have not leisure to defeat them, their readers had need be cautious how they rely upon their credit; and whether this proceeding can be reconciled to humanity or truth, let those, who think it worth their while, determine.
It is agreed, this answerer would have succeeded much better, if he had stuck wholly to his business, as a commentator upon the Tale of a Tub, wherein it cannot be denied that he hath been of some service to the Publick, and hath given very fair conjectures towards clearing up some difficult passages; but, it is the frequent errour of those men (otherwise very commendable for their labours) to make excursions beyond their talent and their office, by pretending to point out the beauties and the faults; which is no part of their trade, which they always fail in, which the world never expected from them, nor gave them any thanks for endeavouring at. The part of Minellius, or Farnaby[1], would have fallen in with his genius, and might have been serviceable to many readers, who cannot enter into the abstruser parts of that discourse; but optat ephippia bos piger: the dull, unwieldy, ill-shaped ox, would needs put on the furniture of a horse, not considering he was born to labour, to plow the ground for the sake of superiour beings, and that he has neither the shape, mettle, nor speed of that noble animal he would affect to personate.
It is another pattern of this answerer's fair dealing, to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet to lay the suspicion upon somebody, I know not who, in the country; to which can only be returned, that
- ↑ Low commentators, who wrote notes upon classic authors for the use of schoolboys.
