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

pire. Thus, though in every province they ridicule the idioms of every other province, they all vail to the English idiom, and scruple not to acknowledge its superiority ever their own.

FOR example, in some parts of Wales, (if we may credit Shakespeare *) the common people say goot for good; in the south of Scotland they say gude, and in the north, gueed. Wherever one of these pronounciations prevail, you will never hear from a native either of the other two; but the word good is to be heard every where from natives as well as strangers; nor do the people ever dream that there is any thing laughable in it, however much they are disposed to laugh at the county-accents and idioms which they discern in one another. Nay more, though the people of distant provinces do not understand on another, they mostly all understand one who speaks properly. It is a just and curious observation of Dr Kenrick, that "the case of languages, or ra"ther speech, being quite contrary to that of science, "in the former the ignorant understand the learned, "better than the learned do the ignorant; in the latter, it is otherwise t.".

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HENCE it will perhaps be found true, upon inquiry, notwithstanding its paradoxical appearance, that though it be very uncommon to speak or write pure

* Fluellen in Henry V.

Rhet. Gram, Chan. ii. Sect. 4.

English, yet, of all the idioms subsisting amongst us, that to which we give the character of purity, is the commonest. The faulty idioms do not jar more with true English, than they do with one another; so that, in order to our being satisfied of the truth of the apparent paradox, it is requisite only that we remember that these idioms are diverse one from another, though they come under the common denomination of impure. Those who wander from the road may be incomparably more than those who travel in it; and yet, if it be into a thousand different by-paths that they deviate, there may not in any of these be found so many as those whom you will meet upon the king's highway.

WHAT hath been now said of provincial dialects, may, with very little variation, be applied to professional dialects, or the cant which is sometimes observed to prevail among those of the same profession or way of life. The currency of the latter cannot be so exactly circumscribed as that of the former, whose distinction is purely local; but their use is not on that account either more extensive or more reputable. Let the following serve as instances of this kind. Advice, in the commercial idiom, means information or intelligence; nervous, in open defiance of analogy, doth in the medical cant, as Johnson expresseth it, denote, having weak nerves; and the word turtle, though pre-occupied time immemorial by a species of

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

doves, is, as we learn from the same authority, employed by sailors and gluttons, to signify a tortoise *.

Ir was remarked, that national might also be opposed to foreign. I imagine it is too evident to need illustration, that the introduction of extraneous words and idioms, from other languages and foreign nations, cannot be a smaller transgression against the established custom of the English tongue, than the introduction of words and idioms peculiar to some precincts of England, or at least somewhere current within the British pale. The only material difference between them is, that the one is more commonly the error of the learned, the other of the vulgar. But if, in this view, the former is entitled to greater indulgence, from the respect paid to learning; in another view, it is entitled to less, as it is much more commonly the result of affectation. Thus two essential qualities of usage, in regard to language, have been settled, that it be both reputable and national.

SECT. III....Present use.

BUT there will naturally arise here another question, "Is not use, even good and national use, in the

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same country, different in different periods? And "if so, to the usage of what period shall we attach

* See these words in the English Dictionary.

Sect. III.

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Present use.

"ourselves, as the proper rule? If you say, the present, as it may reasonably be expected that you will, "the difficulty is not entirely removed. In what ex"tent of signification must we understand the word present? How far may we safely range in quest of authorities? or, at what distance backwards from this moment are authors still to be accounted as possessing a legislative voice in language?" To this, I own, it is difficult to give an answer with all the precision that might be desired. Yet it is certain, that when we are in search of precedents for any word or idiom, there are certain mounds which we cannot overleap with safety. For instance, the authority of Hooker or of Raleigh, however great their merit and their fame be, will not now be admitted in support of a term or expression, not to be found in any good writer of a later date.

In truth, the boundary must not be fixed at the same distance in every subject. Poetry hath ever been allowed a wider range than prose; and it is but just thai, by an indulgence of this kind, some compensation sho uld be made for the peculiar restraints Nor is this only a matter of convenience to the poet, it is also a matter of gratification to the reader. Diversity in the style relieves the ear, and prevents its being tired with the of the rhymes, or sameness But still there are limits to this diver

she is laid under the measure.

7

too frequent recurrence

of the metre.

sity.

The authority of Milto, and of Waller, on this

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

article, remains as yet unquestioned. I should not think it prudent often to introduce words or phrases, of which no example could be produced since the days of Spenser and of Shakespeare.

AND even in prose, the bounds are not the same for every kind of composition. In matters of science, for instance, whose terms, from the nature of the thing, are not capable of such a currency as those which belong to ordinary subjects, and are within the reach of ordinary readers, there is no necessity of confining an author within a very narrow circle. But in composing pieces which come under this last denomination, as history, romance, travels, moral essays, familiar letters, and the like, it is safest for an author to consider those words and idioms as obsolete, which have been disused by all good authors, for a longer period than the age of man extends to. It is not by ancient, but by present use, that our style must be regulated. And that use can never be denominated present, which hath been laid aside time immemorial, or, which amounts to the same thing, falls not within the knowledge or remembrance of any now living.

THIS remark not only affects terms and phrases, but also the declension, combination, and construction of words. Is it not then surprising to find, that' one of Lowth's penetration should think a single person entitled to revive a form of inflection in a particular word, which had been rejected by all good writ