Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/236

162 I am sorry I have not the letter itself to produce on this occasion; but I neither took any copy of it, nor was I careful to keep the gentleman’s letter which I received in answer. I had no apprehension at that time that the business could have been blown to this height. But the gentleman, it seems, had something at that time in his view, and was more careful to keep my letter, a part of which he has thus published, “Mr Bennet desired me to lend him the manuscript Phalaris to be collated; because a young gentleman, Mr Boyle of Christ Church, was going to publish it. I told him, that a gentleman of that name and family, to which I had so many obligations and should always have an honour for, might command any service that lay in my power.” These he acknowledges to be civil expressions; and I dare trust my memory so far as to aver that all the rest were of the same strain. Nay, as the Examiner has given us this fragment of my letter, because he thought he saw a fault in’t, which I shall answer anon; so, if there had been anything else in that letter, either in the words or the matter, that he could but have cavilled at, without doubt he would have favoured us with more of it; for we may