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 were Tories: there may have been some ill-feeling in Oxford at the appointment of Bentley to deliver the first Boyle lecture; for Robert Boyle, at least by residence, was an Oxford man: Bentley was not of high birth, and his overbearing manners tended to deepen the impression that he was 'a sort of ploughboy who had been developed into a learned boor'—a great deal of this contempt for an upstart scholar will be noticed in Boyle's Examination: lastly, Bentley knew the things that Boyle's tutors professed to know, and they felt all the hatred of the fluent charlatan for the genuine scholar.

Recollecting, then, Bentley's reputation for arrogance, and the dislike of him caused by his birth, his politics, and his learning, one may understand partly, at least, the feeling which dictated the phrase bro singulari sua humanitate.

The Present Edition

The present reprint of the Battle of the Books is based upon a comparison of the first, third, fifth, and sixth editions. A list of the significant variants is given