These reflections created ill-blood, and even an open difference amongst several of the _superior artists in writing_. The commanding genius of Snell had a more terrific contest when he published his "Standard Rules," pretending to have _demonstrated_ them as Euclid would. "This proved a bone of contention, and occasioned a terrific quarrel between Mr. Snell and Mr. Clark. This quarrel about 'Standard Rules' ran so high between them, that they could scarce forbear _scurrilous language_ therein, and a treatment of each other unbecoming _gentlemen_! Both sides in this dispute had their abettors; and to say which had the most truth and reason, _non nostrum est tantas componere lites_; perhaps _both parties might be too fond of their own schemes_. They should have left them to people to choose which they liked best." A candid politician is our Massey, and a philosophical historian too; for he winds up the whole story of this civil war by describing its result, which happened as all such great controversies have ever closed. "Who now-a-days takes those _Standard Rules_, either one or the other, for their _guide_ in writing?" This is the finest lesson ever offered to the furious heads of parties, and to all their men; let them meditate on the nothingness of their "Standard Rules," by the fate of Mr. Snell. It was to be expected, when once these writing-masters imagined that they were artists, that they would be infected with those plague-spots of genius--envy, detraction, and all the _jalousie du metier_. And such to this hour we find them! An extraordinary scene of this nature has long been exhibited in my neighbourhood, where two doughty champions of the quill have been posting up libels in their windows respecting the inventor of _a new art of writing_, the Carstairian, or the Lewisian? When the great German philosopher asserted that he had discovered the method of fluxions before Sir Isaac, and when the dispute grew so violent that even the calm Newton sent a formal defiance in set terms, and got even George the Second to try to arbitrate (who would rather have undertaken a campaign), the method of fluxions was no more cleared up than the present affair between our two heroes of the quill.