OBS. 4.—­The imperfection of ancient writing, especially in regard to division and punctuation, has left the syntactical relation of words, and also the sense of passages, in no few instances, uncertain; and has consequently made, where the text has been thought worthy of it, an abundance of difficult work for translators, critics, and commentators.  Rules of grammar, now made and observed, as they ought to be, may free the compositions of this, or a future age, from similar embarrassments; and it is both just and useful, to test our authors by them, criticising or correcting their known blunders according to the present rules of accurate writing.  But the readers and expounders of what has come to us from remote time, can be rightly guided only by such principles and facts as have the stamp of creditable antiquity.  Hence there are, undoubtedly, in books, some errors and defects which have outlived the time in which, and the authority b which, they might have been corrected.  As we have no right to make a man say that which he himself never said or intended to say, so we have in fact none to fix a positive meaning upon his language, without knowing for a certainty what he meant by it.  Reason, or good sense, which, as I have suggested, is the foundation of grammar and of all good writing, is indeed a perpetual as well as a universal principle; but, since the exercises of our reason must, from the very nature of the faculty, be limited to what we know and understand, we are not competent to the positive correction, or to the sure translation, of what is obscure and disputable in the standard books of antiquity.

OBS. 5.—­Let me cite an example:  “For all this I considered in my heart, even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God:  no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.  All things come alike to all.”—­ Ecclesiastes, ix, 1.  Here is, doubtless, one error which any English scholar may point out or correct.  The pronoun “them” should be him, because its intended antecedent appears to be “man,” and not “the righteous and the wise,” going before.  But are there not other faults in the version?  The common French Bible, in this place, has the following import:  “Surely I have applied my heart to all that, and to unfold all this; to wit, that the righteous and the wise, and their actions, are in the hand of God and love and hatred; and that men know nothing of all that which is before them.  All happens equally to all.”  The Latin Vulgate gives this sense:  “All these things have I considered in my heart, that I might understand them accurately:  the righteous and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; and yet man doth not know, whether by love or by hatred lie may be worthy:  but all things in the future are kept uncertain, so that all may happen