Scurrility and passion, in a controversy among scholars, is just so much of nothing to the purpose, and at best a tacit confession of a weak cause: my concern is not so much for my own reputation, as that of the republick of letters, which Mr. Partridge has endeavoured to wound through my sides. If men of publick spirit must be superciliously treated for their ingenious attempts, how will true useful knowledge be ever advanced? I wish Mr. Partridge knew thet houghts, which foreign universities have conceived of his ungenerous proceedings with me; but I am too tender of his reputation to publish them to the world. That spirit of envy and pride, which blasts so many rising geniuses in our nation, is yet unknown among professors abroad: the necessity of justifying myself will excuse my vanity, when I tell the reader, that I have near a hundred honorary letters from several parts of Europe (some as far as Muscovy) in praise of my performance. Beside several others, which, as I have been credibly informed, were opened in the postoffice, and never sent me. It is true, the inquisition in Portugal was pleased to burn my predictions[1], and condemn the author and the readers of them: but I hope at the same time, it will be considered, in how deplorable a state learning lies at present in that kingdom: and with the profoundest veneration for crowned heads, I will presume to add, that it a little concerned his majesty of Portugal to interpose his authority in behalf of a scholar and a
- ↑ This is fact, as the author was assured by sir Paul Methuen, then ambassador to that crown.
