"... _decus imperiumque Latini
Te penes_;"

which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. Now I
consider the present Earl of Bute to be '_Excelsae familiae de Bute_ spes
prima;' and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to be '_spes
altera_.' So in AEneid xii. l. 168, after having mentioned Pater AEneas,
who was the _present_ spes, the _reigning_ spes, as my German friends
would say, the _spes prima_, the poet adds,

"_Et juxta Ascanius, magnae_ spes altera _Romae_."

'You think _alterae_ ungrammatical, and you tell me it should have been
_alteri_. You must recollect, that in old times _alter_ was declined
regularly; and when the ancient fragments preserved in the _Juris
Civilis Fontes_ were written, it was certainly declined in the way that
I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer who writes _alterae_
in a dissertation upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly
venture to quote fragments of old law to so classical a man as Mr.
Johnson, I have not made an accurate search into these remains, to find
examples of what I am able to produce in poetical composition. We find
in Plaut. Rudens, act iii. scene 4,

"_Nam Jiuic alters patria qua: sit profecto nescio_."

Plautus is, to be sure, an old comick writer: but in the days of Scipio
and Lelius, we find, Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3,

".... hoc ipsa in itinere alterae
Dum narrat, forte audivi."