Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/343

314 His good sound Teutonic talk has often been con&shy;trasted with the vicious Latinisms that he penned. How forcible are his compounds, ‘an unclubbable man,’ ‘wretched unideaed girls!’ and his verb, ‘I downed him with this!’ While on the subject of Johnson, one cannot help regretting that neither he nor his friends ever knew of the kinsmanship between the tongues of Southern Asia and Europe. Had the great discovery been made thirty years earlier than it was, he and Burke would have found a safer topic for debate than the Rock&shy;ingham ministry. How heartily would those lordly minds have welcomed the wondrous revelation, that almost all mankind, dwelling between the Ganges and the Shannon, were linked together by the most binding of ties! How warmly would the sages have glowed with wrath or with love, far more warmly than ever before, when talking of Omichund and Nuncomar, of the Corsican patriot and the Laird of Coll! From how many blunders in philology would shrewd Parson Horne have been kept! No such banquet had ever been set before the wise, since the Greeks, four hundred years earlier, unfolded their lore first to the Italians, and then to the rougher Trans&shy;alpines. It was not in vain that the new lords of Hin&shy;dostan induced the Brahmins to throw open what had been of yore so carefully kept under lock and key. But the main credit of the new feast must be given to others; if the English brought home the game, it was the Ger&shy;mans who cooked it.

About the time that the aforesaid discovery was made, the English Muse was once more soaring on high. Her happiest efforts have mostly been made at the moment