Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/79

Rh was soon transferred into the plays and current scribbles of the week, and became an addition to our language; while the men of wit and learning, instead of early obviating such corruptions, were too often seduced to imitate and comply with them.

There is another set of men, who have contributed very much to the spoiling of the English tongue; I mean the poets from the time of the restoration. These gentlemen, although they could not be insensible how much our language was already overstocked with monosyllables, yet, to save time and pains, introduced that barbarous custom of abbreviating words, to fit them to the measure of their verses; and this they have frequently done so very injudiciously, as to form such harsh unharmonious sounds, that none but a northern ear could endure; they have joined the most obdurate consonants without one intervening vowel, only to shorten a syllable: and their taste in time became so depraved, that what was at first a poetical license, not to be justified, they made their choice, alleging, that the words pronounced at length sounded faint and languid. This was a pretence to take up the same custom in prose: so that most of the books we see nowadays, are full of those manglings and abbreviations. Instances of this abuse are innumerable: what does your lordship think of the words, drudg'd, disturb'd, rebuk'd, fledg'd, and a thousand others every where to be met with in prose as well as verse? Where by leaving out a vowel to save a syllable, we form so jarring a sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondered how it could ever obtain. Rh