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Pagination: cxii, 549 [i.e. 545], [10]p. Modern fine binding antique full speckled calf with gilt rules to spine and title on red label. New endpapers. E7-E8 with very small corner tear at bottom no affect. Mostly clean and crisp copy with large margins. Armorial bookplate adhered to verso of title page ?Thomas Isted of the Middle Temple Esquire? Last leaf with errata. At time of description we locate no other first edition copies for sale. Richard Bentley (1662-1742), a noted critic and scholar in Classical Antiquities, was part of a close group of friends which included John Evelyn, Sir Christopher Wren, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. Often called the ?founder of historical philology?, Bentley is considered the greatest of English classical scholars and is credited with the creation of English school of Hellenism. He was Master of Trinity College Cambridge. ?Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistles of, by Richard Bentley (1699). ?The Letters of Phalaris? was a Greek work purporting to be real correspondence of a ferocious Dorian tyrant of Sicily in the sixth century before Christ. The educated world of Swift?s time accepted them as genuine; and Sir William Temple, in a pamphlet assuming the literal truth of many of the wildest legends and myths of antiquity, and setting the ancients in general above the moderns in a series of comparisons curiously naïve for an educated man, had extravagantly lauded them. This led a young Oxford man, Charles Boyle, to edit the ?Letters? for English readers of Greek; and in doing this he used an insulting expression with regard to a fancied wrong done him by Bentley, who had just then (1694) become librarian to the King. Bentley had promised a friend, who wished to take the other side in the discussion with Temple, an essay on the Phalaris letters; and in this he showed clearly that they were a clumsy forgery by a Greek rhetorician of about the time of Christ. Boyle took offense in connection with the appearance of Bentley?s essay, and with the help of several Oxford wits brought out a sharp reply, January 1698. It was to dispose of this that Bentley, fourteen months later, March 1699, published his ?Dissertation?; not merely a crushing reply to Boyle, but in matter and style, on lines which were then new, a masterpiece of literature. It was a brilliant piece of criticism, based on accurate historical research; it presented on several points, which are still of interest, stores of learning rarely ever equaled; and it abundantly testified Bentley?s genius as a controversialist. As a scholar, a learned critic, and a university educator, Bentley stands not only at the highest level, but at the head of the stream which has come down to our time. There began with him a broad and thorough scholarship in Greek and Latin literature, which before him was only beginning to get under way. He is thus to scholars one of the great names of learning and of letters.? [-H.R. Keller The Library of the Worlds Best Literature, 1917].Bookplate: Thomas Isted (1677-1731), Barrister Virtuoso. Oxford (matriculated 1695). Member of Middle Temple (admitted 1695). His proposers were Samuel Pepys [1633-1703, English diarist and naval administrator. His diaries was first published in the 19th century and are considered one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period.] and Sir Hans Sloane [1660-1753, Irish physician and naturalist, collector with a collection of 71,000 items which he bequethed to the British nation thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum London]. Citations: Wing B1929. Bartholomew 109.
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