Note 68 — CONTROVERSY BETWEEN DRYDEN AND STILLINGFLEET, CONCERNING THE DUCHESS OF YORK’S PAPER.
Reading edition
Sir Henry Wotton, provost of Eton College, who died in 1639, directed his grave-stone to be thus inscribed:
Hic jacet hujus Sententiæ primus Author; Disputandi Pruritus, Ecclesiæ Scabies, Nomen Alias Quære.
Wotton’s biographer, honest Isaac Walton, seems to allow, that this sentence, or something like it, was to be elsewhere found, and that Sir Henry was not the first author of it. But he contends, that reason, mixed with charity, must persuade all readers to believe that a holy lethargy had surprised his memory when he assumed the merit of inventing it.