$4 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
DR. OLINTHUS GREGORY'S second ANSWER 
“tothe EDINBURGH REVIEWFRS. —/ 
N your valuable Magazine for August: 
last, you-ingerted a letter which was 
refused admission in the Edinburgh 
‘Review, and in which I proved that 
the writer of the Critique, in that work, 
on the Account of Steam Engines, in 
the second volume of my ‘* Mecha- 
nics,” had, in the short compass of a note 
of ten lines, told four positive false-: 
hoods. The truth of this charge is now 
adinitted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, 
so far as relates to two of their asser- 
tions; they deny my charge in’ relation 
to the third assertion, by telling a new - 
falsehood ;“and--palliate the fourth, by~ 
‘admitting that their language was ambi- 
guous... There is, therefore, (to. adopt 
the wary language of these scientitic 
defamers) “ a probability falling ~short - 
of certainty by a quantity incalculably 
small,” that the Edinburgh Reviewers 
“will be regarded, by every attentive 
reader, as self-convicted liars. What 
right) they can have to plead inad- 
vertence,: in bar of this. conclusion, 
when deliberately and explicitly charging 
me with a general habit of, and parti- 
cular instauces of, plagiarism, 1 am very 
willing the public should determine. 
Iam sorry, Sir, to occupy your va- 
luable pages with my personal concerns. — 
Tif the Edinburgh Reviewers, who have 
long ago forfeited all reputation for 
justice, honour, and liberality, had not 
‘renounced that of courage also; if they 
had dared to admit into their own work, 
my refutation of their own calumnies, 
I should have soug!:t no other redress. 
Not. satisfied, however, with denying 
we, in the first instance, the right of 
vindicating my fame as an author, they 
have attacked my character as a man, 
and. publicly pledged. themselves to 
allow me no opportunity of defending 
it, and to make no retraction of their 
charges, though I should succeed in 
proving them false! «As far as their 
powerextends, my reputation, it seems, 
3s. tq perish. 
“their power. . Despicable vanity, to sup- 
pose it was, of that I should sutfer them 
to.escape with mapunity! Though they 
~ ghrink trom meeting me on equal terms, 
they, are still within my reach, There 
are tribunals in this enlightened country, 
‘at. which’ literary. assassins, however 
eowardly or ferocious, may be conipelled 
to appear. I trust, Sir,-in your liberali- 
fy, tor permission te bring my cause 
Dr. Olinthus Gregory's Second Answer 
Happily, it is not within — 
[Feb, I, 
before one of the most ‘eminent. and 
impartial of those tribunals, and in that 
of your numerous readers, for a patieut 
hearing. ee ee f 
At the end of nearly eight months, 
from their receipt of my first letter, the 
Edinburgh Reviewers have’ honoured 
me with an elaborate reply ; a deviation, 
in my favour, from: their usual and safer 
plaw of total silence, for which I am 
duly grateful. In this reply of ten. 
pages, they have distributed artful mis- 
representations, and direct falsehoods, 
with that profusion, whick may be ex- 
pected from persons: who have abun- 
dance of one kind of commodity at 
command, and very little of any other: 
Quo modo pyris vesci jubet Calubar hospes. 
A complete answer to such a letter as 
theirs, would be far too voluminous to 
appear in a miscellaneous Jourval..-I 
shall only trouble you with a short state- 
ment, which I hope you can immediately 
insert, and which the extensive circula- 
tion of your Magazine may render as 
public as the slanders it refutes, 
Even thus. far I should have thought it 
needless to intrude my concerns into 
your work, could I depend upon. the 
same candour, good sense, and: reflec- 
tion, in every reader of the Edinburgh 
Review, which I have met with on this 
occasion, ‘among my own literary ac- 
quaintance. One of my friends, a gen= 
tleman of the highest literary and-scien- 
tific reputation,* so forcibly. describes 
the impression produced upon his mind 
by the Edinburgh Reviewers’ epistle, 
that I beg leave to quote part of his letter. 
“T have just read,” says he, “ the» 
Edinburgh Reviewers’ epistle to you ; 
and I tinnk you may very readily resg- 
satisfied with the general result of the 
public judgment, waich must necessarily 
be open to the following facts, even from 
the Reviewers’ owir statement. : 
‘3. That the Edinburgh Reviewers have _ 
found the effect of your former exposure of \ 
their misrepresentations to be so poweriul, 
a3 to feel and acknowledge the necessity of 
making a reply; and thus, to takea step 
they have never taken before, one which 
, ns) _ Touse 
* His name I suppress, not to expose him 
unnecessarily to the rancour of the Edinburgh 
Reviewers. The praise they have bestowed 
upon one of his works, would be no security 
against their virulent abuse in future, nor 
even agaist: their condemnation of the same 
work, if we may judge from their treatment 
of Pinkerton’s ‘* Geography,” after they had 
guarretied with the proprietors of that book. 
~ = > “say 
