had not done so, he would have been obliged to seem to attack publicly a young man of twenty (Boyle was eighteen when his Phalaris was published) for mistakes which he could not have been expected to avoid; for Bentley showed that the edition was extremely careless and revealed deplorable ignorance in its editors.
There were thus three disputes in progress at once—the first between Temple and Wotton about Ancient and Modern Learning; the second between Temple and Bentley about the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris; the third between Bentley, on the one side, and Boyle and his tutors, on the other, (a) about the withdrawal of the MS. of the Epistles, {b) about the value of the Epistles as literature, (c) about the scholarship exhibited in the new edition. This leaves out of the account the dispute about the Fables of Æsop[1] which hardly concerns us here.
- ↑ As an answer to Bentley's attack upon them, a new edition of the Fables was produced by Anthony Alsop in 1698. It refers to Bentley twice: once (in the Preface) as Richardum quendam Bentleium virum in volvendis Lexicis satis diligentem: and again in the last fable Canis in praesepi (p. 128), where allusion is made to Bentley's refusal of the MS. of Phalaris. The book was another of the Christ Church publications.
