ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding the Opinion of Cicero in my Motto, That he who commits his Thoughts to Paper without being able methodically to range them, or properly to illustrate them, gives us an Instance of the most intemperate Abuse of his own Time and of Letters themselves; and tho’ Quintilian hath asserted, that Grammar is the Foundation of all Science;2 Nay Horace himself denies anything to be in the Power of Genius without Improvement, notwithstanding these Authorities, I say, I have very often suspected whether Learning be of such Consequence to a Writer as it is imagined. This, however, I have hitherto kept to my self, and, perhaps, tho’ Horace hath, in another Place, taken up the contrary side to what he declares above, and hath enumerated many Advantages arising to a State from the Custom of Writing as well without, as with Learning.3 I might perhaps have never ventured publicly to have declared my Opinion, had I not found it supported by one of the Greatest Writers of our own Age: I mean Mr. Colley Cibber, who, in the Apology for his Life, tells us, That we have frequently Great Writers that cannot read.4
