Of the work from which the following extracts are made, I have elsewhere said (Rose's Biographical Dictionary, Art. BENTLEY, vol. iv. pp. 99, 102): "As a combination of profound learning and great originality, with lively wit and sound logic, it has never been paralleled. Although it came forth as an occasional and controversial work, such is the fulness with which every subject in it is discussed, that it is still used as a text-book in our Universities, and will always continue to be read, even by those who have no interest in, or acquaintance with the work to which it professes to be an answer. The name of Bentley constitutes an epoch in the history of philology. He united in one person the copious erudition of the older scholars and that peculiar felicity in verbal emendation, which is so remarkable in our modern critics, and especially in Porson. We may fairly consider him as the literary progenitor of the great and enlightened philologers of modern Germany; indeed, it would not be too much to say, that the Dissertations on Phalaris paved the way for Niebuhr's History of Rome." To these remarks, I may add that Bentley on Phalaris is still doing more than any other book, to keep up a taste for criticism in this country; and I am one of those who think that this is a great and unqualified advantage. It may be right to take this opportunity of saying a few words on the contrary opinion expressed by an Author, who has not only obtained an unmerited reputation by a series of flimsy and immoral romances, but has also undertaken to write on the history and literature of ancient Athens. This writer makes one of his heroes express the extreme of disgust, on finding a young candidate for university honours engaged in the study of Bentley's Phalaris, and seems to connect this with his general tirade against classical scholarship. I will fully admit, that if classical learning produced no better effects than the tasteless pedantry with which this novelist delights to exhibit his less than little knowledge of the dead languages, it would be well, if all philological treatises were at once committed to the oblivion, which is the certain and speedy fate of his own coarse delineations of puppies, pickpockets, and poisoners. But if it be true that philology has the highest of all vocations-that of maintaining the cause of science against fanatical delusions on the one hand, and mystical traditions on the other, we can have no fear respecting it except this,-lest it should be occasionally degraded by falling into the hands of some smatterer, who is admired as a philosophical genius by shallow politicians and moralists, and respected as a scholar by those who have never served their apprenticeship to Lexicography or Grammar.-J. W. D. AGE OF COMEDY. [Pp. 195-216, Ed. London, 1699.] IN the fifty-first Epistle to Eteonicus, there is another moral sentence: Θνητοὺς γὰρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν, ὥς φασί τινες, οὐ προσήκει “Mortal man ought not to entertain immortal anger (a)." But, I am afraid, he will have no better success with this than the former: for Aristotle, in his Rhetoric', among some other sententious verses, cites this Iambic, as commonly known: ̓Αθάνατον ὀργὴν μὴ φύλαττε, θνητὸς ὤν. This, though the author of it be not named, was probably, like most of those proverbial gnoma, borrowed from the stage; and, consequently, must be later than Phalaris, let it belong to what Poet you please, Tragic or Comic. 1 Lib. ii. cap. 21. [§ 6]. (a) Bentleius in immortali ista de Phalaridis epistolis dissertatione hæc verba, θνητοὺς γὰρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν, ὡς φασί τινες, οὐ προσήκει, ex Euripide mutua sumta existimat, cui sane hactenus assentior. Verum, quod non vidit Vir summus, non sunt ista ex Euripide imitando expressa, sed sunt ipsa Tragici verba, ita legenda : Θνητοὺς γὰρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν Duo erant, quæ, ne Viri docti hoc perviderent, facicbant. Primum, quod nesciebant ábávarov primam producere, quod apud omnes antiquos et genuinos Græciæ Poetas semper fieri præstabo, alias forsitan Brunckii et aliorum errores castigaturus. Deinde paulo minus grati sunt numeri, quam in plerisque Tragicorum senariis, non tamen omnino inusitati.-Porson, ad Eurip. Med. 139. p. 196. But, because it may be suspected that the Poet himself might take the thought from common usage, and only give it the turn and measure of a verse, let us see if we can discover some plainer footsteps of imitation, and detect the lurking sophist, under the mask of the tyrant. Stobæus gives us these verses, out of Euripides' Philoctetes: 2 Ὥσπερ δὲ θνητὸν καὶ τὸ σῶμ ̓ ἡμῶν ἔφυ, Now to him that compares these with the words of 2 Τit. xx. Περὶ ̓Οργῆς. 3 Argument. Medex Eur. (a) The paragraphs here printed in a larger type were originally part of Bentley's first Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris; which, with his remarks on the Fables of sop, was written as an appendage to Dr. Wotton's "Discourse about Ancient and Modern Learning" a work first printed A.D. 1694. It was not, however, given to the world until the publication of Boyle's Edition of Phalaris (January A.D. 1695), in the reprint of Wotton's Discourse. Boyle, jealous for the authenticity of his author, and suspecting Bentley's Dissertation to have been aimed purposely at his edition, attacked this treatise in his "Dr. Bentley's Dissertations Examined." It was in answer to this Examination that Bentley wrote the work from which our extracts are made. |