I 37 1 



quent ufe of remote and abftrufe words of Latin original, that 

 his meaning often becomes unintelligible to readers not poffefTed 

 of a confiderable degree of learning ; and whether thefe words 

 were now firft made by him, or having been made by others, 

 had been hitherto denied admittance into the current language, 

 is a matter of perfed indifference. 



It muft be allowed that thefe terms are reftrained by our 

 author to fuch precifion, that they cannot often refign 

 their places to others more familiar, without fome injury to 

 the fenfe. But fuch is the copioufnefs of our language, that 

 there are few ideas on ordinary fubjc<as, which an attentive 

 examination will find incommunicable in its ordinary words. 

 Though we may not have a term to denote the exiftence of a 

 quality in the abftrad, we may perhaps find one to denote it 

 in the concrete ; and even though there may be none to exprefs 

 any mode of its exiftence, there may readily occur one to exprefs 

 its dired negation. It is the bufinefs of the writer who wifhes 

 to be underftood, to try all poffible variations of the grammatical 

 ftrudure of his fentence, to fee if there be not fome which may 

 poffibly make known his thought in familiar words. But that 

 this was not the pradice of Johnfon, his compofitions and his 

 celebrated fluency afford the ftrongeft evidence. He feems to 

 have followed the firft impulfe of his mind in the ftrudure of 

 his fentence, and when he found in his progrefs no Englifli word 

 at hand to occupy the predetermined place, it was eafy to fupply 

 the deficiency by calling in a Latin one. 



Of this overbearing prejudice, which thus fubdued a ftrongly 

 rational underftanding, and mifled a judgment eminently critical, 



it 



