* Notwithstanding what is here stated, Wotton was treated with much more delicacy by Boyle, than was bis friend Bentley, as appears from the following quotation :

“ I hope Mr Wotton will let the publick know, that he neither engaged his friend to write upon the subject in this manner, nor approved of these discourses when written, which the world will presume him to have done, till the contrary appears, and till he has disclaimed Dr Bentley's attempt as publickly as he seems now to countenance and avow it. 'Tis a little strange, that Mr Wotton, in a second edition of his book, which he had discretely taken care to purge of most things that looked like ill manners in himself, should be prevailed upon to allow a place to the ill manners of another man.

But I hear, and I am not unwilling to think, that Mr Wotton received this present at a venture from Dr Bentley, and let it be printed without giving himself the trouble of reading it. And I the rather fall in with this account, because I find Mr Watton in his book zealously vindicating the age from the imputation of pedantry, and assuring us, that though the citation of scraps of Latin, and a nauseous ostentation of reading, were in fashion fifty or sixty years ago, yet all that is now in a great measure disused, which I suppose he would never have done in some of the last pages of his book, if he had then known of the disser tation that immediately follows it.

“A gentleman of my acquaintance was observing to me what a motley unequal work these two pieces make, as they now lie together. Mr Wotton, (says he) in his reflections, takes in the whole compass of ancient and modern learning, and endeavours to shew wherein either of 'em has been defective, and wherein they have

Desunt cætera.

excelled. A large design, fit for the pen of my Lord Bacon! and in the well executing of which, any one man's life would be usefully spent! Dr Bentley comes after him, with a dissertation half as big as his book, to prove that three or four small pieces, ascribed to some of the ancients, are not so ancient as they pretend to be; a very inconsiderable point, and which a wise man would grudge the throwing away a week's thought upon, if he could gain it! And what then shall we say of him that has spent two or three years of his life to lose it? Mr W.'s motives for writing was, as he tells us, a piece of public service that he hoped he might do the world; Dr Bentley's plainly a private pique, and such as 'twas utterly unfit for him to act upon, either as a scholar or a Christian, much more as he was one in holy orders, and that had undertaken the public defence of religion. Mr W. (continued he) is modest and decent; speaks generally with respect of those he differs from, and with a due distrust of his own opinions: Dr Bentley is positive and pert; has no regard for what other men have thought or said, and no suspicions that he is fallible. Mr W.'s book has a vein of learning running through it, where there is no ostentation of it: Dr Bentley's appendix has all the pomp and show of learning, without the reality. In truth, (said he) there is scarce any thing, as the book now stands, in which that and the appendix agree, but in commending and admiring Dr Bentley; in which they are so very much of a piece, that one would think Dr Bentley had writ both the one and the other."BOYLE'S Examination, ut supra, p. 23.

* Supposed to be Col. Hunter, for some time believed to be the author of the Letter of Enthusiasm, mentioned in the Apology for the Tale of a Tub.

This Discourse is not altogether equal to the former, the best parts of it being omitted; whether the bookseller's account be true, that he durst not print the rest, I know not; nor indeed is it easy to determine, whether he may be relied on in any thing he says of this, or the former treatises, only as to the time they were writ in; which, however, appears more from the discourses themselves than his relation.