...represents the eternal spirit of English. "If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology...language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life . . . There is a conversation above...

...positions Shakespeare as the mediating term: If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology...language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be...

...language seems purely Utopian. He writes If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology...language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be...

...be more than a step on the way to something else. For the first time the language achieved "a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology...respective language as to remain settled and unaltered." It was therefore for the first time worthy of an attention not merely antiquarian. This is one of the...

...washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare. If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation,...intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and...