We have observed several pages which do
not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has
said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for
vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the
poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect--the dialect of
plain working men--was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our
literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old
unpolluted English language--no book which shows so well how rich that
language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved
by all that it has borrowed.
Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan
in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we
suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of
Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely
superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times;
and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in
England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only
two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost,
the other the Pilgrim's Progress.
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