calls Boyle's volume, which he conveys a very good
notion of:--"If his book shall happen to be preserved anywhere as an
useful commonplace book for ridicule, banter, and all the topics of
calumny." With equal dignity and sense he observes on the ridicule so
freely used by both parties--"I am content that what is the greatest
virtue of his book should be counted the greatest fault of mine."

His reply to "Milo's fate," and the tortures he was supposed to pass
through when thrown into Phalaris's bull, is a piece of sarcastic
humour which will not suffer by comparison with the volume more
celebrated for its wit.

"The facetious examiner seems resolved to vie with Phalaris himself in
the science of _Phalarism_; for his revenge is not satisfied with one
single death of his adversary, but he will kill me over and over
again. He has slain me twice by two several deaths! one, in the first
page of his book; and another, in the last. In the title-page I die
the death of Milo, the Crotonian:--

----Remember Milo's end,
Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend.

"The application of which must be this:--That as Milo, after his
victories at six several Olympiads, was at last conquered and
destroyed in wrestling with a _tree_, so I, after I had attained to
some small reputation in letters, am to be quite baffled and run down
by _wooden antagonists_. But in the end of his book he has got me into
Phalaris's bull, and he has the pleasure of fancying that he hears me
_begin to bellow_. Well, since it is certain that I am in the bull, I
have performed the part of a sufferer. For as the cries of the
tormented in old Phalaris's bull, being conveyed through pipes lodged
in the machine, were turned into music for the entertainment of the
tyrant, so the complaints which my torments express from me, being
conveyed to Mr. Boyle by this answer, are all dedicated to his
pleasure and diversion. But yet, methinks, when he was setting up to
be _Phalaris junior_, the very omen of it might have deterred him. As
the old tyrant himself at last bellowed in his own bull, his imitators
ought to consider that at long run their own actions may chance to
overtake them."--p. 43.

Wit, however, enjoyed the temporary triumph; not but that some, in
that day, loudly protested against the award.[306] "The Episode of
Bentley and Wotton," in "The Battle of the Books," is conceived with
all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose sa