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132 mander." It is plain Sir William Temple does not write 'like a dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk,' and therefore the reader, perhaps, will be apt to take his judgement, when he tells him that Phalaris does not write like one neither.

I cannot but observe that Dr Bentley is here, and elsewhere, very liberal in distributing the reproach of pedantry; which is to me, I confess, a plain proof that he has no just notions of it: for if he had, it is so high an offence against good manners and good sense, that methinks he should impute it more sparingly. I will endeavour, therefore, to set him right; which perhaps I shall be the better able to do, because having conversed much a late with some writings where this beauty of style prevails, I have very strong and sensible impressions of it.

Pedantry is a word of a very various and mixed meaning, and therefore hard to be defined: but I will describe it to the Doctor as well as I can, by pointing out some of the chief marks and moles of it.

The first and surest mark of a pedant is to write without observing the received rules of civility and common decency, and without distinguishing the