Wit, however, enjoyed the temporary triumph; not but that some, in that day, loudly protested against the award.[306] 390 “The Episode of Bentley and Wotton,” in “The Battle of the Books,” is conceived with all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose satirists. There Bentley’s great qualities are represented as “tall, without shape or comeliness; large, without strength or proportion.” His various erudition, as “armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;” his book, as “the sound” of that armour, “loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple;” his haughty intrepidity, as “a vizor of brass, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain; so that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature was seen to distil from his lips.” Wotton is “heavy-armed and slow of foot, lagging behind.” They perish together in one ludicrous death. Boyle, in his celestial armour, by a stroke of his weapon, transfixes both “the lovers,” “as a cook trusses a brace of woodcocks, with iron skewer piercing the tender sides of both. Joined in their lives, joined in their death, so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare.” Such is the candour of wit! The great qualities of an adversary, as in Bentley, are distorted into disgraceful attitudes; while the suspicious virtues of a friend, as in Boyle, not passed over in prudent silence, are ornamented with even spurious panegyric.
Garth, catching the feeling of the time, sung—
| And to a Bentley ’tis we owe a Boyle. |
Posterity justly appreciates the volume of Bentley for its stores of ancient literature; and the author, for that peculiar sagacity in emending a corrupt text, which formed his distinguishing characteristic as a classical critic; and since his book but for this literary quarrel had never appeared, reverses the names in the verse of the “Satirist.”
PARKER AND MARVELL.
Marvell the founder of “a newly-refined art of jeering buffoonery”—his knack of nicknaming his adversaries—Parker’s Portrait—Parker suddenly changes his principles—his declamatory style—Marvell prints his anonymous letter as a motto to “The Rehearsal Transprosed”—describes him as an “At-all”—Marvell’s ludicrous description of the whole posse of answers summoned together by Parker—Marvell’s cautious allusion to Milton—his solemn invective against Parker—anecdote of Marvell and Parker—Parker retires after the second part of “The Rehearsal Transprosed”—The Recreant, reduced to silence, distils his secret vengeance in a posthumous libel.
One of the legitimate ends of satire, and one of the proud triumphs of genius, is to unmask the false zealot; to beat back the haughty spirit that is treading down all; and if it cannot teach modesty, and raise a blush, at least to inflict terror and silence. It is then that the satirist does honour to the office of the executioner.
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As one whose whip of steel can with a lash Imprint the characters of shame so deep, Even in the brazen forehead of proud Sin, That not eternity shall wear it out.[307] |