Another miscellaneous work, the Suzunoya no Bunshiu, also contains some interesting personal reminiscences. I should like to transcribe from it a delicately drawn description of how the author spent a very hot day in the society of some congenial friends. It is unfortunately too long for quotation.
Before Motoōri's time there was no Japanese grammar, one or two dictionaries of the Teniwoha or particles being hardly an exception. Although he did not produce a systematic grammar of the Japanese language, Motoöri did much to throw light upon its structure. The Tama-arare, already referred to, contains many useful grammatical hints. In the Moji-goye no Kana-dzukai (1771) he enunciated the principles of the correct spelling of Japanese words, and in the Kanji Sanonkō (1785) he dealt with the various modes of spelling and pronouncing words of Chinese origin. His principal grammatical work, however, is the Kotoba no Tama no wo (1779), in which he set forth and illustrated at great length certain rules of Japanese syntax. Conciseness was not one of Motoöri's merits. The seven volumes of which this work consists have been compressed without material loss into seven pages of English. His grammatical researches were continued by his son, Haruniwa, in whose well-known work, the Kotoba no Yachimata, the inflexional system of the Japanese verb and adjective was for the first time formulated, and by his adopted son, Ōhira, who was the author of a treatise on causative and passive verbs. European writers on Japanese grammar owe much to the researches of Motoöri and his followers.
Carlyle's idea that the qualities which go to make a man of literary genius fit the same person for being a
