So diamonds take a lustre from their foil, John Milner, formerly Vicar of Leeds, had, as a nonjuror, lost his preferments at the Revolution, and was then living at St John's College, Cambridge. In his 'View of the Dissertation' (1698) he proposes 'to manifest the incertitude of heathen chronology,' and takes part against Bentley. According to Eustace Budgell, a caricature was published at Cambridge, in which Phalaris was consigning Bentley to the bull, while the Doctor exclaimed, 'I would rather be roasted than boyled.' Rymer, in his 'Essay on Critical and Curious Learning' (1698), blames both parties. As to the question at issue, he argues that 'curious' learning is all very well in its way, but should not be carried too far. On Boyle's critique Rymer makes a shrewd remark: 'There is such a profusion of wit all along, and such variety of points and raillery, that every man seems to have thrown in a repartee or so in his turn.' Mr Cole (of Magdalen College, Oxford) compared it to 'a Cheddar cheese, made of all the milk of the parish.' In short, 'society' had declared against Bentley, and the men of letters almost unanimously agreed with it. While other acquaintances were turning their backs, Evelyn stood loyal. That was the state of things in 1698. Bentley remained calm. A friend who met him one day urged him not to lose heart. 'Indeed,' he replied, 'I am in no pain about the matter; for it is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself.' Meanwhile he was preparing a reply. CHAPTER V. BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION. WE have seen that Bentley's essay in Wotton's book had been a hasty production. 'I drew up that dissertation,' he says, 'in the spare hours of a few weeks; and while the Printer was employed about one leaf, the other was amaking.' He now set to work to revise and enlarge it. He began his task about March, 1698-soon after Boyle's pamphlet appeared--but was interrupted in it by the two months of his residence at Worcester, from the end of May to the end of July. It was finished towards the close of 1698. The time employed upon it had thus been about seven and a half months, not free from other and urgent duties. It was published early in 1699. Let us clearly apprehend the point at issue. Boyle did not assert that the Letters of Phalaris were genuine; but he denied that Bentley had yet proved them to be spurious. After a detailed refutation of the personal charges against him, Bentley comes to the Letters of Phalaris. First he takes the flagrant anachronisms. The Letters mention towns which, at the supposed date, were not built, or bore other names. Phalaris presents his physician with the ware of a potter named Thericles,—much as if Oliver Cromwell were found dispensing the masterpieces of Wedgwood. Phalaris quotes books which had not. been written; nay, he is familiar with forms of literature which had not been created. Though a Dorian, he writes to his familiar friends in Attic, and in a species of false Attic which did not exist for five centuries after he was dead. Farmer of the taxes though he had been, he has no idea of values in the ordinary currency of his own country. Thus he complains that the hostile community of Catana had made a successful raid on his principality, and had robbed him of no less a sum than seven talents. Again he mentions with some complacency that he has bestowed the munificent dower of five talents on a lady of distinction. According to the Sicilian standard, the loss of the prince would have amounted to twelve shillings and seven pence, while the noble bride would have received nine shillings. The occasions of the letters, too, are often singular. A Syracusan sends his brother to Akragas, a distance of a hundred miles, with a request that Phalaris would send a messenger to Stesichorus (another hundred miles or so), and beg that poet to write a copy of verses on the Syracusan's deceased wife. 'This,' says Bentley, 'is a scene of putid and senseless formality.' Then Phalaris (who brags in one of the letters that Pythagoras had stayed five months with him) says to Stesichorus, 'pray do not mention me in your poems.' 'This,' says Bentley, 'was a sly fetch of our sophist, to prevent so shrewd an objection from Stesichorus's silence as to any friendship at all with him.' But supposing Phalaris had really been so modestBentley adds,-still, Stesichorus was a man of the world. The poet would have known that those sort of requests are but a modest simulation, and a disobedience would J. B. F have been easily pardoned.' Again, these Letters are not mentioned by any writer before the fifth century of our era, and it is clear that the ancients did not know them. Thus, in the Letters, Phalaris displays the greatest solicitude for the education of his son Paurolas, and writes to the young man in terms which would do credit to the best of fathers. But in Aristotle's time there was a tradition which placed the parental conduct of Phalaris in another light. It alleged, in fact, that, while this boy was still of a tender age, the prince had caused him to be served up at table: but how, asks Bentley,supposing the Letters to be genuine-'could he eat his son while he was an infant?' It is true, the works of some writers in the early Christian centuries (Phædrus, Paterculus, Lactantius) are not mentioned till long after their death. But the interval was one during which the Western world was lapsing into barbarism. The supposed epoch of Phalaris was followed by 'the greatest and longest reign of learning that the world has yet seen :' and yet his Letters remain hidden for a thousand years. 'Take them in the whole bulk, they are a fardle of commonplaces, without any life or spirit from action and circumstance. Do but cast your eye upon Cicero's letters, or any statesman's, as Phalaris was; what lively characters of men there! what descriptions of place! what notifications of time! what particularity of circumstances! what multiplicity of designs and events! When you return to these again, you feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk; not with an active, ambitious tyrant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of subjects.' Bentley's incidental discussions of several topics are so I many concise monographs, each complete in itself, each exhaustive within its own limits, and each, at the same time, filling its due place in the economy of the whole. Such are the essays on the age of Pythagoras, on the beginnings of Greek Tragedy, on anapastic verse, on the coinage of Sicily. In the last-named subject, it might have appeared almost impossible that a writer of Bentley's time should have made any near approximation to correctness. He had not such material aids as are afforded by the Sicilian coins which we now possess,without which the statements of ancient writers would appear involved in hopeless contradiction. I am glad, therefore, to quote an estimate of Bentley's work in this department by a master of numismatic science. Mr Barclay Head writes:-'Speaking generally, Bentley's results are surprisingly accurate. think I may safely say that putting aside what was to have been done within the last fifty years, Bentley's essay stands alone. Even Eckhel, in his 'Doctrina numorum' (1790), has nothing to compare with it.' Again, Bentley's range and grasp of knowledge are strikingly seen in critical remarks of general bearing which are drawn from him by the course of the discussion. Thus at the outset he gives in a few words a broad view of the origin and growth of literary forgery in the ancient world. In the last two centuries before Christ, when there was a keen rivalry between the libraries of Pergamus and Alexandria, the copiers of manuscripts began the practice of inscribing them with the names of great writers, in order that they might fetch higher prices. Thus far, the motive of falsification was simply mercenary. But presently a different cause began to swell the number of spurious works. It was a favourite exercise of rhetoric, in the |