Give me leave, courteous reader, to recommend to your perusal and practice this most excellent Rule, which is of such universal use and advantage to the learned world, that the most valuable discoveries, both as to antiquities and etymologies, are made by it; nay, farther, I will venture to say, that all words which are introduced to enrich and make a language copious, beautiful, and harmonious, arise chiefly from this Rule. Let any man but consult Bentley's Horace, and he will see what useful discoveries that very learned Gentleman has made by the help of this Rule; or indeed poor
the Lord's Ambassador with greater fire and loudness than could have been reasonably expected from him, it roused a clown of the congregation, who waked his next neighbour, with, 'Dost hear, Tom, dost hear?' — 'Ay,' says Tom, yawning, 'what does he say?' — 'Say?' answered the other; 'he says a plaguy lie, to be sure; he says as how he is my Lord's Humbassandor; but I think he is more rather the Lord's Receiver General, for he never comes but to take money.' Six hundred pounds a year is, modestly speaking, a competent fee for lulling the largest congregation in England asleep once in a twelvemonth. Such tithes are the price of napping; and such mighty odds there are between a curtain lecture and a cushion lecture." See the collection of Tracts by Gordon and Trenchard, vol. I, p. 130. — Mr. Gordon was a Scotchman, and came to London very young in order to seek his fortune. He was soon taken notice of by Mr. Trenchard, and, in conjunction with him, wrote Cato's Letters, and many political and other Pamphlets. On Mr. Trenchard's death, he married his widow; and some time after received a great addition to his fortune, by a very considerable bequest made to him by the will of a country physician, to whom he was only known by his writings. He was many years a writer in defence of the measures of sir Robert Walpole, afterward lord Orford. To this minister he dedicated his Translation of Tacitus, and was by him appointed one of the Commissioners of the Wine Licence Office, a place which he held at the time of his death, which happened July 28, 1750.
