And as our English is a
composition of the dead and living tongues, there is required a perfect
knowledge, not only of the Greek and Latin, but of the Old German,
French, and Italian, and to help all these, a conversation with those
authors of our own who have written with the fewest faults in prose and
verse. But how barbarously we yet write and speak your Lordship knows,
and I am sufficiently sensible in my own English.[27] For I am often put
to a stand in considering whether what I write be the idiom of the
tongue, or false grammar and nonsense couched beneath that specious name
of _Anglicism_, and have no other way to clear my doubts but by
translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying what sense the
words will bear in a more stable language." _Tantae molis erat_. Five
years later: "The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to
few; it is impossible even for a good wit to understand and practise them
without the help of a liberal education, long reading and digesting of
those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and
manners, _the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company
of both sexes_, and, in short, without wearing off the rust which he
contracted while he was laying in a stock of learning.
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