cheaper substitute.

It seems to me that in all discussions upon this subject the capacities
of the English language have received but scanty justice. The
intellectual tendencies of our race have always been somewhat
conservative, and its standards of literary taste or belief, once set
up, are not varied without a struggle. The English ear is suspicious of
new metres and unaccustomed forms of expression: there are critical
detectives on the track of every author, and a violation of the accepted
canons is followed by a summons to judgment. Thus the tendency is to
contract rather than to expand the acknowledged excellences of the
language.[J]

[J] I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from
Jacob Grimm: "No one of all the modern languages has acquired a greater
force and strength than the English, through the derangement and
relinquishment of its ancient laws of sound. The unteachable
(nevertheless _learnable_) profusion of its middle-tones has conferred
upon it an intrinsic power of expression, such as no other human tongue
ever possessed. Its entire, thoroughly intellectual and wonderfully
successful foundation and perfected development issued from a marvelous
union of the two noblest tongues of Europe, the Germanic and the
Romanic. Their mutual relation in the English language is well known,
since the former furnished chiefly the material basis, while the latter
added the intellectual conceptions. The English language, by and through
which the greatest and most eminent poet of modern times--as contrasted
with ancient classical poetry--(of course I can refer only to
Shakespeare) was begotten and nourished, has a just claim to be called a
language of the world; and it appears to be destined, like the English
race, to a higher and broader sway in all quarters of the earth. For in