"'
[Page 184: The style of the PLAN. A.D. 1747.]
It is worthy of observation, that the _Plan_ has not only the
substantial merit of comprehension, perspicuity, and precision, but that
the language of it is unexceptionably excellent; it being altogether
free from that inflation of style, and those uncommon but apt and
energetick words[535], which in some of his writings have been censured,
with more petulance than justice; and never was there a more dignified
strain of compliment than that in which he courts the attention of one
who, he had been persuaded to believe, would be a respectable patron.
'With regard to questions of purity or propriety, (says he) I was once
in doubt whether I should not attribute to myself too much in attempting
to decide them, and whether my province was to extend beyond the
proposition of the question, and the display of the suffrages on each
side; but I have been since determined by your Lordship's opinion, to
interpose my own judgement, and shall therefore endeavour to support
what appears to me most consonant to grammar and reason. Ausonius
thought that modesty forbade him to plead inability for a task to which
Caesar had judged him equal:
Cur me pesse negem posse quod ille putat[536]?
'And I may hope, my Lord, that since you, whose authority in our
language is so generally acknowledged, have commissioned me to declare
my own opinion, I shall be considered as exercising a kind of vicarious
jurisdiction; and that the power which might have been denied to my own
claim, will be readily allowed me as the delegate of your Lordship.
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