Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/273

Rh calling him pedant upon this article. But if such a general censure as this forward author here passes, had been always fastened upon those that enrich our language from the Latin and Greek stores, what a fine condition had our language been in! 'Tis well known it has scarce any words, besides monosyllables, of its native growth: and were all the rest imported and introduced by pedants? At this rate, the ignominy of pedantry will fall upon all the best writers of our nation; and upon none more heavily than the Examiner's great relation, the incomparable Robert Boyle, whose whole style is full of such Latin words. But when the Examiner is possessed with a fit of rage against me, he lays about him without consideration or distinction, never minding whom he hits, whether his own relation or even himself. The words in my book, which he excepts against, are commentitious, repudiate, concede, aliene, vernacular, timid, negoce, putid, and idiom, every one of which were in print before I used them; and most of them before I was born. And are they not all regularly formed, and kept to the true and genuine sense that they have in the original? Why may we not say negoce, from negotium, as well