Aristarchus Redux: The Satirists vs. the Scholars in the Early Eighteenth Century

CRITICISM ARISTARCHUS REDUX: THE SAnRISTS VS. THE SCHOLARS IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Mary Elizabeth Green Whenever I read of die publication of the latest volume in the "monumental and definitive" edition of an author's works or whenever I attend a meeting of a learned society, I find myself feeling slightly uneasy. I can almost sense the presence of Martinus Scriblerus; I seem to hear him shuffling his papers as he edits his manuscript of Virgilius Restauratus or arranging his three-by-five cards as he rereads his Notes and Prolegomena to the Dunciad in anticipation of being introduced as the second speaker on the day's agenda of scholarly presentations. Like it or not, Martinus Scriblerus is a member ex officio of our scholarly organizations—or at least their eighteenth-century sections—and in the eyes of some we scholars deserve one another. The January 18, 1968, edition of The New York Review of Books, for instance, headlined Lewis Mumford's review of The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson under the title "Emerson and the Pedants." The present edition [Mumford wrote] is an exhibition of current standards of American scholarship at its meticulous best by scholars and strictly for scholars. This means, if I may anticipate my eventual judgment, that it has nothing whatever to do, except by sheer coincidence, with literary values and humanistic aims. The transmission of the journals and notebooks "wie sie eigentlich gescrieben waren" prompted Mumford to remark that this "high fidelity version" reflects "a blunt indifference to any other human aims. As in the way of many enthusiasts, the editors show more concern to reproduce the original scratches and squeaks than the music. . . ." The clash of value systems about the usefulness of certain kinds of learning which underlie this statement must ring familiarly to anyone who has the least acquaintance with Augustan satires on "abuses of learning." Mumford's ridicule of Emerson's modern editors echoes the ridicule heaped on that famous antiquarian Thomas Hearne one year after his death in Impartial Memorials to the Life and Writings of Thomas Hearne, M.A. (London, 1736). The picture of Hearne on the frontispiece bears the subscript: Heamius behold! in Closet close y-pent, Of sober Face, with learned Dust besprent: 35 36RMMLA BulletinJune 1973 To future Ages will his Dulness last, Who hath preserv'd the Dulness of the past.1 The Memorials ironically praise Hearne's "Fidelity as an Editor" in making exact transcripts of obvious errors and lauds him for keeping the text "purely corrupt, and scarce a Blunder thro' the whole, but what is very industriously preserved." Further posthumous abuse was heaped upon Hearne later the same year when his library was sold and the bookseller prefaced the catalogue of Hearne's books with the words that had framed his portrait in the Memorials: Tox on't' quoth Time to Thomas Hearne, •Whatever I forget you learn.' Surely the writers of the Impartial Memorials had a proleptic affinity for Mr. Lewis Mumford. The late Edmund Wilson's skirmishes with the MLA similarly evoke the memory of another battle over the books—the intellectual warfare between the Christ Church wits and Richard Bentley. The position of Charles Boyle and his fellow wits (Francis Atterbury, George Smalridge, Robert and John Freind, and Anthony Alsop) is made quite clear in Dr. Bentleys Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of Aesop, Examined by the Honourable Charles Boyle (London, 1698). First (and as a matter of fact quite incorrecdy) Boyle, with the assistance of his friends, accused Bentley of having spent more than two years on "a very frivolous Cause" and hastened to disclaim having himself spent "any considerable part of my life on so trifling a subject." The only reason he has bothered to answer, Boyle continues, is that Bentley has traduced the character and reputation of men who are so clearly his superiors in breeding and learning, men who mix "Wit with Reason, Sound Knowledge with Good Manners." As he had done in the Preface to his edition of the Epistles, Boyle once again set aside the question of their genuineness as irrelevant and, quoting Cicero's opinion...