five different treatises, which for their mutual credit should never be compared:  it is impossible to place any firm reliance upon the authority of a man who contradicts himself so much.  Those who imagine that the last opinions of so learned a man must needs be right, will do well to wait, and see what will be his last:  they cannot otherwise know to what his instructions will finally lead:  Experience has already taught him the folly of many of his pretended improvements, and it is probable his last opinions of English grammar will be most conformable to that just authority with which he has ever been tampering.  I do not say that he has not exhibited ingenuity as well as learning, or that he is always wrong when he contradicts a majority of the English grammarians; but I may venture to say, he was wrong when he undertook to disturb the common scheme of the parts of speech, as well as when he resolved to spell all words exactly as they are pronounced.

14.  It is not commonly known with how rash a hand this celebrated author has sometimes touched the most settled usages of our language.  In 1790, which was seven years after the appearance of his first grammar, he published an octavo volume of more than four hundred pages, consisting of Essays, moral, historical, political, and literary, which might have done him credit, had he not spoiled his book by a grammatical whim about the reformation of orthography.  Not perceiving that English literature, multiplied as it had been within two or three centuries, had acquired a stability in some degree corresponding to its growth, he foolishly imagined it was still as susceptible of change and improvement as in the days of its infancy.  Let the reader pardon the length of this digression, if for the sake of any future schemer who may chance to adopt a similar conceit, I cite from the preface to this volume a specimen of the author’s practice and reasoning.  The ingenious attorney had the good sense quickly to abandon this project, and content himself with less glaring innovations; else he had never stood as he now does, in the estimation of the public.  But there is the more need to record the example, because in one of the southern states the experiment has recently been tried again.  A still abler member of the same profession, has renewed it but lately; and it is said there are yet remaining some converts to this notion of improvement.  I copy literally, leaving all my readers and his to guess for themselves why he spelled “writers” with a w and “riting” without.

15.  “During the course of ten or twelv yeers, I hav been laboring to correct popular errors, and to assist my yung brethren in the road to truth and virtue; my publications for theze purposes hav been numerous; much time haz been spent, which I do not regret, and much censure incurred, which my hart tells me I do not dezerv.” * * * “The reeder wil observ that the orthography of the volum iz not uniform.  The reezon iz, that many of the