the same time humours our taciturnity, and eases us of many superfluous
syllables.

I might here observe that the same single letter on many occasions does
the office of a whole word, and represents the "his" and "her" of our
forefathers. There is no doubt but the ear of a foreigner, which is the
best judge in this case, would very much disapprove of such innovations,
which indeed we do ourselves in some measure, by retaining the old
termination in writing, and in all the solemn offices of our religion.

As, in the instances I have given, we have epitomised many of our
particular words to the detriment of our tongue, so on other occasions we
have drawn two words into one, which has likewise very much untuned our
language, and clogged it with consonants, as "mayn't," "can't," "shan't,"
"won't," and the like, for "may not," "can not," "shall not," "will not,"
&c.

It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs must which
has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in familiar writings
and conversations they often lose all but their first syllables, as in
"mob.," "rep.," "pos.," "incog.," and the like; and as all ridiculous
words make their first entry into a language by familiar phrases, I dare
not answer for these that they will not in time be looked upon as a part
of our tongue. We see some of our poets have been so indiscreet as to
imitate Hudibras's doggrel expressions in their serious compositions, by
throwing out the signs of our substantives which are essential to the
English language. Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once
run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon
Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all
superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling
to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies,
and have quite destroyed our tongue.

We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when familiarised in
English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas in other modern
languages they receive a softer turn on this occasion, by the addition of
a new syllable.--Nick, in Italian, is Nicolini; Jack, in French, Janot;
and so of the rest.

There is another particular in our language which is a great instance of
our frugality in words, and that is the suppressing of several particles
which must be produced in other tongues to make a sentence intelligible.
This ofte