450 Mr. Pickering on the present state of the English language 
But it is not enough for us to note’ single words; our idiom, it 
would seem, is in some degree changed, and is in danger of still great- 
er corruptions.* At the same time, therefore, that we are “ setting 
a discountenancing mark” upon unauthorised words, we should as- 
siduously study the language of the best authors, especially Dryden, 
Swift, and Addison, to the last of whom, Dr. Blair, in his Lectures 
on Rhetoric, justly applies Quintilian’s well-known remark upon Cic- 
ero—that “to be highly pleased with his manner of writing is the cri- 
“terion of a good taste in English style—Ille se profecisse sciat cui 
“ Cicero valde placebit;” and of whom Dr. Johnson emphatically 
Pe pee whoever would attain a good English style, familiar but not 
“ coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and 
“nights to Addison.” Dr. Franklin, who informs us in his Life, 
that it was one of the greatest objects of his ambition to write English 
well, formed his style upon that of Addison ; “and Franklin is one of the 
very few American writers, whose style has satisfied the Englis . 
ics. This is the discipline to which the most distinguished scholamil 
Great Britain have submitted, and without which neither they, nor the 
scholars of our own country, can acquire and preserve a pure English 
style. It is related of Mr. Fox, that when speaking of his intend 
History of England, he said, he would “ admit no word into his book 
“for which he had not the authority of Dryden.’ "This. determina- 
tion may perhaps seem, at first view, to have been dictated by too fas- 
tidious a taste, or an undue partiality for a favourite author ; but un- 
* That a radical change in the language of a people, so remote from the 
‘source of it, as we are from England, is not a chimerical supposition, will be 
apparent from the alterations that have taken place among the nations of Eu- 
rope ;, of which no instance, perhaps, is more striking, than the change and final 
separation of the languages of Spain and Portugal, notwithstanding the vicinity 
and frequent intercourse of the people of those two countries. 
