r Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be _un pen
passe_; and no Italian will maintain, that the diction of any modern
writer is not perceptibly different from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or
Caro.

Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests
and migrations are now very rare; but there are other causes of change,
which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress,
are, perhaps, as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions
of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce, however necessary,
however lucrative, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the language;
they that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they
endeavour to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled
dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the
Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be confined to the
exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by
degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with
the current speech.

There are likewise internal causes equally forcible. The language most
likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation
raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from
strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of life;
either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with
very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as
common use requires, would, perhaps, long continue to express the same
notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a
people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of
the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other.
Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock
of ideas; and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will
produce new words, or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained
from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at
large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any
custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as
any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same
proportion as it alters practice.

As by the cultivation of various sciences, a language is amplified, it
will be more furnished with words deflected from their original sense;
the geometrician will talk of a "courtier's zeni