Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/85

Rh a judge of them in their originals, will agree, that no translation our country ever yet produced, has come up to that of the Old and New Testament: and by the many beautiful passages, which I have often had the honour to hear your lordship cite from thence, I am persuaded, that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work, than any we see in our present writings; which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole. Then, as to the greatest part of our liturgy, compiled long before the translation of the Bible now in use, and little altered since; there seem to be in it as great strains of true sublime eloquence, as are any where to be found in our language; which every man of good taste will observe in the communion service, that of burial, and other parts.

But when I say; that I would have our language, after it is duly corrrect, always to last, I do not mean that it should never be enlarged. Provided that no word, which a society shall give a sanction to, be afterward antiquated and exploded, they may have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for; because then the old books will yet be always valuable, according to their intrinsick worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible words and phrases, which appear harsh and uncouth, only because they are out of fashion. Had the Roman tongue continued vulgar in that city till this time, it would have been absolutely necessary, from the mighty changes that have been made in law and religion, from the many terms of art required in trade and in war, from the new inventions that have happened in the world, from the vast, spreading