ers, or what Works of
theirs has been communicated to him, that he should know more than all
Mankind? One would think he was their Master by what he says, in the
next Page, _What I have most at Heart, is some Method for ascertaining
and fixing our Language for ever._ Now you must know, that this Reverend
Author, who is so concern'd for the Fixing our Language, has himself a
Style of a very deficient Character; in which the Reader will perceive
how much we shou'd be _improv'd_, by having his manner _ascertained and
fixed_; for doubtless he thinks his own the best, and his Friends know
no better than to be of his Mind. _He would be more comprehensive_, says
an Author of Note, _if he would alter and correct his Style, which is
too loose and diffus'd in all Conscience. So that when I read him
sometimes for a good while together, tho' I go on very evenly and
smoothly, I find it difficult to recollect what I have been doing, and
whether I have been reading or sleeping. My present Advice to him
therefore is, that he would study +Tacitus+, and such other Politicians
as say much in few Words: And if he obstinately persists in the same
Childish fondness for his Style, I shall be obliged to shew in how small
a Compass the whole Substance of what he says, may be contained. All
this vile Drudgery will I submit to for his sake_, &c. But so little
likelihood there is of his mending his Style by reading _Tacitus_, that
he defies him and charges him with the Corruption of the _Roman_ Tongue,
by saying that in Two or Three Words, about which such a Genius as he is
might have employ'd Twenty or Thirty. This Brevity he calls Affectation,
and assures us, it brought Barbarisms into the _Latin_ Tongue, even
before the _Goths_ invaded _Italy_. However he exposes his own
Ignorance, he should have been careful not to have discover'd his
Friends: Does the _Translation_ of the _Bible_ teach us to understand
_Fairfax_? Are that and the _Common-Prayer_ the Standard of Language?
Yet he affirms, that without them one cou'd not understand any thing
written a hundred Years ago. Whereas the _Jerusalem_ of _Fairfax_ is
older than that, and whoever reads it will find the Language as new as
any can be expected from the New Academy these Fifty Years. For our
Tongue is not so variable in the best Authors as the Doctor represents
it, and the difference between the present _English_ and the _English_ a
Hundred Years ago, is not so great as between the Old and Mod