Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/351

322 CHAPTER VI.

read that in our renowned government of 1757, framed by the greatest of all English War ministers and by the greatest of all English Ducal jobbers, everything that was bright and stainless passed through the one channel, everything that was foul and noisome poured through the other; the Ministry was based upon all the high and all the low parts of our nature. Something of the like kind may be remarked in 1873, as to the men who keep the English printing press at work. Some of these are scholars, or men of strong mother wit, who in prose and poetry employ a sound Teutonic style. Others are men representing the middle class, writers who, for want of education, often use in a wrong sense the long Latinized words wherein the true penny-a-liner revels. The first class are day by day straining the foul matter from our language, and are leading us back to old springs too long unsought; perhaps they may yet keep alive our perishing Subjunctive mood. The other class are day by day pouring more sewage into the well of what can no longer be called ‘English undefiled.’ From the one quarter comes all that is lofty and noble