principally on the text, which were appended to the edition in the form of a letter to the editor. They are valuable for the critical sagacity and skill they display, being chiefly restorations of passages partly quoted, and of verses from the old poets in which the metre had been confused by the transcriber, as well as for vast and accurate learning. This work established his fame both at home and abroad.

In the year 1691 the honorable Robert Boyle had by will appropriated fifty pounds a year to maintain a permanent lectureship against infidelity. Bentley was chosen to deliver the first lectures. This was no slight compliment to a young man, who had not yet taken priest's orders. In 1693 he was appointed librarian to the King, by which he was accidentally involved in a celebrated and curious controversy. It had been for some time the practice of Dr Aldrich, the head of Christ Church, Oxford, to encourage his best scholars every year to exercise and show their learning, by publishing an edition of some classical author. Charles Boyle, a young man of fine taste and scholarship was this year chosen editor, and the Epistles of Phalaris as the material of the edition. These epistles were selected probably for the authority and consequence given them by an opinion of Sir William Temple, who in opposition to Fontenelle and others, maintained the superiority of the ancients over the moderns, and in proof of his assertion that the oldest books extant are the best of their kind, mentioned Esop's Fables and the Epistles of Phalaris strongly affirming their antiquity, and passing a high encomium on their merit. To aid in preparing his edition, Boyle was desirous of obtaining a manuscript of the author belonging to the Royal Library, and applied to Bentley for it. By fault of the agent whom he employed, he failed to get it, and when he put out the edition, he reflected somewhat severely in his preface on Bentley, through whose dislike he thought he had failed of the desired collation. His resentment was increased by a remark of Bentley's that the epistles were spurious and not worth reprinting. Bentley was induced by his friend Wotton to write an essay on their genuineness, which was published as an appendix to Wotton's Reflections on ancient learning. In this he demonstrates beyond a doubt that they are spurious, by arguments drawn from chronology, and from their style, contents, and late appearance. To this the coterie of

Christ Church replied, assailing the character, since they could not refute the argument of Bentley; and Swift, who was then in the family of Sir William Temple, added a chapter to his Tale of a Tub, and soon after wrote his Battle of the Books. The reply was thought triumphant, and the wits of Cambridge printed a caricature, in which Phalaris appears forcing Bentley into the brazen throat of the bull, while underneath is written " I had rather be roasted than Boyled." Next year however he published an enlarged edition of his dissertation, in which every position taken by his opponents was attacked and destroyed, their personalities answered, and the original argument enforced and demonstrated. to their utter confusion and discomfiture; the whole written with so much severity of sarcasm, so inexhaustible learning, and such elegant strength of style, that he fairly extinguished them, and confirmed his own reputation as the master of English critics. His manifest supremacy gained him, though the graduate of another college, the Mastership of Trinity College, which became vacant in 1699.

Trinity College was founded by King Henry VIII, about one month before his death, and endowed with revenues taken from the dissolved monasteries. After experiencing some difficulties from the conflict of the popish and reformed churches, it rose rapidly under Elizabeth, and till the civil troubles under Charles I., flourished in a manner unexampled in the history of academical institutions. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. a greater number of Bishops proceeded from this, than from any other society. Lord Coke and Lord Bacon were among its sons. Six of the translators of the Bible were resident Fellows of Trinity. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, it might claim the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and no less than seven other principal prelates of the English bench. Donne, Cowley, and Dryden received their academical education there. Under the Commonwealth all the royalist Fellows were expelled, and though under Charles II. its privileges and dignities were restored, its prosperity flowed in a less ample tide. Yet in the reign of Charles II. John Pearson and Isaac Barrow were successively Masters, and Sir Isaac Newton for many years a resident Fellow. The relaxation of discipline and the filling of vacancies by letters mandatory from the King, and a neglect of the old system of academ

ical study aided the decline which the agitations of the times had commenced.

The appointment of Bentley, who was of another college and had not for many years resided at Cambridge, was at the outset unpopular, and the dislike to him was increased by his arbitrary and novel decisions, and his capricious and unaccommodating temper. He was involved in an almost perpetual course of quarrels and lawsuits with the college and the Visitor, the Bishop of Ely, which embittered his life, and deprived the learned world of much it might have hoped for from his unbounded learning and unparalleled sagacity. Yet he retained much of his literary zeal, kept up a various correspondence, aided in the perfecting of the University press, and the improvement of the Library.

In 1706, he put to the press his edition of Horace. Through haste, and unfortunately, the text was struck off before the notes were written and it became necessary for Bentley, in preparing his notes, to defend his daring and often rash emendations, with all the skill and verbal subtlety of which he was master. His many collegiate occupations left him little leisure for such a work, which he was obliged to prepare piecemeal, during vacations. Among the learned foreigners with whom he now corresponded, were Spanheim,* Grævius, Kuster, and Hemsterhuis. While this great

* Ezekiel Spanheim was born at Geneva, in 1629. He went in 1642 with his father to Leyden, and became the friend of Heinsus and Salmasius. In 1651 he was appointed to a professorship of Theology in Geneva, but preferred to take charge of the education of the son of the elector palatine. He was employed by him in several diplomatic services, and afterwards was induced to enter the service of the King of Prussia, who ennobled him. He went as Prussian ambassador to London in 1702, and died there in 1710. His most important literary works are a Commentary on Callimachus and Aristophanes, a dissertation on the medals of the ancients, in 2 vols. folio. His father, Frederic, was professor of divinity at Geneva and Levden, and his brother Frederic at Heidelberg in 1665, and at Leyden in 1670.

t John George Grævius was born in Naumburg in Saxony, in 1632. He studied in the Universities of Leipsic and Amsterdam, and succeeded J. F. Gronovius, as Professor at Deventer. He was afterwards invited to the chair of history and rhetoric at Utrecht, which he held 41 years. He died in 1703. Among his literary works are an excellent edition of Cicero's Orations, and of Suetonius, Hesiod, &c. He likewise published two large collections of antiquities, Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum in 12 vols. fol., and Thesaurus Antiquitatum Italiae, 6 vols. fol.

Ludolf Kuster, a Westphalian. He was Greek professor at an academy in Berlin and had received the royal permission to travel to foreign universities. He resided some time at Cambridge, at the instance of Bentley,

work, his Horace, remained on his hands, he still was busied in classical labors, and wrote an extended series of notes to Davies' edition of Cicero's Tusculan Questions. These notes are entertaining as well as instructive, and show a great knowledge of the philosophical writings of Cicero, in addition to many ingenious corrections of corrupted metrical fragments of ancient Latin poets. Detained from longer labors by college quarrels, he found time to review LeClerc's edition of the fragments of Philemon and Menander. This work published in 1709, by a man of great scholarship, seems to have been so defective and mutilated as to be almost worthless. This review, which was published at Utrecht by Burmann,* under the title of Phileleutherus Lip

to whom he had been introduced by Grævius. He was occupied here mainly on an edition of Suidas, and labored with so much diligence that in four years his work was completed in three massy folios. He attended as the representative of Cambridge, at the centenary celebration of the University of Frankfort on the Oder, in 1706. On account of some slight he received at Berlin he resigned his professorship, and returned to Utrecht, where he commenced an edition of Hesychius, and published one of Aristophanes. In 1713 he went to Paris, became a Catholic, received a pension cf 2000 livres, and was appointed a member of the Academie des Inscriptions. He here devoted himself with so intense application to his great project of an edition of Hesychius, that his health was undermined and he died in 1716.

§ Tiberius Hemsterhuis was born at Groningen in 1685. He entered the school of that city and devoted himself there chiefly to mathematical studies. He resided some time at Leyden, and before 20 years of age was made professor of mathematics at Amsterdam. He here entered on his glorious career of philology, and before he was nineteen, by the advice of the veteran Grævius, he undertook to complete an edition of Julius Pollux the lexicographer, three books of which had been left unfinished by Lederlin. This led him into a correspondence with Bentley, whose corrections of those points in which he thought himself most perfect, the restoration of the comic fragments, so discouraged him that for two months he refused to open a Greek book. He soon however resumed his studies with greater ardor, and almost rivalled Bentley in his peculiar province, becoming the most profound grammarian and critic of his age. We are mainly indebted to him for the founding of the Analogical School of study for the Greek language. Salmasius and Joseph Scaliger had prepared the way. His principal works are the edition of Pollux above mentioned, an edition of the Plutus of Aristophanes, and of select dialogues of Lucian. He died in 1756. Ruhnken and Valcknaer were his pupils. His son, Francis Hemsterhuis, was also distinguished for his classical and philosophical attain

ments.

* The Burmann family originated at Cologne. Francis, who was born in 1632, was a theologian at Utrecht, where he died in 1669. Peter, his son, was born at Utrecht in 1668, and studied there and at Leyden. In 1688 he became Doctor of Law, and devoted himself to that profession. In 1696 he was made Professor of History and Rhetoric at Utrecht, and afterwards

siensis, exposed the ignorance and presumption of the editor with the keenest irony, and contains many emendations of the text conceived in Bentley's happiest style and for the most part certain and irrefragable.

At the close of the year 1711, Bentley completed the notes to his Horace. It appeared either by accident or design on the birth-day of the poet himself, and was dedicated in a highly complimentary preface, to the Lord Treasurer, Oxford. The greater part of the notes were written in the space of five months, a space too brief for anything but perfect self-confidence and incredible labor. This work is a specimen of both the excellencies and faults of Bentley, demonstrating unequalled erudition, and wonderful critical sagacity, and at the same time, licentiousness of emendation and insufferable arrogance. The alterations of the common readings of Horace were between seven and eight hundred in number, and were all introduced into the text. Many of them are supported by old editions and manuscripts, but the most are purely conjectural, and though they are defended ingeniously and often convincingly, he was himself constrained to acknowledge a regret for about twenty. Of his proposed alterations the greater part are dubious, many unnecessary, others harsh and improbable. It called forth a host of critics, by whom he was assailed with every sort of weapon, grave refutation, irony, and ridicule.

In 1717 Bentley was elected Regius Professor of Divinity. The subject of his Prælection was the genuineness of John i. 7, which he rejected as spurious. However deserving of the office he might have been on the ground of scholarship, one can hardly doubt that his rude temper, and quarrelsome life fully justified the opposition he experienced. His election seems to have been compassed by a manœuvre hardly to have been expected from a candidate for a divinity chair. We pass over his suits in the King's Bench, his quarrels with Colbach and Middleton, and his projected editions of

of Greek. He became Professor of Eloquence, History, and Greek, at Leyden in 1715, and died in 1741. He published editions of many Latin classics, which are distinguished for the learning and accuracy displayed in them. Among them were Phaedrus, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, &c. The reference in the text is to him. Peter Burmann, his nephew, born in 1713, Professor of Eloquence at Franceker in 1735, and of ancient languages and of poetry at Amsterdam, was also devoted to philology, and the editor of many good editions of the classics. He died in 1778.