Ayle, a certain languor and diffuse prolixity that is extremely difagreeable to himself; and doubts not but many of his readers will find it much more difgufting to them; but he finds, at the fame time, that it requires different talents to perceive a defect, and to be able to correct it properly. However, as he has not wilfully offended, he hopes for the indulgence of the candid reader in this. refpect. He is, nevertheless, fenfible that he has not rejected with fuch fcrupulous nicety all provincial words as fome may wish he had done; fome of which he has even knowingly inferted, because he was not fo well acquainted with the language as to have been able to have conveyed his meaning in fuch a determinate or eafy manner without them. This This he was likewife in fome measure induced to do, from having frequently observed, that such inexperienced fcriblers as himself, by too ftudiously avoiding to employ every word that they could not meet with in their dictionaries, have given to their writings an air of pedantry and affectation that is extremely disagreeable; and, which is worse, by being obliged to employ other words in their ftead, the precife meaning of which they have not been able exactly to learn, they have helped to debase our language, by introducing a vague and indeterminate application of phrases, which he deems an evil of far greater confequence than that they endeavoured to fhun. On these accounts he has always employed fuch words as he found conveyed his idea in the easiest manner, without without being anxioufly folicitous to examine whether they were much in fashion or not: Always taking care, however, to mark at the bottom of the page, the precise meaning of every uncommon word that he was conscious of employing. Some readers may perhaps be disgusted at this, while others may poffibly think, that, as every other art has fome particular terms appropriated to itfelf, which could not be rejected without occafioning great circumlocution or inaccuracy when treating of it, so must agriculture have fome peculiar to it, which ought not to be expunged from the language; and that, therefore, they would find fault with no word that conveyed a diftinct idea to the mind, if the meaning of it was duly explained, and if it could not be exactly supplied by any other ftandard-word of the language. ESSAY |