Ye tradesmen, who with writs the fop entrap;
Ye fops, who strive those tradesmen to escape;
Ye reverend Jews, enrich'd by christian spoil;
Ye parsons who for benefices toil :

No longer hope by open war to win,

Cease, cease, ye fools, to lie through thick and thin ;'
But know this truth, enough for rogues to know,
Lies ne'er can please the man who thinks them so.
"Would you by flattery seek the road to wealth?
Push not too hard, but slide it in by stealth.
Mark well your cully's temper and pursuit,
And fit to every leg the pliant boot.

Tell not the spendthrift that he hoards with sense,
Tell not the miser that he scorns expence;

Nor praise the learning of a dunce profest,

Nor swear a sloven's elegantly drest.

Thus, if by chance, in harmless sport and play,
You coolly talk a character away;

Or boldly a flat perjurer appear,

Nor gallows dread, nor lacerated ear;
Still let your lies to truth near neighbours be,
And still with probability agree.

So shall you govern with unbounded reign,
Nor longer, cringe, and toil, and lie in vain;
While truth laments her empire quite o'erthrown,
And by a form usurp'd so like her own.”

No. 16. MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1787.

Usus

Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et enorma loquendi.

Use is the judge, the law, and rule of speech.

IT is a favourite amusement with me, and one of which, in the present paper, I shall invite my readers to participate, to adopt a maxim established in any single instance; to trace its influence where it has

operated undiscovered; to examine the secret springs by which it has worked; and the causes which have contributed to their concealment. In the course of this pursuit, I may boast, that there is scarce one of these miniatures of experience and observation, from the moral maxims of Grecian philosophy, to the prudential apothegms of Poor Robin, which has not been successively the object of my observation and discussion. I am, however, aware, that in the opinion of their importance I may perhaps be singular.

That" life is short," that the generality of "mankind are vicious," seem ideas that might have suggested themselves to a mind undistinguished for peculiar sagacity, or an uncommon share of experience; but to carry further the former of these maxims, and to consider that life is short, when compared with the multiplicity of its business and the variety of its pursuits; that it is too much so for the purposes of honour and ambition; that, to draw a conclusion from the attempts of men, we should imagine it longer, is an observation not so entirely unworthy of a philosopher. And by pursuing the latter of these thoughts, though on the first view it may not appear the result of any extraordinary observation, it may be found, on a narrower inspection, to convey a strong argument of the impropriety of popular government. The scrap of Latin, which, in conformity to established precedent, is prefixed to my paper, exhibits an example of the influence of fashion beyond those limits which are usually assigned to its prerogative. For, were we to accept the definition of it the most usually accepted, we should consider it only as the director of diversion and dress; of unmeaning compliment and unsocial intimacy. And however

evidently mistaken such an opinion might appear, we must look for its source in one of the most prevailing principles of the human mind; a principle (the excess of which we stigmatize by the name of pedantry) of deducing the illustrations of every subject of inquiry from the more immediate objects of our own pursuits, and circumscribing its bounds within the limits of our own observation. On the contrary, we shall find, that all our attempts to prescribe bounds to the activity of this so powerful agent, will end only in surprise at the extent of its authority; in astonishment at the universality of its influence. Its claim to an undisputed empire over language is asserted by the author from whom I have taken the motto of this paper; with what justice, the testimony of a succeeding age may declare; when a Cæsar, who made and unmade the laws of the world at his pleasure, found the smallest innovation in language beyond the utmost limits of arbitrary power. Nothing indeed but the highest vanity, nourished by the grossest adulation, an idea of the infinitude of sovereign authority and servile obedience, could have given birth to such an attempt.

However paradoxical it may seem, that, in a matter of judgment and taste, the vague arbitration of individuals should be preferable to the absolute decision of a learned body; yet the imbecility so evident in the language of a neighbouring nation, and so undoubtedly the effect of establishing such a court of criticism, leaves us little reason to regret that language with us is so entirely the child of chance and custom. The first prize of rhetoric given to a woman, was a bad omen to the future endeavours of the French academy.

To omit the innumerable inconveniencies attending on every attempt to regulate language; to judge of the possible success of such an attempt from the abstracted probability alone, were to declare it impossible. A multitude of circumstances, equally unforeseen and unavoidable, must concur to the formation of a language. An improvement, or corruption of manners; the reduction of a foreign enemy; or an invasion from abroad, are circumstances that ultimately, or immediately, tend to produce some change in the language of a people. And even of these, the most feeble agents have been found more efficacious than the joint operations of power and policy.

The conquests of this nation on the continent, contributed more perhaps to the naturalization of the French language amongst us than the Norman invasion and its attendant consequences; the necessity laid on every individual to acquire the use of that tongue in which all cases of property were to be determined; and the numberless disadvantages and restrictions imposed on the study of the native language.

At a time when measures, so seemingly decisive, proved ineffectual, it may be curious to observe the agency of others, apparently foreign from any connection with the improvement or alteration of our language. The residence of our nobility in the conquered provinces of France, the continual wars maintained against that nation, making the study of their language an indispensable qualification in all who aspired to civil or military dignities, unavoidably brought on a change in our own. The accusation therefore of a learned etymologist against Chaucer, of introducing into our language "integra verborum

plaustra," "whole cartloads of words," however elegant in expression, is false in foundation. The language of Chaucer's poetry is that of the court in which he lived; and that it was not, no probable conclusion can be drawn from any difference of style of authors his contemporaries. In those who writ under the same advantages no such difference is observable; and those who were excluded from them laboured under extreme disadvantages from the variations of vernacular language and the diversity of provincial dialect, which, as they have now in a great measure ceased to exist, may, together with their primary causes, furnish a subject for curious inquiry.

It appears, from the concurrence of several ingenious antiquaries, as well as from the testimony of Caxton in one of his prefaces, that the English language was in his time diversified by innumerable provincial peculiarities. He mentions his own choice of the Kentish dialect, and the success that attended it. The language of Chaucer's poetry is frequently more intelligible to a modern reader than that of such of his successors as employed themselves on popular subjects. Gawin Douglas, a poetical translator of Virgil, is now, owing to the use of a northern dialect, though a near contemporary of Spenser's, almost unintelligible.

After establishing the existence of a fact, the beaten track of transition will naturally lead us to a consideration of its causes. Among the first effects produced by an extension of empire, may be reckoned a barbarous peculiarity of language in the provinces the most remote from the seat of learning and refinement. Livy is said to have had his Patavinity;