of the words drudg'd, disturb'd, rebuk'd, fledg'd, and a thousand others everywhere to be met with in prose as well as verse? where, by leaving out a vowel to save a syllable, we form so jarring a sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondered how it could ever obtain.

Another cause (and perhaps borrowed from the former) which has contributed not a little to the maiming of our language, is a foolish opinion, advanced of late years, that we ought to spell exactly as we speak ; which, beside the obvious inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a thing we should never see an end of. Not only the several towns and counties of England have a different way of pronouncing, but even here in London they clip their words after one manner about the court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs; and, in a few years, it is probable, will all differ from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct; all which, reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography. Yet many people are so fond of this conceit that it is sometimes a difficult matter to read modern books and pamphlets; where the words are so curtailed, and varied from their original spelling, that whoever has been used to plain English will hardly know them by sight.

Several young men at the universities, terribly possessed with the fear of pedantry, run into a worse extreme, and think all politeness to consist in reading the daily trash sent down to them from hence; this they call knowing the world, and reading men and manners. Thus furnished, they come up to town, reckon all their errors for accomplishments, borrow the newest set of phrases; and if they take a pen into their hands, all the odd words they have picked up in a coffeehouse, or a gaming ordinary, are produced as flowers of style; and the orthography refined to the utmost. To this we owe those monstrous productions which, under the name of Trips, Spies, Amusements, and other conceited appellations, have overrun us for some years past. To this we owe that strange race of wits, who tell us, they write to the humour of the age. And I wish I could say, these quaint fopperies were wholly absent from graver subjects. In short, I would undertake to show your lordship several pieces, where the beauties of this kind are so predominant that, with all your skill in languages, you could never be able to read or understand them.

But I am very much mistaken if many of these false refinements among us do not arise from a principle which would quite destroy their credit, if it were well understood and considered. For I am afraid, my lord, that with all the real good qualities of our country, we are naturally not very polite. This perpetual disposition to shorten our words by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended, and whose languages labour all under the same defect. For it is worthy our observation, that the Spaniards, the French, and the Italians, although derived from the same northern ancestors with ourselves, are with the utmost difficulty taught to pronounce our words, which the Swedes and Danes, as well as the Germans and the Dutch, attain to with ease, because our syllables resemble theirs in the roughness and frequency of consonants. Now, as we struggle with an ill climate to improve the nobler kinds of fruits, are at the expense of walls to receive and reverberate the faint rays of the sun, and fence against the northern blast, we sometimes, by the help of a good soil, equal the production of warmer countries, who have no need to be at so much cost and care. It is the same thing with respect to the politer arts among us; and the same defect of heat which gives a fierceness to our natures may contribute to that roughness of our language, which bears some analogy to the harsh fruit of colder countries. For I do not reckon that we want

a genius more than the rest of our neighbours: but your lordship will be of my opinion, that we ought to struggle with these natural disadvantages as much as we can, and be careful whom we employ whenever we design to correct them, which is a work that has hitherto been assumed by the least qualified hands. So that if the choice had been left to me, I would rather have trusted the refinement of our language, as far as it relates to sound, to the judgment of the women, than of illiterate court fops, half-witted poets, and university boys. For it is plain that women, in their manner of corrupting words, do naturally discard the consonants as we do the vowels. What I am going to tell your lordship appears very trifling that more than once, where some of both sexes were in company, I have persuaded two or three of each to take a pen, and write down a number of letters joined together, just as it came into their heads; and upon reading this gibberish, we have found that which the men had wrote, by the frequent encountering of rough consonants, to sound like High Dutch; and the other, by the women, like Italian, abounding in vowels and liquids. Now, though I would by no means give ladies the trouble of advising us in the reformation of our language, yet I cannot help thinking that, since they have been left out of all meetings, except parties at play, or where worse designs are carried on, our conversation has very much degenerated.

In order to reform our language, I conceive, my lord, that a free judicious choice should be made of such persons as are generally allowed to be best qualified for such a work, without any regard to quality, party, or profession. These, to a certain number at least, should assemble at some appointed time and place, and fix on rules by which they design to proceed. What methods they will take is not for me to prescribe. Your lordship, and other persons in great employments, might please to be of the number: and I am afraid such a society would want your instruction and example, as much as your protection; for I have, not without a little envy, observed of late the style of some great ministers very much to exceed that of any other productions.

The persons who are to undertake this work will have the example of the French before them, to imitate where these have proceeded right, and to avoid their mistakes. Beside the grammar part, wherein we are allowed to be very defective, they will observe many gross improprieties, which, however authorized by practice, and grown familiar, ought to be discarded. They will find many words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our language, many more to be corrected, and perhaps not a few long since antiquated, which ought to be restored on account of their energy and sound.

But what I have most at heart is, that some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever, after such alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite. For I am of opinion, it is better a language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing; and we must give over at one time, or at length infallibly change for the worse; as the Romans did, when they began to quit their simplicity of style for affected refinements, such as we meet in Tacitus and other authors; which ended by degrees in many barbarities, even before the Goths had invaded Italy.

The fame of our writers is usually confined to these two islands, and it is hard it should be limited in time, as much as place, by the perpetual variations of our speech. It is your lordship's observation, that if it were not for the Bible and Common Prayer Book in the vulgar tongue, we should hardly be able to understand anything that was written among us a hundred years ago; which is certainly true: for those books being perpetually read in churches, have proved a kind of

standard for language, especially to the common people. | And I doubt whether the alterations since introduced have added much to the beauty or strength of the English tongue, though they have taken off a great deal from that simplicity which is one of the greatest perfections in any language. You, my lord, who are so conversant in the sacred writings, and so great a judge of them in their originals, will agree, that no translation our country ever yet produced, has come up to that of the Old and New Testament: and by the many beautiful passages which I have often had the honour to hear your lordship cite from thence, I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole. Then, as to the greatest part of our liturgy, compiled long before the translation of the Bible now in use, and little altered since, there seem to be in it as great strains of true sublime eloquence as are anywhere to be found in our language; which every man of good taste will observe in the communion service, that of burial, and other parts. But when I say that I would have our language after it is duly correct, always to last, I do not mean that it should never be enlarged. Provided that no word, which a society shall give a sanction to, be afterward antiquated and exploded, they may have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for; because then the old books will yet be always valuable according to their intrinsic worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible words and phrases, which appear harsh and uncouth, only because they are out of fashion. Had the Roman tongue continued vulgar in that city till this time, it would have been absolutely necessary, from the mighty changes that have been made in law and religion, from the many terms of art required in trade and in war, from the new inventions that have happened in the world, from the vast spreading of navigation and commerce, with many other obvious circumstances, to have made great additions to that language; yet the ancients would still have been read and understood with pleasure and ease. The Greek tongue received many enlargements between the time of Homer and that of Plutarch, yet the former author was probably as well understood in Trajan's time as the latter. What Horace says of words going off and perishing like leaves, and new ones coming in their place, is a misfortune he laments, rather than a thing he approves; but I cannot see why this should be absolutely necessary, or if it were, what would have become of his monumentum ære perennius! Writing by memory only, as I do at present, I would gladly keep within my depth; and therefore shall not enter into further particulars. Neither do I pretend more than to show the usefulness of this design, and to make some general observations, leaving the rest to that society which I hope will owe its institution and patronage to your lordship. Besides, I would willingly avoid repetition, having, about a year ago, communicated to the public much of what I had to offer upon this subject, by the hands of an ingenious gentleman, who, for a long time did thrice a-week divert or instruct the kingdom by his papers, and is supposed to pursue the same design at present, under the title of Spectator. This author, who has tried the force and compass of our language with so much success, agrees entirely with me in most of my sentiments relating to it; so do the greatest part of the men of wit and learning whom I have had the happiness to converse with; and therefore I imagine that such a society would be pretty unanimous in the main points.

Your lordship must allow that such a work as this brought to perfection would very much contribute to the glory of her majesty's reign; which ought to be

VOL. II.

recorded in words more durable than brass, and such as our posterity may read a thousand years hence, with pleasure as well as admiration. I always disapproved that false compliment to princes, that the most lasting monument they can have is the hearts of their subjects. It is indeed their greatest present felicity to reign in their subjects' hearts; but these are too perishable to preserve their memories, which can only be done by the pens of able and faithful historians. And I take it to be your lordship's duty, as prime minister, to give order for inspecting our language, and rendering it fit to record the history of so great and good a princess. Besides, my lord, as disinterested as you appear to the world, I am convinced that no man is more in the power of a prevailing favourite passion than yourself; I mean that desire of true and lasting honour which you have borne along with you through every stage of your life. To this you have often sacrificed your interest, your ease, and your health; for preserving and increasing this, you have exposed your person to secret treachery and open violence. There is not, perhaps, an example in history of any minister, who, in so short a time, has performed so many great things, and overcome so many difficulties. Now, though Í am fully convinced that you fear God, honour your queen, and love your country as much as any of your fellow-subjects, yet I must believe that the desire of fame has been no inconsiderable motive to quicken you in the pursuit of those actions which will best deserve it. But, at the same time, I must be so plain as to tell your lordship, that if you will not take some care to settle our language, and put it into a state of continuance, I cannot promise that your memory shall be preserved above a hundred years, further than by imperfect tradition.

As barbarous and ignorant as we were in former centuries, there was more effectual care taken by our ancestors to preserve the memory of times and persons, than we find in this age of learning and politeness, as we are pleased to call it. The rude Latin of the monks is still very intelligible; whereas, had their records been delivered down only in the vulgar tongue, so barren and so barbarous, so subject to continual succeeding changes, they could not now be understood, unless by antiquaries who make it their study to expound them. And we must at this day have been content with such poor abstracts of our English story, as laborious men of low genius would think fit to give us; and even these, in the next age, would be likewise swallowed up in succeeding collections. If things go on at this rate, all I can promise your lordship is, that, about two hundred years hence, some painful compiler, who will be at the trouble of studying old language, may inform the world, that in the reign of queen Anne, Robert, earl of Oxford, a very wise and excellent man, was made high treasurer, and saved his country, which in those days was almost ruined by a foreign war, and a domestic faction. Thus much he may be able to pick out, and willing to transfer into his new history; but the rest of your character, which I, or any other writer, may now value ourselves by drawing, and the particular account of the great things done under your ministry, for which you are already so celebrated in most parts of Europe, w ill probably be dropped, on account of the antiquated style and manner they are delivered in.

How then shall any man, who has a genius for history equal to the best of the ancients, be able to undertake such a work with spirit and cheerfulness, when he considers that he will be read with pleasure but a very few years, and, in an age or two, shall hardly be understood without an interpreter? This is like employing an excellent statuary to work upon mouldering stone. Those who apply their studies to preserve the

U

James or king Charles I., of which lords the two principal were the marquis of Ormond and the earl of Southampton. The minors had, during the rebellion and usurpation, either received too much tincture of bad principles from those fanatic times, or, coming to age at the Restoration, fell into the vices of that dissolute reign.

I date from this era the corrupt method of education among us, and, in consequence thereof, the necessity the crown lay under of introducing new men into the chief conduct of public affairs, or to the office of what we now call prime-ministers; men of art, knowledge, application and insinuation, merely for want of a supply among the nobility. They were generally (though not always) of good birth; sometimes younger brothers, at other times such, who, although inheriting good estates, yet happened to be well educated, and provided with learning. Such, under that king, were Hyde, Bridgeman, Clifford, Osborn, Godolphin, Ashley Cooper: few or none under the short reign of king James II. under king William, Somers, Montague, Churchill, Vernon, Boyle, and many others: under the queen, Harley, St. John, Harcourt, Trevor who, indeed, were persons of the best private families, but unadorned with titles. So in the following reign, Mr. Robert Walpole was for many years prime-minister, in which post he still happily continues: his brother Horace is ambassador extraordinary to France. Mr. Addison and Mr. Craggs, without the least alliance to support them, have been secretaries of state.

If the facts have been thus for above sixty years past, (whereof I could, with a little further recollection, produce many more instances,) I would ask again, how it has happened, that in a nation plentifully abounding with nobility, so great share in the most competent parts of public management has been for so long a period chiefly intrusted to commoners; unless some omissions or defects of the highest import may be charged upon those to whom the care of educating our noble youth had been committed? For, if there be any difference between human creatures in the point of natural parts, as we usually call them, it should seem that the advantage lies on the side of children born from noble and wealthy parents; the same traditional sloth and luxury which render their body weak and effeminate, perhaps refining and giving a freer motion to the spirits beyond what can be expected from the gross, robust issue of meaner mortals. Add to this the peculiar advantages which all young noblemen possess by the privileges of their birth. Such as a free access to courts, and a universal deference paid to their persons. But, as my lord Bacon charges it for a fault on princes, that they are impatient to compass ends without giving themselves the trouble of consulting or executing the means, so, perhaps, it may be the disposition of young nobles, either from the indulgence of parents, tutors, and governors, or their own inactivity, that they expect the accomplishments of a good education without the least expense of time or study to acquire them.

!

What I said last I am ready to retract, for the case is infinitely worse; and the very maxims set up to direct modern education are enough to destroy all the seeds of knowledge, honour, wisdom, and virtue among us. The current opinion prevails, that the study of Greek and Latin is loss of time; that public schools, by mingling the sons of noblemen with those of the vulgar, engage the former in bad company; that whipping breaks the spirits of lads well born; that universities make young men pedants; that to dance, fence, speak French, and know how to behave yourself among great persons of both sexes, comprehends the whole duty of a gentleman.

I cannot but think this wise system of education has

been much cultivated among us by those worthies of the army who, during the last war, returned from Flanders at the close of each campaign, became the dictators of behaviour, dress, and politeness, to all those youngsters who frequent chocolate-coffee-gaminghouses, drawing-rooms, operas, levees, and assemblies: where a colonel, by his pay, perquisites, and plunder, was qualified to outshine many peers of the realm; and by the influence of an exotic habit and demeanour, added to other foreign accomplishments, gave the law to the whole town, and was copied as the standard pattern of whatever was refined in dress, equipage, conversation, or diversions.

I remember, in those times, an admired original of that vocation sitting in a coffeehouse near two gentlemen, whereof one was of the clergy, who were engaged in some discourse that savoured of learning. This officer thought fit to interpose, and professing to deliver the sentiments of his fraternity, as well as his own, (and probably he did so of too many among them,) turned to the clergyman, and spoke in the following manner : "D-n me, doctor, say what you will, the army is the only school for gentlemen. Do you think my lord Marlborough beat the French with Greek and Latin? D-n me, a scholar when he comes into good company, what is he but an ass? D-n me, I would be glad by G-d to see any of your scholars with his nouns and his verbs, and his philosophy, and trigonometry, what a figure he would make at a siege, or blockade, or rencountering- -D-n me," &c.a After which he proceeded with a volley of military terms, less significant, sounding worse, and harder to be understood than any that were ever coined by the commentators upon Aristotle. I would not here be thought to charge the soldiery with ignorance and contempt of learning without allowing exceptions, of which I have known many; but, however, the worst example, especially in a great majority, will certainly prevail.

I have heard that the late earl of Oxford, in the time of his ministry, never passed by White's chocolatehouse (the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies) without bestowing a curse upon that famous academy as the bane of half the English nobility. I have likewise been told another passage concerning that great minister, which, because it gives a humourous idea of one principal ingredient in modern education, take as follows:-Le Sack, the famous French dancing master, in great admiration, asked a friend whether it were true that Mr. Harley was made an earl and lord treasurer? and finding it confirmed said, "Well; I wonder what the devil the queen could see in him; for I attended him two years, and he was the greatest dunce that ever I taught.'

"b

Another hinderance to good education, and I think the greatest of any, is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families of entertaining French tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are enjoined by the father to take special care that the boy shall be perfect in his French; by the mother, that master must not walk till he is hot, nor be suffered to play with other boys, nor be wet in his feet, nor daub his clothes, and to see the dancing master attends constantly, and does his duty; she further insists, that he be not kept too long poring on his book, because he is subject to sore eyes, and of a weakly constitution.

By these methods the young gentleman is, in every article, as fully accomplished at eight years old, as at eight and twenty, age adding only to the growth of his person and his vice; so that if you should look at him in his boyhood through the magnifying end of a per

a Swift has versified part of this passage in his poem on Hamilton's Bawn.

b The story of Le Sack many of the dean's friends have heard him tell, as he had it from the earl himself.

spective, and in his manhood through the other, it would be impossible to spy any difference; the same airs, the same strut, the same cock of his hat, and posture of his sword, (as far as the change of fashions will allow,) the same understanding, the same compass of knowledge, with the very same absurdity, impudence, and impertinence of tongue.

He is taught from the nursery that he must inherit a great estate, and has no need to mind his book, which is a lesson he never forgets to the end of his life. His chief solace is to steal down and play at spanfarthing with the page or young blackamoor, or little favourite footboy, one of which is his principal confident and bosom friend.

There is one young lorda in this town, who, by an unexampled piece of good fortune, was miraculously snatched out of the gulph of ignorance, confined to a public school for a due term of years, well whipped when he deserved it, clad no better than his comrades, and always their playfellow on the same foot; had no precedence in the school, but what was given him by his merit, and lost it whenever he was negligent. It is well known how many mutinies were bred at this unprecedented treatment, what complaints among his relations, and other great ones of both sexes; that his stockings with silver clocks were ravished from him; that he wore his own hair; that his dress was undistinguished; that he was not fit to appear at a ball or assembly, nor suffered to go to either: and it was with the utmost difficulty he became qualified for his present removal, where he may probably be further persecuted, and possibly with success, if the firmness of a very worthy governor and his own good dispositions will not preserve him. I confess I cannot but wish he may go on in the way he began; because I have a curiosity to know by so singular an experiment, whether truth, honour, justice, temperance, courage, and good sense, acquired by a school and college education, may not produce a very tolerable lad, although he should happen to fail in one or two of those accomplishments which in the general vogue are held so important to the finishing of a gentleman.

It is true, I have known an academical education to have been exploded in public assemblies; and have heard more than one or two persons of high rank declare, they could learn nothing more at Oxford and Cambridge than to drink ale and smoke tobacco; wherein I firmly believed them, and could have added some hundred examples from my own observation in one of those universities; but they all were of young heirs sent thither only for form; either from schools where they were not suffered by their careful parents to stay above three months in the year; or from under the management of French family tutors, who yet often attended them to their college, to prevent all possibility of their improvement; but I never yet knew any one person of quality, who followed his studies at the university and carried away his just proportion of learning, that was not ready upon all occasions to celebrate and defend that course of education, and to prove a patron of learned men.

There is one circumstance in a learned education which ought to have much weight, even with those who have no learning at all. The books read at school and college are full of incitements to virtue, and discouragements from vice, drawn from the wisest reasons, the strongest motives, and the most influencing examples. Thus young minds are filled early with an inclination to good, and an abhorrence of evil, both which increase in them, according to the advances they make in literature; and although they may be, and too often are, drawn by the temptations of youth, and the opportunities of a large fortune, into some irregua Lord Mountcashel, bred at Dr. Sheridan's school.

larities, when they come forward into the great world, yet it is ever with reluctance and compunction of mind, because their bias to virtue still continues. They may stray sometimes, out of infirmity or compliance; but they will soon return to the right road, and keep it always in view. I speak only of those excesses which are too much the attendants of youth and warmer blood; for as to the points of honour, truth, justice, and other noble gifts of the mind, wherein the temperature of the body has no concern, they are seldom or ever known to be wild.

I have engaged myself very unwarily in too copious a subject for so short a paper. The present scope I would aim at is, to prove that some proportion of human knowledge appears requisite to those who by their birth or fortune are called to the making of laws, and, in a subordinate way, to the execution of them; and that such knowledge is not to be obtained, without a miracle, under the frequent, corrupt, and sottish methods of educating those who are born to wealth or titles. For I would have it remembered that I do by no means confine these remarks to young persons of noble birth; the same errors running through all families where there is wealth enough to afford that their sons (at least the eldest) may be good for nothing. Why should my son be a scholar when it is not intended that he should live by his learning? By this rule, if what is commonly said be true, that money answers all things," why should my son be honest, temperate, just, or charitable, since he has no intention to depend upon any of these qualities for a maintenance?

When all is done, perhaps, upon the whole, the matter is not so bad as I would make it; and God, who works good out of evil, acting only by the ordinary course and rule of nature, permits this continual circulation of human things, for his own unsearchable ends. The father grows rich by avarice, injustice, oppression; he is a tyrant in the neighbourhood over slaves and beggars, whom he calls his tenants. Why should he desire to have qualities infused into his son which himself never possessed, or knew, or found the want of, in the acquisition of his wealth? The son, bred in sloth and idleness, becomes a spendthrift, a cully, a profligate, and goes out of the world a beggar, as his father came in thus the former is punished for his own sins, as well as for those of the latter. The dunghill, having raised a huge mushroom of short duration, is now spread to enrich other men's lands. It is indeed of worse consequence where noble families are gone to decay; because their titles and privileges outlive their estates: and politicians tell us, that nothing is more dangerous to the public than a numerous nobility without merit or fortune. But even here God has likewise prescribed some remedy in the order of nature; so many great families coming to an end by the sloth, luxury, and abandoned lusts, which enervated their breed through every succession, producing gradually a more effeminate race wholly unfit for propagation.

HINTS TOWARD AN ESSAY ON

CONVERSATION.

I HAVE observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or at least so slightly, handled as this; and indeed I know few so difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there seems so much to be said.

Most things pursued by men for the happiness of public or private life, our wit or folly have so refined, that they seldom subsist but in idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of government, with some others, require so many ingredients, so good in their