Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/260

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186
APPENDIX

crime in him. I am as much to seek, too, for his meaning, that his employment makes it not proper for him to add an account of those reflections. His employment as a bookseller I think a very reputable one, if he himself be not a disgrace to't. And if that make it "not proper" for him to bear false witness against his neighbour, by a pretended "account of those reflections," methinks the profession of the Doctor, to whom he refers himself, is more improper for that work. The Doctor indeed, by his profession, may be enabled to do it with more cunning, but he would do it with the greater crime. But let us hear the Doctor's testimony; the air and spirit of it is so very extraordinary; the virulency and insolence so far above the common pitch; that it puts one in mind of Rupilius King, a great ancestor of the Doctor's, commended to posterity by Horace under this honourable character—

Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum.
Horat. Sat. i. 7.
The filth and venom of Rupilius King.

And if the Doctor do not inherit the estate of Rupilius, yet the whole world must allow that he is heir of his