14. From Dr. Johnson’s Life of Addison.—­Example written about 1780.

“That he always wrote as he would think it necessary to write now, cannot be affirmed; his instructions were such as the character of his readers made proper.  That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk, was in his time rarely to be found.  Men not professing learning, were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.  His purpose was to infuse literary curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected conveyance, into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he therefore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar.  When he shewed them their defects, he shewed them likewise that they might easily be supplied.  His attempt succeeded; inquiry was awakened, and comprehension expanded.  An emulation of intellectual elegance was excited, and from this time to our own, life has been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged.”—­SAMUEL JOHNSON:  Lives, p. 321.

15. Reign of George II, 1760 back to 1727.—­Example written in 1751.

“We Britons in our time have been remarkable borrowers, as our multiform Language may sufficiently shew.  Our Terms in polite Literature prove, that this came from Greece; our terms in Music and Painting, that these came from Italy; our Phrases in Cookery and War, that we learnt these from the French; and our phrases in Navigation, that we were taught by the Flemings and Low Dutch.  These many and very different Sources of our Language may be the cause, why it is so deficient in Regularity and Analogy.  Yet we have this advantage to compensate the defect, that what we want in Elegance, we gain in Copiousness, in which last respect few Languages will be found superior to our own.”—­JAMES HARRIS:  Hermes, Book iii, Ch. v, p. 408.

16. Reign of George I, 1727 back to 1714.—­Example written about 1718.

“There is a certain coldness and indifference in the phrases of our European languages, when they are compared with the Oriental forms of speech:  and it happens very luckily, that the Hebrew idioms ran into the English tongue, with a particular grace and beauty.  Our language has received innumerable elegancies and improvements from that infusion of Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the poetical passages in holy writ.  They give a force and energy to our expressions, warm and animate our language, and convey our thoughts in more ardent and intense phrases, than any that are to be met with in our tongue.”—­JOSEPH ADDISON:  Evidences, p. 192.

17. Reign of Queen Anne, 1714 to 1702.—­Example written in 1708.