version is, that it may always meet with such
powerful and impartial advocates, and that it may be as much esteemed by
all candid judges, as it is by,

Learned Sir,
Your sincere wellwishers and humble servants,
The AUTHORS of the Universal History.

A Letter from the learned Mr. Robert Ainsworth, author of the Latin and
English Dictionary, to Mr. Lauder.

LEARNED AND WORTHY SIR,

These wait on you, to thank you for the honour you have done a person,
equally unknown as undeserving, in your valuable present, which I did
not receive till several weeks after it was sent: and since I received
it, my eyes have been so bad, and my hand so unstable, that I have been
forced to defer my duty, as desirous to thank you with my own hand. I
congratulate to your nation the just honour ascribed to it by its
neighbours and more distant countries, in having bred two such excellent
poets as your Buchanan and Johnston, whom to name is to commend; but am
concerned for their honour at home, who being committed together, seem
to me both to suffer a diminution, whilst justice is done to neither.
But at the same time I highly approve your nation's piety in bringing
into your schools sacred instead of profane poesy, and heartily wish
that ours, and all Christian governments, would follow your example
herein. If a mixture of _utile dulci_ be the best composition in poetry,
(which is too evident to need the judgment of the nicest critick in the
art,) surely the _utile_ so transcendently excels in the sacred hymns,
that a Christian must deny his name that doth not acknowledge it: and if
the _dulce_ seem not equally to excel, it must be from a vitiated taste
of those who read them in the original, and, in others, at second-hand,
from translations. For the manner of writing in the east and west is
widely distant, and which to a paraphrast must render his task exceeding
difficult, as requiring a perfect knowledge in two languages, wherein
the idioms and graces of speech, caused by the diversity of their
religion, laws, customs, &c. are as remote as the inhabitants, wherein,
notwithstanding, your poets have succeeded to admiration.

Your main contest seems to me, when stript of persons, whether the easy
or sublime in poesy be preferable; if so,

Non opis est nostrae tantam componere litem:

nor think I it in your case material to be decided. Both these have
their particular excellencies and graces, and youth ought to be taught
wherein (wh