Sect. I.] English Language, ^9^^ 



sive improvements conferred on our language by 

 Shakspeare, Hooker, Milton, Clarendon, Temple, 

 Tillofson, Sprat, Dryden, and Locke, are well 

 known, and have been frequently the subjects of 

 eulogium by the literary historian. But still these 

 writers left many defects to be supplied. Their 

 respective styles, though various, were for the 

 most part formal, feeble, circuitous, abounding 

 with excrescences and cumbrous parts, and in 

 many instances perplexed, inaccurate, and inele- 

 gant to a very high degree. These charges, in- 

 deed, do not equally belong to all that have been 

 mentioned ; for ^t\v would admit that Shakspeare, 

 Milton, and Dryden, were feeble writers. But 

 the general application of the character above 

 stated will scarcely be denied. And though it 

 may be allowed that most of those writers were 

 free from some faults which have since become 

 fashionable, still they were chargeable with others 

 equally great, and more inconsistent with the phi- 

 losophy of language. 



The eighteenth century opened with better pro- 

 spects. The writings of Addison formed an im- 

 portant sera in English literature *. In truth, this 

 celebrated author attained at once a style of com- 

 position so much superior to that of any who had 

 gone before him, that none can peruse the monu- 

 ments which he has left us of his taste without ad- 

 miration. He was less faulty in multiplying syuo- 

 nymous words than his predecessors. He display- 



* Joseph Addison, the son of the reverend Launcelot Addison, 

 was born in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at the 

 university of Oxford ; became secretary of state in 1717> a"^ ^^^'^ 

 in J 719. 



