lay them aside and be ashamed: but he has now given over those thoughts, since the weightiest men* in the weightiest stations, are pleased to think it a more dangerous point to laugh at those corruptions in religion, which they themselves must disapprove, than to endeavour pulling up those very foundations, wherein all Christians have agreed.

He thinks it no fair proceeding, that any person should offer determinately to fix a name upon the author of this discourse, who hath all along concealed himself from most of his nearest friends: yet several have gone a farther step, and pronounced another book+ to have been the work of the same hand with this: which the author directly affirms to be a thorough mistake; he having yet never so much as read that discourse: a plain instance how little truth there often is in general surmises, or in conjectures. drawn from a similitude of stile, or way of thinking.

Had the author written a book to expose the abuses in law, or in physick, he believes the learned professors in either faculty, would have been so far from resenting it, as to have given

* Alluding to Dr. Sharp, the Archbishop of York's representation of the author. Hawkesworth.

↑ Letter concerning Enthusiasm.

ever envenomed the mouths may be that discharge them? He hath seen the productions but of two answerers, one of which at first appeared as from an unknown hand, but since avowed by a person, who, upon some occasions, hath discovered no ill vein of humour. "Tis a pity any occasion should put him under a necessity of being so hasty in his productions, which otherwise might often be entertaining. But there were other reasons obvious enough for his miscarriage in this; he writ against the conviction of his talent, and entered upon one of the wrongest attempts in nature, to turn into ridicule by a week's labour, a work which had cost so much time, and met with so much success in ridiculing others: the manner how he handled his subject, I have now forgot, having just looked it over when it first came out, as others did, merely for the sake of the title.+

of

The other answer is from a person a graver character, and is made up of half invective, and

Supposed to be Dr. William King, the civilian, author of an Account of Denmark, a Dissertation on Samplars, and other pieces of burlesque on the Royal Society, and the Art of Cookery, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, &c. Hawkes.

+ This we cannot recover at present; it being so absolutely forgotten; the oldest booksellers in trade remember nothing of it. Hawkes.

half annotation.*

In the latter of which he

hath generally succeeded well enough. And the project at that time was not amiss, to draw in readers to his pamphlet, several having appeared desirous that there might be some explication of the more difficult passages. Neither can he be altogether blamed for offering at the invec tive part, because it is agreed on all hands that the author had given him a sufficient provoca tion. The great objection is against his manner of treating it, very unsuitable to one of his function. It was determined by a fair majority, that this answerer had, in a way not to be par doned, drawn his pen against a certain great man then alive, and universally reverenced for every good quality that could possibly enter into the composition of the most accomplished person: it was observed, how he was pleased and affected to have that noble writer called his adversary, and it was a point of satire well directed; for I have been told, Sir W. Temple was suffi

* Wotton's Defence of his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning. From the annotations, are selected the notes, signed W. Wotton. Thus, Wotton appears busied to illustrate a work which he laboured to condemn, and adds force to a satire pointed against himself: as captives were bound to the chariot-wheel of the victor, and compelled to increase the pomp of his triumph, whom they had in vain attempted to defeat. Hawkes.

ciently mortified at the term.

All the men of

wit and politeness were immediately up in arms, through indignation, which prevailed over their contempt, by the consequences they apprehended from such an example, and it grew to be Porsenna's case; idem trecenti juravimus. In short, things were ripe for a general insurrec tion, till my Lord Orrery had a little laid the spirit, and settled the ferment. But his lordship being principally engaged with another antagonist*, it was thought necessary, in order to quiet the minds of men, that this opposer should receive a reprimand, which partly occasioned that discourse of the Battle of the Books, and the author was farther at the pains to insert one or two remarks on him in the body of the book.

This answer has been pleased to find fault with about a dozen passages, which the author will not be at the trouble of defending, farther than by assuring the reader, that for the greater part the reflecter is entirely mistaken, and forces interpretations which never once entered into the writer's head, nor will, he is sure, into that of any reader of taste and candour; he allows two or three at most there produced, to have been delivered unwarily, for which he desires to plead

Bentley, concerning Phalaris and Esop. Hawkes.

the excuse offered already, of his youth, and frankness of speech, and his papers being out of his power at the time they were published.

But this answerer insists, and says, what he chiefly dislikes, is the design; what that was, I have already told, and I believe there is not a person in England who can understand that book, that ever imagined it to have been any thing else, but to expose the abuses and corruptions in learning and religion.

But it would be good to know what design this reflecter was serving, when he concludes his pamphlet by a caution to readers, to beware of thinking the author's wit was entirely his own: surely this must have had some alley of personal animosity, at least mixt with the design of serving the public by so useful a discovery; and it indeed touches the author in a very tender point, who insists upon it, that through the whole book he has not borrowed one single hint from any writer in the world; and he thought, of all criticisms, that would never have been one. He conceived it was never disputed to be an original, whatever faults it might have. However this answerer produces three instances to prove this author's wit is not his own in many places. The first is, that the names of Peter, Martin and Jack, are borrowed from a letter of the late