III. Of the Pronoun.
26. So much has already been said re specting the force of the pronoun, that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it here. Mr. H. Tooke's derivation of it must how- ever be stated, as it shows what have been the actual procedures of language in the formation of one of our pronouns, 'and gives an insight into the probable origin of the rest. It, formerly written hit and het, is the past participle of the verb IsAjrNit to name, and therefore Means the person or persons, thing, or things named, or afore said : and accord ingly was applied by all our old writers indifferently to plural and to singular nouns. We do not know whether a simi lar opinion, as to the origin of pronouns, has been before laid before the public, but the philosophical Greek professor of Glasgow, (whose prelections have often anticipated Mr. H. Tooke) long ago deliv erecrit as his opinion, that some, at least, of the pronouns are participles ; and, if we mistake not, traced the origin of eys, and ipse, as follows. Eyed, in the more ancient dialect of Greece, was which is an obvious abbreviation or cor ruption of Aeyea ; so that 1761 (whence the Latin and other languages have their first person) signifies the speakino. per son. Ipse is the Latin past participle from 0.1; and though this verb is not to be found in Latin writers, those who know how much the Latin is a dialect of tlia Greek, will not feel this a material diffi culty : on this derivation, ipse signifies the said person, &c. These speculations might be advantageously extended, would our limits permit ; but sufficient has been said to show, that these . words are not of that unintelligible nature which has been usually supposed.
27. Respecting the inflection of pro nouns, the same general principles are applicable, as respecting that of nouns. His is obviously he's ; and whatever be the origin of the possessive termination of the noun, it has the same origin here. aline, thine, and here and theirs, still re tained in some of our dialects, have' ap parently the same origin as wooden, wool len, &c. The objective form is merely a grammatical appropriation of one of the forms of the pronouns to wparticular pur pose; and we still find that her, among the vulgar, is commonly employed, as the subject of verbs, instead of she.
28. Though we see no reason to give the appellation pronoun to those words which are called adjective pronouns, (and accordingly we class them as restrictives,) yet there is one word of peculiar import ance, which seems properly a pronoun, and to which some attention is necessary, viz. the relative. We have already ob served several of the contrivances of lan guage to particularize general terms ; another is, to restrict or explain the gene ral term by means of a dependant sen tence connected with it by a relative.— We will first consider what the relative performs, and then how it performs it Take the following examples ; every man, who loves truth, abhors falsehood ; and John, who loves truth, hates false hood. If the relative clause had been omitted in the former sentence, the re maining assertion would have been false ; here then it is restrictive : in the second it is merely explanatory, and in such cases, so far from being necessary, may even destroy the unity and force of the sentence. To explain the subject of
discourse, and to restrict its signification, are the two offices of the relative. If the custom of language allowed it, precisely the same purpose mightbe answered by an adjective or participle connected with the term, as, every man loving truth, &c. and it might seem useless to introduce a new procedure ; but the utility of the present plan is obvious, when we consider the immense number of new words which must be introduced to supply the place of the relative ; and further, that it ens tiles us to state a greater variety of cir cumstances in connection with the ante cedent, and occasionally to state them more forcibly. The relative is equiva lent to a personal pronoun with a con nective of general signification. We do not mean to affirm, that in the original signification that connective will be found; but that such is the present force. The dependent clause may be joined to the principal, either by simple juxtaposi tion, or by means of a connecting parti cle, or lastly by a word including the force of a connective particle. Instances of the first are. The ship he commanded was wrecked, and, The man that (i. e. that man) loves wisdom shall find her : in both of which the dependent clause is connected in that natural manner, which is frequently adopted in our simple lan guage to express connection in ideas; and in the same manner the early Greek wri ters employ their definite article for their relative. As an instance of the second kind we may adduce this mode of expression ; A man if he do not love truth cannot be virtuous ; in which the dependent clause is joined by a connective, though of a less general kind than what is implied in the relative. This last mode is the most ge neral, and on the whole the most useful, because most general and least ambigu ous. Without venturing to assert that -who essentially differs in its original sig nification from that, it certainly does now include more signification ; and that ad. ditional signification we think to be what is expressed by and, so that, Every man who loves truth hates falsehood, means, Every man and he loves truth, hates falsehood, i. e. as Mr. H. Tooke has shewn us, Every man and (this circumstance) ke loves truth, &c.
IV. Of the Verb.
29. As we do not profess to consider the theory of grammar in general, we have not much occasion to enlarge respecting this important sort of words ; for our lan guage, simple in most of its procedures, is here almost at the verge of simplicity. Some languages have a great variety of changes in the form of the verb, to denote the subject of affirmation, and the mode and time in which the affirmation is to be taken: we have only four, and of those three are, to say the least, is no way ne cessary. We have already said enough respecting the nature of the verb (g 10.) to render it unnecessary to recur again to that point, and we shall here direct the