His voice
was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no
progression or developement. All that is worth any thing (and that is but
little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter
which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, hut
there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto
volume, 1 believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons
and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the
pamphlet, It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so
divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political
squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who
gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system
of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language
by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language,
or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair.
Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing--not very profoundly, it is true,--with
the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes
and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of
words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is
a very different thing.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129