ect might be
excused by the hope of being employed as a negociator, by the desire
of being generally understood on the continent; but my true motive was
doubtless the ambition of new and singular fame, an Englishman
claiming a place among the writers of France. The latin tongue had
been consecrated by the service of the church, it was refined by the
imitation of the ancients; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
the scholars of Europe enjoyed the advantage, which they have gradually
resigned, of conversing and writing in a common and learned idiom. As
that idiom was no longer in any country the vulgar speech, they all
stood on a level with each other; yet a citizen of old Rome might have
smiled at the best Latinity of the Germans and Britons; and we may learn
from the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, how difficult it was found to steer a
middle course between pedantry and barbarism. The Romans themselves
had sometimes attempted a more perilous task, of writing in a living
language, and appealing to the taste and judgment of the natives. The
vanity of Tully was doubly interested in the Greek memoirs of his own
consulship; and if he modestly supposes that some Latinisms might be
detected in his style, he is confident of his own skill in the art of
Isocrates and Aristotle; and he requests his friend Atticus to disperse
the copies of his work at Athens, and in the other cities of Greece, (Ad
Atticum, i. 19. ii. i.) But it must not be forgotten, that from infancy
to manhood Cicero and his contemporaries had read and declaimed, and
composed with equal diligence in both languages; and that he was not
allowed to frequent a Latin school till he had imbibed the lessons of
the Greek grammarians and rhetoricians. In modern times, the language of
France has been diffused by the merit of her writers, the social manners
of the natives, the influence of the monarchy, and the exile of the
protestants. Several foreigners have seized the opportunity of speaking
to Europe in this common dialect, and Germany may plead the authority
of Leibnitz and Frederick, of the first of her philosophers, and the
greatest of her kings. The just pride and laudable prejudice of England
has restrained this communication of idioms; and of all the nations on
this side of the Alps, my Countrymen are the least practised, and least
perfect in the exercise of the French tongue. By Sir William Temple
and Lord Chesterfield it was only used on occasions of civility an