“Horner speaks of the book with admiration;—but is it finished? or are you engaged with something else? Poor evidence! poor procedure! Your turn may come by and by,—but courage,—I submit, but not without a protest—in the name of the human race I protest against Scotland.
“But, Seignior, you owe me authentic reparation! You sold me, though I have not lost a day, to the common cause. I know it is a ruse of yours to intimidate me, feeling in your conscience that you are a deserter, and that you have sold yourself to the service of ‘Demon pamphlet,’ which will always be an ingrate; but I want to know when your bail with this demon expires.”
“I have received your third sheet in small octavo, and in characters suited to the size; and I must tell you that, if you took Dr Parr for your model, you are not yet quite arrived at his perfection; but you are near it—in short, with one or two hours’ hard labour, I did understand, or guess, your meaning.
* * * *
“I have just glanced over your plan of Appellate Judicature, which you sent to Romilly. It seems very good; but bodies seldom consent to lessen their own authority, even though they rarely use it.
* * * *
“I do not willingly undertake the revision of Montagu’s translations. Romilly thinks that if the MSS. were all sent to him, it would be a labyrinth for him, and only create new difficulties. And yet for the definitions, the original phraseology should be employed. What better could be found? There is most visible the hand of the great master. This, I must tell you, and I feel as you do, all that must be lost in the translation of a translation. But to confront the work with the MSS. is no small labour, especially when the MSS. are not familiar to the confronter.
“Farewell, then, to the second deluge, as you say; but for myself, I will be satisfied with Methusalem’s age. I will not answer your wicked and jealous jokes. No! you will be for exposing me as no better than a Socinian.”
Basil Montagu had been engaged in translating back into English, Dumont’s translations of Bentham.
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