against the poison of his original. The 5th and 7th volumes are armed
with five letters from an anonymous divine to his friends, Foothead
and Kirk, two English students at Rome: and this meritorious service
is commended by Monsignor Stoner, a prelate of the same nation, who
discovers much venom in the fluid and nervous style of Gibbon. The
critical essay at the end of the third volume was furnished by the
Abbate Nicola Spedalieri, whose zeal has gradually swelled to a more
solid confutation in two quarto volumes.--Shall I be excused for not
having read them?

The brutal insolence of Mr. Travis's challenge can only be excused by
the absence of learning, judgment, and humanity; and to that excuse be
has the fairest or foulest pretension. Compared with Archdeacon Travis,
Chelsum and Davies assume the title of respectable enemies.

The bigoted advocate of popes and monks may be turned over even to the
bigots of Oxford; and the wretched Travis still smarts under the lash
of the merciless Porson. I consider Mr. Porson's answer to Archdeacon
Travis as the most acute and accurate piece of criticism which has
appeared since the days of Bentley. His strictures are founded in
argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with wit; and his
adversary neither deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The
evidence of the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any
court of justice: but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf, and our
vulgar bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious text, "sedet
aeternumqne sedebit." The more learned ecclesiastics will indeed have
the secret satisfaction of reprobating in the closet what they read in
the church.

I perceived, and without surprise, the coldness and even prejudice of
the town; nor could a whisper escape my ear, that, in the judgment
of many readers, my continuation was much inferior to the original
attempts. An author who cannot ascend will always appear to sink; envy
was now prepared for my reception, and the zeal of my religious, was
fortified by the motive of my political, enemies. Bishop Newton, in
writing his own life, was at full liberty to declare how much he
himself and two eminent brethren were disgusted by Mr. G.'s prolixity,
tediousness, and affectation. But the old man should not have indulged
his zeal in a false and feeble charge against the historian, who had
faithfully and even cautiously rendered Dr. Burnet's meaning by the
alternative of sleep or re