true. But Bohun has so artfully
interwoven his historical patches of misrepresentations, surmises, and
fictions, that he succeeded in framing an historical libel.

Not satisfied with this vile tissue, in his own obscure volume, seven
years afterwards, being the editor of a work of high reputation,
Nathaniel Bacon's "Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and
Government of England," he further satiated his frenzy by contriving
to preserve his libel in a work which he was aware would outlive his
own.

Whence all this persevering malignity? Why this quarrel of Mr. Bohun,
of the Middle Temple, with the long-departed William of Wykeham?

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

He took all these obscure pains, and was moved with this perpetual
rancour against William of Wykeham, merely to mortify the Wykehamists;
and slandered their founder, with the idea that the odium might be
reflected on New College. Bohun, it seems, had a quarrel with them
concerning a lease on which he had advanced money; but the holder had
contrived to assign it to the well-known Eustace Budgell: the college
confirmed the assignment. At an interview before the warden, high
words had arisen between the parties: the warden withdrew, and the wit
gradually shoved the antiquary off the end of the bench on which they
were sitting: a blow was struck, and a cane broken. Bohun brought an
action, and the Wykehamites travelled down to give bail at Westminster
Hall, where the legal quarrel was dropped, and the literary one then
began. Who could have imagined that the venerable bishop and
chancellor of Edward III. was to be involved in a wretched squabble
about a lease with an antiquary and a wit? "Fancying," says Bishop
Lowth, "he could inflict on the Society of New College a blow which
would affect them more sensibly by wounding the reputation of their
founder, he set himself to collect everything he could meet with that
was capable of being represented to his discredit, and to improve it
with new and horrible calumnies of his own invention." Thus originated
this defamatory attack on the character of William of Wykeham! And by
arts which active writers may practise, and innocent readers cannot
easily suspect, a work of the highest reputation, like that of
Nathaniel Bacon's, may be converted into a vehicle of personal
malignity, while the author himself disguises his real purpose under
the specious appearance of literature! The present case, it must