Transcriber's note:

A few typographical errors have been corrected. Theyappear in the text like this, and theexplanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the markedpassage.

THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,

LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF
PHYSICIANS, LONDON; MEMBER OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
NEW YORK; LATE PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AND LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

THIRD EDITION,

REVISED AND GREATLY ENLARGED.

LONDON:

TAYLOR, WALTON, AND MABERLY,

UPPER GOWER STREET, AND IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1850.

LONDON:
Printed by Samuel Bentley & Co.,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

THE REV. WILLIAM BUTCHER, M.A.,

ROPSLEY, LINCOLNSHIRE,

IN ADMIRATION OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS A LINGUIST,

AND AS A TESTIMONY OF PRIVATE REGARD,

The following pages are Inscribed,

BY HIS FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

London,

Nov. 4, 1841.

{v}

PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND EDITION.

The first edition of the present work was laid before the public, with the intention of representing in a form as systematic as the extent of the subject would allow, those views concerning the structure and relations of the English language, which amongst such scholars as had studied them with the proper means and opportunities, were then generally received; and which, so being received, might take their stand as established and recognized facts. With the results of modern criticism, as applied to his native tongue, it was conceived that an educated Englishman should be familiar. To this extent the special details of the language were exhibited; and to this extent the work was strictly a Grammar of the English Language.

But besides this, it was well known that the current grammarians, and the critical philologists, had long ceased to write alike upon the English, or {vi}indeed upon any other, language. For this reason the sphere of the work became enlarged; so that, on many occasions, general principles had to be enounced, fresh terms to be defined, and old classifications to be remodelled. This introduced extraneous elements of criticism, and points of discussion which, in a more advanced stage of English philology, would have been superfluous. It also introduced elements which had a tendency to displace the account of some of the more special and proper details of the language. There was not room for the exposition of general principles, for the introduction of the necessary amount of preliminary considerations, and for the minutiæ of an extreme analysis. Nor is there room for all this at present. A work that should, at one and the same time, prove its principles, instead of assuming them, supply the full and necessary preliminaries in the way of

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THE