I beg pardon for entertaining the reader with so ill a subject:  but before I quit that argument, which was the cause of this digression; I cannot but take notice how I am corrected for my quotation of SENECA, in my defence of Plays in Verse.

My words were these [p. 570]:  “Our language is noble, full, and significant; and I know not why he, who is master of it, may not clothe ordinary things in it, as decently as the Latin; if he use the same diligence in his choice of words.”

One would think, “Unlock the door,” was a thing as vulgar as could be spoken:  yet SENECA could make it sound high and lofty in his Latin.

    Reserate clusos regii postes Laris.

But he says of me, That being filled with the precedents of the Ancients who Writ their Plays in Verse, I commend the thing; declaring our language to be full, noble, and significant, and charging all the defects upon the ill placing of words; which I prove by quoting SENECA’s loftily expressing such an ordinary thing as shutting the door.

Here he manifestly mistakes.  For I spoke not of the Placing, but the Choice of words:  for which I quoted that aphorism of JULIUS CAESAR, Delectus verborum est origo eloquentiae.  But delectus verborum is no more Latin for the “Placing of words;” than Reserate is Latin for “Shut the door!” as he interprets it; which I, ignorantly, construed “Unlock or open it!”

He supposes I was highly affected with the Sound of these words; and I suppose I may more justly imagine it of him:  for if he had not been extremely satisfied with the Sound, he would have minded the Sense a little better.

But these are, now, to be no faults.  For, ten days after his book was published, and that his mistakes are grown so famous that they are come back to him, he sends his Errata to be printed, and annexed to his Play; and desires that instead of Shutting, you should read Opening, which, it seems, was the printer’s fault.  I wonder at his modesty! that he did not rather say it was SENECA’s or mine:  and that in some authors, Reserate was to Shut as well as to Open, as the word Barach, say the learned, is [in Hebrew] both to Bless and Curse.

Well, since it was the printer[’s fault]; he was a naughty man, to commit the same mistake twice in six lines.

I warrant you! Delectus verborum for Placing of words, was his mistake too; though the author forgot to tell him of it.  If it were my book, I assure you it should [be].  For those rascals ought to be the proxies of every Gentleman-Author; and to be chastised for him, when he is not pleased to own an error.