button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page vi:-
the stories of Joseph and Bellerophon, of Jeptha and Idomeneus. The funeral howl has been raised in almost every quarter of the earth, and human superstition has always had its fausti and nefausti [nefasti] dies. Many English words, with their native meaning attached to them, have migrated into Calabria and Apulia; yet we know not whether they were introduced along with English sheep, or at some other time. These things, without doubt, and many more that might be instanced, originate from causes which have not been of sufficient importance for the notice of general history; or they have crept on in a silent progression; or have been transported by casualties, the authentic story of which is either lost or obscured by time: yet some of them furnish powerful arguments for the existence of obsolete arrangements, and unrecorded intercourse. It is here that local attempts to supply the void in general history take place, and present resemblances, which may stimulate curiosity to investigate, if possible, their causes.
  languages
  dialects

IV. That languages radically the same, even in the latter stages of the world, should assume altered tones and idioms, far alienated from their original ones, does not seem wonderful, when one recollects the number of promiscuous tongues with which force and other contingence have blended them; it seems to me rather more wonderful, that modern refinement, and the laboured improvements of grammarians, have almost erazed every trace of affinity. A language, when once settled with classic precision, will of course leave out such a number of the current phrases, and words of particular districts, as are proportional to the difference between the dialects of those districts and the men who compiled the standard tongue: some, besides, will be lost by forgetfulness, and others overlooked on account of their vulgarity. In process of time these excluded words and phrases grow more and more estranged, become at last a barbarism, and are forgotten. Yet it is not perhaps unworthy of a thinking mind to observe, how other tongues of the same stock still retain, in their purest state, many of those things which are exiled into the more barbarous and remote dialects of another; or in what manner expressions, though occasionally changed in termination, &c. mingle familiarly with the current of one mode of speech, when they have lost all connection with each other. There are few dialects which have not something distinct and peculiar to themselves; either in single words, particular phrases, or the general structure of their sentences; and when such a dialect as one of these has no standard of its own, that is, before civilization and learning have given it uniformity, every one that writes will write the words he is accustomed to, and in the stile which use has taught him. Again: Where there is no great seminary to produce scholars, who may dignify and fix their native idiom by their writings; and idiom, formed on some more fashionable plans, and established by some eminent performances, will be sought; it will become the language of scholars, and learning in time must not deviate from it. Yet as every county in England, though the radicals of its language be common, and its speech in general conformable to that of the rest, uses many phrases notwithstanding which are peculiar to itself; we may naturally infer, from the variety of nations who have inhabited this island, that it was always so; and that the standard tongue, which is a sort of mixture of the whole, left out many words as needless,, because supplied by other dialects, and rejected many more on account of their vulgarity. Therefore, if any particular place has, by its cultivation of letters, or by its authority, established the superiority of its own dialect; that dialect, as it advances in refinement, will gradually become fastidious, and reject or forget many of its own homely phrases which it had in common with others of the same stock, and assume those of languages which circumstances have rendered still more learned and fashionable. Few will hesitate in calling this an emendation; yet such emendation will make the distinction still more obvious, as it must of course leave out many of those expressions which it once used in common with its kindred dialects, and which rusticity and solitude have in the mean time secured from any material alteration: for from whatever cause languages originate, without books as a fixed point to which they may recur, they will always in general intercourse be vague and fluctuating.
  war
V. That irregular, but mischievous kind of war, which is called Incursive, cannot
well
erratum from p.194
for nefausti, read nefasti.
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