And again, we do not think that every custom is an evident corruption, where the general usage of those who cannot be suspected of writing with other than good judgment, lays the groundwork for precept, as leading to the exercise of art, and assurance to the pen. And we rest content with the number of our letters. Some people in studying to increase this number, only cumber our tongue, both with strange characters and with needless diphthongs, forcing us away from what the general rule has won and is content with. And why not these letters only? Or why may they not be put to many uses? This paucity and poverty of letters has contented the best and bravest tongues that either are, have been, shall be, or can be, and has expressed by them, both in speech and pen, as great variety and as much difficulty in all subjects as possibly can be expressed or understood by the English tongue or be devised by any English intelligence. The people that now use them, and those that have used them, have naturally the same organs of voice, and the same delivery in sound, for all their speaking, that we English have, because they are men, just as we English folk are; and they handed down the use of the pen to us, and not we to them. And finding in their own use this necessity which you note, they fled to that help which you think naught, and were bold with their letters, to make them serve diverse turns, sometimes with change, sometimes with some ingenious mark of distinction. That this kind of distinction is enough, is known to all who are acquainted with the foreign letters, and with those writers who treat of them. Nor is there any difficulty which they are not subject to, either in the same or in very similar things, just as we are. And will strangers wonder at us? Or do not those of our own people who are learned perceive these things? For in the ignorant I require no such discretion. I certainly think that all people, as they have the same natural organs to speak by, though from habit some may harp more on one sound than on others, and some--even whole nations--may lean more upon one organ, such as the throat or the teeth, than others do, yet naturally all are made able to sound all kinds of speech and all letters, if they are accustomed to them at the most fitting age and by the best means. I hold also that it is only education and custom that make the difference, and therefore rule all, or at least most, in speech, wherein if there be any reason, it is not natural and simple, as in things, but artificial and compound, based upon such and such a cause in custom and consent. And though the Hebrew grammarians alone divide their letters according to the vocal organs on which they lean most, such as the throat, the roof of the mouth, the tongue, the lips, or the teeth, yet not the Hebrews alone have that distinction in nature, but every people which has throat, teeth, palate, tongue, lips, and with those organs use the utterance of sounds. This is an argument