The best specimen which has come down to us is perhaps the oration for Marcellus, such an imitation of Tully's eloquence as Tully would himself have read with wonder and delight.The worst specimen is perhaps a collection of letters purporting to have been written by that Phalaris who governed Agrigentum more than 500 years before the Christian era.The evidence, both internal and external, against the genuineness of these letters is overwhelming.When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in company with much that was far more valuable, from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by Politian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar on our side of the Alps.In truth, it would be as easy to persuade an educated Englishman that one of Johnson's Ramblers was the work of William Wallace as to persuade a man like Erasmus that a pedantic exercise, composed in the trim and artificial Attic of the time of Julian, was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian, who roasted people alive many years before there existed a volume of prose in the Greek language.But, though Christchurch could boast of many good Latinists, of many good English writers, and of a greater number of clever and fashionable men of the world than belonged to any other academic body, there was not then in the college a single man capable of distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek literature.So superficial indeed was the learning of the rulers of this celebrated society that they were charmed by an essay which Sir William Temple published in praise of the ancient writers.It now seems strange that even the eminent public services, the deserved popularity, and the graceful style of Temple should have saved so silly a performance from universal contempt.Of the books which he most vehemently eulogised his eulogies proved that he knew nothing.In fact, he could not read a line of the language in which they were written.Among many other foolish things, he said that the letters of Phalaris were the oldest letters and also the best in the world.Whatever Temple wrote attracted notice.People who had never heard of the Epistles of Phalaris began to inquire about them.Aldrich, who knew very little Greek, took the word of Temple who knew none, and desired Boyle to prepare a new edition of these admirable compositions which, having long slept in obscurity, had become on a sudden objects of general interest.
The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who was Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of the college.It was an edition such as might be expected from people who would stoop to edite such a book.The notes were worthy of the text; the Latin version worthy of the Greek original.The volume would have been forgotten in a month, had not a misunderstanding about a manuscript arisen between the young editor and the greatest scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters, Richard Bentley.The manuscript was in Bentley's keeping.Boyle wished it to be collated.A mischief-****** bookseller informed him that Bentley had refused to lend it, which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the letters attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by such counterfeits, which was perfectly true.Boyle, much provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironical compliment to Bentley's courtesy.Bentley revenged himself by a short dissertation, in which he proved that the epistles were spurious, and the new edition of them worthless: but he treated Boyle personally with civility as a young gentleman of great hopes, whose love of learning was highly commendable, and who deserved to have had better instructors.
Few things in literary history are more extraordinary than the storm which this little dissertation raised.Bentley had treated Boyle with forbearance; but he had treated Christchurch with contempt; and the Christchurch-men, wherever dispersed, were as much attached to their college as a Scotchman to his country, or a Jesuit to his order.Their influence was great.They were dominant at Oxford, powerful in the Inns of Court and in the College of Physicians, conspicuous in Parliament and in the literary and fashionable circles of London.Their unanimous cry was, that the honour of the college must be vindicated, that the insolent Cambridge pedant must be put down.Poor Boyle was unequal to the task, and disinclined to it.It was, therefore, assigned to his tutor, Atterbury.