its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore
of fine workmanship and solid weight? There is no government mint of
words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring
expression unauthorised by Mr. Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat
of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it
probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established
word, otherwise he is but an ignorant pretender!

Julius Caesar, who, unlike other great captains, is authority on words as
well as about blows, wrote a large treatise on "Analogy," in which that
fine genius counselled to "avoid every unusual word as a rock!"[19] The
cautious Quintilian, as might be expected, opposes all innovation in
language. "If the new word is well received, small is the glory; if
rejected, it raises laughter."[20] This only marks the penury of his
feelings in this species of adventure. The great legislator of words,
who lived when his own language was at its acme, seems undecided, yet
pleaded for this liberty. "Shall that which the Romans allowed to
Caecilius and to Plautus be refused to Virgil and Varius?" The answer to
the question might not be favourable to the inquirer. While a language
is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when
established, for restricting themselves to them. But this is to imagine
that a perfect language can exist! The good sense and observation of
Horace perceived that there may be occasions where necessity must become
the mother of invented words:--

----Si forte necesse est
Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum.

If you write of things abstruse or new,
Some of your own inventing may be used,
So it be seldom and discreetly done.

ROSCOMMON.

But Horace's canon for deciding on the legality of the new invention, or
the standard by which it is to be tried, will not serve to assist the
inventor of words:--

----licuit, semperque licebit,
Signatum praesente nota procudere nummum.[21]

This _praesens nota_, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new
coinage of words: for many received at a season have perished with
it.[22] The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest
enemy--Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter
himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his
grave before he can enter the dictionary.

In Willes' address to the reader, prefix