[eBook #10574] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, VOLUME I*** E-text prepared by David J. Cole Transcriber's Note: Like much 18th and 19th century publishing, the edition of David Hume's "History of England" from which this text was prepared makes extensive use of both footnotes and marginal notes.

I continued with my mother and brother in the country, and in that time recovered the knowledge of the Greek language, which I had too much neglected in my early youth.

The only certain means by which nations can indulge their curiosity in researches concerning their remote origin, is to consider the language, manners, and customs of their ancestors, and to compare them with those of the neighbouring nations.

Their language was the same; their manners, their government, their superstition, varied only by those small differences which time or communication with the bordering nations must necessarily introduce.

He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to desire and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the Roman language and manners, instructed them in letters and science, and employed every expedient to render those chains which he had forged both easy and agreeable to them

So he proposed the classics; and the youth Caught at the offer; and for many a night, When others lay and lost themselves in sleep, He groped his way with lexicon and rule, Through ancient deeds embalmed in Latin old, Or poet-woods alive with gracious forms; Wherein his knowledge of the English tongue (Through reading many books) much aided him For the soul's language is the same in all.

How had we read, as in new-languaged books, Clear love of God in lone retreating nooks!

The Dr. has a happy talent at invention, and has had the glory of enriching our language by his phrases, as much as he has improved medicine by his bills.'

Whether this observation is well founded, we shall not at present examine, only remark, that if any poet has a right to be forgiven for this error, Mr. Rowe certainly has, as his cadence is the sweetest in the world, his sentiments chaste, and his language elegant.

The conduct of the design is regular, and in that sense it partakes not of Shakespear's wildness; the poetry is uniform, which marks it to be Rowe's, but in that it is very different from Shakespear, whose excellency does not consist merely in the beauty of soft language, or nightingale descriptions; but in the general power of his drama, the boldness of the images, and the force of his characters.

The compliment he meant, was, that these books had given him a very new idea of the English politeness, and that he did not question, but there were excellent compositions in the native language of a country, which possessed the Roman genius in so eminent a degree.'

This subject was still drier, and less susceptible of poetical ornament than the former, but in the hands of so great a writer, there is no doubt but genius would have supplied what was wanting in the real story, and have covered by shining sentiments, and noble language, the simplicity of the plot, and deficiency in business.

This diverted him from the design he had formed of composing an English Dictionary upon the plan of a famous Italian one: that the world has much suffered by this promotion I am ready to believe, and cannot but regret that our language yet wants the assistance of so great a master, in fixing its standard, settling its purity, and illustrating its copiousness, or elegance.

"With regard to the reduction of the observations of the Transit of Venus: After reference to the difficulties arising from the errors and the interpretation of the language used by some of the observers, the Report continues thus: "Finally a Report was made to the Government on July 5th, giving as the mean result for Mean Solar Parallax 8".76; the results from ingress and from egress, however, differing to the extent of 0".11....

In the time of Shakspeare, the living tongue resembled that tree which Father Hue saw in Tartary, whose leaves were languaged,and every hidden root of thought, every subtilest fibre of feeling, was mated by new shoots and leafage of expression, fed from those unseen sources in the common earth of human nature.

He is, indeed, only languaged in diseases, and speaks Greek many times when he knows not.

Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy that acknowledged no fountain but God, to utter themselves by other language than by tears, by restles anthems, by reverberations rising from every choir, of the Gloria in excelsis.

But with all its faults, the language is dramatic.

This courtship Pembrooke knows, but idle love, The sick-fac't object of an amorous brayne, Did never clothe mine eye-balls, never taught This toung, inurde to broyles and stratagems, The passionate language of a troubled heart: I am too blunt and rude for such nice service.

One may smile at the notion of holloaing "to the beast," but the whole passage is vigorous, and some single lines (e.g. "The passionate language of a troubled heart") are excellent.

Niceties of language in especial are keenly, and often unjustly, criticized.

In view of this inevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of his dialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to use only what may be called everybody's English, or the language undoubtedly current throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs.

"He many-languaged nations has surveyed.

The "well-languaged Daniel," of whom Ben Jonson said that he was "a good honest man, but no poet," wrote, however, one fine meditative piece, his Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland, a sermon apparently on the text of the Roman poet Lucretius's famous passage in praise of philosophy, Suave, mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

She regarded the chief and his mother with love and reverence, and had so completely learned their language and customs as almost to have forgotten her own.