" "On ne
peut pas admettre dans le developpement des langues aucune revolution
artificielle et sciemment executee; il n'y a pour elles ni conciles,
ni assemblees deliberantes; on ne les reforme pas comme une
constitution vicieuse."--Renan, De l'Origine du Langage, p 95.
[90] This is an old complaint. Puttenham sighs over such innovation
in Elizabeth's time, and Carew in James's. A language grows, and is
not made. Almost all the new-fangled words with which Jonson taxes
Marston in his "Poetaster" are now current.
[91] Like most idiomatic, as distinguished from correct writers, he
knew very little about the language historically or critically. His
prose and poetry swarm with locutions that would have made Lindley
Murray's hair stand on end. _How_ little he knew is plain from his
criticising in Ben Jonson the use of _ones_ in the plural, of "Though
Heaven should speak with all _his_ wrath," and be "as false English
for _are_, though the rhyme hides it." Yet all are good English, and
I have found them all in Dryden's own writing! Of his sins against
idiom I have a longer list than I have room for. And yet he is one of
our highest authorities for _real_ English.
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