ABSTRACT
There is no justification for an assertion like the following: “Such sentences as ‘I don’t know what is worse than for such wicked strumpets to lay their sins at honcst men’s doors’ (Fielding) would be sought in vain before the eighteenth century, though the way was paved for them in Shakespearian sentences like ‘For us to levy power Proportionate to th’enemy is all impossible’”. Jespersen, Growth and Str., §211.
