No people have pretended to so much precision in their language as the Turks. They have not only verbs active, passive, transitive, and reciprocal, but also verbs co-operative, verbs meditative, verbs frequentative, verbs negative, and verbs impossible; and moreover they have what are called verbs of opinion, and verbs of knowledge. The latter are used when the speaker means it to be understood that he speaks of his own sure knowledge, and is absolutely certain of what he asserts; the former when he advances it only as what he thinks likely, or believes upon the testimony of others. Now in the Turkish language the word whereon both the meaning and the construction of the sentence depend, is placed at the end of a sentence which extends not unfrequently to ten, fifteen or twenty lines. What therefore they might gain in accuracy by this nice distinction of verbs must be more than counterbalanced by the ambiguity consequent upon long-windedness. And notwithstanding their conscientious moods, they are not more remarkable for veracity than their neighbours who in ancient times made so much use of the indefinite tenses, and were said to be always liars. We have a sect in our own country who profess to use a strict and sincere plainness of speech; they call their dialect _the plain language_, and yet they are notorious for making a studied precision in their words, answer all the purposes of equivocation. CHAPTER LIX. SHOWING WHAT THAT QUESTION WAS, WHICH WAS ANSWERED BEFORE IT WAS ASKED. _Chacun a son stile; le mien, comme vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique._ M^E. DE SEVIGNEˊ. In reporting progress upon the subject of the preceding chapter, it appears that the question asked concerning the question that was answered, was not itself answered in that chapter; so that it still remains to be explained what it was that was so obvious as to require no other answer than the answer that was there given; whether it was the reason why there is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove? or the reason why Horrebow, if he had been the author of this book, would simply have said that there was none, and have said nothing more about it? The question which was answered related to Horrebow. He would have said nothing more about the matter, because he would have thought there was nothing more to say; or because he agreed with Britain's old rhyming Remembrancer, that although More might be said hereof to make a proof, Yet more to say were more than is enough.