232 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1705. 



was such a master) surely, it must be more difficult to pronounce the age of 

 those books, from the hand, which were written in other countries, in an un- 

 known language. And what may make a man yet more liable to mistakes, be- 

 sides the want of dates in the most ancient Greek, Latin and other MSS. was 

 the practice of many writers, still to use the very same hand when in years, as 

 they learnt when they were young ; like as many ancient people, who yet con- 

 tinue to write the Roman and secretary hands, which were more fashionable 50 

 or 60 years since, than now. 



As to the great facility of finding out an author, and the time he lived in, by 

 his style and phrase, people have learned the knack of changing their style, 

 upon occasion, so artificially, as not to be discovered, but when they themselves 

 wish to be known. Who would have thought that Erasmus wrote the Epistolae 

 obscurorum Virorum ? Or that some of the nicer, nay, the most eminent 

 modern critics, could have been imposed on by their familiar and near acquaint- 

 ance, who trumped upon them their own recent performances, for invaluable 

 fragments of the ancients, whose other works these very critics had lying be- 

 fore them ? It has been a frequent practice, in all ages, for poor scribblers to 

 father their wretched oflfspring upon illustrious persons : and the disparity be- 

 tween the genuine works of the one, and the spurious pieces of the other, being 

 evident enough, it has been easy to distinguish between the gold and the brass. 

 But I would humbly ask this question, is all that is even now by learned men 

 ascribed to some ancient voluminous Greek and Latin authors, undoubtedly 

 theirs ? May not there still some supposititious pieces lurk among them, which 

 have the luck to be received, only because they have been more ingeniously 

 counterfeited ? Nay, may not the same person in the course of his life, even 

 alter and vary his style and phrase unwittingly, and without any design to do so? 

 I think Mr. Richardson, somewhere in his answer to Amyntor, on occasion of 

 the difference in point of style between the Revelation of St. John and his 

 other works, between the Prophecy of Jeremiah and his Lamentations, tells us 

 from Dr. Cave, that the consideration of the times when a man writes, or of 

 the persons to whom, or the subjects about which, or the temper of body, or 

 the humour he is in when he writes, or the care and pains that he takes in 

 writing, may occasion such alterations in his style, as that no certain rule can 

 be inferred from thence. And if it was really possible to find out the time 

 when an author lived, only by diligently reading his works ; surely the world 

 would have been long since agreed as to the time when Homer lived, though 

 they could not tell where he was born. And I believe even in the list of eccle- 

 siastical writers there are some, and those not of the least consideration, who. 



