Excerpt from Modern English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects In recommending for imitation the example' of the French, so far as relates to grammatical propriety, I do not wish to be understood as recommending that we should sacrifice any of the advantages of our own mother-tongue to the attainment of that object. French is one of the poorest of modern languages; but its poverty does not arise from its method and propriety. This indeed is so little the case, that, if it were written with no greater atten tion to grammar than English commonly is, it would soon be reduced to an intolerable jargon. English, on the other hand, is one of the richest of living languages; but its copiousness and vigour would suffer no diminution by being combined with a higher degree of method and propriety. That these qualities are not unat tainable is sufficiently shown by the examples of such writers as Hazlitt, Southey, and Landor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.