ight at last.

"Treason does never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason."

Language is in constant fermentation, and all that is thrown in, so far as
it is not fit to assimilate, is thrown off; and this without any obvious
struggle. In the meanwhile every one who has read good authors, from
Shakspeare downward, knows what is and what is not English; and knows,
also, that our language is not one and indivisible. Two very different
turns of phrase may both be equally good, and as good as can be: we may be
relieved of the consequences of contempt of one court by _habeas corpus_
issuing out of another.

TEST OF LANGUAGE.

Hallam remarks that the Authorized Version of the Bible is not in the
language of the time of James the First: that it is not the English of
Raleigh or of Bacon. Here arises the question whether Raleigh and Bacon are
the true expositors of the language of their time; and whether they were
not rather the incipient promoters of a change which was successfully
resisted by--among other things--the Authorized Version of the Testaments.
I am not prepared to concede that I should have given to the English which
would have been fashioned upon that of Bacon by imitators, such as they
usually are, the admiration which is forced from me by Bacon's English from
Bacon's pen. On this point we have a notable parallel. Samuel Johnson {328}
commands our admiration, at least in his matured style: but we nauseate his
followers. It is an opinion of mine that the works of the leading writers
of an age are seldom the proper specimens of the language of their day,
when that language is in its state of progression. I judge of a language by
the colloquial idiom of educated men: that is, I take this to be the best
medium between the extreme cases of one who is ignorant of grammar and one
who is perched upon a style. Dialogue is what I want to judge by, and plain
dialogue: so I choose Robert Recorde[609] and his pupil in the _Castle of
Knowledge_, written before 1556. When Dr. Robert gets into his altitudes of
instruction, he differs from his own common phraseology as much as probably
did Bacon when he wrote morals and philosophy. But every now and then I
come to a little plain talk about a common thing, of which I propose to
show a specimen. Anything can be made to look old by such changes as
_makes_ into _maketh_, with a little old spelling. I shall invert these
changes, using the