This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had
done, on the "Eclipse;" did not summarily pronounce a broad sentence
without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination
and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of
the "Eclipse" has instituted between his use of ridicule and that
of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules,
_first_, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with
calumny; _secondly_, not to wound them needlessly. "Neglect of the
first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its
"Defence"] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the
second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their
author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations,
interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to
subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply,
while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of
faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence
of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while
in appearance citing _verbatim_;... and that he habitually employs
a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself
have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the
fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as
reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must
have deluded Zeuxis who painted them."
So grave an accusation against my assailant's truthfulness, coming not
from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew
well what he was saying and why,--could not be passed over unnoticed,
although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued
to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a
thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In
the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend
himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed
pages, the "Defence" itself being 218. The "Eclipse," in its 9th
edition of small print, is 393 pages. And how does he set about his
reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was
notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin,
irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third
article: He says (p. 221):--
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