him till he saw it in its systematic necessity. Any one of his books was in some sense exposition or explication of this system.
"The Essentials of English Grammar" is his most perfect work of this kind. It seems to be a statement of simple facts in the simplest language, made with charming ease and fluency; but it is an organic unity,—the same blood flows and forms in every sentence and every word. It is a masterly portrait of the youngest sister of the Indo-European family. The German and French grammars are similar sketches of her French and German sisters. Professor Whitney had chosen betimes the eldest of this sisterhood. He had his earlier fancies, lightly turned to the beauty of minerals, of plants, of birds; but he married betimes, as the scholar should, and when he married Sanskrit, he married into the family. When his students sought the acquaintance of the younger sisters, he liked to introduce them to the head of the sisterhood. The press has teemed with American English grammars ever since Lindley Murray, many of them brilliant with original nomenclature, diagrams, and other novelties. Professor Whitney's "Essentials" shows that simplicity and lucidity are better than brilliancy. It makes the study of grammar an effort to understand language, elementary grammar an exposition of facts by principles. It shows no fads of methods. It has no special relations with any of the current text-books. It is an original growth from fundamental truth, and might have been written in any age when the fundamental truths were known, and it is and will be as good for one age as another. This is the
