structing, especially in semi-mechanical contrivances, a genius like that of Franklin. There are in his earlier vocabularies notable contrivances of method, order, and typography, for conveying in simple ways information about etymology and the like. In the Century there are many ingenious devices of arrangement and notation especially to indicate pronunciation. Those are of special importance which give the pronunciation of letters of varying sound. He also makes an onslaught on the irregularities and inconsistencies of English spelling.
In his work upon Sanskrit, studying old manuscripts, observing, systematizing, expounding ancient speeches, he would be apt to think of language as record merely. But in dealing with modern languages and especially with the lexicography of English, he could not fail to recognize it as machinery,—mighty machinery working for the future. He would pride himself on the conquest of the past, the reconstruction of history in his exposition of Sanskrit; but his English lexicography would remind him that the highest praise of a branch of knowledge is that it is fruitful, that "we seek truth for generation, fruit, and comfort." His linguistic philosophy also, his view of words as inventions, of each language as an aggregation of these inventions, a national institution, and of the science of language as a branch of human history, made it a matter of course that he should regard language as a field for improvements, like other inventions and institutions.
Professor Whitney had already, in 1867, in his lectures on Language and the Study of Language, and in a
