No. CV.

Obscurata diu populo bonus eruet, atque
Proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum,
Quæ priscis memorata Catonibus atque Cethegis,
Nunc situs informis premit, et deserta vetustas.
Adsciscet nova, quæ genitor produxerit usus:
Vehemens, et liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,
Fundet opes, Latiumque beabit divite linguâ.

HORAT.

Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears,
Bright through the rubbish of a thousand years;
Command old words that long have slept, to wake,
Words that wise Bacon, or brave Raieigh spake;
Or bid the new be English, ages hence
(For use will foster what's begot by sense);
Pour the rich tide of eloquence along,
Lucid and pure, yet velement and strong,
With all the treasures of the mother tongue.
POPE and COLMAN.

LEARNING, like beaten gold, in proportion to its being more extended, becomes more superficial. Gross ignorance, and profound erudition, are now equally uncommon. Literature, no longer confined to colleges and cloisters, mixes itself, in some measure, with the commerce of the exchange, the exercises of the camp, and the graces of the court: but the deep-read scholar is å rarer character than ever. The main stream of science, branching into numberless rivulets, grows shallow as well as clear. The stores of learning

are parcelled out by retail; and what was sarcastically said of the reputed knowledge of our northern neighbours, is nearly applicable to that of the whole island: every man has a mouthful, but no man has a bellyful.

This observation on the state of learning in general, is almost equally true in respect to the lesser graces of style and composition: that happy mediocrity denied by gods and men to the writers of former ages, has been reserved for our own period. Few writers are barbarous and ungrammatical, or even unmusical in their language; but very few are truly simple, nervous, or elegant. Some styles, like handsome faces, are spoiled by affectation, or ruined by varnish and extrinsic ornament; some are bloated with false pomp; some darkened by metaphysical abstract phraseology; and some enervated by dapper familiarities, and the cant jargon of drawing-rooms, horse-courses, and gaming-tables.

Purity of style, like purity of manners, is not wholly practicable: languages, like men by whom they are framed, will be imperfect; yet every endeavour to trace the sources of corruption, tends to stop its progress. Living authors, as well as living manners, are at once the chief objects of our censure and imitation.

The works of deceased writers, which we have been taught by tradition to applaud, are too seldom turned over; while the productions of our cotemporaries present themselves to our notice oftener than their persons. He who has talents to distinguish himself from the crowd, has more followers than an ancient philosopher. A popular writer sets the fashion of style, and the very herd of critics that wish to depreciate the value of his works run after him. If an /author arises, whose deep learning and large imagination, struggling for expression equal to his conception, tempt him to lengthen his periods, and swell his phraseology; if an intimate familiarity with the combinations of a dead language, now and then betray him into too wide a deviation from the vernacular idiom; such a writer will have the mortification to see the beauties of his style distorted by awkward imitation, and his errors (if in him they are errors) made ridiculous by aggravation. The language that, in his master-hand, like a well-tuned instrument, "discourses most eloquent music," under their management utters nothing but discord. The rattling of their periods and tumidity of their phrases, like the noise of a drum, or swell of a bladder, are but symptoms of their wind and emptiness.

Ornament of diction, says Quintilian, though the greatest of beauties, is only graceful when it follows as it were of itself, not when it is pursued. Of all ornaments, a foreign structure of period, as it is the most prejudicial to the genius of our language, appears the most studied and unnatural. An adopted word is but a partial and trifling innovation, and is often happily incorporated, when care is taken to naturalise the foreigner, by giving a national air to the turn of the phrase. Every language, more especially the English, has its idioms, which we should not register, with grammarians and lexicographers, among its irregularities, but, with poets and orators, number among its beauties. To extirpate idiom from our tongue, would be like rooting up the old oaks that are the glory and ornament of our country; or, to vary the allusion, to square the language of our ancient writers to the rigid rules of Roman, or even French syntax, would extinguish the genius of our tongue, and give the whole a foreign air; like the labours of a tasteless improver, exchanging the luxuriance of nature, in our gardens, for clipped yews, straight walks, and formal parterres.

Perspicuity without meanness is pronounced by Aristotle to be the perfection of language,

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or, as he more nervously expresses it, the virtue of style; to attain which, he recommends, as a principal instrument, the use of the most common words and phrases in a figurative signification; the familiarity of the terms rendering them clear, and the novelty of their application giving them an air of elegance or dignity. The works of our old writers, prosaick as well as poetical, abound with these home-spun metaphors, by which the lowest words increase their consequence, or, at least, like ciphers, raise the value of their neighbours. Sometimes, indeed, these popular tropes are carried to excess, or used too licentiously; yet they commonly breathe a magnificent simplicity, and the whole construction is purely English; a circumstance, like that which induced Cicero to recommend the study of the ancient Roman authors, to his pupils in oratory; urging, that whoever was well read in their productions could not, were he even inclined to it, speak other than genuine Latin.

It will not, I hope, be imagined, from what I have said, that I think too lightly of the labour and genius of those learned philologists, who, by compiling grammars and dictionaries, have endeavoured to give precision and stability to our tongue. Their works, if properly consulted,