our thoughts in few sounds.
This indeed takes off from the elegance of our tongue, but at the same
time expresses our ideas in the readiest manner, and consequently answers
the first design of speech better than the multitude of syllables which
make the words of other languages more tuneable and sonorous. The sounds
of our English words are commonly like those of string music, short and
transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch; those of other
languages are like the notes of wind instruments, sweet and swelling, and
lengthened out into variety of modulation.

In the next place we may observe that, where the words are not
monosyllables, we often make them so, as much as lies in our power, by
our rapidity of pronunciation; as it generally happens in most of our
long words which are derived from the Latin, where we contract the length
of the syllables, that gives them a grave and solemn air in their own
language, to make them more proper for despatch, and more conformable to
the genius of our tongue. This we may find in a multitude of words, as
"liberty," "conspiracy," "theatre," "orator," &c.

The same natural aversion to loquacity has of late years made a very
considerable alteration in our language, by closing in one syllable the
termination of our preterperfect tense, as in the words "drown'd,"
"walk'd," "arriv'd," for "drowned," "walked," "arrived," which has very
much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest
words into so many clusters of consonants. This is the more remarkable
because the want of vowels in our language has been the general complaint
of our politest authors, who nevertheless are the men that have made
these retrenchments, and consequently very much increased our former
scarcity.

This reflection on the words that end in "ed" I have heard in
conversation from one of the greatest geniuses this age has produced. I
think we may add to the foregoing observation, the change which has
happened in our language by the abbreviation of several words that are
terminated in "eth," by substituting an "s" in the room of the last
syllable, as in "drowns," "walks," "arrives," and innumerable other
words, which in the pronunciation of our forefathers were "drowneth,"
"walketh," "arriveth." This has wonderfully multiplied a letter which
was before too frequent in the English tongue, and added to that hissing
in our language which is taken so much notice of by foreigners, but at