vancing in a direct line, but wheeling with incredible agility and force, he made a terrible slaughter among the enemy's light horse. Him when Cowley observed, his generous heart burnt within him, and he advanced against the fierce ancient, imitating his address, his pace, and career, as well as the vigour of his horse and his own skill would allow. When the two cavaliers had approached within the length of three javelins, first, Cowley threw a lance, which missed Pindar, and, passing into the enemy's ranks, fell ineffectual to the ground. Then Pindar darted a javelin so large and weighty, that scarce a dozen cavaliers, as cavaliers are in our degenerate days, could raise it from the ground: yet he threw it with ease, and it went by an unerring hand, singing through the air; nor could the modern have avoided present death, if he had not luckily opposed the shield, that had been given him by Venus. * And now both heroes drew their swords; but the modern was so aghast and disordered, that he knew not where he was; his shield dropped from his hands; thrice he fled, and thrice he could not escape; at last he turned, and, lifting up his hand in the posture of a suppliant, Godlike Pindar, said he, spare my life, and possess my horse, with these arms, beside the ransom which my friends will give when they hear I am alive, and your prisoner. Dog, said Pindar, let your ransom stay with your friends; but your carcase shall be left for the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. With that he raised his sword, and, with a mighty stroke, cleft the wretch

*His poem called the Mistress.

ed modern in twain, the sword pursuing the blow; and one half lay panting on the ground to be trod in pieces by the horses' feet; the other half was borne by the frighted steed through the field. This Venus* took, washed it seven times in ambrosia, then struck it thrice with a sprig of amaranth; upon which, the leather grew round and soft, and the leaves turned into feathers, and being gilded before, continued gilded still; so it became a dove, and she harnessed it to her chariot.

*

Hiatus valde deflendus in MS.

THE EPISODE OF BENTLEY AND WOTTON. †

Day being far spent, and the numerous forces of the moderns half inclining to a retreat, there issued forth from a squadron of their heavy armed foot, a captain, whose name was Bentley, the most deformed of all the moderns; tall, but without shape or comeliness; large, but without strength or proportion. His armour was patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces; and the sound of it, as he marched, was loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead, which an etesian wind

*I do not approve the author's judgment in this, for I think Cowley's Findarics are much preferable to his Mistress.

† As the account of the Battle of the Books is an allegorical representation of Sir William Temple's Essay, in which the ancients are opposed to the moderns, the account of Bentley and Wotton is called an episode, and their intrusion represented as an under action.

blows suddenly down from the roof of some steeple. His helmet was of old rusty iron, but the vizor was brass, which, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain; so that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature was seen to distil from his lips. In his right hand he grasped a flail, and (that he might never be unprovided of an offen. sive weapon) a vessel full of ordure in his left. * Thus completely armed, he advanced with a slow and heavy pace, where the modern chiefs were holding a consult upon the sum of things; who, as he came onwards, laughed to behold his crooked leg, and hump shoulder, which his boot and armour, vainly endeavouring to hide, were forced to comply with and expose. The generals made use of him for his talent of railing; which, kept within government, proved frequently of great service to their cause, but at other times did more mischief than good; for, at the least touch of offence, and often without any at all, he would, like a wounded elephant, convert it against his leaders. Such, at this juncture, was the disposition of Bentley; grieved to see the enemy prevail, and dissatisfied with every body's conduct but his own. He humbly gave the modern generals to understand, that he conceived, with great submission, that they were all a pack of rogues, and fools, and sons of whores, and d-n'd cowards, and confounded loggerheads, and illiterate whelps, and nonsensical scoundrels; that, if him

*The person here spoken of, is famous for letting fly at every body without distinction, and using mean and foul scurrilities.

self had been constituted general, those presumptuous dogs, the ancients, would, long before this, have been beaten out of the field. You, said he, sit here idle; but when I, or any other valiant modern, kill an enemy, you are sure to seize the spoil. But I will not march one foot against the foe, till you all swear to me, that whomsoever I take or kill, his arms I shall quietly possess. Bentley having spoken thus, Scaliger, bestowing him a sour look, Miscreant prater, said he, eloquent only in thine own eyes, thou railest without wit, or truth, or discretion. The malignity of thy temper perverteth nature, thy learning makes thee more barbarous, thy study of humanity more inhuman; thy converse among poets more grovelling, miry, an dull. All arts of civilizing others render thee rude and untractable; courts have taught thee ill manners, and polite conversation has finished thee a pedant. Besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army. But never despond; I pass my word, whatever spoil thou takest shall certainly be thy own; though, I hope, that vile carcase will first become a prey to kites and worms.

Bentley durst not reply; but, half choked with spleen and rage, withdrew in full resolution of performing some great achievement. With him, for his aid and companion, he took his beloved Wotton; resolving, by policy or surprise, to attempt some neglected quarter of the ancients' army. They began their march over carcasses of

*Vid. Homer. de Thersite.

+ This episode is founded upon Bentley's having subjoined to Wotton's Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, his own disquisition concerning the authenticity of the Fables of Æsop,

their slaughtered friends; then to the right of their own forces; then wheeled northward, till they came to Aldrovandus's tomb, which they passed on the side of the declining sun. And now they arrived with fear toward the enemy's out-guards; looking about, if haply they might spy the quarters of the wounded, or some straggling sleepers, unarmed, and remote from the rest. As when two mongrel curs, whom native greediness and domestic want provoke and join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to invade the folds of some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and lolling tongues, creep soft and slow; meanwhile the conscious moon, now in her zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendicular

and the Epistles of Phalaris. These authors had been highly extolled by Temple, in the following passage:

"It may, perhaps, be further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, are Æsop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since, for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original, so I think the Epistles of Phalaris have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men have not esteemed them genuine; and Politian, with some others, have attributed them to Lucian: but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar and the sophist; and, in all the other, the tyrant and the commander."-TEMPLE, ut supra, vol. III. P. 463.