Without limiting the term at all, without excluding his fanciful “language of brutes,” he says, on the next leaf, “Language is conventional, and not only invented, but, in its progressive advancement, varied for purposes of practical convenience.  Hence it assumes any and every form which those who make use of it, choose to give it.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 18.  This, though scarcely more rational than his “natural language of men and brutes,” plainly annihilates that questionable section of grammatical science, whether brutal or human, by making all language a thing “conventional” and “invented.”  In short, it leaves no ground at all for any grammatical science of a positive character, because it resolves all forms of language into the irresponsible will of those who utter any words, sounds, or noises.

OBS. 5.—­Nor is this gentleman more fortunate in his explanation of what may really be called language.  On one page, he says, “Spoken language or speech, is made up of articulate sounds uttered by the human voice.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 17.  On the next, “The most important use of that faculty called speech, is, to convey our thoughts to others.”—­Ib., p. 18.  Thus the grammarian who, in the same short paragraph, seems to “defy the ingenuity of man to give his words any other meaning than that which he himself intends them to express,” (Ib., p. 19,) either writes so badly as to make any ordinary false syntax appear trivial, or actually conceives man to be the inventor of one of his own faculties.  Nay, docs he not make man the contriver of that “natural language” which he possesses “in common with the brutes?” a language “The meaning of which,” he says, “all the different animals perfectly understand?”—­See his Gram., p. 16.  And if this notion again be true, does it not follow, that a horse knows perfectly well what horned cattle mean by their bellowing, or a flock of geese by their gabbling?  I should not have noticed these things, had not the book which teaches them, been made popular by a thousand imposing attestations to its excellence and accuracy.  For grammar has nothing at all to do with inarticulate voices, or the imaginary languages of brutes.  It is scope enough for one science to explain all the languages, dialects, and speeches, that lay claim to reason.  We need not enlarge the field, by descending

   “To beasts, whom[84] God on their creation-day
    Created mute to all articulate sound.”—­Milton.[85]

PART I.

ORTHOGRAPHY.

ORTHOGRAPHY treats of letters, syllables, separate words, and spelling.

CHAPTER I.—­OF LETTERS.

A Letter is an alphabetic character, which commonly represents some elementary sound of the human voice, some element of speech.