der of the parts of Speech, all agree in beginning with Nouns.

2. The Bible, that most ancient and authentic record of the origin of things, states, Gen. ii. 19-20, that when the first Man was created, the Divine Author of speech brought before him all the various tribes of animals, "to see what he would call them: And what"ever Adam called any living creature, that "became its name," in the primæval lan- / guage. In this most ancient and venerable Nomenclature, therefore, Nouns were the first words; and daily observation confirms, that the most familiar objects of sensation first attract the attention of infants, and that their names are the first learned; and that these are necessarily monosyllables, as being the sounds that are shortest and simplest of utterance, or easiest of articulation; such as are framed by the first organs of speech, the throat and lips, like 28, Ab, “Father,' DR, Am, Mother," , Ah, "Brother," 12, Ben, "Son," ", Jad," Hand," M, Peh, "Mouth," &c. which are not confined to the Hebrew language, but run through most of the kindred oriental dialects, demonstrating

their common descent from some parent stock: whereas the Verbs in all these are mostly triliteral or dissyllables; and consequently, as being more difficult of pronunciation, as well as more abstruse in their significations, denoting ideas of reflection, could not be the roots of nouns, or the names of sensible objects earlier known, and easier to be understood and expressed: See Locke's Essay, b. ii. ch. i. Of the Original of our Ideas; and b. iii. ch. i. § 5. Of Words of

Reflection,

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3. If we attend to the analogy of languages, that accomplished scholar, and admirable linguist, Sir William Jones, asserts, that it is the genius of the Sanscrit language, that the roots of verbs are almost universally biliteral.”—Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 4. 4. But the Sanscrit, or sacred language of Hindostan, is a twin sister of the primitive Syriac dialect; consequently, these roots could not be verbs themselves, (as Sir William Jones supposes,) but rather nouns; according to the analogy of the Hebrew and Syriac tongue. Sir George Staunton also, in his account of the late embassy

to China, states, that in the Chinese language the words of every kind are mostly monosyllables, differing, by nice and delicate inflexions of the voice, in the same combinations of elementary letters, so as to be scarcely distinguishable by European ears, and utterly incapable of being pronounced by European tongues; but the Chinese language, like the Sanscrit, is of the remotest antiquity, both having sprung from the same parent stock: and the same original structure of roots, we may safely conclude, is common to the nearer dialects of the East, and the remoter of the West, their descendants.

And that verbs are not indeed the elementary or essential parts of speech, we may collect from their frequent omission, in grammatical sentences, in all the ancient languages; especially in poetical compositions, the earliest of all:-Thus the first sentence of the book of Psalms, in the Hebrew, and all the ancient versions, "Blessed the man," &c. wants the verb substantive “is is ;" and the usual salutation in China, Hou poo hou

-"Well,

-"Well, not well?" intimates: [Are you] well [or] not well?

4. The nouns 7," Hand," D, “Mouth,"

p", "Sack," or "

,שק

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Sack," or " bag," with bag," with many others of the biliteral class, are allowed by Kimchi, Buxtorf, Castell, and all the lexicographers, to be radicals. And the learned Michaelis, in his Supplementa ad Lexica Hebraica, under the head of, Manus, p. 1055, acknowledges: "Primiticum esse videtur, ut et alia "membrorum corporis humani vocabula." And again, under 18, 8, Deus, p. 87. "Difficilis est de etymologia nominum quorundam primorum et antiquissimorum disputatio, quod VERBA forte ex NOMI"NIBUS orta et denominata sunt."-This is a notable concession from this celebrated advocate of the received hypothesis, though qualified with a forte," perhaps ;" and before him, Schultens, that great Orientalist, candidly confesses, in his judicious Institutiones Lingua Hebrææ, p. 158," Docent passim Grammatici, (submonuitque Cl. Alting) NOMINA interdum radicis rationem habere, et VERBO originem dare: ut 18, Auris, propagavit 18, in Pih. et j'18,

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7

"" in

Talia bene

“in Hiph.— Aures præbuit. “multa extant.”—And the testimony of the accurate Alting, to which he alludes, is most express, in his useful Synopsis Institutionum Hebræarum, Chaldæarum, et Syrarum, &c. vol. i. p. 89, edit. 8vo. 1730.

"HEBRÆI, Verbum primo loco collocant, "tum quod radicem fere exhibeat unde par"tium aliarum vocabula derivantur; tum ob

amplitudinem tractationis: Sed Nos Verbo "primum locum in tractatione negamus, tum "quia naturâ sua, nomine posterius est (quòd "substantiam sæpe notat, et verbum, accidens) tum imprimis, quia participia (pars

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verbi) sequuntur flexionem nominum; quam

proinde cognitam esse oportet, aut alieno "loco jam pertractanda est. Tertium porro "locum Verbo assignamus, quia ob crebram "ellipsin verbi substantivi, Sententia integra "ex solis Nominibus et Particulis formari po"test, nullo prorsus Verbo interveniente. Vide "Ps. iii. 9, et viii. 10, et xviii. 31-32.”

5. Several of the triliteral verbs, set down as roots or themes by lexicographers, according to the received hypothesis, are imaginary, and these are distinguished from the real