Sect. I.] English Language* 303 



many of those words and phrases which modern 

 innovators have introduced, a better taste will, no 

 doubt, indignantly dismiss. If more than forty 

 years ago a celebrated writer could complain, with 

 justice, of numerous departures from the purity of 

 Englisli idiom, and deviations toward the '' Gallic 

 structure and phraseology," it is presumed that, 

 since that time, the complaint has become better 

 founded. Mr. Hume, and, in a high degree, ]\Ir. 

 Gibbon, to say nothing of a multitude of less con- 

 spicuous writers, are chargeable with many devia- 

 tions from the purity of our language, and the in- 

 troduction of many phrases by no means consistent 

 with its analogy. Stilly however, it must be ad- 

 mitted that these faults are accompanied with real 

 and numerous improvements ; that the style of our 

 best authors is not only incomparably superior to 

 that which prevailed antecedently to the time of 

 Addison, but also, in some respects, superior to his 

 best specimens ; and that excellences of style have 

 lately become more common and popular than at 

 any former period ; insomuch, that wp now often 

 find in an occasional pamphlet, or in the pages of 

 a gazette, a perspicuity, energy, and elegance of 

 diction^ for which we might have looked in vain 

 amono- the best models of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. 



Beside the improvements which have taken 

 place in English style, during the last age, the 

 language has undergone several minuter changes, 

 which are not unworthy of being just mentioned, 

 i'he Orthographij of our tongue has received con- 

 siderable modifications. Superfluous letters have 

 been discarded from many words. And, in the- 



