BOYLE (Charles):

Dr Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of AEsop, Examin'd. The Fourth Edition With some Additions, occasioned by a Book entituled A View of the Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, &c.

London: London, Printed for M. coooper..., 1745. 8vo, 197 x 119, pp. [viii], 266 [ 267 - 270 Index], contemporary calf, gilt spine, red leather label; joints slightly cracked, some general wear to binding, but a good to very good copy. Sir William Temple's incautious observations on the authentic antiquity of the epistles of Phalaris in an essay on "Ancient and Modern Learning" in part two of his Miscellanea (1690) called forth William Wotton's Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), in which Temple's tentative conjecture was severely criticized. In 1695, Charles Boyle, fourth Earl of Orrery, began preparation for an edition of the epistles in which Temple's view as to their antiquity would be asserted, but he included injudicious comments about the courtesy and integrity of the scholar Richard Bentley. In his work, Wotton defended Bentley vigorously, and Boyle, with the assistance of various witlings at Christ Church College, Oxford, replied with his book in 1698. The controversy eventually prompted Swift to produce his Battle of the Books. Wing O471.

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Book number: 9282

Catalogue: Textual criticism

Keywords: textual criticism scholarship prose