For Hebrew Roots altho they’re found
To flourish but in barren Ground,
He had such Plenty as suffic’d
To make some think him circumcis’d.
The rest of Sir Hudibras’s Merit in Letters is of a Piece, and set off with a Puritanical Air, that renders the whole truly Ridiculous, and makes a good Comment on several Pages of the Doctor’s Epistle, which is most valuable for the great Judgment and Sincerity that he has shewn in it.
It has already been observ’d, that Horace asserts Osse to be the only Rule of Language; and the Letter-Writer repeats what he says, of Words going off and perishing like Leaves, and new ones coming in their Places,[C] which he tells us did not approve of Horace, notwithstanding his own Law of paying Obedience to usage. For if that were necessary, what, according to our Author, would become of his Monumentum Ære perennius? Did not the Roman Tongue even by his own confession, change as much as ours has done. The Latin Three Hundred Years before Tully was as unintelligible in his Time as the English and French of the same Period are now. And the Corruptions afterwards by the Barbarians made it as different from Cicero’s as Ennius’s; yet amidst all those variations, Horace’s Works are still Monumentum ære perennius. When a Tongue is come to any degree of Perfection, whoever writes well in it will Live; there’s a Thirst after Wit in all Ages, and those that have a Taste of it will distinguish the Thought from the Diction. Chaucer will, no doubt, be admir’d as long as the English Tongue has a Being; and the Changes that have happen’d to our Language have not hinder’d his Works out living their Contemporary Monuments of Brass or Marble.
The Doctor may as well set up a Society to find out the Grand Elixir, the Perpetual Motion, the Longitude, and other such Discoveries, as to fix our Language beyond their own Times. The Test of their Successors will vary with the Age, and their Rules grow obsolete as well as their Words. He would make us believe, that the French Academy have not been able to preserve their Language from Decay, and who are the Men in Britain who pretend to greater Genius for Eloquence than the most Polite of the Politest Nation in Europe. Mr. Waller Elegantly complains of the Change which necessarily happens to Stile, and does it however in Language which shews, that the Doctor need not be afraid of People’s forgetting his Patron a Hundred Years hence, if he can write as good English upon him now, as Mr. Waller did on this Subject Threescore Years ago.
But who can hope his Lines should long
Last, in a daily changing Tongue,
While they are new, Envy prevails,