persuaded to approach the "well of English undefiled," with the
certainty that a slender degree of patience will enable him to to enjoy
both the humour and the pathos with which old Geoffrey delighted the age
of Cressy and of Poictiers.

To pursue this a little farther. If our neophyte, strong in the new-born
love of antiquity, were to undertake to imitate what he had learnt to
admire, it must be allowed he would act very injudiciously, if he were
to select from the Glossary the obsolete words which it contains, and
employ those exclusively of all phrases and vocables retained in modern
days. This was the error of the unfortunate Chatterton. In order to give
his language the appearance of antiquity, he rejected every word that
was modern, and produced a dialect entirely different from any that
had ever been spoken in Great Britain. He who would imitate an ancient
language with success, must attend rather to its grammatical character,
turn of expression, and mode of arrangement, than labour to collect
extraordinary and antiquated terms, which, as I have already averred, do
not in ancient authors approach the number of words still in use, though
perhaps somewhat altered in sense and spelling, in the proportion of one
to ten.

What I have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to
sentiments and manners. The passions, the sources from which these must
spring in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks
and conditions, all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter
of course, that the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however
influenced by the peculiar state of society, must still, upon the whole,
bear a strong resemblance to each other. Our ancestors were not more
distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had "eyes,
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;" were "fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer," as ourselves. The
tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings, must have borne the
same general proportion to our own.

It follows, therefore, that of the materials which an author has to
use in a romance, or fictitious composition, such as I have ventured
to attempt, he will find that a great proportion, both of language and
manners, is as proper to the present time as to those in which he has
laid his time of action. The freedom of choice whi