iSi LINNAEUS’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 character, was also remarkable in the 
language of his science, which derived from him so many reforms and 
perfections. The diCtion of a technical man could not surely be that 
of a Cicero. The objeCt of which he complained, appeared more im- 
portant to him than the vesture which he threw about it. 0 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 LinnjEUs be- 
eomes an inducement even to mention the mosttrifling particulars. He fre- 
quently used to say to his friends: — li I would rather have three 
S6 slaps from Priscian, than one from Nature.— Malo tres 
“ alaftas 
