Whoever Therefore Now Writes In This Language,
Spells According To His Own Perception Of The Sound, And His Own
Idea Of The Power Of The Letters.
The Welsh and the Irish are
cultivated tongues.
The Welsh, two hundred years ago, insulted
their English neighbours for the instability of their Orthography;
while the Earse merely floated in the breath of the people, and
could therefore receive little improvement.
When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to
refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have
undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a
proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them
by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent;
different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an
establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.
Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction,
merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his
eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There
may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be
no polished language without books.
That the Bards could not read more than the rest of their
countrymen, it is reasonable to suppose; because, if they had read,
they could probably have written; and how high their compositions
may reasonably be rated, an inquirer may best judge by considering
what stores of imagery, what principles of ratiocination, what
comprehension of knowledge, and what delicacy of elocution he has
known any man attain who cannot read.
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