[Rarebooks] fa: RICHARD BENTLEY - DISSERTATION UPON PHALARIS - 1699

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th- & 18th-century titles, auctions  
ending Sunday, May 29. More details and images can be found at the URL  
below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Richard Bentley: A Dissertation Upon the Epistles of Phalaris. With an  
Answer to the Objections of the Honourable Charles Boyle, Esquire.  
London: Printed by J.H. for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St.  
Paul’s Church-Yard, and John Hartley over-against Gray’s Inn in  
Holborn, 1699. FIRST EDITION. Hardcover 8vo in modern boards; cxii +  
549[i.e. 545] + [11] pp. ESTC R21147.
The first edition with Bentley's lengthy and definitive response to  
Charles Boyle on the subject of the Phalaris controversy, in which he  
magisterially demonstrated once and for all that the Epistles  
attributed to the Greek tyrant Phalaris, and edited by Boyle in 1695,  
were bogus, as "towns were mentioned in them that did not exist in the  
days of Phalaris, the dialect was Attic not Dorian, etc." (Oxford  
Companion to English Literature). The controversy was famous enough to  
figure in Jonathan Swift's Battle of the Books. Richard Bentley  
(1662-1742), keeper of the king's library and Master of Trinity  
College, Cambridge, was one of the greatest classical scholars of his  
time, described as the "founder of historical philology," though  he  
is often remembered today for his misguided "revision" of Paradise  
Lost (see our other auctions this week for a very different approach  
to Milton's masterwork).

Occasional toning to the leaves, darkening to the edges, light foxing  
on 5-6 leaves toward the end, a bit of worming to the fore-edge margin  
of some of the first leaves (through p. 26), not affecting any text;  
otherwise, clean, crisp and sound in a sharp, immaculate, if rather  
utilitarian, modern binding.