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classic languages: not to mould the outward form of the vernacular by them, but to infuse into it, by their aid, a classical spirit. Upon this principle he acted himself, with unerring instinct; and although all the most idiomatic writers of that period, South and Swift not less than others, were early tinctured with classical literature, Milton alone was both the most learned of poets and the purest Saxon writer of his age, using the Latin to adorn his style, and at the same time proving the English to be equal to the most sublime conceptions.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Restoration-French in England-Addison and the Essayists-Johnson's Dictionary-Horne Tooke-Recent changes in English.

AFTER the English language had thus been firmly established in its essential features, and seemed to be secured against the most imminent dangers, literature was content to direct its gradual refinement by filing away asperities, throwing out redundancies, and naturalizing useful exotic terms. This guidance became most visible when new efforts were made by wellmeaning but injudicious writers, to add stores of foreign words to a tongue that needed them not.

The Restoration had already brought, with its young monarch and merry court, a number of French words and expressions. Their taste and associations were all derived from France; a knowledge of her manners and language was con

sidered necessary for every one who laid claim to higher polish and "gentility," and as Latin returned to law-records, French came back to reports; highways were called again "chemins," tithes "dimes," and man and wife "baron et feme." An erased portion of the MS. of Rowe's poem on Dryden, copied by Oldmixon, contains the following lines, characteristic of the influence of the returning sovereign, and the striking difference between the pure, Addisonian English of Dryden's poems, and the mixed language of his comparatively worthless plays:

"Backt by his friends the Invader brought along

A crew of foreign words into our tongue

To ruin and enslave the freeborn English song;

Still the prevailing fashion propt his (Dryden's) throne
And to four volumes let his plays run on."

Some of these French terms, however, were really serviceable, and enriched the English not only with distinct expressions for distinct ideas, but also with different names for the same object, viewed in different lights. Addison, and the contemporary essayists, gave it new dignity and elegance. They attempted, for the first time, to use the concentrated phraseology of the language of abstraction for the discussion of common topics, and thus raised the general style, and tuned the ear of the public to the perception of harmony in prose as well as in poetry. Of all these authors, Johnson is commonly considered the highest authority and the most influential writer. His merit lies, with many, principally in the "Dictionary of the English Language," an undertaking, the necessity of which Swift had already expressed in his "Proposal for correcting,

improving, and ascertaining the English tongue, in which, were it not for the Bible and Common Prayer Book, we should hardly be able to understand any thing that was written, say, two hundred years ago." Johnson's genius and literary sovereignty are historical facts; as a great and powerful writer, as the first critic of England, he checked the impertinence of innovation by the success with which he exhibited in his great work, at one view, the resources of his mother-tongue, and the use made of them by the best writers. In this aspect his influence on the form of the English language is undoubted, and generally admitted to have been healthy and permanent. On the intrinsic merit of his works opinions may differ; it is certain that if he did not exactly coin new derivatives, he revived disused terms and employed them frequently, influenced, no doubt, by his familiarity with Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, and Burton, who supplied him with Latinisms. Of these his wellknown definition of "net-work" is a popular illustration. The selection of words and the copiousness of his dictionary have as little escaped criticism. It has been said that he starved what ought to have been kept up, and pampered what he should have kept down, until the language had, like himself, little sinew and much fat. The criticism, however, is itself like one of those Johnsonian expressions, full of fine words and brilliant by antithesis, which were so easy to imitate, and so tempting, especially to younger writers, that his imitators ought to be blamed more than the great author himself, whose later writings were, moreover, much purer than those he published first. More serious is the charge that Johnson wrote but a dialect of English, and gave in his dictionary merely a selection of those words which

form the English language. Chalmers, in his Apology for the Believers, assures his readers that there are in Shakspeare alone one thousand words not found in Johnson's Dictionary; and the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, in a letter to Mr. Fox, states that he had collected from Milton more than five hundred "solid and nervous" words, equally missing. But it is no easy task to ascertain with tolerable precision what words were, at any given period, generally used and received; and no better proof can be given of this difficulty than the fact that, for instance, Mr. Todd added, in his time, several thousand words more to the list; whilst modern philologists assure us that there are now some thirteen thousand words in common use in England which do not appear in any (English) dictionary of the language.

It is a matter of sincere regret with all who know the real merits of Horne Tooke, that his spleen and causticity of temper should have prevented him from becoming what his talents and labors might easily have made him-the father of modern English. Darwin says very truly of him, that he first let in light upon the chaos of English etymology, and displayed the wonders of formation in language—at least in the particles. His mistaken vocation was the eternal bar to real greatness: the life-long struggle with it embittered his life and his mind, already too fond of paradox, and made him the very Ishmael of literature and politics-his hand against every man's hand, and every man's hand against his.

During the last century, the influence of literature on the English language has perhaps been less evident, because of the general activity in all branches of human knowledge. A tendency to import a large number of Latin and Greek terms was

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the necessary consequence of the extension of physical sciences, of Botany, Geology, Conchology, Mineralogy, and Chemistry. These were, of course, mostly technical terms, formed as new words were required to answer to the advance made in knowledge and the discovery of new facts. Fortunately, men of genius and taste were then also found to check the too free importation, and to limit the number of new words to the demands of absolute necessity. Paley, Sir John Herschel, and Sir Charles Bell, proved in their classic works that the results of science may be stated with dignity, and expressed in a popular manner, without the slightest ostentation of terms. Southey discarded much of the cumbrous Latinity of Johnson, and enriched the language by valuable Saxonisms. He was probably, with Cobbett, the most idiomatic writer of that day, as he always acted up to the views he thus expressed on that subject in a letter to William Taylor, of Norwich: "I can tolerate a Germanism for family sake; but he who uses a French or Latin phrase where a pure old English word does as well, ought to be hung, drawn, and quartered for high treason against his mother-tongue."

The most recent instance of the influence which authors have exercised on the English, is the tendency towards Germanisms, produced by the increased familiarity with German literature, and the intentional or unconscious imitation of German forms. Carlyle's peculiar style is perhaps the most striking evidence of such a change of literary standard: words like steamboat, handbook, fatherland, and standpoint are examples of those German formations that have actually been naturalized in English.

Other languages present even more remarkable instances of