the obscurity of their history prevents them from misleading the imagination, by recalling to it the objects or phenomena to which they owed their origin. The notions, accordingly, we annex to them, may be expected to be peculiarly precise and definite.” (Stewart’s Phil. Essay, p. 184.) Indeed all attempts at descriptive terminology have utterly failed, and have impeded, instead of advancing, the progress of knowledge. “Medicine (observes the same eminent writer, in another place,) is a practical profession. That knowledge is most essential to its students, which renders them the most useful servants of the public; and all reputation for extrinsic learning (such, for instance, as Sanscrit and Arabic,) which is acquired at the expense of practical skill, is meretricious, and deceives the public, by dazzling their judgment.”
Although Mr. Tytler has throughout, unconsciously to himself, we doubt not, overstrained his argument, yet is there one passage which, we are free to confess, trenches on the extravagant. “The great sources of our language,” he states, “must be shown; the Saxon, the Latin, and the French. We must explain what words and what idioms are derived from each, and what changes they have undergone in their passage. Till this be all done, difficult as it may seem, we may by much practice impress upon the natives a sort of jargon, and agree to call it English; but it will bear scarcely more resemblance to real English than to the dialect of the Hottentots.” In a word, if we do not make lexicographers of native sub-assistant surgeons, they will not be able to set a fracture, or to prescribe a dose of calomel; and their English remarks or directions, though perfectly intelligible, will amount, in fact, to nothing but a Hottentot jargon! Need we, in refutation of this exaggerated view, remind your Lordship, that there are many respectable native gentlemen in Calcutta, who both speak and write English correctly and fluently? The works of the late Rammohan Roy were not
