ar," which though it
is not exactly the same Latin that Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and
Ovid spoke, is, however, as good Latin as the erudite Germans speak or
write. I have always observed that the most learned people, that is,
those who have read the most Latin, write the worst; and that
distinguishes the Latin of gentleman scholar from that of a pedant. A
gentleman has, probably, read no other Latin than that of the Augustan
age; and therefore can write no other, whereas the pedant has read much
more bad Latin than good, and consequently writes so too. He looks upon
the best classical books, as books for school-boys, and consequently
below him; but pores over fragments of obscure authors, treasures up the
obsolete words which he meets with there, and uses them upon all
occasions to show his reading at the expense of his judgment. Plautus is
his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of
his comedies, but upon account of the many obsolete words, and the cant
of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else. He will rather
use 'olli' than 'illi', 'optume' than 'optima', and any bad word rather
than any good one, provided he can but prove, that strictly speaking, it
is Latin; that is, that it was written by a Roman. By this rule, I might
now write to you in the language of Chaucer or Spenser, and assert that I
wrote English, because it was English in their days; but I should be a
most affected puppy if I did so, and you would not understand three words
of my letter. All these, and such like affected peculiarities, are the
characteristics of learned coxcombs and pedants, and are carefully
avoided by all men of sense.

I dipped accidentally, the other day, into Pitiscus's preface to his
"Lexicon," where I found a word that puzzled me, and which I did not
remember ever to have met with before. It is the adverb 'praefiscine',
which means, IN A GOOD HOUR; an expression which, by the superstition of
it, appears to be low and vulgar. I looked for it: and at last I found
that it is once or twice made use of in Plautus, upon the strength of
which this learned pedant thrusts it into his preface. Whenever you write
Latin, remember that every word or phrase which you make use of, but
cannot find in Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil; and Ovid, is bad,
illiberal Latin, though it may have been written by a Roman.

I must now say something as to the matter of the "Lecture," in which I
confess ther