MR. FINCH'S QUOTATION FROM WHEWELL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I am sufficiently sensitive to the critical acumen of the Spectator to desire to be allowed to vindicate myself from the im- putation of bad scholarship conveyed by your otherwise considerate notice last Saturday of my "Discourse on the Inductive Philo- sophy."
I cannot defend, as a translation from Cicero, the passage to which you have taken exception ; but I can say, "Non meus hic sermo," for I adopted the expression from a lecture by the late Dr. Whewell, to which I was careful to refer in a note ; as, in another note, I gave the ipsissima verba of Cicero (quoted by you), in order that the critical reader might revise for himself the textual version of my spoken discourse. Dr. Whewell's words are these :—" Cicero says proudly, but not too proudly, that a single page of a Roman jurist con- tained more solid and exact matter than a whole library of Greek philosophers."
As a rhetorical paraphrase suited Dr. Whewell's purpose (in an oral address), so it suited mine, and I trust you will not set me down as incorrigible if I say that, on this occasion, " malo cum Platone errare, quam recte sentire "—with the Spectator.—I am,
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