irregularities. But innovations can only be made by poets; and even such as they make do not always become current. My province was merely to observe, record, arrange, and explain facts, and to produce quotations in proof of my statements. A few years ago I was shown a manuscript Grammar, which was professedly an improvement of that I first published; but in reading it I found that the author had merely inserted all that I had rejected, and excluded such rules as were new, restoring the arrangement which I disapproved. ,
Failing health having obliged me to return to England while this work was in the press, the latter pages contain some errors; but there are none which will impede the progress of the student.*
If, in-the arrangement of the rules, I have taken a new course, it is because my great object has been to facilitate self-instruction, making the learner independent of oral aid. "Every man (says Parkhurst, in the Preface to his Greek Dictionary), who has thought much upon so curious and extensive a subject as grammar, may justly claim some indulgence to his own notions, and be allowed his own peculiar method of communicating them to others." This discretion may be profitably exercised when we have to examine principles which are well understood by the commonalty, but are obscured by refinements invented by the learned.
Our earliest English Grammars were arranged on the Latin system; and the oldest grammatical treatises on Telugu were constructed on the Sanscrit plan, though the two languages are radically different. The native grammarians of the present day are fond of the expression that " Sanscrit is the mother ;" but this does not allude to its origin; it merely denotes dependance, because we cannot speak Telugu without using Sanscrit words.
Some learned or half-learned natives find fault with the arrangement I introduced. Hitherto every path was overgrown with gay weeds of pedantry, which I have cleared away. While preparing a second edition, I have been exhorted to replace some of the riddles which they venerate, and which, in their eyes, render the science mysterious. But it is to be observed that the learned
- In london I prepared the preface and sent it printed to Madras; but the packet was not received,l and I therefore re-printed it, with some improvements.
