company are supposed to be the best methods of getting at the niceties and elegancies of a language; but this road is long and irksome. It is certainly a safer and a readier way to sail by compass than to rove at random; and any person who wished to become acquainted with the various productions of nature, would do better to study the systems of our best naturalists, than to go wandering about from land to land, lighting here upon one, and there upon another, merely out of a desire to see them all. I hope also this book may be useful to those foreigners that wish to learn the English tongue; it being intended to contain all our most usual Anglicisms : all those phrases and peculiarities, which form the characteristics of our language. I will not take upon me to say that we have no grammar capable of teaching a foreigner to read our authors; but this I am sure of, that we have none by which he can be enabled to understand our conversation.

ADDITION, 1834.-EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. BURKE TO MR. MURPHY.

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"THERE is a style which daily gains ground amongst

us, which I should be sorry to see farther advanced by "the authority of a writer of your just reputation. The tendency of the mode to which I allude is, to establish "two very different idioms amongst us, and to introduce marked distinction between the English that is written, and the English that is spoken. This practice, "if grown a little more general, would confirm this "distemper, (such I must think it) in our language, "and perhaps render it incurable.

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"From this feigned manner, or falsetto, as I think the "musicians call something of the same sort in singing, no "one modern historian, Robertson only excepted, is per

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fectly free. It is assumed, I know, to give dignity and

variety to the style; but whatever success the attempt

may sometimes have, it is always obtained at the ex"pense of purity, and of the graces that are natural and "appropriate to our language. It is true, that when the exigence calls for auxiliaries of all sorts, and common

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language becomes unequal to the demands of extra"ordinary thoughts, something ought to be conceded to "the necessities which make Ambition Virtue;' but "the allowances to necessities ought not to grow into

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a practice. These portents and prodigies ought not to 66 grow too common."

TO MR. HENDERSON.

London, 1785.

I WENT, as I promised, to see the new "HAMLET," whose provincial fame had excited your curiosity as well as mine.

There has not been such a first appearance since yours: yet Nature, though she has been bountiful to him in figure and feature, has denied him a voice-of course he could not exemplify his own direction for the players to "speak the speech trippingly on the tongue," and now and then he was as deliberate in his delivery as if he had been reading prayers, and had waited for the response.

He is a very handsome man, almost tall and almost large, with features of a sensible, but fixed and tragic

cast his action is graceful, though somewhat formal; which you will find it hard to believe, yet it is true. Very careful study appears in all he says and all he does; but there is more singularity and ingenuity, than simplicity and fire. Upon the whole, he strikes me rather as a finished French performer, than as a varied and vigorous English actor; and it is plain he will succeed better in heroic, than in natural and passionate tragedy. Excepting in serious parts, I suppose he will never put on the sock.

You have been so long without a "brother near the throne," that it will perhaps be serviceable to you to be obliged to bestir yourself in Hamlet, Macbeth, Lord Townley, and Maskwell; but in Lear, Richard, Falstaff, and Benedict, you have nothing to fear, notwithstanding the known fickleness of the public and its love of novelty.

I think I have heard you remark (what I myself have observed in the History of the Stage), that periodical changes have taken place in the taste of the audience, or at least in the manner of the great performers. Sometimes the natural and spirited mode has prevailed, and then the dignified and declamatory. BETTERTON, eminent both in comedy and tragedy, appears to have been an

instance of the first. Then came BOOTH and QUIN, who were admired for the last. GARRICK followed, restoring or re-inventing the best manner, which you have also adopted so fortunately and successfully. Mr. KEmble will be compelled, by the hoarse monotony of his voice, to rely upon the conventional stateliness that distinguished Garrick's predecessors, which is now carried to inimitable perfection by his accomplished sister.

You see that I have been much amused by this townmade incident, a first-appearance; but, believe me, I had much rather have been angling with you at Marlow, even though without a bite. I had rather laugh at your

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quips and cranks," than hook the largest perch in the Thames.