Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE m. ANGLO-SAXON VOCABULARY, LITERATURE, AND GRAMMAR. In order to a just estimate of the capacities of the AngloSaxon tongue, we must pass from the forms and sounds of its words, the sensuous impressions they produce on the organ of hearing, to their significance, their power of communicating fact and exciting emotion, which constitutes the essence of human speech. We must here admit that our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is not such as to enable us to pronounce on this point with as much certainty as in the case of many other languages, dead as well as living. The extant, or at least printed, literature of that tongue is not sufficiently extensive and varied in subject and in treatment to furnish us with the true and only means we can ever possess of learning the actual force of words, namely, observation of their use at different periods, in different combinations, and by different writers, and we therefore do not understand an Anglo-Saxon book as we do a work in a living foreign, or even an ancient classical, language. True the close alliance between the Anglo-Saxon and English helps us to run through Anglo-Saxon narrative works, and simple homilies like those of Alfric, with great ease: but wnen we Anglo-Saxon lexicography was in a very unsatisfactory condition until the appearance of Bosworth's laborious dictionary, which, though much behind the advanced linguistic science of our day, was a very timely and important addition to our facilities for studying the ancient mother tongue of England. The glossaries to Schmid's Gesetze dor Angpl-Sachsen, and to Groin's Bibliothek der Anfrel-Siichsischen Poesie, nre also valuable contributions to the samo branch of philology. But, after all, word-books cannot go beyond their authorities, ...
