Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/88

80 the desire of fame has been no inconsiderable motive to quicken you in the pursuit of those actions, which will best deserve it. But at the same time I must be so plain as to tell your lordship, that if you will not take some care to settle our language, and put it into a state of continuance, I cannot promise that your memory shall be preserved above a hundred years, farther than by imperfect tradition.

As barbarous and ignorant as we were in former centuries, there was more effectual care taken by our ancestors, to preserve the memory of times and persons, than we find in this age of learning and politeness, as we are pleased to call it. The rude Latin of the monks is still very intelligible: whereas, had their records been delivered down only in the vulgar tongue, so barren and so barbarous, so subject to continual succeeding changes, they could not now be understood, unless by antiquaries, who make it their study to expound them. And we must, at this day, have been content with such poor abstracts of our English story, as laborious men of low genius would think fit to give us: and even these, in the next age, would be likewise swallowed up in succeeding collections. If things go on at this rate, all I can promise your lordship, is, that about two hundred years hence, some painful compiler, who will be at the trouble of studying old language, may inform the worlds that in the reign of queen Anne, Robert earl of Oxford, a very wise and excellent man, was made high treasurer, and saved his country, which in those days was almost ruined by a foreign war, and a domestick faction. Thus much he may be able to pick out, and willing to transfer into his new tory;