Note 4 — DISSERTATION I.
Reading edition
The progress of corruption in language is described with precision, and philosophical reasons assigned with great judgement, by that celebrated French writer, Condillac, in his Origin of Human Knowlege, Part 2.
"It is nearly the same here as in physics, where motion, the source of life, becomes the principle of destruction. When a language abounds with original writers in every kind, the more a person is endowed with abilities, the more difficult he thinks it will be to surpass them. A mere equality would not satisfy his ambition; like them he wants the pre-eminence. He therefore tries a new road. But as every stile analogous to the character of the language and to his own, has been already used by preceding writers, he has nothing left but to deviate from analogy. Thus in order to be an original, he is obliged to contribute to the ruin of a language, which, a century sooner, he would have helped to improve.
"Tho such writers may be criticized, their superior abilities must still command success. The ease there is in copying their defects, soon persuades men of indifferent capacities, that they shall acquire the same degree of reputation. Then begins the reign of strained and subtle conceits, of affected antitheses, of specious paradoxes, of frivolous and far-fetched expressions, of new-fangled words, and in short, of the jargon of persons, whose understandings have been debauched by bad metaphysics. The public applauds; foolish and ridiculous writings, the beings of a day, are surprisingly multiplied; a vicious taste infects the arts and sciences, which is followed by a visible decrease of men of abilities."
One would think that Condillac had designed here to give a description of the present taste of the English writers, and a state of their literature.
The foregoing sentiments seem to have been borrowed from Velleius Paterculus. Hist. Rom. L. 1. Cap. 17.
The same passage is copied by Sig. Carlo Denina, Professor of Eloquence and Belles Lettres in the University of Turin, in his "Revolutions of Literature," page 47; and if I mistake not, the sentiments are adopted by Lord Kaims, in his Sketches of the History of Man.
Similar reasons may be assigned for the prevalence of an affected and vitious pronunciation.