[G] The attacks upon the genuineness
of the writing on its margins Mr. Collier was at once too ready to
regard as impeachments of his personal integrity, and to shirk by making
counter-insinuations against the integrity of his opponents and the
correctness of their motives. He attributes to the pettiest personal
spite or jealousy the steps which they have taken in discharge of a duty
to the interests of literature and the literary guild, and at the risk
of their professional reputations, and then slinks back from his charges
with,--"I have been told this, but I don't believe it: this may be so,
but yet it cannot be: I did something that Mr. So-and-so's father did
not like, yet I wouldn't for a moment insinuate," etc., etc.[H] Then,
Mr. Collier, why do you insinuate? And what in any case do you gain?
Suppose the men who deny the good faith of your marginalia are the
small-souled creatures you would have us believe they are, they do not
make this denial upon their personal responsibility merely; they produce
facts. Meet those; and do not go about to make one right out of two
wrongs. Cease, too, this crawling upon your belly before the images of
dukes and carls and lord chief-justices; digest speedily the wine and
biscuits which a gentleman has brought to you in his library, and let
them pass away out of your memory.
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