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 croud 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 stile, 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
licence of translatours, 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 constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.