spite or jealousy the steps which they have taken in discharge of a duty
to the interests of literature and the literary guild, and at the risk
of their professional reputations, and then slinks back from his charges
with,--"I have been told this, but I don't believe it: this may be so,
but yet it cannot be: I did something that Mr. So-and-so's father did
not like, yet I wouldn't for a moment insinuate," etc., etc.[H] Then,
Mr. Collier, why do you insinuate? And what in any case do you gain?
Suppose the men who deny the good faith of your marginalia are the
small-souled creatures you would have us believe they are, they do not
make this denial upon their personal responsibility merely; they produce
facts. Meet those; and do not go about to make one right out of two
wrongs. Cease, too, this crawling upon your belly before the images of
dukes and carls and lord chief-justices; digest speedily the wine and
biscuits which a gentleman has brought to you in his library, and let
them pass away out of your memory. Let us have no more such sneaking
sentences as, "I have always striven to make myself as unobjectionable
as I could"; but stand up like a man and speak like a man, if you have
aught to say that is worth saying; and your noble patrons, no less than
the world at large, will have more faith in you, and more respect for
you.

[Footnote G: Such hasty examinations as those which it must have
received at the Society of Antiquaries and the Shakespeare Society,
where Mr. Collier took it, are of little importance.]

[Footnote H: See, for instance, "I have been told, but I do not believe
it, that Sir F. Madden and his colleagues were irritated by this piece
of supposed neglect; and that they also took it ill that I presented the
Perkins folio to the kindest, most condescending, and most liberal of
noblemen, instead of giving it to their institution." (_Reply_, p. 11.)