he was uncertain who she was, to use his peculiar capable of being represented to his discredit, and language, "into the king's bosom;" to have joined her in excluding the Black Prince from all power in the state; and he hints at this hero having been poisoned by them; of Wykeham's embezzling a million of the public money, and, when chancellor, of forging an Act of Parliament to indemnify himself, and thus passing his own pardon. It is a singularity in this libellous romance, that the contrary of all this only is true. But Bohun has so artfully interwoven his historical patches of misrepresentations, surmises, and fictions, that he succeeded in framing an historical libel.

Not satisfied with this vile tissue, in his own obscure volume, seven years afterwards, being the editor of a work of high reputation, Nathaniel Bacon's "Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England," he further satiated his frenzy, by contriving to preserve his libel in a work which he was aware would outlive his own.

Whence all this persevering malignity? Why this quarrel of Mr. Bohun, of the Middle Temple, with the long-departed William of Wykeham?

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"

to improve it with new and horrible calumnies of his own invention." Thus originated this defamatory attack on the character of William of Wykeham! And by arts, which active writers may practise, and innocent readers cannot easily suspect, a work of the highest reputation, like that of Nathaniel Bacon's, may be converted into a vehicle of personal malignity; while the author himself disguises his real purpose under the specious appearance of literature! The present case, it must be acknowledged, is peculiar, where a dead person was attacked with a spirit of rancour, to which the living only appear subject; but the author was an antiquary, who lived as much with the dead as the living: his personal motive was the same as those already recorded, and here he was acting with a double force on the dead and the living!

But here I stop my hand, my list would else be too complete. Great names are omitted-Whitaker and Gibbon"; Pope and Lord Hervey†; Wood and South‡; Rowe, Mores, and Ames§; and George Steevens and Gough.

This chapter is not honourable to authors; but historians are only Lord Chief Justices, who must execute the laws, even on their intimate friends, when standing at the bar. The chapter is not honourable-but it may be useful; and that is a quality not less valuable to the public. It lets in their readers to a kind of knowledge, which opens a necessary comment on certain works, and enlarges our comprehension of their spirit.

If in the heat of controversy authors imprudently attack each other with personalities, they are only scattering mud, and hurling stones, and will incur the ridicule or the contempt of those who, unfriendly to the literary character, feel a

He took all these obscure pains, and was moved with this perpetual rancour against William of Wykeham, merely to mortify the Wykehamists; and slandered their founder, with the idea that the odium might be reflected on New College. Bohun, it seems, had a quarrel with them concerning a lease, on which he had advanced money; but the holder had contrived to assign it to the well-known Eustace Budgell: the college confirmed the assignment. At an interview before the warden, high words had arisen between the parties: the warden withdrew; and the wit gradually shoved the anti-secret pleasure in its degradation: but let them quary off the end of the bench on which they were sitting a blow was struck, and a cane broken. Bohun brought an action, and the Wykehamites travelled down to give bail at Westminster Hall, where the legal quarrel was dropped, and the literary one then began. Who could have imagined that the venerable bishop and chancellor of Edward III. was to be involved in a wretched squabble about a lease, with an antiquary and a wit? "Fancying," says Bishop Lowth, "he could inflict on the Society of New College a blow, which would affect them more sensibly by wounding the reputation of their founder, he set himself to collect everything he could meet with, that was

learn, that to open a literary controversy from mere personal motives; thus to conceal the dagger of private hatred under the mantle of literature; is an expedient of short duration, for the secret history is handed down with the book; and when once the dignity of the author's character sinks, in the meanness of his motives, powerful as the work may be, even Genius finds its lustre diminished, and Truth itself becomes suspicious.

GIBBON'S Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. 243.
+ WALPOLE's Memoirs, vol. iii. 40.
The Life of Wood, by GUTCH, vol. i.
NICHOLS's Literary Anecdotes.

PERSONS TREATED OF, OR ALLUDED TO, IN QUARRELS OF AUTHORS.

Johnson, Dr., 153, 154, 167, 170, 181, 183, 186, 187, 189, 191, Newman, the Cobler, 306

192, 195, 198, 199, 201, 202, 255, 285, 314, 315

Milton, 153, 160, 161, 163, 214, 238, 241, 242, 243, 244, 254, Ranelagh, Lord, 223

Stubbe, Dr. Henry, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 221, 223, 268, Warwick, Earl of, 197

END OF THE QUARRELS OF AUTHORS.