bug, slug, plug, &c. And U, G can never | fallen into the strange mistakes of the folform ti; nor ac become bo; &c. But in lowing passage. Chinese, as we have shown, two conven"The difference, in point of numbers, betional signs do not blend into one sound, ex- tween the written and spoken words of the cepting only, and this is the strongest possi- Chinese language, is not so great as is geneble confirmation, in the modern system of rally imagined. In the first place, there are the compilers of the Imperial Dictionary, a great number of homophonous words, which but which system is rejected by the nation being pronounced alike are, as I presume, in at large. It follows then, that in alphabet- calculating the numbers of those significant syllables considered as one and the same ical systems the elementary forms only are conventional; and that the syllables are not so many different words in relation to pronunciation of different characters, and formed on an established principle, of neces- their sense. It is the same as if, in our lansity deduced from them; whilst in Chinese, guage, we should consider as one the words the element does not (so to say) exist, and fain, fane and feign, because pronounced the syllable itself is whole and indivisible alike, although they differ in meaning widely and therefore conventional. Both kinds from each other. There is another mode of are undoubtedly, as the Doctor affirms them computation which is directly the reverse of to be, sounds, as the language stands: but the former necessarily, the second by sufferance only. Sun, Moon, could never be sounded light; but jih, yue, are sounded ming. Is it not then, in the latter case, the idea (created by the combination) that supplies the word? We extract the following for its justice, and possible usefulness: this. Because the monosyllables of the Chihave been honoured with the name of words, nese language are significant, they alone and their numerous compounds have been left out of view. I have said above, that those monosyllables might be compounded, precisely as those of our own language in welcome, welfare, &c.; and I may add here, that formed of those compounds, which are sepathe greatest part of the Chinese idiom is rated only by the manner in which they are "The Portuguese orthography was once exhibited to the eye when written. Thus, in exclusively used to represent the sounds of our dictionaries, shoemaker is found as a the Chinese words by means of the letters of polysyllabic word, while pear tree is not, but our alphabet, and it was adopted and under- each of its component syllables must be look stood by all, until national vanity and indi-ed for in its proper place, according to the vidual caprice interfered. Not only every alphabet. And yet it would seem that pearnation, but every sinologist has his own mode of spelling Chinese words. The English, the French, and the Germans, have each adopted a mode of spelling suited to their own language. But the evil does not stop here; every writer has a spelling of his own; Mor. rison does not spell like Marshman, nor Remusat like De Guignes. Where will this confusion end? For my part, I adopt in this disquisition the spelling of the writer that first comes to hand. I shall certainly not try to reconcile them, or show a preferance to one over the other. I only wish that the old-fashioned Portuguese mode of spelling had been preserved; or that the alphabet of my learned friend Mr. Pickering was as generally adopted by the learned of Europe and America, as it is by our missionaries in the South Sea Islands and elsewhere."-pp. 20, 21. But our author does not appear to have any definite notion of the difference between syllables and words. It may be difficult to separate the two in Chinese: but had he been careful to define both, or either, he would not, we conceive, have been led into an error. Yet there could have been no difficulty in determining, as we must for him, that a syllable is a sound without (necessarily) a meaning, and that a word is a sound with a meaning. tree is as much a word in English as shoemaker, shipwright, and so many others. There are English words which in Chinese are expressed by five significant monosyllables, such for instance as the word puberty, which is called fa-shin-teih-she-how. I am not sufficiently versed in the Chinese language to explain the meaning of each of these five monosyllables; I leave the task to sinologists. But it is evident, that nothing is wanting but to give to the Chinese compounds the denomination of words, to make that language as rich, perhaps, as those whose composition is disguised by the foreign origin of the monosyllables, or the more artificial manner in which they are joined together.”—pp. 21, 22. With regard to the first sentence of this quotation, if there is any difference whatever between the numbers of the written and spoken words, it is of itself fatal to the learned author's argument, "that every character necessarily represents a word." If so, how is it that many characters extant have confessedly lost their sounds? The Yunheo being formed to preserve the remainder by collecting homophonous finals together. Words of the same sound (homophonous) are, it is clear from his own statement, represented by different and dissimilar chaHad the Doctor racters because they convey dissimilar kept this in mind he would scarcely have ideas. Nor is it in the slightest degree the same (we beg the Doctor's pardon, as our racter, such as we have seen that and these, words fain, fane, feign: the ai in the first prevented the amalgamation of the sounds of these, the a-e in the second and the eig in by the immalleability of the characters. If the third, are clearly equivalents by combi- such a process had begun amongst sounds nation, and hence the almost identity of in China previous to the formation of its sound; but what is, or can be, a Chinese written characters, and the process was as equivalent, when the slightest change of probable there as everywhere else, in the character would produce a complete altera- interval between the creation, or the deluge, tion, both in sound and meaning also; that and the 26th century before Christ;-then it is to say, would make a totally different is not unlikely that at the time of forming word; thus by the slight change of trans- those characters the compound or polysyl posing or adding a small stroke shang, labic terms that had come by habit and usage above, would become hea, below, or che, to were simplified into, or in some cases restop. Therefore, since homophonous words jected for, monosyllables. If the articula have wholly different characters in Chinese, tory organs of the Chinese did not differ those characters do not represent the homo- from those of the whole human race bephonous sounds; and consequently cannot sides, the process of language must have represent words spoken of which those been similar in all, until checked by some sounds are the integral portion. cause operating in them alone; and we The next oversight in this extract is know of none so obvious, simple, and natu. scarcely less striking: because wel-come, ral as this, for returning to simplicity of wel-fare, shoe-maker, pear-tree, ship-wright, language: and these considerations vindiare single words in English, the Chinese cate the proposition of the Quarterly Recombinations of terms should be also called view, as of Rémusat, Fourmont, and others single words; and hence the language all nearly the same, and all assailed by the might fairly be termed polysyllabic! Now ridicule of the learned President of the if those English words were the only poly- American Philosophical Society. syllabic forms of our language, this might be fairly called monosyllabic, we suggest: but how two, four, or five words, as in the Chinese instance quoted, each having, and preserving its separate and complete sense, should by mere juxta-position become syllables, i. e. without a sense, we cannot imagine. Even words, used phonetically, lose their sense. We must distinctly avow our opinion that the difference between existing and original languages, is not in general sufficiently attended to. For instance, it is usually considered (and Doctor Du Ponceau is no exception) that languages were originally polysyllabic: and yet, wherever we can examine them closely, we find their words consist of a double term, or of a prefix or affix conjoined; or else of an interfix or infix, as it is usually called. We en tirely doubt the existence of this last, for wherever we can detect it, we have reason to suspect it is the affix to the preceding or prefix to the following syllable, or, more properly, word: being in itself simply the sign of a case, or at other times an epithet; but, in its apparent state, forming (with it self) two other monosyllabic words into a polysyllable. These combinations have descended into subsequent forms of language as genuine polysyllables, such as we are accustomed to consider them-excepting, possibly, in the case of the Chinese, where, if we may assume a fact, the intrinsic disconnection between the sound and the cha We must, however, in fairness, make an ample extract of the writer's argument as it proceeds: "The learned authors of the historical and descriptive account of China, which is a part of the collection called The Edinburgh take, when they say that the idea of making Cabinet Library,' are therefore under a misguage, seems never once to have occurred to the written subservient to the spoken lanthe mind of a Chinese.' On the contrary,it is clear that the primary, and indeed the sole object of the inventors of the writing, was to give representative signs, to the words of the oral idiom, and consequently to make their graphic system subservient to it, as in fact it is and ever will be. That the literati of and 'consider speech as an altogether secondChina should entertain a different opinion, ary and subordinate mode of communication,' is not at all to be wondered at; their excessive vanity led them into this prejudice, and maintains them in it. "So far, at least, no sign appears of an has been called. Its object, as far as we have ideographic language, as the Chinese writing scen, is not to recall ideas to the mind abstracted from sounds, but the sounds or words in which language has clothed those ideas. The written signs do not, indeed represent sounds in the elementary form of letters, but in the compound form of syllables and words. They have precisely the same effect as our farther into the ideal world. Then we may groups of letters, and do not advance a step say that it is not an idea that each character represents, but a word; and if it represents the idea at all it is through the wordwhich it calls to mind; and such is the operation of our alphabetical writing. The five letters which, placed next to each other, form the word horse, present to our minds the idea of the animal so called, quite as well as the horizontal and perpendicular strokes of the Chinese character answering to the same word. That group of letters might also be called ideographic, when, in fact, it is but the sign of a spoken word."-pp. 24, 25., The question here, however, is not whether the idea is as well represented, but wheth er by the same process. Again, to each, and through them the idea which those words contain; when grouped together they only bring to mind the word she, and the abstract idea of time.* Now in the English cases here quoted is it not evident that the separate words go for nothing in themselves, but, combined, are signs of one idea; and that we think and perceive by this alone and through associaminds incessantly without giving us the time tion? In fact, do not ideas pass through our to shape them into words? and if we wish to detain them is it not by mentally shaping "Man spoke before he wrote, and lan- them into words? To argue otherwise and guages were fixed before any system of writ- insist, with our author, that the word preing was invented. Before the invention of cedes the idea, would be to make the matetheir characters, the Chinese communicated rial more fleet and less tangible than the by means of knotted cords like the Quipos of the Peruvians. They might be yet in a immaterial—to affirm that thought is slower savage state when they invented their writ than speech. ing, but nevertheless they spoke and understood each other. Their ideas, then, had received an external shape, the impression of which was made through the sense of hear ing, and therefore they were not driven, like those born deaf and dumb, to give them an original form, derived only from their sensations. Where a solitary language exists, be it ocular or auricular, ideas present themselves to the mind clothed in the forms that In the Chinese illustrations of the latter that language has given them. The deaf part of our quotation, we think the Doctor and dumb man, before he has learned to read, satisfactorily refutes his own argument-and thinks in the visible signs by means of which we have already examined a precisely simi. he communicates with his fellows; when, by lar instance. the art of De l'Epée and his followers, he has learned to understand some written language, he thinks in the groups of letters or characters the meaning of which he knows, and which memory presents to his recollection through the mental eye. Without these helps his ideas would be vague and confused, having nothing on which to fix themselves; and they would be reduced to the feeling of present sensations and the recollections of the past."-p. 25. These "visible signs not elementary. are conventional, "When we say hand-maid, we think of a female servant, not of the part of the body called the hand. When we say Bridewell, we neither think of a bride nor of a well, much less of St. Bridget or St. Bride, after whom the place was denominated; we think only of a house of detention. When we say a hogshead, (meaning a cask to contain liquor,) we do not think of the animal called hog, nor any part of nis body. When we speak of the hands of a ship, we think of the men, not of their hands. It is the same with the Chinese, The word she or chi, which signifies time, is represented in writing by a group of three characters, which severally signify the sun, the earth, and a measure; as who should say, the sun measuring the earth,' or in plainer language, the revolutions of the sun round the earth;' a very just and ingenious metaphor. But, though these three characters separately represent the several words affixed If it be replied, that it is not the word itself, but the idea of the word that suggests itself, this is but shifting the ground without forwarding the argument; for it is only saying that we prefer the idea of the representation to the idea of the reality, and in our wish to see the thing itself we turn, instead, to its reflex. From his resolute adhesion to the opinion that the system in question represents words and not ideas it naturally arises that the learned president cannot enter in the feeling of pleasure boasted by the Chinese as derived from the bare inspection of their written characters. Having made up his mind that the process by which these impress the understanding is precisely the same as the formative system of our alphabets, he is content to refer, in a somewhat bantering and turesque beauties" to the force of imagina. sceptical tone, the perception of those "pic. tion in natives, and in scholars also. The Chinese-says one of their writers-lay the stress on the characters, not on the sounds. Foreign nations prefer sounds, and these are sonorous and admirable. The Chinese prefer symbols, as more perspicuous and far more readily varied. They seek delight by the car. Our fair characters charm the eye, our chief medium of communication. seems to me impossible," says M. de Remu "It However complicated any character may or seven characters, like compounds in Greek appear, still the compound, though it embrace six and Sungskrit, expresses only one idea, and still remains an adjective, a substantive, a verb &c,, as capable of union with other characters, as the simplest character in the language. Marshm, Clavis Sinica, p. 4" sat, "to express in any language, the energy | And in proof of his assertion, he adds: of those picturesque characters, which pre- "Some characters have two names widely sent to the eye, instead of barren conven- different from each other." tional signs of pronunciation, the objects themselves, figured by all that is essential in them, so that it would require many sentences, to exhaust the signification of a single word." The President conceives he answers this by the remark that ough is pronounced different in ought, bough, dough, through, enough; and that the sound of a differs in grace, bad, all. We think, wound, subst. and verb, would be a better illustration. Now these are but modifications of sound produced by combination, and resulting from the various sources whence our etymology is derived-partly from neighbouring, partly from ancient, partly from oriental nations. They are, we repeat, modifications, or at the ut most, and in some very few instances, digammic changes, but in no case, like the Chinese, completely and essentially different and independent sounds-such as would be the change of bad to cole or line; of bough to trip; of ought to slide, &c. Little consideration will suffice to show, that if an agreeable object, a woman, or a flower, is expressed by a character that combines the thing itself with its several attributes, as sweetness, grace, beauty, so as to condense that and these into a single impression through the eye on the sense, the impression must be stronger than when the result is at tempted by a successive enumeration, which heightens gradually, but by that very graduation partially distracts. A finished picture produces a more striking effect than when we see the successive finishing strokes ap. plied. A hideous figure, invested with all the attributes of terror, produces a far great-with the Chinese characters. And if this fact "Of course the same thing may happen er effect when seen at once by the eye than proves any thing, it is rather in opposition to when these attributes are successively as Dr. Marshman's principle, than in favour of sumed; and still more than when read of, or it: for it proves that the characters thus vary. described. This last is the more appropri.ing their pronunciation may represent differate simile, since our words excite the ideas ent words, precisely as our letters represent for the understanding, while Chinese charac. different elementary sounds.”—p. 35. ters half-picture the objects on the retina; and those characters consequently may be considered as holding a power, inferior indeed, to the reality, but superior to the rela tion of it in words; they are a conventional picturesque. If bought, dough, &c., so grouped, had each two sounds, the cases might be parallel. Characters are exactly like groups first, then best. If they have the qualities of both, they letters or parts of groups, as suits our author can be neither. refers to poetry— That there is some difficulty in conceiving this fact, is perhaps an additional argument in its favour. Doctor Du Ponceau admits the occasional validity of an argument à pri- "If the Chinese writings were, as it is call ori, and uses it himself. We here followed, ideographic, or, as it is asserted to be, a the example: for as the mind creates no. complete ocular language, independent of the thing, but at the utmost simply combines the oral mode of communication and unconnectresults of its own or of others experience, weed with it, it would have its poetry and its may fairly affirm that our experience of al- prose, and a style peculiar to itself. It would phabets never could have helped our alpha- fact stand? The poetry of the Chinese is be translated, not read. But how does the betic races to the above conclusion or asser-addressed to the ear. It is measured, and tion by the Chinese of the effect their charac- has even recourse for its harmony to the jinters produce; and that to produce an effect so different from our experience and so dif. ficult to conceive when asserted and untried, must require a system essemially different from our own. If further proof were necessary it would be found in this passage from Marchman's grammar: "The sound of no character," says he, "is inherent therein it may be totally changed without affecting the meaning of the character. Thus to the character of yin, a man, might be affixed tao or lee, or any other name, and the character would still convey the same idea, because the writ ten language speaks wholly to the eye.' gle of rhyme. How could a poem be read if upon And would the Chinese language depends chiefly on their not each, on seeing those figures so placed juxtaposition, it would create a cacophony in in fives, give them, from one to sixty, the reading that word, to the hearer, make the Chinese sounds as they appear before us ?— sense of the characters perfect nonsense. It is impossible, therefore, to accede to such a any one pretend that these figures supposition; the writing must servilely follow therefore contained in themselves those (althe words spoken, otherwise there will be phabetic) sounds? It follows then that all two different languages, and one must be Chinese wonld read alike the characters that translated into the other. But this is not pre- represent those sounds as conventionally estended. Besides, prose as well as poetry is tablished, and much the same as if they were written for the ear and not for the eye. written for us alphabetically, and hié and mié There is a harmony of sounds which every would rhyme sufficiently, though no part of writer is bound to attend to, and to attempt the written character hié corresponds with to combine it with a supposed harmony of signs, would be a task, in my opinion, beyond any part of the written chatacter for mié. the power of talent and of genius, however exalted, to compass."-pp. 35, 36. Doctor Du Poncheau further makes use of an argument or assumption, which we conceive to be strangely contrary to universal experience, namely, that from "words spelt in the same manner no confusion ensues. Referring to, rather than repeating former arguments, we shall merely say, that if from his earliest years a Chinese understands that a certain character is to recall a certain sound, it will do so with him as regularly as if the character absolutely expressed that sound.The figure 2 does not express the sound we give to it, but implies or recalls it, and at the end of a line would thus furnish a rhyme to true, though its appearance amongst syllables might be irregular enough. But our author everywhere repeats that such a process is translating, not reading. The objection is not to the act, but to the word; to translate is to render from one language into another, but he insists that characters do not form a language; it cannot then, by his own showing, be called translating. But the term is a mere quibble, and our objection little better. We need not stand on either; the idea or thing has a representative sign or written character; and a spoken sign or term: the two may be independent of each other, yet not be the more for this unconnected, as Dr. Du Ponceau would dextrously imply; but this assertion. We put proceed collaterally, like the two sides of an isosceles triangle, from the idea, or common point of junction, to their basis in the mind, where they are connected with each other. We take as a specimen of Chinese poetry the commencement of the Ode on Tea. "Nor would it in the Chinese, if one character only was employed to represent all the words which are pronounced in the same manner. M. Remusat himself gives us a fact in support of this proposition, too strong to be omitted. He says, that at this time the merchants, mechanics, and other unlettered men in China, paying very little attention to the symbols, are contented each pronunciation, in whatever sense the with making use of one single character for syllable may be used, while the literati write them with different characters. Now, nothing can be more plain, than that if any thing peculiarly requires clearness in the mode of writing, it is the contracts of merchants and mechanics, and their correspondence on matters of busi ness. This act appears to me sufficient to settle the whole question."—p. 64. The author is a scholar, but can have made tittle use of his acquired learning in ing, if confusion does not constantly arise it to every man livfrom the source referred to? And if it is not merely from the context that the sense in these cases is discoverable, who can tell whether the word sound, the Doctor's own illustration, standing singly, signifies "noise, an arm of the sea, healthy, orthodox, or trying a depth?" Is not the omission of the diacritical points in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian; the adoption, through negligence, of one orthography for total different words; the confounding by one sign b, s, t, p, for instance; bych, j, kh, h; by d and z; by z, r, and zh; an endless stumbling-block to natives themselves? But in the particular case of merchants and mechanics, does not the Shekesteh writing of Persia, and Hindostan Suppose every individual had been ac- use but a single character for each pronuncicustomed through life to give these sixty ation, without reference to scientific correctChinese words as the sound of the first sixty ness of orthography, as t, k, t, for tukht? and of our numercial figures, and no other, would does not eternal confusion ensue? Is not Mei-hoa chê pou yao |