at able writer."
Murray simply intended to do good, and good that might descend to
posterity; and this just and generous intention goes far to excuse even his
errors. But Kirkham, speaking of posterity, scruples not to disavow and to
renounce all care for them, or for any thing which a coming age may think
of his character: saying,

"My pretensions reach not so far. To the _present generation only_, I
present my claims. Should it lend me a listening ear, and grant me its
suffrages, _the height of my ambition_ will be attained."--_Advertisement,
in his Elocution_, p. 346.

His whole design is, therefore, upon the very face of it, a paltry scheme
of present income. And, seeing his entered classes of boys and girls must
soon have done with him, he has doubtless acted wisely, and quite in
accordance with his own interest, to have made all possible haste in his
career.

33. Being no rival with him in this race, and having no personal quarrel
with him on any account, I would, for his sake, fain rejoice at his
success, and withhold my criticisms; because he is said to have been
liberal with his gains, and because he has not, like some others, copied me
instead of Murray. But the vindication of a greatly injured and perverted
science, constrains me to say, on this occasion, that pretensions less
consistent with themselves, or less sustained by taste and scholarship,
have seldom, if ever, been promulgated in the name of grammar. I have,
certainly, no intention to say more than is due to the uninformed and
misguided. For some who are ungenerous and prejudiced themselves, will not
be unwilling to think me so; and even this freedom, backed and guarded as
it is by facts and proofs irrefragable, may still be ingeniously ascribed
to an ill motive. To two thirds of the community, one grammar is just as
good as an other; because they neither know, nor wish to know, more than
may be learned from the very worst. An honest expression of sentiment
against abuses of a literary nature, is little the fashion of these times;
and the good people who purchase books upon the recommendations of others,
may be slow to believe there is no merit where so much has been attributed.
But facts may well be credited, in opposition to courteous flattery, when
there are the author's own words and works to vouch for them in the face of
day. Though a thousand of our great men may have helped a copier's weak
copyist to take "some practical advantage" of the wo