We gratefully accept of the books, and kind compliments you were pleased to transmit to us by Mr. Strahan, and had long since returned you our thanks, but for the many avocations which the great work you know us to be engaged in doth of necessity bring upon us; obliging us, or some, at least, of our society, to make, from time to time, an excursion to one or other of our two learned universities, and consulting them upon the best method of carrying on this work to the greatest advantage to the public.  This has been some considerable part of our employment for these twelve months past; and we flatter ourselves, that we have, with their assistance and approbation, made such considerable improvements on our original plan, as will scarcely fail of being acceptable to the learned world.  They will shortly appear in print, to convince the world that we have not been idle, though this sixth volume is like to appear somewhat later in the year than was usual with our former ones.  We shall take the liberty to transmit some copies of our new plan to you as soon as they are printed.  All we have left to wish with respect to your excellent countryman and his version is, that it may always meet with such powerful and impartial advocates, and that it may be as much esteemed by all candid judges, as it is by,

Learned Sir,
Your sincere wellwishers and humble servants,
The AUTHORS of the Universal History.

A Letter from the learned Mr. Robert Ainsworth, author of the Latin and
English Dictionary, to Mr. Lauder.

LEARNED AND WORTHY SIR,

These wait on you, to thank you for the honour you have done a person, equally unknown as undeserving, in your valuable present, which I did not receive till several weeks after it was sent:  and since I received it, my eyes have been so bad, and my hand so unstable, that I have been forced to defer my duty, as desirous to thank you with my own hand.  I congratulate to your nation the just honour ascribed to it by its neighbours and more distant countries, in having bred two such excellent poets as your Buchanan and Johnston, whom to name is to commend; but am concerned for their honour at home, who being committed together, seem to me both to suffer a diminution, whilst justice is done to neither.  But at the same time I highly approve your nation’s piety in bringing into your schools sacred instead of profane poesy, and heartily wish that ours, and all Christian governments, would follow your example herein.  If a mixture of utile dulci be the best composition in poetry, (which is too evident to need the judgment of the nicest critick in the art,) surely the utile so transcendently excels in the sacred hymns, that a Christian must deny his name that doth not acknowledge it:  and if the dulce seem not equally to excel, it must be from a vitiated taste of those who read them in the original, and, in others, at second-hand, from translations.  For the manner of writing in the east and west is widely distant, and which to a paraphrast must render his task exceeding difficult, as requiring a perfect knowledge in two languages, wherein the idioms and graces of speech, caused by the diversity of their religion, laws, customs, &c. are as remote as the inhabitants, wherein, notwithstanding, your poets have succeeded to admiration.