Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/93

 learnt these from the French; and our phrases in Navigation, that we were taught by the Flemings and Low Dutch. These many and very different Sources of our Language may be the cause, why it is so deficient in Regularity and Analogy. Yet we have this advantage to compensate the defect, that what we want in Elegance, we gain in Copiousness, in which last respect few Languages will be found superior to our own."--JAMES HARRIS: Hermes, Book iii, Ch. v, p. 408.

16. Reign of George I, 1727 back to 1714.--Example written about 1718.

"There is a certain coldness and indifference in the phrases of our European languages, when they are compared with the Oriental forms of speech: and it happens very luckily, that the Hebrew idioms ran into the English tongue, with a particular grace and beauty. Our language has received innumerable elegancies and improvements from that infusion of Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the poetical passages in holy writ. They give a force and energy to our expressions, warm and animate our language, and convey our thoughts in more ardent and intense phrases, than any that are to be met with in our tongue."--JOSEPH ADDISON: Evidences, p. 192.

17. Reign of Queen Anne, 1714 to 1702.--Example written in 1708.

"Some by old words to Fame have made pretence,   Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;    Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,    Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile." "In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;   Alike fantastick, if too new or old:    Be not the first by whom the new are try'd,    Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." ALEXANDER POPE: Essay on Criticism, l. 324-336.

III. ENGLISH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

18. Reign of William III, 1702 to 1689.--Example published in 1700.

"And when we see a Man of Milton's Wit Chime in with such a Herd, and Help on the Cry against Hirelings! We find How Easie it is for Folly and Knavery to Meet, and that they are Near of Kin, tho they bear Different Aspects. Therefor since Milton has put himself upon a Level with the Quakers in this, I will let them go together. And take as little Notice of his Buffoonry, as of their Dulness against Tythes. Ther is nothing worth Quoting in his Lampoon against the Hirelings. But what ther is of Argument in it, is fully Consider'd in what follows."--CHARLES LESLIE: Divine Right of Tithes, Pref., p. xi.

19. Reign of James II, 1689 back to 1685.--Example written in 1685.

"His conversation, wit, and parts,   His knowledge in the noblest useful arts,     Were such, dead authors could not give;     But habitudes of those who live;    Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive:     He drain'd from all, and all they knew;    His apprehension quick, his judgment true:     That the most learn'd with shame confess    His knowledge more, his reading only less." JOHN DRYDEN: Ode to the Memory of Charles II; Poems, p. 84.

20. ''Reign of Charles II, 1685 to 1660.--Example from a Letter to the Earl of Sunderland, dated, "Philadelphia, 28th 5th mo. July, 1683."''

"And I will venture to say, that by the help of God, and such noble Friends, I will show a Province in seven years, equal to her neighbours of forty years planting. I have lay'd out the Province into Countys. Six are begun to be seated; they lye on the great river, and are planted about six miles back. The town platt is a mile long, and two deep,--has a navigable river on each side, the least as broad as the Thames at Woolwych, from three to eight fathom water. There is built about eighty houses, and I have settled at least three hundred farmes contiguous to it."--WILLIAM PENN. The Friend, Vol. vii, p. 179.

21. From an Address or Dedication to Charles II.--Written in 1675.

"There is no [other] king in the world, who can so experimentally testify of God's providence and goodness; neither is there any [other], who rules so many free people, so many true Christians: which thing renders thy government more honourable, thyself more considerable, than the accession of many nations filled with slavish and superstitious souls."--ROBERT BARCLAY: Apology, p. viii.