considerate readers have been led to entertain, that it has been my object rather to report the result of other men's investigations than to produce a work which would be entitled to claim a distinct and original position in this department of literature. For the credit, therefore, of English scholarship, which is too often subordinated to the learning of Germany, I think it necessary, in publishing a third edition of this work, to direct attention to some of the features which have hitherto distinguished this book from all other treatises on comparative grammar. The numerous contributions to Greek lexicography, and to the interpretation or correction of particular passages in the Greek authors, do not require any mention, and may be left to speak for themselves. But the independence of the work, as a new contribution to comparative philology in general, rests on the same foundation as that of the primary German treatises, and I venture to think that it has done as much as any other book of the same kiud to interpret the facts of language, to classify the phenomena, and to discover the laws which regulate the transmutations of sounds in cognate forms of human speech. In support of this conviction, I may appeal to the fact that the most accomplished English philologer of the present century-the late Mr. R. Garnett—has in more than one instance made the principles which were first indicated in this book, the acknowledged starting-point of his own profound and accurate investigations, and that German writers on comparative grammar have tacitly accepted my positions, or have written essays in proof of the combinations which had been already made in my first edition; to say nothing of the numerous and important details in which I have corrected the errors of my most eminent contemporaries. Above all, it must be remembered that this work was, at the time of its first appearance, the only complete treatise on inflected language then in existence either in England or on the continent, and that it inaugurated a new method and a new application of comparative philology, for it was the first attempt to combine speculations affecting the whole fabric

of human speech with the established system and well-tried materials of the old classical scholarship.

But although I am entitled to claim complete originality. both for the conception to which this work owes its existence, and for the new combinations, which are exhibited in almost every page, I am most willing to admit the accidental influences which directed my attention to comparative philology at a very early period. It is more than probable that a natural tendency would have led me to engage in lexicographic researches, like those of Ruhnken and Lobeck, and to speculate in Greek and Latin etymology, after the manner of Butmann and Döderlein, even if I had never heard of Grimm or Bopp; but it so happened that, as a student of University College, London, during the first two years of its existence (1828, 1829), I had been made aware of the advantages which might be derived from a study of Sanscrit, and had acquired some knowledge of that language; and having become a contributor to the Journal of Education immediately after proceeding to my first degree in 1834, I could not but be struck by Rosen's admirable reviews of Bopp's Comparative Grammar, and Pott's Etymological Researches, which appeared by the side of my own papers on subjects relating to classical scholarship. The time, at which I was thus once more attracted to comparative philology, was the epochal period of that study; and, for the success of my own special labours, it was fortunate, as I remarked on a former occasion, that I was enabled to abstain from all general speculations in linguistic science until I had passed through the schools of Bentley and Porson, of Buttmannn and Hermann, of Niebuhr and K. O. Müller, and had enjoyed the advantages common to all those who have encountered the competitive discipline of the University of Cambridge, advantages which the philological students of Germany are quite unable to appreciate.

The general design of this work was sufficiently stated in the preface to the first edition, and its antagonism to the principles of Horne Tooke is intimated without any reserve

in the introductory chapters (§§ 60–62, 126). Nevertheless, I have from time to time observed a tendency towards a misunderstanding of my general title, and as this may be the last occasion on which I shall have to write a new preface to the book, it may be worth while to explain why I have called this work "The New Cratylus," and what was its intended form.

When I was first led to a study of general philology, the "Diversions of Purley" was the standard book of reference in this country; a new edition had been recently published; an English dictionary had been commenced in accordance with its theory; and it was generally understood that its principles were unquestionably sound and valid. At an early period, however, I had convinced myself that Horne Tooke's method was not only vicious in itself, but also a mere reproduction of the linguistic sophistries which Plato had confuted in his Cratylus. When, therefore, I had become persuaded that the time had arrived for a radical reform of the current English philology, and saw my way to the attainment of satisfactory results, by making the old classical scholarship of the country my basis and substratum, it was not an unnatural consequence of so wide and ambitious a design that I should follow the established precedent of Francis Bacon, and as he called his treatises in opposition to Aristotle and in imitation of Plato by the now familiar names of Novum Organon and "New Atlantis,” I felt myself justified in adopting a similar designation for my onslaught on the Cratylus redivivus of Purley, and the winged words of his Heracleitean ultra-nominalism. It was at first my intention to make the parallel complete by assuming, as Horne Tooke had done, the form of a dialogue; and I wrote in this way the two chapters from which I proposed to develope the whole theory of language, namely, those in which I discussed the particles denoting a motive (book III. chapter IV.)* and the verbs signifying will and choice (book IV. chapter v.). But I found this machinery too cumbrous

* It was intended that the whole theory and its details should flow from an inquiry into the origin and structure of vena.

for the extent of my proposed undertaking, and without carrying the experiment any farther, I adopted the methodical and didactic form in which the work first met the public eye.

Such then are the claims of this work to a primary and independent position. Such are the circumstances in which it originated, and the design which its author proposed to himself. But its permanent usefulness, as a sufficiently popular introduction to the study of Comparative Grammar and Ethnography, must depend on the systematic completeness with which it treats of the necessary details, and its adaptation for continuous perusal. With regard to the former, the analytical tables of contents prefixed to the successive chapters will enable the reader to see whether it neglects any part of the subject. And with regard to the mode of exposition, it has certainly been my wish to write a book which might be read from beginning to end with as much ease as the student would listen to a series of lectures on the same heads. In this particular, at least, I do not fear a comparison with my fellow-labourers in Germany. For I doubt whether any one, who is not already acquainted with philology, would attempt to use the Grammars of Grimm and Bopp except as books of reference, and the new edition, which Pott has commenced of his etymological researches, is a mere farrago of crude materials, a confused lumber-room of illarranged information, which the most determined student would not enter without dismay or traverse without wearisomeness.

In the present edition I have carefully revised every page with reference, not only to the general progress of philological knowledge in the last few years, but also to my own studies during the interval, and I hope that the result will be found in a great number of little improvements. There is not so much enlargement as there was in the second edition compared with the first. Still there is a considerable increase of matter; for which I have in some measure made room by a more extensive use of the smaller type, by condensation and by the omission of passages quoted from other authors

or adequately represented in other works of my own. And while the principles of linguistic philosophy advocated in this book remain unaltered, I venture to hope that the competent critic will find them in many places confirmed by new arguments and illustrations.

In conclusion, I repeat here, what I said in the preface to the second edition, that continued experience and reflexion have convinced me of the increasing importance of the task which was for the first time attempted in this worknamely, the prosecution of comparative philology as the safe and ascertained basis of the old classical scholarship. And though a German philologer has at last ventured on a similar undertaking, in which I detect many traces of servile imitation, I have no reason to believe that this book has been superseded by any similar treatise either English or foreign. I have reason to know that it has been hitherto of some use in stimulation, guiding and assisting the studies of young philologers in this country, and it has been formally or virtually adopted as a text-book by more than one great University. Having, then, bestowed great pains on this revision, I venture to renew the hope, with which I concluded the preface to my last edition, that by the increased precision of its results and the greater accuracy of its details it may now contribute in a higher degree to establish a consistent theory of linguistic philosophy, and may connect Greek scholarship by firmer bonds with the general study of human speech and of the co-ordinate laws of thought.

J. W. D.

CAMBRIDGE,

June 10, 1859.