Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Sketch of the Comparative Beauties of the French and Spanish Languages
Efforts of this kind must fail, and deservedly so. They must fail because, in order that they should succeed, we must be persuaded to sweep away not only some of our sweetest and dearest associations, such as those attaching to the words of childhood and youth, but all the glories of literature, the diversities of style, the power and pathos, the wit and humour which every tongue, as at present constituted, can convey to the understanding. The great charm of language is its diversity. We admire one idiom for its softness, another for its strength we praise one tongue for its manly grace, another for its copiousness we show a preference for one language on account of its simplicity; for another because of its elegance; but all these motives of choice and admiration would be destroyed, could the world, dreadful thought! Be induced to adopt a universal idiom.
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