On the Approaches to the English Language [pp. 434-456]

1874.] ON THE APPROACHES TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
student can read selections from the first 300 pp. of Bartsch's
Chrestomalthie de l'ancien Franoais, and thus prepare himself for
taking up such elaborate works as Ellis on Early English Ptonunciatiot.
We have attempted to lead, in imagination, the student from
Ulfilas to Chaucer. The road is a long one, and in many places
thorny, yet it is, according to our honest convictions, the only
safe approach to English philology. He who attempts to open
any other will certainly protract the journey. The course above
described, although intended to cover three years, is after all
imperfect. The utmost that the teacher can do is to explain
processes, to show the student how to work by working with
him. The student acquires practical familiarity with the rules,
the manipulations, so to speak, of the science, with the nomenclature, and with the text-books. This familiarity acquired, he
may be left to work for himself. The fruits of three years'
study will be in his brain, not as isolated facts and misty theories,
but in the shape of methodical training. We lay great stress
upon reading. It is not enough that the student know in a
general way the outlines of the phonetic changes in Gothic, Old
German, Anglo-Saxon, Old French. He must read in those
languages, he must have the concrete forms before him and explain them as they occur, grammar and lexicon in hand. Above
all, he must not be burdened with too much general philology.
It is a grave mistake to imagine that philology is something to
be taught by general lectures. Philology is a science of methods
and processes, and can be learned only through actual practice
in a given language or group of languages. The general theories
upon the inter-relations of languages, the development of roots,
the origin of speech, are indeed the final results of the science.
But these theories have been developed only by men ripe in the
profession, and are intelligible only to the initiated. The great
grammars of Bopp and Grimm, the Compendium and Chrestomathy of Schleicher, which are far from representing the most
advanced stages of investigation,* can scarcely be looked at
by the beginner. The student who has read and carefully digested a single chapter of Ulfilas, the Hildebrandslied, or the
*The most thorough-going, we do not say the most trustworthy, investigations
into language are the essays contained in Steinthal's Periodical for Ethnic Psychology.
29
453