veritatis zelus, nulla pietatis exempla, nulla denique pessimorum hominum supplicia, ullibi compareant. Impietas, superbia, avaritia, luxus, omnes ut plurimum occupant, et passim omnibus in locis grassantur; porro sentiunt quem promoverunt, et in coelos usque extulerunt, faeminae gubernationis fructum. Deus pro sua infinita misericordia, iram suam, quam sumus commeriti et procuramus quotidie, procul a nobis avertat. Whittingamo nostro, cui silentium ob libertatem loquendi impositum fuit, linguam relaxarunt, idque absque ulla conditione, quod nullam voluerit admittere. Cum nostris qui apud vos fuerunt, durius agitur: sed nostrae probationis tempus est, aequum namque videri debet, ut aliquam crucis portionem sustineamus, qui tam longa conscientiarum tranquilitate, nobiscum terque quaterque beatis, in vestra beata civitate Dei, fruebamur: cujus memoria omnem mihi molestiam non levat modo, sed aufert penitus. Frater noster Johannes Knoxoeus, scio ad te scribet, itaque de eo prolixius agere supervacaneum judico. Uxore sua piissima privatus ipse non satis validus corpore, animo tamen robustus, laboribus nunquam caedit. Tempestivus erat illius in Scotiam adventus, et non minus necessaria, nunc praesentia ; cui precor annorum numerum, in patriae suae commodum et ecclesiae progressum augeri. Est etiam alius Johannes Wollocus diligens minister, et strenuus veritatis propugnator. Juvenes praeterea nonnulli bonae spei manum operae admovent. Sed istis commemorandis finem imponam, atque hunc juvenem D. Jacobum Kyrkcaldy, nobili Scotorum genere prognatum, religionis studiosissimum, et optimis moribus praeditum, tuae pietati commendo, simulque obsecro et obtestor, ut illi de hospite bono ac fideli, quocum permaneat, prospicias: sive ex ministris, sive ex praelectoribus, quos, scio, ejus familiaritatis nunquam poenitebit. Nominabam illi Dominum Danionem et Dominum Baesa, inter, caeteros, quibuscum se optime fore non dubito. Sed tuo judicio acquiescet per omnia, et pro omnibus, quae accepturus sit, satisfaciet. Ministros omnes queso ut meo nomine salutes potissimum D. Viretum et Dom. Farellum: Omnibus autem, tibi vero potissimum, totique Senatui vestro, me, quoad vixero debitorem contestor. Deus Opt. M. te tuosque omnes in ecclesiae solatium, quam diutissime conservet

S. Andre, 13 februarii, anno Domini 1561.

E Scotia.

Tui studiosissimus Christophorus GOODMANUS.

ARTICLE II.

SEMITIC COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

BY DR. L. TAFEL AND PROF. R. L. TAFEL, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, MO.

THE labors of the comparative school of philology have thus far been limited to the Indo-European family of languages. Besides the work of J. E. Renan (Histoire et Système comparé des langues Sémitique), of which the first volume, treating of the history and genius of the Semitic languages, appeared several years ago, no systematic application of this new discipline has been made to these languages. And yet a comparison of the various Semitic idioms sheds as much light upon their respective grammars, as a comparison of the Indo-European or Arian languages elucidates theirs. In the present Article we propose to make a first contribution to Semitic comparative philology, discussing the Semitic Verb and Noun, as developed in the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius and the more recent schoolgrammar of Ewald, the Chaldee grammars of Fürst and Winer, the Syriac of Uhlemann, the Arabic of Caspari, and the Ethiopic of Dillmann. The form in which we treat our subject will be a review of the above-mentioned Hebrew grammars of Gesenius and Ewald, in the light of Semitic comparative philology.

Gesenius and Ewald have been considered, for a long time, as the leading oriental scholars of Europe, and their Hebrew grammars are more extensively used than any other. The former scholar has long been familiar to our orientalists by the translations of his Hebrew grammar and dictionary; and of his life and other works, Prof. Robinson has given a detailed account in an early number of the Bibliotheca Sacra. Prof. Ewald is not so well known; and for this reason, before entering upon a discussion of his grammar, we propose to draw a short comparison between the gram

mars of Gesenius and Ewald, and give our opinion of the latter, both as a man and a scholar.

In the preface to his Hebrew grammar for beginners, which he published upon his return to Göttingen, after a protracted stay in Tübingen in southern Germany, on pages v and vi he exclaims: "How much labor and toil, perfectly useless, has been expended during the last three hundred years, by thousands of students, in either acquiring no knowledge of Hebrew at all, or a mere smattering for the sake of showing off! Is it not time that in this respect, likewise, we in Germany should begin to think about true use?" From this extract we are to infer that before the time of Ewald there were no able text-books for the study of the Hebrew language in Germany; while yet the grammar of Gesenius, which since his death, by the care of the learned Rödiger is kept on a level with the science, fulfils all just claims to a good grammar, and by means of other grammars, too, able Hebrew scholars have been educated. In this wholesale denunciation of a lack of knowledge of the Hebrew among his countrymen, and more especially among the Swabians in southern Germany (because in their schools they had preferred Gesenius's to his own grammar), Ewald does them manifest injustice. For the last three hundred years the Hebrew has been very thoroughly studied in all parts of Germany, and especially in Würtemberg, where great care has been bestowed upon the instruction in Hebrew, both in the theological seminaries or colleges and in the university proper. The reason why the professors in these institutions preferred Gesenius's to Ewald's grammar is, because the former is very simple and intelligible, and arranged in a convenient form; while the schoolgrammar of Prof. Ewald lacks even the convenience of an index, without which no grammar, and especially no school grammar, ought ever to be published.

By his low estimation of the works of others, Prof. Ewald injured his usefulness very much in the university of Tübingen in Würtemberg, to which he received a call after his exile from Göttingen; and by his supercilious manner he VOL. XIX. No. 75.

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prevented his real merits from being duly acknowledged and appreciated. Ewald, as regards the Hebrew, we are told, is an αὐτοδίδακτος; since he, independent of all ὁδηγία of other Hebrew scholars, has made his own thorough studies of the holy scriptures; and has occasionally compared the Hebrew with the other Semitic idioms and also the IndoEuropean languages which he calls Mediterranean. But by the impetuous flight of his genius, he has sometimes been carried into the realm of arbitrary hypotheses, while the cautious Gesenius has remained more on "terra firma.”

Yet the school-grammar of Ewald is by no means void of merit. On page iv of his Preface, he very justly opposes the common method of commencing the study of a language with committing the rules of grammar to memory, of which the students have not the slightest conception. For by this means, he says, the eyes and ears of beginners, since time immemorial, have been frightened off, their ideas confused, and their interest in learning killed." He continues: "the various wants and mental gifts of the scholars must be taken into consideration by a wise teacher; and, according to circumstances, he may either enter into details and institute comparisons with other languages known to the student, or else confine himself to the general matters (die grossen Hauptsachen) on the surface. Nor is it necessary," he adds, "for the professor to confine himself strictly to the order followed in the text-book, but he may as well commence the study of the details of the language by committing the paradigms to memory." This mode of proceeding reminds us of the course pursued by a German professor of eminence, who, whenever his boys, upon entering his room, brought their new grammars with them, took his penknife and cut out all except the declensions and conjugations, declaring that the rest, viz. the rules of syntax, the boys would have to make up for themselves. And he was not altogether wrong. In olden times, when the boys were not yet furnished with grammars in which the minutest rules of syntax were laid down, and when they had to deduce these rules themselves, there were more thorough masters of

classical literature, than at the present day, when a student, with his memory inflated with rules deduced by others, exhibits the learning of others and not his own. Prof. Ewald, however, does not go quite as far; he simply opposes the committing to memory of the rules of syntax, and recommends that the students learn how to use their grammars as books of reference, under the guidance of an experienced teacher. After this preliminary talk, we enter upon the subject of the grammar itself.

Prof. Ewald, at the beginning of his work, before entering into the details of grammar, gives a synopsis of the masculine and feminine nouns in the states construct and absolute of the singular, dual, and plural numbers, with their pronominal suffixes, and divides the nouns into such of the first, second, and third formation; in the place of the nine masculine and four feminine declensions of Gesenius, which the latter gives partly in §§ 53, 55, and partly in the appendix. Afterwards Ewald introduces the verbs according to their different conjugations, and concludes with examples of the verb with pronominal suffixes.

Upon comparing the two grammars in respect to the doctrine of the noun and the declensions, that of Ewald has a decided advantage over that of Gesenius. First, Ewald justly includes the masculine and feminine nouns in the same declensions; for the suffix of the gender is subject to the same law as the suffix of the number and of the pronouns. Secondly, Gesenius, in establishing nine masculine and four feminine declensions, takes into consideration mere accidental and external analogies, without paying any attention to internal similarities; while at least the first two of Ewald's three declensions represent certain stages in the formation of the nouns. The only point where we differ from Prof. Ewald is the priority of these several stages. This point we will develop more fully hereafter, and simply state now, that in the Semitic languages the nominal and verbal roots were originally, to a great extent, the same, not only as regards the consonants, but also the vowels; and that an analogy may be traced between the declensions of