Tully would himself have read with wonder and delight. The worst
specimen is perhaps a collection of letters purporting to have
been written by that Phalaris who governed Agrigentum more than
500 years before the Christian era. The evidence, both internal
and external, against the genuineness of these letters is
overwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in
company with much that was far more valuable, from their
obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by Politian, the
greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar
on our side of the Alps. In truth, it would be as easy to
persuade an educated Englishman that one of Johnson's Ramblers
was the work of William Wallace as to persuade a man like Erasmus
that a pedantic exercise, composed in the trim and artificial
Attic of the time of Julian, was a despatch written by a crafty
and ferocious Dorian, who roasted people alive many years before
there existed a volume of prose in the Greek language. But,
though Christchurch could boast of many good Latinists, of many
good English writers, and of a greater number of clever and
fashionable men of the world than belonged to any other academic
body, there was not then in the college a single man capable of
distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek
literature. So superficial indeed was the learning of the rulers
of this celebrated society that they were charmed by an essay
which Sir William Temple published in praise of the ancient
writers. It now seems strange that even the eminent public
services, the deserved popularity, and the graceful style of
Temple should have saved so silly a performance from universal
contempt. Of the books which he most vehemently eulogised his
eulogies proved that he knew nothing. In fact, he could not read
a line of the language in which they were written. Among many