That it would please him to take their speech in good part, considering that it concerned not their private good, but the general interest of the whole province of writing: That he would call to his remembrance the reasons which moved them at the first to give him alone the authority over the pen, as one whom they then thought most fit for such a government, and indeed most fit to govern alone: That they now perceived, not any fault in him, for using like a prince what was his peculiar right, granted by their own commission, but an oversight in themselves in unadvisedly overcharging him with an estate which he could not rule alone without a sacrifice of his honour, whereof they were as tender as of their own souls: That their request therefore unto him was not to think more of his own private honour than of the good of the whole province: That they might with his good leave amend their own error, which however it concerned his person yet should not affect his credit, the fault being theirs in their first choice. They paused a little while, before they uttered the main cause of their motion, for they noticed that sound began to change colour, and was half ready to swoon. For the fellow is passionate, tyrannous in authority but timorous. Howbeit, seeing that the common good urged them to speech, they went on, and told him in plain terms that he must be content to refer himself to order, and so much the rather because their meaning was not to seek either his deprivation or his resignation, but to urge him to qualify his government, and make use of a further council which they meant to join with him, as a thing likely to bear great fruit, and of good example in many such cases, since even great potentates and princes, for the general weal of their states, were very well content, upon humble suit made to them, to admit such a council, and use it in affairs: That the reasons which moved them to make this suit, and might also move him to admit the same, were of great importance: That because letters were first found only to express him, therefore they had given him alone the whole government therein, and were well contented with it, until they had espied, not his misgovernment, but their own mischoice: That the bare and primitive inventions, being but rude, and being ruled accordingly, and experience at the time affording no more growth in refinement, why should they not now yield to refinement, upon better cause, what they yielded to rudeness from mere necessity? That no man having any sense of the correctness in writing that is commended by experience would yield the direction to sound alone, which is always altering, and differs according as either the pronouncer is ignorant or learned, or the parts that pronounce are of clear or stop delivery, or as the ear itself has judgment to discern: That considering these defects, which crave reform, and the letter itself, which desires some assurance of her