Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/288



URING the reign of parties for about forty years past, it is a melancholy consideration to observe how philology has been neglected, which was before the darling employment of the greatest authors, from the restoration of learning in Europe. Neither do I remember it to have been cultivated, since the Revolution, by any one person, with great success, except our illustrious modern star, doctor Richard Bentley with whom the republick of learning must expire; as mathematicks did with sir Isaac Newton. My ambition has been gradually attempting, from my early youth, to be the holder of a rush-light before that great luminary; which, at least, might be of some little use during those short intervals, while he was snuffing his candle, or peeping with it under a bushel.

My present attempt is, to assert the antiquity of our English tongue; which, as I shall undertake to prove