Blair Collection > Elements of Gaelic grammar

XIV INTRODUCTIOX.
With respect to my literary countrymen, who
are proficients in the Gaelic, and who may cast
an eye on this volume, less with a view to learn
than to criticise ; while I profess a due deference
to their judgment, and declare my anxiety to ob-
tain their favourable suffrage, I must take the
liberty to intreat their attention to the following
considerations.
The subject of Universal Grammar has been
examined in modern times with a truly philoso-
phical spirit, and has been settled on rational and
stable principles ; yet, in applying these prin-
ciples to explain the grammar of a particular
language, the divisions, the arrangements, and
the rules to be given are, in a good measure, me-
chanical and arbitrary. One set of rules may be
equally just with another. For what is it that
grammatical rules do ? They bring into view the
various parts, inflections, or, as they may be term^
ed, the phaenomena of a language, and class them
together in a certain order. If these 2)^tae?io7ne7ia
be all brought forward, and stated according as
they actually appear in the language, the rules
may be said to be both just and complete. Dif-
ferent sets of rules may exhibit the same things
in a different order, and yet may all be equally
just. The superiority seems, on a comparison, to
belong to that system which follows most nearly
the order of nature, or the process of the mind in
forming the several inflections j or rather, perhaps,
to