miser, in giving a fine dinner with plenty of money: the
really great cook is he who can set out a banquet with no money at all.
That Bentley should have written excellently on ancient chronology and
geography, on the development of the Greek language, and the origin of
the Greek drama, is not strange. But that Atterbury should, during some
years, have been thought to have treated these subjects much better than
Bentley is strange indeed. It is true that the champion of Christchurch
had all the help which the most celebrated members of that society could
give him. Smalridge contributed some very good wit; Friend and others
some very bad archaeology and philology. But the greater part of the
volume was entirely Atterbury's: what was not his own was revised and
retouched by him: and the whole bears the mark of his mind, a mind
inexhaustibly rich in all the resources of controversy, and familiar
with all the artifices which make falsehood look like truth, and
ignorance like knowledge. He had little gold; but he beat that little
out to the very thinnest leaf, and spread it over so vast a surface that
to those who judged by a glance, and who did not resort to balances and
tests, the glittering heap of worthless matter which he produced seemed
to be an inestimable treasure of massy bullion. Such arguments as he had
he placed in the clearest light. Where he had no arguments, he resorted
to personalities, sometimes serious, generally ludicrous, always clever
and cutting. But, whether he was grave or merry, whether he reasoned or
sneered, his style was always pure, polished, and easy.

Party spirit then ran high; yet, though Bentley ranked among Whigs, and
Christchurch was a stronghold of Toryism, Whigs joined with Tories in
applauding Atterbury's volume. Garth insulted Bentley, and extolled
Boyle in lines which are now never quoted except to be laughed at.
Swift, in his "Battle of the Books," introduced with much pleasantry
Boyle, clad in armour, the gift of all the gods, and directed by Apollo
in the form of a human friend, for whose name a blank is left which may
easily be filled up. The youth, so accoutred, and so assisted, gains
an easy victory over his uncourteous and boastful antagonist. Bentley,
meanwhile, was supported by the consciousness of an immeasurable
superiority, and encouraged by the voices of the few who were really
competent to judge the combat. "No man," he said, justly and nobly, "was
ever written down but