Britain, the British court is commonly too fluctuating an object. Use in language requires firmer ground to stand upon. No doubt, the conversation of men of rank and eminence, whether of the court or not, will have its influence. And in what concerns merely the pronunciation, it is the only rule to which we can refer the matter in every doubtful case; but in what concerns the words themselves, their construction and application, it is of importance to have some certain, steady, and well-known standard to recur to, a standard which every one hath access to canvass and examine. And this can be no other than authors of reputation. Accordingly we find that these are, by universal consent, in actual possession of this authority; as to this tribunal, when any doubt arises, the appeal is always made.

I CHOOSE to name them, authors of reputation, rather than good authors, for two reasons first, because it is more strictly conformable to the truth of the case. It is solely the esteem of the public, and not their intrinsic merit (though these two go generally together) which raises them to this distinction, and stamps a value on their language. Secondly, this character is more definitive than the other, and therefore more extensively intelligible. Between two or more authors, different readers will differ exceedingly, as to the preference in point of merit, who agree perfectly as to the respective places they hold in the favour of the public. You may find persons of a taste so particu

The nature and characters of the use which gives law to language.

lar, as to prefer Parnel to Milton; but you will hardly find a person that will dispute the superiority of the latter in the article of fame. For this reason, I affirm, that Vaugelas' definition labours under an essential defect; inasmuch as it may be difficult to meet with two persons whose judgments entirely coincide in determining who are the sounder part of the court, or of the authors of the age. I need scarcely add, that when I speak of reputation, I mean not only in regard to knowledge, but in regard to the talent of communicating knowledge. I could name writers, who, in respect of the first, have been justly valued by the public, but who, on account of a supposed deficiency in respect of the second, are considered as of no authority in language.

NOR is there the least ground to fear, that we should be cramped here within too narrow limits. In the English tongue there is a plentiful supply of noted writings in all the various kinds of composition, in prose and verse, şerious and ludicrous, grave and familiar. Agreeably then to this first qualification of the term, we must understand to be comprehended under general use, whatever modes of speech are au thorised as good by the writings of a great number, if not the majority of celebrated authors.

Sect. II.

National use.

SECT. II....National use.

ANOTHER qualification of the term use, which deserves our attention, is that it must be national. This I consider in a twofold view, as it stands opposed both to provincial and to foreign.

In every province there are peculiarities of dialect, which affect not only the pronunciation and the accent, but even the inflection and the combination of words, whereby their idiom is distinguished both from that of the nation, and from that of every other province. The narrowness of the circle to which the currency of the words and phrases of such dialects is confined, sufficiently discriminates them from that which is properly styled the language, and which commands a circulation incomparably wider. This is one reason, I imagine, why the term use, on this subject, is commonly accompanied with the epithet general. In the use of provincial idioms, there is, it must be acknowledged, a pretty considerable concurrence both of the middle and of the lower ranks. But still this use is bounded by the province, county, or district, which gives name to the dialect, and be yond which its peculiarities are sometimes unintelligible, and always ridiculous. But the language, properly so called, is found current, especially in the upand the middle ranks, over the whole British em

per

The nature and characters of the use which gives law to language.

pire. Thus, though in every province they ridicule the idioms of every other province, they all vail to the English idiom, and scruple not to acknowledge its superiority ever their own.

FOR example, in some parts of Wales, (if we may credit Shakespeare *) the common people say goot for good; in the south of Scotland they say gude, and in the north, gueed. Wherever one of these pronounciations prevail, you will never hear from a native either of the other two; but the word good is to be heard every where from natives as well as strangers; nor do the people ever dream that there is any thing laughable in it, however much they are disposed to laugh at the county-accents and idioms which they discern in one another. Nay more, though the people of distant provinces do not understand on another, they mostly all understand one who speaks properly. It is a just and curious observation of Dr Kenrick, that the case of languages, or ra"ther speech, being quite contrary to that of science, "in the former the ignorant understand the learned, "better than the learned do the ignorant; in the lat"ter, it is otherwise †.".

66

HENCE it will perhaps be found true, upon inquiry, notwithstanding its paradoxical appearance, that though it be very uncommon to speak or write pure

*Fluellen in Henry V.

+ Rhet. Gram. Chap. ii. Sect. 4.

English, yet, of all the idioms subsisting amongst us, that to which we give the character of purity, is the commonest. The faulty idioms do not jar more with true English, than they do with one another; so that, in order to our being satisfied of the truth of the apparent paradox, it is requisite only that we remember that these idioms are diverse one from another, though they come under the common denomination of impure. Those who wander from the road may be incomparably more than those who travel in it; and yet, if it be into a thousand different by-paths that they deviate, there may not in any of these be found so many as those whom you will meet upon the king's highway.

WHAT hath been now said of provincial dialects, may, with very little variation, be applied to professional dialects, or the cant which is sometimes observed to prevail among those of the same profession or way of life. The currency of the latter cannot be so exactly circumscribed as that of the former, whose distinction is purely local; but their use is not on that account either more extensive or more reputable. Let the following serve as instances of this kind. Advice, in the commercial idiom, means information or intelligence; nervous, in open defiance of analogy, doth in the medical cant, as Johnson expresseth it, denote, having weak nerves; and the word turtle, though pre-occupied time immemorial by a species of