reeping into books{82}, 'sensational', and others as well, so that
it is hard to say where this influx will stop, or whether all our words
with this termination will not finally generate an adjective. Convenient
as you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly counsel you to
abstain from all but the perfectly well recognized formations of this
kind. There may be cases of exception; but for the most part Pope's
advice is good, as certainly it is safe, that we be not among the last
to use a word which is going out, nor among the first to employ one that
is coming in.

'Starvation' is another word of comparatively recent introduction,
formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of an
apparently similar character--its first formers, indeed, not observing
that they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon word. Some have
supposed it to have reached us from America. It has not however
travelled from so great a distance, being a stranger indeed, yet not
from beyond the Atlantic, but only from beyond the Tweed. It is an old
Scottish word, but unknown in England, till used by Mr. Dundas, the
first Viscount Melville, in an American debate in 1775. That it then
jarred strangely on English ears is evident from the nickname,
"_Starvation_ Dundas", which in consequence he obtained{83}.

{Sidenote: _Revival of Words_}

Again, languages enrich themselves, our own has done so, by recovering
treasures which for a while had been lost by them or forgone. I do not
mean that all which drops out of use _is_ loss; there are words which it
is gain to be rid of; which it would be folly to wish to revive; of
which Dryden, setting himself against an extravagant zeal in this
direction, says in an ungracious comparison--they do "not deserve this
redemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slain
for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish could
revive them"{84}. There are others, however, which it is a real gain to
draw back again from the temporary oblivion which had overtaken them;
and this process of their setting and rising again, or of what, to use
another image, we might call their suspended animation, is not so
unfrequent as at first might be supposed.

You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing in a few memorable lines
the history of words, while he notes that many once current have now
dropped out of use, does not therefore count that of necessity their
race is for ev