other foolish things, he said that the letters of Phalaris were
the oldest letters and also the best in the world. Whatever
Temple wrote attracted notice. People who had never heard of the
Epistles of Phalaris began to inquire about them. Aldrich, who
knew very little Greek, took the word of Temple who knew none,
and desired Boyle to prepare a new edition of these admirable
compositions which, having long slept in obscurity, had become on
a sudden objects of general interest.

The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who was
Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of the college. It was
an edition such as might be expected from people who would stoop
to edite such a book. The notes were worthy of the text; the
Latin version worthy of the Greek original. The volume would
have been forgotten in a month, had not a misunderstanding about
a manuscript arisen between the young editor and the greatest
scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters,
Richard Bentley. The manuscript was in Bentley's keeping. Boyle
wished it to be collated. A mischief-making bookseller informed
him that Bentley had refused to lend it, which was false, and
also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the letters
attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by
such counterfeits, which was perfectly true. Boyle, much
provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironical compliment to
Bentley's courtesy. Bentley revenged himself by a short
dissertation, in which he proved that the epistles were spurious,
and the new edition of them worthless: but he treated Boyle
personally with civility as a young gentleman of great hopes,
whose love of learning was highly commendable, and who deserved
to have had better instructors.