Owing to these discontentments, and by consent of those who could judge and pronounce best, they arrived at a certain and reasonable custom--or rather, truth to say, to a customary reason--which they held for a law, not inadvertently hit on through error and time, but advisedly resolved on by judgment and skill. Nor yet did they, contrary to their promise, deprive sound of all his royalty, which was like that of a dictator before, but they joined reason with him, and custom too, so as to begin then in acknowledged right, and not in corruption after, as a Caesar and a Pompey, to be his colleagues in a triumvirate. From that time forward sound could do much, but not at all so much as before, being many times very justly overruled by his well-advised companions in office. Thus ended the monarchy of sound alone. We are now come to that government in writing which was under sound, reason and custom jointly, and which proceeded in this way. Reason, as he is naturally the principal director of all the best doings, and not of writing alone, began to play the master, but yet wisely and with great modesty. For considering the disposition of his two companions, first of sound, which the letters were to express in duty, being devised for that purpose, and then of custom, which was to confirm and pave the way to general approval, he established this for a general law in the province of writing--that as the first founders and devisers of the letters used their own liberty, in assigning by voluntary choice a particular character for the eye, to a particular sound in the voice, so it should be lawful for the said founders and their posterity, according as the necessity of their use and the dispatch in their pen did seem to require it, either to increase the number of letters, if the supply seemed not to satisfy the variety in sound, or to apply one and the same letter to diverse uses, if it could be done with some nice distinction, in order to avoid a multitude of characters, as we apply words, which are limited in number, to things which are without limit; and generally, like absolute lords in a tenancy at mere will, to make their own need the test of all letters, of all writing, of all speaking, to chop, to change, to alter, to transfer, to enlarge, to lessen, to make, to mar, to begin, to end, to give authority to this, to take it from that, as they themselves should think good. This decree being penned by reason, both sound and custom at once approved--sound, because there was no remedy, though his heart longed still for his former monarchy, which was now eclipsed; custom, because that served his turn best. For if necessary use and dispatch in the pen could have authority, which was given them in law, by consent of the men who were successors to those that first founded the letter (which were men of the most learned and wisest sort), then were custom indeed, having reason for a friend, and sound no foe, a very