Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/39

Rh construct a dictionary and grammar of it, and teach them to read it, is to do more for them than themselves could effect in many centuries. Lastly, I must beg leave to observe that it is not every European, whom accident or design may station in those islands for a few years, that can learn their language with accuracy; for the idiom is so different from our civilized and more artificial forms of speech, that it must be chiefly young persons, with minds very susceptible of the impressions of spoken language, and of the gestures accompanying it, that can readily accomplish this object without the assistance of an interpreter:—and as Mr. Mariner had acquired this under circumstances peculiarly favourable, it appeared to me paramount to a duty to use those means that lay in my power to prevent all that he had learnt in this respect from sinking for ever into oblivion.