Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/238

 Less than this would have passed with me for good satisfaction. But it was not, that he would give me satisfaction, but that I had his free leave to take it: which was in answer to a paragraph of my letter, that perhaps I might think myself obliged to make a public vindication. And this, as I take it, was so far from being a just satisfaction, that it was plainly a defiance, and an addition to the affront.

The gentleman and I here differ a little about the expression in his answer; but I suppose the very circumstances will plainly discover whose account is the truer. For what probability is there that he should promise such fair satisfaction, and yet let the book be published, when it was in his power to stop it? If he had writ me word the very next post, that he had stopped the books in the printing-house, and would suffer no more to go abroad till the matter was fairly examined, this had been just and civil. And then, if he had found himself misinformed by his bookseller, he might have cut out the leaf, and printed a new one; which in all respects had been the fairest, and cheapest and quickest satisfaction.

Several persons have been so far misinformed by