OR, GLIMPSES OF THE INNER LIFE OF OUR LANGUAGE. BY M. SCHELE DE VERE, LL. D. PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. DEM AOKK RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. PREFACE. THE illustrious founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, appreciating with rare foresight, nearly fifty years ago, the importance of a scientific study of the English Language, inserted Anglo-Saxon among the subjects on which a course of lectures was to be delivered by the incumbent of the chair of Modern Languages. The author, whose good fortune it has been to fill that chair for many years, has been led to think that the increasing interest in the study of our mother tongue called for some aid and systematic guidance, and he has therefore endeavored in the following pages to point out those topics which deserve most attention, and those methods which lead to a profitable study on a historic basis. He hopes that his suggestions will call more general attention to the growing importance of a new science, which can already boast of a Müller in England and a Marsh in our own country, and to the charms of the inner life of a noble old tongue, which, through the nations who speak it, now rules the world in undisputed supremacy. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, November, 1866. |