did, when he cleverly in many passages elbowed out almost all Teutonic words, except such as his, to, of, and the like. Cobbett roused us from foreign pedantry; and if we do not always reach Tyndale's bountiful proportion of Teutonic words in his political tracts, we at least do not fall below the proportion employed by Addison.[1] In proof of this, let any one contrast the diction of our modern English writers on Charles V. with the Latinized style wherein Dr. Robertson revels when handling the same subject. That fine passage, in which Mr. Froude sets before us the Armada leaving the Spanish shore, would have been altogether beyond Hume a hundred years ago. Mr. Carlyle has had many disciples, whose awkward efforts to conjure with his wand are most laughable; but one good result at least has followed — the stern rugged Teutonism of the teacher is copied by those who ape him.
It is amusing to look back upon what was thought sound English criticism barely forty years ago. In a sharp attack on Dr. Monk's Life of Bentley, the Edinburgh Reviewer of July, 1830, lifts up his voice against such vulgar forms as hereby, wherein, hereupon, caught up, his bolt was shot, fling away his credit, a batch of fragments, it lay a bleeding. I know not whether Dr. Monk could have explained the a in the last phrase; but it seems pretty certain that he was one of the pioneers who brought us back to a homelier style or English.[2] Most men in our time would allow, that a
