Thus you see in grosse and generall, the whole designe exprest in as few words as the brevity of the subject would permitt me; And However rationall it may be in it selfe yet it wants not its adversaryes; Some with a great deal of heat, plead that if this method acquiring the Languages, hath any thing in it that is Curious by way of speculation, it is however uselesse enough in relation to its practice, since Custome and Conversation only (say they) is the great Master of Language, and that we must intirely relye upon memory and the assiduity of constant and resolv’d industry.

Others confesse that it hath in earnest its advantages, but doubt much of the possibility of its execution, hardly beleeving that the Languages have in good truth such an accord and resemblance as I suppose they have, or that there is a possibility for the witt of man now to discover it.

By way of reply to the first, I confesse that one thing I wonder at, is that persons so knowing and ingenuous should so highly declare themselves against the judgement in favour of the memory, I have a very great regard to their qualitie and worth, but cannot submitt my selfe to their opinion, The only way (as I imagine) to Learn the Languages, and that in what number we please, to do it with ease without taediousnesse, confusion, trouble and losse of time, and without the common hazard, of forgetting them with as much ease as we acquire them with difficulty, and to be master of them all in such a manner, as shall rellish nothing that is mean or not becomeing a Rationall man, is in one word, to attribute more to the judging and reflecting faculty then to the memory; for if the memory depend and relye only upon the reflexions of the judgement, we have no reason to expect much from its single Conduct, for however plausible it may appear, it will always be slow, limited, confus’d, and faithlesse; its action is not vigorous enough to take us off from those fatigues that distast our most likely enterprizes, and its efforts to weak and Languishing in a little time to execute a designe of so large a compasse as this; being so determin’d as it is, it is impossible it should reduce so great a number of Languages so distanc’t in appearance one from another; If at any time it seem extraordinary in an action, its Species are soon displac’t by their multitude, and when they are rang’d in the best order imaginable, they continue not so long without being either effact by those that supervene or disappearing of themselves, haveing nothing that can fixe and retaine them, So that the Languages being of so vast an extent, there is no reason that the memory alone should be confided to for their acquest, unlesse we could be content to sacrifice an infinite space of time to the Sole knowledge of words, which being so valuable as it ought to be to us, may be imployd with more discretion and successe, either towards the cognizance of things or the management of businesse.