Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/276

202 have been always allowed to be their proper places, is itself a very ill mixture of ignorance and pedantry. For if they cannot be used there without pedantry, they must be banished out of all sorts of writings. So that Aristotle, Theophrastus,, Aristarchus, and some others of the best wits of old, and among the moderns, the great Erasmus, and the great Scaliger, made collections of proverbs, merely to serve pedants. Erasmus's own writings are full of them; and he will be thought to have had as much wit, and as little pedantry, as Mr B. and his Directors. And the great treasuries from whence he collected them, are the writings of Plato, Plutarch, and Lucian; who "among some little men may go for" pedants, "but among the wise and sensible part of mankind" will pass for men of wit.

4. "To over-rate the price of knowledge is another sign of pedantry." And let the world judge between the Examiner and me, whether of us is most concerned in this character of a pedant. I have never published anything yet, but at the desire of others: my Sermons in Mr Boyle's Lecture were required for the press by the Honourable the Trustees; my