Page "William Bellenden" Paragraph 3

The greatest of Bellenden's works is the extensive treatise De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum, printed and published posthumously at Paris in 1633.

The book is unfinished, and treats only of the first luminary, Cicero ; the others intended were apparently Seneca and Pliny.

It contains a most elaborate history of Rome and its institutions, drawn from Cicero, and thus forms a storehouse of all the historical notices contained in that voluminous author.

It is said that nearly all the copies were lost on the passage to England.

One of the few that survived was placed in the university library at Cambridge, and freely drawn upon by Conyers Middleton, the librarian, in his History of the Life of Cicero.

Both Joseph Warton and Dr Parr accused Middleton of deliberate plagiarism, which was the more likely to have escaped detection owing to the small number of existing copies of Bellenden's work.