Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/205

Rh Bentley's correspondence with foreign professors; especially if they be such professors as have the judgement to admire him and his humanity. I shall not therefore offer a word, on the general part of this head, in justification of the Epistles: I shall barely set down the passage in which Sir William Temple expresses his sense of this matter, and shall then leave it to the reader whose opinion he'll think fit to take—either his, or the Library-keeper's at St James's. Sir William's admirable words are, "I think he must have but 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 'em, and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting, as Phalaris did. In all one writ you find the scholar or the sophist, and in all the other writ, the tyrant and the com-