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and finds expression, which it may be convenient to call the three adjections.

1. The first, which may be called the Flat1, is by collocation. Thus, brick and stone are substantives; but mere position before another substantive turns them into adjectives, as brick house, stone wall; and the latter, when condensed into a compound substantive, stone-wall, may again by collocation make a new adjective, as 'Stone-wall Jackson.'

Thus we speak of garden flowers and hedge flowers:

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild.

Oliver Goldsmith, Deserted Village.

In some instances a substantive, through long standing in such a position, has acquired the adjectival habit exclusively. 565. Thus milch, in the expressions 'milch cow,' 'milch goat,' though now an adjective, yet is nothing but a phonetic variety of the substantive milk, just as church and kirk are varieties of the same word. In the German language the current substantive of milk has the form of our present adjective, viz. Milch. Let our particular example of this adjection be elm tree.

2. The second, which may be called the Flexional, is by modification of form, either (a) in the way of Case, as fool's paradise, nature's music. This is a power in poetry :

1 I have been asked, Why 'Flat'? To this I can only answer by another question: Why do you say 'a flat refusal'? or, a flat contradiction'? or, No, I won't, that's flat'? What does the word mean in the following quotation?' He turned neither better nor worse then flat Atheist,' Thomas Fuller, Life and Death of Franciscus Junius in 'Abel Redevivus,' 1651. Only this I will say, that it is not used disparagingly; for the structures which I have called Flat are of the purest native idiom, and it is due to these structures perhaps more than to any other that can be named, when good English style merits the praise of 'racy.'

Her angels face

As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.

Edmund Spenser, Faery Queene, i. 3. 4.

Rob. When thou wak'st, with thine owne fooles eies peepe.-A Midsommer Nights Dreame, iv. 1. 81.

The

or (b) through an adjectival formative, as elmen tree. latter, being the most prevalent of all modes of adjection, has occupied to itself the whole name of Adjective.

3. The third way, which may be called the Phrasal, is by means of a symbol-word, and most prominently by the preposition of, as gate of heaven, plank of elm.

In the compound knighthood the word knight affords an instance of the adjective by collocation. We may express the same idea in this form, knight's rank, or thus, knightly rank, and this is the second adjection. The third adjection is when we say rank or quality of knight.

This adjection we have learnt from the French; and although we use it less than our neighbours, yet we are well acquainted with such expressions as men of property, men of business, persons of strong opinions, the girl of the period, the men of this generation, arms of precision, days of yore, matters of course, families of note, garlands of delight.

426. This triple adjection pervades the language, and is one of the springs of its flexibility. Thus we may tabulate to almost any extent:

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The following line displays the first and third:

The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel.

H. W. Longfellow, King Robert of Sicily.

The next quotation displays the second and third :—

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Law rationall therefore, which men commonly vse to call the law of may be termed most fitly the law of reason.-R. Hooker, Of the Lawes, &c., i. 8.

nature,

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Cumulation of the second and third is employed in asseveration; as ' of the earth earthy':

Now such a view of the clerical office is of the world worldly.-Frederic Myers, Catholic Thoughts, ii. 18.

427. This analysis would not be quite idle if it were only for an observation which it enables us to make on the relative adjectional habits of the three languages.

1. The flat adjection is peculiarly English. There is indeed a rare and fitful use of it in French, but in German it is quite gone, having passed into the sphere of the compounds.

2. The adjection 2 (a), unknown in French, is common to English and German. The 2 (6) is the technical adjective, and all this section has been occupied with it, and it is common to the three as to all mature languages. But the German, being destitute of the First Adjection, and little disposed to avail itself of the Third, uses this Flexional one to an astonishing extent. Thus Jacob Grimm's Grammar is with perfect propriety called 'die Grimmsche grammatik,' and his works are spoken of as 'die Grimmschen werke.'

3. The third adjection is imitated a little in German and a good deal in English, but in neither to such a degree as to obscure the fact that it was French by origin, or to interfere with its natural heritage as a prominent

characteristic of the French in common with the other Romanesque languages.

Such are the three ways in which we manage the expression of the adjectival idea, the three methods of adjection, the variations in the Morphology of the Adjective.

This threefold variety of adjectives, Flat, Flexional, and Phrasal, has a philological importance which will more clearly be seen in the next section, where it will be made the basis of the whole arrangement.

3. OF THE ADVERB.

The adverbs

428. In Adverbs our attention shall be given to one leading character. It is that which has been already traced in the adjectives at the end of the last section. rise stage above stage in a threefold gradation. They are either Flat, Flexional, or Phrasal; and this division gives the plan of the present section.

If a substantive becomes an adverb by position we call it a Flat Adverb, as forest wild in 219. Or if an adjective is so transformed;—as

extreme.

All the former Editions being extream Faulty.-Preface to Telemachus ; translated by Littlebury and Boyer, 11th ed.; 1721.

these are flat adverbs. If we say extremely faulty we use a flexional adverb: and the same thing may be expressed by a phrasal adverb, thus, faulty in the extreme.

But before proceeding to catalogue, it will be desirable to apprehend clearly what an adverb is, in the most pure and simple acceptation of the term. The adverb is the tertiary or third presentive word. It has been shewn above that the substantive is the primary, that the adjective and verb are

co-ordinated as the secondary, and we now complete this trilogy of presentives by the addition of the adverb, which is the third and last of presentive words. Whatever material idea is imported into any sentence must be conveyed through one of these three orders of words. All the rest is mechanism.

We assign to the adverb the third place, although we know that it does not stand in that order in every sentence. We do so because this is the true and natural order; for it is in this order alone that the mind can make use of it as an adverb. Whether the adverb stand first, as in very fine child, or in the third place as in John rides well, either way it is equally third in mental order. As fine is dependent on child for its adjectival character, so very is dependent on the two for its adverbial character. There is a good meaning in very if I say 'a very child,' but it is no longer an adverbial

meaning.

429. As a further illustration of the tertiary character of the adverb, it may be noticed that it attaches only to adjectives and verbs, that is to the two secondary words. The adverb is further removed from the base of language, it is higher above the foundation by which language is based in physical nature; in other words, mind is more deeply engaged in its production than it is either in that of the substantive or of the adjective. Accordingly the adverbs cannot be disposed of in a catalogue such as we have made of substantives and adjectives. The power of making adverbs is too unlimited for us to catalogue them as things already moulded and made. The adverb is to be looked at rather as a faculty than as a product, as a potential rather than as a material thing.

Of all presentive words, the adverb has most sympathy with the verb. Indeed, this quality is already intimated in

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