A Faction of Wits at Oxford the concealed movers of this
Controversy--Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE'S opinions the ostensible cause;
Editions of classical Authors by young Students at Oxford the
probable one--BOYLE'S first attack in the Preface to his
"Phalaris"--BENTLEY, after a silence of three years, betrays his
feelings on the literary calumny of BOYLE--BOYLE replies by the
"Examination of Bentley's Dissertation"--BENTLEY rejoins by
enlarging it--the effects of a contradictory Narrative at a
distant time--BENTLEY'S suspicions of the origin of the
"Phalaris," and "The Examination," proved by subsequent
facts--BENTLEY'S dignity when stung at the ridicule of Dr.
KING--applies a classical pun, and nicknames his facetious and
caustic Adversary--KING invents an extraordinary Index to dissect
the character of BENTLEY--specimens of the Controversy; BOYLE'S
menace, anathema, and ludicrous humour--BENTLEY'S sarcastic reply
not inferior to that of the Wits.
The splendid controversy between BOYLE and BENTLEY was at times a
strife of gladiators, and has been regretted as the opprobrium of our
literature; but it should be perpetuated to its honour; for it may be
considered, on one side at least, as a noble contest of heroism.
The ostensible cause of the present quarrel was inconsiderable; the
concealed motive lies deeper; and the party feelings of the haughty
Aristarchus of Cambridge, and a faction of wits at Oxford, under the
secret influence of Dean Aldrich, provoked this fierce and glorious
contest.
Wit, ridicule, and invective, by cabal and stratagem, obtained a
seeming triumph over a single individual, but who, like the Farnesian
Hercules, personified the force and resistance of incomparable
strength. "The Bees of Christchurch," as this conspiracy of wits has
been called, so musical and so angry, rushed in a dark swarm about
him, but only left their fine stings in the flesh they could not
wound. He only put out his hand in contempt, never in rage. The
Christchurch men, as if doubtful whether wit could prevail against
learning, had recourse to the maliciousness of personal satire. They
amused an idle public, who could even relish sense and Greek, seasoned
as they were with wit and satire, while Boyle was showing how Bentley
wanted wit, and Bentley was proving how Boyle wanted learning.
To detect the origin of the controversy, we must find the seed-plot
of Bentley's volume in Sir William Temple's "Essay upon Ancient and
Modern Learning," which he inscribed to his alma mater, the
University of Cambridge. Sir William, who had caught the contagion
of the prevalent literary controversy of the times, in which the
finest geniuses in Europe had entered the lists, imagined that the
ancients possessed a greater force of genius, with some peculiar
advantages--that the human mind was in a state of decay--and that
our knowledge was nothing more than scattered fragments saved out of
the general shipwreck. He writes with a premeditated design to dispute
the improvements or undervalue the inventions of his own age. Wotton,
the friend of Bentley, replied by his curious volume of "Reflections
on Ancient and Modern Learning." But Sir William, in his ardour, had
thrown out an unguarded opinion, which excited the hostile contempt of
Bentley. "The oldest books," he says, "we have, are still in their
kind the best; the two most ancient that I know of, in prose, are
'AEsop's Fables' and 'Phalaris's Epistles.'"--The "Epistles," he
insists, exhibit every excellence of "a statesman, a soldier, a wit,
and a scholar." That ancient author, who Bentley afterwards asserted
was only "some dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk."
Bentley, bristled over with Greek, perhaps then considered that to
notice a vernacular and volatile writer ill assorted with the critic's
_Fastus_. But about this time Dean Aldrich had set an example to the
students of Christchurch of publishing editions of classical authors.
Such juvenile editorships served as an easy admission into the
fashionable literature of Oxford. Alsop had published the "AEsop;" and
Boyle, among other "young gentlemen," easily obtained the favour of
the dean, "to _desire_ him to undertake an edition of the 'Epistles of
Phalaris.'" Such are the modest terms Boyle employs in his reply to
Bentley, after he had discovered the unlucky choice he had made of an
author.
For this edition of "Phalaris" it was necessary to collate a MS. in
the king's library; and Bentley, about this time, had become the royal
librarian. Boyle did not apply directly to Bentley, but circuitously,
by his bookseller, with whom the doctor was not on terms. Some act of
civility, or a Mercury more "formose," to use one of his latinisms,
was probably expected. The MS. was granted, but the collator was
negligent; in six days Bentley reclaimed it, "four hours" had been
sufficient for the purpose of collation.
When Boyle's "Phalaris" appeared, he made this charge in the preface,
that having ordered the Epistles to be collated with the MS. in the
king's library, the collator was prevented perfecting the collation by
the _singular humanity_ of the library-keeper, who refused any further
use of the MS.; _pro singulari sua humanitate negavit_: an expression
that sharply hit a man marked by the haughtiness of his manners.[297]
Bentley, on this insult, informed Boyle of what had passed. He
expected that Boyle would have civilly cancelled the page; though he
tells us he did not require this, because, "to have insisted on
the cancel, might have been forcing a gentleman to too low a
submission;"--a stroke of delicacy which will surprise some to
discover in the strong character of Bentley. But he was also too
haughty to ask a favour, and too conscious of his superiority to
betray a feeling of injury. Boyle replied, that the bookseller's
account was quite different from the doctor's, who had spoken
slightingly of him. Bentley said no more.
Three years had nearly elapsed, when Bentley, in a new edition of his
friend Wotton's book, published "A Dissertation on the Epistles of the
Ancients;" where, reprehending the false criticism of Sir William
Temple, he asserted that the "Fables of AEsop" and the "Epistles of
Phalaris" were alike spurious. The blow was levelled at Christchurch,
and all "the bees" were brushed down in the warmth of their
summer-day.
It is remarkable that Bentley kept so long a silence; indeed, he had
considered the affair so trivial, that he had preserved no part of the
correspondence with Boyle, whom no doubt he slighted as the young
editor of a spurious author. But Boyle's edition came forth, as
Bentley expresses it, "with a sting in its mouth." This, at first,
was like a cut finger--he breathed on it, and would have forgotten it;
but the nerve was touched, and the pain raged long after the stroke.
Even the great mind of Bentley began to shrink at the touch of
literary calumny, so different from the vulgar kind, in its extent and
its duration. He betrays the soreness he would wish to conceal, when
he complains that "the false story has been spread all over England."
The statement of Bentley produced, in reply, the famous book of
Boyle's "Examination of Bentley's Dissertation." It opens with an
imposing narrative, highly polished, of the whole transaction, with the
extraordinary furniture of documents, which had never before entered
into a literary controversy--depositions--certificates--affidavits--and
private letters. Bentley now rejoined by his enlarged "Dissertation on
Phalaris," a volume of perpetual value to the lovers of ancient
literature, and the memorable preface of which, itself a volume,
exhibits another Narrative, entirely differing from Boyle's. These
produced new replies and new rejoinders. The whole controversy became
so perplexed, that it has frightened away all who have attempted to
adjust the particulars. With unanimous consent they give up the
cause, as one in which both parties studied only to contradict each
other. Such was the fate of a Narrative, which was made out of the
recollections of the parties, with all their passions at work, after
an interval of three years. In each, the memory seemed only retentive
of those passages which best suited their own purpose, and which were
precisely those the other party was most likely to have forgotten.
What was forgotten, was denied; what was admitted, was made to refer to
something else; dialogues were given which appear never to have been
spoken; and incidents described which are declared never to have taken
place; and all this, perhaps, without any purposed violation of
truth. Such were the dangers and misunderstandings which attended a
Narrative framed out of the broken or passionate recollections of the
parties on the watch to confound one another.[298]
Bentley's Narrative is a most vigorous production: it heaves with the
workings of a master-spirit; still reasoning with such force, and
still applying with such happiness the stores of his copious
literature, had it not been for this literary quarrel, the mere
English reader had lost this single opportunity of surveying that
commanding intellect.
Boyle's edition of "Phalaris" was a work of parade, designed to confer
on a young man, who bore an eminent name, some distinction in the
literary world. But Bentley seems to have been well-informed of the
secret transactions at Christchurch. In his first attack he mentions
Boyle as "the young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the
edition;" and asserts that the editor, no more than his own
"Phalaris," has written what was ascribed to him. He persists in
making a plurality of a pretended unity, by multiplying Boyle into a
variety of little personages, of "new editors," our "annotators," our
"great geniuses."[299] Boyle, touched at these reflections, declared
"they were levelled at a learned society, in which I had the happiness
to be educated; as if 'Phalaris' had been made up by contributions
from several hands." Pressed by Bentley to acknowledge the assistance
of Dr. John Freind, Boyle confers on him the ambiguous title of "The
Director of Studies." Bentley links the Bees together--Dr. Freind and
Dr. Alsop. "The Director of Studies, who has lately set out Ovid's
'Metamorphoses,' with a paraphrase and notes, is of the same size for
learning with the late editor of the AEsopian Fables. They bring the
nation into contempt abroad, and themselves into it at home;" and adds
to this magisterial style, the mortification of his criticism on
Freind's Ovid, as on Alsop's AEsop.
But Boyle assuming the honours of an edition of "Phalaris," was but a
venial offence, compared with that committed by the celebrated volume
published in its defence.
If Bentley's suspicions were not far from the truth, that "the
'Phalaris' had been _made up by contributions_," they approached still
closer when they attacked "The Examination of his Dissertation." Such
was the assistance which Boyle received from all "the Bees," that
scarcely a few ears of that rich sheaf fall to his portion. His
efforts hardly reach to the mere narrative of his transactions with
Bentley. All the varied erudition, all the Attic graces, all the
inexhaustible wit, are claimed by others; so that Boyle was not
materially concerned either in his "Phalaris," or in the more
memorable work.[300]
The Christchurch party now formed a literary conspiracy against the
great critic; and as treason is infectious when the faction is strong,
they were secretly engaging new associates; Whenever any of the party
published anything themselves, they had sworn to have always "a fling
at Bentley," and intrigued with their friends to do the same.
They procured Keil, the professor of astronomy, in so grave a work as
"The Theory of the Earth," to have a fling at Bentley's boasted
sagacity in conjectural criticism. Wotton, in a dignified reproof,
administered a spirited correction to the party-spirit; while his love
of science induced him generously to commend Keil, and intimate the
advantages the world may derive from his studies, "as he grows older."
Even Garth and Pope struck in with the alliance, and condescended to
pour out rhymes more lasting than even the prose of "the Bees."
But of all the rabid wits who, fastening on their prey, never drew
their fangs from the noble animal, the facetious Dr. King seems to
have been the only one who excited Bentley's anger. Persevering
malice, in the teasing shape of caustic banter, seems to have affected
the spirit even of Bentley.
At one of those conferences which passed between Bentley and the
bookseller, King happened to be present; and being called on by Boyle
to bear his part in the drama, he performed it quite to the taste of
"the Bees." He addressed a letter to Dean Aldrich, in which he gave
one particular: and, to make up a sufficient dose, dropped some
corrosives. He closes his letter thus:--"That scorn and contempt which
I have naturally for pride and insolence, makes me remember that which
otherwise I might have forgotten." Nothing touched Bentley more to the
quick than reflections on "his pride and insolence." Our defects seem
to lose much of their character, in reference to ourselves, by habit
and natural disposition; yet we have always a painful suspicion of
their existence; and he who touches them with no tenderness is never
pardoned. The invective of King had all the bitterness of truth.
Bentley applied a line from Horace; which showed that both Horace and
Bentley could pun in anger:--
Proscripti _Regis Rupili_ pus atque venenum.[301]--_Sat._ i. 7.
The filth and venom of _Rupilius King_.
The particular incident which King imperfectly recollected, made
afterwards much noise among the wits, for giving them a new notion of
the nature of ancient MSS. King relates that Dr. Bentley said--"If the
MS. were collated, it would be worth nothing for the future." Bentley,
to mortify the pertness of the bookseller, who would not send his
publications to the Royal Library, had said that he ought to do
so, were it but to make amends for the damage the MS. would sustain
by his printing the various readings; "for," added Bentley, "after
the various lections were once taken and printed, _the MS. would
be like a squeezed orange, and little worth for the future_." This
familiar comparison of a MS. with a squeezed orange provoked the
epigrammatists. Bentley, in retorting on King, adds some curious facts
concerning the fate of MSS. after they have been printed; but is
aware, he says, of what little relish or sense the Doctor has of MSS.,
who is better skilled in "the catalogue of ales, his Humty-Dumty,
Hugmatee, Three-threads, and the rest of that glorious list, than
in the catalogue of MSS." King, in his banter on Dr. Lister's
journey to Paris, had given a list of these English beverages. It
was well known that he was in too constant an intercourse with them
all. Bentley nicknames King through the progress of his Controversy,
for his tavern-pleasures, Humty-Dumty, and accuses him of writing more
in a tavern than in a study. He little knew the injustice of his
charge against a student who had written notes on 22,000 books and
MSS.; but they were not Greek ones.
All this was not done with impunity. An irritated wit only finds
his adversary cutting out work for him. A second letter, more
abundant with the same pungent qualities, fell on the head of
Bentley. King says of the arch-critic--"He thinks meanly, I find,
of my reading; yet for all that, I dare say I have read more than any
man in England besides _him_ and _me_; for I have read his book all
over."[302] Nor was this all; "Humty-Dumty" published eleven
"Dialogues of the Dead," supposed to be written by a student at
Padua, concerning "one Bentivoglio, a very troublesome critic in the
world;" where, under the character of "Signior Moderno," Wotton
falls into his place. Whether these dialogues mortified Bentley, I
know not: they ought to have afforded him very high amusement. But
when a man is at once tickled and pinched, the operation requires
a gentler temper 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 further,
than their own;" and, in the imperious style of Festus, add:--"Since
Dr. Bentley has appealed to foreign universities, to foreign
universities he must go." Yet this is light, compared with the odium
they would raise against him by the menace of the resentments of a
whole society of learned men.
"_Single adversaries_ die and drop off; but _societies_ are immortal:
their resentments are sometimes delivered down from hand to hand; and
when once they have begun with a man, there is no knowing when they
will leave him."
In reply to this literary anathema, Bentley was furnished, by his
familiarity with his favourite authors, with a fortunate application
of a term, derived from Phalaris himself. Cicero had conveyed his idea
of Caesar's cruelty by this term, which he invented from the very name
of the tyrant.[304]
"There is a certain temper of mind that Cicero calls _Phalarism_; a
spirit like Phalaris's. One would be apt to imagine that a portion of
it had descended upon some of his translators. The gentleman has given
a broad hint more than once in his book, that if I proceed further
against Phalaris, I may draw, perhaps, a duel, or a stab upon myself;
a generous threat to a divine, who neither carries arms nor principles
fit for that sort of controversy. I expected such usage from the
spirit of Phalarism."
In this controversy, the amusing fancy of "the Bees" could not pass by
Phalaris without contriving to make some use of that brazen bull by
which he tortured men alive. Not satisfied in their motto, from the
Earl of Roscommon, with wedging "the great critic, like Milo, in the
timber he strove to rend," they gave him a second death in their
finis, by throwing Bentley into Phalaris's bull, and flattering their
vain imaginations that they heard him "bellow."
"He has defied Phalaris, and used him very coarsely, under the
assurance, as he tells us, that 'he is out of his reach.' Many of
Phalaris's enemies thought the same thing, and repented of their vain
confidence afterwards in his _bull_. Dr. Bentley is perhaps, by this
time, or will be suddenly, satisfied that he also has presumed a
little too much upon his distance; but it will be too late to repent
when he begins to bellow."[305]
Bentley, although the solid force of his mind was not favourable to
the lighter sports of wit, yet was not quite destitute of those airy
qualities; nor does he seem insensible to the literary merits of "that
odd work," as he 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 satirists. There
Bentley's great qualities are represented as "tall, without shape or
comeliness; large, without strength or proportion." His various
erudition, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;" his
book, as "the sound" of that armour, "loud and dry, like that made by
the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple;" his
haughty intrepidity, as "a vizor of brass, tainted by his breath,
corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain; so
that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of
most malignant nature was seen to distil from his lips." Wotton is
"heavy-armed and slow of foot, lagging behind." They perish together
in one ludicrous death. Boyle, in his celestial armour, by a stroke of
his weapon, transfixes both "the lovers," "as a cook trusses a brace
of woodcocks, with iron skewer piercing the tender sides of both.
Joined in their lives, joined in their death, so closely joined, that
Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for
half his fare." Such is the candour of wit! The great qualities of an
adversary, as in Bentley, are distorted into disgraceful attitudes;
while the suspicious virtues of a friend, as in Boyle, not passed over
in prudent silence, are ornamented with even spurious panegyric.