Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

308 LOGOPANDECTEISION.
19. Some languages have copiousness of discourse, which are barren in composi-
tion ; such is the Latine. Others are compendious in expression, which hardly have
any flexion at all ; of this kind are the Dutch, the English, and Irish.
20. Greek hath the agglutinative faculty of incorporating words, yet runneth not
so glib in poesie as doth the Latine, though far more abundant. The Hebrew like-
wise, with its auxiliary dialects of Arabick, Caldean, Syriack, ^Ethiopian, and Sama-
ritan, compoundeth prettily, and hath some store of words, yet falleth short by many
stages of the Greek.
2 1 . The French, Spanish, and Italian, are but dialects of the Latine, as the Eng-
lish is of the Saxon tongue, though with this difference, that the mixture of Latine
with the Gaulish, Moresco, and Gotish tongues, make up the three first languages ;
but the meer qualification of the Saxon with the old British, frameth not the English
to the full, for that, by its promiscuous and ubiquitary borrowing, it consisteth almost
of all languages ; which I speak not in dispraise thereof, although I may with confi-
dence aver, that were all the four aforesaid languages stript of what is not originally
their own, we should not be able with them all, in any part of the world, to purchase
so much as our breakfast in a market.
22. Now, to return from these to the learned languages, we must acknowledge it
to be very strange, why, after thousands of yeers continual practice in the polishing
of them by men of approved faculties, there is neither in them, nor any other tongue
hitherto found out, one single word expressive of the vice opposite either to tempe-
rance or chastity in the defect, though many rigid monks, even now a-days, be guilty
of the one, as Diogenes of old was of the other.
23. But that which makes this disease the more incurable, is, that when an exube-
rant spirit would to any high researched conceit adapt a peculiar word of his own
coyning, he is branded with incivility, if he apologize not for his boldness, with a
Quod ita dixerim parcant CiceroniancB manes, Ignoscat Demosthenis genius, and other
such phrases, acknowledging his fault of making use of words never uttered by others,
or at least by such as were most renowned for eloquence.
24. Though learning sustain great prejudice by this restraint of liberty to endenizon
new citizens in the commonwealth of languages, yet do I conceive the reason thereof
to proceed from this, that it is thought a less incongruity to express a thing by cir-
cumlocution, then by appropriating a single word thereto, to transgress the bounds
of the language ; as in architecture it is esteemed an error of less consequence to make
a circuitory passage from one room to another, then by the extravagancie of an irre-
gular sallie, to frame projectures disproportionable to the found of the house.
25. Thus is it, that, as according to the largeness of the plat of a building, and
compactedness of its walls, the work-master contriveth his roofs, platforms, outjettings,
and other such like parts and portion of the whole, just so, conform to the extent
and reach which a language in its flexions and compositions hath obtained at first,