You cannot but know how easy it is and was for me to have spoken to you in the same language. Why did I not? Because I thought that amongst men that were civilly bred it would have redounded to my shame, as you have cause to fear that this will redound to yours. But what moved you to speak in that manner? Were you angry? If I thought that the cause, I could pardon it the sooner, but it must be very great anger that can put a man, that professeth to teach good manners, so much out of his wits as to fall into such a language as this of yours. It was perhaps an imagination that you were talking to your inferior, which I will not grant you, nor will the heralds, I believe, trouble themselves to decide the question. But, howsoever, I do not find that civil men use to speak so to their inferiors. If you grant my learning but to be equal to yours, (which you may certainly do without very much disparaging of yourself abroad in the world), you may think it less insolence in me to speak so to you in respect of my age, than for you to speak so to me in respect of your young doctorship. You will find that for all your doctorship, your elders, if otherwise of as good repute as you, will be respected before you. But I am not sure that this language of yours proceeded from that cause; I am rather inclined to think you have not been enough in good company, and that there is still somewhat left in your manners for which the honest youths of Hedington and Hincsey may compare with you for good language, as great a doctor as you are. For my verses of the Peak, though they be as ill in my opinion as I believe they are in yours, and made long since, yet they are not so obscene as that they ought to be blamed by Dr. Wallis. I pray you, sir, whereas you have these words in your _School Discipline_, page 96, “_unless you will say that one and the same motion may be now and anon too_.” What was the reason you put these words, _now and anon too_, in a different character, that makes them to be more taken notice of? Do you think that the story of the minister that uttered his affection (if it be not a slander) not unlawfully but unseasonably, is not known to others as well as to you? What needed you then, when there was nothing that I had said could give the occasion, to use those words; there is nothing in my verses that do _olere hircum_ so much as this of yours. I know what good you can receive by ruminating on such ideas, or cherishing of such thoughts. But I go on to other words of mine by you reproached, “_you may as well seek the focus of the parabola of Dives and Lazarus_,” which you say is mocking the Scripture; to which I answer only, that I intended not to mock the Scripture, but you, and that which was not meant for mocking was none. And thus you have a second στιγμὴ. GRAMMAR AND CRITIQUES.