I would beseech my Readers to observe, the Candour and Ingenuity of
these Gentlemen: They tell us, _We might give you various Instances
more of the essential difference between the old _Saxon_ and modern
_English_ Tongue_; and yet have plainly made it appear, that they know
little or nothing of the old _Saxon_. So that it will be hard to say
how they come to know of any such _essential difference, as _MUST_
satisfy any reasonabie Man_; and much more that this _essential
difference_ is so _great, that the _Saxon_ can be no Rule to us,
and that to understand ours, there is no need of knowing the _Saxon_.
_What they say, _that it cannot be a Rule to them_, is true; for
nothing can be a Rule of Direction to any Man, the use whereof he does
not understand; but if to understand the Original and Etymology of the
Words of any Language, be needful towards knowing the Propriety of any
Language, a thing which I have never heard hath yet been denied; then
do these Gentlemen stand self-condemned, there being no less than
four Words, in the Scheme of Declensions they have borrowed from
Dr. _Hickes_, now in use, which are of pure _Saxon_ Original, and
consequently _essential to the modern English_. I need not tell any
English Reader at this Day the meaning of _Smith_, _Word_, _Son_, and
_Good_; but if I tell them that these are Saxon Words, I believe they
will hardly deny them to be _essential to the modern English_, or that
they will conclude that the difference between the old _English_ and
the modern is so great, or the distance of Relation between them so
remote, as that the former deserves not to be remember'd: except by
such Upstarts who having no Title to a laudable Pedigree, are backward
in all due Respect and Veneration towards a noble Ancestry.

Their great Condescension to Dr. _Hickes_ in allowing him to have been
a very curious Inquirer into those _obsolete Tongues, now out of use,
and containing nothing valuable in them_, is a Compliment for which I