e subjects of which authors profess to treat, to judge fairly and fully
of their works, and then to let the _reasons_ of their judgement be known.
For no one will question the fact, that a vast number of the school-books
now in use are either egregious plagiarisms or productions of no
comparative merit. And, what is still more surprising and monstrous,
presidents, governors, senators, and judges; professors, doctors,
clergymen, and lawyers; a host of titled connoisseurs; with incredible
facility lend their names, not only to works of inferior merit, but to the
vilest thefts, and the wildest absurdities, palmed off upon their own and
the public credulity, under pretence of improvement. The man who thus
prefixes his letter of recommendation to an ill-written book, publishes,
out of mere courtesy, a direct impeachment of his own scholarship or
integrity. Yet, how often have we seen the honours of a high office, or
even of a worthy name, prostituted to give a temporary or local currency to
a book which it would disgrace any man of letters to quote! With such
encouragement, nonsense wrestles for the seat of learning, exploded errors
are republished as novelties, original writers are plundered by dunces, and
men that understand nothing well, profess to teach all sciences!

41. All praise of excellence must needs be comparative, because the thing
itself is so. To excel in grammar, is but to know better than others
wherein grammatical excellence consists. Hence there is no fixed point of
perfection beyond which such learning may not be carried. The limit to
improvement is not so much in the nature of the subject, as in the powers
of the mind, and in the inducements to exert them upon a theme so humble
and so uninviting. Dr. Johnson suggests, in his masterly preface, "that a
whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole
life would not be sufficient." Who then will suppose, in the face of such
facts and confessions as have been exhibited, that either in the faulty
publications of Murray, or among the various modifications of them by other
hands we have any such work as deserves to be made a permanent standard of
instruction in English grammar? With great sacrifices, both of pleasure and
of interest, I have humbly endeavoured to supply this desideratum; and it
remains for other men to determine, and other times to know, what place
shall be given to these my labours, in the general story of this branch of