"Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well
Call'st a book good or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so too; I give thee leave, but crave
For the luck's sake, it thus much favor have;--
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought,
Not offered as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title page on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man
Who scarce can spell the hard names, whose knight less can.
If, without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 't will, well."
Time is the best critic, and the better for his intolerance of any
inferiority. And fortunate for literature that he is thus choice and
exacting. Books, like character, are works of time, and must run the
gauntlet of criticism to gain enduring celebrity. The best books may
sometimes wait for their half century, or longer, for appreciative
readers--create their readers; the few ready to appreciate these
at their issue being the most enlightened of their time, and they
diffuse the light to their circle of readers. The torch of truth thus
transmitted sheds its light over hemispheres,--the globe at last.
"Hail! native language, that with sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips
Half unpronounced slide through my infant lips,
Driving dull silence from the portal door
Where he had mutely sat two years before--
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask
That now I use thee in my latter task.
Now haste thee strait to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure,
Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight,
Which takes our late fantastics with delight,
But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire,
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits admire."
Thus wrote Milton at the age of nineteen, and made his college
illustrious and the language afterwards. Yet the purest English is
not always spoken or written by graduates of universities. Speech is
the fruit of breeding and of character, and one shall find sometimes
in remote rural districts the language spoken in its simplicity and
purity, especially by sprightly boys and girls who have not been vexed
with their grammars and school tasks. Ours is one of the richest of
the spoken tongues; it may not be the simplest in structure and ease
of attainment; yet this last may be facilitated by simple and natural
methods of studying it. Taught by masters like Ascham or Milton,
students might acquire the art of speaking and of writing the language
in its purity and elegance, as did these great masters in their day.
Ascham lays down this sensible rule: "He that will write well in any
tongue, must follow this advice of Aristotle: '_to speak as the common
people do, to think as wise men do, and so should every man understand
him, and the judgment of wise men about him_.'"
George Chapman, the translator of Homer, thus speaks of the scholarly
pedantries of his time, of which ours affords too many examples:--
"For as great clerks can use no English words,
Because (alas! great clerks) English affords,
Say they, no height nor copy,--a rude tongue,
Since 'tis their native,--but, in Greek and Latin
Their wits are rare, for thence true poesy sprung,
Through which, truth knows, they have but skill to chat in,
Compared with what they might have in their own."
Camden said, "that though our tongue may not be as sacred as the
Hebrew, nor as learned as the Greek, yet it is as fluent as the Latin,
as courteous as the Spanish, as court-like as the French, and as
amorous as the Italian; so that being beautified and enriched out of
these tongues, partly by enfranchising and endenizing foreign words,
partly by implanting new ones with artful composition, our tongue is as
copious, pithy, and significative as any in Europe."
If one would learn its riches at sight, let him glance along the pages
of Richardson's Dictionary; and at the same time survey its history
from Gower and Chaucer down to our time.
"If there be, what I believe there is," says Dr. Johnson, "in every
nation, a style which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of
phraseology so component and congenial to the analogy and principles
of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this
style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among
those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of eloquence.
The polite are always catching modish expressions, and the learned
depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making
it better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar when
the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and
below refinement, where propriety resides, and where Shakespeare seems
to have gathered his comic dialogues. He is therefore more agreeable
to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote,
and among his other excellences deserves to be studied as one of the
original masters of the language."
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