A pamphlet published in the year 1703 has the following strange title: “The _Deformity_ of Sin cured; a Sermon preached at St. Michael’s, _Crooked_-lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. J. _Crookshanks_. Sold by Matthew Denton, at the _Crooked_ Billet near _Cripple_-gate, and by all other booksellers.” The words of the text are, “_Every crooked path shall be made straight_;” and the prince before whom it was preached was _deformed_ in person. THE COURT-FOOL’S PUN ON ARCHBISHOP LAUD. Great praise to God, and _little Laud_ to the devil. English Words and Forms of Expression. Dictionary English is something very different not only from common colloquial English, but even from that of ordinary written composition. Instead of about forty thousand words, there is probably no single author in the language from whose works, however voluminous, so many as ten thousand words could be collected. Of the forty thousand words there are certainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should be surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words we manage to express all that we have to say, either with our lips or with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly amounts to ten thousand words; our common spoken English hardly to five thousand. Odd words are to be found in the dictionaries. Why they are kept there no one knows; but what man in his senses would use such words as zythepsary for a brewhouse, and zymologist for a brewer; would talk of a stormy day as procellous and himself as madefied; of his long-legged son as increasing in procerity but sadly marcid; of having met with such procacity from such a one; of a bore as a macrologist; of an aged horse as macrobiotic; of important business as moliminous, and his daughter’s necklace as moniliform; of some one’s talk as meracious, and lament his last night’s nimiety of wine at that dapatical feast, whence he was taken by ereption? Open the dictionary at any page, and you will find a host of these words. By a too ready adoption of foreign words into the currency of the English language, we are in danger of losing much of its radical strength and historical significance. Marsh has compared the parable of the man who built his house upon the sand, as given by Matthew and Luke. Matthew uses the plain Saxon English. The learned Evangelist, Luke, employed a Latinized dictionary. “Now,” he says, “compare the two passages and say which to every English ear, is the most impressive:” “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”—_Matthew._ “Against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”—_Luke._