Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/267

Rh in his History of Philosophy refers to Schleiermacher's essay on Heraclitus in Wolfs und Buttmann's Museum. So does Krug, and also to Bœckh's on the Platonic soul of the world in Daub's und Creuzer's Studien. Müller (Archæol. p. 21) quotes Stuart's und Revett's Antiquities of Athens. And a writer in the Vienna Review ( 3) speaks of Galls und Spurzheims Methode. It would be easy to multiply instances : these however are sufficient to shew that the German received idiom on this point is the reverse of ours : and that it should be so is easily to be accounted for, from their being much more familiar with the meaning of cases than we are. To explain our practice grammatically we must suppose that the two names are as it were under a bracket, and that the final s belongs to them both: pretty much as when two compound words, the latter half of which is the same, are coupled together, we go to work on an economical plan, and allow only one tail to two heads. This is very common in German, which might perhaps convince us that an economy of words is not the real object aimed at : but in English also we should talk of a wine and spirit-merchant, a bread and biscuit-baker, a tea and coffee-dealer. Swift (Vol. ii. p. 186) speaks of eel and trout-fishing. Milton (i. p. 169) exclaims against the dieting the ignorance of the clergy " with the limited draught of a matin and evensong drench." And South in one of his bursts of plainspoken force (i. p. 132) says that the consciences of most men " nowadays are hell and damnation-proof."

The preceding remarks at all events shew how well disposed we are to assume that the final s of the genitive is not an essential part of the noun, but a kind of affix which may be removed from it, and attach t to some other word connected with it : and such being the case, we need not be surprised that the erroneous notion of its standing in the room of his should have met with such ready acceptance. That notion I called "a, gross blunder" in the last Number : and that it is so G. C. L. agrees with me: indeed nobody at this day who knows anything about the matter could be of a different opinion. He reminds me however very justly that "the connexion between two things may be a fiction, and yet that both may have a real existence."