_Wild_ signifies a wood, or the place of the higher growth, and is an emblematical expression for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the Υλη, matter or sound of human speech, as ειδος seems to be of its ideal property.
_Person_ is a compound of pêr-son, _sweet sound_; pêr also signifies any sweet ripe fruit, as figs or figes, according to the Welsh; which perhaps resembles that which gave man the denomination of person, _the sound of the apple or afal_, and to the _fallen_ angel that tempted Eve, the name of di-afal or devil, _the apple God_; and figes and vices signify the same thing; the v consonant and digamma being the same, and g being an inflection of the radical c. See _person_, _wood_, &c. in the vocabulary.
The fall of man has laid us under a sort of charm, which nothing can remove but a thorough taste of the tree of knowledge, and avoiding its vicious branches as much as possible. Had that great reasoner Mr. Lock been so happy as to attend a little more to the tree of knowledge, instead of intirely rejecting the divine origin of human speech, and innate principles of thinking, he might have reasoned well upon _right_ principles, instead of misleading and confirming us in our errors, as without doubt was his intention.
The learned Hermes, the very best of modern grammarians, whose ingenious performance, had it sooner come to my perusal, might have charmed me out of my present labours, to acquiesce with his opinions, seems to be a little affected by this fort of charm, and perhaps is as much deluded from his subject by the language, learning, and beauties of the Greeks and Romans, as the late author of the short introduction to the English language, by some of our modern barbarisms, the very exceptionable parts of our language.
Grammar is the right method of expressing the ideas of things by signs and sounds adapted for the sensation of the eye and ear, according to their hieroglyfic nature, forms, and modes, and that εντελεχεια or intelligent echo, with which man was originally endued by his Creator.
It consists of three parts or sorts of names, viz. letters, considered as characters or the figures of things, and as signs of articulate sounds; their combination into particles and nouns; and their construction into phrases, propositions, and sentences. And, according to the present state of languages, etymology may be admitted as a fourth division of grammar.