Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never
mentioned as masters of elegance or models of stile; but words
must be sought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent
for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many
quotations serve no other purpose, than that of proving the bare
existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness
than those which are to teach their structures and relations.

My purpose was to admit no testimony of living authours, that I
might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries
might have reason to complain; nor have I departed from this
resolution, but when some performance of uncommon excellence excited
my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with
an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness
of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name.

So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern
decorations, that I have studiously endeavoured to collect examples
and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works
I regard as the wells of English undefiled, as the pure sources of
genuine diction. Our language, for almost a century, has, by the
concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original
Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and
phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recal it,
by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of stile, admitting
among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real
deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our
tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idioms.