th graceful words the willing ear of taste. His wisdom shall be silence,
when men are present; for the soul of manly language, is the soul that
thinks and feels as best becomes a man.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

"Non mediocres enim tenebrae in sylva, ubi haec captanda: neque eon, quo
pervenire volumus semitae tritae: neque non in tramitibus quaedam objecta, quae
euntem retinere possent."--VARRO. _De Lingua Latina_, Lib. iv, p. 4.

1. In order that we may set a just value upon the literary labours of those
who, in former times, gave particular attention to the culture of the
English language, and that we may the better judge of the credibility of
modern pretensions to further improvements, it seems necessary that we
should know something of the course of events through which its
acknowledged melioration in earlier days took place. For, in this case, the
extent of a man's knowledge is the strength of his argument. As Bacon
quotes Aristotle, "Qui respiciunt ad pauca, de facili pronunciant." He that
takes a narrow view, easily makes up his mind. But what is any opinion
worth, if further knowledge of facts can confute it?

2. Whatsoever is successively varied, or has such a manner of existence as
time can affect, must have had both an origin and a progress; and may have
also its particular _history_, if the opportunity for writing it be not
neglected. But such is the levity of mankind, that things of great moment
are often left without memorial, while the hand of Literature is busy to
beguile the world with trifles or with fictions, with fancies or with lies.
The rude and cursory languages of barbarous nations, till the genius of
Grammar arise to their rescue, are among those transitory things which
unsparing time is ever hurrying away, irrecoverably, to oblivion. Tradition
knows not what they were; for of their changes she takes no account.
Philosophy tells us, they are resolved into the variable, fleeting breath
of the successive generations of those by whom they were spoken; whose
kindred fate it was, to pass away unnoticed and nameless, lost in the
elements from which they sprung.

3. Upon the history of the English language, darkness thickens as we tread
back the course of time. The subject of our inquiry becomes, at every step,
more difficult and less worthy. We have now a tract of English literature,
both extensive and luminous; and though many modern writers, and no few