THEIR ANALOGY, AND POWER TO EXPRESS THE RADICAL IDEAS TO HAVE BEEN FORMED. An Element is that, out of which, as their first Principle, Things generated Diog. Laert. vii. 176.-Hermes, p. 324. Note (e.) By L D. NELME. LONDON: PRINTED BY T. SPILSBURY, FOR S. LEACROFT, BOOKSELLER, OPPOSITE SPRING-GARDENS, CHARING-CROSS M DCC LXXII. PREFACE. T HERE is not in nature a more felf-evident principle, than that Words and Things do mutually illumine, declare, explain, and lead to each other. Letters, whereof Words are compounded, are Symbols of Things; and the Ideas conveyed by those Symbols are immutably the fame, however they may be varied in compofition, to express, comparatively, an infinite variety of Ideas by Words. Inattention to this firft principle hath made great confusion in Language; but it hath been of great emolument to the bookfellers, whofe fhelves are are oppreffed with the accumulated weight of Lexicon upon Lexicon, wherein the authors would have appeared (had not their reputation for learning, integrity, and industry, protected them from fuch an imputation) as emulative who should confound the English language most, by mixing or blending it with all the other European tongues into one mass, and confounding the English language by derivations from others, when the radical Ideas were to be found in the parent of their mother tongue, the English-Saxon. Investigations of language cannot be effected, otherwise than by De-compofition; i. e. reducing words to their first principles, and thereby bringing to light the power of each Letter, or Symbol, whereof fuch words are compounded. Herein confifts the excellency of the English language: the radical Words, or Sounds to exprefs radical Ideas, are therein most pure and UNMIXED, and therefore more capable of fuch De-compofition. Foreigners fee |