Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/211

201 ON MODERN INNOVATIONS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND IN PRINTING.

Philadelphia, Dec. 26, 1789.

RECEIVED, ſome time ſince, your Diſſertations on the Engliſh Language. It is an excellent work, and will be greatly uſeful in turning the thoughts of our countrymen to correct writing. Pleaſe to accept my thanks for it, as well as for the great honour you have done me in its dedication. I ought to have made this acknowledgement ſooner, but much indiſpoſition prevented me.

I cannot but applaud your zeal for preſerving the purity of our language both in its expreſſion and pronunciation, and in correcting the popular errors ſeveral of our ſtates are continually falling into with reſpect to both. Give me leave to mention ſome of them, though poſſibly they may already have occurred to you. I wiſh, however, that in ſome future publication of yours, you would ſet a diſcountenancing mark upon them. The firſt I remember, is the word improved. When I left New-England in the year 1723, this word had never been uſed among us, as far as I know, but in the ſenſe of ameliorated, or made better, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather's, entitled Remarkable Providences. As that man wrote a very obſcure hand, I remember that when I read that word in his book, uſed inſtead of the word employed, I conjectured that it was an error