 | Robert Anderson - 696 pages
...improve his native language, by the formation of a more correct and dignified style. " I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence. Where common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarised... | |
 | Ann Messenger - 1986 - 208 pages
...its precise discriminations, antitheses, and balances, into the more solid medium of English prose. "Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance...construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence." Nadezhda Mandelstam preserved the great poems of her husband in her head; for a long time her memory... | |
 | Christine Sick - 1993 - 342 pages
...betrachteten, steht Dr. Samuel Johnson, der sich in bezug auf sein Wörterbuch folgendes Ziel gesteckt hatte: to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...from colloquial barbarisms, licentious Idioms, and irregulär combinations. (Smith 1925:264) 7 ZB Ball (1958), Clark (1958),Collins (1960), Dixon (1891),... | |
 | Greg Clingham - 1997 - 290 pages
...authority of Johnsonian English is split apart. Yet it is striking to see how far, having labored in public "to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations" (Rambler 108, v, 318-19), the Johnson of the letters takes an exuberant holiday from linguistic rectitude,... | |
 | Lance St. John Butler - 1999 - 230 pages
...it could become as fit a vehicle for high thoughts as Latin. Johnson claimed that he had 'laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...barbarisms, licentious idioms and irregular combinations' (Rambler, 14 March 1752). Swift, developing Aristophanes' pronouncement that 'High thoughts must have... | |
 | David Crystal, Hilary Crystal - 2000 - 604 pages
...Jespersen, 1946, 'Standards of Correctness', in Mankind, Nation and Individual, Ch. 5 8:39 I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Samuel Johnson, 14 March 1752, The Rambler, no. 208 8:4O Every language has its anomalies, which, though... | |
 | John T. Lynch - 2003 - 244 pages
...concern with linguistic purity; we can hear it clearly in Johnson's declaration that he has "laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and...colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations.'"7 As England began searching for its own canon of classics, it sought to ground its... | |
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I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony... 
