In those days Old Sarum will again be a town and have houses in it.  There will be fights in the air with wind-guns and bows and arrows; and there will be prodigious increase of land for tillage, especially in France, by breaking up all public roads as useless.  But enough of my fooleries; for which I am sorry you must pay double postage.

HIS LETTERS ON LITERATURE—­DISADVANTAGE OF MODERN WRITERS—­COMPARISON OF LADY MARY WORTLEY WITH MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

TO JOHN PINKERTON, ESQ.

June 22, 1785.

Since I received your book,[1] Sir, I scarce ceased from reading till I had finished it; so admirable I found it, and so full of good sense, brightly delivered.  Nay, I am pleased with myself, too, for having formed the same opinions with you on several points, in which we do not agree with the generality of men.  On some topics, I confess frankly, I do not concur with you:  considering how many you have touched, it would be wonderful if we agreed on all, or I should not be sincere if I said I did.  There are others on which I have formed no opinion; for I should give myself an impertinent air, with no truth, if I pretended to have any knowledge of many subjects, of which, young as you are, you seem to have made yourself master.  Indeed, I have gone deeply into nothing, and therefore shall not discuss those heads on which we differ most; as probably I should not defend my own opinions well.  There is but one part of your work to which I will venture any objection, though you have considered it much, and I little, very little indeed, with regard to your proposal, which to me is but two days old:  I mean your plan for the improvement of our language, which I allow has some defects, and which wants correction in several particulars.  The specific amendment which you propose, and to which I object, is the addition of a’s and o’s to our terminations.  To change s for a in the plural number of our substantives and adjectives, would be so violent an alteration, that I believe neither the power of Power nor the power of Genius would be able to effect it.  In most cases I am convinced that very strong innovations are more likely to make impression than small and almost imperceptible differences, as in religion, medicine, politics, &c.; but I do not think that language can be treated in the same manner, especially in a refined age.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Pinkerton was a Scotch lawyer, who published a volume entitled “Letters on Literature” under the name of Heron; which, however, he afterwards suppressed, as full of ill-considered ideas, which was not strange, as he was only twenty-five.]