For having all belief out grown
That every strange prodigious Tale
Is measur’d by your German Scale,
By which the Virtuosi try
The Magnitude of every Lye, &c.
Which may very well be introduc’d as often as one has occasion to speak of the late Examiner, or any one that belongs to him. Let this Learned Doctor and his new Academy do their utmost to furnish our Language with what the French call Chevilles, with his Thoroughs, Althoughs, and the whole Army of antiquated Words before-mention’d; I can’t imagine Mr. Dryden’s Poetry will be in any Danger of becoming unintelligible, tho’ he has us’d Abreviations as much as any Polite Writer; and will preserve that Character when the Doctor’s is forgotten, unless we should return to our Original Barbarity, as he says we incline to do. He complains the Refinement of our Language has hitherto been trusted to illiterate Court Fops, Half-witted Poets, and University Boys. He would have a thin Society, if he should exclude all such from his own Academy: And if the Choice be in himself, as he seems to insinuate, I believe the Reformation of our Language would have just as much success as the Reformation of our Manners, which, ’tis said, none have more corrupted than the very Reformers. He gives us his Word, That the Style of some great Ministers very much exceed that of any other Productions. Where I wonder are the Instances of this Excellence? In Speeches in Parliament, for themselves or others, or what Works of theirs has been communicated to him, that he should know more than all Mankind? One would think he was their Master by what he says, in the next Page, What I have most at Heart, is some Method for ascertaining and fixing our Language for ever. Now you must know, that this Reverend Author, who is so concern’d for the Fixing our Language, has himself a Style of a very deficient Character; in which the Reader will perceive how much we shou’d be improv’d, by having his manner ascertained and fixed; for doubtless he thinks his own the best, and his Friends know no better than to be of his Mind. He would be more comprehensive, says an Author of Note, if he would alter and correct his Style, which is too loose and diffus’d in all Conscience. So that when I read him sometimes for a good while together, tho’ I go on very evenly and smoothly, I find it difficult to recollect what I have been doing, and whether I have been reading or sleeping. My present Advice to him therefore is, that he would study Tacitus, and such other Politicians as say much in few Words: And if he obstinately persists in the same Childish fondness for his Style, I shall be obliged to shew in how small a Compass the whole Substance of what he says, may be contained. All this vile Drudgery will I submit to for his sake, &c. But so little likelihood there is of his mending his Style by reading Tacitus, that he defies him and charges him with the Corruption of the Roman Tongue, by saying that in Two or Three Words, about which such a Genius as he is might have employ’d Twenty or Thirty. This Brevity he calls Affectation, and assures us, it brought Barbarisms into the Latin Tongue, even before the Goths invaded Italy. However he exposes his own Ignorance, he should have been careful not to have discover’d his Friends: Does the Translation of the Bible teach us to understand Fairfax? Are that and the Common-Prayer the Standard of Language? Yet he affirms, that without them one cou’d not understand any thing written a hundred Years ago. Whereas the Jerusalem of Fairfax is older than that, and whoever reads it will find the Language as new as any can be expected from the New Academy these Fifty Years. For our Tongue is not so variable in the best Authors as the Doctor represents it, and the difference between the present English and the English a Hundred Years ago, is not so great as between the Old and Modern French in that Term. Of all the Parts of Learning, that is surely the least ally’d to Politeness that deals in Old Musty Manuscripts, and affects a Knowledge in Tongues which have not one Polite Book to recommend them. How such a Quality can be serviceable to the Advancement of Wit and Eloquence, I cannot conceive; but there are some Characters in the World, that encroach upon all others, and some Men that for their Interest will say any thing that comes uppermost, either for or against another. The Knowledge of Tongues is certainly very useful; but if a Person knows a great many Ancient and Modern, and can hardly speak intelligibly in his own, He shou’d be no Orator for me. I would no more value his Learning than Sir Hudibras’s, of which the Doctor puts me in mind more than once by his Compliments, especially of this Passage in the first Canto.
We grant, altho’ he had much Wit,
He was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out.
And therefore bore it not about,