And the last of these; for the first is rough thro' too many Consonants.

_A lewd Desire strange Lands and Swains to know:
Ah Gad! that ever I should covet Woe!_ Past. 2.

There are other Methods, I see, Cubbin, you have taken to enervate your
Language; too minute and too numerous to recite, but they are easily, I
think, observ'd, if a Person peruses the Pastoral Writers with Care.

When our Dialect is thus render'd weak and low, we must then add to
it, (in order to render it as pleasant as a Dialect that is not low and
mean) Simplicity, Softness and Rusticity. This is perform'd principally
by these three things. By Old-Terms; by Turns of Words, and Phrazes; and
by Compound Words. Of all which I shall crave leave to treat distinctly.
And first of Ancient Terms.


SECT. 2.

_Of Old-Words_.

When first I look'd into _Chaucer_. I thought him the most dry insipid
Writer I ever saw. And there is indeed nothing very valuable in either
his Images or Thoughts; but after a Person is accustom'd to his manner
of Writing and his Stile, there is something of Simplicity in his Old
Language, inimitably sweet and pleasing. If 'tis thus in _Chaucer_,
in Pastoral such a Language is vastly more delightful. For we expect
something very much out of the Way, when we come among Shepherds; and
how can the Language of Shepherds be made to differ from that of other