'
Having availed myself of this editor's eulogy on my departed friend, for
which I warmly thank him, let me not suffer the lustre of his
reputation, honestly acquired by profound learning and vigorous
eloquence, to be tarnished by a charge of illiberality. He has been
accused of invidiously dragging again into light certain writings of a
person respectable by his talents, his learning, his station and his
age, which were published a great many years ago, and have since, it is
said, been silently given up by their authour. But when it is considered
that these writings were not _sins of youth_, but deliberate works of
one well-advanced in life, overflowing at once with flattery to a great
man of great interest in the Church, and with unjust and acrimonious
abuse of two men of eminent merit; and that, though it would have been
unreasonable to expect an humiliating recantation, no apology whatever
has been made in the cool of the evening, for the oppressive fervour of
the heat of the day; no slight relenting indication has appeared in any
note, or any corner of later publications; is it not fair to understand
him as superciliously persevering? When he allows the shafts to remain
in the wounds, and will not stretch forth a lenient hand, is it wrong,
is it not generous to become an indignant avenger? BOSWELL.
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