ng under local paralysis before our controversy
commenced: and though his mind was quite unaffected, a retort of as
downright a character as the attack might have produced serious effect upon
a person who had shown himself sensible of ridicule. Had a second attack of
his disorder followed an answer from me, I should have been held to have
caused it: though, looking at Hamilton's genial love of combat, I strongly
suspected that a retort in kind

{340}

"Would cheer his heart, and warm his blood,
And make him fight, and do him good."

But I could not venture to risk it. So all I did, in reply to the article
in the _Discussions_, was to write to him the following note: which, as
illustrating an etiquette of controversy, I insert.

"I beg to acknowledge and thank you for.... It is necessary that I should
say a word on my retention of this work, with reference to your return of
the copy of my _Formal Logic_, which I presented to you on its publication:
a return made on the ground of your disapproval of the account of our
controversy which that work contained. According to my view of the subject,
any one whose dealing with the author of a book is specially attacked in
it, has a right to expect from the author that part of the book in which
the attack is made, together with so much of the remaining part as is
fairly context. And I hold that the acceptance by the party assailed of
such work or part of a work does not imply any amount of approval of the
contents, or of want of disapproval. On this principle (though I am not
prepared to add the word _alone_) I forwarded to you the whole of my work
on _Formal Logic_ and my second Cambridge Memoir. And on this principle I
should have held you wanting in due regard to my literary rights if you had
not forwarded to me your asterisked pages, with all else that was necessary
to a full understanding of their scope and meaning, so far as the contents
of the book would furnish it. For the remaining portion, which it would be
a hundred pities to separate from the pages in which I am directly
concerned, I am your debtor on another principle; and shall be glad to
remain so if you will allow me to make a feint of balancing the account by
the offer of two small works on subjects as little connected with our
discussion as the _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, or the Lutheran dispute. I
trust that by accepting my _Opuscula_ you will enable me to avoid the {341}
use of the knife, and leave me