CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Life and Growth of Language. By W. D. Whitney. (Henry S. King and Co.)—About eight years ago, when the name of Professor Whitney was little known in Europe, beyond an esoteric circle of Sanskrit scholars, we welcomed with satisfaction the appearance of his
Language and the Study of Language." Although that work did not escape "flouts and gibes and jeers"- from scholars who have been sometimes inclined to claim a monopoly in the department of popular scientific philology, it soon vindicated its claims to respect, and has become, in Dr. Jolly's translation, a standard work in Germany. In the preface to his present contribution to the "International Scientific \ Series," Professor Whitney tells us that, having gone over the subject in the work alluded to upon a carefully matured and systematic plan, he found it impossible, when treating it again for the same public, to avoid following in the main the 8&1118 course; and, as the basis of linguistic facts and their classification have during the past eight years undergone no such change or extension as should show conspicuously in a compendious discussion, he has merely offered in The Life and Growth of Language an outline of linguistic science agreeing in many of its principal features with the former one; the old story, told in a new way, under changed aspects, and with changed proportions, and with considerably less fullness of exposition and illustration. This being the case, as it is not our purpose to make the little book a peg upon which to hang a dissertation on the personal controversy between Professor Whitney and Professor Max Muller, we shall satisfy ourselves with briefest words of notice. The author's design has been to produce an introduction to the principles of linguistic science sufficiently simple to be within the range of popular appreciation, and as ouch, we confidently recommend it. We take the opportunity of pointing out to students, who have gained their first knowledge of the elements of comparative philology from the introductory chapters of Dr. Morriss admirable historical outlines of English accidence, the importance of Professor Whitney's remarks on the genetic classification of languages. The familiar distinction of languages into isolating, agglutinative, and inflective, as exhibited by Dr. Morris, though convenient and of attractive simplicity, does not offer the student who reaches the domain of independent investigation an exact or absolute test by which the character of linguistic structure may be tried; "the three degrees lie in a certain line of progress, but, as in all such cases, pass into one another."
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