“Single adversaries die and drop off; but societies are immortal: 388 their resentments are sometimes delivered down from hand to hand; and when once they have begun with a man, there is no knowing when they will leave him.”
In reply to this literary anathema, Bentley was furnished, by his familiarity with his favourite authors, with a fortunate application of a term, derived from Phalaris himself. Cicero had conveyed his idea of Cæsar’s cruelty by this term, which he invented from the very name of the tyrant.[304]
“There is a certain temper of mind that Cicero calls Phalarism; a spirit like Phalaris’s. One would be apt to imagine that a portion of it had descended upon some of his translators. The gentleman has given a broad hint more than once in his book, that if I proceed further against Phalaris, I may draw, perhaps, a duel, or a stab upon myself; a generous threat to a divine, who neither carries arms nor principles fit for that sort of controversy. I expected such usage from the spirit of Phalarism.”
In this controversy, the amusing fancy of “the Bees” could not pass by Phalaris without contriving to make some use of that brazen bull by which he tortured men alive. Not satisfied in their motto, from the Earl of Roscommon, with wedging “the great critic, like Milo, in the timber he strove to rend,” they gave him a second death in their finis, by throwing Bentley into Phalaris’s bull, and flattering their vain imaginations that they heard him “bellow.”
“He has defied Phalaris, and used him very coarsely, under the assurance, as he tells us, that ‘he is out of his reach.’ Many of Phalaris’s enemies thought the same thing, and repented of their vain confidence afterwards in his bull. Dr. Bentley is perhaps, by this time, or will be suddenly, satisfied that he also has presumed a little too much upon his distance; but it will be too late to repent when he begins to bellow.”[305]
Bentley, although the solid force of his mind was not favourable to the lighter sports of wit, yet was not quite destitute of those airy qualities; nor does he seem insensible to the literary merits of “that odd work,” as he calls Boyle’s volume, which he conveys a very good notion of:—“If his 389 book shall happen to be preserved anywhere as an useful commonplace book for ridicule, banter, and all the topics of calumny.” With equal dignity and sense he observes on the ridicule so freely used by both parties—“I am content that what is the greatest virtue of his book should be counted the greatest fault of mine.”
His reply to “Milo’s fate,” and the tortures he was supposed to pass through when thrown into Phalaris’s bull, is a piece of sarcastic humour which will not suffer by comparison with the volume more celebrated for its wit.
“The facetious examiner seems resolved to vie with Phalaris himself in the science of Phalarism; for his revenge is not satisfied with one single death of his adversary, but he will kill me over and over again. He has slain me twice by two several deaths! one, in the first page of his book; and another, in the last. In the title-page I die the death of Milo, the Crotonian:—
| ——Remember Milo’s end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend. |
“The application of which must be this:—That as Milo, after his victories at six several Olympiads, was at last conquered and destroyed in wrestling with a tree, so I, after I had attained to some small reputation in letters, am to be quite baffled and run down by wooden antagonists. But in the end of his book he has got me into Phalaris’s bull, and he has the pleasure of fancying that he hears me begin to bellow. Well, since it is certain that I am in the bull, I have performed the part of a sufferer. For as the cries of the tormented in old Phalaris’s bull, being conveyed through pipes lodged in the machine, were turned into music for the entertainment of the tyrant, so the complaints which my torments express from me, being conveyed to Mr. Boyle by this answer, are all dedicated to his pleasure and diversion. But yet, methinks, when he was setting up to be Phalaris junior, the very omen of it might have deterred him. As the old tyrant himself at last bellowed in his own bull, his imitators ought to consider that at long run their own actions may chance to overtake them.”—p. 43.