Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/288

 off the others to another opportunity. There are a few things, therefore, referred to in this part, which do not appear here; but they shall be all made out in the next. I have it already by me, and when I can have leisure to transcribe it for the press, the Examiner shall have it.

He has been pleased to say more than once that I spent two or three years of my life in writing my first dissertation; and yet he owns he never once saw my face; much less can he have any knowledge of the course of my studies. But he has a singular way of talking, as he says, "at a venture." I drew up that dissertation in the spare hours of a few weeks, and while the printer was employed about one leaf, the other was a-making. 'Tis now, I think, about forty weeks since his Examination came abroad, eight of which I spent in the country, where I had no thoughts of him and his controversy. And if in the rest of that time I have published this book, and have the second ready for publication, I conceive the world will be satisfied that I could not spend three years in the other book of nine sheets only. And yet I'll assure him, but for the delays of the press, which I