Published by [London:] Printed for the Editor; and sold by T. Beckett and P. Dehondt, , Seller: Peter Harrington. Contact seller. First Edition. From United Kingdom to U. Quantity: 1 available. Rare first edition of The Philological Miscellany, all published, containing the first appearance in print of Adam Smith's "Considerations concerning the first formation of Languages, and the different genius of original and compounded Languages" pp.
The "Considerations" was a work of which Smith was, according to Dugald Stewart, proud: "It is an essay of great ingenuity, and on which the author himself set a high value. He saw that its value lies, not in the possible accuracy of the opinions, but in its being a specimen of an entirely modern kind of inquiry 'which seems, in a peculiar degree, to have interested Mr Smith's curiosity'" Introduction to the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
In he had published an extended version of his lecture on the origins of language in a little-known and short-lived review called The Philological Miscellany under the title 'Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages'. One can see why he wanted to do so.
His theory of morals and the elaborate discussion of the process of sympathetic exchange on which it was based had presupposed the theory of language on which his theory of rhetoric was based.
The theory of language he had presented to his Edinburgh and Glasgow students had been designed to show that language was essentially a vehicle for communication which had a history that was probably as old as civilization. Not only was this a subject of obvious relevance to an understanding of the workings of sympathy, it was also a means of addressing Rousseau's objection that 'not even our new grammarians' he has Condillac in mind could convince him that all the complexities of modern grammar could be explained in naturalistic terms.
