[266 J | Sept. 
NOTES OF A MISCELLANEOUS READER. 
I read with my pencil in my hand, and I make pa ae Spe vine gel go. slong. sail! 
Tue Mutasitiry or LANcuace.—In the margin of the paper in the 
Sketch-Book, entitled « The Mutability of Literature,” I find the fol- 
lowing notes. I had better, I think, first give the text upon which I 
have commented :-— 
« Even now, many talk of Spenser’s well of pure English undefiled, 
as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was 
not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, perpetually subject to 
changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature 
so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting...... 
This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most 
popular writer. He finds the language in which he has embarked his 
fame gradually altering, and subject to the dilapidations of time, and 
the caprice of fashion. * * * Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, the immor- 
tality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers, and which, in 
truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of 
language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into 
obscurity ; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of 
a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely 
known even by name. * * * What do we hear of Gyraldus Cambrensis, 
the historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He 
declined two bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for 
posterity ; but posterity never inquires for his labours.” —Shetch-Book, 
vol. i. pp. 269-75. 
I cannot, by any means, agree with this. English literature, since the 
general practice of printing, is not particularly mutable ; certainly not 
more so than that of France, or of any other modern nation. In point 
of fact, this paper, though very agreeable and entertaining, is most 
unphilosophically conceived, and very illogically argued throughout. 
The decay of the works of Sir Philip Sidney, &c., enumerated above, is 
to be ascribed to their matter, not to their language. Do we not(to say 
nothing of Shakspeare) read Marlow,and Beaumont and Fietcher, and Spen- 
ser, and Holinshed, and Stowe—and, which is a stronger, because an older 
example—Sir Thomas More? Cranmer and Latimer are not obsolete. It 
is the affected modernness, the euphonism of Sir Philip and of Lyly, which 
has caused them to be forgotten; not the mutability of the language gene- 
rally. One of the chief, and, perhaps, best effects of the invention of 
printing, has been to fir language. Once the literature of a nation is set 
in print, its language, by that alone, acquires permanence. Thus, what 
is true historically, is not so prophetically. The language of England 
has undergone scarcely any change (beyond the mere variations of con- 
ventional and temporary fashion—slang, in fact) for the last hundred and 
twenty years. Shakspeare died in 1616; and, a hundred years after- 
wards, the learned were at daggers-drawing about his meaning. . Addi- 
son died in 1719, and yet I have never heard of any disputed readings 
in Cato. And why? Because, in Shakspeare’s time, printing was slo- 
venly and inaccurate: errors, of infinite number and variety, crept, 
from this cause, into the text, and thence rendered it doubtful, and open 
to debate. But, when Addison lived, the art of printing had acquired a 
degree of excellence which made such chances impossible. In exact 
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