But it may be said that all our exceptions, due to most reasonable prerogative, may well be reduced to a general form, which I do not at all deny, though I see some difficulty in altering what our custom has thus grasped, and it were almost too much to require any wise and learned man so to arrest exceptions, particularly where no standard can be fixed. He who wishes this seems to conceive of such a thing, but even if it were attempted, the stream of custom would break out again immediately in some other way, and cause an even greater gap, for no banks can keep it in so narrowly but those that are content to be sometimes overflowed, and no strength can withstand such a current but those stays which in the fury of water will bend like a bulrush.
If any pen, either through ignorance or pretension, offend against reason, and intrude upon prerogative, that is no good quill, and it will not be upheld by me; nor is that current to be called _custom_ which holds by usurpation; nor is that cause to be accounted _reason_ which has any other beginning than genuine knowledge, or any other ending than the nature of the thing will seem to admit. Certainly, when I consider the matter deeply--and my thoughts on it have not been slight or superficial--I cannot see why, when the imperfections are removed that always accompany perfection, and can easily be removed, to the satisfaction of the wise who are not blinded with their own habits, the tongue as well as the pen may not quite well have its prerogative, since our custom has become so well-ordered that it may be ruled without chopping or changing a single letter, or otherwise begging more aid from foreign invention than I have already sufficiently set down.
These are my suggestions for the regulation of our tongue and the fixing of a standard in its writing. If I have in any way hit the mark, I shall be warranted by the right, though it may not seem so to some, and in this I must be comforted, even if I cannot content all.
_To my gentle readers and fellow-countrymen, wherein many things are handled concerning learning in general, and the nature of the English and foreign tongues, besides some particular remarks about the writing of books in English._