Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/32

xxiv Bentley refused, as he had a perfect right to do. By the same evening, therefore, the MS. was returned to Bentley, with no hint that the collation was not finished. When a quarrel broke out on this question Bentley tried how long the work should have taken, and found that he could have collated the whole book (which only contained 127 of the 148 Epistles) in four hours. The MS. had been in Bennet's hands about a week when Bentley asked for its return, and he had therefore no reason to think that between the noon and evening of Saturday, the work had not been completed.

However, Gibson had only collated 40 of the Epistles (and these so carelessly that Bentley noted 50 variant readings where Boyle's edition only recorded one), and the unfinished collation was sent to Boyle with the explanation that Bentley had refused the further use of the MS. No doubt Bennet thought the task a very much longer one than it really was, and no doubt Gibson worked very much more slowly at a Greek text than did the greatest Greek scholar in Europe, but this did not explain Bennet's explanation to Boyle of his failure to carry out his instructions.