"The work of this society," says Defoe, "should be to encourage polite learning, to polish and refine the English tongue, and advance the so much neglected faculty of correct language; also, to establish purity and propriety of style, and to purge it from all the irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced; and all these innovations of speech, if I may call them such, which some dogmatic writers have the confidence to foster upon their native language, as if their authority were sufficient to make their own fancy legitimate."
Never was such society more needed than in the present day, when you can scarcely take up a newspaper, or a periodical, a new poem, or any modern literary production, without finding some new-coined word, perplexing to the present reader, and a perfect stumbling-block in the way of any future editor.
Some of these words are, I admit, a welcome addition to our common stock, but the greater part of them are mere abortions, having no analogy to any given root.
A society similar to the one proposed by Defoe might soon be established in this country, if a few such efficient authorities as Dr. Kennedy would take the initiative in the movement.
He who should first establish such a society, and bring it to a practicable bearing, would be conferring an inestimable boon on society.
I trust that these hints may serve to arouse the attention of some of the many talented contributors to the "Notes and Queries," and in due season bring forth fruit.
David Stevens.
Godalming, April 19. 1851.
Great Fire of London.—Our popular histories of England, generally, contain very indefinite statements respecting the extent of destruction wrought upon the city of London by the Great Fire. I have therefore thought it may be interesting to others, as it has been to myself, to peruse the following, which purports to be "extracted from the Certificates of the Surveyors soon after appointed to survey the Ruins."
"That the fire that began in London upon the second of September, 1666, at one Mr. Farryner's house, a baker in Pudding Lane, between the hours of one and two in the morning, and continued burning until the sixth of that month, did overrun the space of three hundred and seventy-three acres within the walls of the city of London, and sixty-three acres three roods without the walls. There remained seventy-five acres three roods standing within the walls unburnt. Eighty-nine parish churches, besides chappels burnt. Eleven parishes within the walls standing. Houses burnt, Thirteen thousand two hundred.
"JONAS MOORE,
"RALPH GATRIX,
Surveyors."
