If you wish to convince yourselves by actual experience, of the fact
which I just now asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of the
language is Saxon, I would say, Try to compose a sentence, let it be
only of ten or a dozen words, and the subject entirely of your choice,
employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. I venture
to say you will find it impossible, or next to impossible to do it;
whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you in the face. And
while it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do not
say in philosophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but on
familiar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should be
of Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these, pages in which, with
the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity, all appearance of
awkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should never
occur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer had
submitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which he
employed, and was only drawing them from one section of the English
language. Sir Thomas Browne has given several long paragraphs so
constructed. Take for instance the following, which is only a little
fragment of one of them: “The first and foremost step to all good works
is the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which through
the Holy Ghost enlighteneth the blindness of our sinful hearts to tread
the ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land of blessing”{30}.
This is not stiffer than the ordinary English of his time. I would
suggest to you at your leisure to make these two experiments; you will
find it, I think, exactly as I have here affirmed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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