Note 46 — II
Reading edition
We have notable evidence in some lines of Waller of the sense which in his time scholars had of the rapidity with which the language was changing under their hands. Looking back at what the last hundred years had wrought of alteration in it, and very naturally assuming that the next hundred would effect as much, he checked with misgivings such as these his own hope of immortality:
“Who can hope his lines should long Last in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails. * * * * * “Poets that lasting marble seek, Must carve in Latin or in Greek: We write in sand; our language grows, And like the tide our work o’erflows”.
Such were his misgivings as to the future, assuming that the rate of change would continue what it had been. How little they have been fulfilled, every one knows. In actual fact two centuries, which have elapsed since he wrote, have hardly antiquated a word or a phrase in his poems. If we care very little for them now, that is to be explained by quite other causes—by the absence of all moral earnestness from them.