduced what I hold to be the travestied form, to a closer resemblance, in sound and measure of syllables, with that which I deemed the original phrase or term. The nearer the mutual likeness in those respects, the clearer and more indisputable the identity of the two; judging by the comparison of the import in which we now use the travesties, with that conveyed by the original sound.

To admit the preponderance of letters, in the import of words, over that of sound, would be to constitute the Primer the principle of human communication and the amalgamator of the moral and physical constitution of speech, instead of mind and appropriate organs.

Whether, by an increased strictness in the application of the test I have proposed for the truth of the principle already suggested, I have here succeeded in a more direct revival of the true forms of that portion of the phrases and terms contained in the prior publication, or not, it is for others to decide; always premising, that every sentence of this Essay is offered simply as a proposition to the judgment of the reader, and not laid down as an axiom to be adopted in disregard of it. If the view I have presented of the sources of such phrases and terms is the true one, the former etymological basis of the lexicography of our language vanishes-to be replaced by a sounder one.

In stating our language to have been, at a former period, identical with the Low-Saxon, and that that language still survived, as to the main, in what we now term Dutch (the ellipsis of Low-Dutch, as Nederduitsch or, more definitely, Nedersachsisch or Platduitsch; Dutch being as Teutsch, Deutsch, Deudisch), I did not imagine such proposition to be either new or startling to any one who had urned his attention to the subject; having always een aware that with the soundest philologists of

Holland the fact was held indisputable, and having long known the like opinion to have been that of the same class among ourselves.

The learned and judicious CAMDEN, in his book of REMAINES, has the following passage; "The grounde of our language appertainith to the OLDSAXON, little differing from the PRESENT DUTCH, because they more than any other of their neighbours have hitherto preserved that speech from any grete forreine mixture."

By the OLD-SAXON let no one suppose it is the so named ANGLO-SAXON which is intended by those who use that term, nor that it is ever understood in such sense by any one duly acquainted with the meaning of the two terms. The English and Anglo-Saxon are sister-dialects of a same parent-tongue, but neither the source of the other; and the Anglo-Saxon is no more the author of the English than the English is of that. It has been a misconception in this regard, which has evidently bewildered most of our later philologists. To tell us English is like Anglo-Saxon, and to mean it comes out of that dialect, is, as to suppose one siser the parent of the other because we perceive a family-likeness between the two; instead of looking for the true parent of both, where the common principle and general constitution of each will be found in a same source and structure.

Dutch literature has so narrow a compass in the attention of any learned class among us, that it

may be right to say, in regard to the groundsyllables [themas] of that language, I have borrowed freely from the various details in the works of Bilderdijk, in my view, the author of the only doctrine by which the nature of language can be practically developed, or will ever be explicitly acounted for. He has taken up the question at the point where our own great Locke has stopped in his Essay, fulfilled the task and displayed a genius equal to it.

Among the critics, whose attention had been called by the first publication of the present Essay, is the scribe of a paper named The Athenæum, who, in addition to much indefinite scolding and vulgar abuse, has introduced a barefaced and evidently intentional untruth, by asserting, in confidence of the ignorance of those who might read him, there was no such word in the Dutch language as tocken [in the imperative form tock]; and implying, it was either the blunder of ignorance, or a purposed infidelity practised upon my readers:a falsehood to be detected by any one who will give himself the trouble of turning to the proper page in the standard dictionary of the Dutch language, called Kiliaan's; where he will find that verb as three distinct articles, in its three different imports, and in that in which the word is used in the place referred to by the above critic. The word is, in fact, the source of the Italian toccare, the Spanish tocar, the French toucher, and our to

touch, if not also of the Latin tangere, tetigi, tactus. I have noticed this untruth solely that the effrontery of the writer might not impose upon any one; otherwise as respects ruffianly abuse, studied falsehood, and want of argument, the writer of that paper has, in regard to this Essay, a rival in the editor of The Times.

In the ensuing volume a General Index to the two will be added.