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ART. V.-RICHARD BENTLEY.

RICHARD BENTLEY was born Jan. 27, 1662, at Oulton, near Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was taught the rudiments of Latin by his mother, and received the principal part of his education preparatory to the University, in the grammar school at Wakefield, under Mr John Baskerville. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, at the age of fourteen, in 1676. At this time he began an acquaintance, which afterwards became an intimate friendship, with Sir Isaac Newton, who was then Lucasian Professor of Natural Philosophy. Among his contemporaries at the University were Garth* and William Wotton. He commenced bachelor of arts after the usual term, and was at the age twenty, appointed head master of the grammar school at Spaulding in Lincolnshire. During this year he was selected by Dr Stillingfleet,‡ then Dean of St Paul's, as the private tutor

of

Samuel Garth, author of the Dispensary, well known as a poet, physician, and philanthropist. During the controversy with Boyle on the Epistles of Phalaris, Garth inserted in his Dispensary the following judgment of the combatants.

So diamonds take a lustre from their foil,
And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle.

An unfortunate couplet, as posterity have reversed his judgment.

t William Wotton was not only a university contemporary but a friend through life of Bentley. It is testified not by one, but by many persons of sense and learning, that at six years of age he was able to read and translate Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, to which at seven he added some knowledge of the Arabic and Syriac. On his admission at Catharine Hall, in his tenth year, the master, Dr Eachard, the anatomist of Hobbes, recorded, Gulielmus Wotton, infra decem annos, nec Hammondo nec Grotio secundus. When he proceeded Bachelor of Arts, he was acquainted with twelve languages; and as there was no precedent for granting that degree to a boy of thirteen, Dr Humphrey Gower, one of the Caput, thought fit to put upon record a notice of his extraordinary proficiency in every species of literature, as a justification of the University. In after life Wotton maintained a reputation much higher than is generally the case with persons famed for precocious intellect in childhood.

Edward Stillingfleet, of whom Bentley says, "that by his vast and comprehensive genius he is as great in all parts of learning, as the greatest next himself are in any." He was the confidential adviser of Queen Mary, in the matter of ecclesiastical patronage. It is said that a nobleman dining with Bentley, at the Bishop's, was struck with his powers of conversation, and remarked after dinner, "that chaplain of yours is an extraordinary man." "Yes," said Stillingfleet, "had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe."

of his son. In this station he resided in London for several years, having free access to the noble library of his patron, and mingling with the refined society of that city. In this period of his tutorship "he wrote, before he was twentyfour years of age, a sort of Hexapla; a thick volume in quarto, in the first column of which he inserted every word of the Hebrew Bible alphabetically; and in five other columns all the various interpretations of those words in the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate Latin, Septuagint and Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion, that occur in the whole Bible. This he made for his own use, to know the Hebrew, not from the late Rabbins, but from the ancient versions; when bating Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic, he read over the whole Polyglot." In the same period he wrote another quarto volume, containing the various readings of the Hebrew text of the Bible, which are found in the ancient versions, "which though done in those green years, would make a second part of the famous Capella's Critica Sacra." He was also accustomed to prepare indexes of the authors quoted by the scoliasts, &c. From this it appears that his labors were bestowed upon theological subjects and a preparation for orders, and that classical philology, in which he afterwards became the foremost of English scholars, was made subordinate, for we can hardly suppose it neglected.

In 1689, Bentley accompanied young Stillingfleet to Oxford, where he entered Wadham College. Bentley was here made Master of Arts, a degree which he had before received at Cambridge. He soon buried himself in the rich libraries of Oxford, and began by collating three manuscripts of Hophæstion, with annotations. The next year he was ordained deacon, and made chaplain to Dr Stillingfleet, who had been promoted by King William, to the see of Worcester. He was here strongly urged, by friends who knew his powers and habits, to publish the remains of the Greek Lexicographers, a work which it was supposed would fill four folio volumes. The plan was abandoned; not however till Bentley had made five thousand corrections in the text of Hesychius. About this time a plan was formed of publishing the chronicle of Johannes Malelas, a work of value only for the fragments quoted in it from writers whose works have perished. Dr Mill was the editor. He showed the sheets as they came from the press, to Bentley, who wrote comments

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.

† 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,