knowledge is already in the possession of the reader. To be able to designate each word as such or such a part of speech, and to practise the rules for combining parts of speech together, is the ordinary task of grammar. The determination of the part of speech is the barrier beyond which grammar does not (generally speaking) pursue the analysis. Although what is called Parsing, or assigning words to their parts, is a juvenile exercise, yet it is nevertheless the surest test of a person's having learnt that which grammar has to teach; especially if he can do it in the English sentence. For it is easier to do in Latin. A boy may be quite ignorant of the meaning of a Latin sentence, and of each word in it; and yet he may be able to answer that navabat, for example, is a verb in the active voice, imperfect tense, indicative mood. He knows this from having learnt the forms of the Latin verb, and he knows the ending -abat for the verbal form of that voice, tense, and mood. Such knowledge is but formal and mechanical. If, however, in parsing English, he meets the verb loved, he cannot venture to pronounce what part of the verb it is by a mere look at the form. It may be the indicative, or the subjunctive, or it may be the participle. Which it is he can only tell by understanding the phrase in which it stands.

212. Throughout the Latin language the words are to a very great extent grammatically ticketed. In the English language the same thing exists, but in a very slight degree. In Latin, the part of speech is most readily determined by mere regard to the form, and it is only occasionally that attention to the structure becomes necessary. Parsing in Latin is therefore mainly an exercise in what is called the Accidence, that is, the grammatical inflections of words. In English, on the contrary, there is so little to be gathered by looking at the mere form, that the exercise of parsing trains

the mind to a habit of judging each word's value by reference to its yoke-fellows in the sentence. Parsing in English is an exercise in Syntax. A single example will make this plain. It would be a foolish question to ask, without reference to a context, What part of speech is love? because it may stand either for a verb or for a noun. But if you ask in Latin, What part of speech is amare or caritas? the question can be answered as well without a context as with. Each word has in fact a bit of context attached to it, for an inflection is simply a fragment of context, and a nominative is as much. an inflection as a genitive. This is the cause why it is easier to catch the first elements of grammatical ideas through the medium of a highly inflected language like Latin. On the other hand, those ideas can best be perfected through the medium of a language with few inflections, like English. Through such a medium we learn to see in language a reflex of mind, and to analyze it by reference not to the outward forms but to the inward intelligence.

213. In studying grammar through the English language, we purge our minds of the wooden notion that it is an inherent quality in a word to be of this or that part of speech. To be a substantive, or a verb, or an adjective, is a function which the word discharges in such and such a context, and not a character innate in the word or inseparable from it. Thus the word save is a verb, whether infinitive to save, or indicative I save, or imperative save me: but it is the selfsame word when it stands as a preposition, 'forty stripes save one.'

The force of these observations is not lessened by the fact that there are many words in English that discharge but one function, and are of one part of speech only. In such cases the Habit of the word has become fixed, it has lost the plastic state which is the original and natural condition of

every word, and it has contracted a rigid and invariable character. The bulk of Latin words are in this state, simply because they are not pure words at all, but fragments of a phrase. Each Latin word has its function as noun or verb or adverb ticketed upon it. But in English the words of fixed habit are comparatively few. In a general way it may be said that the pronouns are so in all languages. Yet even this group, of all groups the most habit-bound, is not without its occasional assertions of natural freedom. The prepositions are many of them in the fixed state, but the researches of the philologer tend to set many of them in a freer light. We must not therefore regard the parts of speech as if they were like the parts of a dissected map, where each piece is unfit to stand in any place but one. Each part of speech is what it is, either by virtue of the place it now occupies in the present sentence; or else, by virtue of an old habit which has contracted its use to certain special positions. The inflected word carries both position and habit about with it, in that very inflection by which its function is limited because its grammatical relations are determined.

214. Before we proceed to the examples which will illustrate these remarks, we must make a clearance of one thing which else might cause confusion. There is a sense in which every word in the world is a noun. When we speak of the word have, or the word marry, these words are regarded as objects of sense, and are mere nouns. Just in the same way in the expression 'the letter A,' this alphabetic symbol becomes a noun. In this aspect each item in the whole catalogue of letters and words in a dictionary is presented to our minds as a noun. And beyond the pages of the dictionary, there are situations in the course of conversation and of literature in which this is the case. Thus,

in Shakspeare, King John, i. 1, 'Have is have'; and in Longfellow's

Mother, what does marry mean?

In these cases the word is (as one may say) taken up between the finger and thumb, and looked at, and made an object of. It is no longer, as words commonly are, a symbol of some object or idea in the mind's meaning, i.e. subjective; it enters for the moment into an objective position of its own. There are many instances of this.

Must is a verb. But when we hear the popular saying Oh! you must, must you? Must is made for the Queen'here must is a noun.

This 'objective' citation of words being cleared away, it remains now to consider how words may change their subjective condition, that is to say, their relation to the thinking mind, and vary their characters as parts of speech accordingly. 215. And first, the verb may become a substantive, as— To err is human, to forgive divine.

To live in hearts we leave behind,

Is not to die.-Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground.

The word handicap is an old Saxon noun meaning a compromise or bargain, and in this character, I suppose, it figures in the technical language of horse-racing. This sporting substantive signifies the extra weight which horses. carry as a compensation for any advantage they may have in respect of age. It frequently stands for a verb, as in the following from a contemporary journal.

The legitimate objects of the Trades Unions are overlaid by elaborate attempts to handicap ability and industry, and to exclude competition. 216. Further examples of the functional interchange between substantive and verb:

With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 4.

In 1811 the Swedes, though not yet actually at war with England, were making active preparations for defence by sea and land, in case,' says Parry, we should be inclined to Copenhagen them.'-Memoirs of Sir W. E. Parry, by his Son, ch. ii.

Passing to more familiar and trivial instances, such as are (be it remembered) the best examples of the unfettered and natural action of a language, we hear such expressions as 'to cable a message'; and again, ‘If such a thing happens, wire me.'

I do not say that these expressions have become an acknowledged part of the language. If we confined our attention solely to that which is mature and established, we should act like a botanist who never studied buds, or a physiologist who neglected those phenomena which are peculiar to young things. Young sprigs of language have a levity and skittishness which render them unworthy of literature and grammar, but which make an exhibition of the highest value for the purposes of philology. There are many movements that are natural and that are among the best guides to the student of nature, which are discontinued with staid age. It is a main character of philology as contrasted with grammar that it is unconfined by literary canons, and that the whole realm of speech is within its province.

217. To such an extent does the language exert this faculty of verbifying a substantive, that even where there is already by the ancient development of the language a verb and a noun of the same stem, it will sometimes drop the established verb, and make a new verb by preference out of the noun. Thus we have the verb to graff, and the noun graft. But we have dropped the proper verb graff and have made a new verb out of the substantive. Everybody now talks of grafting, and says to graft, and we never hear of to graff except in church.

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