Well, and I find a lot of English language texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries far less stale and much more contemporary sounding than similar offe

Well, and I find a lot of English language texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries far less stale and much more contemporary sounding than similar offerings in my native Danish. Kierkegaard and to a lesser extent Hans Christian Andersen (sort of well known examples, I suppose) sound dated, Dickens doesn't really.