gradually exalted, and conversation purified
and enlarged."--SAMUEL JOHNSON: _Lives_, p. 321.

15. _Reign of George II, 1760 back to 1727.--Example written in 1751_.

"We Britons in our time have been remarkable borrowers, as our _multiform_
Language may sufficiently shew. Our Terms in _polite Literature_ prove,
that this came from _Greece_; our terms in _Music_ and _Painting_, that
these came from Italy; our Phrases in _Cookery_ and _War_, that we learnt
these from the French; and our phrases in _Navigation_, that we were taught
by the _Flemings_ and _Low Dutch_. These many and very different Sources of
our Language may be the cause, why it is so deficient in _Regularity_ and
_Analogy_. Yet we have this advantage to compensate the defect, that what
we want in _Elegance_, we gain in _Copiousness_, in which last respect few
Languages will be found superior to our own."--JAMES HARRIS: _Hermes_, Book
iii, Ch. v, p. 408.

16. _Reign of George I, 1727 back to 1714.--Example written about 1718_.

"There is a certain coldness and indifference in the phrases of our
European languages, when they are compared with the Oriental forms of
speech: and it happens very luckily, that the Hebrew idioms ran into the
English tongue, with a particular grace and beauty. Our language has
received innumerable elegancies and improvements from that infusion of
Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the poetical passages in holy
writ. They give a force and energy to our expressions, warm and animate our
language, and convey our thoughts in more ardent and intense phrases, than
any that are to be met with in our tongue."--JOSEPH ADDISON: _Evidences_,
p. 192.

17. _Reign of Queen Anne, 1714 to 1702.--Example written in 1708_.

"Some by old words to Fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile."
"In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastick, if too new or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are try'd,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."
ALEXANDER POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, l. 324-336.

III. ENGLISH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

18. _Reign of William III, 1702 to 1689.--Example published in 1700_.

"And when we see a Man of _Milton's_ Wit _Chime_ in with such a _Herd_, and
Help on the _Cry_ against _Hirelings_! We find How Easie it is fo