"These two evils, ignorance and want of taste, have produced a third; I mean the continual corruption of our English tongue, which, without some timely remedy, will suffer more by the false refinements of twenty years past than it hath been improved in the foregoing hundred. And this is what I design chiefly to enlarge upon, leaving the former evils to your animadversion.
"But instead of giving you a list of the late refinements crept into our language, I here send you the copy of a letter I received some time ago from a most accomplished person in this way of writing; upon which I shall make some remarks. It is in these terms:
"'I _cou'dn't_ get the things you sent for all _about town_. I _thôt_ to _ha'_ come down myself, and then _I'd h' bôt 'um_; but I _ha'n't don't_, and I believe I _can't d't, that's pozz_. Tom[121] begins to _gi'mself_ airs, because _he's_ going with the _plenipo's_. 'Tis said the French King will _bamboozl' us agen_, which _causes many speculations_. The Jacks and others of that _kidney_ are very _uppish_, and _alert upon't_, as you may see by their _phizz's_. Will Hazzard has got the _hipps_, having lost _to the tune of_ five hundr'd pound, _thô_ he understands play very well, _nobody better_. He has promis't me upon _rep_, to leave off play; but you know 'tis a weakness _he's_ too apt to _give into, thô_ he has as much wit as any man, _nobody more_. He has lain _incog._ ever since. The _mobb's_ very quiet with us now. I believe you _thôt_ I _bantr'd_ you in my last like a _country put_. I _shan't_ leave town this month,' &c.
"This letter is in every point an admirable pattern of the present polite way of writing, nor is it of less authority for being an epistle: you may gather every flower in it, with a thousand more of equal sweetness, from the books, pamphlets, and single papers, offered us every day in the coffee-houses: and these are the beauties introduced to supply the want of wit, sense, humour, and learning, which formerly were looked upon as qualifications for a writer. If a man of wit, who died forty years ago, were to rise from the grave on purpose, how would he be able to read this letter? And after he had got through that difficulty, how would he be able to understand it? The first thing that strikes your eye is the breaks at the end of almost every sentence, of which I know not the use, only that it is a refinement, and very frequently practised. Then you will observe the abbreviations and elisions, by which consonants of most obdurate sound are joined together, without one softening vowel to intervene; and all this only to make one syllable of two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, altogether of the Gothic strain, and a natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity, which delights in monosyllables, and uniting of mute consonants, as it is observable in all the Northern languages. And this is still more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest; such as phizz, hipps, mobb, pozz, rep, and many more, when we are already overloaded with monosyllables, which are the disgrace of our language. Thus we cram one syllable, and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit off their legs, to prevent them from running away; and if ours be the same reason for maiming our words, it will certainly answer the end, for I am sure no other nation will desire to borrow them. Some words are hitherto but fairly split, and therefore only in their way to perfection, as incog. and plenipo; but in a short time, 'tis to be hoped, they will be further docked to inc. and plen. This reflection has made me of late years very impatient for a peace, which I believe would save the lives of many brave words, as well as men. The war has introduced abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns. Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communication, circumvallation, battalions, as numerous as they are, if they attack us too frequently in our coffee-houses, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear.