My Lord:  I had, last night, the honor of your Lordship’s letter of the 24th; and will set about doing the orders contained therein; and if so be that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail for to give your Lordship an account of it by next post. I have told the French Minister, as how that if that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship would think it all long of him; and that he must have neglected for to have wrote to his court about it.  I must beg leave to put your Lordship in mind as how, that I am now full three quarter in arrear; and if so be that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall cut A very bad figure; for this here place is very dear.  I shall be vastly beholden to your Lordship for that there mark of your favor; and so I rest or remain, Your, etc.

You will tell me, possibly, that this is a caricatura of an illiberal and inelegant style:  I will admit it; but assure you, at the same time, that a dispatch with less than half these faults would blow you up forever.  It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults, in speaking and writing; but you must do both correctly and elegantly.  In faults of this kind, it is not ‘ille optimus qui minimis arguetur’; but he is unpardonable who has any at all, because it is his own fault:  he need only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors.

It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may make himself an orator; and the very first principle of an orator is to speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and elegance.  A man will be forgiven even great errors in a foreign language; but in his own, even the least slips are justly laid hold of and ridiculed.

A person of the House of Commons, speaking two years ago upon naval affairs; asserted, that we had then the finest navy upon the face of the YEARTH.  This happy mixture of blunder and vulgarism, you may easily imagine, was matter of immediate ridicule; but I can assure you that it continues so still, and will be remembered as long as he lives and speaks.  Another, speaking in defense of a gentleman, upon whom a censure was moved, happily said that he thought that gentleman was more liable to be thanked and rewarded, than censured.  You know, I presume, that liable can never be used in a good sense.