THE best method now used for Grinding Spectacles and other glasses, was by me at great charge and pains found out, which I shewed to the Royal Society in the year 1693, and by them approved; being gentlemen the best skilled in optics, for which they gave me their certificate to let the world know what I had done. Since which I have made spectacles, telescopes, and microscopes, for all the Kings and Prince’s Courts in Europe. And as for the 2 new spectacle makers, that would insinuate to the world that they were my best workmen for several years: the one I never employed, the other I found as I doubt not but many gentlemen have and will find them both, to be only boasters and not performers of what they advertise, &c. &c. After pursuing this strain till he had run down, Mr Marshall concludes by saying, “What I have inserted is nothing but truth.” At the same time Yarwell and Sterrop overwhelmed the raisers of this hornets’ nest with a new attention, in which among other things was the following:-- Mr Willdey and Brandreth have the folly to believe that abundance of words is sufficient to gain applause, and therefore throw ’em out without regard to truth and reason, but as that is an affront to the understanding of gentlemen that use the goods they sell, they being persons of discerning judgment, there needs no other answer to what they have published than to compare one part with another. They set forth with a lying vaunt that their two-foot telescope would perform the same that a common four-foot one would do, and when ’twas replied that was false, and a four-foot one offered to try, they poorly shift off with crying “That’s one of your best four-foot ones.” Now we profess to make none but best, the glasses of every one being true ground and rightly adjusted, and the difference in price arrises only from the goodness, ornaments, and convenience of the case, neither can he produce a four-foot one of anybody’s make, that does not far exceed his two-foot, nor does his two-foot one at all exceed ours, which they don’t now pretend. And therefore the lie is all on his side, and the impossibility in his pretensions is as strong as ever, and what we have said is just truth, and his foul language no better than Billingsgate railing. But it seems because we do not treat him in his own way and decry his goods as much as he does other men’s, he has the folly to construct it as an acknowledgement that his excel. But we are so far from allowing that, that we do aver they have nothing to brag of but what they learnt of us, and Brandreth was so indifferent a workman that Marshall, who had taken him for a journeyman, was fain to turn him off. The secrets they brag of is all a falsehood, and the microscope the same that any one may have from Culpeper who is the maker. We have already told the world that we will venture any wager