On English Preterites and Genitives. 251 century after century using two words or two phrases with- out drawing a distinction between them. Cobbett too says just the same thing as Mr Crombie, adding, that, " as to when one mode of expression is best, and when the other, it is a matter which must be left to taste f^ so that he felt there was a difference between them, though he was unable to explain it, and therefore referred the question to taste, that last arbiter invoked by those who have nothing else to appeal to : as if taste were something totally arbitrary and unaccountable, and as if the very business of a grammarian were not to set forth the rules which taste lays down for the usage of speech, and to explain their motives and grounds. It may be not unin- teresting to remark that the general principle of the ancient languages with regard to the order of words, so far as relates to the matter we are now discussing, was the reverse of ours, and that, both in Latin and Greek, genitives as well as ad- jectives, unless they were emphatic, stood in the rear, except under peculiar circumstances : and moreover that in compound words, our general practice being to throw back the accent as far as possible, the most important word usually comes first. Hence for instance Tom the soji of John becomes Tom John- son: but nobody would call him Tom John's son. In Gaelic names on the contrary, whatever the reason may be, as in Macdonald^ Macleod^ Macpherson^ the word expressing filia- tion is prefixt. May not these remarks point our way to the reason which led us to retain the genitive for one, and yet only for one, particular construction ? When the two languages out of which the modern English has grown up, began to coalesce, one of the result? of their union, as was remarkt in the last Number (pp. 667-9), was a tendency to get rid of gramma- tical forms. For in the first place when forein words are imported in any numbers, there is always a good deal of difficulty in transforming them into natives, as may be seen in the unenglish character of our scientific phraseology, in which we have not yet been able to give a national form even to the plurals of genus and species^ and in which the words are often no less uncouth a medley than the objects they are meant to stand for. One might almost fancy that our men of science had lost their perception of what the
