pilius King_.

The particular incident which King imperfectly recollected, made
afterwards much noise among the wits, for giving them a new notion of
the nature of ancient MSS. King relates that Dr. Bentley said--"If the
MS. were collated, it would be worth nothing for the future." Bentley,
to mortify the pertness of the bookseller, who would not send his
publications to the Royal Library, had said that he ought to do
so, were it but to make amends for the damage the MS. would sustain
by his printing the various readings; "for," added Bentley, "after
the various lections were once taken and printed, _the MS. would
be like a squeezed orange, and little worth for the future_." This
familiar comparison of a MS. with a squeezed orange provoked the
epigrammatists. Bentley, in retorting on King, adds some curious facts
concerning the fate of MSS. after they have been printed; but is
aware, he says, of what little relish or sense the Doctor has of MSS.,
who is better skilled in "the catalogue of ales, his Humty-Dumty,
Hugmatee, Three-threads, and the rest of that glorious list, than
in the catalogue of MSS." King, in his banter on Dr. Lister's
journey to Paris, had given a list of these English beverages. It
was well known that he was in too constant an intercourse with them
all. Bentley nicknames King through the progress of his Controversy,
for his tavern-pleasures, Humty-Dumty, and accuses him of writing more
in a tavern than in a study. He little knew the injustice of his
charge against a student who had written notes on 22,000 books and
MSS.; but they were not Greek ones.

All this was not done with impunity. An irritated wit only finds
his adversary cutting out work for him. A second letter, more
abundant with the same pungent qualities, fell on the head of
Bentley. King says of the arch-critic--"He thinks meanly, I find,
of my reading; yet for all that, I dare say I have read more than any
man in England besides _him_ and _me_; for I have read his book all
over."[302] Nor was this all; "Humty-Dumty" published eleven
"Dialogues of the Dead," supposed to be written by a student at
Padua, concerning "one Bentivoglio, a very troublesome critic in the
world;" where, under the character of "Signior Moderno," Wotton
falls into his place. Whether these dialogues mortified Bentley, I
know not: they ought to have afforded him very high amusement. But
when a man is at once tickled and pinched, the operation requires
a gentler t