374 On English Prcetentes. jectives, and verbs formed in their turn from nouns and ad- jectives though this is perhaps the most interesting and important question in the etymology of our tongues. The error fallen into by most English grammarians has resulted froni their confining themselves to the appearances of the verbs at some particular time, and their neglecting to inquire how and whence such forms arose, and what assistance might be gained from languages cognate to their own : in order to avoid this I shall call up the whole mass of Teutonic lan- guages, from the earliest period, and following in the steps of that mighty philologist James Grimm, attempt to sub- stitute a rational scheme for a word, by using the aids which history offers. For it must be quite clear to every one who has ever studied a language at all, that a great number of eases are not to be explained by any thing which he at any given time finds in the language itself; the English student for example would be very much puzzled if he were asked to say how the word day^ the word fair^ the word hrain came to mean what they do. But the very first help which he would clutch at, would be the hope that in an earlier form of the language he might find a key to their meaning, and that a less corrupted combination of vowels and xonsonants might hint at the real signification of the roots : he might possibly find a difficulty in discovering the secret meaning of the roots ddg^ fag and hrdg by which the conceptions on which they rested were introduced into the words dag (Gothic Dags) fdg-er and hrdg-en^ but he would at any rate not be quite so likely to blunder as if he contemplated the ai in those modern forms as a true vowel. To take another and commoner instance ; how much painful labour has not been bestowed upon the simple expression " me- thinks**' by those who could not reconcile the apparent error of grammar with what they knew of the habits of the lan- guage. Yet when we reflect, that it was not till a late period that the form think spread itself beyond its limits, and in- volved a similar yet distinct verb, that the Gothic j^ugkjan. Anglo-Saxon J^yncan. Ohd. Dunhan. Nhd. Dunken. videri^ is as far removed in form as meaning from the Gothic bagkian. Ohd. Denhan. Anglo-Saxon J^encan. Nhd. Denken. cogitare^ our difficulty vanishes at once. ^^ Me-thinks*" is then a dat.
