Of every learned and elegant people the language is divided into two parts: the one lax and cursory, used on slight occasions with extemporary negligence; the other rigorous and solemn, the effect of deliberate choice and grammatical accuracy.1 When books are multiplied and style is cultivated, the colloquial and written diction separate by degrees, till there is one language of the tongue, and another of the pen.

No language can be said to have been learned till both these parts are understood: but to reach the colloquial without the opportunities of familiar conversation, is very difficult. By reading great authors it cannot be obtained, as books speak but the language of books; and those, who in England intend to learn Italian, are seldom within the reach of Italian conversation.

This deficience I have, by a bold experiment, endeavoured to supply, in the following dialogues, in which I have undertaken to comprize not the gross and barbarous, but the careless and airy diction of casual talkers. Let no supercilious contemner of trifles look upon these productions with too much elevation, or indulge himself in merciless censures on the humble author, who knows already, with full conviction, the levity of his subjects, and the unimportance of his personages. His design is not to refine the language of the senate or the school: it is only to teach Italian; to teach those words and phrases, which are appropriated to trifles; but of which, as life is made of trifles, there is a frequent use. In other books, words are sought for the illustration of images and enforcement of reason; but in this, images and reason, such as they are, have been chosen merely as they afford an opportunity of words. I have only contrived a chain to hold those words together; and as it was to bear no great weight, it needed not the strength of that, by which the earth is suspended from the throne of Jupiter.2

These are, however, not the first pages that have been compiled only for the sake of teaching words; but, as I cannot boast of having invented the method that I have taken, I will not, by voluntary degradation, place myself below other nomenclators. Let my dialogues be compared for copiousness of language, variety of topics, and power of entertainment, with other collections of words and phrases; and of the place, which honest criticism may give me, I shall have no reason to be much ashamed.