man of talent, and of great antiquarian erudition, limited the
popularity of his work, by excluding from it every thing which
was not sufficiently obsolete to be altogether forgotten and
unintelligible.

The license which I would here vindicate, is so necessary to the
execution of my plan, that I will crave your patience while I
illustrate my argument a little farther.

He who first opens Chaucer, or any other ancient poet, is so much
struck with the obsolete spelling, multiplied consonants, and
antiquated appearance of the language, that he is apt to lay the
work down in despair, as encrusted too deep with the rust of
antiquity, to permit his judging of its merits or tasting its
beauties. But if some intelligent and accomplished friend points
out to him, that the difficulties by which he is startled are
more in appearance than reality, if, by reading aloud to him, or
by reducing the ordinary words to the modern orthography, he
satisfies his proselyte that only about one-tenth part of the
words employed are in fact obsolete, the novice may be easily
persuaded to approach the "well of English undefiled," with the
certainty that a slender degree of patience will enable him to
to enjoy both the humour and the pathos with which old Geoffrey
delighted the age of Cressy and of Poictiers.

To pursue this a little farther. If our neophyte, strong in the
new-born love of antiquity, were to undertake to imitate what he
had learnt to admire, it must be allowed he would act very
injudiciously, if he were to select from the Glossary the
obsolete words which it contains, and employ those exclusively of