Page:Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (Elstob 1715).djvu/14

 that we are obliged to derive the Sense, Construction, or Nature of our predent Language from his Discoverses.

I would beseech my Readers to observe, the Candour and Ingenuity of these Gentlemen: They tell us, We might give you various Instances more of the essential difference between the old Saxon and modern English Tongue; and yet have plainly made it appear, that they know little or nothing of the old Saxon. So that it will be hard to fay how they come to know of any such essential difference, as MUST satisfy any reasonable Man; and much more that this estential difference is so great,that the Saxon can be no Rule to us, and that to understand ours, there is no need of knowing the Saxon. What they say, that it cannot be a Rule to them, is true; for nothing can be a Rule of Direction to any Man, the use whereof he does not understand; but if to understand the Original and Eytmology of the Words of any Language, be needful towards knowing the Propriety of any Language, a thing which I have never heard hath yet been denied; then do these Gentlemen stand self-condemned, there being no lefs than four Words, in the Scheme of Declendions they have borrowed from Dr. Hickes, now in use, which are of pure Saxon Original, and conseguently essential to the modern English. I need not tell any English Reader at this Day the meaning of Smith, Word, Son, and Good; but if I tell them that these are Saxon Words, FE believe they will hardly deny them to be essential to the modern English, or that they will conclude that the difference between the old English and the modern is so great, or the distance of Relation between them so remote, as that the former deferves not to be remember'd: except by such Upstarts who having no Title to