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    which group together in a few great families the whole population of words in the same language , and , having thus laid bare its primeval state , to trace the successive steps of association by which it has multiplied its resources , and refined its susceptibilities with the increasing wants and more delicate perceptions of

    the minds whose instruments it has been . There was nothing , at least , to prevent his delineation of the outline of such a history ; the details must have partaken of the defects already noticed in his mental analysis . Be this as it may , however , the attempt was never made . Nothing could ever have made him forget that

    language is only the vehicle of ideas , and the study of it , therefore , only a means to an end ; and we suspect that few who are habitually impressed with this undeniable truth , will become men of erudition . We do not question the importance of minute criticism ; we admit that without it the whole meaning of an author

    cannot be developed , and that the lights and shades of expression which it brings out are really lights and shades of thought , constituting an essential element in the graces of a foreign literature . But most readers are utilitarians ; of the amount of meaning which they lose by an accuracy not absolutely finished they are necessarily unconscious , the quantity which they gain will seem

    enough for their purpose ; and , unless they possess a sensitiveness of taste seldom to be found , and read in order to gratify their perception of the beautiful , they will feel little inducement to brace themselves to the long barren toils of the professed linguist . It may be doubted , however , whether Dr . Priestley renounced the needful labour upon any such deliberate

    calculation , and whether he did not greatly underrate the attainments requisite for a philologist . At Ifcast we cannot but think that many of our grave professors , who can lecture an hour upon a word , would smile at his characteristic project of translating the whole Hebrew Scriptures himself , during the intervals of other occupations , in three or four years .

    Dr . Priestley has repeatedly recorded of himself a remarkable deficiency of memory ; a want to be regretted less on its own account than because , in conjunction with another cause , it involved a mental failure of a more fceriou 9 kind—a Weakness of conception By conception we mean the power of bringing vividly before the thoughts , in combination , the parts of any object or any scene which has been presented to the senses or

    the mind . It is emphatically the pictorial faculty needed by the illustrating artist when , having gathered from Milton or from Byron the elements of his design , he brings them harmoniously together , and groups his figures , end makes his perspective , and disposes his lights ; needed by the historian , when , having learned the catalogue of a great man ' s deeds , he blends these fragments into an image of his mind ; or , having collected the dispersed events of a period , he disposes them in due relation before his

    Untitled Article

    86 * On the Life , Character , and Writing of ton Prie * Ue $ .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 86*, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/18/