Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/268

194 Library the value of a printed sermon. Though I remember, when I once told this story to a very great man, his answer was, that if I was not in earnest I ought to have been so.

The bookseller says his employment makes it not proper for him to give an account of the reflections I made, as we talked about Phalaris. But I'll help him out for once, and give an account of one that I very well remember. The bookseller once asked me privately that I would do him the favour to tell my opinion, if the new edition of Phalaris, then in the press, would be a vendible book: for he had a concern in the impression, and hoped it would sell well, such a great character being given of it in Essays as made it mightily inquired after. I told him he would be safe enough, since he was concerned for nothing but the sale of the book: for the great names of those that recommended it, would get it many buyers. But however, under the rose, the book was a spurious piece, and deserved not to be spread in the world by another impression. His "employment," it seems, could suffer him to betray this discourse to some concerned in the edition, as I was informed from a