GENTLEMEN: In the June number of the KNICKERBOCKER, I have seen an 'extract' purporting to be taken from the 'Introduction' of a yet unpublished work upon English grammar, by GOOLD BROWN, which extract seems to be a sort of criticism levelled at me and my works, but more especially at my Grammar. Judging from the fury of this assault, one would be inclined to think, that my antagonist believed his very existence as an author depended upon his annihilation of me, and that my future popularity and success are dependant upon _his_ opinion of me and my works! My Grammar, gentlemen, has been attacked by abler writers than Goold Brown, and has passed through the ordeal of their criticisms unscathed. It is not to be expected, therefore, that I should care a groat whether this self-constituted philological umpire likes the work or not. Indeed, I would rather he would _not_ like it; for sure I am, that if he liked it, few others would; a clear proof of which we have, in a dull book on grammar, which he himself produced, some twelve or fifteen years ago, on a plan and in a style exactly suited to his own peculiar liking. Since then, it never entered into my scheme to write a grammar to suit the taste of my jealous rivals, but to please myself and the public. Having gained the latter point, I can very complacently bear all the futile abuse which may be heaped upon me. I know it is mortifying for an author to fail, especially a conceited one. I admit that it is hard for him to write eleven years for nine hundred dollars,[7] even though his labors may not have been worth to the public one-half that sum. It is natural, too, for such writers, after having ascertained that nobody will _purchase_ their bantlings, to turn philosophers, and become very disinterested, and affect to despise the idea of connecting _emolument_ with the labors of their mighty pens. Doubtless, also, it is sufficiently provoking, and especially mortifying to a discomfitted author's vanity, to learn that the works of a much younger writer, and one upon whom he once affected to look down as his inferior, should go off by _thousands_, while his own precious productions are with difficulty shoved off by _tens_. That such an author should find nothing to praise in a work so much more popular than his own, is not at all singular; yet, when a conceited charlatan, himself a professed author, (and a pretended _Quaker_, withal!) so far departs from the dignity and decency of manly feeling, as to attempt, by gross misrepresentations and low trickery, to destroy the hard-earned and honest fame of a more successful fellow-laborer, for purposes of private malice, a decent respect for the dignity of true criticism and the rights of authorship, no less than a proper regard for the cause of learning, requires that he should be held up to public detestation.