10 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Mr. Warton 18) or Mr. Malone 19) but certainly not from 
you. 
I have no intention whatever of troubling the public with 
anything more upon the subject. My only wish was to justify 
myself which I hope I have done to the satisfaction of every 
unprejudiced person. 
You will do me the justice to believe that I never enter¬ 
tained the the most distant suspicions of your having any con¬ 
cern in the scurrilous libel you allude to 20) —but both 
Baynes 21) & I were very much surprised to see it noticed in 
your list 22) which we concluded it would not have been if 
you were unacquainted with its contents, & which it was 
equally difficult to conceive why it shod have been if you were 
not. 
I should consider myself a person of neither honour or 
honesty if I had been actuated in this publication by the least 
spark of resentment against you & I beg leave to assure you 
that notwithstanding what has passed I shall still continue to 
preserve the respect and esteem to which your personal char¬ 
acter & literary services have so just a claim. 
I am, 
Dear Sir, 
Your very obliged & obed. serv. 
J. Eitson. 
Grays Inn, 
22d. Feb. 1788. 
The following letter shows primarily Eitson’s antiquarian 
interest. It is directed to William Laing (1764-1832), Edin- 
See Ritson’s Observations on the three first volumes of the History of 
English Poetry, in a familiar letter to the author, London, 1782, and the 
controversy which was subsequently waged in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 
Vols. LII, LIII. 
^9 Malone’s Supplement to the edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 
1778, London, 1780, his Second Appendix to Mr. Malone’s Supplement, London, 
1783, and his own edition of Shakespeare contained violent abuse of the 
author of Remarks and Quip Modest. Ritson retaliated in kind in his Cur¬ 
sory Criticisms on the edition of Shakspeare published by Edmond Malone, 
London, 1792. 
20 A familiar address to the curious in English poetry, more especially to 
the readers of Shakespeare, by Thersites Literarius, London, 1784. This 
pseudonymous tract greatly offended Ritson, as it wasi written with the ob¬ 
vious intention of creating the impression that it came from him. 
21 John Baynes (1758-1787), author of anonymous political verses and 
translations from French and German poems, was the friend whom Ritson 
selected, at Reed’s suggestion, to arbitrate their differences. See Letters, 
Vol. I, p. 132. 
22 “A list of detached pieces of criticism”, in Reed’s Shakspeare, Vol. I, 
pp. 261-6. 
