Excerpt from The New Cratylus, or Contributions Towards a More Accurate Knowledge of the Greek Language

Every didactic work is or ought to be adapted to the wants of some particular class of readers, and should presume, in them, a certain amount of preparatory knowledge and no more. I have written, then, first, for Englishmen, who are not sup posed to be intimately or extensively acquainted with the phi lological literature of the continent and secondly, I have written for persons who possess at least some slight knowledge of the Greek language, and would rather increase it by investigating the principles of the language and endeavouring to discover the causes of its grammatical peculiarities, than by overloading the memory with a mass of cmde, incoherent facts, which can neither be digested nor retained. I have also wished to give those, who come to the study of Greek with no higher aim than to make it the means of obtaining University distinctions, an Opportunity of learning from it the dignity of human speech, of perceiving how little of the casual and capricious there is in language. And of convincing themselves that in this, as in other things, there are laws to combine, regulate, and vivify the seemingly disjointed, scattered, and lifeless phenomena. It is possible that the novelty of some of my speculations may induce maturer scholars to take up this book. If so, they will under stand from this statement, why I have here and there entered upon long explanations of peculiarities, which can occasion no difficulty to the philologer or have been already discussed by German or French writers, and, on the other hand, why I have despatched with a hint or a reference some really difficult questions, in which the young student could take no interest, while the scholar would comprehend my meaning from a single word.

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