The age of Queen Anne was compared to the
Ciceronian age of Latin, or the age of Aristotle and Plato in Greek.
But in both these cases, as indeed in that of every known ancient
people, the language, after reaching its acme of perfection, had begun
to decay and become debased: the golden age of Latinity had passed
into a silvern, and that into a brazen and an iron age. The fear was
that a like fate should overtake English also; to avert which calamity
the only remedy appeared to be to _fix the language_ by means of a
'Standard Dictionary,' which should register the proper sense and use
of every word and phrase, from which no polite writer henceforth would
be expected to deviate; but, even as generation after generation of
boys and men found their perfection of Latinity in the imitation of
Cicero, so all succeeding ages of Englishmen should find their ideal
of speech and writing fixed for ever in this standard dictionary. To
us of a later age, with our fuller knowledge of the history of
language, and our wider experience of its fortunes, when it has to be
applied to entirely new fields of knowledge, such as have been opened
to us since the birth of modern science, this notion seems childlike
and pathetic.
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