Ossian Collection > Essay on the authenticity of the poems of Ossian

98 ON THE AUTHENTICITY
the terms, but also the genius, the phrases,
and the idiom, of the Greek and Latin.
From this circumstance, it has happened,
that none of these modern languages, or
even the Latin itself, has any peculiarly cha-
racteristic idiom. The Latin is no otherwise
distinguished from the Greek, or the modern
languages of Europe, which are derived from
the Latin, from one another, than by the
words which constitute these lano-uao-es, to-
gether with the peculiar inflections of these
words, and the particles by which they are
connected. Hence, when we speak, or write,
in English, for example, we adopt promis-
cuously the idioms, the turns of expression,
and the construction of phrases, which may
have struck our fancies, or impressed our
memories, in the course of our reading, in all
the other languages with which we are ac-
quainted.
The modern languages of Europe, it is
true, are not altogether destitute of some