Excerpt from The Students Handbook of Comparative Grammar: Applied to the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and English Languages Comparative Grammar treats of several languages in conjunction. It explains what has become obscure in one by that which remains intelligible in others. It is thus enabled to trace the origin of grammatical forms, and to illustrate the nature of language itself more fully and satisfactorily than could be done by the investigation of any one language separately. Lord Bacon judged that to be the noblest form of grammar which should compare the properties of many tongues, 'both learned and vulgar, ' and so attain to a perfect system - as Apelles shaped his Venus, not according to one model, but from the separate beauties of many individuals. No linguist, however, appeared for centuries to carry out this idea. Little was done until the discovery and study of Sanskrit literature gave the impulse and supplied the materials for those works upon the subject which have appeared in Germany during the last thirty years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.