LEARNED AND WORTHY SIR,
These wait on you, to thank you for the honour you have done a person, equally unknown as undeserving, in your valuable present, which I did not receive till several weeks after it was sent: and since I received it, my eyes have been so bad, and my hand so unstable, that I have been forced to defer my duty, as desirous to thank you with my own hand. I congratulate to your nation the just honour ascribed to it by its neighbours and more distant countries, in having bred two such excellent poets as your Buchanan and Johnston, whom to name is to commend; but am concerned for their honour at home, who being committed together, seem to me both to suffer a diminution, whilst justice is done to neither. But at the same time I highly approve your nation's piety in bringing into your schools sacred instead of profane poesy, and heartily wish that ours, and all Christian governments, would follow your example herein. If a mixture of utile dulci be the best composition in poetry, (which is too evident to need the judgment of the nicest critick in the art,) surely the utile so transcendently excels in the sacred hymns, that a Christian must deny his name that doth not acknowledge it: and if the dulce seem not equally to excel, it must be from a vitiated taste of those who read them in the original, and, in others, at second-hand, from translations. For the manner of writing in the east and west is widely distant, and which to a paraphrast must render his task exceeding difficult, as requiring a perfect knowledge in two languages, wherein the idioms and graces of speech, caused by the diversity of their religion, laws, customs, &c. are as remote as the inhabitants, wherein, notwithstanding, your poets have succeeded to admiration.
Your main contest seems to me, when stript of persons, whether the easy or sublime in poesy be preferable; if so,
Non opis est nostrae tantam componere litem:
nor think I it in your case material to be decided. Both these have their particular excellencies and graces, and youth ought to be taught wherein (which the matter ought chiefly to determine) the one hath place, and where the other. Now since the hymns of David, Moses, and other divine poets, intermixt with them, (infinitely excelling those of Callimachus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, and all others,) abound in both these virtues, and both your poets are acknowledged to be very happy in paraphrasing them, it is my opinion, both of them, without giving the least preference to either, should be read alternately in your schools, as the tutor shall direct. Pardon, learned Sir, this scribble to my age and weakness, both which are very great, and command me wherein I may serve you, as,
Learned Sir,
Your obliged, thankful, and obedient servant,
ROBERT AINSWORTH.
Spitalfields, Sept. 1741.
A Letter from the Authors of the Universal History to Mr. Auditor
Benson.