New-York daily tribune., 1858-12-24

mural of the Saxon adjective was made in and a. late
az the sixteenth century Hooker wrote my deare, Tor
,rv dear heart,s II WAS droppet after, and
since then the sccctive had been inle;lnahi~. Ae
verb had always more infections than aay other pad
OF speech suce they ce.ary iodicate tn'e'
The conJugatiOns Of the AngloSaxon anl the Norma"
had no points Of resemb anc-, ant 50 both "o'o
dropped, and the radical left s'ne to os 'e.er-
mined by ixiares. Shall and rW we're NOV u'ei d
anxiare- before they wee q, English. except by t1e
Scandinavians Mr. " ,rsh uext noticed tue tendency
Of the language to agglu'raton, w1ich Ensi''h hal
ms, before the time Of c5,1cer. This process, was
particularly exerphfed 10 the joinins Of the second
person singular TO the verb producing such forms
,-z..to4o ,esto ,edsopg for sieepes thou, SECS, thou
and yeo4,,, ,Jo, <e and he began 10 melt into tue
words IN which they bel"g-o. This, however,
tendency Of the spos language than OF the
xr,,,en ard Cbauc-r D. sG lees Of i. than the more
bomelv authors Of bis tine. Tne reduction Of language
4o writing turned the tide ald LET il ~ gard p r.
ton Thu aggutnstion wopld be really understood
IL supposed foreigner TO attempt TO wr e our
forms, az, for ins stcs: hnrvi haryu, haz=ee. Had
English remained longer unwrtten, it would probably
have had a full set Of grammatical forms. We had
lost much 10 losing the Saxon forms OF the
verb The Saxon had complete negative
from all verbs, begoning with vowel or
orr, a. mad for ne had, for ne has aod aHf}r
ne viH, which last was retantc in the phrase WAy
n,Uy a. the foru in none, neuher nerer. lie did
not thrk il improbable that one Of these forms
might be reacquired. The only formal and deliberate
attempt TO restore old form had been made oy the
s. cety of Friends With what they called the plain Ian
spaee and tfer want Of proved the sodty Of
the English lsnguag aud ts aversion 10 variety Even
among themselves ney f.ied TO the second person
of the verb ard often abused the secold personal pro-
noun. Thcy sad tte soH thou has for 1ee acrh ttou
hast. We might recover many of the Saxon wOris,
but the tendency Of our language was to the enioe-
tion If all dsuc lions OF and rumber aud person
by Infection. There had been many changes in the
of the pOsssssive. The Kings rCbeS ana he kHg's
traitors we're oncs in use, and oddly ss they nog
gOunded, they resly stranger than phr sse
now in common use, TIE Kings enemls. L)ige
called his translation Of Seneca, SeH,caS Trans
Iation. The possessive had been used in this way
by the best EDgsh writers until very recent period.
Mr. Marsh discussed the mooed point Of the origin Of
the posse ssive he believed that the general origin Of
the genetve possessive in in the Iudo-E lropeiu
isnsusges, was fact which must receive ulti-
mate. St the argument brought against the ex plan
ation, that Johns book was John has boOk-the al
ment that it ridiculous when applied to feminine
words-fell to the ground when il was remembered
that the original hi used to represen. nouns now
feminine aud neuter as well nouns masculine.
HIS used in the euuine as late le first half OF
the seventeenth century. His used instead Of as
in the original edition of King Jsmess translation of
the English Bible. Its said 70 occur in the orig
inal editions Of some Of Slskespeares plays. In the
first half of the seveneeDthc eotufy there was gen
era dslibe to the Of has the neater and yet as
had gained favor So many whole foos con-
tanned neuter possessive, using inetead, of
IL or hereoC Not far from this time singular
corruption general; it was common to
write, John his stock aud Mary Ter b0ok;
this wss founded on the grammatical theory before.
mentioned. A precisely similar corruption appeared
at the same time IN the Danish, Swedish, En-
plsh and German languages. Was not ths All rvi
depce that the posessive originated by some such
proce.s7 The rejection of Injections and especially
tie want of passive voice necesstated some strange
forms. Such phrase a. lam told, sounded oddly
enough TO foreigner. In late disco by learned
divine. be had seeD-may be fallen back upon, must
be gone ropgh srih ongh 10 be taken notice ot aud
IL ough not TO be tost sgh Of. These awkward forms
did not make the language less ineligible, but they
did make 1t less atittc They were, however, an out
growth of the spirit Of the age.
Prof Marsh, in conclusion, said that he would give
the next lecture Of the the 7th OF JsDuary
The remainder Of the would be less Theoretical
and more practical than the lectures which he hai
hitherto given.