emper than Bentley's. "Humty-Dumty," indeed, had Bentley
too often before him. There was something like inveteracy in his wit;
but he who invented the remarkable index to Boyle's book, must have
closely studied Bentley's character. He has given it with all its
protuberant individuality.[303]

Bentley, with his peculiar idiom, had censured "all the stiffness and
stateliness, and operoseness of style, quite alien from the character
of 'Phalaris,' a man of business and despatch." Boyle keenly turns his
own words on Bentley. "_Stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of
style_, is indeed quite _alien from the character of a man of
business_; and being but a _library-keeper_, it is not over-modestly
done, to oppose his judgment and taste to that of Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE,
who knows more of these things than Dr. Bentley does of Hesychius and
Suidas. Sir William Temple has spent a good part of his life in
transacting affairs of state: he has written to kings, and they to
him; and this has qualified him to judge how kings should write, much
better than the _library-keeper at St. James's_."--This may serve as a
specimen of the Attic style of the controversy. Hard words sometimes
passed. Boyle complains of some of the _similes_ which Bentley
employs, more significant than elegant. For the new readings of
"Phalaris," "he likens me to a bungling tinker mending old kettles."
Correcting the faults of the version, he says, "The first epistle cost
me four pages in scouring;" and, "by the help of a Greek proverb, he
calls me downright ass." But while Boyle complains of these
sprinklings of ink, he himself contributes to Bentley's "Collection of
Asinine Proverbs," and "throws him in one out of Aristophanes," of "an
ass carrying mysteries:" "a proverb," says Erasmus, (as 'the Bees'
construe him.) "applied to those who were preferred to some place they
did not deserve, as when a _dunce_ was made a _library-keeper_."

Some ambiguous threats are scattered in the volume, while others are
more intelligible. When Bentley, in his own defence, had referred to
the opinions which some learned foreigners entertained of him--they
attribute these to "the foreigners, because they are foreigners--we,
that have the happiness of a nearer conversation with him, know him
better; and we may perhaps take an opportunity of setting these
mistaken strangers right in their opinions." They threaten him with
his character, "in a tongue that will last longer, and go