ings from the steady application of rules; and polish
is the work of taste and refinement. We may easily err by following the
example of our early writers with more reverence than judgement; nor is it
possible for us to do justice to the grammarians, whether early or late,
without a knowledge both of the history and of the present state of the
science which they profess to teach. I therefore think it proper rapidly to
glance at many things remote indeed in time, yet nearer to my present
purpose, and abundantly more worthy of the student's consideration, than a
thousand matters which are taught for grammar by the authors of treatises
professedly elementary.

11. As we have already seen, some have supposed that the formation of the
first language must have been very slow and gradual. But of this they offer
no proof, and from the pen of inspiration we seem to have testimony against
it. Did Adam give names to all the creatures about him, and then allow
those names to be immediately forgotten? Did not both he and his family
continually use his original nouns in their social intercourse? and how
could they use them, without other parts of speech to form them into
sentences? Nay, do we not know from the Bible, that on several occasions
our prime ancestor expressed himself like an intelligent man, and used all
the parts of speech which are now considered _necessary_? What did he say,
when his fit partner, the fairest and loveliest work of God, was presented
to him? "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be
called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." And again: Had he not
other words than nouns, when he made answer concerning his transgression:
"I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked;
and I hid myself?" What is it, then, but a groundless assumption, to make
him and his immediate descendants ignorant savages, and to affirm, with Dr.
Blair, that "their speech must have been poor and narrow?" It is not
possible now to ascertain what degree of perfection the oral communication
of the first age exhibited. But, as languages are now known to improve in
proportion to the improvement of society in civilization and intelligence,
and as we cannot reasonably suppose the first inhabitants of the earth to
have been savages, it seems, I think, a plausible conjecture, that the
primeval tongue was at least sufficient for all the ordinary intercourse of
civilized men, living in the simpl