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xviii
The Preface.
will take upon them to reform it, who are the best Writer in it, we may partly conceive from the new Proposal for ascertaining the British Tongue, and fixing the Standard of it. And whenever a Work of that Public Spirit shall be undertaken, and supported by the greatest and ablest Hands in the Kingdom, I will promise myself to see our Language rival the Strength and Eloquence of the Roman Diction.
If I had seen my Lord Lansdowne's Poems in one View, I might have formed a juster Idea of the Greatness of his Genius, and the Delicacy of his Wit. For when I wrote these Sheets, they lay dispersed up and down in the
Miscel-
