the obsolete spelling, multiplied consonants, and antiquated appearance of
the language, that he is apt to lay the work down in despair, as encrusted too
deep with the rust of antiquity, to permit his judging of its merits or tasting
its beauties. But if some intelligent and accomplished friend points out to him,
that the difficulties by which he is startled are more in appearance than
reality, if, by reading aloud to him, or by reducing the ordinary words to the
modern orthography, he satisfies his proselyte that only about onetenth part of
the words employed are in fact obsolete, the novice may be easily persuaded to
approach the »well of English undefiled,« with the certainty that a slender
degree of patience will enable him to enjoy both the humour and the pathos with
which old Geoffrey delighted the age of Cressy and of Poictiers.
    To pursue this a little farther. If our neophyte, strong in the new-born
love of antiquity, were to undertake to imitate what he had learnt to admire, it
must be allowed he would act very injudiciously, if he were to select from the
Glossary the obsolete words which it contains, and employ those exclusive of all
phrases and vocables retained in modern days. This was the error of the
unfortunate Chatterton. In order to give his language the appearance of
antiquity, he rejected every word that was modern, and produced a dialect
entirely different from any that had ever been spoken in Great Britain. He who
would imitate an ancient language with, success, must attend rather to its
grammatical character, turn of expression, and mode of arrangement, than labour
to collect extraordinary and antiquated terms, which, as I have already averred,
do not in ancient authors approach the number of words still in use, though
perhaps somewhat altered in sense and spelling, in the proportion of one to ten.
    What I have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to
sentiments and manners. The passions, the sources from which these must spring
in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks and conditions,
all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter of course, that the
opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however influenced by the peculiar
state of society, must still, upon the whole, bear a strong, resemblance to each
other. Our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from
Christians; they had »eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
passions;« were »fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to
the same