A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712) [ Concepts ]
… To examine into the several circumstances by which the language of a country may be altered, would force me to enter into a wide field. I shall only observe, that the Latin , … (which is but little less than seven hundred years) as the Latin appears to have done in the like term. Whether our language or the French will decline as fast as the Roman did, is a question, that would perhaps admit more debate … be assigned; not to mention those invasions from the Goths and Vandals which are too obvious to insist on. The roman language arrived at great perfection, before it began to decay: and the French for these last fifty years hath been …
Corruption | Eloquence
Anthology