$52 LINN^US'S KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE. 



and even when old age had chilled the brilliancy of his imagination, 

 would frequently read Ovid and Virgil, and rehearse with ease 

 and pleasure, several passages from the works of those poets. He 

 was not fond of what is properly called the philology of words. While 

 at college, he had already but too much evinced his aversion to the 

 learning of languages. In the foreign countries which he had visited, 

 in England, Holland, and France, the Latin language became mostly 

 his aid in his intercourse, which was almost entirely confined to the 

 learned. In this language, with the assistance of the Greek, of which 

 he had a competent knowledge for his profession, he expressed him- 

 self in describing objefts of natural history, with ease, fluency, 

 masterly conciseness, perspicuity, and precision. Simplicity, the pre- 

 dominant feature of his whole charafter, was also remarkable in the 

 language of his science, which derived from him so many reforms and 

 perfeQions. The di£lion of a technical man could not surely be that 

 of a Cicero. The obje6l of which he complained, appeared more im- 

 portant to him than the vesture which he threw about it. His de- 

 scriptions and his letters please, though one ought not to search for ele- 

 gance of latinity in them. Owing to the quickness with which he 

 wrote, he would sometimes commit errors even against the grammatical 

 accuracy of the vernacular tongue of the Romans, and some of his 

 letters which we had occasion to insert in this work, will furnish ample 

 proof of the truth of this assertion. The greatness of Linnaeus be- 

 comes an inducement even to mention themosttriflingparticulars. He fre- 

 quently used to say to his friends : — " I would rather have three 



" SLAPS FROM PrISCIAN, THAN ONE FROM NaTURE. Mdlo tre& 



" alaj^as 



