Note 381 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

The author of the excellent Latin grammar of the English language, so useful to every student in Europe, of which work that singular patriot, Thomas Hollis, printed an edition, to present to all the learned Institutions of Europe. Henry Stubbe, the celebrated physician of Warwick, to whom the reader has been introduced, joined, for he loved a quarrel, in the present controversy, when it involved philosophical matters, siding with Hobbes, because he hated Wallis. In his “Oneirocritica, or an Exact Account of the Grammatical Parts of this Controversy,” he draws a strong character of Wallis, who was indeed a great mathematician, and one of the most extraordinary decypherers of letters; for perhaps no new system of character could be invented for which he could not make a key; by which means he had rendered the most important services to the Parliament. Stubbe quaintly describes him as “the sub-scribe to the tribe of Adoniram” (i.e. Adoniram Byfield, who, with this cant name, was scribe to the fanatical Assembly of Divines), and “as the glory and pride of the Presbyterian faction.”