He hopes, _therefore_, to escape the censure so frequently and so justly awarded to those _unfortunate innovators_ who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture the text of that able writer, merely to gratify an itching propensity to figure in the world _as authors_, and gain an ephemeral popularity by arrogating to themselves _the credit due to another_." [13]--_Kirkham's Gram._, 1829, p.
10.
32.

Now these statements are either true or false; and I know not on which supposition they are most creditable to the writer.

Had any Roman grammatist thus profited by the name of Varro or Quintilian, he would have been filled with constant dread of somewhere meeting the injured author's frowning shade! Surely, among the professed admirers of Murray, no other man, whether innovator or copyist, unfortunate or successful, is at all to be compared to this gentleman for the audacity with which he has "not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture, the text of that able writer." Murray simply intended to do good, and good that might descend to posterity; and this just and generous intention goes far to excuse even his errors.

But Kirkham, speaking of posterity, scruples not to disavow and to renounce all care for them, or for any thing which a coming age may think of his character: saying, "My pretensions reach not so far.

To the _present generation only_, I present my claims.