Doric Greek; to use a form of Attic that did not exist until hundreds of years after his death; to speak of the Sicilian talent (worth 1s. 10d. ) as though it had been the Attic talent (worth £180); and to write in a style that might well come from a rhetorician but could not possibly belong to a tyrant.
He then passes to a word with the editors of the new edition and tells his story of the withdrawal of the MS.[1] The rest of the book is concerned with the other spurious Epistles mentioned in the title.
Throughout the Dissertation Bentley assumes that the edition of Phalaris is not the work of Boyle, but the work of his tutors: he speaks, not of 'the Editor' but of 'the Editors.' Bentley wrote his Dissertation in English, though replying to a Latin book, (as well, of course, as to Temple's Essay)—a thing which Boyle's friends seem to have resented[2]—and was therefore making his appeal to the general public. Whether he should, under these circumstances, have used the knowledge which he possessed of the way in which the book was prepared, is at least doubtful. But if he
