neglected faculty of correct language, to establish purity and
propriety of style, and to purge it from all the irregular additions
that ignorance and affectation have introduced; and all those
innovations in speech, if I may call them such, which some dogmatic
writers have the confidence to foster upon their native language, as
if their authority were sufficient to make their own fancy
legitimate.

By such a society I daresay the true glory of our English style
would appear; and among all the learned part of the world be
esteemed, as it really is, the noblest and most comprehensive of all
the vulgar languages in the world.

Into this society should be admitted none but persons eminent for
learning, and yet none, or but very few, whose business or trade was
learning. For I may be allowed, I suppose, to say we have seen many
great scholars mere learned men, and graduates in the last degree of
study, whose English has been far from polite, full of stiffness and
affectation, hard words, and long unusual coupling of syllables and
sentences, which sound harsh and untuneable to the ear, and shock
the reader both in expression and understanding.

In short, there should be room in this society for neither
clergyman, physician, nor lawyer. Not that I would put an affront
upon the learning of any of those honourable employments, much less
upon their persons. But if I do think that their several
professions do naturally and severally prescribe habits of speech to
them peculiar to their practice, and prejudicial to the study I
speak of, I believe I do them no wrong. Nor do I deny but there may
be, and now are, among some of all those professions men of style