iv
which it is constructed are right. The patient work which I know that he has devoted to the subject for years and his mastery of the language both as scholar and as poet are a sufficient guarantee that his illustration of the principles is wide and sufficiently correct.
In the study of Tamil in our Colleges the book will mark an epoch. For it puts that study upon a better basis, and will begin to do for it what such writers as Trench and Morris and Skeat did for English a generation or more ago. The author has by it gained for himself the distinction of being the pioneer in a field into which many will doubtless follow him. But none of his successors are likely to excel him in the real usefulness of their work or in their love of the language whose past he here illumines.
