Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/211

 the rest, yet are in correcter English; by Mr Dryden four or five times in his Life of Plutarch; by Mr Duke, and Mr Creech, often, in their several Lives of Theseus and Solon; and because, perhaps, one old divine may weigh more with Mr Wotton than all these modern witnesses, by the Reverend and learned Dr Jackson in his volumes on the Creed. Mr Wotton might have said indeed that Delphos in the singular number is not good Latin or good Greek: but when he says 'tis 'bad English' he only shows that he does not converse with so good authors as he ought to do. This digression might have been spared, but that Mr Wotton, when he was purging his book of some unbecoming passages in a second edition of it, thought fit still to retain this grammatical reflection there: perhaps in a third edition he'll take care that this too shall bear the rest company.

Dr Bentley will forgive me this short visit to his friend, now I return to him.

Pedantry consists also in low and mean ways or speech, which are a vicious affectation of what is natural and easy, as hard words are of learning and scholarship. And whether Dr Bentley has not