In an anonymous tractate written in response to the Proposals (this was an age of controversialists and pamphleteers), which discussed the pamphlet paragraph by paragraph, Bentley was attacked for his program and was said, by his anonymous opponent, to have “neither talents nor materials proper for the work he had undertaken.”11 Bentley took this, as one can imagine, as a slur on his (self-acknowledged) great talents and responded in kind. Unfortunately, he mistook the identity of his opponent, who was actually a Cambridge scholar named Conyers Middleton, for another, John Colbatch, and wrote
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Not a great testament to Bentley's skill for attribution.
