Page:A Grammar of the Persian Language.djvu/17

 letter in that idiom, though it be written in characters which he has never seen before, and of which he has no alphabet.

In short, I am persuaded that whoever will study the Persian language according to my plan, will in less than a year be able to translate and to answer any letter from an Indian prince, and to converse with the natives of India, not only with fluency, but with elegance. But if he desires to distinguish himself as an eminent translator, and to understand not only the general purport of a composition, but even the graces and ornaments of it, he must necessarily learn the Arabick tongue, which is blended with the Persian in so singular a manner, that one period often contains both languages wholly distinct from each other in expression and idiom, but perfectly united in sense and construction. This must appear strange to an European reader; but he may form some idea of this uncommon mixture, when he is told that the two Asiatic languages are not always mixed like the words of Roman and Saxon origin in this period, “The true law is right reason, conformable to the nature of things, which calls us to duty by commanding, deters us from sin by forbidding;” but as we may suppose the Latin and English to be connected in the following sentence; “The true lex is recta ratio, conformable natur, which by commanding vocet ad officium, by forbidding à fraude deterreat.”

A knowledge of these two languages will be attended by a variety of advantages to those who acquire it: the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, and Ethiopian tongues, are dialects of the Arabick, and bear as near a resemblance to it as the Ionic to the Attic Greek; the jargon of Indostan, very improperly called the language of the Moors, contains so great a number