Add to this, that such conduct is, in your particular, grossly impolitic. You at present enjoy a temporary repose; hostilities seem for a while suspended between your Right Reverend Correspondent and you: cultivate the time; examine and improve your resources; conciliate to yourself new allies, rivet and confirm your old ones; and imitate those few wise and provident princes, who, knowing the short duration of all public felicity, employ the intervals of peace in preparations for a future war. You will probably find employment enough for all your talents, when the great champion, whom you have so insultingly provoked, shall enter the lists against you: the time will certainly come; and amongst the virtues which you will have occasion to exercise in that day of trial, 'tis well, my Lord, if repentance be not found to have a place. The zealous affection which you, my Lord, so well know how to express for your friends, must excuse the warmth with which I interest myself in the defence of mine. If honour calls upon us to resent an aspersion upon an absent friend, yet living; something more than honour, piety engages us to vindicate the dead. Did your Lordship, when you struck with such rancour at Dr. Bentley, flatter yourself that he had outlived all those private and tender alliances which bind and connect mankind together, and that his fame lay at the mercy of every freebooter? Far from it: the learned and the candid of all nations are the friends of his fame; and no inconsiderable number still survive, whom his private worth and virtues have left under lasting impressions of affection. The former order of men will probably think you have discovered no great tokens of discernment in this invective; or, favouring your judgment, will think your temper not altogether free from some small portion of envy and asperity. As for the latter class of people, personalities, my Lord, inflame mankind to that degree, that 'tis well if they leave you even the small shred of reputation, which you have allowed to Dr. Bentley. Recollect, my Lord, the warmth, the piety, with which you remonstrated against Bishop W's treatment of your father in a passage of his Julian: "It is not in behalf of myself that I expostulate; but of one, for whom I am much more concerned, that is my father." These are your Lordship's words; amiable, affecting expression! instructive lesson of filial devotion! Alas, my Lord, that you, who was thus sen ⚫ Page 128. sible to the least speck which fell upon the reputation of your father, should be so inveterate against the fame of one, at least as eminent, and perhaps no less dear to his family. For my own part, much as I reverence great and learned men, in my poor estimation, one generous sentiment, one benevolent emanation of the heart, is of more value and respect than all the unimpassioned productions of the understanding; I therefore cannot help holding your correspondent in higher esteem for the generous and candid manner in which he atones for this offence, than for all the vast fund of erudition, which he has displayed in the eyes of the world, to the singular annoyance (as it should seem) of your Lordship, but to the general use and information of all mankind besides. He tells you, that he knew not that the Mr. L.' whom he had treated with disrespect in one of his notes, was your father; that this circumstance amply justified you for every thing he complained of relative to your unkind usage of him in your prelections; in short, that he owed so much to your piety, which he considered as really edifying, that he would strike out that note against your father the first opportunity. Indeed, the whole turn of the letter, from which these expressions are selected, carries such an air of candour and polite acknowledgment, that I am surprised your Lordship, with this transaction fresh in your memory, should not have considered, when you was thus unhandsomely treating Dr. Bentley's character, that it was possible some one might be found, under the same predicament, or with the same feelings towards him, that you had experienced towards Mr. L. There is a rule, my Lord, in the Christian doctrine, which I dare say you have frequently recommended to other people, that on this occasion would have been peculiarly useful to yourself. All that can now be done is, that, as you have thought fit to copy your learned correspondent in the least amiable part of his character, you should strive to resemble him in his more shining features; and learn of him, that even faults may be made graceful by an ingenuous manner of atoning for them. As there are some distempers, which, by being skilfully cured, leave the constitution more vigorous and healthy than if it had never been attacked by them; so there seem to be certain flaws in the moral conduct of some men, which, being well and effectually repaired, set off the character with greater lustre and advantage than it could have appeared with, had such imper fections never been discovered. Was I worthy to prescribe to your Lordship, the task would be no very hard one that I should set you: it would be only to give your real sentiments of Dr. Bentley's merit; and I am persuaded they would turn out the most complete recantation of what you have now been pleased to amuse us with, that could be wished for. I have entered thus circumstantially into this matter, not with a design to aggravate your Lordship's offence, but to extenuate my own. Censure which falls from you, my Lord, falls from a great height; especially when the defenceless object, upon whom it is directed, is unhappily laid so low. : You will now permit me to transcribe the sentence of which I complain. I find it in your 80th page; I mention the page, because for the allusion it bears to any part of your subject, it might as well be sought for in any other leaf of the book. The paragraph is addressed to Bishop W, and runs thus:"And here more opportunely for the illustration of what I am saying, than for your own purpose, you introduce the incomparable Bentley, as standing in the foremost rank of modern critics of grammatical and verbal critics I agree with you; he could judge with great penetration of the age of an author by the dialect, the phrase, and the matter; by Thericlean cups and Sicilian talents; this was his proper sphere of science, and in this he excelled: but in matters of pure taste, a fine discernment of the different characters of composition, colours of style, and manners of thinking, of interior beauties and excellencies of writing, in regard to all this, what was he? Unus caprimulgus, aut fossor. What then has he to do here?"-Ay, what indeed? Your Lordship has asked a question, which I really cannot easily resolve; and, but that you have prevented me in it, the very question I should have taken the liberty of putting to your Lordship. For what answer can we give? Is it to be thought that you conceive this sovereign contempt of Dr. Bentley's taste and genius from an acquaintance with his works? with his original works' I mean; for, although a great and elegant genius will break forth, even when employed in the under work of criticism and exposition, (as witness your Lordship's learned labours on the Hebrew poesy,) yet undoubtedly it is in compositions of an original sort, where the proper estimate of the genius of an author is to be formed. Let me then, with all due respect, demand of your Lordship, from which of the original It is proposed to publish a new edition of these works in a short time. productions of Dr. Bentley's pen is it that you have collected these very unfavorable sentiments concerning him? In which of his labours have you traced the brutal ignorance of a goatherd, the clownish stupidity of a hedger and ditcher? Indeed, my good Lord, these are hard words;-worse by one half than you bestowed upon the prophet Ezra, who escaped your satire with the appellation only of a semi-barbarian. Could you have given worse language to a country curate at a visitation? Is your Lordship sure that these expressions are perfectly elegant and perfectly true? are they fit for one scholar, one gentleman, one Christian divine to bestow upon another? do they give us any impression of your Lordship's manners, of your wit, or of your judgment? The virtues of your heart, my Lord, and the purity of your morals, will support your character with the present age; but it must be the productions of your understanding, that are to establish your reputation with posterity. How therefore could you think of transmitting to after ages an opinion, which mankind will be sure to charge to the error either of your head or of your heart? What provocation can you have received from Dr. Bentley's genius, that you should liken it to that of boors and peasants? I don't know, my Lord, what kind of licence you men of learning take in speaking of each other; but we, who act in common life and have common understandings, stare at such familiarities: a certain cautious principle (which your Lordship seems to hold in disregard) called prudence, and a small degree of worldly virtue (in which your Lordship, 'tis plain, on some occasions, does not abound) called good manners, teach us to smother and repress. these sallies of spleen and ill-nature; if not from natural principle, yet from the dread of that humiliating corrrection, which expressions of so offensive a nature would be apt to incur. These, my Lord, are amongst the checks and restraints that civilize society. I don't mean to apply them to the case in question: I believe, and, by your Lordship's example, am convinced, that other rules and principles obtain in the republic of letters; every thing there breathes an unrestrained freedom of manners; affronts are mutually interchanged, and challenges are publicly given and accepted by the gravest and most respectable characters: nothing, however, shall persuade me that this is not ridiculous and unbecoming. I cannot see Professors, dignified Divines and Bishops tilting at each other, without a blush: 'tis this unpardonable petulancy that makes the company of men of learning so little sought after; it reduces literary science to the rank of a mechanical art; when the scholar is found to give way to as many little niean detracting insinuations in his profession, as a Fiddler, or a Tailor does in his. For my own part, such is my prejudice against envy and ill-nature, and so great is the respect that I bear to candour and complaisance, that, although I have your Lordship's example before my eyes, still I cannot be persuaded that invidious aspersions, lessening comparisons, and calumnious railings are any proofs of liberal education, or of an elegant improved understanding; and this I can tell your Lordship, that if you had not expressly, ay, and in capital letters, asserted,' THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD to have been the place of your education, the seat where you first sacrificed to the muses and to the graces; it might really, to future ages, have been just matter of doubt, in what one spot of this globe your Lordship had imbibed those elegant and friendly manners, which run through the whole of your disputations with Bishop W..., and are particularly marked out in the character you have given of Dr. Bentley; a character in which you have apparently a double intent; not only to undeceive the world with respect to any false opinions we might have taken up concerning his understanding, but to give us at the same time a just impression of your own; for where would be the use of exposing Dr. Bentley's egregious deficiency in all the polite accomplishments of a scholar, if you did not thereby tacitly inform mankind that Dr. L.. th was eminently endowed with them all? This, my Lord, of all the roads which lead to fame, is the shortest and easiest ascent: 'tis following the camp without mixing in the fray. That men, born in the same country, cultivators of the same science, professing the same religion, fellow-labourers in the same ministry, should invidiously defame and disparage each other in the eyes of mankind, is a mystery to men of ordinary capacities. If a Caprimulgus, my Lord, a low and paltry Herdsman, should set about to under-rate the talents of a rival in that rustic occupation; if a Fossor, a vulgar untaught Hedger and Ditcher, should attempt to disparage the handy-work of a fellow-labourer, such low-bred dealings in clowns might find some excuse; but when we see the same mean passions carried into upper life, and exhibited by a man of your Lordship's talents and erudition, we blush for you, for your profession, for your title; we feel an ingenuous shame for the disreputation, which is brought upon learning, nay, even upon our ' Page 64. |