Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful usage, who, even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk from all rude collision, and had generally succeeded in avoiding it, and whose sensitiveness had been increased by many years of seclusion and flattery, was moved to most violent resentment, complained, very unjustly, of Bentley’s foul-mouthed raillery, and declared that he had commenced an answer, but had laid it aside, “having no mind to enter the lists with such a mean, dull, unmannerly pedant” Whatever may be thought of the temper which Sir William showed on this occasion, we cannot too highly applaud his discretion in not finishing and publishing his answer, which would certainly have been a most extraordinary performance.

He was not, however, without defenders.  Like Hector, when struck down prostrate by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick crowd of shields.

Outis edunesato poimena laou
Outasai oudi balein prin gar peribesan aristoi
Polubmas te, kai Aineias, kai dios Agenor,
Sarpedon t’archos Lukion, kai Glaukos amumon.

Christchurch was up in arms; and though that College seems then to have been almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no academical society could show, a greater array of orators, wits, politicians, bustling adventurers who united the superficial accomplishments of the scholar with the manners and arts of the man of the world; and this formidable body resolved to try how far smart repartees, well-turned sentences, confidence, puffing, and intrigue could, on the question whether a Greek book were or were not genuine, supply the place of a little knowledge of Greek.

Out came the Reply to Bentley, bearing the name of Boyle, but in truth written by Atterbury with the assistance of Smalridge and others.  A most remarkable book it is, and often reminds us of Goldsmith’s observation, that the French would be the best cooks in the world if they had any butcher’s meat, for that they can make ten dishes out of a nettle-top.  It really deserves the praise, whatever that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant.  The learning of the confederacy is that of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary schoolboy; but it is used with the skill and address of most able, artful, and experienced men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, and is disposed in such a way as to seem ten times larger than it is.  The dexterity with which the confederates avoid grappling with those parts of the subject with which they know themselves to be incompetent to deal is quite wonderful.  Now and then, indeed, they commit disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom they had studied, would have whipped them all round.  But this circumstance only raises our opinion of the talents which made such a fight with such scanty means.  Let readers who are not acquainted with the controversy imagine a Frenchman, who has acquired just English enough to read the Spectator with a dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of Ireland’s Vortigern against Malone; and they will have some notion of the feat which Atterbury had the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it was really thought that he had performed.