way
to clear my doubts, but by translating my English into Latin, and
thereby trying what sense the words will bear in a more stable
language. I am desirous, if it were possible, that we might all write
with the same certainty of words, and purity of phrase, to which the
Italians first arrived, and after them the French; at least that we
might advance so far, as our tongue is capable of such a standard. It
would mortify an Englishman to consider, that from the time of Boccace
and of Petrarch, the Italian has varied very little; and that the
English of Chaucer, their contemporary, is not to be understood
without the help of an old dictionary. But their Goth and Vandal had
the fortune to be grafted on a Roman stock; ours has the disadvantage
to be founded on the Dutch[4]. We are full of monosyllables, and those
clogged with consonants, and our pronunciation is effeminate; all
which are enemies to a sounding language. It is true, that to supply
our poverty, we have trafficked with our neighbour nations; by which
means we abound as much in words, as Amsterdam does in religions; but
to order them, and make them useful after their admission, is the
difficulty. A greater progress has been made in this, since his
majesty's return, than, perhaps, since the conquest to his time. But
the better part of the work remains unfinished; and that which has
been done already, since it has only been in the practice of some few
writers, must be digested into rules and method, before it can be
profitable to the general. Will your lordship give me leave to speak
out at last? and to acquaint the world, that from your encouragement
and patronage, we may one day expect to speak and write a language,
worthy of the English wit, and which foreigners may not disdain to
learn? Your birth, your education, your natural endowments, the former
employments which you have had abroad, and that which, to the joy of
good men you now exercise at home, seem all to conspire to this
design: the genius of the nation seems to call you out as it were by
name, to polish and adorn your native language, and to take from it
the reproach of its barbarity. It is upon this encouragement that I
have adventured on the following critique, which I humbly present you,
together with the play; in which, though I have not had the leisure,
nor indeed the encouragement, to proceed to the principal subject of
it, which is the words and thoughts that are suitable to tragedy; yet
the