a check to innovation. But the means which they use for this purpose, have sometimes even a contrary tendency. If you will replace what hath been long since expunged from the language, and extirpate what is firmly rooted, undoubtedly you yourself become an innovator. If you desert the present use, and by your example, at least, establish it as a maxim, that every critic may revive at pleasure old-fashioned terms, inflections, and combinations, and make such alterations on words as will bring them nearer to what he supposeth to be the etymon, there can be nothing fixed or stable on the subject. Possibly you prefer the usage that prevailed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; another may, with as good reason, have a partiality for that which subsisted in the days of Chaucer. And with regard to etymology, about which grammarians make so much useless bustle; if every one hath a privilege of altering words, according to his own opinion of their origin, the opinions of the learned being on this subject so various, nothing but a general chaos can ensue.

On the other hand, it may be said,

catch at every new-fashioned term and phrase which "whim or affectation may invent, and folly circulate ? "Can this ever tend to give either dignity to our style, or permanency to our language?" It cannot surely. This leads to a further explanation and limitation of the term present use, to prevent our, being misled by a mere name. It is possible, nay it is

.

The nature and characters of the use which gives law to language.

common, for men, in avoiding one error, to run into. another and a worse. There is a mean in every thing. I have purposely avoided the expressions recent use and modern use, as these seem to stand in direct opposition to what is ancient. But I have used the word present, which, in respect of place, is always opposed to absent, and in respect of time, to past or future, that now have no existence. When, therefore, the word is used of language, its proper contrary is not ancient but obsolete. Besides, though I have acknowledged language to be a species of mode or fashion, as doubtless it is, yet, being much more permanent than articles of apparel, furniture, and the like, that, in regard to their form, are under the dominion of that inconstant power, I have avoided also using the words fashionable and modish, which but too generally convey the ideas of novelty and levity. Words, therefore, are by no means to be accounted the worse for being old, if they are not obsolete; neither is any word the better for being new. On the contrary, some time is absolutely necessary to constitute that custom or use, on which the establishment of words depends.

Ir we recur to the standard already assigned, namely, the writings of a plurality of celebrated authors, there will be no scope for the comprehension of words

***In vitium ducit culpte fuga, si caret arte,

HOR. De Arte Poet..

and idioms, which can be denominated novel and upstart. It must be owned, that we often meet with such terms and phrases, in newspapers, periodical pieces, and political pamphlets. The writers to the times, rarely fail to have their performances studded with a competent number of these fantastic ornaments. A popular orator in the House of Commons, hath a sort of patent from the public, during the continuance of his popularity, for coining as many as he pleases. And they are no sooner issued, than they obtrude themselves upon us from every quarter, in all the daily papers, letters, essays, addresses, &c. But this is of no significancy. Such words and phrases are but the insects of a season at the most. The people, always fickle, are just as prompt to drop them, as they were to take them up, And not one of a hundred survives the particular occasion or party-struggle which gave it birth. We may justly apply to them what Johnson says of a great number of the terms of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, “This fugitive cant cannot be regarded as any part "of the durable materials of a language, and there"fore must be suffered to perish, with other things "unworthy of preservation *."

As use, therefore, implies duration, and as even a few years are not sufficient for ascertaining the characters of authors, I have,' for the most part, in the

* Preface to his Dictionary.

1

The nature and characters of the use which gives law to language.

following sheets, taken my prose examples, neither from living authors, nor from those who wrote before the Revolution; not from the first, because an author's fame is not so firmly established in his lifetime; nor from the last, that there may be no suspicion that the style is superannuated. The vulgar translation of the Bible I must indeed except from this restriction. The continuance and universality of its use throughout the British dominions, affords an obvious reason for the exception.

THUS I have attempted to explain what that use is, which is the sole mistress of language, and to ascertain the precise import and extent of these her essential attributes, reputable, national, and present, and to give the directions proper to be observed in searching for the laws of this empress. In truth, grammar and criticism are but her ministers; and though, like other ministers, they would sometimes impose the dictates of their own humour upon the people, as the commands of their sovereign, they are not so often successful in such attempts, as to encourage the frequent repetition of them.

CHAP. II.

The nature and use of verbal Criticism, with its principal canons.

THE first thing in elocution that claims our attention, is purity; all its other qualities have their foundation in this. The great standard of purity is use, whose essential properties, as regarding language, have been considered and explained in the preceding chapter. But before I proceed to illustrate and specify the various offences against purity, or the different ways in which it may be violated, it will be proper to enquire so much further into the nature of the subject, as will enable us to fix on some general rules or canons, by which, in all our particular decisions, we ought to be directed. This I have judged the more necessary, as many of the verbal criticisms. which have been made on English authors, since the beginning of the present century, (for in this island. we had little or nothing of the kind before) seem to have proceeded either from no settled principles at all, or from such as will not bear a near examination, There is this further advantage in beginning with establishing certain canons, that, if they shall be found reasonable, they will tend to make what remains of our road both shorter and clearer, than it would otherwise have been. Much in the way of illustration and eviction may be saved, on the particu