)
"I cry you mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it
matters little. almost all the writers of your time have likewise
passed into forgetfulness, and De Worde's publications are mere
literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and stability
of language, too, on which you found your claims to perpetuity,
have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even
back to the times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote
his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+ Even now many talk of
Spenser's `well of pure English undefiled,' as if the language
ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not rather a
mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes
and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature
so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so
fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more
permanent and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must
share the fate of everything else, and fall into decay. This
should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the
most popular writer. He finds the language in which he has
embarked his fame gradually altering and subject to the
dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion.
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