To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered with the restoration, and from infecting our religion and morals, fell to corrupt our language; which last was not likely to be much improved by those, who at the time made up the court of king Charles the second; either such who had followed him in his banishment, or who had been altogether conversant in the dialect of those fanatick times; or young men, who had been educated in the same country: so that the court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and, I think, has ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment; and so will remain, till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness. The consequence of this defect, upon our language, may appear from the plays, and other compositions written for entertainment within fifty years past; filled with a succession of affected phrases, and new conceited words, either borrowed from the current style of the court, or from those, who, under the character of men of wit and pleasure, pretended to give the law. Many of these refinements have already been long antiquated, and are now hardly intelligible; which is no wonder, when they were the product only of ignorance and caprice.
I have never known this great town without one or more dunces of figure, who had credit enough to give rise to some new word, and propagate it in most conversations, though it had neither humour nor significancy. If it struck the present taste, it
