When a nation first emerges from barbarism, two or three masterly writers may operate wonders; and the fewer the number of writers, as the number is small at such a period, the more absolute is their authority.  But when a country has been polishing itself for two or three centuries, and when, consequently, authors are innumerable, the most super-eminent genius (or whoever is esteemed so, though without foundation) possesses very limited empire, and is far from meeting implicit obedience.  Every petty writer will contest very novel institutions:  every inch of change in any language will be disputed; and the language will remain as it was, longer than the tribunal which should dictate very heterogeneous alterations.  With regard to adding a or o to final consonants, consider, Sir, should the usage be adopted, what havoc it would make!  All our poetry would be defective in metre, or would become at once as obsolete as Chaucer; and could we promise ourselves, that, though we should acquire better harmony and more rhymes, we should have a new crop of poets, to replace Milton, Dryden, Gray, and, I am sorry you will not allow me to add, Pope!  You might enjoin our prose to be reformed, as you have done by the “Spectator” in your thirty-fourth Letter; but try Dryden’s “Ode” by your new institution.

I beg your pardon for these trivial observations:  I assure you I could write a letter ten times as long, if I were to specify all I like in your work.  I more than like most of it; and I am charmed with your glorious love of liberty, and your other humane and noble sentiments.  Your book I shall with great pleasure send to Mr. Colman[1]:  may I tell him, without naming you, that it is written by the author of the comedy I offered to him?  He must be struck with your very handsome and generous conduct in printing your encomiums on him, after his rejecting your piece.  It is as great as uncommon, and gives me as good an opinion of your heart, Sir, as your book does of your great sense.  Both assure me that you will not take ill the liberty I have used in expressing my doubts on your plan for amending our language, or for any I may use in dissenting from a few other sentiments in your work; as I shall in what I think your too low opinion of some of the French writers, of your preferring Lady Mary Wortley to Madame de Sevigne, and of your esteeming Mr. Hume a man of deeper and more solid understanding than Mr. Gray.  In the two last articles it is impossible to think more differently than we do.[2] In Lady Mary’s “Letters,” which I never could read but once, I discovered no merit of any sort; yet I have seen others by her (unpublished) that have a good deal of wit; and for Mr. Hume, give me leave to say that I think your opinion, “that he might have ruled a state,” ought to be qualified a little; as in the very next page you say, his “History” is “a mere apology for prerogative,” and a very weak one.  If he could have ruled a state,