Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/20

 Classic; he writes two copies of verses in Musae Anglicanae; he edits Clarendon with Sprat, the subject of attack from the only enemy he ever had, H. Smith, an old Student, expelled for scandalous conduct, known to the public as 'Captain Rag.' This Smith got Oldmixon, 'a mean and dishonest scribbler,' to charge the editors with corrupting the text—a charge refuted by the exiled Atterbury. The Dean also made a work on Heraldry, 'the best Mr. Thwaits ever saw,'—but it never saw the light. Aldrich had also once begun an edition of Caesar's Commentaries, 'with cutts of his own contriving.' So much for his leading. For his guidance, it was his custom to set promising young pupils to work at an edition—John Freind, e.g. at Demosthenes; young Ch. Aldrich, 'a most ingenious young man,' at the Odyssey; and Charles Boyle on the Letters of Phalaris. The memorable storm which raged round those unhappy letters Aldrich rode with his usual calmness: all the passion of the fight found its home in the war-god Atterbury—for him there is nothing more to be said than that he was trapped into a belief in the classical judgment of Sir W. Temple. It was an age at which Pope's Homer appeared, it must be remembered—an age, that is, popularly devoid of all historical feeling, incapable of critical appreciation of primitive or artificial simplicity: and perhaps a tinge of popularity did hang about the Christ Church scholarship.

I cannot close this better than with the words of the memoir of the great John Freind in the Biographia Britannica:—

'Mr. Freind enjoyed the signal advantage of being under the eye of Dr. Aldrich, who for his exemplary vigilance, true zeal for learning, and well-conducted generosity was universally