Such errors as this, however, are easily corrected, and many of the acute remarks which have been here copied are well worthy the attention of practical grammarians; at the same time enough has been said, without any disparagement of Cobbett’s talents, to show that a man cannot be well qualified to teach that which he has not had the means of properly learning. For although the English language appears at first sight to be extremely simple and philosophical in its structure, it has, in fact, been derived from a variety of heterogeneous sources; it has undergone a variety of vicissitudes, and has served for the expression of a multiplicity of discussions on the most refined subjects in literature and history and science, for [p100] the feelings of oratory, and the passions of poetry, and it has been worn away by degrees, as the crystal in the stream is worn to a pebble, till it has returned to a simplicity which wears the aspect of the immediate offspring of the Chinese or Egyptian or Mexican Hieroglyphics. But with all this, it has still some spots, some idioms, which invariable custom obliges us to retain; and which can only be distinguished from corruptions and vulgarisms by tracing their history through the different stages of its progress, including, of necessity, the corresponding idioms in the parent languages out of which it has arisen.
Believe me always, my dear Sir, Your’s very sincerely, * * *
_Malaria: an Essay on the Production and Propagation of this Poison, and of the Nature and Localities of the Places by which it is produced, with an Enumeration of the Diseases caused by it, and of the Means of diminishing and preventing them, both at Home and in the Naval and Military Service_. By J. Mac Culloch, M.D., F.R.S., &c. &c. Longman and Co. 1827.
Though we have given a place in our Journal to two articles on Malaria from Dr. Mac Culloch, we have thought it expedient to take some notice of his book under the form of a review; particularly as some matters have come under our cognizance, which may add some illustrations to this subject where the author appears to have been in a state of deficient information, or to have shunned the question for reasons which appear to us somewhat over refined.