294 Modern Lafiguoges. [Chap. XV.. 



But not to content ourselves with these gene- 

 ral remarks, let us descend to the particular con- 

 sideration of some of those living European lan- 

 guages, which may be supposed to have received 

 the greatest number of improvements during the 

 last century, and to be most worthy of notice*. 



SECTION I. 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 



The English language has received, during this 

 period, a large portion of the improvements which 

 have been mentioned. From the middle of the 

 sixteenth to the commencement of the eighteenth 

 century, English style had been in a regular course 

 of refinement and general melioration. The great 

 British lexicographer, Dr. Johnson, tells us tha,t 

 the writings of sir Philip Sidney, who died in 

 ^5^5, furnish a boundary beyond which he made 

 few excursions in search of the *' wells of English 

 undcfiled f ." After Sidney, the important success 



* In the following sections tlie intelligent reader will observe: 

 that the Spanish, tlie Dutch, and several other important dialects of 

 modern Europe, are omitted. The reason for this omission is the 

 best in the world. It is because the author knows so little of 

 those languages, and is so entirely ignorant of the details of im- 

 provement which they have received, that he cannot undertake to 

 ■^tate them. It is presumed, ho\\ ever, tliat the improvements which 

 have lately taken place in most of the cultivated living languages, 

 respectively, agree in so many rcsppcts, that the exhibition of those 

 V hich belong to one may be considered as applying in a conside- 

 rable degree to the rest. 



I Pnfacc to the Dktionarij of the English Language. 



