atural to the rapidity of colloquial speech.[486] It
is by their knowledge of orthography and etymology that the more
educated part of the community is preserved from these corrupt modes of
pronunciation. There is always therefore a standard by which common
speech may be rectified; and in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge
and politeness the deviations from it will be more slight and gradual.
But in distant provinces, and especially where the language itself is
but of recent introduction, many more changes may be expected to occur.
Even in France and England there are provincial dialects, which, if
written with all their anomalies of pronunciation as well as idiom,
would seem strangely out of unison with the regular language; and in
Italy, as is well known, the varieties of dialect are still more
striking. Now, in an advancing state of society, and especially with
such a vigorous political circulation as we experience in England,
language will constantly approximate to uniformity, as provincial
expressions are more and more rejected for incorrectness or inelegance.
But, where literature is on the decline, and public misfortunes contract
the circle of those who are solicitous about refinement, as in the last
ages of the Roman empire, there will be no longer any definite standard
of living speech, nor any general desire to conform to it if one could
be found; and thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar will entirely
predominate. The niceties of ancient idiom will be totally lost, while
new idioms will be formed out of violations of grammar sanctioned by
usage, which, among a civilized people, would have been proscribed at
their appearance.

Such appears to have been the progress of corruption in the Latin
language. The adoption of words from the Teutonic dialects of the
barbarians, which took place very freely, would not of itself have
destroyed the character of that language, though it sullied its purity.
The worst law Latin of the middle ages is still Latin, if its barbarous
terms have been bent to the regular inflections. It is possible, on the
other hand, to write whole pages of Italian, wherein every word shall be
of unequivocal Latin derivation, though the character and personality,
if I may so say, of the language be entirely dissimilar. But, as I
conceive, the loss of literature took away the only check upon arbitrary
pronunciation and upon erroneous grammar. Each people innovated through
caprice, imitati