Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.28.1

42.28.1

Let us have done then with subscriptions, as well as with errors of syntax and grammar. The more so with the latter, as no one of my readers, on stumbling upon an error of the kind, or upon a solecism, has so much as once thought proper to look at the end of the book, and to try whether it was a fault of the printer's or not? Let us draw a veil upon this singular and very novel doubt, whether a man of some knowledge and some sense, who has in times of yore wrote very esteemed French, which he had practised only for twelve years, is so very likely to ignore the English, which he is practising these thirty. But I am likewise reproached for having written in bad language, and for having dared to write an history, notwithstanding the physical impossibility under which a foreigner labours, and must labour, on that head; and all this is said by people that might have reflected on the many foreigners, who are become authors in foreign languages. Bolingbroke is an author, and an elegant one in French; Voltaire wrote Sonnets to Queen Caroline, and also some other pieces, which were never suspected to be written by a foreigner. The Frenchman Menage is an author, and an elegant Poet, in Italian. Lord Carteret wrote excellent Spanish. Lord Cobham wrote in German and French at Vienna, and gave in 1730 the first notions of commerce, maritime affairs, and prosperity resulting from manufactures, to the Austrian Council. Barretti, an Italian, has written in English in 1760;