LETTER 28. TO CAIUS GRACCHUS.

You have attacked me because I ventured to disapprove of Mr. Godwin's
Works: I notice your attack because it affords me an opportunity of
expressing more fully my sentiments respecting those principles.--I must
not however wholly pass over the former part of your letter. The
sentence "implicating them with party and calumniating opinions," is so
inaccurately worded, that I must "guess" at your meaning. In my first
essay I stated that literary works were generally reviewed by personal
friends or private enemies of the Authors. This I "know" to be fact; and
does the spirit of meekness forbid us to tell the truth? The passage in
my Review of Mr. Burke's late pamphlet, you have wilfully misquoted:
"with respect to the work in question," is an addition of your own. That
work in question I myself considered as mere declamation; and
"therefore" deemed it wofully inferior to the former production of the
venerable Fanatic.--In what manner I could add to my numerous "ideal"
trophies by quoting a beautiful passage from the pages which I was
reviewing, I am ignorant. Perhaps the spirit of vanity lurked in the use
of the word ""I""--"ere "I" begin the task of blame." It is pleasant to
observe with what absurd anxiety this little monosyllable is avoided.
Sometimes "the present writer" appears as its substitute: sometimes the
modest author adopts the style of royalty, swelling and multiplying
himself into "We"; and sometimes to escape the egotistic phrases of "in
my opinion," or, "as I think," he utters dogmas, and positively
asserts--"exempli gratia": ""It is" a work, which, etc." You deem me
inconsistent, because, having written in praise of the metaphysician, I
afterwards appear to condemn the essay on political justice. Would an
eulogist of medical men be inconsistent, if he should write against
vendors of (what he deemed) poisons? Without even the formality of a