Page:Selected Orations Swedish Academy 1792.djvu/16

16 fellow-citizens. You revive, my worthy nobles, those times of ancient Rome, when the most distinguished citizens united the culture of the liberal arts with the highest offices in the republic; when, with the same voice with which they enforced the interest of their country, and with the same hand that signed the decrees of the senate, they enlightened their fellow-citizens, and not only adorned their language by the elegance of their own writings, but established its permanency on the certain foundation of unerring rules. What, indeed, is the purity of a language? What is the beauty of style? Is it not the expressing of clear thoughts in concise, strong, and perspicuous terms, to which ambiguous meanings cannot be assigned, and which exhibit sentiments in the same correct form in which they rise upon the mind? Does not every man perceive the advantage which the public would derive from this accuracy, in whatever most essentially regards the interest and peace of society? If treaties, conventions, and laws, were expressed in fixed, indisputable, and acknowledged terms, they would be no longer exposed to that obscurity, that doubt, those perpetual explanations, which often, to illustrate an obscure passage, entirely alter the wisest ordinances; and how many examples have we of the inconveniences which such explanations introduce! Our own annals will sufficiently exemplify this assertion.

you, my worthy nobles, those gentlemen are this day united, who have both enriched and embellished the Swedish language; and in the midst of an assembly, whose talents are consecrated to the eulogy of the national heroes and benefactors, and whose anniversary festival is to be