Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/235

161 This I then thought was sufficient to vindicate myself from that little aspersion. But I am now constrained, by the worse usage that I have since met with from the same quarter, to give an account of some particulars, which then I omitted, partly out of an unwillingness to trouble the public with complaints about private and personal injuries, but chiefly out of a tenderness for the honour of the Editor.

The first time I saw his new Phalaris was in the hands of a person of honour, to whom it had been presented; and the rest of the impression was not yet published. This encouraged me to write the very same evening to Mr Boyle at Oxford, and to give him a true information of the whole matter; expecting that upon the receipt of my letter, he would put a stop to the publication of his book till he had altered that passage and printed the page anew, which he might have done in one day, and at the charge of five shillings. I did not expressly desire him to take out that passage, and reprint the whole leaf: that I thought was too low a submission. But I said enough to make any person of common justice and ingenuity have owned me thanks for preventing him from doing a very ill action.