Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/75

To examine into the several circumstances by which the language of a country may be altered, would force me to enter into a wide field. I shall only observe, that the Latin, the French, and the English, seem to have undergone the same fortune. The first from the days of Romulus to those of Julius Cæsar, suffered perpetual changes: and by what we meet in those authors who occasionally speak on that subject, as well as from certain fragments of old laws, it is manifest that the Latin three hundred years before Tully was as unintelligible in his time, as the English and French of the same period are now; and these two have changed as much since William the Conqueror, (which is but little less than seven hundred years) as the Latin appears to have done in the like term. Whether our language, or the French, will decline as fast as the Roman did, is a question, that would perhaps admit more debate than it is worth. There were many reasons for the corruptions of the last: as, the change of their government to a tyranny, which ruined the study of eloquence, there being no farther use or encouragement for popular orators: their giving not only the freedom of the city, but capacity for employments, to several towns in Gaul, Spain, and Germany, and other distant parts, as far as Asia; which brought a great number of foreign pretenders into Rome: the slavish disposition of the senate and people, by which the wit and eloquence of the age were wholly turned into panegyrick, the most barren of all subjects: the great corruption of manners, and introduction of foreign luxury, with foreign terms to express it, with several others, that might be assigned; not to mention those inva-