n shield has
repeatedly been pierced by the spear of Horsley, and his trumpet of
sedition may at length awaken the magistrates of a free country. The
profession and rank of Sir David Dalrymple (now a Lord of Session)
has given a more decent colour to his style. But he scrutinized each
separate passage of the two chapters with the dry minuteness of a
special pleader; and as he was always solicitous to make, he may have
succeeded sometimes in finding, a flaw. In his Annals of Scotland, he
has shewn himself a diligent collector and an accurate critic. I have
praised, and I still praise, the eloquent sermons which were preached in
St. Mary's pulpit at Oxford by Dr. White. If he assaulted me with
some degree of illiberal acrimony, in such a place, and before such an
audience, he was obliged to speak the language of the country. I smiled
at a passage in one of his private letters to Mr. Badcock; "The part
where we encounter Gibbon must be brilliant and striking." In a sermon
preached before the university of Cambridge, Dr. Edwards complimented a
work, "which can only perish with the language itself;" and esteems the
author a formidable enemy. He is, indeed, astonished that more learning
and ingenuity has not been shewn in the defence of Israel; that the
prelates and dignitaries of the church (alas, good man!) did not vie
with each other, whose stone should sink the deepest in the forehead of
this Goliath.

"But the force of truth will oblige us to confess, that in the attacks
which have been levelled against our sceptical historian, we can
discover but slender traces of profound and exquisite erudition, of
solid criticism and accurate investigation; but we are too frequently
disgusted by vague and inconclusive reasoning; by unseasonable banter
and senseless witticisms; by imbittered bigotry and enthusiastic jargon;
by futile cavils and illiberal invectives. Proud and elated by the
weakness of his antagonists, he condescends not to handle the sword of
controversy."--Monthly Review, Oct. 1790.

Let me frankly own that I was startled at the first discharge of
ecclesiastical ordnance; but as soon as I found that this empty noise
was mischievous only in the intention, my fear was converted into
indignation; and every feeling of indignation or curiosity has long
since subsided in pure and placid indifference.

The prosecution of my history was soon afterwards checked by another
controversy of a very different kind. At the reques