Byington, edited by Brinton; Contributions to a Grammar of the Muskogee Language; The Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan, describing Lauda's so-called Maya alphabet; The Arawack Language of Guiana, in which the author shows that the nations of the Bahamas and Antilles at the discovery were of the Arawack stock; this essay contains an analysis of the primitive language of Hayti On the Language of the Natchez, wherein the writer identifies the language of the Natchez as largely a dialect of the Chahta-Muskokee family; the Names of the Gods, an exegetical study of the Popol Vuh, or national book of the Quiches of Guatemala; A Grammar of the Cakchiquel Language of Guatemala; American Languages and why we should study them; The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as set forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt, with the translation of an unpublished memoir by him, on the American verb; On Polysynthesis and Incorporation; Notes on the Manque, an extinct dialect formerly spoken in Nicaragua; The Taensa Grammar and Dictionary, in which are shown the fraudulent claims of the alleged Taensa language, introduced by Parisot; The Study of the Nahuatl Language; The Phonetic Elements in the Graphic System of the Mayas and Mexicans; The Conception of Love in some American Languages; On the Ikonomatic Method of Phonetic Writing; and, in 1889, associated with Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony was issued a Lenâpé-English Dictionary, based upon a manuscript of the last century, preserved in the Moravian church at Bethlehem, Pa.
In general linguistics he has contributed several papers to the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society on the possibility of an international scientific tongue, the chief arguments in which were summed up in a pamphlet published in 1889 on the Aims and Traits of a World-Language.
In the great conflict between scientific thought and religious dogma, Dr. Brinton has always occupied a pronounced position. His volume on the Religious Sentiment begins by an absolute rejection of the supernatural as such, and explains all expressions of religious feeling as the results of familiar physical and mental laws. These opinions he further emphasized in an address on Giordano Bruno, published in 1890, a philosopher to whose theories he had paid considerable attention in early life.
While singularly devoid of taste or faculty for music—which may perhaps be attributed to six generations of Quaker ancestry—Dr. Brinton has always cherished an ardent love of poetry. He is Vice-President of and a frequent contributor to the Browning Society of Philadelphia, which numbers nearly seven hundred members; he is also a friend and disciple of Walt Whitman, and has published an essay explaining his eccentric versifications.
