1£ PREFERENCE FOR PROSE. 



Knowing your partiality to rhyme, I could 

 wish to send you my thoughts in verse ; but as 

 this would take me longer time, without answer- 

 ing your purpose better, I mvist beg you to 

 accept them in humble prose, — in my opinion 

 better suited to the subject. Didactic essays 

 should be as little clogged as possible ; they 

 should proceed regularly and clearly ; should 

 be easily written, and as easily understood, hav- 

 ing less to do with words than things. The 

 game of cramho is out of fashion, to the no 

 small prejudice of the rhyming tribe; and be- 

 fore I could find a rhyme to porringer, I should 

 hope to finish a great part of these Letters. I 

 shall therefore, without further delay, proceed 

 upon them ; this however I must desire to be 

 first understood between us, that when, to save 

 trouble to us both, I say a thing is, without 

 tacking a salvo to the tail of it, such as, in my 

 opinion, — to the best of my judgment, &c. &c. — 

 you shall not call my humility in question, as 

 the assertion is not meant to be mathematically 

 certain. When I have any better authority than 

 my own, such as Somervile for instance, (who, by 

 the by, is the only one, I believe, who has writ- 

 ten on this subject to be understood,) I shall take 

 the liberty of giving it you in his own words, to 

 save you the trouble of turning to him. 



