This critique relates to the new edition of Prof. Muller's well-known work on Language. "For many," says Prof. Whitney, in his preface, "the book has been their first introduction to linguistic study; and doubtless to a large proportion of English-speaking readers, especially, it is still the principal and most authoritative text-book of that study, as regards both methods and results. A work holding such a position calls for careful criticism, that it may not be trusted where it is untrustworthy, and so do harm to the science which it was intended to help."
"This caustic review of Max Muller's latest edition of his 'Science of Language' will command attention for more and higher merits than its brilliant criticism. It upholds a theory of language and of its development which, though not taught by Max Muller, is held by the great masters of linguistic science. The reader not versed in the science, nor well read in its controversial literature, will get from this brochure a conception of the critical points of the subject which he might miss in the reading of many larger and more systematic treatises."
—The Independent, New York.