PHILOLOGY

(Gr. 0iAto), / love, and Xoyus, speech, discourse.) This word appears to have been used by the cla ical ancients to designate the whole circle of belles-lettres, and even of the sciences: cultivated as they then were very imperfectly, and more in a theoretical than an inductive shape; considered not with respect to their respective subject matters, but to the language in which they were conveyed. A philologist was one who studied or taught the elegance of diction, as applicable to every branch of human learning; nor can the meaning of the designation be very accurately distinguished from that of the ypuufiHTiKos, or grammarian: while sometimes the term philology was usurped in a wider sciijc, so as to comprehend learning in general. After the revival of letters, the word was introduced into modern European languages, but in a much more restricted signification. It then comprehended grammatical criticism and etymology, and some branches of archeology;and as these studies were almost confined to the ancient languages, and other relics of cla ical antiquity, which alone were then studied in a scientific manner, the only philologists were the learned investigators of the Greek and Latin idioms and literature. Commentaries on ancient authors, etymological works, and glo aries of their language, grammars, , were then the cla of writings usually denominated philological; and although the field of philoiogy, considered In this sense, is now more extensive, as the modem European and non-European languages have also become the subjects of accurate investigation, it is with the same general meaning that the word is chiefly used, at least among English writers, at the present day. It is defined by Johnson "criticism, grammatical learning." In this popular sense philology may be said to embrace, 1. Etymology,or the science of the origin of words; 2. Gramma?, or the science of the construction of language in general, and of individual languages; 3. Literary criticism, or the investigation of merits and demerits in style and diction. Of late years, however, a new and very extensive province has been added to the dominion of philology; namely, the science of language in a more general sense, considered philosophically with respect to the light it throws on the nature of the human intellect and progre of human knowledge;and historically, with reference to the connexion between different tongues, and the connexion thus indicated netween different nations and races. Some attempts have recently been made to confine the use of the word philology to this particular branch of learning. It comprehends, 1. Phonology, or the knowledge of the sounds of the human voice; which appears to include orthography, or the system to be adopted when we endeavour to render, by our own alphabet, the sounds of a foreign language; 2. Etymology3.; Ideology, or the science of the modification of language by grammatical forms, according to the various points of view from which men contemplate the ideas which words are meant to expre . Cla ical Philology. — By German writers the use of the word philology is still not uncommonly restricted to this branch of study. The earliest commentators, lexicographers, and grammarians, whose works we po e , flourished in Greece and Rome at various periods between the Chri» tian era and the fall of the Roman empire. During the middle ages the knowledge of the cla ical languages, or of the works written in them, ceased to be cultivated as a science. Philology was revived about the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century, and chiefly by the labours of various learned Greeks expelled from their own country by the encroachments of the Romans. In the 15lh century, Italy was peculiarly animated with a zeal for cla ical lit erature, which, in fact, e entially injured, during the whole of that period, the cultivation of the native language of the country. In the following age, the cultivation of this study pa ed chiefly into the hands of the French, Dutch, and Germans; nor was it long retained in any perfection among the students of the first of these nations. In the hands of the industrious writers of Holland nnd Germany cla ical philology a umed a new form. Le elegant, and pursued [s. 940]