Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo
  Ne, superi, prohibete.

I know not whither I am running, in this extacy which is now upon me:  I am almost ready to re-assume the ancient rights of poetry; to point out, and prophecy the man, who was born for no less an undertaking, and whom posterity shall bless for its accomplishment.  Methinks, I am already taking fire from such a character, and making room for him, under a borrowed name, amongst the heroes of an epic poem.  Neither could mine, or some more happy genius, want encouragement under such a patron: 

  Pollio amat nostram, quamvis sit rustica, musam.

But these are considerations afar off, my lord:  the former part of the prophecy must be first accomplished; the quiet of the nation must be secured; and a mutual trust, betwixt prince and people, be renewed; and then this great and good man will have leisure for the ornaments of peace; and make our language as much indebted to his care, as the French is to the memory of their famous Richelieu[2].  You know, my lord, how low he laid the foundations of so great a work; that he began it with a grammar and a dictionary; without which all those remarks and observations, which have since been made, had been performed to as little purpose, as it would be to consider the furniture of the rooms, before the contrivance of the house.  Propriety must first be stated, ere any measures of elegance can be taken.  Neither is one Vaugelas sufficient for such a work[3].  It was the employment of the whole academy for many years; for the perfect knowledge of a tongue was never attained by any single person.  The court, the college, and the town, must be joined in it.  And as our English is a composition of the dead and living tongues, there is required a perfect knowledge, not only of the Greek and Latin, but of the old German, the French, and the Italian; and, to help all these, a conversation with those authors of our own, who have written with the fewest faults in prose and verse.  But how barbarously we yet write and speak, your lordship knows, and I am sufficiently sensible in my own English.  For I am often put to a stand, in considering whether what I write be the idiom of the tongue, or false grammar, and nonsense couched beneath that specious name of Anglicism; and have no other way to clear my doubts, but by translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying what sense the words will bear in a more stable language.  I am desirous, if it were possible, that we might all write with the same certainty of words, and purity of phrase, to which the Italians first arrived, and after them the French; at least that we might advance so far, as our tongue is capable of such a standard.  It would mortify an Englishman to consider, that from the time of Boccace and of Petrarch, the Italian has varied very little; and that the English of Chaucer, their contemporary, is not to be understood without the help of an old