Page:Collier's Cyclopedia of Commercial and Social Information.djvu/13

Rh RAMMAR is the science of language, and its principal use is to enable those who study it to express their thoughts with correctness and propriety, so as to be understood by those whom they address.

It must always be remembered that grammars can only define, but cannot determine, the correct use of language. This depends, in every instance, upon the forms of thought and meaning to be conveyed; and in all languages was settled and employed long before the studies of grammarians commenced. And at this very time it may be seen how completely powerless are all the grammatical treatises on our own tongue, now existing, to prevent such changes as the disuse of the subjunctive mood of verbs, etc., from being made in the forms of the English language; by which the power of expressing some finer shades of meaning must be greatly circumscribed, if not entirely lost. The best method, therefore, to be pursued by any one who desires to become practically and thoroughly acquainted with his mother-tongue, is carefully to read some select works of our best authors, in the manner now to be described, with the help of such a compendious grammar as that contained in the following pages. This method, by the peculiar interest it excites, relieves the study of all drudgery; and at the same time furnishes one of the most satisfactory means of intellectual training, and an available introduction to the study of any other language to which the attention may afterward be directed. 2. The following paragraphs form the commencement of Lord Bacon’s Essay,

"I. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. "II. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.

"III. For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels and the plots, and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. "IV. To-spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment only by their rules is the humor of a scholar. "V. They perfect nature, and are perfected by: experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study, and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

"VI. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. "VII. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted ; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider," 3. In the first paragraph we find something spoken of, "studies," and something said about them, viz., that they "serve" for certain purposes, as "for delight,"