ome bricks for him at his
country-house, wrote to the brewer that he could not go forward unless
he had two or three loads _of spanish_, and that otherwise his bricks
would cost him six or seven chaldrons of coals extraordinary, and the
bricks would not be so good and hard neither by a great deal, when they
were burnt.

The brewer sends him an answer, that he should go on as well as he could
for three or four days, and then the _spanish_ should be sent him:
accordingly, the following week, the brewer sends him down two carts
loaded with about twelve hogsheads or casks of molasses, which frighted
the brickmaker almost out of his senses. The case was this:-The brewers
formerly mixed molasses with their ale to sweeten it, and abate the
quantity of malt, molasses, being, at that time, much cheaper in
proportion, and this they called _spanish_, not being willing that
people should know it. Again, the brickmakers all about London, do mix
sea-coal ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with the clay of which
they make bricks, and by that shift save eight chaldrons of coals out of
eleven, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with, and
these ashes they call _spanish_.

Thus the received terms of art, in every particular business, are to be
observed, of which I shall speak to you in its turn: I name them here to
intimate, that when I am speaking of plain writing in matters of
business, it must be understood with an allowance for all these
things--and a tradesman must be not only allowed to use them in his
style, but cannot write properly without them--it is a particular
excellence in a tradesman to be able to know all the terms of art in
every separate business, so as to be able to speak or write to any
particular handicraft or manufacturer in his own dialect, and it is as
necessary as it is for a seaman to understand the names of all the
several things belonging to a ship. This, therefore, is not to be
understood when I say, that a tradesman should write plain and explicit,
for these things belong to, and are part of, the language of trade.

But even these terms of art, or customary expressions, are not to be
used with affectation, and with a needless repetition, where they are
not called for.

Nor should a tradesman write those out-of-the-way words, though it is in
the way of the business he writes about, to any other person, who he
knows, or has reason to believe, does not understand them--I say, he
ought