Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/214

 never think themselves; they tell you only what others have thought before them. They heap together matter in abundance, without choice or distinction, and care not how worthless it is, so there be but enough on't. They know nothing but just as they learn it from their books, and learn nothing but what everybody else desires to be ignorant of. They have a vain, dry, insipid sort of knowledge, that is disagreeable and useless; can neither enliven conversation, nor conduce to business. We are sometimes surprised at their reading, but always tired with their discourse or their writings. These are they, who, among all the little men and some great ones, go for scholars, but among the wise and sensible part of mankind, for pedants."

This account of pedantry has drawn me a little out of my way: I shall now return again into it, and consider the particular instances Dr Bentley has brought to justify his general assertion, that the matter and business of the letters betrays 'em not to be genuine.

The first is 'an improbable and absurd story' (as he thinks) about Stesichorus, who dying at Catana,