PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
The study of Comparative Philology has of late years been cultivated in Germany, especially, with remarkable ability and proportionate success. The labours of Grimm, Pott, Bopp, and other distinguished Scholars, have given a new character to this department of literature; and have substituted for the vague conjectures suggested by external and often accidental coincidences, elementary principles, based upon the prevailing analogies of articulate sounds and the grammatical structure of language.
But although the fact that a material advance has been made in the study of Comparative Philology is generally known, and some of the particulars have been communicated to the English public through a few works on Classical Literature, or in the pages of periodical criticism; yet the full extent of the progress which has been effected, and the steps by which it has been attained, are imperfectly appreciated in this country. The study of the German language is yet far from being extensively pursued; and the results which the German Philologers have developed, and the reasonings which have led to them, being accessible to those only who can consult the original writers, are withheld from many individuals of education and learning to whom the affinities of cultivated speech are objects of interest and inquiry. Translations of the
works, in which the information they would gladly seek
a
