Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 3 (1797).djvu/113

Rh must be admitted: but it is here contended, that it does not on this account alone follow that they are so. This is proved from the practice of the ancient grammarians in the invention of technical terms, in conjunction with the authority of Tully.

First, the use of a Latin primitive or derivative, in a sense in which it does not occur in any pure Roman writer, is not necessarily an impropriety, technically so called; for if a considerable variation from such an established sense were so, the very grammatical terms of the Roman writers would fall under that censure, as for instance (articulus) an article, (verbum) a verb. When these terms were first used by grammarians, there was a great variation from their pre-established sense, and their primary significations—a joint, a word.

It is likewise certain, that if grammar had not been reduced into an art among the Romans, these terms would not have been now found in their technical senses in their writings. And if a writer of this age, having reduced the art into a system, had presented the world with the first Latin Grammar, and had given the same names, verbum, articulus, to the same things, his offence against pure Latinity, or the pre-established good use of those words, would have been of the same magnitude as that of the original Latin grammarians, and no more; the same innovations in a language, living or dead, being of equal quality: yet the charge against the propriety of the terms used by such a writer, would be the same in kind as that brought against the natural historians; but it must have fallen to the ground—nor would it have been in degree less strong; for bolder extensions in the sense of Latin terms, are not, that I recollect, to be found in the Lexicon of our technical language. These fastidious grammatical exceptions are, in principle, exceptions both to the art and the philosophy of grammar. If the naturalists err in this point, they err with the grammatical fathers (cum patribus). 3