- Chaucer's Testament of Love.
(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such
intolerably antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in
rendering them into modern phraseology.)
"I cry your mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it
matters little: almost all the writers of your time have likewise
passed into forgetfulness; and De Worde's publications are mere
literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and stability of
language, too, on which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been
the fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even back to the
times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in
rhymes of mongrel Saxon.* Even now many talk of Spenser's 'well of
pure English undefiled,' as if the language ever sprang from a well or
fountain-head, and was not rather a mere confluence of various
tongues, perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is
this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the
reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be
committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a
medium, even thought must share the fate of every thing else, and fall
into decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity and
exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the language in
which he has embarked his fame gradually altering, and subject to
the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion.
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