This secret mystery, or rather quickening spirit, that dwells in every spoken tongue, and therefore in our own, I call “prerogative,” because when sound has done his best, when reason has said his best, and when custom has carried into effect what is best in both, this prerogative will resist any of them, and take exception to all their rules, however general and certain. It thus makes way for a new change, which will follow at some stage of the language, if the writer’s period be chosen at the best. I cannot compare this customary prerogative in speech to anything better than to those who devise new garments, and are left by law to liberty of device. Hence it comes in the matter of apparel, that we do not remain like ourselves for any length of time, though what is most seemly, like a rule of art, pleases the wisest people best. From this same liberty of speech to carve out a way for itself, come the exceptions to our general rules. Hence it comes that _enough_, _bough_, _tough_, and such other primitives are so strangely written, and more strangely sounded. In this way prerogative seems to be like quicksilver, ever stirring and never settled, though the general custom always offers itself to be ordered by rule, as a close friend to reason. This stirring quintessence, leading to change in a thing that is naturally changeable and not blameworthy for changing, some not very well-advised people consider as an error, and a private misuse, contrary to custom, because it seems to be a very imperious controller, but in this they are deceived. For indeed, though this prerogative, by opposition in particular cases, checks general conclusions, yet that opposition came not from individual men; it is a private thing itself, and the very life-blood which preserves tongues in their best natural form, from the first time that they grew to be of any account till they come to decay, and begin a new period, different from the old, though excellent in its kind, which in its turn must give way to another when the time is ripe.