There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other,
which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A
mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both; and
they will always be mixed, where the chief part of education, and the
most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign
tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find its
words and combinations crowd upon his memory; and haste and negligence,
refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotick
expressions.

The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever
turned from one language into another, without imparting something of
its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive
innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the
tongue continue the same; but new phraseology changes much at once; it
alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the
columns. If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our
style; which I, who can never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope
the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead
of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour, with all their
influence, to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and
ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a
dialect of France.

If the changes, that we fear, be thus irresistible, what remains but to
acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of
humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we
palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though
death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a
natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our