tuating follies; completed the works
of the two bishops in utter spite; and in "Tracts by Warburton and a
Warburtonian," has furnished posterity with a specimen of the force of
his own "vernacular" style, giving a lesson to the wary bishop, who
had scarcely wanted one all his life--of the dangers of an unlucky
epithet!

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the author of the "Life of Cicero," seldom
wrote but out of pique; and he probably owed his origin as an author
to a circumstance of this nature. Middleton when young was a
_Dilettante_ in music; and Dr. Bentley, in contempt, applied the
epithet "fiddling Conyers." Had the irascible Middleton broken his
violin about the head of the learned Grecian, and thus terminated the
quarrel, the epithet had then cost Bentley's honour much less than it
afterwards did. It seems to have excited Middleton to deeper studies,
which the great Bentley not long after felt when he published
proposals for an edition of the New Testament in Greek. Middleton
published his "Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, upon the proposals,"
to show that Bentley had neither talents nor materials proper for the
work. This opened a great paper-war, and again our rabid wolf fastened
on the majestic lion, "paragraph by paragraph." And though the lion
did affect to bear in contempt the fangs of his little active enemy,
the flesh was torn. "The proposals" sunk before the "paragraph by
paragraph," and no edition of the Greek Testament by Bentley ever
appeared. Bentley's proposals at first had met with the greatest
success; the subscription-money amounted to two thousand pounds, and
it was known that his nephew had been employed by him to travel abroad
to collect these MSS. He declared he would make use of no MS. that was
not a thousand years old, or above; of which sort he had collected
twenty, so that they made up a total of twenty thousand years. He was
four years studying them before he issued his proposals. The Doctor
rested most on eight Greek MSS., the most recent of which was one
thousand years old. All this wore a very imposing appearance. At a
touch the whole magnificent edifice fell to pieces! Middleton says,
"His twenty old MSS. shrink at once to eight, and he is forced again
to own that even of these eight there are only four which had not been
used by Dr. Mill;" and these Middleton, by his sarcastic reasoning, at
last reduces to "some pieces only of the New Testament in MS." So that
twenty MSS. and their twenty th