reader as private consumer. R. F. Jones encountered this 
attitude in the early sixteenth century in England:

     The refinement and adornement of the mother tongue 
     were themselves considered the goal of literature. In other 
     words, literature was considered instrumental to 
     language, not language to literature. Writers are more 
     frequently praised for what they have done for the 
     medium of their expression than for the intrinsic value of 
     their compositions. . . . (81)

Print had the effect of purifying Latin out of existence.

*     Many great scholars have toiled at the study of the 
printed English vernacular. So rich is the field that any kind of 
approach is arbitrarily selective. Writing on “Tyndale and the