sure no other Nation will desire to borrow them.  Some words are hitherto but fairly split, and therefore only in their way to perfection, as incog and plenipo:  But in a short time it is to be hoped they will be further docked to inc and plen.  This reflection has made me of late years very impatient for a peace, which I believe would save the lives of many brave words, as well as men.  The war has introduced abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns; Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communication, circumvallation, battalions, as numerous as they are, if they attack us too frequently in our coffeehouses, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear.

“The third refinement observable in the letter I send you, consists in the choice of certain words invented by some pretty fellows; such as banter, bamboozle, country put, and kidney, as it is there applied; some of which are now struggling for the vogue, and others are in possession of it.  I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of mobb and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.

“In the last place, you are to take notice of certain choice phrases scattered through the letter; some of them tolerable enough, till they were worn to rags by servile imitators.  You might easily find them, though they were not in a different print, and therefore I need not disturb them.

“These are the false refinements in our style which you ought to correct:  First, by argument and fair means; but if those fail, I think you are to make use of your authority as Censor, and by an annual index expurgatorius expunge all words and phrases that are offensive to good sense, and condemn those barbarous mutilations of vowels and syllables.  In this last point the usual pretence is, that they spell as they speak; a noble standard for language! to depend upon the caprice of every coxcomb, who, because words are the clothing of our thoughts, cuts them out, and shapes them as he pleases, and changes them oftener than his dress.  I believe, all reasonable people would be content that such refiners were more sparing in their words, and liberal in their syllables:  And upon this head I should be glad you would bestow some advice upon several young readers in our churches, who coming up from the University, full fraught with admiration of our Town politeness, will needs correct the style of their Prayer-Books.  In reading the absolution, they are very careful to say “Pardons and absolves;" and in the Prayer for the Royal Family, it must be, endue’um, enrich’um, prosper’um, and bring’um.[5] Then in their sermons they use all the modern terms of art, sham, banter, mob, bubble, bully, cutting shuffling, and palming, all which, and many more of the like stamp, as I have heard them often in the pulpit from such young sophisters, so I have read them in some of those sermons that have made most noise of late.  The design, it seems, is to avoid the dreadful imputation of pedantry, to shew us, that they know the Town, understand men and manners, and have not been poring upon old unfashionable books in the University.