[12] A presbyterian preacher of the last age chose to exemplify the Golden Rule, by dissecting the name of the great enemy of mankind: 'Take away D, and it is Evil, take away the E, and it is Vile, take away the V, and it is Ill—Ill, Vile, Evil, Devil.'
Let us now consider a new case; as for instance, 'The church of England, as by law established.' Put a T before it, and it is Test-ablished: take away the Test and put in o, and it is Abolished.
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How much was Tom Gordon, the late ingenious author of Parson Alberoni, obliged to it, in that very natural story which he framed concerning the preacher, where he tells you, one of the congregation called the minister an Humbassandor for an Ambassador[13].
[13] The story here alluded to is told in a pamphlet, entitled, 'A modest Apology for Parson Alberoni, Governor to King Philip, a Minor, and universal Curate of the whole Spanish Monarchy, &c. by Thomas Gordon, Esq. 1719,' and is as follows: 'There is, in a certain diocese in this nation, a living worth about six hundred pounds a-year. This, and two or three more preferments, maintain the doctor in becoming ease and corpulency. He keeps a chariot in town, and a journeyman in the country; his curate and his coach-horses are his equal drudges, saving that the four-legged cattle are better fed, and have sleeker cassocks, than his spiritual dray-horse. The doctor goes down once a-year, to shear his flock and fill his pockets, or, in other words, to receive the wages of his embassy; and then, sometimes in an afternoon, if his belly do not happen to be too full, he vouchsafes to mount the pulpit, and to instruct his people in the greatness of his character and dullness. This composes the whole parish to rest; but the doctor one day denouncing himself the Lord's Ambassador with greater fire and loudness than could have been reasonably expected from him, it roused a clown of the congregation, who waked his next neighbour with, 'Dost hear, Tom, dost hear?'—'Ay,' says Tom, yawning, 'what does he say?'—'Say?' answered the other, 'he says a plaguy lie, to be sure; he says as how he is my Lord's Humbassandor, but I think he is more rather the Lord's Receiver-General, for he never comes but to take money.' Six hundred pounds a-year is, modestly speaking, a competent fee for lulling the largest congregation in England asleep once in a twelvemonth. Such tithes are the price of napping; and such mighty odds are there between a curtain lecture and a cushion lecture.' See the collection of Tracts by Gordon and Trenchard, vol. i. p. 130.
Give me leave, courteous reader, to recommend to your perusal and practice this most excellent rule, which is of such universal use and advantage to the learned world, that the most valuable discoveries, both as to antiquities and etymologies, are made by it; nay, further, I will venture to say, that all words which are introduced to enrich and make a language copious, beautiful, and harmonious, arise chiefly from this rule. Let any man but consult Bentley's Horace, and he will see what useful discoveries that very learned gentleman has made by the help of this rule; or, indeed, poor Horace would have lain under the eternal reproach of making 'a fox eat oats,' had not the learned doctor, with great judgment and penetration, found out nitedula to be a blunder of the librarians for vulpecula; which nitedula, the doctor says, signifies a grass-mouse, and this clears up the whole matter, because it makes the story hang well together: for all the world knows, that weazles have a most tender regard and affection to grass mice, whereas they hate foxes as they do fire-brands. In short, all various lections are to be attributed to this rule: so are all the Greek dialects; or Homer would have wanted the sonorous beauty of his oio's. But the greatest and best masters of this rule, without dispute, were the Dorians, who made nothing of saying tin for soie, tenos for ekeinos, surisdomes for surizomen, &c. From this too we have our quasis in Lexicons. Was it not, by rule the 34th, that the Samaritan, Chaldee, Æthiopic, Syriac, Arabic, and Persian languages were formed from the original Hebrew? for which I appeal to the Polyglot. And among our modern languages, are not the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, derived and formed from the Latin by the same power? How much poets have been obliged to it, we need no further proof than the figures prothesis, epenthesis, apocope, paragoge, and ellipsis. Trimming and fitting of words to make them more agreeable to our ears, Dionysius Halicarnassensis has taken notice of, in his book 'De Compositione Vocum,' where he pleasantly compares your polite reformers of words to masons with hammers, who break off rugged corners of stones, that they may become more even and firm in their places.