Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/44

xxxviii, have produced almost all their instances from Gulliver's Travels.

“But, beside the particular passages which I have commented upon in the notes, there are some general improprieties which run through the whole body of the works, not only of our author, but of all other English writers. These have been established by long custom, and suffered to keep their posts through an unpardonable neglect of studying our own language. To point these out wherever they occurred, would have been an endless task, and occasioned a disgusting repetition; I have therefore corrected them throughout; and that the reader may judge of the propriety of so doing, I here subjoin a list of them.

“As the living speech has never engaged our attention, the whole being employed about the written language, many barbarous words of uncouth sound are still retained, notwithstanding there are others of the same import, more pleasing to the ear. Such as

No final sound can be more disagreeable than that of st as it is only the sudden stop of a hiss.

What occasion is there for continuing the final s in those words?

Why is this anomaly suffered to remain, when we have the regular decrees of comparison in Far,