"Critical Sagacity," And "Happy Conjecture；" Or, Bentley‘s Milton
----BENTLEY, long to wrangling schools confined,
And but by books acquainted with mankind----
To MILTON lending sense, to HORACE wit,
He makes them write, what never poet writ.
DR. BENTLEY‘S edition of our English Homer is sufficiently known by name. As it stands a terrifying beacon to conjectural criticism, I shall just notice some of those violations which the learned critic ventured to commit, with all the arrogance of a Scaliger. This man, so deeply versed in ancient learning, it will appear, was destitute of taste and genius in his native language.
Our critic, to persuade the world of the necessity of his edition, imagined a fictitious editor of Milton‘s Poems: and it was this ingenuity which produced all his absurdities. As it is certain that the blind bard employed an amanuensis, it was not improbable that many words of similar sound, but very different signification, might have disfigured

......
全部内容，请购买此书。