only_ touches my
learning. This will give me _no concern_, though it may put me
to some little trouble. I shall enter upon this with _the
indifference of a gamester who plays but for a trifle_." On
this affected indifference, Bentley keenly observes:--"This
was entering on his work a little ominously; for a gamester
who plays with indifference never plays his game well. Besides
that, by this odd comparison, he seems to give warning, and is
as good as his word, that he will put the dice upon his
readers as often as he can. But what is worse than all, this
comparison puts one in mind of a general rumour, that there's
another set of gamesters who _play him_ in his dispute while
themselves are safe behind the curtain."--BENTLEY'S
_Dissertation on Phalaris_, p. 2.

[300] Rumours and conjectures are the lot of contemporaries; truth
seems reserved only for posterity; and, like the fabled
Minerva, she is born of age at once. The secret history of
this volume, which partially appeared, has been more
particularly opened in one of Warburton's letters, who
received it from Pope, who had been "let into the secret."
Boyle wrote the Narrative, "which, too, was corrected for
him." Freind, who wrote the entire Dissertation on AEsop in
that volume, wrote also, with Atterbury, the body of the
Criticisms; King, the droll argument, proving that Bentley was
not the author of his own Dissertation, and the extraordinary
index which I shall shortly notice. In Atterbury's "Epistolary
Correspondence" is a letter, where, with equal anger and
dignity, Atterbury avows his having written _about half, and
planned the whole_ of Boyle's attack upon Bentley! With these
facts before us, can we read without surprise, if not without
indignation, the passage I shall now quote from the book to
which the name of Boyle is prefixed. In raising an artful
charge against Bentley, of appropriating to himself some MS.
notes of Sir Edward Sherburn, Boyle, replying to the argument
of Bentley, that "Phalaris" was the work of some sophist,
says:--"The sophists are everywhere pelted by Dr. Bentley, for
putting out what they wrote in other men's names; but I did
not expect to hear so lou