Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/303

Rh this is, who prevaricates so notoriously in a case as plain as the sun? Did I ever make such a supposition, that the letters were written in the order they are printed? Had I not expressly supposed in the fourth article, that the eighty-fifth letter might be written before the eighty-fourth, nay before the twentieth, nay before the very first of all? And is it not visible and plain to any man of sense, that I place the inconsistency here, not upon the order of the Epistles, but upon the differences of place and time? I would ask him now in his own language, was the pleasure of forging this imaginary supposition, which is worthy of himself, and none of mine, an equivalent to the shame of being told on't?

But he tells me, I make four other suppositions; which have not the least countenance from the Epistles, or any other history. What the Examiner will grant or deny, to me is indifferent: but I appeal to others, if every particular that I said there, may not be fairly gathered from the letters themselves. Phalaris fled from Astypalaea; his wife endeavouring to follow him, was poisoned by Python, who courted her to a second marriage. Again, his wife is alive in Crete, when Phalaris had long possessed the government of Agri-