Cf. Pope, Dunciad, i. 279 'How index-learning turns no student pale.' Swift doubtless has Bentley in view in this passage. It was the fashion with the Christ Church wits to stigmatise Bentley's scholarship, which they could not appreciate, much less emulate, as 'index-learning.' This taunt occurs repeatedly in the reply to Bentley's Dissertation, published in 1698 under the name of Charles Boyle, but really the work of Atterbury and the circle who ranged themselves against Bentley and Wotton.