Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/350

346 by any evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the Dutchess of Somerset, by shewing it to the Queen, debarred him from a bishoprick.

When this wild work first raised the attention of the publick, Sacheverell, meeting Smalridge, tried to flatter him, seeming to think him the author; but Smalridge answered with indignation, "Not all that you and I have in the world, nor all that ever we shall have, should hire me to write the Tale of a Tub."

The digressions relating to Wotton and Bentley must be confessed to discover want of knowledge, or want of integrity; he did not understand the two controversies, or he willingly misrepresented them. But Wit can stand its ground against Truth only a little while. The honours due to Learning have been justly distributed by the decision of posterity.

"The Battle of the Books" is so like the "Combat des Livres," which the same question concerning the Ancients and Moderns had produced in France, that the improbability of such a coincidence of thoughts without