XCVIII. The writing letters with address and propriety, is a very essential part of urbanity, and a matter upon which a great deal may be said by way of instruction; but as the want of this may be supplied, by reading approved books of letters on various subjects, I would recommend to the reader the perusal of those of many eminent men, which have been lately collected and published, by that diligent and pains-taking person Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, librarian to his majesty, and professor of civil law in the kingdom of Valentia; and would advise him to read them over and over again with much attention, as the best patterns of letters in our language. With respect to the writing of Latin letters, those who desire to be well instructed in that, should read attentively, those of Don Manuel Marti Dean of Alicant, which have been lately published by the before-named Don Gregorio Mayans in two volumes in octavo; and those of Mayans’s own, which he published in one volume in quarto in 1732. I consider the publication of these books, to have been of the greatest use and importance, on account of the miserable state, to which the writing the Latin language was reduced in Spain, and especially with respect to the familiar or epistolary stile. How often have I experienced, that whenever it became necessary for a religious society or community, to write a Latin letter to Rome, or some other foreign kingdom, that there were very few men to be found among them, who were capable of doing it, unless it was in Latin stuffed full of Hispanisims? And whenever it became necessary for them to converse in Latin with any stranger, they seemed as much at a loss, and as much embarrassed, as if they had been obliged to talk to him in Arabic.