CHAPTER VII.
CHANGES AND SPECIMENS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
"Quot enim verba, et nonnunquam in deterius, hoc, quo vivimus, saeculo, partim aliqa, partim nulla necessitate cogente, mutata sunt ?"--ROB.
AINSWORTH: _Lat.Dict., 4to_; Praef., p.

xi.
1.

In the use of language, every one chooses his words from that common stock which he has learned, and applies them in practice according to his own habits and notions.

If the style of different writers of the same age is various, much greater is the variety which appears in the productions of different ages.

Hence the date of a book may often be very plausibly conjectured from the peculiarities of its style.