notion, "LANGUAGE, in its most extensive
sense, implies those signs by which _men and brutes_, communicate _to each
other_ their thoughts, affections and desires."--_Kirkham's English Gram._,
p. 16. Again: "_The language of brutes_ consists in the use of those
inarticulate sounds by which they express _their thoughts and
affections_."--_Ib._ To me it seems a shameful abuse of speech, and a vile
descent from the dignity of grammar, to make the voices of "_brutes_" any
part of language, as taken in a literal sense. We might with far more
propriety raise our conceptions of it to the spheres above, and construe
literally the metaphors of David, who ascribes to the starry heavens, both
"_speech_" and "_language_," "_voice_" and "_words_," daily "_uttered_" and
everywhere "_heard_." See _Psalm_ xix.

OBS. 4.--But, strange as it may seem, Kirkham, commencing his instructions
with the foregoing definition of language, proceeds to divide it, agreeably
to this notion, into two sorts, _natural_ and _artificial_; and affirms
that the former "is common both to man and brute," and that the language
which is peculiar to man, the language which consists of _words_, is
altogether an _artificial invention_:[83] thereby contradicting at once a
host of the most celebrated grammarians and philosophers, and that without
appearing to know it. But this is the less strange, since he immediately
forgets his own definition and division of the subject, and as plainly
contradicts himself. Without limiting the term at all, without excluding
his fanciful "_language of brutes_," he says, on the next leaf, "_Language_
is _conventional_, and not only _invented_, but, in its progressive
advancement, _varied for purposes of practical convenience_. Hence it
assumes _any and every form_ which those who make use of it, choose to give
it."--_Kirkham's Gram._, p. 18. This, though scarcely more rational than
his "_natural language of men and brutes_," plainly annihilates that
questionable section of grammatical science, whether brutal or human, by
making all language a thing "_conventional_" and "_invented_." In short, it
leaves no ground at all for any grammatical science of a positive
character, because it resolves all forms of language into the irresponsible
will of those who utter any words, sounds, or noises.

OBS. 5.--Nor is this gentleman more fortunate in his explanation of what
may really be called language. On one page, he says, "_Spoken language_ or