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"such as fruit, which raises his desire, and "who requests another to give it to him. SupOf improved .. Perception. posing our savage to be unacquainted with 66 words, he would, in that case, labour to make "himself be understood, by pointing earnestly

66

at the object, which he desired, and uttering, at the same time, a passionate cry. Supposing him to have acquired words, the first word, which he uttered, would, of course, "be the name of that object. He would not express himself according to our English "order of construction, Give me fruit,' but "according to the Latin order, Fruit give

me,' Pomum da mihi: for this plain reason, "that his attention was wholly directed towards "fruit, the desired object. This was the ex

citing idea; the object which moved him to 66 speak; and, of course, would be the first "named. Such an arrangement is precisely

putting into words the gesture, which nature taught the savage to make, before he was "acquainted with words; and, therefore, it may be depended upon as certain, that he "would fall most readily into this arrange

ment.

"Accustomed now to a different method of ordering our words, we call this inversion, "and consider it as a forced and unnatural "order of speech. But, though not the most logical, it is however, in one view, the most

"

"

"natural order; because it is the order suggested by imagination and desire, which always impel us to mention their object in the "first place. We might, therefore, conclude, "à priori, that this would be the order, in "which words were most commonly arranged at the beginnings of language; and accordingly we find, in fact, that, in this order, "words are arranged in most of the ancient tongues; as in the Greek, and the Latin; (c and, it is said, also in the Russian, the Sclavonic, the Gaelic, and several of the Ame"rican tongues

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I.

Of improved

Perception.

"All the other modern languages of Europe "have adopted a different arrangement from "the ancient. In their prose compositions,

very little variety is admitted in the colloca"tion of words: they are mostly fixed to one "order; and that order is what may be called "the order of the understanding. They place,

first, in the sentence, the person or thing, "which speaks or acts; next its action; and lastly, the object of its action. So that the "ideas are made to succeed to one another, "not according to the degree of importance,

• P. 135, 8vo. ed.

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I.

Of improved
Perception.

"which the several objects carry in the imagination, but according to the order of nature, and of time *."

*2

"It appears that, in all the successive changes, which language has undergone, as "the world advanced, the understanding has gained ground on the fancy and imagination. "The progress of language, in this respect, re"sembles the progress of age in man.. in man.

The imagination is most vigorous and predo"minant in youth; with advancing years the imagination cools, and the understanding "ripens. Thus language, proceeding from sterility to copiousness, hath, at the same "time, proceeded from vivacity to accuracy; "from fire and enthusiasm to coolness and precision †!"

33. The collocation of words, according to the order of desire or imagination, it is easy to perceive, must have been much better adapted to the purposes of poetry, than the collocation of them according to the order of the understanding; but a variety of flexible terminations is absolutely necessary to make words, so ar

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I.

ranged, intelligible; and, in these, all the
polished languages of modern Europe are de-
fective: wherefore it is impossible that they Perception.
Of improved
should ever rival those of the Greeks and
Romans in poetical diction and expression.
No language is more inflexible than the Eng-
lish; and none, except perhaps the French,
requires its words to be arranged more strictly
according to the order of the understanding:
but, nevertheless, when glowing sentiment or
passion is to be expressed; or when the mind.
of the speaker is so agitated as to be more
under the influence of feeling, than of thought,
it often reverts to the primitive order; and
allows, without any violation of idiom, the
words to be arranged by natural impulse in-
stead of artificial reflection or acquired habit.
That, which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have

says Macbeth, when agitated by remorse and
despair; and the passage would lose all its
energy and beauty, were the words arranged
according to the regular process of thought,
with the agent first, the action next, and the
object last-" I must not look to have honour,
love, obedience, troops of friends, &c. which
ought to accompany old age *." Shakspeare,

"Videsne, ut ordine verborum paulum commutato,
iisdem

K

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Of improved
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66

who wrote from feeling, has many happy in stances of the same kind; as me of my lawful pleasure, she bereft, &c. ;" but Milton, and other epic and moral writers in blank verse, who viewed nature through the medium of books, and wrote from the head rather than the heart, have often employed this inverted order merely to stiffen their diction, and keep it out of prose; an artifice, of all others, the most adverse to the genuine purposes of a metrical or poetical style; which, though known to be the result of study and labour, should always appear to flow from inspiration. In matters of taste, it is of little importance what the understanding knows by inference or analogy; but it is different with what the imagination perceives by immediate impression.

34. The pleasure, which we receive from verse, in light or didactic compositions; or such as are not capable of exciting or sustaining enthusiasm, arises from the charms of neatness, point, and emphasis; all of which are improved and invigorated by the regularity. of a metrical style, which facilitates the flow of utterance, and directs and fixes the attention to the particular idea, which the author wishes to impress most strongly. By these means, as well as by the periodical recurrence iisdem verbis stante sententia, ad nihilum omnia recident, cum sint ex aptis dissoluta."-Cic. Orator.