i IM-UJi k A THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES z^^ STA7F NORMAL SCHOOL, <-0S Ar.geles Cal. (Euglisl) illcn of Ccttcro EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY Z^(^ BEINTTLE Y BY R C. JEBB, M.A., LL.D. Edin. KNIGHT OF THE OUDER OF THE SAYIOUR PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE fSIVERSITY OF GLASGOW FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FKAKKLIN SQUAKE ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. Edited by John Morlev. Johnson^. Leslie Stephen. Gibbon J. C. Morison. Scott R. H. Hutton. Shelley J. A. Symonds. Hume T. H. Huxley. Goldsmith William Black. Defoe William Minto. Burns J. C. Shairp. Spenser R. W. Church. Thackeray Anthony TroUope. Burke John Morley. Milton Mark Pattison. Hawthorne Henry James, Jr. SouTHEY E. Dowden. Chaucer A. W. Ward. BuNYAN J. A. Froude. CowPER Goldwin Smith, j Pope Leslie Stephen. | BvRON John NichoL Locke Thomas Fowler. Wqrdsworth F. Myers. Dryden G. Saintsbury. Landor Sidney Colvin. De Quincey Da\-id Masson. Lamb Alfred Ainger. Bentley R. C. Jebb. Dickens A. W. Ward. Gray E. W. Gosse. Swift Leslie Stephen. Sterne H. D. Traill. Macaulay J. Cotter Morison. Fielding Austin Dobson. Sheridan Mrs. Oliphant Addison W. J. Courthope. Bacon R. W. Church. Coleridge H. D. Traill. i2mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any pari o/tlte United States, on receipt of the price. ?A '3 i>AfJ PKEFATORY NOTE. The following are the pnucipal sources for an es- timate of Bentley's life and work : 1. Life of Bcntley, by J. H. Monk, 4to, London, 1830: 2nd ed., 2 vols. 8vo, 1833. — 2. Bentley's Correspondence, cd. C. Wordsworth, 2 vols., Lond. 1842.— 3. Bentley's Works, ed. Alex. Dyec, 1836-38. Vols. I. and IL — Dissertation on Letters of Phalaris, (1) as published in 1699, (2) as orij,'iiial]y printed in Wotton's Bcjlictiom, 1697. Epis- tola ad loannem Milliuin. Vol. III. — Boyle Lectures, with New- ton's Letters : Sermons : Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free- thinking : Proposals for an edition of the Xew Testament : Answer to the Remarks of Conyers Middlcton. — i. Bentley's Fragments of Callimachus, in the edition of Graevius, Utrecht, 1697, reprinted in Blomfield's ed., London, 1815. — 5, Emendations on Menander and Philemon (1710), reprinted, Cambridge, 1713. — 6. Horace, Camb. 1711, 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1713.— 7. Terence, Cambridge, 1726, 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1728. — 8. Milton's Paradise Lost, London, 1732. — 9. Mauilius, London, 1739. Notes by Bentley appeared during his lifetime in the books of other scholars. Since his death, many more have been published from his MSS. These, while varying much in fulness and value, cannot be over- looked in a survey of the field which his studies cov- ered. Tlie subjoined list comprises the greater part of them : On Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, in Gaisford's ed., Oxford, 1805. — Ilephajstion, in Gaisford's cd., 1810. — Lucretius, in Oxford ed., vi BENTLEY. 1818. — Horace (curae novissimae), in the Cambridge Museum Criti- cum, I. 194-6, ed. T. Kidd. — Ovid, in the Classical Journal, xix. 168, 258, ed. G Burges. — Lucan,ed. II. Cumberland, Strawberry Hill, 1760. — Silius Italicus, Class. Journ. iii. 381. — L. Annfcus Seneca,ib. xxxvir. 1 1, ed. T. Kidd. — Nicander, in Museum Criticum, i. 370, 445, ed. J. H. Monk. — Aristophanes, in Classical Journal, xi. 131, 248, xii. 104, 352, XIII. 132, 336, xiT. 130, ed. G. Burges; and in Museum Criticum, ii. 126, ed. J. H. Monk. — Sophocles, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, ed. E. Maltby in Morell's Thesaurus, reprinted in Classical Journal, xiii. 244. — Philostratus, in Olearius's edition (1709). — Hierocles, in Need- ham's edition (1709). — Plautus, in E. A. Sonnenschein's ed. of the Captivi, p. 135, Lond. 1880. — Iliad, i. ii., at the end of J. Maehly's memoir of Bentley (1868), from the MS. at Trinity College, Cam- bridge. — Selected Notes on the Greek Testiunent (from the MS. at Trin. Coll., Camb.), including those on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Bentleii Critica Sacra, ed. A. A. Ellis, Camb. 1862. — A few anecdota from Bentley's MS. notes on Homer (at Trin. Coll., Camb.) are given on page 150. R. Cumberland's Ifemoirs (4to, 1806, 2nd edition, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1807) deserve to be consulted indepen- dently of Monk's quotations from tlieni. Tlie memoir of Bentley by F. A, Wolf, in his Litterarische Analektoi (pp. 1-89, Berlin, 1816), has the permanent interest of its authorship and its date. Rud's Diary, so useful for a part of Bentley's college history, was edited, with some additional letters, by H. R. Luard for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1860. De Quincey's essay — originally a review of Monk — has every charm of his style; the sometimes whimsical judgments need not be taken too seriously. Hartley Coleridge's comments on Monk's facts may be seen iu the short biography of Bentley which he wrote in the Worthies of YorJcshire and Lancashire (pp. 65-1 74). In " Rich- ard Bentley, eine Biographic" (Leipzig, 1868), Jacob Maehly gives a concise sketch for German readers, on PREFATORY NOTE. vii Monk's plan of a continuous chronological narrative, in which notices of the literary works are inserted as they occur. It is proper to state the points which arc distinctive of the present volume: 1. In regard to the external facts of Bentley's life, I have been able to add some traits or illustrations from contemporary or other sources: these are chiefly in chapters i. in. vir. xii. — 2. Chapter vr. is condensed from some results of stud- ies in the University life of Bentley's time, and in the history of Trinity College. — 3. Tiie controversy on the Letters ofPhalaris has hitherto been most familiar to English readers through De Quinccy's essay on Bentley, or the brilliant passage in Macaulay's essay on Temple. Both versions are based on Monk's. The account given here will be found to present some mat- ters under a ditferent light. In such cases the views are those to which I was led by a careful examination of the original sources, and of all the literary evidence which I could find. — 4. My aini has been not more to sketch the facts of Bentley's life than to estimate his work, the character of his powers, and his place in scholarship. Here the fundamental materials arc Bent- ley's writings themselves. To these I have given a comparatively large share of the allotted space. My treatment of them has been independent of any pred- ecessor. The courtesy of the Master of Trinity afforded me an opportunity of using Bentley's marginal notes on Homer at a time when they would not otherwise have been accessible. Mr, Tyrrell, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Dublin, fiivoured me with information regarding a manuscript in the Library. VIU BENTLEY. Prof. A. Michaelis, of Strassburg, and Mr. J. W. Clark, of Trinity College, Cambridge, kindly lent me some books and tracts relating to Bentley. My thanks are especially due to Dr. Hort, for read- inof the proof-sheets of chapter x. ; and to Mr. Munro, for reading those of chapters viii. and ix. To both I have owed most valuable suggestions. For others, on many points, I have been indebted to Dr. Lnard, Registrary of the University of Cambridge ; who, with a kindness which I cannot adequately acknowl- edge, has done rae the great favour of reading the whole book during its passage through the press. The College, Glasgow, February, 1882. ANXALS OF BENTLEY'S LIFE. 1662 1672 10 1676 14 1680 18 1682 20 1683 21 1685 23 1689 27 1690 28 1691 29 1692 30 1693 31 1694 32 1695 33 1696 34 1697 35 1698 36 1699 37 1700 38 1701 39 ^Et. I. Earlier Period.— 1662-1699. Jan. 27. Birth. Goes to Wakefield School. Enters St. John's Coll., Cambridge. B.A. Degree. Master of Spalding School. Tutor to J. Stillingfleet. M.A. Degree. James II. William and Mary. Goes with J. stillingfleet to Oxford. Ordained. Chaplain to Bp. Stillingfleet. Letter to Mill. • Boyle Lectures. Prebendary of Worcester. Temple's Essay. Fragments of Callimachus. Nominated King's Librarian. Appointed, April 12. Wotton's Reflections. Chaplain in Ordinary to King.— F.R.S.— Boyle's Phalaris. Promotes reparation of Camb. Press.— D.D. First essay on Phalaris in 2nd ed. of Wotton. Jan. ^^ Boyle against Bentley.'^ Mar. ^'Bentley against Boyle."— Master of Tria Coll., Camb. II. At Cambridge.— 1700-1742. Feb. 1. Installed at Trin.— Vice-Chancellor. Jan. 7. Marriage. — Archdeacon of Ely. ANNALS OF BENTLEY'S LIFE.— Continued. IX Anne. Collogc Ucformg.— Swin's Battle of the Hooks {11(H). Aids K Kustor, T. Ilemstcrliiiys. Feb. 10. relilioa from Fellows of Trin. to tip. Moore. J/c- nander and P/a/cmon.— Thornhill's portrait ofB. Doc. 8. Horace. rip. cites B. to Ely House. Rimarhs in reply to Collin.s. FiH3T Tri.vl .\t Ely IIofSE.— July 31. Bp. Mooro dies before juilgmcnt has been given. Aug. 1. Death of Queen Anuc. George Z. Jacobite Revolt. B.'s Sermon on Popery. I'etition ft-om Fellows of Trin. to Crown. B. Regius Prof of Divinity. George I. visits Cambridge. B. arrested. Deprived of Degrees by Senate (Oct. 17). B. makes terms with Miller. Proposals for edition of New Testament. Mar. 26. B.'s degrees restored. — Declines sec of Bristol. B.'s Latin speech at Commencement. Terence published. GcorgfC II. Death of Newton. George II. at Cambridge. — B.'s illness.— Colbatch active. Bp. Greene cites B. to appear. Veto by King's Bench. Senate House opened. Fire at Cottonian Library. B. 's edition of Paroiiise Lost. He undertakes Homer. Second Trial at Ely House. April 27. Bp. Greene sentences B. to deprivation. Efforts to procure execution of the judgment. April 22. End of the struggle. B. remains in possession. Manilius. Death of Mrs. Bentlcy. March. Pope's enlarged Dunciad, with verses on B. June. B. examines for the Craven. July 14. His death. Dates of some Prikcifal 'Works. Letter to Mill. Boyle Lectures. Fragments of Calliroacbus. Enlarged Dissertation on I'halaris. Emendations on Menander and Philemon. Horace. Remarks on a late Discourse of Free thinking. Terence. Edition oT Paradise Lost. Manilius. 1* XI. 1702 40 1702-4 40-2 1700-8 44-0 1710 48 1711 49 1713 51 1714 52 1715 53 1716 54 1717 55 1718 50 1719 57 1720 58 1724 62 1725 C3 1720 64 1727 65 1728 60 1729 67 1730 68 1731 69 1732 70 1733 71 1734 72 1735-7 73-5 1738 70 1739 77 1740 78 1742 80 1C91 29 1692 30 1693 31 1699 37 1710 48 1711 49 1713 51 1720 64 1732 70 1739 77 CONTENTS. CHAriER I. p^^^ Earlt Life.— The Lettes to Mill 1 CHAPTER II. The Boyle Lectures ^^ CHAPTER HL Learned Correspoxdesce.— The King's Librarian .... 33 CHAPTER IT. The Coxtroterst on the Letters of Phalaris 39 CHAPTER V. Bestley's Dissertation ^^ CHAPTER YI. Trinity College, Cambridge ^^ CHAPTER YII. Bentlet as Master of Trinity 95 CHAPTER Vm. Literary Work after 1700.— Horace 121 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. Page Other Classical Studies. — Terejjce. — Manilius. — Homer . .133 CHAPTER X. The Proposed Edition of the New Testament 154 CHAPTER XI. English Style. — Edition op "Paradise Lost" 169 CHAPTER XII. Domestic Life. — Last Years 188 CHAPTER XIII. Bentley's Place in the History op Scholarship 202 BENTLEY. CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. TUE LETTER TO MILL. Richard Bextley was born on January 27, 1GG2. A re- markable variety of interest belongs to his life of eighty years. lie is the classical critic whose thoroughly origi- nal genius set a new example of method, and gave a deci- sive bent to the subsequent course of scholarship. Amongst students of the Greek Testament he is memorable as the first who defined a plan for constructing the whole text directly from the oldest documents. Ilis English style has a place of its own in the transition from the prose of the seventeenth century to that of the eighteenth. Dur- ing forty years he was the most prominent figure of a great English University at a stirring period. And every- thing tliat he did or wrote bears a vivid impress of per- sonal character. The character may alternately attract and repel ; it may provoke a feeling in which indignation is tempered only by a sense of the ludicrous, or it may irre- sistibly appeal to our admiration ; but at all moments and in all moods it is signally masterful. 2 BENTLEY. [chap. His birthplace was Oulton, a township in the parish of Roth well, near Wakefield, in the West Riding of York- shire. His family were yeomen of the richer class, who for some generations had held property in the neighbour- hood of Halifax. Bcntlcy's grandfather had been a cap- tain in the Royalist army during the civil war, and had died whilst a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. The Bentleys suffered in fortune for their attachment to the Cavalier party, but Thomas Bcntley, Richard's father, still owned a small estate at Woodlesford, a village in the same parish as Oulton. After the death of his first wife, Thom- as Bentley, then an elderly man, married in 1661 Sarah, daughter of Richard Willie, of Oulton, who is described as a stone-mason, but seems to have been rather what would now be called a builder, and must have been in pretty good circumstances ; he is said to have held a major's commission in the royal army during the troubles. It was after him that his daughter's first-born was called Richard. Bentley's literary assailants in later years en- deavoured to represent him as a sort of ploughboy who had been developed into a learned boor; whilst his amia- ble and accomplished grandson, Richard Cumberland, ex- hibited a pardonable tendency to over-estimate the family claims. Bentley himself appears to have said nothing on the subject. He was taught Latin grammar by his mother. From a day-school at Mcthley, a village near Oulton, he was sent to the Wakefield Grammar School — probably when he was not more than eleven years old, as he went to Cambridge at fourteen. School-boy life must have been more cheer- ful after the Restoration than it had been before, to judge from that lively picture in North's "Lives" of the school at Bury St. Edmund's, where the master — a staunch Royal- I.] EAlilA' LIl'E.-TllE LKTTKIt TO MIl.I.. 3 ist — was forced, " in the tlrei^s of time," to observe " super- hypocritical fastings and scckings," and " walked to cliurcli after his brigade of boys, there to endure the inlliction of divers holdersforth." Then the King came to his own again, and this scholastic martyr had the happy idea of "publishing his cavaliership by putting all the boys at his school into red cloaks ;" " of whom he had near thir- ty to parade before him, through that observing town, to church ; which made no vulgar appearance." The only notice of Bcntley's school -life by himself (so far as I know) is in Cumberland's Memoirs, and is highly charac- teristic. "I have had frcm him at times whilst standing at his elbow " — says his grandson, who was then a boy about nine years old — " a complete and entertaining narra- tive of his school-boy days, with the characters of his dif- ferent masters very humorously displayed, and the punish- ments described which they at times would wrongfully in- flict upon him for seeming to be idle and regardless of his task — When the dunces, he would say, could not discover that I ivas ponderinr/ it in my mind, and fxing it more finnbj in my memory, than if I had been bawling it cut amongst the rest of my schoolfellows.'''' Ilowever, he seems to have retained through life a warm regard for Wakefield School. It had a high reputation. Another of its pupils, a few years later, was John Potter, author of the once pop- ular work on Greek antiquities, editor of Lycophron, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Bcntley was only thirteen when his father died. His grandfather, Richard Willie, decided that he should go to the University without much more delay. The boy bad his own way to make; his father's small estate had been left to a son by the first marriage ; and in those days there was nothing to hinder a precocious lad from matriculating 4 BENTLEY. [chap. at fourteen, though the ordinary age was already seven- teen or eighteen. On May 24, 1G76, " Ricardus Bentley de Oulton " was enrolled in the Admission Book of St. John's College. The choice of a University may have been influenced by the fact that John Baskervile, the mas- ter of Wakefield School, was a member of Emmanuel Col- lege, Cambridge; the choice of a College, partly by the fact that some scholarships for natives of Yorkshire had been founded at St. John's by Sir Marmaduke Constable. Bentley, like Isaac Newton at Trinity, entered as a sub- sizar, a student who receives certain allowances. St. John's College was just then the largest in the University, and appears to have been as efficient as it was distinguished. The only relic of Bentley's undergraduate life is a copy of English verses on the Gunpowder Plot. That stirring theme was long a stock subject for College exercises. Bentley's verses have the jerky vigour of a youth whose head is full of classical allusions, and who is bent on mak- ing points. The social life of the University probably did not engage very much of his time ; and it is left to us to conjecture how much he saw of two Cambridge contem- poraries who afterwards wrote against him — Richard John- son, of his own College, and Garth, the poet, of Peter- house ; or of William Wotton, his firm friend in later life — that " juvenile prodigy " who was a boy of fourteen when Bentley took his degree, and yet already a Bache- lor of Arts. Nothing is known of Bentley's classical studies whilst he was an undergraduate. His own statement, that some of his views on metrical questions dated from earliest manhood (iam ah adolescentia), is too vague to prove anything. Monk remarks that there were no prizes for classics at Cambridge then. It may be observed, however, 1.] EARLY LIFE.— THE LETTEll TO .MII,L. 5 that there was one very important prize — the Craven Uni- versity Schohirship, founded in 1G47. But no competi- tion is recorded between lOVO, when Bentlcy was eight years okl, and lG81,thc year after he took his first degree. The studies of tlic Cambridge Schools were Logic, Ethics, Natural Thilosophy, and Mathematics. Bentlcy took high honours in these. 11 is place was nominally sixth in the first class, but really third, since three of those above him were men of straw. The Vice-chancellor and the two Proctors then possessed the privilege of interpolating one name each in the list, simply as a compliment, and they naturally felt that such a compliment was nothing if it was not courageous. Bentley's degree had no real like- ness, of course, to that of third Wrangler now ; modern Mathematics were only beginning, and the other subjects of the Schools had more weight ; the testing process, too, •was far from thorough. Bcntley never got a Fellowship. In his time — indeed, until the present century — there were territorial restric- tions at almost all Colleges. As a native of Yorkshire, he had been elected to a Constable scholarship, but the same circumstance excluded him from a greater prize. When he graduated, two Fellowships at St. John's were already held by Yorkshiremcn, and a third representative of the same county was inadmissible. lie was a candi- date, indeed, in 1G82; but as no person not in Priest's Orders was eligible on that occasion, he must have gone in merely to show what he could do. The College was enabled to recognise him in other ways, however. lie was appointed to the mastership of Spalding School in Lincolnshire. At the end of about a year, he quitted this post for one which offered attractions of a different kind. Dr. StilUngtlcct — then Dean of St. Paul's, and formerly a 6 BENTLEY. [chap. Fellow of St. John's, Cambrido-e — wanted a tutor for his second son : and Lis clioice fell on Bentley. A youth of twenty-one, with Bentley's tastes and pow- ers, could scarcely have been placed in a more advantageous position. Stillingfleet was already foremost amongst those scholarly divines who were regarded as the champions of Christianity against deists or materialists, and more partic- ularly as defenders of the English Church against designs which had been believed to menace it since the Restora- tion. The researches embodied in Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae and other works had for their general aim to place the Anglican religion on the historical basis of primitive times. In the course of his extensive and varied studies, he had gradually formed that noble library — one of the finest private collections then existing in England — which after his death was purchased for Dublin by Archbishop Marsh. Free access to such a library was a priceless boon for Bentley. At the Dean's house he would also meet the best literary society in London ; and his " patron " — to use the phrase of that day — received him on a footing which enabled him to profit fully by such opportunities. Stil- lingfleet could sympathise with the studies of his son's young tutor. In his own early days, after taking his de- gree at the same College, Stillingfleet had accepted a do- mestic tutorship, and " besides his attendance on his prop- er province, the instruction of the young gentleman," had found time to set about writing his Irenicum — the endeav- our of a sanguine youth to make peace between Presbyte- rians and Prelacy. A contemporary biographer (Dr. Tim- othy Goodsvin) has thus described Dr. Stillingfleet: "He was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned ; his countenance comely, fresh, and awful ; in his conversation, cheerful and discreet, obliging, and very instructive." To the day of I.] KAIJLY LlFi:.— THE LKTTEU To Mil, I,. 7 his death in 1699 Stillini^flcct was Bcntley's best friend — the architect, indeed, of liis early fortunes. The next six years, from the twenty-first to tlic twcnty- sevcntli of his ag-e (1GS3-1G89), were passed by Bcntlcy in Dr. Stilliiigtleet's family. It was during this period, when he enjoyed much leisure and the use of a first-rate library, that Bentley laid the solid foundations of his learning. lie enlarged his study of the Greek and Latin classics, writinor notes in the margin of his books as he went along. In those days, it will be remembered, such studies were not facilitated by copious dictionaries of classical biography, geography, and antiquities, or by those well-ordered and comprehensive lexicons which exhibit at a glance the results attained by the labours of successive generations. Bentley now began to make for himself lists of the authors whom he found cited by the ancient gram- marians; and it may be observed that a series of detract- ors, from Boyle's allies to Richard Dawes, constantly twit Bentley with owing all his learning to " indexes." Thus, in a copy of verses preserved by Granger, Bentley figures as "Zoilus, tir'd with turning o'er Dull indexes, a iirecious store." At this time he also studied the Xew Testament critically. His labours on the Old Testament may be described in his own words: "I wrote, before I was twenty-four years of age, a sort of Hexapla ; a thick volume in quarto, in the first column of which I inserted every word of the Hebrew Bible alphabetically ; and, in five other columns, all the various interpretations of those words in the Chaldee, Syr- iac, Vulgate, Latin, Septuagint, and Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, that occur in the whole Bible." Bentlev did not take Orders till 1G90, when he was 8 BENTLEY. [chap. twenty -eiglit, but he had probably always intended to do so. His delay may have been partly due to the troubles of James II.'s reign. Immediately after the Revolution Dean Stillingfleet was raised to the see of Worcester. Ilis eldest son had gone to Cambridge ; but Bentley's pupil, James, was sent to Wadham College, Oxford. Bentley accompanied him thither ; and, having taken an ad eundem degree of M.A., was placed on the books of Wadham College. He continued to reside at Oxford till the latter part of 1690 ; and we find him engaged on be- half of the University in negotiations for the purchase of the library which had belonged to Dr. Isaac Voss, Canon of Windsor. This valuable collection — including the books of Gerard John Voss, Isaac's father — ultimate- ly went to Leyden ; not, apparently, through any fault of Bentley's, though that was alleged during his controversy with Boyle. While living at Oxford, Bentley enjoyed access to the Bodleian Library ; and, as if his ardour had been stimu- lated by a survey of its treasures, it is at this time that his literary projects first come into view. " I had de- cided" (he informs Dr. Mill) "to edit the fragments of all the Greek poets, with emendations and notes, as a sin- gle great work." Perhaps even Bentley can scarcely then have realised the whole magnitude of such a task, and would have gauged it more accurately two years later, when he had edited the fragments of Callimachus. Nor was this the only vast scheme that floated before his mind. In a letter to Dr. Edward Bernard (then Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford) he discloses a project of editing three Greek lexicons — those of Hesychius and Suidas, with the Etymologkum Magnum — in three paral- lel columns for each page. These would make three folio I.] EARLY LIFE.— THE LETTER TO MILL. 9 volumes; a fourth volume would contain other lexicons (as tho.sc of Julius Pollu.v, Erotian, and I'hrynichus) which did not lend themselves to the arrangement in column. Ilis thoughts were also busy with Philostratus (the Greek biographer of the Sophists) — with Lucretius — and with the astronomical poet Manilius. Bentley excelled all pre- vious scholars in accurate knowledge of the classical me- tres, llis sojourn at Oxford is the earliest moment at which we find a definite notice of his metrical studies. The Baroccian collection in the Bodleian Library contains some manuscripts of tlic Greek "Hand-book of Metres" which has come down under the name of the grammarian Ucphaestion. Bentley now collated these, using a copy of the edition of Turnebus, in which be made some mar- ginal notes ; the book is in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. When Bentley was thirty-six, he could still say, *' I have never published anything yet, but at ilie desire of others." Before he left Oxford, towards the end of 1G90, a friend had already engaged him to appear in print. The Baroccian collection of manuscripts contained the only known copy of a chronicle written in Greek by a certain John of Antioch. He is sometimes called John Malclas, or simply Malclas. This is the Greek form of a Syriac surname similar in import to the Greek rhetor — " orator," " eloquent writer." It was given to other liter- ary men also, and merely served to distinguish this John of Antioch from other well-known men of the same name and place. His date is uncertain, but may probably be placed between the seventh and tenth centuries. Ilis chronicle is a work of the kind which was often under- taken by Christian compilers. Beginning from the Crea- tion, he sought to give a chronological sketch of universal 10 BENTLEY. [chap. history down to bis own time. Tlie work, as extant, is incomplete. It begins with a statement characteristic of its general contents: "After the death of Hephaestus (Vulcan), his son Helius (the Sun) reigned over the Egyptians for the space of 4407 days;" and it breaks off at the year 560 a.d., five years before the death of Justinian. Historically it is worthless, except in so far as it preserves a few notices by writers contemporary with the later emperors ; and it has no merit of form. Scali- ger once described a similar chronicle as a dust-bin. Yet the mass of rubbish accumulated by John of Antioch in- cludes a few fragments of better things. Not only the classical prose-writers but the classical poets were among his authorities, for he made no attempt to discriminate facts from myths. In several places he preserves the names of lost works. Here and there, too, a bit of clas- sical prose or verse has stuck in the dismal swamp of his text. Eager to reconstruct ancient chronoloffv, the stu- dents of the seventeenth century had not overlooked this unattractive author. In the reign of Charles I. two Ox- ford scholars had successively studied him. John Greg- ory (who died in 1646) had proved the authorship of the chronicle — mutilated though it was at both ends — by showing that a passage of it is elsewhere quoted as from the chronicle of Malclas. Edmund Chilmead — a man re- markable for his attainments in scholarship, mathematics, and music — translated it into Latin, adding notes. As a Eoyalist, Chilmead was ejected from Christ Church by the Parliamentary Visitation of 1648. He died in 1653, just as his work was ready to be printed. After the lapse of thirty-eight years, the Curators of the Sheldonian Press resolved in 1690 to edit it. The manuscript chronicle had already gained some repute through the citations of I.] E.UILY LIFE.- THE LETTER To MILL. 11 it by such scholars a.s Seldcn, Usher, Pearson, Stanley, Lloyd. It was arranged that an introduction should bo written by Humphrey Ilody, who had been James Stil- lingflect's College tutor at Wadliara, and had, like Bent- ley, been appointed Chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester. lie was an excellent scholar, and performed his task in a highly creditable manner. A general supervision of the edition had been entrusted to Dr. John Mill, Principal of St. Edmund Ilall, whose learning has an abiding monu- ment in his subsequent edition of the New Testament One day Mill and Bentlcy were walking together at Ox- ford, when the conversation turned on the chronicle of Malelas. Bentlcy said that he would like to see the book before it was published. Mill consented, on condition that Bentlcy would communicate any suggestions that might occur to him. The proof-sheets were then sent to Bentlcy ; who shortly afterwards left Oxford, to take up his residence as chaplain with the Bishop of AVorce.ster. Dr. Mill presently claimed Bentley's promise ; and, thus urged, Bentley at length sent his remarks on Malelas, in the form of a Latin Letter addressed to Dr. Mill. lie elsewhere says that he had been further pressed to write it by the learned Bishop Lloyd. In June, 1691, the chronicle appeared, with Bentley's Letter to Mill as an appendix. This edition ( " Oxonii, e Theatro Sheldoni- ano") is a moderately thick octavo volume; first stands a note by Ilody, on the spelling of the chronicler's sur- name ; then his Prolegomena, filling 04 pages ; the Greek text follows, with Chilmead's Latin version in parallel col- umns, and foot-notes ; and the last 98 pages are occupied by Bentley's Letter to Mill. Briefly observing that he leaves to Ilody the question of the chronicler's identity and age, Bentley comes at 12 BENTLEY. [chap. once to the text. Malelas had treated Greek mythology as history, iuterweaving it with other threads of ancient record. Thus, after enumerating some fabulous kings of Attica, he proceeds: "Shortly afterwards, Gideon was leader of Israel. Contemporary with him was the famous lyric poet Orpheus, of Thrace." Malelas then quotes some statements as to the mystic theology taught by Orpheus. One of these is a sentence which, as he gives it, seems to be composed of common words, but is wholly unintelligible. Bcntley takes up this sentence. He shows that the deeply corrupted words conceal the names of three mystic divinities in the later Orphic system, sym- bolical, respectively, of Counsel, Light, and Life. He proves this emendation, as certain as it is wonderful, by quoting a passage from Daraascius — the last great Neo- platonist, who lived in the early part of the sixth century, and wrote a treatise called " Questions and Answers on First Principles," in which he sketches the theology of "the current Orphic rhapsodies." This treatise was not even partially printed till 1828; and Bentley quotes it from a manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi Col- lege, Oxford. He next deals with a group of fictitious "oracles" which Malelas had reduced from hexameter verse into prose of the common dialect, and shows that several of them closely resemble some which he had found in a manuscript at Oxford, entitled "Oracles and Theolo- gies of Greek Philosophers." Then he turns to those passages in which the chronicle cites the Attic dramatists. He demonstrates the spurious- ness of a fragment ascribed to Sophocles. He confirms or corrects the titles of several lost plays which Malelas ascribes to Euripides, and incidentally amends numerous passages which he has occasion to quote. Discursive exuberance of I.] EARLY LIFE.— THE LETTEU TO MILL. 18 learn In LC cliaractcriscs the wLoIc Letter. A sinpflc exam- ple will serve to illustrate it. Malelas says: "Euripides brought out a play about Pasiphae." Bcntlcy remarks on this : " I do not speak at random ; and I am certain that no ancient writer mentions a Pasiphao of Euripides." The comic poet Alcneus, indeed, composed a piece of that name, which is said to have been exhibited in the same year as the recast Plutus of Aristophanes. It is true, however, Bcntley adds, that the story of Pasiphao had been handled by Euripides, in a lost play called The Cre- tans. Tliis he proves from a scholiast on the Fror/s of Aristophanes. But the scholiast himself needs correction : who says that Euripides introduced Aeropo in The Cretans. Here he is confounding The Cretans with another lost play of Euripides, called the Women of Crete: the former dealt with the story of Icarus and Pasiphae, the latter with that of Aerope, Atreus, and Thyestes. Porphyry, in his book on Abstinence, quotes nine verses from a play of Euripides, in which the chorus are addressing Minos. Grotius, in his Excerpts from Greek Comedies and Trage- dies, had attempted to amend these corrupted verses, and had supposed them to come from the Women of Crete. Bentley (incidentally correcting a grammarian) demon- strates that they can have belonged only to The Cretans. He then turns to the Greek verses themselves. Grotius bad given a Latin version of them, in the same metre. This metre was the anapaestic — one which had been fre- quently used by the scholars of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, both in translations and in original poems. Bentley points out that one of its most essential laws had been ignored, not only by Grotius, but by the modern Lat- inists generally, including Joseph Scaligor. The ancients regarded the verses of this metre as forming a continuous 2 14 BENTLEY. [chap. chain ; hence the last syllable of a verse was not indiffer- ently long or short, but necessarily one or the other, as if it occurred in the middle of a verse. Thus Grotius had written : " Quas prisca domos dedit indigena Quercus Chalyba secta bipenni." Here the short a at the end of indigena should be a long syllable, in order to make an anapicst (^•— ). This is known as Bentley's discovery of the synaphea (" connec- tion'''') in anapaestic verse. He further illustrates the metre from fragments of the Latin poet Attius — which he amends ; one fragment, indeed, he recognises in the prose of Cicero's Tmculans. Returning to the fragment of The Cretans in Porphyry, which Grotius had handled amiss, Bentley corrects it — with certainty in some points, with rashness in others, but everywhere brilliantly. Nor has he done with the verses yet. They mention the c7/press as "native" to Crete. This leads Bentley to discuss and amend passages in Pliny's Natural History, in the History of Plants by Theophrastus, and in the geographical work of Solinus. Elsewhere Malelas refers to the lost Meleager of Euripi- des. Having quoted another mention of it from Hesych- ius, Bentley takes occasion to show at length the principal causes of error in that lexicon. This is one of the most striking parts of the Letter. Then, in numerous places, he restores proper names which Malelas had defaced. The chronicler says that the earliest dramatists were Themis, Minos, and Auleas. Bentley shows that he means Thespis, Ion of Chios, and iEschylus. Thespis leads him to quote Clement of Alexandria, and to explain some mysterious words by showing that they are specimens of a pastime which consisted in framing a sentence with the twentj- I.] EARLY LIFE— TUK LKTTKIl TO MILL. 16 four letters of tlie alpliabct, each used once only. Speak- inrr of Ion, he gives an exhaustive discussion of that poet's date and writings, verse and prose. The Letter ends with some remarks on the form of the name MaleJas. Ilody had found fault with Bcntley for adding the final s, which no previous scholar used. Bentlcy replies that a at the end of a foreign name ordinarily became as in Greek — as Agrippas. And Malelas being the Greek form of a Greek writer's name, we should keep it in Latin and English, just as Cicero says Lysias, not L>jsia. The Latin exceptions are the domesticated names — those of slaves, or of Greeks naturalised by residence : cOS Sosia, Pkania. But it was objected that Malda was a " barbarian " name, and there- fore indeclinable. Bentlcy answers that the Hun Attila appears in Greek writers as Attilas — adding half a dozen Huns, Goths, and Vandals. The prejudice in favour of Malela arose from a simple cause. The chronicler is men- tioned only thrice by Greek writers : two of these three passages happen to have the name in the genitive case, which is Malela; the third, however, has the^nominativc, which is Malelas. Mr. Hody was not convinced about the s. The note — in four large pages of small print — which precedes his Prolegomena was written after he had read Bentlcy's argument ; and ends with a prayer. Mr. Ilody's aspiration is that he may always write in a becoming spirit; and, finally, that he may be a despiscr of trifles {nugarum, deniqiie contemptor). Taken as a whole, Bentlcy's Letter to Mill is an extraor- dinary performance for a scholar of twenty-eight in the year 1690. It ranges from one topic to another over al- most the whole field of ancient literature. L'pwards of sixty Greek and Latin writers, from the earliest to the 16 BENTLEY. [chap, latest, are incidentally explained or corrected. There are many curious tokens of the industry with which Bentley had used his months at Oxford. Thus, referring to a manuscript of uncertain origin in the Bodleian Library, *' I have made out," he says, " from some iambics at the beginning — almost effaced by age — that it contains the work of the grammarian Theognotus, whom the author of the Etymologicum Magnum quotes several times ;" and he gives his proof. It is interesting to see how strongly this first production bears the stamp of that peculiar style which afterwards marked Bentley's criticism. It is less the style of a writer than of a speaker who is arguing in a strain of rough vi- vacity with another person. The tone is often as if the ancient author was reading his composition aloud to Bent- ley, but making stupid mistakes through drowsiness or in- attention. Bentley pulls him up short ; remonstrates with him in a vein of good-humoured sarcasm ; points out to him that he can scarcely mean this, but — as his own words else- where prove — must, no doubt, have meant that ; and rec- ommends him to think more of logic. Sometimes it is the modern reader whom Bentley addresses, as if begging him to be calm in the face of some tremendous blunder just committed by the ancient author, who is intended to over- hear the " aside " — " Do not mind him ; he does not really mean it. He is like this sometimes, and makes us anx- ious ; but he has plenty of good-sense, if one can only get at it. Let us see what we can do for him." This collo- quial manner, with its alternating appeals to author and reader, in one instance exposed Bentley to an unmerited rebuke from Dr. Monk. Once, after triumphantly show- ing that John of Antioch supposed the Boeotian Aulis to J.] EARLY LIFE.— THE LETTER TO MILL. 17 be in Scythin, Bcntley exclaims, " Good indeed, Jo/inrujr (Eiige vero, w 'hoayyihur). Dr. Monk thought that this was said to Dr. John Mill, and reproved it as "an indeco- rum which neither the familiarity of friendship nor the license of a dead languaj^fc can justify towards the dii^ni- ficd Ilcad of a House." Mr. Maehly, in a memoir of Bent- ley, rejoins: "That may be the view of English high life ; a German savant would never have been offended by the expressions in question." (Das mag Anschauung des eng- lischcn hif/h life sein : eincm deutschen Gelehrten wiirden die fraglichen Ausdriickc nic aufgefallen sein.) But our Aristarchus was not addressing the Principal of St. Ed- mund Hall ; he was sportively upbraiding the ancient chronicler. Indeed, Monk's slip — a thing most rare in his work — was pointed out in a review of his first edition, and is absent from the second. Two of the first scholars of that day — John George Graevius and Ezechiel Spanhcim — separately saluted the young author of the Letter to Mill as " a new and already brio-ht star" of English letters. But the Letter to Mill received by far its most memorable tribute, yeai-s after Bentley's death, from David Ruhnken, in his preface to the Hesychins of Alberti. "Those great men," he says — meaning such scholars as Scaliger, Casaubon, Saumaise — "did not dare to say openly what they thought (about Hesychius), whether deterred by the established repute of the grammarian, or by the clamours of the half-learned, who are always noisy against their betters, and who were uneasy at the notion of the great Hesychius losing his pre-eminence. In order that the truth should be publish- ed and proved, we needed the learned daring of liichard Bentlcy — daring which here, if anywhere, served literature 18 BENTLEY. [chap. i. better than the sluggish and credulous superstition of those who wish to be called and deemed critics. Bentley shook off the servile yoke, and put forth that famous Let- ter to Mill — a wonderful monument of genius and learn- ing, such as could have come only from the first critic of his time." CHAPTER II. TnE BOYLE LECTURES. Robert Bovle, born in the year after Bacon's death (1G27), stands next to him among the Englishmen of the seventeenth century who advanced inductive science. His experiments — "physico-mechanical," as he describes them — led to the discovery of the law for the elasticity of the air; improvements in the air-pump and the thermometer were due to him ; and his investigations were serviceable to Hydrostatics, Chemistry, and Medicine. In his theo- logical writings it was his chief aim to show "the recon- cilableness of reason and religion," and thus to combat the most powerful prejudice which opposed the early progress of the New Philosophy. Boyle's mind, like Newton's, be- came more profoundly reverent the further he penetrated into the secrets of nature; his innermost feeling appears to be well represented by the title which he chose for one of his essays — "On the high veneration man's intellect owes to God, peculiarly for his wisdom and power." Thus his "Disquisition of Final Causes" was designed to prove, as against inferences which had been drawn from the cos- mical system of Descartes, that the structure of the uni- verse reveals the work of a divine intelligence. Dying on December 30, 1691, he left a bequest which was in har- 20 BENTLEY, [chap. mony witli the main purpose of his life, and which might be regarded as his personal and permanent protest against the idea that a servant of science is an enemy of religion. He assigned fifty pounds a year as a stipend "for some divine, or preaching minister," who should " preach eight Sermons in the year for proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels, viz. Atheists, Deists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans ; not descending to any controversies that are among Christians themselves : The lectures to be on the first Monday of the respective months of January, February, March, April, May, September, October, Novem- ber; in such church as the trustees shall from time to time appoint." The four trustees named in the will — Bishop Tenison, Sir Henry Ashurst, Sir John Rotheram, and John Evelyn (the author of the Sylva and the Diary) — soon appointed the Lecturer who was to deliver the first course. " We made choice of one Mr. Bentley," says Evelyn — " chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester." Bishop Stil- lingfleet, himself so eminent an apologist, would naturally be consulted in such an election. Bentley took for his subject the first of the topics indicated by the founder — "A confutation of Atheism." At this time the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes had been forty years before the world : and Bentley's lectures stand in a peculiar relation to it. Hobbes resolved all ideas into sensations ; he denied that there was " any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the ob- jects themselves," He did not, however, deny the exist- ence of a God. "Curiosity about causes," says Hobbes, " led men to search out, one after the othei", till they came to the necessary conclusion, that there is some eternal cause which men called God. But they have no more idea of his nature than a blind man has of fire, though he II.] THE BOYLE LECTURES. 21 knows tliat tlicrc is something wliich warms him." So elsewhere he distinguislics between the necessary "ac- knowledgment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal God," and the attempt — which he pronounces delusive — to define the nature of that Being " by spirit incorporeal." Bcntley held with those who regarded llobbes, not merely as a materialist who destroyed the basis of mo- rality, but as an atheist in the disguise of a deist. Writ- ing to Bernard, Bentlcy says roundly of llobbes, "his corporeal God is a meer sham to get his book printed." llobbes had said — not in the Leviathan, but in "An An- swer to Bishop Bramhall," who had pressed him on this point — " I maintain God's existence, and that he is a most pure and most simple corporeal spirit ;" adding, " by cor- poreal I mean a substance that has magnitude." Else- where he adds "invisible^^ before "corporeal." But at this time the suspicion of a tendency was sometimes enough to provoke the charge of atheism : thus Cud- worth, in his "Intellectual S>/s(em '* — published fourteen years before Bcntley's lectures, and, like them, directed mainly against llobbes — casts the imputation, without a shadow of reason, on Gassendi, Descartes, and Bacon. Bentlcy declared that atheism was rife in " taverns and coffee-houses, nay AVestminster-hall and the very churches." The school of Uobbcs, he was firmly persuaded, was an- swerable for this. "There may be some Spinosists, or immaterial Fatalists, beyond seas," says Bentlcy ; " but not one English infidel in a hundred is any other than a Ilobbist; which I know to be rank atheism in the private study and select conversation of those men, whatever it may appear abroad." Bcntley's Lectures are, throughout, essentially an argument against llobbes. The set of the lecturer's thoughts may be seen from an illustration used 2* 22 BENTLEY. [chap. in his second discourse, where he is arguing against a fortuitous origin of the universe. "If a man should af- firm that an ape, casually meeting with pen, ink, and paper, and falling to scribble, did happen to write exactly the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, would an atheist believe such a story ?" It was from the pulpit of St. Martin's Church, in Lon- don, that Bentley delivered his Boyle Lectures. The first was given on March 7, 1692. Bentley announces that his refutation of atheists will not be drawn from those sacred books which, in their eyes, possess no special authority ; " but, however, there are other books extant, which they must needs allow of as proper evidence ; even the mighty volumes of visible nature, and the everlasting tables of right reason ; wherein, if they do not wilfully shut their eyes, they may read their own folly written by the finger of God, in a much plainer and more terrible sentence than Belshazzar's was by the hand upon the wall." In choosing this ground Bentley was following a recent example. Richard Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Pe- terborough, had published in 1672 his " Philosophical Dis- quisition on the Laws of Nature" — arguing, against the school of Hobbes, that certain immutable principles of moral choice are inherent in the nature of things and in the mind of man. He purposely refrains, however, from appealing to Scripture : the testimony which Cumberland invokes is that of recent science, mathematical or physio- logical — of Descartes and Huygens, of Willis or Harvey. It is characteristic of Bentley that he chose to draw his weapons from the same armoury. He was already a dis- ciple of strictly theological learning. But in this field, as in others, he declined to use authority as a refuge from losxical encounter. n.] THE 150YLK LECTURES. 23 Bentlcy's first Lecture argues that to adopt atheism is " to choose death and evil before life and good ;" that such folly is needless, since religion imposes nothing repugnant to man's faculties or incredible to his reason ; that it is also luirtful, both to the individual, whom it robs of the best hope, and to communities, since religion is the basis of society. The second Lecture proceeds to deduce the existence of the Deity from the faculties of the human soul. Ilobbes had said : " There is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense : tlic rest are de- rived from that original." Bcntley, on the contrary, un- dertakes to prove that "the powers of cogitation, and volition, and sensation, arc neither inherent in matter as such, nor producible in matter;" but proceed from "some cogitative substance, some incorporeal inhabitant within us, which we call spirit and soul." As the result of the inquiry, he concludes that there is " an immaterial and intelligent Being, that created our souls ; which Being was cither eternal itself, or created immediately or ulti- mately by some other Eternal, that has all those perfec- tions. There is, therefore, originally an eternal, immate- rial, intelligent Creator; all which together are the attri- butes of God alone." Evelyn, who was present at this Lecture, writes of it in his Diary (April 4, 1G92) — "one of the most learned and convincing discourses I had ever heard." From this point we may date the friendship which till his death in 1706 he steadily entertained for Bentley. The third, fourth and fifth Lectures urge the same inference from the origin and structure of human bodies. Bentley seeks to prove that "the human race was neither from everlasting without beginning ; nor owes its beginning to the influence of heavenly bodies ; nor to 24 BENTLEY. [chap. ■what they call nature, that is, the necessary and mechan- ical motions of dead senseless matter." His style of ar- gument on the evidence of design in the human structure may be seen from this passage on the organism of the heart : " If we consider the heart, which is supposed to be the first principle of motion and life, and divide it by our im- agination into its constituent parts, its arteries, and veins, and nerves, and tendons, and membranes, and innumera- ble little fibres that these secondary parts do consist of, we shall find nothing here singular, but what is in any other muscle of the body. 'Tis only the site and posture of these several parts, and the configuration of the whole, that give it the form and functions of a heart. Now, why should the first single fibres in the formation of the heart be peculiarly drawn in spiral lines, when the fibres of all other muscles are made by a transverse rectilinear motion? What could determine the fluid matter into that odd and singular figure, when as yet no other member is supposed to be formed, that might direct the course of that fluid matter? Let mechanism here malce an experi- ment of Hs power, and produce a spiral and turbinated motion of the whole moved body without an external director." The last three Lectures (vi., vii., viii.) deal with the proofs from " the origin and frame of the world." These arc by far the most striking of the series. Newton's Principia had now been published for five years. But, beyond the inner circle of scientific students, the Carte- sian system was still generally received. Descartes taught that eacL planet was carried round the sun in a separate vortex ; and that the satellites are likewise carried round by smaller vortices, contained within those of the several II.] THE BOYLE LECTURES. o.T planets. Ccntrifuijal motion would constantly impel the planets to fly off in a straight line from the sun ; but they arc kept in their orbits by the pressure of an outer sphere, consisting of denser particles which are beyond the action of the vortices. Newton had demolished this theory, lie had shown that the planets arc held in their orbits by the force of gravity, which is always drawing them towards the sun, combined with a transverse impulse, which is always pro- jecting them at tangents to their orbits. Bentley takes up Newton's gre.it discovery, and applies it to prove the existence of an Intelligent Providence. Let us grant, he says, that the force of gravity is inherent to matter. What can have been the origin of that other force — the trans- verse impulse .• This impulse is not uniform, but has been adjusted to the place of each body in the system. Each planet has its particular velocity, proportioned to its dis- tance from the sun and to the quantity of the solar mat- ter. It can be due to one cause alone — an intelligent and omnipotent Creator. This view has the express sanction of Newton. His letters to Bentley — subsequent in date to the Lectures — repeatedly confirm it. "I do not know any power in nature," Newton writes, " which would cause this trans- verse motion without the divine arm," ..." To make this system, with all its motions, required a cause which under- stood and compared together the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitat- ing powers resulting from thence; the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth ; and the veloci- ties with which these planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies ; and to com- 26 BENTLEY. [chap. pare and adjust all these things together, in so great a va- riety of bodies, argues that cause to be, not blind and for- tuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry." The application of Newton's discoveries which Bentley makes in the Boyle Lectures was peculiarly welcome to Newton himself. " When I wrote my treatise about our system," he says to Bentley, " I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity ; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the public any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought," The correspondence between Bentley and Newton, to which the Boyle Lectures gave rise, would alone make them memorable. It has commonly been supposed that Bentley first studied the Princlpia with a view to these Lectures. This, as I can prove, is an error. The Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains the autographs of Newton's four letters to Bentley, and of his directions for reading the Princlpia ; also a letter to Wotton from John Craig, a Scottish mathematician, giving advice on the same subject, for Bentley's benefit. Now, Craig's letter is dated June 24, 1691 ; Bentley, then, must have turned his mind to the Principia six months before the Boyle Lectures were even founded. We know, further, that in 1689 he was working on Lucretius. I should conjecture, then, that his first object in studying Newton's cosmical system had been to compare it with that of Epicurus, as interpreted by Lucretius ; to whom, indeed, he refers more than once in the Boyle Lectures. Craig gives an alarming list of books which must be read before the Princijyict can be understood, and represents the study as most arduous. Newton's own directions to Bentley are simple and en- I,.] THE BOYLE LECTURES. 27 couraginrj: "at y*^ first perusal of my Book," lie con- cludes, " it's enough if you understand y" Propositions \v*'' some of y*^ Demonstrations w*^'' are easier than the rest. For when you understand y** easier, they will after- wards o-ive vou light into y^ harder." At the bottom of the paper Bentley has written, in his largest and bold- est character, ^^ Directions from Mr. Newton l»j his own Hand.'''' There is no date. Clearly, however, it was Craig's formidable letter which determined Bentley on writing to Newton. The rapidity with which Bentley — amongst all his other pursuits — comprehended the Prin- cipia proves both industry and power. Some years later, his Lectures were searched for flaws by John Keill, after- wards Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and the principal agent in introducing Newton's system there. The Phalaris controversy Avas going on, and Kcill wished to damage Bentley. But he could find only one real blot. Bentley had missed Newton's discovery — mentioned, but not prominent, in the Principia — that the moon revolves about her own axis. Keill's only other point was a verbal cavil, refuted by the context. Better testimony to Bent- ley's accuracy could scarcely have been borne. The last Lecture was given on December 5, 1692. The first six had already been printed. But before publishing the last two — which dealt in more detail with Newton's principles — Bentley wished to consult Newton himself. He therefore wrote to him, at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was in the autumn of that year that Newton had fin- ished his Letters on Fluxions. ]Ic was somewhat out of health, suffering from sleeplessness and loss of appetite ; perhaps (as his letters to Locke suggest) vexed by the re- peated failure of his friends to obtain for him such a pro- vision as he desired. But he at once answered Bcntley's 28 BENTLEY. [chap. letter witli that concise and lucid thorougliness wliicli makes his style a model in its kind. His first letter is dated Dec. 10, 1692, and addressed to Bentley "at the Bishop of Worcester's House, in Park Street in West- minster." On the back of it Bentley has written : " Mr Newton's Answer to some Queries sent by me, after I had preach't ray 2 last Sermons ; All his answers are agree- able to what I had deliver'd before in the pulpit. But of some incidental things I do ixix^iy [suspend judgment]. R. B." Three other letters are extant which Newton wrote at this time to Bentley — the last on Feb. 25, 1693. He probably wrote others also ; there are several from Bent- ley to him in the Portsmouth collection. In the course of these four letters, Newton approves nearly all the arguments for the existence of God which Bentley had deduced from the Principia. On one im- portant point, however, he corrects him. Bentley had conceded to the atheists that gravity may be essential and inherent to matter. "Pray," says Newton, "do not as- cribe that notion to me ; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it." In the last letter, about five weeks later, Newton returns to this topic, and speaks more decidedly. The notion of gravity being inherent to matter " is to me," he says, " so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws ; but whether this agent be ma- terial or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers." One of the most interesting points in these letters is to sec how a mind like Bcntley's, so wonderfully acute in n.] THE BOYLE LECTURES. 29 certain directions, and logical in criticism oven to excess, is corrected by a matlicmatical mind. Tims Ijontloy, in writing to Newton, had argued that every particle of mat- ter in an infinite space has an infinite quantity of matter on all sides, and consequently an infinite attraction every way; it must therefore rest in equilibrium, all infinites being equal. Now, says Newton, by similar reasoning we might prove that an inch is equal to a foot. For, if an inch may be divided into an infinite number of parts, the sura of those parts will be an inch ; and if a foot may be divided into an infinite number of parts, the sum of those parts must be a foot ; and therefore, since all infinites arc equal, those sums must be equal ; that is, an inch must be equal to a foot. Tlic logic is strict; what, then, is the error in the premises? The position, Newton answers, that all infinites arc equal. Infinites may be considered in two ways. Viewed absolutely, they arc neither equal nor unequal. But when considered under certain definite restrictions, as mathematics may consider them, thev can be compared. " xV mathematician would tell you that, though there be an infinite number of infinite little parts in an inch, yet there is twelve times that number of such parts in a foot." And so Bcntley's infinite attracting forces must be so conceived as if the addition of the slightest finite attracting force to cither would destroy the equilibrium. Johnson has observed that these letters show " how even the mind of Newton gains ground gradually upon darkness:" a fine remark, but one which will convey an incorrect impression if it is supposed to mean that Bcnt- ley's questions had led Newton to modify or extend any doctrine set forth in the Princijna. Bcntley's present object in using the Principia was to refute atheism. 30 BENTLEY. [chap. Newton had not previously considered all the possible applications of his own discoveries to the purposes of the- ological controversy. This is the limit to the novelty of suggestion which he found in Bentley's letters. Be- sides the few cases in which Newton points out a fallacy, there are others in which he puts a keener edge on some argument propounded by his correspondent. For in- stance, Bcntley had submitted some reasons against " the hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechan- ical principles from matter evenly spread through the heavens." This was one of the theories which sought to eliminate the necessity of an intelligent cause. It was, of course, radically incompatible with Newton's system. " I had considered it very little," Newton writes, "before your letters put me upon it." But then he goes on to point out how it may be turned against its authors. It involves the assumption that gravity is inherent to matter. But, if this is so, then matter could never have been even- ly spread through the heavens without the intervention of a supernatural power. Newton's letters, while they heighten our admiration for the master, also illustrate the great ability of the dis- ciple — his strong grasp of a subject which lay beyond the sphere of his familiar studies, and his vigorous originality in the use of new acquisitions, Bentley's Boyle Lectures have a lasting worth which is independent of their scien- tific value as an argument. In regard to the latter, it may be observed that they bear the mark of their age in their limited conception of a natural law as distinguished from a personal agency. Thus gravitation is allowed as a nat- ural " law " because its action is constant and uniform. But wherever there is a more and a less, wherever the op- eration is apparently variable, this is explained by the in- ii.J THE BOYLE LECTURES. 31 tcrvcnhi"' will of an intelligent person; it is not conceived that the disturbing or modifying force may be another, though unknown, " law," in the sense in whicli that name is given to a manifestly regular sequence of cause and ef- fect. On their literary side, the best parts of the Lectures exhibit Bentley as a born controversialist, and the worst as a born litigant. The latter character appears in an oc- casional tendency to hair-splitting and quibbling; the for- mer, in his sustained power of terse and animated reason- ing, in rapid thrust and alert defence, in ready command of various resources, in the avoidance of declamation while lie is proving his point, and in the judicious use of elo- (jucnce to clinch it. Here, as elsewhere, he has the knack of illustrating an abstruse subject by an image from com- mon things. He is touching (in the second Lecture) on the doctrine of Epicurus that our freedom of will is due to the declension of atoms from the perpendicular as they fall through infinite space. "'Tis as if one should say that a bowl equally poised, and thrown upon a plain and smooth bowling-green, will run necessarily and fatally in a direct motion ; but if it be made with a bias, that may de- cline it a little from a straight line, it may acquire by that motion a liberty of will, and so run spontaneously to the jack." It may be noticed that a passage in the eighth Lecture is one of the quaintest testimonies in literature to the comparatively recent origin of a taste for the grander forms of natural scenery. Bentley supposes his adversa- ries to object that "the rugged and irregular surface" of the earth refutes its claim to be "a work of divine artifice." "We ought not to believe," he replies, "that the banks of the ocean are really deformed, because they have not the form of a regular bulwark ; nor that the mountains are out of shape, because they arc not exact pyramids or cones." 32 BENTLEY. [chap. ii. The Lectures made a deep and wide impression. Soon after they had been published, a Latin version appeared at Berlin. A Dutch version subsequently came out at Utrecht. There was one instance, indeed, of dissent from the general approval. A Yorkshire squire wrote a pam- phlet, intimating that his own experience did not lead him to consider the faculties of the human soul as a decisive argument for tlie existence of a Deity ; and, referring to Bentley's observations on this head, he remarked, " I judge he hath taken the wrong sow by the ear." In 1694 Bentley again delivered a course of Boyle Lectures — " A Defence of Christianity" — but they were never printed. Manuscript copies of them are mentioned by Kippis, the editor of the Biographia Britannica (1780); but Dean Vincent, who died in 1815, is reported by Kidd as believ- ing that they were lost. CHAPTER III. LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE. THE KINg's LIBRARIAN. In 1692 — the year of his fii-st Boyle Lcctnrcrship — an ac- cident placed Beutley in correspondence with John George Gracvins, a German who held a professorship at Utrecht, and stood in the front rank of classical — especially Latin — scholarship. AVhen Bentley was seeking materials for an edition of Manilius, he received a bo.x of papers from Sir Edward Sherburn, an old Cavalier who had partly trans- lated the poet. The papers in the box, bought at Ant- werp, had belonged to the Dutch scholar, Gaspar Geviirts. Amongst them was a Latin tract by Albert Rubens (" Ru- benius,") the author of another treatise which Graevius had previously edited. Bentley, with Shcrburn's leave, sent the newly-found tract to Graevius, who published it in 1694, with a dedication to Bentley. This circumstance afterwards brought on Bentley the absurd charge of hav- ing intercepted an honour due to Sherburn. Graevius was rejoiced to open a correspondence with the author of the Letter to Mill, which he had warmly admired. The professor's son had lately died, leaving an unpublished edition of the Greek poet Callimachus, which Graevius was now preparing to edit. lie applied to Bent- ley for any literary aid that he could give. In reply: 34 BENTLEY. [chap. Bentley undertook to collect the fragments of Calliraa- chus, scattered up and down throughout Greek literature ; remarking that he could promise to double the number printed in a recent Paris edition, and also to improve the text. In 1696 Bentley fulfilled this promise by sending to Graevius a collection of about 420 fragments; also a new recension of the poet's epigrams, Avith additions to their number from a fresh manuscript source, and with some notes on the hymns. The edition appeared at Utrecht in 1697, with Bentley's contributions. In the preface Graevius shows his sense that the work done by Bentley — " that new and brilliant light of Brit- ain " — was not merely excellent in quality, but of a new order. Such indeed it was. Since then, successive gen- erations have laboured at collecting and sifting the fras;- raents of the Greek poets. But in 1697 the world had no example of systematic work in this field. The first pattern of thorough treatment and the first model of crit- ical raethod were furnished by Bentley's Callimachus. Hitherto the collector of fragments had aimed at little more than heaping together " the limbs of the dismem- bered poet." Bentley shows how these limbs, when they have been gathered, may serve, within certain limits, to re- construct the body. Starting from a list of the poet's works, extant or known by title, he aims at arranging the fragments under those works to which they severally be- longed. But, while he concentrates his critical resources in a methodical manner, he wisely refrains from pushing conjecture too far. His Callimachus is hardly more dis- tinguished by brilliancy than by cautious judgment — praise which could not be given to all his later works. Here, as in the Letter to Mill, we see his metrical studies bearing fruit: thus be points out a fact which had hitherto es- III] LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE. 35 capod even such scholars as Sanniaisc and Casaubon — that tlie Greek diphthongs ai and oi cannot bo shortened before consonants. Erncsti, in the preface to his CuUima- chiis (17C3), speaks of Bentley as " liaving distanced com- petition :" and another estimate, of yet higher authority, is expressed more strongly still. " Nothing more excel- lent in its kind has appeared," said Valckenacr — " nothing more highly finished;" "a most thorough piece of work, by which writers who respect their readers might well be deterred" from an attempt at rivalry. It is no real abate- ment of Bentley's desert that a few gleanings were left for those who came after him. Here, as in some other cases, the distinctive merit of his work is not that it was final, but that it was exemplary. In this particular department — the editing of fragments — he differed from his predeces- sors as the numismatist, who arranges a cabinet of coins, differs from the digger who is only aware that he has un- earthed an old bit of gold or silver. Meanwhile letters had been passing between Bentley and a correspondent very unlike Graevius. In 1693 Joshua Barnes, of Emmanuel College, Cambridcre, Avas editinii Eu- ripides, and wrote to Bentley, asking his reasons for an opinion attributed to him — that the "Letters of Euripi- des " were spurious. Bentley gave these reasons in a long and courteous reply. Barnes, however, resented the loss of a cherished illusion. Not only did he omit to thank Bentley, but in the preface to his Euripides (1G94) he al- luded to his correspondent's opinion as " a proof of ef- frontery or incapacity." Barnes is a curious figure, half comic, half pathetic, amongst the minor persons of Bent- ley's story. Widely read, incessantly laborious, but un- critical and vain, he poured forth a continual stream of injudicious publications, English or Greek, until, when he 36 BENTLEY. [chap. was fifty-one, tliey numbered forty-three. The last work of his life was an elaborate edition of Homer. He had invested the fortune of Mrs. Barnes in this costly enter- prise, obtaining her somewhat reluctant consent, it was said, by representing the " Iliad" as the work of King Sol- omon. Queen Anne declined the dedication, and nothing could persuade poor Barnes that this was not Bentley's doing. Bentley said of Barnes that he probably knew about as much Greek, and understood it about as well, as an Athenian blacksmith. The great critic appears to have forgotten that Sophocles and Aristophanes were appre- ciated by audiences which represented the pit and the gallery much more largely than the boxes and the stalls. An Athenian blacksmith could teach us a good many things. Bentley had now made his mark, and he had powerful friends. One piece of preferment after another came to him. In 1692 Bishop Stillingfleet procured for hira a prebendal stall at Worcester, and three years later appoint- ed him to hold the Rectory of Ilartlebury, in that county, until James Stillingfleet should be in full orders. At the end of the year 1693 the office of Royal Librarian became vacant. By an arrangement which was not then thought singular, the new Librarian was induced to resign in fa- vour of Bentley, who was to pay hmi £130 a year out of the salary of £200. The patent appointing Bentley Keep- er of the Royal Libraries bore date April 12, 1694. The "Licensing Act" (Stat. 13 and 14, Car. II.) finally expired in 1694, a few months after Bentley took ofiice. But he made the most of his time. The Act reserved three copies of every book printed in England — one for the Royal Li- brary, one for Oxford, and one for Cambridge. Latterly it had been evaded. Bentley applied to the Master of the Stationers' Company, and exacted " near a thousand " vol- Ill] , LKAIJNKI) COKKKsrONDEN'CE. 37 uraes. In this year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1G95 he became a Chaplain in ordinary to the King. Hitherto he had resided with Bishop Stilling- fleet ; but early in 1G9G he took possession of the rooms in St. James's Palace which were assisrncd to the Roval Librarian. One of his letters to Evelyn — whom he had been help- ing to revise bis Numismata, a "Discourse on Medals, an- cient and modern" — discloses an amusing incident. Bent- ley's lodgings at St. James's were next the Earl of Marl- borongh's. Bcntlcy wished to annex some rooms overhead, for the better bestowal of certain rare books. Marlborough undertook to plead his cause. The result of this obliging diplomacy was that the future liero of Blenheim got " the closets" for himself. Bentley now became anxious to build a new library, and Evelyn warmly sympathises with his "glorious enterprise." It was, indeed, much needed. The books were so ill-lodged that they could not be prop- erly arranged ; Bentley declared that the library was " not fit to be seen ;" and he kept its chief treasure, the Alex- andrine MS. of the Greek Bible, at his own rooms in the palace, " for this very reason, that persons might see it without seeing the library." The Treasury consented to the proposal for building. But public business prevented the bill coming before Parliament, and the scheme was dropped for the time. Meanwhile Bentley 's energy found scope at Cambridge. Since the civil troubles, the Univer- sity Press had lapsed into a state which called for repara- tion. Bentley took an active part in procuring subscrip- tions for that purpose. He was empowered by the Uni- versity to order new founts of type, which were cast in Holland. Evelyn, in his Dianj (Aug. 17, 169G), alludes to " that noble presse which my worthy and most learned 3 38 BENTLEY. [chap. hi. friend ... is with greate charge and industrie erecting now at Cambridge." In the same year Bentley took the degree of Doctor in Divinit}''. On Commencement Sunday (July 5, 1696) he preached before the University, taking as his text 1 Pet. iii. 15. The sermon, which is ex- tant, defends Christianity against deism. It is natural to ask — was Bentley yet remarked for any of those qualities which form the harsher side of his char- acter in later life ? He was now thirty-four. There is the story of the dinner-party at Bishop Stillingfleet's, at which the guest, who had been sitting next Bentley, said to the Bishop after dinner, " My Lord, that chaplain of yours is certainly a very extraordinary man." (Mr. Bentley, like the chaplain in " Esmond," had doubtless conformed to the usage of the time, and retired when the custards appeared.) "Yes," said Stillingfleet, "had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe." If this has a certain flavour of concoction, at any rate there is no doubt as to what Pepys wrote, after reading Boyle's allusion to Bentley's supposed discourtesy. " I suspect Mr. Boyle is in the right ; for our friend's learning (which I have a great value for) wants a little filing." Against such hints there is a noteworthy fact to be set. A letter of Bentley's to Evelyn, dated Oct. 21, 1697, mentions that a small group of friends had arranged to meet in the even- ings, once or twice a week, at Bentley's lodgings in St. James's. These are the names : John Evelyn, Sir Christo- pher Wren, John Locke, Isaac Newton. A person with whom such men chose to place themselves in frequent and familiar intercourse must have been distinguished by some- thing else than insolent erudition. But now we must see how Bentley bore himself in the first great crisis of his career. CHAPTER IV. THE CONTROVERSY ON THE LETTERS OF PHALARIS. William Wotton's Rejections on Ancient and Modern Learning (1G94) give the best view of a discussion wbicli greatly exercised tlic wits of the day. " Soon after the Kestauration of King Charles II.," says Wotton, '* upon the institution of the Royal Society, the comparative ex- cellency of the Old and New Philosophy was eagerly debated in England. But the disputes then managed be- tween Stubbe and Glanvilc were rather particular, relating to the Royal Society, than general, relating to knowledge in its utmost extent. In France this controversy has been taken up more at large. The French were not content to argue the point in Philosophy and Mathcmaticks, but even in Poetry and Oratory too ; where the Ancients had the general opinion of the learned on their side. Monsieur do Fontcnelle, the celebrated author of a Look concerning the Plurality of \yorlds, began the dispute about six years ago [1G88], in a little Discourse annexed to the Pastorals.'''' Porrault, going further still than Fontcnelle, " in oratory sets the Bishop of Mcaux [Bossuet] against Pericles (or rather Thucydides),the Bishop of Nisraes [Flechier] against Isocratcs, F. Bourdalouc against Lysias, Monsieur Voiture against Plinv, and Monsieur Balzac against Cicero. In 40 BEXTLEY. [chap. Poetry likewise lie sets Monsieur Boileau against Horace, Monsieur Corneille and Monsieur Moliere against the An- cient Dramatic Poets." Sir William Temple, in his '"Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning" — published in 1692, and dedicated to his own University, Almoe Mairi Cantabrigiensi — was not less uncompromising in the opposite direction. His gen- eral view is that the Ancients surpassed the Moderns, not merely in art and literature, but also in every branch of science, though the records of their science have perished. "The Moderns," Temple adds, "gather all their learning out of Books in the Universities." The Ancients, on the contrary, travelled with a view to original research, and advanced the limits of knowledge in their subjects by per- sistent interviews with reserved specialists in foreign parts. Thales and Pythagoras are Sir William's models in this way. "Thales acquired his knowledge in Egypt, Phoe- nicia, Delphos, and Crete ; Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt, and twelve years more in Chaldsea; and then returned laden with all their stores." Temple's per- formance was translated into French, and made quite a sensation in the Academy — receiving, amongst other trib- utes, the disinterested homage of the Modern Horace. Wotton's object was to act as a mediator, and " give to every side its just due." As to " eloquence and poetry," it required some courage (in England) even to hint that the Moderns had beaten the Ancients. " It is almost a hercsie in wit, among our poets, to set up any modern name against Homer or Virgil, Horace or Terence. So that though here and there one should in Discourse prefer the writers of the present age, yet scarce any man among us, who sets a value upon his own reputation, will venture to assert it in print." With regard to science, however, IV. J Till-: LETTERS OF I'liALAUIS. 41 Wotton speaks out, and in a gentle way disposes of the Ancients. He may, in fact, claim tlic credit of liavin<^ made a sensible contribution to tlic discussion. Sir Wil- liam Temple, "the ornament of the age," was no mean antagonist. Wotton must have been glad of a trusty ally, especially on the ground of ancient literature, the strongest part of the enemy's position. Such an ally he found in Bentley. Temple had written thus : " It may perhaps be further aflirmed, in favour of the Ancients, that the oldest books we have arc still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those wc call profane authors, arc vEsop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest mas- ter in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original ; so I think the Epistles of Phal- aris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, cither ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine; and Politian, with some others, have attrib- uted them to Lucian : but I think lie must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original. Such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government; such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression ; such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies; such honour of learned men, such esteem of good; such knowledge of life, such contempt of death ; with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but b}' him that possessed them. And I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris 42 BENTLEY. [chap. did. In all one Avrit you find the scholar or the sophist ; in all the other, the tvrant and the commander." Mutual admiration and modern journalisiu have seldom produced a more magnificent advertisement than Sir Wil- liam Temple had given to this ancient writer. After the slumber, or the doze, of centuries, Phalaris awoke and found himself in demand. The booksellers began to feel an interest in him such as they liad never even simulated before. The "Epistles of Phalaris" are a collection of a hun- dred and forty-eight letters — many of them only a few lines long — written in "Attic" Greek of that artificial kind which begins to appear about the time of Augustus. They are first mentioned by a Greek writer, Stoba^us, who flourished about 480 a.d. We know nothing about the exact time at which they were written. On the other hand there is no doubt as to the class of literature which they represent, or the general limits of the period to which they must be assigned. These limits are roughly marked by the first five centuries of the Christian era. Phalaris, the reputed author of the Letters, is a shadowy figure in the early legends of ancient Sicily. The modern Girgenti, on the south-west coast of the island, preserves the name of Agrigentum, as the Romans called the Greek city of Akragas. Founded early in the sixth century be- fore Christ by a Dorian colony from Gela, Akragas stood on the spacious terraces of a lofty hill. It was a splendid natural stronghold. Steep cliffs wer'e the city's bulwarks on the south; on the north, a craggy ridge formed a ram- part behind it, and the temple-crowned citadel, a precipitous rock, towered to a height of twelve hundred feet above the sea. Story told that Phalaris, a citizen of Akragas, had contrived to seize the citadel, and to make himself abso- iv.] THE LETTERS OF PIIALARIS. 43 liitc ruler of the place — in Greek phrase, "tyrant." lie strengthened the city — then recently founded — and was successful in wars upon his neighbours. At last his own subjects rose against him, overthrew his power, and put him to death. This latter event is said to have occurred between 5G0 and 550 b.c. Such was the tradition. All that wc really know about Phalaris, however, is that as early as about 500 b.c. his name had become a proverb for horrible cruelty, not only in Sicily, but throughout Hellas, rindar refers to this in his first Pythian ode (4V4 B.C.) : " the kindly worth of Croesus fades not ; but in every land hate follows the name of him who burned men in a brazen bull, the ruthless Phalaris.''^ This habit of slowly roasting objectionable persons in a brazen bull was the only definite trait which the Greeks of the classical age associated with I'halaris. And this is the single fact on which Lucian founds his amusing piece, in which envoys from Phalaris offer the bull to the temple of Delphi, and a Delphian casuist urges that it ought to be accepted. The bull may be seen, portrayed by the fancy of a modern artist, in the frontispiece to Charles Boyle's edition of the Letters. The head of the brazen animal is uplifted, as if it was bellowing; one of the tyrant's apparitors is holding up the lid of a large ob- long aperture in the bull's left flank ; two others arc hus- tling in a wretched man, who has already disappeared, all but his legs. The two servants wear the peculiar expres- sion of countenance which may be seen on the faces of persons engaged in packing; meanwhile another pair of slaves, with more animated features, are arranging the fagots under the bull, which are already beginning to blaze cheerfully, so that a gentle warmth must be felt on the. inner surface of the brass, though it will probably be 44 BENTLEY. [chap. some minutes yet before it begin to be uncomfortable, Phalaris is seated on bis tbrone just bebind tbe bull, in a sort of undress uniform, with a loug round ruler for scep- tre in bis right band ; firmness and mildness are so blend- ed in bis aspect that it is impossible not to feel in the presence of a great and good man ; on the left side of the tbrone, a Polonius is standing a little in tbe background, with a look of lively edification subdued by deference ; and in the distance there is a view of hills and snug farm- bouses, suggesting fair rents and fixity of tenure. The rather hazy outlines of the old Greek tradition are filled up by Phalaris himself in the Letters, which abound with little bits of autobiography. He gives us to know that be was born — not at Agrigentum, as Lucian has it — but at a place called Astypala^a, seemingly a town in Crete. He got into trouble there at an early age, being- suspected of aiming at a tyranny, and was banished, leav- ing bis wife and son bebind him ; when he betook him- self to Agrigentum, and there became a farmer of taxes; obtained the management of a contract for building a temple on the rocky height above tbe town ; hired troops with the funds thus committed to him ; and so made him- self master of the place. Some of tbe letters are to bis wife, bis son, and a few of his particular friends, among whom is tbe poet Stesichorus. One or two epistles are addressed to distinguished strangers, begging them to come and see him in Sicily — as to Pythagoras, and Abaris tbe Hyperborean ; and, what is very curious, the collec- tion gives us the answer sent by Abaris, which refers not obscurely to tbe bull, and declines the invitation of the prince in language more forcible than polite. Then there are a few letters to various communities — the people of Messene, the people of Tauroraenion, and others. iv.J THE LETTERS OF THALARIS. 45 It may be well to give a sliort specimen or two. Not a few of the Letters, it should be premised, arc pervaded by a strain of alhision to the bull. Phalaris was a person of almost morbid sensibility, and if there was one subject on which he was more alive to innuendo than another it was this of the bull, and the want of regard for the feel- insfs of others which his use of it had been thought to imply. There are moments when he can no longer suffer in silence, but comes to the point, as in the following let- ter to the Athenians [Ep. 122 = 5 (Lennep)]: "Your artist Perilaus, Athenians, came to me with some works of very satisfactory execution ; on account of which wo gladly received him, and requited bim witli worthy gifts, for the sake of his art, and more particu- larly for the sake of liis native city. Not long since, however, he made a brazen bull of more than natural size, and brought it to Akragas. Now we were delighted to welcome an animal whose labours are associated with those of man ; the effigy appeared a most proper gift to a prince — a noble object of art ; for he had not yet dis- closed to us the death which lurked within. But when be opened a door in the flank, and laid bare ' Murder fulfilled of perfect cruelty, A fate more dire than all imagined death,' then, indeed, after praising him for his skill, we proceeded to punish him for his inhumanity. "We resolved to make him the first illustration of his own device, since we bad never met with a worse villain than its contriver. So we put him into the bull, and lit the fire about it, according to his own directions for the burning. Cruel was bis sci- ence; stern the proof to which he brought it. We did not see the sufferer; we beard not bis cries or lamcnta- 3* 46 BENTLEY. [chap. tions ; for the human shrieks that resounded within came forth to his listening punishers as the bellowings of a bra- zen throat. "Now, Athenians, when I was informed that you re- sented the removal of your artist, and were incensed with me, I felt surprise ; and for the present I am unable to credit the report. If you censure me on the ground that I did not torment him by a more cruel mode of death, I reply that no mode more cruel has yet occurred to me ; if, on the other hand, you blame me for having pun- ished him at all, then your city, which glories in its hu- manity, courts the charge of extreme barbarity. The bull Avas the work of one Athenian, or of all : but this will be decided by your disposition towards me. ... If you consider the case dispassionately, you will perceive that I act involuntarily ; and that, if Providence decrees that I must suffer, my lot will be unmerited. Though my royal power gives me free scope of action, I still rec- ognize that measures of a harsh tendency are exceptional ; and, though I cannot revoke the deeds of the past, I can confess their gravity. Would, however, that I had never been compelled to them by a hard necessity! In that case, no one else would have been named for his virtues where Phalaris was in company." The following letter, addressed by Phalaris to a peevish critic, shows that consciousness of rectitude had gradually braced the too sensitive mind of the prince [Ep. 66 = 94 (Lennep)] : ''To Telecleides. " For reasons best known to j'ourself, you have repeat- edly observed in conversation with my friends that, after the death of Perilaus, the artist of the bull, I ought not to have despatched any other persons by the same mode IV.] THE LETTERS OF PIIALAKIS. 47 of torment ; since I thus cancel my own merit. Possibly you had in view the result which has actually occurretl — viz., that your remarks should be carried to me. Xow, as to IVrilaus, I do not value myself upon the compliments which I received for having punished him ; praise was not my object in assuming that office. As to the other per- sons, I feel no uneasiness at the misrepresentations to which I am exposed for chastising them. Retribution operates in a sphere apart from good or evil report. Per- mit mo, however, to observe that my reason for correcting the artist was precisely this — that other persons were to be despatched in the bull. . . . AVcll, I am now in posses- sion of your views ; it is unnecessary for you to trouble other listeners ; do bat cease to worry yourself and me." The slight testiness which appears at the end only con- firms Sir William Temple's remark, that here wc have to do with a man of affairs, whose time was not to be at the mercy of every idle tattler. After AVotton had pub- lished the first edition of his "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning" (1G94), Bentley had happened to speak with him of the passage in Temple's Essay which wc quoted above. Bentley observed that the Letters of Phal- aris could be proved to be spurious, and that nothing composed by yEsop was extant : opinions which he had formed, and intimated, long before Temple wrote. Wot- ton then obtained a promise from Bentley that he would give his reasons for these views in a paper to be printed as an appendix to the second edition of the "Reflections." But meanwhile an incident occurred which gave a new turn to the matter. Dr. Ilenry Aldrich, then Dean of Christ Church, had been accustomed to engage the most promising of tho younger scholars in the task of editing classical authors, 48 BENTLEY. [chap, and copies of such editions were usually presented by him to members of the House at the beginning of the year. Temple's essay had attracted attention to the Letters of Phalaris. In 1693 the preparation of a new edition was proposed by the Dean to " a young Gentleman of great hopes" (as Bentley calls him), the Honourable Charles Boyle, a brother of the Earl of Orrery, and grand-nephew of Robert Boyle, the founder of the Lectures. Charles Boyle was at this time only seventeen. Before coming to Oxford, he had been the private pupil of Dr. Gale, the Dean of York (formerly, for a brief space, Greek Professor at Cambridge), of whom he says : " the foundation of all the little knowledge I have in these matters was laid by him, which I gratefully own." Boyle's scholarship seems to have been quite up to the higher school standard of that day ; he appears to have been bright, clever, and amiable, and was personally much liked at Christ Church. In preparing his Phalaris, he wished to consult a manu- script which was in the King's Library at St. James's. He accordingly wrote to his bookseller in London, Mr. Thomas Bennet, " at the Half-moon in St. Paul's Church- yard," requesting him to get the manuscript collated. This was apparently in September, 1693. Bentley had then nothing to do with the Library. The Royal Patent constituting him Keeper of His Majesty's Libraries bore date April 12, 1694; and, owing to delays of form, it was the beginning of May before he had actual custody of the Library at St, James's. Bennet had already spoken to Bentley (early in 1694, it seems) about the manuscript of Phalaris ; and Bentley had replied that he would glad- ly " help Mr. Boyle to the book." Meanwhile Bennet had received urgent applications from Boyle, and had laid the blame of the delay on Bentley. IV.] TUE LETTEIIS OF PIIALARIS. 49 As soon as the latter had assumed cliargc of the Library (May, 1C94), he gave the manuscript to a person sent for it by Bonnet. " I ordered liim," says Bcntloy, " to tell tlic collator not to lose any time ; for I was shortly to go out of town for two months." This was afterwards proved by a letter from Gibson, the person employed as collator. The manuscript remained in Gibson's hands "five or six days," according to Bentley ; and this estimate can scarce- ly be excessive, for Boyle himself says merely " not nine." Bentley was to leave London for Worcester (to reside two months there) at five o'clock on a Monday morning to- wards the end of May. On the Saturday before, about noon, Bentley went to Bennet's shop, asked for the manu- script, and waited whilst a message was sent to Gibson. "Word came back that Gibson had not finished the colla- tion. Bennet then begged that the manuscript might be left with him till Sunday morning, and promised to make the collator sit np all night. Bentley declined to comply with this demand, but said that they might keep the man- uscript till the evening of that day — Saturday. On Satur- day evening it was restored to Bentley. Only forty-eight letters had then been collated. As this aSair was made a grave charge against Bentley, it is well to see just what it means. The business of the collator was to take a printed text of Phalaris, compare it with the manuscript, and note those readings in which the manuscript differed from it. This particular manuscript was, in Bentley's words, " as legible as print." " I had a mind," he says, "for the experiment's sake, to collate the first forty epistles, which are all that the collator has done. And I had finished them in an hour and eighteen minutes; though I made no very great haste. And yet I remarked and set down above fifty various lections, though the edi- 50 BENTLEY. [chap. tor has taten notice of one only." This manuscript con- tains only 127 of the 148 letters. At Bentley's rate, the whole might have been done in about five hours. Sup- pose that Bentley worked thrice as fast as Gibson ; the latter would have required fifteen hours. Grant, further, that Gibson had the manuscript for four days only, though Boyle's phrase, " less than nine," implies eight. He could still have completed his task by working less than four hours a day. So utterly groundless was the complaint that Bentley had not allowed sufficient time for the use of the manuscript. That, however, was the defence which Bennet made to his employer. Clearly he had no liking for the new Li- brarian who had begun by exacting the dues of the Royal Library. And he supported it by representing Bentley as unfriendly to Boyle's work. "The bookseller once asked me privately," says Bentley, " that I would do him the fa- vour to tell my opinion, if the new edition of Phalaris, then in the press, would be a vendible book ? for he had a concern in the impression, and hoped it would sell well ; such a great character being given of it in [Temple's] Es- says as made it mightily inquired after. I told him. He would be safe enough, since he was concerned for nothing but the sale of the book : for the great names of those that recommended it would get it many buyers. But however, under the rose, the book was a spurious piece, and deserved not to be spread in the world by another impression." Dr. William King, a member of Christ Church, and a " wit," chanced to be in Bennet's shop one day, and overheard some remark of Bentley's which he considered rude towards Boyle. "After he [Bentley] was gone," writes the frank Dr. King, " I told Mr. Bennet that he ought to send Mr. Boyle word of it." Boyle's edition IV.] THE LETTEUS OF TIIALAIUS. til of Plialaris appeared in January, 1G95, with a graceful ded- ication to the Dean of Christ Church. The Latin preface conchides thus: " I liave collated the Letters themselves with two Bod- leian manuscripts from the Cantuar and Selden collection; I have also procured a collation, as far as Letter XL., of a manuscript in the Royal Library ; the Librarian, with that courtoey which distinguishes him [pro singulan sua hu- manitate], refused me the further use of it. I have not recorded every variation of the MSS. from the printed texts ; to do so would have been tedious and useless ; but, wherever I have departed from the common reading, my authority will be found in the notes. This little book is indebted to the printer for more than usual elegance ; it is hoped that the author's labour may bring it an equal measure of acceptance." Pro sinr/ulari sua humanitatc : with that courtesy which distinguishes him ; or, as Bentlcy renders it, with grim lit- cralness, " out of his singular humanity !" This, says Bent- ley, " was meant as a lash for me, who had the honour then and since to serve his Majesty in that office" (of Libra- rian) ; and, in fact, the nature of Bentley's " humanity " forthwith became a question of the day. The tone of Boyle's public reference to Bentley was wholly unjustifiable. Bentley had returned from Worces- ter to London some months before Boyle's book was ready, but no application had been made to him for a fur- ther use of the manuscript, though a few hours would have finished the collation. Bentley, after his return to London, spent a fortnight at Oxford, "conversing," he says, " in the very college where the editors resided ; not the least whisper there of the manuscript." It was on January 20 — when the book had been out more than three 52 BENTLEY. [chap. weeks — that Bentley clianced to see it for the first time, " in the hands of a person of honour to whom it had been presented ; and the rest of the impression was not yet pubUshed. This encouraged me to write the very same evening to Mr. Boyle at Oxford, and to give him a true in- formation of the whole matter ; expecting that, upon the receipt of my letter, he would put a stop to the publication of his book, till he had altered that passage, and printed the page anew ; which he might have done in one day, and at the charge of five shillings. I did not expressly desire him to take out that passage, and reprint the whole leaf; that I thought was too low a submission. But I said enough to make any person of common justice and ingenuity [ingenuousness] have owned me thanks for pre- venting him from doing a very ill action." "After a de- lay of two posts," Boyle replied in terms of which Bentley gives the substance thus : " that what I had said in my own behalf might be true; but that Mr. Bennet had repre- sented the thing quite otlierwise. If he had had my ac- counl before, he should have considered of it: and [but?] now that the book was made public, he would not inter- pose, but that I might do myself right in what method I pleased." On receiving Bentley's explanation, Boyle was clearly bound, if not to withdraw the offensive passage, at least to stop its circulation until he had inquired further. And he knew this, as his own words show. This is his account of his reply to Bentley : " That Mr. Bonnet, whom I employed to wait on him in my name, gave me such an account of his reception, that I had reason to apprehend myself affronted : and since I could make no other excuse to my reader, for not collating the King's MS., but because 'twas denyed me, I thought I cou'd do no less than express some resentment of that denial. That I shou'd be very IT.] THE LETTERS OF TUALAKIS. 63 much conccrn'J if Mr. Bcnnct had dealt so ill with me as to mislead me in his accounts; and if that appear\l, shou\l be ready to take some ojiportunilf/ of her/ging his [Bctit- Icy's] pardon : and, as I remember, I exjyress'd myself so, that the Dr miyht understand I meant to yive him satisfac- tion as 2)ublick/y as I had injur d him. Here the matter rested, and I thought that Dr Bcntley ivas satisfiedy That is to say, Boyle had offered a public affront to Bentlcy, without inquiring whether Bonnet's story was true ; Bcntley explained that it was untrue ; and Boyle still refused to make any amend, even provisionally. Bcntley was advised by sonic of his friends to refute the aspersion : which, indeed, was not niercly a charge of rude- ness, but also of failure iu his duty as Librarian. lie re- mained silent. " Out of a natural aversion to all quarrels and broils, and out of regard to the editor himself, I re- solved to take no notice of it, but tt) let the matter drop." But in 1697 "NVotton was preparing a second edition of the "Reflections," and claimed Bcntlcy's old promise to write something on yEsop and Phalaris. Then, in a great hurry, Bcntley wrote an essay on the " Epistles of Phalaris, Themistoclcs, Socrates, Euripides, and others; and the Fa- bles of ^Esop." This essay was printed, with a separate title- page, at the end of the new edition of the " Reflections " (169T). What ^vas he to say about Boyle ? " Upon such an occasion," he remarks, " I was plainly obliged to speak of that calumny : for my silence would have been inter- preted as good as a confession : especially considering with what industrious malice the story liad been spread all over England." In this he was possibly right ; it is not easy to say now. But his mode of self-vindication was certainly not judicious. Uc ought to have confined himself to a statement of the facts concerning the loan of 64 BENTLEY. [chap. the manuscript. After doing this, however, he enters upon a liostile review of Boyle's book. Throughout it he speaks in the phiral of " our editors." He may have had reason to know that Boyle had been assisted ; but such a use of the knowledge was unwarrantable. Boyle's edition was the slight performance of a very young man, and apart from the sentence in the preface, might fairly be regarded as privileged. It contains a short Latin life of Phalaris, based on ancient notices and on the Letters themselves ; the Greek text, with a Latin version ; and, at the end, some notes. These notes deserve mention only because Bentley was afterwards accused of having " pillaged " them. There was a singular hardihood in this charge. Boyle's notes on the hundred and forty-eight Let- ters occupy just twelve small pages. The greater part of them are simply brief paraphrases intended to bring out the sense of the text. Three Latin translations of Phalaris then existed; one, not printed, but easily accessible in manuscript, by Francesco Accolti of Arezzo (Aretino) ; a second, printed by Thomas Kirchmeier, who Hellenized his surname into Naogeorgus (Basel, 1558) ; and a third, ascribed to Cujas, which Boyle knew as re-issued at Ingol- stadt in 1614 for the use of the Jesuit schools. Boyle's version occasionally coincides with phrases of Aretino or the Jesuit text ; this, however, may well be accident. It is manifest, however, that his translation was based on that of Naogeorgus, who is sometimes less elegant, but not seldom more accurate. The story of the controversy has usually been told as if Boyle defended the genuineness of the Letters, while Bent- ley impugned it. That is certainly the impression which any one would derive from Bentley's Dissertation, with its banter of " our editors and their Sicilian prince." Proba- IV.] TUE LETTERS OF PnALARIS. 85 bly it will Lc new to most persons that Boyle had never asserted the genuineness of the Letters. On the contrary, he had expressly stated some reasons for believing that they were not genuine. I translate the following from Boyle's Latin preface : " The reader of these Letters will find less profit in inquiring who wrote them than pleasure in enjoying the perusal. As to the au- thorship, the conflicting opinions of learned men must be consulted — perhaps in vain ; as to the worth of the book, the reader can judge best for himself. Lest I disappoint curiosity, however — though the controversy does not deserve keen zeal on either part — I will briefly explain what seems to mc probable on both sides of the question." Here he enumerates: (l) some of those who think the Letters genuine — including Sir W. Temple, whose encomi- um on Phalaris he freely Latinizes: (2) those who believe the Letters to be the work of Lucian. Here Boyle gives his reasons — excellent as far as thev no — for holdinir that Lucian was not the author. lie then resumes : " These arc my reasons for not ascribing the Letters to Lucian ; there are other reasons which make me doubt whether Phalaris can claim the Letters as bis own. It was scarcely possible that Letters written by so distinguished a man, and in their own kind perfect, should have remained completely hidden for more than a thousand years: and, as Sicilian writers always preferred the Dorian dialect, the tyrtint of the Agrigentines (who were Dorians) ought to have used no other. In the style there is nothing unworthy of a king, except that he is too fond of antithesis, and sometimes rather frigid. I have also noticed that sometimes (thougli that may be accidental) the Letters bear names which look as if they had been invented to suit the contents. As to history, time has robbed us of all certain knowledge regarding the state of Sicily and its commonwealth, in that age; and the recipients of the letters are mostly obscure, except Stesichorus, Pythagoras, and Abaris ; whose age agrees with that of Phalaris — thus affording no hold for doubt on that ground. If, how- 66 BENTLEY. [chap. ever, Diodorus Siculus is right in saying that Tauromenium, whose citizens our author addresses, was built and so called after the de- struction of Naxos by the younger Dionysius— then the claim of Fhal- aris is destroyed, and the whole fabric of conjectural ascription falls to the ground. This is the sum of what I had to say on my author — set forth, indeed, somewhat hastily ; but, if more learned men have anything to urge against it, I am ready to hear it." Boyle wrote this, let it be remembered, before Bcntley bad published anything on the subject. Boyle was strict- ly justified in saying afterwards, " I never profess'd myself a patron of Phalaris ;" " I was not in the least concern'd to vindicate the Letters." He defines his own position with exactness in another place : " Phalaris was always a favourite book with me : from the moment I tnew it, I wish'd it might prove an original : I had now and then, indeed, some suspicions that 'twas not genuine ; but I lov'd him so much more than I suspected him, that I wou'd not suffer myself to dwell long upon 'em. To be sincere, the opinion, or mistake, if you will, was so pleasing that I was somewhat afraid of being iindeceiv'd." It was Sir William Temple, not Boyle, who was committed to the view that the Letters were genuine. We shall speak of Bentley's Dissertation in its second and mature form. The first rough draft, in Wotton's book, is a rapid argument, with just enough illustration to make each topic clear. It had been very hastily written. That Boyle and his friends should have been angry, can surprise no one. Bentley, in rebutting a calumny, had become a rough assailant. A reply came out in January, 1690. It was entitled, " Dr. Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of ^sop, cxamin'd by the Hon- ourable Charles Boyle, Esq." The motto was taken from Roscommon's " Essay of Translated Verse :" IV.] TIIK LETTERS OF I'llALAltlS. 67 " Remember Milo's end ; Wcdg'J in that Timber, which he strove to rend." The piece is clever and effective. " Soon after Dr. Bentley's Dissertation came out,'' Doyle says in the pref- ace, " I was caird away into Ireland, to attend the Par- liament there. The puWick business, and my own private affairs, detain'd me a great while in that kingdom ; else the world should have had a much earlier account of him and his performance." Coylc explains that he had edited the Letters "rather as one that wish'd well to learning than profcss'd it." His motive for replying to Bentley's attack is "the publick affront" of being charged with set- ting his name to a book which was not his own. No one bad helped him in it — except one friend who had been bis adviser " upon any difficulty," and had also consulted " some books " for him " in the Oxford Libraries." As to the Letters, he had neither asserted nor denied their genuine- ness, lie is sorry to have been the occasion of bringing such a storm on the head of Sir ^Villiam Temple. He re- grets, too, that Bentlcy should have extended his asper- sions to Christ Church. Then comes an onslaught on Bentley's essay and a defence of Boyle's book. " A Short Account of Dr. Bentley by way of Index " was appended to the second edition. This is an index to the precediug 26G pages, under such heads as these: "Dr. Bentley's Civil Usage of Mr. Boyle ; Ills Singular Humanity to Mr. Boyle ; His Elegant Similes ; His Clean and Gentile Metaphors ; His Old Sayings and Proverbs ; His Col- lection of Asinine Proverbs: His E.xtraordinarv Talent at Drollery ; His Dogmatical Air ; His Ingenuity in transcribing and plundering Notes and Prefaces of Mr. Boyle [here follows a list of other victims]. His Mod- esty and Decency in contradicting Great Men [here fol- 58 BENTLEY. [chap. lows a list of the persons contradicted, ending with Every- bodyy This, we know, was a joint performance. Francis At- terbury, afterwards Bishop of Rocliester, was then thirty- six : George Smah'idge was a year younger. Both were already distinguished at Oxford. Attcrbury, in a letter to Boyle, says with reference to this piece : " in writing more than half of the book, in reviewing a good part of the rest, in transcribing the whole and attending the press half a year of my life has passed away." Smalridge is sup- posed to have contributed a playful proof that Bentley did not write his own essay. This is a parody of Bent- ley's arguments about Phalaris, partly woven with his own words and phrases. This sham Bentley — urges the critic — " is a perfect Dorian in his language, in his thoughts, and in his breeding." It is vain to plead that " he was born in some Village remote from Town, and bred among the Peasantr}'^ while young." The real Bentley had been " a Member of one University, and a Sojourner in the other; a Chaplain in Ordinary to the King, and a Tutor in extra- ordinary to a Young Gentleman :" such a man must surely have written Attic ; he must "have quitted his Old Coun- try Dialect for that of a Londoner, a Gentleman, and a Scholar." Then the sham Bentley is " a Fierce and Angry Writer; and One, who when he thinks he has an advan- tage over another Man, gives him no Quarter." But the real Bentley says in his Letter to Dr. Mill, "it is not in my nature to trample upon the Prostrate." The real Bentley was " much vers'd in the Learned Languages." This pseudo-Bentley shows " that he Avas not only a per- fect Stranger to the best Classic Authors, but that he wanted that Light which any Ordinary Dictionary would have afEorded him." The pages on ^sop may have been ,v.] THE LETTERS OF rilALAKIS. C9 chiefly due to Anthony Alsop, a young Student of Christ Church, who edited the Fables in that year (1G98). The " very deserving gentleman " to whom Boyle refers as his assistant appears to have been John Frcind, whose brother Robert (both were Students of Christ Church) is also be- lieved to liavc helped. Some of the insults to Bentley are very gross. Thus it is hinted, twice over, that his further compliance in the matter of the manuscript might have been purchased by a fee. This is the only thing in the piece which Bentley noticed with a word of serious reproof. The book gives us some curious glimpses of the way in which critical studies were then viewed by Persons ol Honour. " Begging the Dr's pardon," says Boyle, " I take Index-hunting after Words and Phrases to be, next after Anagrams and Acrosticks, the lowest Diversion a Man can betake himself to." Boyle is apprehensive lest " worthy Men, who know so well how to employ their hours, should be diverted from the pursuit of Useful Knowledge into such trivial Enquiries as these:" and he shrinks from be- ing suspected of having "thrown away any considerable part of his life on so trifling a subject." lie need not have felt much uneasiness. However small Boyle's share in this book may have been, it is right to observe that there is an almost ludi- crous exaggeration in the popular way of telling the story, as if all Christ Church, or all Oxford, had been in a league to annihilate Bentley. The joint book was written by a group of clever friends who represented only themselves. Ryraer, indeed, says, " Dr. Aldrich, no doubt, was at the head of them, and smoaked and punned plentifully on this occasion." But this was a mistake. The "Short Review" published anonymously in ITOI (the author was CO BENTLEY. CIUP. Atterbnry) says expressly : " That an answer was pre- paring, he [the Dean of Christ Church] knew nothing of till 'twas publick talk, and he never saw a line of the Ex- amination but in Print," In the preface to Anthony Alsop's ^sop — another of the Christ Church editions, which came out, before Boyle's book, early in 1698 — our hero is mentioned as " a certain Bentley, diligent enough in turning over lexi- cons;" and his behaviour about the manuscript is indi- cated by a Latin version of " The Dog in the Manger." The wearied ox, coming home to dinner, is driven from his hay by the snarling usurper, and remonstrates warm- ly ; when the dog replies, " You call me currish ; if for- eigners are any judges, there is not a hound alive that ap- proaches me in humanity." To whom the ox: "Is this your singular humanitij, to refuse me the food that you will not and cannot enjoy yourself?" At last "Boyle against Bentley" came out (1698). Its success was enormous. A second edition was called for in a few months. A third edition followed in the next year. Forty-six years later, when both the combatants were dead, it was still thought worth while to publish a fourth edition. Temple lost no time in pronouncing. In March, just after the book appeared, he writes : " The compass and application of so much learning, the strength and perti- nence of his (Boyle's) arguments, the candour of his re- lations, in return to such foul-mouthed raillery, the pleas- ant turns of wit, and the easiness of style, are in my opin- ion as extraordinary as the contrary of these all appear to be in what the Doctor and his friend [Wotton] have writ- ten." Hard as this is on Bentley, it is harder still on poor Wotton, who had been elaborately civil to Temple. iv.J THE LETTERS OF TIIALARIS. 61 Garth published his Disjyensanj in 1099, with that luckless couplet — meant, says Noble, " to please his brother wits at Button's:"' "So diamonds take a lustre from their foil, Aud to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle." John Milner, formerly Vicar of Leeds, had, as a non- juror, lost his preferments at the Revolution, and was then liviufi; at St. John's Collej^e, Cambridge. In his " View of the Dissertation " (1698) he proposes " to mani- fest the incertitude of heathen chronology," and takes part against Bentley. According to Eustace Budgcll, a caricature was published at Cambridge, in which Phalaris was consigning Bentley to the bull, while the Doctor ex- claimed, " I would rather be roasted than boyled." Ey- raer, in his " Essay on Critical and Curious Learning " (1G9S), blames both parties. As to the question at issue, he argues that "curious" learning is all very well in its way, but should not be carried too far. On Boyle's cri- tique Rymcr makes a shrewd remark: "There is such a profusion of wit all along, and such variety of points and raillery, that every man seems to have thrown in a repar- tee or so in his turn." Mr. Cole (of Magdalen College, Oxford) compared it to " a Cheddar cheese, made of all the milk of the parish." In short, " society " bad declared against Bentley, and the men of letters almost unanimously agreed with it. "While other acquaintances were turning their backs, Eve- lyn stood loyal. That was the state of things in 1698. Bentley remained calm. A friend who met him one day urged him not to lose heart. " Indeed," he replied, " I am in no pain about the matter; for it is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself." Meanwhile he was preparing a reply. 4 CHAPTER V. bentley's dissertation. We have seen that Bentley's essay in Wotton's book had been a hasty production. '' I drew up that dissertation," he says, " in the spare hours of a few weeks ; and while the Printer was employed about one leaf, the other was amaking." He now set to work to revise and enlarge it. He began his task about March, 1698 — soon after Boyle's pamphlet appeared — but was interrupted in it by the two months of his residence at Worcester, from the end of May to the end of July. It was finished toward the close of 1698. The time employed upon it had thus been about seven and a half months, not free from other and urgent duties. It was published early in 1699. Let us clearly apprehend the point at issue. Boyle did not assert that the Letters of Phalaris were genuine ; but he denied that Bentley had yet proved them to be spurious. After a detailed refutation of the personal charges against him, Bentley comes to the Letters of Phalaris. First he takes the flagrant anachronisms. The Letters mention towns which, at the supposed date, were not built, or bore other names. Phalaris presents his physi- cian with the ware of a potter named Thericles — much as if Oliver Cromwell were found dispensing the masterpieces CIIAI-. v.] I51:NTLEY'S ULSriEUTAIlUN. 03 of Wedgwood. I'halaris quotes books which had not been written ; nay, he is familiar with forms of literature which had not been created. TIiouj,Hi a Dorian, be writes to his familiar friends in Attic, and in a species of false Attic which did not exist for five centuries after he was dead. Farmer of the taxes though he had been, be has no idea of values in the ordinary currency of his own country. Thus be complains that the hostile community of Catana had made a successful raid on bis principality, and had robbed him of no less a sum than seven talents. Again, he mentions with some complacency that he has bestowed the munificent dower of five talents on a lady of distinc- tion. According to the Sicilian standard, the loss of the prince would have amounted to twelve shillings and seven pence, while the noble bride would have received nine shillings. The occasions of the letters, too, arc often sin- gular. A Syracusan sends his brother to Akragas, a dis- tance of a hundred miles, with a request that Phalaris would send a messenger to Stesicborus (another hundred miles or so), and beg that poet to write a copy of verses on the Syracusan's deceased wife. " This," says Bentley, " is a scene of putld and senseless formality." Then Phal- aris (who brags in one of the letters that Pythagoras had stayed five months with him) says to Stesicborus, ^^ ^^^^V do not mention mo in your poems." " This," says Bent- ley, " was a sly fetch of our sophist, to prevent so shrewd an objection from Stesichorus's silence as to any friend- ship at all with him." But supposing Phalaris had really been so modest — Bentley adds — still, Stesicborus was a man of the world. The poet would have known "that those sort of requests are but a modest simulation, and a disobedience would have been easily pardoned." Again, these Letters are not mentioned by any writer before the 64 BENTLEY. [chap. fifth century of our era, and it is clear tliat the ancients did not know them. Thus, in the Letters, Phalaris dis- plays the greatest solicitude for the education of his son Paurolas, and writes to the young man in terms which would do credit to the best of fathers. But in Aristotle's time there was a tradition which placed the parental con- duct of Phalaris in another light. It alleged, in fact, that, while this boy was still of a tender age, the prince had caused him to be served up at table: but how, asks Bentley — supposing the Letters to be genuine — " could he cat his son while he was an infant?" It is true, the works of some writers in the early Christian centuries (Phffidrus, Paterculus, Lactantius) are not mentioned till long after their death. But the interval was one during which the Western world was lapsing into barbarism. The supposed epoch of Phalaris was followed by " the greatest and longest reign of learning that the world has yet seen :" and yet his Letters remain hidden for a thousand years. " Take them in the whole bulk, they are a fardle of common- places, without any life or spirit from action and circum- stance. Do but cast your eye upon Cicero's letters, or any statesman's, as Phalaris was ; what lively characters of men there ! what descriptions of place ! what notifica- tions of time ! what particularity of circumstances ! what multiplicity of designs and events ! When you return to these again, you feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk ; not with an active, ambitious ty- rant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of subjects." Bentley's incidental discussions of several topics are so many concise monographs, each complete in itself, each exhaustive within its own limits, and each, at the same v.] BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION. 65 time, filling its due place in the economy of the whole. Such arc the essays on the age of Pythagoras, on the be- ginnings of Greek Tragedy, on anapaestic verse, on the Coinage of Sicily. In the last-named subject, it might have appeared almost impossible that a writer of Bentlcy's time should have made any near approximation to correct- ness, lie had nut such material aids as arc alforded by tlie Sicilian coins which we now possess — without which the statements of ancient writers would appear involved in hopeless contradiction. I am glad, therefore, to quote an estimate of Bentlcy's work in this department by a master of numismatic science. Mr. Barclay Head writes: "Speak- ing generally, Bentlcy's results arc surprisingly accurate. I think I may safclv say that puttinij aside what was to have been done within tlic last fifty years, Bentlcy's essay stands alone. Even Eckln.'], in las 'Doctrina numorum ' (1790), has nothing to compare with it." Again, Bentlcy's range and grasp of knowledge are strikingly seen in critical re- marks of general bearing which arc drawn from him by the course of the discussion. Thus at the outset he gives in a few words a broad view of the orioin and ijrowth of literary forgery in the ancient world. In the last two centuries before Christ, when there was a keen rivalry be- tween the libraries of Pergamus and Alexandria, the copi- ers of manuscripts began the practice of inscribing them with the names of great writers, in order tliat they might fetch liighcr prices. Thus far, the motive of falsification was simply mercenary. But presently a different cause began to swell the number of spurious works. It was a favourite exercise of rhetoric, in the early period of the Empire, to compose speeches or letters in the name and character of some famous person. At first such exercises would, of course, make no pretence of being anything 66 BENTLEY. [chap. more. But, as the art was developed, " some of the Greek Sophists had the success and satisfaction to see their es- says in that kind pass with some readers for the genuine works of those they endeavoured to express. This, no doubt, was great content and joy to them ; being as full a testimony of their skill in imitation, as the birds gave to the painter when they pecked at his grapes." Some of them, indeed, candidly confessed the trick. " But most of them took the other way, and, concealing their own names, put off their copies for originals ; preferring that silent pride and fraudulent pleasure, though it was to die Avith them, before an honest commendation from posterity for being good imitators." And hence such Letters as those of Phalaris. Dr. Aldrich had lately dedicated his Logic to Charles Boyle. Bentley makes a characteristic use of this cir- cumstance. "If his. new System of Logic teaches him such arguments," says Bentley, " I'll be content with the old ones." The whole Dissertation, in fact, is a remorse- less syllogism. But Bentley is more than a sound rea- soner. He shows in a high degree the faculties which, go to make debating power. He is frequently success- ful in the useful art of turning the tables. Alluding to his opponent's mock proof that " Dr. Bentley could not be the author of the Dissertation," he remarks that Boyle's Examination is open to a like doubt in good earnest, if we are to argue " from the variety of styles in it, from its contradictions to his edition of Phalaris, from its con- tradictions to itself, from its contradictions to Mr. B.'s character and to his title of honourable." Boyle had said of Bentley, " the man that writ this must have been fast asleep, for else he could never have talked so wildly." Bentley replies, " I hear a greater paradox talked of v.] BEXTLEY'S DISSERTATION. f.7 abroad ; that not the * wild ' only, but the best, part of the Examiner's book may possibly have been written while he was fast asleep." He is often neat, too, in exploding logical fallacies. Boyle argued that, as Diodorus gives two different dates for the founding of Tauromenium, neither can be trusted. Bentley rejoins: "One man told mc in company that the Examiner was twenty-four years old; and another said, twenty-five. Now, these two stories contradict one an- other, and neither can be depended on ; wo are at liberty, therefore, to believe him a person of about fifty years of age." Boyle had taken refuge in a desperate suggestion that people might have been called " Tauromcnitcs " from a river Tauromenius, before there was a city Tauromenium. " Now," says Bentley, *' if the Tauromcnitcs were a sort of fish, this argument drawn from the river would be of great force." Boyle had argued that a Greek phrase was not poetical because each of the two words forming it was common. Bentley quotes from Lucretius : " Luna dies, et nox, et noctis signa scvera." Is not every word common ? And is the total effect pro- saic ? Bentley's retort is a mere quibble, turning on the ambiguity of "common" as meaning either "vulgar" or "simple" — but illustrates his readiness. Once — as if in contempt for his adversary's understanding — he has in- dulged in a notable sophism. Boyle had argued that the name "tragedy" cannot have existed before the iking. Bentley rejoins : " 'tis a proposition false in itself that things themselves must he, before the names by xchich they are called. For we have many new tunes in music made every day, which never existed before; yet several of them arc called by names that were formerly in use : and 68 BENTLEY. [chap. perhaps the tune of Chevy Chase, though it be of famous antiquity, is a little younger than the name of the chase itself. And I humbly conceive that Mr. Hobbes's book, which he called the Leviathan, is not quite as ancient as its name is iu Hebrew." But the " name " of which Boyle spoke Avas descriptive, not merely appellative. Bentley's reasoning would have been relevant only if Boyle had ar- gued that, since a tragedy is called the " Agamemnon," Tragedy must have existed before Agamemnon lived. As to the English style of the Dissertation, the Boyle party had expressed their opinion pretty freely when the first draft of it had appeared in Wotton's book. They complained that, when Bentley " had occasion to express himself in Terms of Archness and Waggery," he descend- ed to " low and mean Ways of Speech." " The familiar expressions of taking one tri2'>ping — coming off tvith a whole skin, minding his hits — a frieiul at a 2^i^i'Ch — go- ing to hloivs — setting horses together — and going to 2^ot ; with others borrow'd from the Sports and Employments of the Country; shew our Author to have been accus- tom'd to another sort of Exercise than that of the Schools." Alluding to the painful fate which was said to have over- taken the mother of Phalaris, Bentley particularly shock- ed his critics by the phrase, " Roasting the old Woman ;" and, in a similar strain of rustic levity, he had described the parent of Euripides as " Mother Clito the Herbwom- an." Dr. King, of Christ Church (who, it will be remem- bered, had meddled in the manuscript affair), had written an account of a journey to London ; wherein he relates that, on his asking concerning the ales at a certain inn, the host answered " that he had a thousand such sort of liquors, as humtie dumtie, three-threads, four-threads, old Pharoah [sic], knockdown, hugmetee," &c. Playfully re- v.] BEXTLEY'S DISSERTATION. 61) ferring to this passage, Bcntley says (spcaldng of a wikl assertion), "A man must be dosed with Ilumty-dnmty that could talk so inconsistently ;" and again, speaking of Dr. King's statements, " If he comes with more testimo- nies of his Bookseller or his Ilumty-dumty acquaintance, I shall take those for no answer." Worst of all, this fa- miliar stylo was used towards Phalaris himself and his defenders. Speaking of the Greek rhetoricians, Bentley announces that his design is "to pull off the disguise from those little Pedants that have so long stalkt about in the Apparel of Heroes." The work of Boyle and his assist- ants is thus characterised : " Ilcre are your Work-men to mend an author ; as bungling Tinkers do old kettles ; there was but one hole in the text before they meddled with it, but they leave it with two." Not a soothing style this, nor one to be recommended for imitation. But what vigour there is in some of the phrases that Bentley strikes out at a red heat! They ought to have made inquiries "before they ventur'd to Print — xvhich is a sword in the hand of a Child.'''' " Uc gives us some shining metaphors, and a polished period or two; but, for the matter of it, it is some common and ob- vious thought dressed and curled in the beauish way.'''' Speaking of work which Bishop Pearson had left unfin- ished: "though it has not passed the last hand of the author, yet it's every way Avorthy of him ; and the vcrtj dust of his writings is gohl.''^ And here — as Bentley was charged in this controversy with such boundless arrogance, and such " indecency in contradicting great men " — let us note his tone in the Dissertation towards eminent men then living or lately dead. Nothing could be more becom- ing, more worthy of his own genius, than the warm, often glowing, terras in which he speaks of such men as Selden, 4* 70 BENTLEY. [chap, Pearson, Lloyd, StilJingfleet, Spanheim — in a word, of al- most all the distinguished scholars -whom lie has occa- sion to name. Dodwell, who was ranged against hira, is treated with scrupulous courtesy and fairness. Joshua Barnes, whose own conduct to Bentlcy had been remark- ably bad, could scarcely be described more indulgently than in these words — "one of a singular industry and a most diffuse reading," Those were precisely the two things which could truly be said in praise of Barnes, and it would not have been easy to find a third. Hallam characterises the style of the Dissertation as " rapid, concise, amusing, and superior to Boyle in that which he had chiefly to boast, a sarcastic wit." It may be questioned how far " wit," in its special modern sense, was a distinguishing trait on either side of this controversy. The chief weapons of the Boyle alliance were rather de- rision and invective, Bentley's sarcasm is always powerful and often keen ; but the finer quality of wit, though seen in some touches, can hardly be said to pervade the Disser- tation. As to the humour, that is unquestionable. There is so far an unconscious clement iu it, that its effect on the reader is partly due to Bentley's tremendous and unflag- ging earnestness in heaping up one absurdity upon another. This cumulative humour belongs to the essay as a whole ; as Bentley marches on triumphantly from one exposure to another, our sense of the ludicrous is constantly risino;. But it can be seen on a smaller scale too. For instance, one of Boyle's grievances was that Bentlcy had indirectly called him an ass. In Bentley's words : " By the help, he says, of a Greek proverb, I call him a downright ass. Af- ter I had censured a passage of Mr. Boyle's translation that lias no affinity with the original. This puts me in mind, said I, of the old Greek proverb, that Leucon carries one v.] HEXTLEY'S DISSERTATION. 71 thitif/, and his Ass quite another. Where the Ass is mani- festly spoken of the Sophist [the real author of the Let- ters], whom I liad before represented as an Ass under a Lio7i's skin. And if ilr. B. has such a dearness for his Phalaris that he'll change places with him there, how can I help it? I can only protest that I put him into Lcucon's place ; and if lie will needs compliment himself out of it, ^I must leave the two friends to the pleasure of thcinnutnal civilities.'' " [Boyle's own words about Bentley and Wot- ton,] But this was not all : Boyle had accused Bentley of comparing liim to Lucian's ass. Now tliis, says Bent- ley, "were it true, would be no coarse compliment, but a very obliging one. For Lucian's Ass was a very intelli- gent and ingenious Ass, and had more sense than any of his Riders ; he was no other than Lucian himself in the shape of an ass, and had a better talent at kicking and bantering than ever the Examiner will have, though it seems to be his chief one." " But is this Mr. B.'s way of interpreting similitudes ? ... If I liken an ill critic to a bungling Tinker, that makes two holes while he mends one; must I be charged witli calling him Tinker? At this rate Ilomcr will call his heroes Wolves, Boars, Dogs, and Bulls. And when Horace has this comparison about himself, 'Demitto auriculas, ut iniquae mentis ascUus,' Mr. B. may tell him that he calls himself downright ass. But he must be put in mind of the English proverb, that similitudes, even when they arc taken from asses, do not walk upon all four." Swift — alluding to the transference of the Letters from Phalaris to their real source — called Bentley that " great rectifier of saddles." Bentley might have replied that he could rectify panniers too. 12 BENTLEY. [chap. It would be a mistake to regard Bentley's Dissertation as if its distinctive merit had consisted in demonstratinf^ the Letters of Phalaris to be spurious. That was by no means Bentley's own view. The spuriousness of these Letters, he felt from the first, Avas patent. He had given (in Wotton's book) a few of the most striking proofs of this : and he had been attacked. Now he was showing, in self-defence, that his proofs not only held good, but had deep and solid foundations. Others before him had suspected that the letters were forgeries, and he would have scorned to take the smallest credit for seeing what was so plain. He was the first to give sufiicient reasons for his belief ; but he did not care, and did not pretend, to give all the reasons that might be adduced. Indeed, any careful reader of the Letters can remark several proofs of spuriousness on which Bentley has not touched. For instance, it could be shown that the fictitious proper names are post-classical ; that the forger was acquainted with Thucydides ; and that he had read the Thecetetus of Plato. But Beutley had done more than enough for his purpose. The glory of his treatise was not that it estab- lished- his conclusion, but that it disclosed that broad and massive structure of learning upon which his conclusion rested. "The only book that I have writ upon my own account," he says, " is this present answer to Mr. B.'s ob- jections; and I assure him I set no great price upon 't; the errors that it refutes are so many, so gross and palpa- ble, that I shall never be very proud of the victory." At the same time, he justly refutes the assertion of his adver- saries that the point at issue was of no moment. Bentley replies: "That the single point whether Phalaris be gemv ine or no is of no small importance to learning, the very learned Mr. Dodwell is a sufficient evidence ; who, espou? v.] BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION'. 73 injr Phalaris fur a true author, has cnclcavourcJ bv that means to make a great innovation in the ancient chronol- oo-y. To undervalue this dispute about Thalaris because it docs not suit to one's own studies, is to quarrel with a circle because it is not a square." A curious fatality attended on Bcntlcy's adversaries in this controversy. While they dealt thrusts at points where he was invulnerable, they missed all the chinks in his armour except a statement limiting too narrowly the use of two Greek verbs, and his identification of "Alba Gracca" with Buda instead of Belgrade. Small and few, indeed, these chinks were. It would have been a j)etty, but fair, triumph for his opponents, if they had perceived that, in correcting a passage of Aristophanes, he had left a false quantity. They might have shown that a passage in Diodorns had led him into an error regarding Attic chro- nology during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. They miirht have exulted in the fact that an emendation which he proposed in Isajus rested on a confusion between two different classes of choruses; that he had certainly mis- construed a passage in the life of Pythagoras by lambli- chus ; that the " Minos," on which he relies as Plato's work, was spurious; that, in one of the Letters of Phala- ris, he had defended a false reading by false grammar. They could have shown that Bentley was demonstrably wroncf in assertinsx that no writings, bearing the name of yEsop, were extant in the time of Aristophanes; also in stating that the Fable of "The Two Boys" had not come down to the modern world : it was, in fact, very near them — safe in a manuscript at the Bodleian Libra- ry. Even the discussion on Zaleucus escaped : its weak points were first brought out by later critics — "Warbur- ton, Salter, Gibbon. Uad such blemishes been ten times 74 BENTLEY. [chap. more numerous, tliey would not have affected the worth of the book ; but, such as they were, they were just of the kind which small detractors delight to magnify. In one place Bentley accuses Boyle of having adopted a wrong reading in one of the Letters, and thereby made nonsense of the passage. Now, Boyle's reading, though not the best, happens to be capable of yielding the very sense which Bentley required. Yet even this Boyle and his friends did not discover. How was the Dissertation received ? Accordino- to the popular account, no sooner had Bentley blown his mighty blast, than the walls of the hostile fortress fell flat. The victory was immediate, the applause universal, the foe's ruin overwhelming. Tyrwhitt, in his Bahrius — published long after Bentley's death — is seeking to explain why Bentley never revised the remarks on -^sop, which he had pub- lished in Wotton's book. " Content with having pros- trated his adversaries with the second Dissertation on Phalaris, as by a thunder-bolt, he withdrew in scorn from the uneven fight." Let us see what the evidence is. Just as the great Dis- sertation appeared, Boyle's friends published " A short Ac- count of Dr. Bentley's Humanity and Justice." It is con- ceived in a rancorous spirit ; Bentley is accused of having plundered, in his Fragments of Callimachus, some papers which Thomas Stanley, the editor of ^schylus, left un- published at his death ; and Bentley's conduct to Boyle about the manuscript is set forth as related by the book- seller, Mr. Bennet. Now, in John Locke's correspondence, I find a letter to him from Thomas Burnet, formerly a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, and then Master of Charterhouse, author of a fantastic book on the geological history of the earth {Telluris Theoria Sacra). The date v.] IJEXTLEY'S DISSERTATION. 7.'. is March 19, 1G99. Bentlcy had read part of his preface to Burnet before it was pubHshed. Burnet liad now read the whole, and a great part of the Dissertation itself; also the newly published " Short Account." He is now dis- posed to believe Bonnet's version. " I do profess, upon second thoughts . . . that his story seemeth the more likely, if not the most true, of the two." As to the Letters of riialaris, he is aware that some great scholars arc with Bentlcy. " But I doubt not," he adds, " that a greater number will be of another sentiment, who would not be thought to be of the unlearned tribe." That, we may bo sure, was what many people were saying in London. A defence of Bentlcy against the " Short Account," which came out at this time, has been ascribed to a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford — Solomon Whately, the first translator of Phalaris into English. The Boyle party had addressed themselves to the wits and the town. Bentley's work had plenty of qualities which could be appreciated in that quarter; but its pe- culiar strength lay in things of which few persons could judge. These few were at once convinced by it; and their authority helped to convince the inner circles of students. But the Boyle party still had on their side all those who, regarding the contest as essentially an affair of style, preferred Boyle's style to Bentley's. This number would include the rank and file of fashion and its depend- ents — the persons who wrote dedications, and the patrons in whose antechambers they waited. Most of them would be genuinely unconscious how good Bentley's answer was, and their prepossessions would set strongly the other way. So, while Bcntley had persuaded the scholars, it would still be the tone of a large and inlhicntial world to say that, though the pedant might have brought cumbrous proofs 76 BENTLEY. [chap. of a few trivial points, Boyle had won a signal victory in " wit, taste, and breeding." Swift's " Battle of tbe Books " was begun when Le was living with Sir William Temple at Moor Park in 1697. It was suggested by a Frencb satire, Coutray's Histoire Poetique de la guerre nouvellement declaree entre les anciens et les modernes, and referred to Bentley's ^/'si Dissertation, wbicb bad just appeared. Temple was feeling sore, and Swift wisbed to please bim. But its circulation was only private until it was publisbed witb tbe "Tale of a Tub" in 1704. Temple bad tben been dead five years. If Bentley's victory bad tben been universally recognised as crusbing, Swift would have been running tbe risk of turn- ing tbe laugb against bimself ; and no man, so fond of wounding, liked tbat less. In tbe "Battle of tbe Books," Boyle is Acbilles, clad in armour wrougbt by tbe gods. The character ascribed to Bentley and Wotton is expressed in tbe Homeric similes which adorn tbe grand battle at tbe end. "As a Woman in a little House, tbat gets a painful livelihood by spinning; if chance her Geese be scattered o'er tbe Common, she courses round tbe plain from side to side, compelling, here and there, the stragglers to tbe flock ; they cackle loud, and flutter o'er tbe cham- pain : so Boyle pursued, so fled this Pair of Friends. . . . As when a skilful Cook has truss'd a brace of Woodcocks, he, with iron Skewer, pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close pinion'd to their ribs ; so was this Pair of Friends transfix'd, till down they fell, join'd in their lives, join'd in their deaths ; so closely join'd that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half bis fare." When this was first pub- lished, Bentley's second Dissertation had been five years before the public. v.] BEXTLEY'S DISSERTATION. 77 Against this satire — so purely popular that it lost noth- ing by being whetted on the wrong edge — we must set two pieces of contemporary evidence to Bentley's iniinedi- ate success with his own limited audience. In discussing the ago of Pythagoras, he had said : " I do not pretend to pass my own judgment, or to determine positively on ci- ther side; but I submit the whole to the censure of such readers as arc well versed in ancient learning ; and partic- ularly to that incomparable historian and chronologcr, the Right Reverend the Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield." In the same year (1G99) Dr. Lloyd responded by publish- ing his views on the question, prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to Bcntlcy. The other testimony is of a different kind, but not less significant. "A Short Review " of the controversy appeared in ITOI. It was anonymous. Dycc says that a friend of his possessed a copy in which an ear- ly eighteenth century hand had written, " by Dr. Atter- bury." The internal evidence leaves no doubt of this. I may notice one indication of it, which does not appear to have been remarked. "We have seen that the " Examina- tion" of Bentley's first es'^ay was edited, and in great part written, by Atterbur}'. This ends with these words: "I fancy that the reader will be glad to have . . . the Dr.'s Picture in Miniature," rather " than that it shou'd be again drawn out at full length.''^ The "picture in minia- ture" is the "Index" already mentioned above. Now the " Short Review " ends with " the Dr.'s Advantagious Character of himself at full lenr/thy The writer of this "Character" is clearly going back on his own footsteps: and that writer can be no other than Atterbury. He is very angry, and intensely bitter. He hints that ^Vhig interest has bolstered up Bentley against Tory opponents. AVith almost incredible violence, he accuses Bentley of 18 BExVTLEY. [chap. "lying, stealing, and prevaricating" (p. 12). He con- trasts tlie character of a " Critic " with that of a " Gentle- man." Stress is laid on the imputation that Bentley had attacked not Boyle alone, but also the illustrious society in which Boyle had been educated. The members of. that society (Atterbury remarks) are not cut all alike, as Bushels are by Winchester-measure: "Bat they are men of different Talents, Principles, Humours, and Interests, who are seldom or never united save when some unrea- sonable oppression from abroad fastens them together, and consequently whatever ill is said of all of them is falsely said of many of them." " To answer the reflexion of a private Gentleman with a general abuse of the So- ciety he belong'd to, is the manners of a dirty Boy upon a Country-Green." It will not avail Bentley that his friends " style him a Living Library, a Walking Diction- ary, and a Constellation of Criticism." A solitary gleam of humour varies this strain. Some wiseacre had sug- gested that the Letters of Phalaris might corrupt the crowned heads of Europe, if kings should take up the Agrigentinc tyrant as Alexander the Great took up Homer, and put him under their pillows at night. " I objected" — says the author of the "Short Eeview" — "that now, since the advancement of Learnino- and Civil- ity in the world, Princes were more refined, and would be ashamed of such acts of Barbarity as Phalaris was guilty of in a ruder age." But the alarmist stuck to his point; urging that "his Czarish Majesty" (Peter the Great, then in the twelfth year of his reign) might have met with the Letters of Phalaris in his travels, and that " his curiosity might have led him to make a Brazen Ball, when he came home, to burn his Rebells in." The piece ends by renewing the charge of plagiarism against Bent- v.] BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION'. 79 ley. Considering; that tlic second Dissertation had now been out two years, this is a curiosity of literature: " Common Pilferers will still yo on in their trade, even after therj have sitffer\lfor it^ But, when Bentley's Dissertation had been published for half a century, surely there can have been no Ioniser any doubt as to the completeness of his victory ? Wc shall see. In 1749, seven years after Bentley's death, an English Translation of the Letters of Phalaris was pub- lished by Thomas Francklin. lie had been educated at Westminster School, and was then a icsidcnt Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge ; his translation of Sophocles is still well known, lie dedicates his version of Phalaris to John, Earl of Orrery, alluding to the esteem in which the Greek author had been held by the late Lord Orrery (Charles Boyle). lie then refers to " the celebrated dis- pute " between Boyle and Bentley about these Letters. "Doctor Bentley," he allows, "was always look'd on as a man of wit and parts." Ou the other hand, Francklin vindicates Boyle against " the foolish opinion " that he had been helped by "some men of distinguished merit" in his book against Bentley. Had this been so, those men would have been eager to claim their share in the reputation acquired by it. As they have not done so, there can be no reason why Boyle's " claim to the de- served applause it has met with should ever for the future be call'd in question." " I have not enter'd into any of the points of the controversy," Francklin proceeds, " as it would be a disagreeable as well as unnecessarv task, but shall only observe that, tho' several very specious argu- ments are brought by Doctor Bentley, the strongest of them do only affect 2>cu'ticular epistles; which, as Mr. Boyle ob- serves, do not hurt the whole body; for in a collection 80 BENTLEY. [chap. of pieces tbat have no dependence on each other, as epis- tles, epigrams, fables, the first number may be encreased by the wantonness and vanity of imitators in aftertimes, and yet the book he authentic in the main, and an original stilly Franclvlin was not outra2;in«: the sense of a learned community by writing thus. In the very next year (1750) he was elected to the Regius Professorship of Greek. Nothing could show more conclusively the average state of literary opinion on the controversy half a century after it took place. But there is evidence which carries us fifty years lower still. In 1804 Cumberland, Bentley's grand- son, was writing his Memoirs. "I got together" (he says) " all the tracts relative to the controversy between Boyle and Bentley, omitting none even of the authorities and passages they referred to, and having done this, I compressed the reasonings on both sides into a kind of statement and report upon the question in dispute ; and if, in the result, my judgment went with him to whom my inclination lent, no learned critic in the 2yresent age will condemn me for the decision." Such was the apologetic tone which Bentley's grandson still thought due to the world, even after Tyrwhitt had written of the " thunder- bolt," and Porson of the " immortal Dissertation !" The theory that Bentley had an immediate triumph does not represent the general impression of his own age, but re- flects the later belief of critical scholars, who felt the crushing power of Bentley's reply, and imagined that every one must have felt it when it first appeared. The tamer account of the matter, besides being the truer, is also far more really interesting. It shows how long the clearest truth may have to wait. Bentley's Dissertation was translated into Latin by the v.] BENTLEVS DISSEIITATION. 81 Dutch scliolar, John Daniel Lcnnep, who edited the Letters of Phalaiis. After Lennep's death, the transition and the edition were pubHshed togetlier by Yalckenaer (1777). The Dissertation was subsequently rendered into German, with notes, by Ilibbeck ; and only seven years ago (1874) the English text of the Dissertation (both in its first and in its second form) was rc-issued in Germany, with Intro- duction and notes, by Dr. "Wilhclm Wagner. It has thus been the destiny of Bentley's work, truly a work of gen- ius, to become in the best sense monumental. In a litera- ture of which continual supersession is the law, it has owed this permanent place to its triple character as a storehouse of erudition, an example of method, and a masterpiece of controversy. Isaac Disraeli justly said of it that " it heaves with the workings of a master spirit." Bentley's learmng everywhere bears the stamp of an original mind ; and, even where it can be corrected by modern lights, has the lasting interest of showing the process by which an intellect of rare acuteness reached approximately true conclusions. As a consecutive argument it represents the first sustained ap- plication of strict reasoning to questions of ancient litera- ture — a domain in which his adversaries, echoing the sen- timent of their day, declared that " all is but a lucky guess." As a controversial reply, it is little less than marvellous, if we remember that his very clever assailants had been un- scrupulous in their choice of weapons — freely using every sort of insinuation, however irrelevant or gross, which could tell — and that Bcntlcy repulsed them at every point, with- out once violating the usages of legitimate warfare. "While he demolishes, one by one, the whole scries of their rele- vant remarks, he steadily preserves his own dignity by simply turning back upon them the dishonour of their own calumnies and the ridicule of their own impertinence. 82 BEXTLEV. [chap. Witli a dexterity aliin to that of a consummate debater, he wields the power of retort in such a manner that he appears to be hardly more than the amused spectator of a logical recoil. Shortly before Swift described Boyle as Achilles, poor Achilles was writing from Ireland, in some perturbation of spirit, to those gods who were hard at work on his armour, and confiding his hopes " that it Avould do no harm." It did not do much. This was the first controversy in Eng- lish letters that had made anything like a public stir, and it is pleasant to think that Achilles and his antagonist ap- pear to have been good friends afterwards : if any ill-will lingered, it was rather in the bosoms of the Myrmidons. Dr. William King, who had helped to make the mischief, never forgave Bentley for his allusions to "Ilumty-dum- ty," and satirised him in ten "Dialogues of the Dead" (on Lucian's model) — a title which suits their dulness. Bentley is Bentivoglio, a critic who knows that the first weather-cock was set up by the Argonauts and that cush- ions were invented by Sardanapalus. Salter mentions a tradition, current in 1777, that Boyle, after he became Lord Orrery, visited Bentley at Trinity College, Cam- bridge. There is contemporary evidence, not, indeed, for such personal intercourse, but for the existence of mutual esteem. In 1721 a weekly paper, The Spy, attacked Bentley in an article mainly patched up out of thefts from Boyle's book on Phalaris, and a reply appeared, call- ed " The Apothecary's Defence of Dr. Bentley, in answer to the Spy." " Let me now tell it the Spy as a secret," says the Apothecary, " that Dr. Bentley has the greatest deference for his noble antagonist (Boyle), both as a per- son of eminent parts and quality ; and I dare say his noble antagonist thinks of Dr. Bentley as of a person as great v.] UENTLEVS Dl.S.Si:UTATl()N. 83 in critical learning as England has boasted of for many a century." Wo remember Bentlcy's description of Boyle as *' a young gentleman of great hopes," and gladly believe that the Apothecary was as well informed as his tone would imply. Atterbury was in later life on excellent terms with Bentley. It is long enough now since " the sprinkling of a little dust" allayed the last throb of angry passion that had been roused by the Battle of the Books : but we look back across the years, and see more than the persons of the quarrel ; it was the beginning of a new epoch in criticism ; and it is marked by a work which, to this hour, is classical in a twofold sense, in relation to the literature of England and to the philology of Europe. CHAPTER VI. TRINITY COLLEaE, CAMBRIDGE, Towards the end of 1699, about eiglit months after the publication of Bentley's Dissertation on Pbalaris, the Mas- tership of Trinity College, Cambridge, became vacant by the removal of Dr. Mountague to the Deanery of Durham. The nomination of a successor rested with six Commission- ers, to whom King William had entrusted the duty of ad- vising in the ecclesiastical and academic patronage of the Crown. They were Archbishops Tenison and Sharp, with Bishops Lloyd, Burnet, Patrick, and Moore — the last- named in place of Stillingfleet, who had died in April, 1699. On their unanimous recommendation, the post was given to Bentley. He continued to hold the ofBce of King's Librarian; but his home thenceforth was at Cambridge. No places in England have suffered so little as Oxford and Cambridge from the causes which tend to merge local colour in a monochrome. The academic world which Bentley entered is still, after a hundred and eighty years, comparatively near to us, both in form and in spirit. The visitor in IVOO, whom the coach conveyed in twelve hours from the " Bull " in Bishopsgate Street to the " Ptose " in the Market-place of Cambridge, found a scene of which the CHAP. VI.] TRLMTY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. '85 essential features were the same as they arc to-day. The most distinctive among the older buildings of the Uni- versity had long been such as \\c now sec them ; already for nearly two centuries the chapel of King's College had been standing in the completeness of its majestic beauty ; the charm of the past could already be felt in the quad- rangles and cloisters of many an ancient house, in pleasant shades and smooth lawns by the quiet river, in gardens with margins of briiiht flowers bordering time -stained walls, over which the sound of bells from old towers came like an echo of the middle age, in all the haunts which tradition linked with domestic memories of cherished names. It was only the environment of the University that was decidedly unlike the present. In the narrow streets of the little town, where feeble oil-lamps flickered at night, the projecting upper stories of the houses on either side approached each other so nearly overhead as partly to supply the place of umbrellas. The few shops that existed were chiefly open booths, with the goods dis- played on a board which also served as a shutter to close the front. That great wilderness of peat-moss which once stretched from Cambridge to the "Wash had not yet been drained with the thoroughness which has since reclaimed two thousand square miles of the best corn-land in Eng- land; tracts of fen still touched the outskirts of the town; snipe and marsh-fowl were plentiful in the present sub- urbs. To the south and south-east the country was unen- closed, as it remained, in great measure, down to the be- ginning of this century. A horseman might ride for miles without seeing a fence. The broadest difference between the University life of Bentley's time and of our own might perhaps be roughly described by saying that, for the older men, it had more 5 86 BENTLEY. [chap, resemblance, both in its rigours and in its laxities, to the life of a monastery, and, for the younger men, to the life of a school. The College day began with morning chapel, usually at six. Breakfast was not a regular meal, but, from about IVOO, it was often taken at a coffee-house where the London newspapers could be read. Morning lectures began at seven or eight in the College hall. Tables were set apart for different subjects. At " the logiclc table " one lecturer is expounding Duncan's trea- tise, while another, at "the ethick table," is interpreting Puffendorf on the Duty of a Man and a Citizen ; classics and mathematics engage other groups. The usual College dinner-hour, which had long been 11 a.m., had advanced before 1720 to noon. The afternoon disputations in the Schools often drew large audiences to hear "respondent" and "opponent" discuss such themes as "Natural Phi- losophy does not tend to atheism," or " Matter cannot think." Evening chapel was nsually at five ; a slight supper was provided in hall at seven or eight ; and at eight in winter, or nine in summer, the College gates were locked. All students lodged within College walls. Some tutors held evenino; lectures in their rooms. Dis- cipline was stern. The birch-rod which was still hung up at the butteries typified a power in the College dean sim- ilar to that which the fasces announced in the Roman Con- sul ; and far on in the seventeenth century it was some- times found to be more than an austere symbol, when a youth showed himself, as Anthony "Wood Iims it, "too forward, pragmatic, and conceited." Boating, in the ath- letic sense, was hardly known till about 1820, and the first record of cricket in its present form is said to be the match of Kent against England in 1746; but the under- graduates of Bentley's day played tennis, racquets, and VI.] TIMNITV r()IJ,K<;E, CAMnRinOE. 87 bowls; they rang pcals on churcli-bclls; they jjavc c(in- ccrts; nay, wc hear that the votaries "of Ilamlcl and Co- relli " (the Italian violinist) were not less earnest than thusc of Newton and Loeke. In IJcntley's Cambridi^c the sense of a corjiorate life was strengthened by continuous resi- dence. Many Fellows of Colleges, and some undergrad- uates, never left the University from one year's end to another. An excursion to the Bath or to Epsom Wells was the equivalent of a modern vacation-tour. No read- ing-party had yet penetrated to the Lakes or the Iligh- l.mds. No summer fetes yet brought an influx of guests; the nearest ajiproach to anything of the kind was the annual Sturbridge Fair in September, held in fields near the Cam, just outside the town. The seclusion of the University world is curiously illustrated by the humorous speeches which old custom allowed on certain {)ublic occa- sions. The sallies of the academic satirist were to the Cambridge of that period very much what the Old Com- edy was for the Athens of Aristophanes. The citizens of a compact commonwealth could be sufficiently entertained by lively criticism of domestic affairs, or by pointed allu- sions to the conduct of familiar persons. In relation to the studies of Cambridge the moment of Bentley's arrival was singularly opportune. The theories of Descartes had just been exploded by that Newtonian philosophy which Bentley's Boyle Lectures had first popu- larised ; in alliance with Newton's principles, a mathemati- cal school was growing; and other sciences also were be- ginning to flourish. Between 1702 and 1727 the Univer- sity was provided with chairs of Astronomy, Anatomy, Geology, and Botany ; whilst the academic study of Medi- cine was also placed on a better footing. George I. found- ed the chair of Modern Historv in 1724. For classical 88 BENTLEY. [chap. learning the latter part of the seventeenth century had been a somewhat sterile period. There was thus a two- fold function for a man of comprehensive vigour, holding an eminent station in the University — to foster the new learning, and to reanimate the old. Bentley proved him- self equal to both tasks. On February 1, 1700, the Fellows of Trinity College met in the chapel for the purpose of admitting their new Master, Bentley toot the Latin oath, promising (amongst other undertakings) that he would "observe in all things the Statutes of the College, and interpret them truly, sincerely, and according to their grammatical sense ;" that he would " rule and protect all and singular Fellows and Scholars, Pensioners, Sizars, Subsizars, and the other members of the College, according to the same Statutes and Laws, without respect of birth, condition, or person, without favour or ill-will ;" that, in the event of his resigning or being deposed, he Avoald restore all that was due to the College " without controversy or tergiver- sation." He was then installed in the Master's seat, and his reign began. Bentley had just completed his thirty-eighth year. He had a genius for scholarship, which was already recog- nised. He had also that which does not always accom- pany it, a large enthusiasm for the advancement of learn- ing. His powers of work were extraordinary, and his physical strength was equal to almost any demand which even he could make upon it. Seldom has a man of equal gifts been placed at so early an age in a station which offered such opportunities. Henry VHL founded Trinity College only a few weeks before his death. Two establishments, each more than two centuries old, then stood on the site of the present VI. J TIUMTV fuLLLUi:, O.MliKlDfiK. bJ Great Court. One of these was Michael-house, founded in 1324 by llervey de Stanton, Chancellor to Edward II. The other. Kind's llall, was founded in 1337 by Edward III., who assigned it to the King's Scholars, thirty or for- ty students, maintained at Cambridge by a royal bounty, first granted by Edward II. in 1316. Thus, whilst Mi- chael-house was the older College, King's Hall represented the older foundation. When Henry VIII. united them, the new name, "Trinity College," was probably taken from Michael-house, which, among other titles, had been dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity. The Ref- ormation had been a crisis in the history of the English Universities. In 1540 their fortunes were almost at the lowest ebb. That fact adds significance to the terms in Avhich Henry's charter traces the noble plan of Trinity Collejxe. The new house is to be a "collcixe of literature, the sciences, philosophy, good arts, and sacred Theology." It is founded "to the glory and honour of Almighty God and the Holy and Undivided Trinity; for the amplifica- tion and establishment of the Christian faith ; the extirpa- tion of heresy and false opinion ; the increase and contin- uance of Divine Learning and all kinds of good letters ; the knowledge of the tongues: the education of youth in piety, virtue, learning, and science ; the relief of the poor, destitute, and atfiicted ; the prosperity of the Church of Christ; and the common good of his kingdom and subjects." The King had died before this conception could be embodied in legislative enactment. Statutes were made for Trinity College in the reign of Edward XL, and again in the reign of Mary. Manuscript copies of these are preserved in the Muniment-room of the College ; but the first printed code of Statutes was that given in the 90 BENTLEY. [chap. second year of Elizabeth. These governed Trinity Col- lege until a revision produced the "Victorian" Statutes of 1844. Two features of the Elizabethan Statutes de- serve notice. All the sixty Fellowships are left open, without appropriation to counties — whilst at every other Cambridge College, except King's, territorial restrictions existed till this centurv. And, besides the Colleo-e Lect- urers, maintenance is assigned to three University Readers. These are the Regius Professors of Divinity, Hebrew, and Greek, who are still on Henry VHI.'s foundation. Thue, from its origin, Trinity College was specially associated with two ideas: free competition of merit; and provis- ion, not only for collegiate tuition, but also for properly academic teaching. During the first century of its life — from the reio'n of Edward VI. to the Civil Wars — the prosperity of Trinity College was brilliant and unbroken. The early days of the Great Rebellion were more disastrous for Cambridge than for Oxford ; yet at Cambridge, as at Oxford, the period of the Commonwealth was one in which learning throve. Trinity College was "purged" of its Royalist members in 1645. Dr. Thomas Hill then became Master. He proved an excellent administrator. Isaac Barrow, who was an undergraduate of the College, had written an exer- cise on " the Gunpowder Treason," in which his Cavalier sympathies were frankly avowed. Some of the Fellows Avere so much incensed that they moved for his expulsion, when Hill silenced them with the words, "Barrow is a better man than any of us." The last Master of Trinity before the Restoration was Dr. John Wilkins, brother-in- law of Oliver Cromwell, and formerly Warden of Wadham College, Oxford ; who was "always zealous to promote worthy men and generous designs." He was shrewdly VI.] TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 91 su.^^pccteJ of being a Royalist, and Croimvcn Imd been wont to greet bis visits thus: " Wiiat, brother Wilkins, I siij> pose )ou arc come to ask something or other in favour of the Malignants?'' But his inthiencc is said to have decided the Protector against confiscating the revenues of O.vford and Cambridge to pay his army.* In the space of forty years betweert the Restoration and Bentley's arrival, Trinity College liad suffered some de- cline ; not through any default of eminent abilities or worthy charactcr.s, but partly from general influences of the time, partly from tlic occasional want of a sufficiently firm rule. Dr. John Pearson — the author of the treatise on the Creed — was Master of Trinity from 1662 to 1673. A contemporary — whoso words plainly show the contrast witli Bentley which was in his mind — said that Pearson was "a man the least apt to encroach upon anything that belonged to the Fellows, but treated them all with abun- dance of civility and condescension." " The Fellows, he has heard, ask'd him wlicthcr he wanted anything in his lodge — table-linen, or the like ; * No,' saith the good man, 'I think not; this I have will serve yet;' and though pressed by his wife to have new, especially as it was oflfcr- ed him, he would refuse it while the old was fit for use. He was very well contented with what the College allowed him." • See a letter, preserved in the Muniment-room of Trinity College, Cambridge, and published by Mr. W. Aldis Wright in Xofcs and Queries, Aug. 13, 1881. I may remark that Dr. Croyghton, whose recollections in old age the letter reports, errs in one detail. It must have been as Warden of Wadham, not as Master of Trinity, that Wil- kins interceded against the confi.-Jcation. Oliver Cromwell died Sept. 3, 1G58. It was early in 1659 that Richard Cromwell appointed Wilkins to Trinity College. 92 BENTLEY. [ckap. Pearson was succeeded in the Mastersliip by Isaac Bar- row, who held it for only four years — from 161 3 to his death in 1677. Both as a mathematician and as a theo- loo-ian he stood in the foremost rank. In 1660 he was elected "without a competitor" to the professorship of Greek. Thus a singular triad of distinctions is united in his person ; as Lucasian professor of Mathematics, he was the predecessor of Newton ; at Trinity College, of Bentley ; and, in his other chair, of Porson. In early boyhood he was chiefly remarkable for his pugnacity, and for his aver- sion to books. When he was at Charterhouse, " liis greatest recreation was in such sports as brought on fighting among the boys; in his after-time a very great courage remain- ed .. . yet he had perfectly subdued all inclination to quarrelling; but a negligence of his cloaths did always continue with him." As Master of Trinity, " besides the particular assistance he gave to many in their studies, he concerned himself in everything that was for the interest of his College." Tlie next two Masters were men of a different type. John North was the fifth son of Dudley, Lord North, and younger brother of Francis North, first Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper in the reigns of Charles II. and James It. He had been a Fellow of Jesus College, and in 1677 he was appointed Master of Trinity. John North was a man of cultivated tastes and considerable accomplishments, of a gentle, very sensitive disposition, and of a highly nervous temperament. Even after he was a Fellow of his College, he once mistook a moonlit towel for " an enorm spectre ;" and his brother remembers how, at a still later period, "one Mr. Wagstaff, a little gentleman, had an express au- dience, at a very good dinner, on the subject of spectres, and mv^ch was said pro and con^ On one occasion ho Ti.] TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMDKIDGE. 9d travelled into Wales, "to visit and be possessed of his sinecure of Llandinon." "The parishioners came about liini antl liiitrtjcd liiiii, calling him their pastor, and tellini; him tlioy were his sheep;" when "lie got him back to liis College as fast as he could." In the Mastership of Trinity North showed no weakness. Certain abuses had begun to infect the election to Fellowships, and lie made a vigor- ous effort to remedy them. lie was no less firm in his endeavours to revive discipline, which had been somewhat relaxed since the Restoration. One day he was in the act of admonishing two students, when he fell down in a fit. The two young men were "very helpful" in carrying him to the Lodge. Paralysis of one side ensued, lie lived for upwards of three years, but could thenceforth take little part in College affairs; and died, six years after he liad become ^Master, in 1083. Dr. John Mountague, North's successor, was the fourth son of Edward, first Earl of Sandwich. The little that is known of Mountague exhibits him as an amiable person of courtly manners, who passed decently along the path of rapid preferment whicb then awaited a young divine with powerful connexions. Having first been Master of Sherburn Hospital at Durham, he was appointed, in 1683, to the Mastership of Trinity. His easy temper and kind- ly disposition made him popular with the Fellows — all the more so, perhaps, if his conscience was less exacting than that of the highly-strung, anxious North. In 1699 he returned, as Dean of Durham, to the scene of his ear- lier duties, and lived to sec the fortunes of the College under Bentley. He died in London, in 1728. There was a double disadvantage for Bentley in coming after such a man ; the personal contrast was marked ; and those ten- dencies which North strove to repress had not suffered, 5* 94 BENTLEY. [chap. ti. under Mouiitague, from any interference whicli exceeded the limits of good breeding. In the fore-front of the difficulties which met Bentley Dr. Monk puts the fact that he " had no previous con- nexion with the College wliicli ho was sent to govern ; he was himself educated in another and a rival society." Now, without questioning that there were murmurs on this score, I tliiuk that we shall overrate the influence of such a consideration if we fail to observe what the precedents had been up to that date. Bentley was the twentieth Master siuce 1546. Of his nineteen predeces- sors, only five had been educated at Trinity College. To take the four immediately preceding cases, Barrow and Mountague had been of Trinity, but Pearson had been of King's, and North of Jesus. Since Bentley's time every Master has been of Trinity. But it cannot be said that any established usage then existed of which Bentley's appointment was a breach. And young though he was for such a post — thirty-eight — he was not young beyond recent example. Pearson, when appointed, had been forty ; Barrow, forty-three ; North, thirty-three ; and Mountague, only twenty-eight. Thus the choice was not decidedly exceptional in either of the two points which might make it appear so now. But the task which, at that moment, awaited a Master of Trinity was one which demanded a rare union of qualities. How would Bentley succeed? A few readers of the Dissertation on Phalaris, that mock despot of Agrigentum, might tremble a little, perhaps, at the thought that the scholarly author appeared to have a robust sense of what a real tyrant should be, and a cordial contempt for all shams in the part. It was natural, however, to look with hope to his mental grasp and vigour, his energy, his penetration, his genuine love of learning. en AFTER VII. BENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRINITY. "When Bcntley entered on his new office, lie was in one of those positions where a great deal may depend on the impression made at starting. lie did not begin very happily. One of liis first acts was to demand part of a College dividend due by usage to his predecessor, Dr. Mountaguc, wlio closed the discussion by waiving his claim. Then tlie Master's Lodge required repairs, and the Seniority (the eight Senior Fellows) had voted a sum for that purpose, but the works were executed in a man- ner which ultimately cost about four times the amount. It is easy to imagine the comments and comparisons to which such things would give rise in a society not, perhaps, too favourably prepossessed towards their new chief. But Bentley's first year at Trinity is marked by at least one event altogether fortunate — his marriage. At Bishop Stillingfleet's house he had met Miss Joanna Bernard, daughter of Sir John Bernard, of Brampton, Huntingdonshire. "Being now raised to a station of dig- nity and consequence, he succeeded in obtaining the ob- ject of his affections," says Dr. Monk — who refuses to believe a story that the engagement was nearly broken off owing to a doubt expressed by Bentley with regard to the authority of the Book of Daniel. ^Vhiston has 96 BENTLEY. [chap. told us what this alleged doubt was. Nebuchadnezzar's golden image is described as sixty cubits higb and six cubits broad ; now, said Bentley, this is out of all pro- portion ; it ought to have been ten cubits broad at least ; " which made the good lady weep." The lovers' differ- ence was possibly arranged on the basis snggested by Whiston — that the sixty cubits included the pedestal. Some letters whicli passed between Dr. Bentley and Miss Bernard, before their marriage, are still extant, and Lave been printed by Dr. Luard at the end of Rud's Diary. In the Library of Trinity College is preserved a small printed and interleaved "Ephemeris" for the year lYOl. The blank page opposite the month of January has the following entries in Bentley's hand : " Jan. 4. I maried Mrs. Johanna Bernard, daughter of S'' John Bernard, Baronet. C Richardson, Fellow of Eaton College and Mas- ter of Peterhouse, maried U3 at Windsor in y« College Chapel. " 6. I brought my wife to S' James's \i. e., to his lodgings, as King's Librarian, in the Palace]. " 27. I am 39 years old, complete. " 28. I returnd to ye College." It was a thoroughly happy marriage, through forty years of union. What years they were, too, outside of the home in whicli Mrs. Bentley's gentle presence dwelt ! In days when evil tongues were busy no word is said of ber but in praise ; and perhaps, if all were known, few women ever went through more in trying, like Mrs. Thrale, to be civil for two. Bentley was Vice-chancellor of Cambridge at the time of his marriage. His year of ofRce brought him into col- lision with the gaieties of that great East England carni- val, Sturbridge Fair. Its entertainments were under the joint control of the University and the Town, but, without VII.] IJENTLIiY AS MASTKU OF TIlIMTV. 97 licence from tlic Vicc-clianccllor, some actors had been announcoJ to play in September, 1701. ])ciitloy inter- posed his veto, and provided for discipline by investing sixty-two Masters of Arts with the powers of I'roctors. One of his hist acts as Vice-chancellor was to draw np an address which the University presented to King AVilliain, expressing *' detestation of the indignity " which Lonis XIV. liad just offered to the English Crown by recog- nising the claims of the Pretender. The term of his University magistracy having expired, Bentlcy was able to bestow undivided attention on Trini- ty College. An important reform was amongst his earli- est measures. Fellowships and Scholarships were at that time awarded by a merely oral examination. Written papers were now introduced ; tlic competition for Schol- arships became annual instead of biennial, and freshmen were admitted to it. The permanent value of this change is not affected by the estimate which may be formed of Bentley's personal conduct in College elections. There are instances in which it was represented as arbitrary and unfair. But we must remember that his behaviour was closely watched by numerous enemies, who eagerly pressed every point which could be plausibly urged against him. The few detailed accounts which we have of the elections give the impression that, in those cases at least, the merits of candidates were fairly considered. Thus John Byrom says (1V09): "We were examined by the Master, Vice- master, and Dr. Smith, one of the Seniors. On Wednes- day wc made theme for Dr. Bentley, and on Thursday the Master and Seniors met in the Chapel for the election [to Scholarships]. Dr. Smith had the gout and was not there. Thcv staved consulting about an hour and a half, and then the Master wrote the names of the elect and gave them to 98 BENTLEY. [chap. the Cliapel Clerk." Whether lie was or was not always blameless on such occasions, Bentley deserves to be re- membered as the Master who instituted a better machin- ery for testing' merit, and provided better guarantees for its recognition. To do him justice, no man could have been more ear- nest than Bentley was in desiring to maintain the prestige of Trinity College, or more fully sensible of the rank due to it in science and letters. It was through Bentley's in- fluence that the newly-founded Plumian Professorship of Astronomy was conferred on Roger Cotes — then only a Bachelor of Arts — who was provided with an observato- ry in the rooms over the Great Gate of Trinity College (1706). Ten years later, when this man of wonderful promise died at the age of thirty-four, Newton said, " Had Cotes lived, we should have known something." The ap- pointment of Cotes may be regarded as marking the for- mal establishment of a Newtonian school in Cambridge ; and it was of happy omen that it should have been first lodged within the walls which had sheltered the labours of the founder. Three English sovereigns visited the Col- lege in the course of Bentley's Mastership, but the most interesting fact connected with any of these occasions is the public recognition of Newton's scientific eminence in 1705, when he received knighthood from Queen Anne at Trinity Lodge. Then it Avas Bentley who fitted up a chemical laboratory in Trinity College for Vigani, a na- tive of Verona, who, after lecturing in Cambridge for some years, was appointed Professor of Chemistry in 1702. It was Bentley who made Trinity College the home of the eminent Oriental scholar Sike, of Bremen, whom he helped to obtain the Regius Chair of Hebrew in 1703. Briefly, wherever real science needed protection or encouragement, Til] Ur.NTLKY AS MASTEU OF TlIINITV. 99 there, in Bcntlcy's view, was tlie opportunity of Trinity Cullct^e ; it was to be indeed a house of the sciences and " of all kinds of good letters ;" it was to be not only a great College, but, in its own measure, a true University. This noble conception represents the good side <»f Bentley's Mastership ; he did something towards making it a reality ; ho did more still towards creating, or reani- mating, a tradition that this is what Trinity College was meant to be, and that nothing lower than this is the char- acter at which it should aim. Xor is it without signifi- cance that Xevile's care for tlie external embellishment of the College was resumed by Bentlcy. The Chapel, be- srun in 1557 and finished in Elizabeth's reign, was tlirough Bentley's efforts entirely refitted, and furnished with a fine organ by Bernard Smith. This work was completed in 1727. The grounds beyond the river, acquired by Nevile, were first laid out by Bentley ; and the noble avenue of limes, planted in 1G74 on the west side of the Cam, was continued in 1717 from the bridge to the Col- lege. But unfortunately it was his resolve to be absolute, and he proclaimed it in a manner which was altogether his own. The College Bursar (a Fellow) having protested against the lavish outlay on the repairs of the Master's Lodge, Bentley said that he would "send him into the country to feed his turkeys." When the Fellows opposed him in the same matter, he alluded to his power, under the Statutes, of forbidding them to leave the College, and cried, " Have you forgotten my rusty sword ?" The Fel- low who held the office of Junior Bursar had demurred to paving for a hen-house which had been put in the Mas- ter's yard ; Bentley, doubtless in allusion to Lafontaine's fable of " the Old Lion," replied, " I will not be kicked by 100 BENTLEV. [chap. an a5s" — and presently strained liis prerogative by stop- ping the Junior Bursar's commons. Remonstrances being made, he grimly rejoined, "'Tis all but lusus jocusque (mere clnld's-play) ; I am not warm yet." Criticising a financial arrangement which was perfectly legitimate, but of which he disapproved, he accused the Seniors of "rob- bing the Library," and "putting the money in their own pockets." lie harassed the society by a number of petty regulations, in which we may give him credit for having aimed at a tonic effect, but which were so timed and exe- cuted as to be highly vexatious. Thus, in order to force the Fellows to take the higher degrees, he procured the decision, after a struggle, that any Bachelor or Doctor of Divinity should have a right to College rooms or a Col- lege living before a Master of Arts, even thou2;h the latter was senior on the list of Fellows. As a measure of re- trenchment, he abolished the entertainment of guests by the College at the great festivals. Taking tlie dead letter of the Statutes in its rigour, he decreed that the College Lecturers should be fined if they omitted to perform cer- tain daily exercises in the hall, which were no longer need- ful or valuable ; he also enforced, in regard to the thirty junior Fellows, petty fines for absence from chapel (which were continued to recent times). On several occasions he took into his own hands a jurisdiction which belonged to him only jointly with the eight Seniors. Thus, in one in- stance, he expelled two Fellows of the College by his sole fiat. If Bentley is to be credited with the excellence of the intentions which declared themselves in such a form, rec- ognition is certainly due to the forbearance shown by the Fellows of Trinity. Bentley afterwards sought to repre- sent them as worthless men who resented his endeavours Til.] BENTLEY AS MASTEIt OF TIUXITV. Ml to reform them. It cannot be too distinctly said tliat this was totally unjust. The Fellows, as a body, were liable to no such charges as Bcntley in his anger brought against them ; not a few of thcni were eminent in the University ; and if there wore any whose lives would not bear scrutiny, they were at most two or three, usually non-resident, and always without influence. It may safely be said that no large society of that time, in cither University, would liave sustained an inspection with more satisfactor}' re- sults. The average College Fellow of that period was a moderately accomplished clergyman, whose desire was to repose in decent comfort on a small freehold. Centley swooped on a large house of such persons — not ideal stu- dents, yet, on the whole, decidedly favourable specimens of their kind ; he made their lives a burden to them, and then denounced them as the refuse of humanity when they dared to lift their heads against his insolent assump- tion of absolute power. They bore it as long as flesh and blood could. For nearly eight years they endured. At last, in December, 1709, things came to a crisis — almost by an accident. Bcntley had brouglit forward a proposal for redistribut- ing the divisible income of the College according to a scheme of his own, one feature of which was that the Master should receive a dividend considerably in excess of bis legitimate claims. Even Bentley's authority failed to obtain the acquiescence of the Seniors in this novel inter- pretation of the maxim, divide et imjjera. They declined to sanction the scheme. While the discussion was pend- ing, Edmund Miller, a lay Fellow, came up to spend the Christmas vacation at Trinity. As an able barrister, who understood College business, he was just such an ally as the Fellows needed, lie found them, lie says, " looking 102 BENTLEY. [chap. like so many prisoners, Avhicli were uncertain whctlier to expect military execution, or the favour of decimation." At a meeting of tbe Master and Seniors, it was agreed to licar Miller, as a representative of the junior Fellows, on the dividend question. Miller denounced the plan to r>entley's face, who replied by threatening to deprive him of his Fellowship. A few days later, an open rupture took place between the Seniors and Bentley, who left the room exclaiming, "Henceforward, farewell peace to Trin- ity College." Miller now drew up a declaration, which was signed by twenty-four resident Fellows, including the Seniors. It expressed a desire that Bentley's conduct should be represented " to those who are the proper judges thereof, and*in such manner as counsel shall ad- vise." Bentley, against the unanimous vote of the Sen- iors, and on a technical quibble of his own, now declared Miller's Fellowship void. Miller appealed to the Vice- master, who, supported by all the Seniors, replaced him on the list. The Master again struck out his name. Mil- ler now left for London. Bentley soon followed. Both sides were resolved on war. fWho were "the proper judges" of Bentley's conduct? The 46th chapter of Edward VI.'s Statutes for Trinity College recognised the Bishop of Ely as General Visitor. The Elizabethan Statutes omit this, but in their 40th chap- ter, which provides for the removal of the Master in case of necessity, incidentally speak of the Bishop as Visitor. Bentley, six years before (1703), had himself appealed to the Bishop of Ely on a point touching the Master's pre- rogative. No other precedent existed. Acting on this, the Fellows, in February, 1710, laid their "humble peti- tion and complaint " before the Bishop of Ely. They brought, in general terms, a charge of malversation against Til] BENTIJIY AS MASTER OF TRINITV. 103 Bcntlcy, and promised to submit "the several particulars" within a convenient time. Bentloy now published a " Let- ter to the Bishop of Ely,'' in which he made a most gross attack on the collective character of the Fellows, describ- ing their Petition as "the last struggle and effort of vice and idleness against vertue, learning, and good discipline." In July the Fellows presented " the several particulars " to the Bishop, in the form of an accusation comprising fifty- four counts. The Statute prescribed that an accused Mas- ter should be "examined" before the Visitor. Hence each of the counts is interrogative. For example : " SJl'JJi' li'i^'c you fur many Years lust past, wasted the College Bread, Ale, Beer, Coals, Wood, Turfc, Sedge, Charcoal, Llunen, Pew- ter, Corn, Flower, Brawn, and Bran ? &e." "?!®I)cn by false and base Practices, as by threatning to bring Letters from Court, A'isitations, and the like; and at other times, by boasting of your great Interest and Acquaintance, and that you were the Genius of the Age, and what great things you would do for the College in general, and for every Member of it in particular, and promising that you would for the future lire peaceably with them, and never make any farther Demands, you had prevailed with the Senior Fellows to allow you several hundred Pounds for your Lodge, more than they first intended or agreed for, to the great Dissatisfac- tion of the College, and the wonder of the whole University, and all that heard of it: ICJIjii did you the very next Year, about that time, merely for your .own Vanity, require them to build you a new Stair- case in your Lodge? S[ntl lufjcu they (considering how much you had extorted from them before, which you had never accounted for) did for good reason deny to do it : 8[2l^l)n did you of your own Head pull down a good Staircase in your Lodge, and give Orders and Directions for building a new one, and that too fine for common Use ?" " JE' tl' did you use scurrilous Words and Language to several of the Fellows, particularly by calling Mr. EJen an Ass, and 'Hv. Rashh/ the College Dog, and l)y telling Mr. Cock he would die in his Shoes ?" 104 BENTLEY. [chap. Dr. Moore, the learned Bishop of Ely, was one of the six Commissioners who had nominated Bentley for the Mastership ; he sympathised with his studies ; and Bent- ley had been Archdeacon of the diocese since iVOl. The judge, then, could hardly be suspected of any bias against the accused, lie sent a copy of the accusation to Bent- ley, who ignored it for some months. In November the Bishop wrote again, requiring a reply by December 18. Bentley then petitioned the Queen, praying that the Bish- op of Ely might be restrained from usurping the functions of Visitor, The Visitor of Trinity College, Bentley con- tended, was the Sovereign. Mr. Secretary St. John at once referred Bentley's contention to the Law OflBcers of the Crown, and meanwhile the Bishop was inhibited from pro- ceeding. This was at the end of 1710. Bentley's move was part of a calculation. In 1710 the Tories had come in under Harley and St. John. Mrs. Bentley was related to St. John, and also to Mr. Masham, whose wife had succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen's favour. Bentley reckoned on command- ing sufficient influence to override the Bishop's jurisdic- tion by a direct interposition of the Crown. He was dis- appointed. The Attorney-general and the Solicitor-gen- eral reported that, in their opinion, the Bishop of Ely was Visitor of Trinity College in matters concerning the Mas- ter ; adding that Bentley could, if he pleased, try the ques- tion in a court of law. This was not what Bentley de- sired. He now wrote to the Prime-minister, Harley, who had recently escaped assassination, and, witb the office of Lord High Treasurer, had been created Earl of Oxford. Bentley's letter is dated July 12, 1 711. "I desire nothing more," he writes, " than that her Majesty would send down commissioners to examine into all matters upon the place, vii.] IJKNTLKV AS MASTKU UF TKIMTV. 105 . . . and to punish where the faults sliall be found. ... I am easy under everything but loss of time by detainment here in town, which hinders nic from putting my last hand to my edition of Horace, and from doing myself the honour to inscribe it to your Lordship's great name." The Premier did his best, lie referred the report of the At- torney and Solicitor to the Lord Keeper, Sir Simon Har- court, and Queen's Counsel. In January, 1712, they ex- pressed their opinion that the Sovereign is the General Visitor of Trinity College, but that the Bishop of Ely is Special Visitor in the case of charges brought against the Master. The Minister now tried persuasion with the Fel- lows. Could they not concur with the Master in referring their grievances to the Crown ? The Fellows declined. A year passed. Bcntlcy tried to starve out the ttollege by refusing to issue a dividend. In vain. The Ministry were threatened with a revision, in the Queen's Bench, of their veto on the Bishop. They did not like this prospect. On April 18, 1713, Bolingbrokc, as Secretary of State, au- thorised the Bishop of Ely to proceed. Bcntley's ingenuity was not yet exhausted. He pro- posed that the trial should be held forthwith at Cam- bridge, where all the College books were ready to hand. Had this been done, he must certainly have been acquit- ted, since the prosecutors had not yet worked up their case. Some of the Follows unwarily consented. But the Bishop appointed Ely House, in London, as the place of trial, and the month of November, 1713, as the time. Various causes of delay intervened. At last, in May, 1714, the trial came on in the great hall of Ely House. Five counsel, including Miller, were employed for the Fellows, and three for Bentley. Bishop Moore had two eminent lawyers as his assessors — Lord Cowpcr, an ex- 106 BENTLEY. [chap. Chancellor, and Dr. Newton. Public feeling was at first with Beutley, as a distinguished scholar and divine. But the prosecutors had a strong case. An anecdote of the trial is given by Bentley's grandson, Cuuiberland. One day the Bishop intimated, from his place as Judge, that he condemned the Master's conduct. For once, Bentley's iron nerve failed him. He fainted in court. After lasting six weeks, the trial ended about the mid- dle of June. Both sides now awaited with intense anx- iety the judgment of the Bishop and his assessors. The prosecutors were confident. But week after week elapsed in silence. The Bishop had caught a chill during the sittings. On July 31 he died. The next day, August 1, 1714, London was thrilled by momentous news. Queen Anne was no more. The British Crown had passed to the House of Hanover. Ministers had fallen ; new men were coming to power; the political world was wild with excite- ment ; and the griefs of Trinity College would have to wait. Bentley's escape had been narrow. After Bishop Moore's death, the judgment which he had prepared, but not pro- nounced, was found among his papers: "By this our de- finitive sentence, we remove Richard Bentlev from his of- fice of Master of the College." Dr. Monk thinks that the Bishop had meant this merely to frighten Bentley into a compromise with the Fellows. Possibly; though in that case the Bishop would have had to reckon with the other side. But in any case Bentley must have accepted the Bishop's terms, and these must have been such as would have satisfied the prosecutors. If not ejected, therefore, he Avould still have been defeated. As it was, he got oflE scot-free. The new Bishop of Ely, Dr. Fleetwood, took a different line from his predecessor. The Crown lawyers had held Til.] BENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRINITY. 107 that the Bisliop was Special Visitor, but not General Vis- itor. Dr. Fleetwood said that, if he interfered at all, it must be as General Visitor, to do justice on all alike. This scared some of the weaker Fellows into niakino; peace with Bcntlcv, who kindly consented to drop his dividend scheme. In one sense the new Bishop's course was greatly to Bentley's advantage, since it raised the preliminary question over again. Miller vainly tried to move Dr. Fleetwood. Meanwhile Bentley was acting as autocrat of the College — dealing with its property and its patronage as he pleased. His conduct led to a fresh effort for redress. The lead on this occasion was taken by Dr. Colbatch, now a Senior Fellow. From the beginning of the feuds, Colbatch had been a counsellor of moderation, disapprov- ing much iu the stronger measures advocated by Miller. He was an able and accomplished man, whose rigid main- tenance of his own principles e.xtorted respect even where it did not command sympathy. Colbatch's early manhood had been expended on performing the duties of private tutor in two families of distinction, and he had returned to College at forty, more convinced than ever that it is a mistake to put trust in princes. He was a dangerous ene- my because he seemed incapable of revenge ; it was always on high grounds that he desired the confusion of the wick- ed ; and he pursued that object with the temperate impla- cability which belongs to a disappointed man of the world. Since the Bishop of Ely would not act unless as General Visitor, Colbatch drew up a petition, which nineteen Fel- lows signed, praying that it might be ascertained who was General Visitor. This was encouraged by the Arclibishop of Canterbury, Dr. AVake — who described Bentley as " the greatest instance of human frailty that I know of, as with 108 BENTLEY. [chap. such good parts and so mucli learning he can be so insup- portable." The object of the petition was baulked for the time by the delays of the Attorney-general. After three years the petition came before the Privy Council in May, 1719. Bentley was equal to the occasion. Serjeant Miller had presented the petition, and could withdraw it. For five years Bentley had been making active war on Miller, and renewing the attempt to eject him from his Fellowship. Now, towards the end of 1719, he made peace with hira, on singular terms. Miller was to withdraw the petition ; to resign his Fellowship, in consideration of certain pay- ments ; and to receive the sum of £400 as costs on ac- count of the former prosecution before Bishop Moore. Miller agreed. Bentley then proposed the compact to the Seniors. Five of the eight would have nothing to say to it. By a series of manoeuvres, however, Bentley carried it at a subsequent meeting. Serjeant Miller received £528 from the College. Who shall describe the feelings of the belligerent Fellows, when the Serjeant's strategy collapsed in this miserable Sedan ? It was he who had made them go to war ; it was he who had led them through the mazes of the law ; they had caught his clear accents, learned his great language ; and here Avas the end of it ! But this was not all. If the College is to pay costs on one side, the Master argued, it must pay them on both. Accord- ingly, Bentley himself received £500 for his own costs in the trial. And, anxious to make hay in this gleam of sun- shine, he further prevailed on the Seniors to grant a hand- some sum for certain furniture of the Master's Lodge. Bentley had no more to fear, at present, from the oppo- sition of an organised party. For the next few years his encounters were single combats. VII.] 13ENTLEY AS MASTKK OF TRINITY. 109 Such wa3 the state of affairs ia Trinity College, Mean- while Bcntley's relations with the University had come to an extraordinary pass. From the first days of his Master- ship his reputation, his ability and energy had made him influential in Cambridge, though he was not generally pop- ular. Wc saw that, before his appointment to Trinity, he had taken a leading part in the reparation of the Univer- sity Press. He continued to show an active interest in its management by serving on occasional committees; no per- manent Press Syndicate was constituted till 1737. Poli- tics were keen at the University in Bentlcy's time : a divi- sion in the academic Senate was often a direct trial of strength between Whig and Tory. When Bcntlcy struck a blow in these University battles, it was almost always with a view to some advantaire in his own College war. Two instances will illustrate this. In June, 1712, when acting as Deputy Vice-chancellor, Bentley carried in the Senate an address to Queen Anne, congratulating her on the progress of the peace negotiations at Utrecht. The address was meant as a manifesto in support of the Tory Ministry, whom the "Whigs had just been attacking on this score in the Lords. At that time llarley, the Tory Pre- mier, was the protector on whom Bcntlcy relied in his College troubles. The irritation of the Whig party in the University may have been one cause of a severe reflection passed on Bentley soon afterwards. The Senate resolved that no Archdeacon of Ely should thenceforth be eligible as Yice-ehanccllor ; a decree which, however, was rescind- ed two years later. Then in 171C Bentley sorely needed the countenance of the "WTiig Government against the re- vived hostilities in Trinity. By a sui-prise he carried througli the Senate an address to George I,, congratulat- ing him on the recent suppression of the Jacobite risings. 6 110 BENTLEY. [chap. A letter of Bentley's describes the Cambridge Tories as being *' in a desperate rage " — not wholly, perhaps, with- out provocation. It was shortly before this — in the early days of the Jac- obite rebellion, when visions of a Roman Catholic reign were agitating the public imagination — that Bentley preach- ed before the University, on the 5th of November, 1715, his " Sermon on Popery " — from which a passage on the tortures of the Inquisition has been transferred by Sterne to the pages of "Tristram Shandy," and deeply moves Corporal Trim. Bentley had then lately received the un- usual honour of being publicly thanked by the Senate for his reply to "A Discourse of Free-thinking" by Anthony Collins. When the Regius Professorship of Divinity — the most valuable in the University — fell vacant in I7l7, few persons, perhaps, would have questioned Dr. Bentley's claims on the grounds of ability and learning. But the Statute had declared that the Professor must not hold any other oflace in the University or in Trinity College. Two precedents were alleged to show that a Master of Trinity might hold the Professorship, but they were not unexcep- tionable. Of the seven electors, three certainly — presuma- bly five — were against the Master of Trinity's pretensions. The favourite candidate was Dr. Ashton, Master of Jesus ; and there are letters to him which show the strong feeling in the University against his rival. On the whole, most men Avould have despaired. Not so Bentley. By raising a legal point, he contrived to stave oflf the election for a few weeks ; and then seized a propitious moment. The Vice-chancellor was one of the seven electors. It was ar- ranged that Mr. Grigg, who held that office, should leave Cambridge for a few days, naming Bentley Deputy Vice- chancellor. On the day of election the Master of Trinity m] BEXTLEY AS MASTER OF TKINITV. Ill was chosen Rcgins Professor of Divinity by four out of seven votes, one of the four being that of the Deputy Vice-chancellor, It was in this candidature that Dr. Bentley delivered an admired discourse on the three heav- enly witnesses, which denied the authenticity of that text. It is no longer extant, but had been seen by Porson, who himself wrote on the subject. This was in May, 171 7. Not long afterwards Bentley had occasion to appear publicly in his new character of Regius Professor. Early in October, George I. was stay- ing at Newmarket. On Friday, the 4th, his Majesty con- sented to visit Cambridge on the following Sunday. There was not much time for preparation, but it was arranged to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws on twenty-seven of the royal retinue, and that of Doctor of Divinity on thirty- two members of the University. On Sunday morninfj Mr. Grigg, the Vice-chancellor, presented himself at Trinity Lodge, there to await the arrival of the Chancellor, " the proud Duke of Somerset." Bentley was unprepared for this honour; he was "in his morning gown," busied with meditations of hospitality or of eloquence ; in fact, he re- monstrated ; but Mr. Grigg remained. At last the Chan- cellor came. Bentley was affable, but a little distrait. " While he entertained the Duke in discourse," says one who was present, " there stood the Earl of Thomond and Bishop of Norwich, unregarded : and there they might have stood, if one of the Beadles had not touched his sleeve a little ; and then he vouchsafed them a welcome also." But worse was to come. George I. attended ser- vice at King's College Chapel. TVhen it was over, the Vice-chancellor proceeded to conduct his Majesty back to Trinity College. But Mr. Grigg was desirous that royal eyes should behold his own College, Clare Hall, and there- 112 BENTLEY. [chap. fore cliose a route wliicli led to a closed gate of Trinity- College. Here a halt of some minutes took place in a muddy lane, before word could reacli the principal en- trance, where Bentley and an enthusiastic crowd were awaiting their Sovereign. These little griefs, however, were nothing to the later troubles which this day's proceedings begat for Bentley. As it was thought that thirty-two new Doctors of Divinity might be too much for the King, Sunday's ceremonial had been limited to presenting a few of them as samples. Bentley, as Regius Professor of Divinity, had done his part admirably. But the next day, when the rest of the doctors were to be " created " at leisure, Bentley flatly re- fused to proceed, unless each of them paid him a fee of four guineas, in addition to the customary broad -piece. As the degrees were honorary, the claim was sheer extor- tion. Some complied, others resisted. Conyers Middle- ton, the biographer of Cicero, was at this time a resident in Cambridge, though no longer a Fellow of any College. He paid his four guineas, got his D.D. degree, and then sued Bentley for the debt in the Vice-chancellor's Court, a tribunal of academic jurisdiction in such matters. After months of fruitless diplomacy, the Vice-chancellor reluc- tantly issued a decree for Bentley's arrest at Middleton's suit. The writ was served on Bentley at Trinity Lodge — not, however, before one of the Esquire Bedells had been treated with indignity. Bail was given for Bentley's ap- pearance before the Court on October 3, 1718. He failed to appear. The Court then declared that he was suspend- ed from all his degrees. A fortnight later, a Grace was offered to the Senate, proposing that Bentley's degrees should be not merely suspended but taken away. Bent- ley's friends did their utmost. To the honour of the Fel- vn.] HENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRI.MTV. 113 lows of Trinity, only four of tlicm voted against him. But the Grace was carried by more than two to one. Nine Heads of Colleges and twenty -three Doctors sup- ported it. AVhen the Master of Trinity learned that he was no longer Richard Bentley, D.D., M.A., or even B.A., but simply Richard Bentley, he said, " I have rubbed through many a worse business than this." Uc instantly bestirred himself with his old vigour, petitioning the Crown, appeal- ing to powerful friends, and dealing some hard knocks in the free fight of pamphlets which broke out on the ques- tion. For nearly six years, however, he remained under the sentence of degradation. During that period he brought actions of libel against his two principal adversa- ries, Colbatch, and Conycrs Middleton. Colbatch suffered a week's imprisonment and a fine. Middleton was twice prosecuted ; the first time, he had to apologise to Bentley, and pay costs ; the second time he was fined. During the years 1720-1723 Bentley had altogether six lawsuits in the Court of King's Bench, and gained all of them. The last and most important Avas against the University, for having taken away his degrees. That act had undoubtedly been illegal. The four Judges all took Bentley's part. On February 7, 1724, the Court gave judgment. The University received peremptory direction to restore Bent- ley's degrees. That command was obeyed, but with a significant circumstance. On March 25, 1724, the Vice- chancellor was to lay the first stone of the new buildings designed for King's College. In order that Bentley might not participate as a Doctor in the ceremonial, the Grace re- storing his degrees was offered to the Senate on March 20. Thus, after fifteen years of almost incessant strife, the Master of Trinity had prevailed over opposition both in 114 BENTLEY. [chap. the College and in tlic University. He was sixty-two. His faine as a scliolar was unrivalled. As a controversial- ist he had proved himself a match, in different fields, for wits, heretics, and lawyers. At Cambridge, where he was now the virtual leader of the Whig party in the Senate, his influence had become pre-eminent. And as if to show that he had passed through all his troubles without stain, it was in this year, 1724, that the Duke of Newcastle wrote and offered him the Bishopric of Bristol — then rather a poor one. Bentley declined it, frankly observing that the revenues of the see would scarcely enable him to attend Parliament. When he was asked what preferment he would accept — "Such," he answered, "as would not induce rae to desire an exchange." The remainder of this combative life, it might have been thought, would now be peaceful. But the last chapter is the most curious of all. It can be briefly told. Dr. Col- batch, the ablest of Bentley's adversaries in Trinity Col- lege, had never resigned the purpose of bringing the Mas- ter to justice. It had become the object for which he lived : private wrongs had sunk into his mind ; but he believed himself to be fulfilling a public duty. In 1726 he vainly endeavoured to procure intervention by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, on the ground of certain grievances suffered by the Westminster scholars at Trini- ty College. In 1728 he was more successful. Some Fel- lows of Trinity joined him in a fresh attempt to obtain a visitation of the College by the Bishop of Ely. There Avas, in fact, good reason for it. Bentley's rule had be- come practically absolute, and therefore unconstitutional. While Colbatch's new allies were preparing their meas- ures death nearly saved them the trouble. George II. had visited Cambridge, and had been received in full state at vii.J HENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRIKITY. 118 Trinity College. Bcntlcy, who was subject to severe colds, had caught a chill during the ceremonies of the reception, in the course of which ho liad been called on to present no fewer than fifty-eight Doctors of Divinity, lie was seized with fever. For some days his life was in most im- minent danger. But he rallied, and, after taking the wa- ters at Bath, recovered. Five Counsel having expressed an opinion that the Bishop of Ely was General Visitor of the College, Dr. Greene, who now held that see, cited Bent- ley to appear before him. Bentlcy did so ; but presentl}' obtained a rule from the Court of King's Bench, staying the Bishop's proceedings on the ground that the articles of accusation included matters not cognizable by the Bish- op. The question of the Bishop's jurisdiction was next brouQ;ht before the Kind's Bench. The Court decided that the Bishop was in this cause Visitor — but again stayed his proceedings — this time on the ground of a technical informality. The prosecutors now appealed to the House of Lords. The House of Lords reversed the decision of the King's Bench, and empowered the Bishop to try Bentlcy on twenty of the sixty-four counts which had been preferred. After the lapse of nearly twenty years, Bentlcy was once more arraigned at Elv House. This second trial be- gan on June 13, 1733. On April 27, 1734, the Bishop gave judgment. Bcntley was found guilty of dilapidating the College goods and violating the College Statutes. lie was sentenced to be deprived of the Mastership. At last the long chase was over and the prey had been run to earth. No shifts or doublings could save him now. It only remained to execute the sentence. The Bishop sent down to Cambridge three copies of his judgment. One was for Bentloy. Another was to be posted on the 116 BExXTLEY. [chap. gates of Trinity College. A third was to be placed in the hands of the Vice-master. The fortieth Statute of Elizabeth, on ■which the judg- ment rested, prescribes that the Master, if convicted by the Visitor, shall be deprived by the agenmj of the Vice- master. It has been thought — and Monk adopts the view — that the word Vice-master here is a mere clerical error for Visitor. The tenor of the Statute itself first led me to doubt this plausible theory. For it begins by saying that a peccant Master shall first be admonished by the Vice-master and Seniors : per Vice Mayistrum, etc., . . . ad- moneatur. If obdurate, he is then to be examined by the Visitor ; and, if convicted, per eundem Vice-magistrum Of- ficio Magistri privetur. This seems to mean : " let him be deprived by the same Vice-master who had first admon- ished him." The Statute intended to provide for the exe- cution of the sentence by the College itself, without the scandal of any external intervention beyond the purely ju- dicial interposition of the Visitor. I have since learned that the late Francis Martin, formerly Vice -master, dis- cussed this point in a short paper (Nov. 12, 1857), which Dr. Luard's kindness has enabled me to see. Dr. Monk had seen a copy of the Statutes in which Visitatorem was written as a correction over Vice-magistrum. He believed this copy to be the original one; and when in 1846 Mar- tin showed him the really authentic copy — with Elizabeth's signature and the Great Seal — in the Muniment-room, he at once said, " I never saw that book." There the words stand clearly Vice-magrm, as in the Statutes of Philip and Mary ; there is no correction, superscript or marginal ; and the vellum shows that there has been no erasure. The Vice-master, who takes the chief part in admitting the Master (Stat. Cap. 2), is the natural minister of depriva- vii.J BENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRIXITV. 117 tion. Bcntlcy's Counsel advised the Vice - master, Dr. llackct, to refrain from acting until he had taken legal opinion. Meanwhile Lcntlcy continued to act as Master, to the indiirnation of his adversaries, and the astonishment of the world. An examination for College scholarships was going on just then. On such occasions in former years Bentley had often set the candidates to write on some theme suggestive of his own position. Thus, at the height of his monarchy, he gave them, from Virgil, " Xo one of this number shall go away without a gift from me ;" and once, at a pinch in his wars, from Ilomcr, " De- spoil others, but keep hands ofE Ilector." This time he had a very apposite text for the young composers, from Terence : " This is your plea now — that I have been turned out: look you, there arc ups and downs in all things." Dr. llackct, however, had no mind to stand long in the breach; and on May 17, 1734, he resigned the Vice-mas- tership, lie was succeeded by Dr. Richard "Walker, a friend on whom Bentley could rely. During the next four years, every resource which ingenuity could suggest was employed to force Dr. "Walker into executing the sen- tence of deprivation on Bentley. A petition was present- ed by Colbatch's party to the Ilouse of Lords, which the peers, after a debate, permitted to be withdrawn. Dr. AValker now effected a compromise between Bentley and some of the hostile Fellows. But Colbatch persevered. Three different motions were made in the Court of King's Bench ; first, for a writ to compel Dr. "Walker to act ; next, for a writ to compel the Bishop of Ely to compel Dr. "Walker to act ; then, for a writ to compel the Bishop to do his own duty as General Visitor. All in vain. On April 22, 1738, the Court rejected the last of these appli- cations. 6* 118 BENTLEY. [chap. That day marks the end of the strife begun in Feb- ruary, lYlO: it had thus lasted a year longer than the Peloponneslan War. It has two main chapters. The first is the fourteen years' struggle from 1710 to 1724, in -which Miller was the leader down to his withdrawal in 1719. The years 1725-1727 were a pause. Then the ten years' struggle, from 1728 to 1738, was organised and maintained by Colbatch. Meanwhile many of the persons concerned were advanced in age. Three weeks after the King's Bench had refused the third mandamus. Bishop Greene died at the age of eighty. Dr. Colbatch was seventy-five. Bentley himself was seventy-seven. If he had wanted another classical theme for the candidates in the scholarship examination, he might have given them — " One man by his delay hatli restored our fortunes." He was under sentence of deprivation, but only one per- son could statutably deprive him ; that person declined to move ; and no one could make him move. Bentley therefore remained master of the field — and of the College. We remember the incorrigible old gentleman in the play, whose habit of litigation was so strong that, when precluded from further attendance on the public law- courts, he got up a little law-court at home, and prose- cuted his dog. Bentley's occupation with the King's Bench ceased in April, 1738. In July he proceeded ao-ainst Dr. Colbatcb at Cambridn'c in the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of Ely, for the recovery of certain payments called "proxies," alleged to be due from Col- batch, as Rector of Orwell, to Bentley, as Archdeacon of the diocese. The process lasted eighteen months, at the end of whicb Dr. Colbatch had to pay six years' arrears and costs. Looking,back on Bentley's long war with the Fellows, vn.] RENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRINITY. 119 one asks, AVho was most to blame ? Do Quinccy approves Dr. I'an's opinion — expressed long after Bcntley's death — that the College was wrong, and Bcntlcy right. But De Quinccy goes further. Even granting that Bentley was wrong, Dc Quinccy says, wc ought to vote him right, " for by this means the current of one's sympathy with an illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstructions." It is good to be in sympathy with an illustrious man, but it is better still to be just. The merits of the controversy be- tween Bentley and the Fellows have two aspects, legal and moral. The legal question is simple. Had Bentley, as Master, brought himself within the moaning of the forti- eth Elizabethan Statitte, and deserved the penalty of dep- rivation ? Certainly he had. It was so found on two distinct occasions, twenty years apart, after a prolonged investigation by lawyers. Morally, the first question is: Was Bentley obliged to break the Statutes in order to keep some higher law? He certainly was not. It can- not be shown that the Statutes were in conflict with any project which he entertained for the good of the College ; and, if they had been so, the proper course for him was not to violate them, but to move constitutionally for their alteration. A further moral question concerns the nature of his personal conduct towards the Fellows. This con- duct might conceivably have been so disinterested and considerate as to give him some equitable claim on their forbearance, though they might feel bound to resist the course which he pursued. His conduct was, in fact, of an opposite character. On a broad view of the whole matter, from 1710 to 1738, the result is this. Legally, the Col- lege had been right, and Bentley wrong. Morally, there had been faults on both parts ; but it was Bcntley's intol- erable behaviour which first, and after long forbearance. 120 BENTLEY. [chap. tii. forced the Fellows into an active defence of the common interests. The words " Farewell peace to Trinity Col- lege" were pronounced by Bentley. It is not a relevant plea that his academic ideal was higher than that of the men whose rights he attacked. The College necessarily suffered for a time from these long years of domestic strife which had become a public scandal. Almost any other society, perhaps, would have been permanently injured. But Trinity College had the strength of unique traditions, deeply rooted in the history of the country ; and the excellent spirit shown by its best men, in the time which immediately followed Bentley's, soon dispelled the cloud. When the grave had closed over those feuds, the good which Bentley had done lived in better tests of merit, and in the traditional association of the Collesfe with the encouragement of rising sciences. Now we must turn to an altogether different side which, throughout these stormy years, is presented by the activity of this extraordinary man. CHAPTER YIII. LITERARY WORK AFTER 1700. HORACE. From the bcfrinninc: of 1700 to the summer of 1702 Bent- ley was constantly occupied with University or College affairs. On August 2, 1702, be writes to Graevius at Utrecht : " You must know that for the last two years I have hardly had two days free for literature." This was perhaps the longest decisive interruption of literary work in his whole life. Nearly all his subsequent writings were finished in haste, and many of them were so timed as to appear at moments when he had a special reason for wish- ing to enlist sympathy. But his studies, as distinguished from his acts of composition, appear to have been seldom broken off for more than short spaces, even when he was most harassed by external troubles. Ilis wonderful nerve and will enabled him to concentrate his spare hours on his own reading, at times when other men would have been able to think of nothing but threatened ruin. His early years at Trinity College offer several instances of his generous readiness to help and encourage other scholars. One of these was Ludolph Kiister, a young Westphalian then living at Cambridge, whom Bentley as- sisted with an edition of the Greek lexicographer Suidas, and afterwards with an edition of Aristophanes. Another was a young Dutchman, destined to celebrity — Tiberius 122 BENTLEY. [chap. Hemsterhuys. Bentley had sent liim a Idndly criticism on an edition of Julius Pollux, pointing out certain defects of metrical knowledge. The effect on Hemsterhuys has been described by his famous pupil, David Ruhuken. At first he was plunged in despair : then he roused himself to intense effort. To his dying day he revered Bentley, and would hear nothing against him. The story recalls that of F. Jacobs, the editor of the Greek Anthology, who was spurred into closer study of metre by the censures of God- frey Hermann. In 1709 John Davies, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, published an edition of Cicero's " Tus- culan Disputations," with an appendix of critical notes by Bentley. The notes were disparaged in a review called the Bihliotheque Choisie by the Swiss John Le Clerc, then leader of the Arminians in Holland ; a versatile but shal- low man, who had touched the surface of philosophy, and was now ambitious of figuring on the surface of classical literature. Some months later Le Clerc edited the frag- ments of the Greek comic poets, Menander and Philemon. Nettled by the review, Bentley wrote his own emendations on 323 of these fragments. He restored them metrically, showing that Le Clerc had mixed them with words from the prose texts in which they occur, and had then cut the compound into lengths of twelve syllables, regardless of scansion. Bentley's manuscript, under the name of " Phil- eleutherus Lipsiensis," was transmitted to a scholar at Utrecht, Peter Burmann, who willingly used the permis- sion to publish it. The first edition was sold in three weeks. Le Clerc learned who " Philcleutherus" was, and wrote a violent letter to Bentley. Bentley made a caustic reply. He has been charged with denying the authorship. He does not do so ; but he shows a mischievous pleasure in puzzling jil^ fm-ions correspondent. vm.J MTEILUiY WORK AI-TEU ITdh.— IlUKACE. 123 As early as 1702 Bcntley had been meditating an edi- tion of Horace. I translate from his Latin preface his Dwn account of the motive: " When; a few years ago [/. e., in 1700], I was promoted to a station in which oiricial duties and liarassing cares, daily surging about me, liad distracted me from all deeper studies, I resolved — in order that I might not wholly for- get the Muses and my old loves — to set about editing some writer of the pleasanter sort, comparatively light in style and matter, such as would make in me, rather than claim from me, a calm and untroubled mind ; a work that could be done bit by bit at odd hours, and would brook a thousand interruptions without serious loss. My choice was Horace ; not because I deemed that I could restore and correct more things in him than in almost any other Latin or Greek author ; but because he, above all the ancients — thanks to his merit, or to a peculiar genius and gift for pleasing — was familiar to men's hands and hearts. The form and scope of my work I defined and limited thus; — that I should touch only those things which con- cern the soundness and purity of the text; but should wholly pass by the mass of those things which relate to history and ancient manners — that vast domain and labo- ratory of comment.''^ Bcntley began printing his Horace, with his own emen- dations embodied in the text and the common readings given at the foot of the page, before he had written the critical notes which were to justify these changes. In August, 170G, he says: "I have printed three new sheets in it this last fortnight, and I hope shall go on to finish by next spring." Sinister auguries were already lieard in certain quarters. '' I do not wonder," he writes to a friend, "that some . . . do talk so wildly about my Hor- 124 BENT LEY. [chap. ace. ... I am assurGcI none of tliem will write against my notes. They have had enough of rac, and will hereafter let me alone." The rumour of Bentley's new labours in- spired his old enemy, Dr. King, with a satire called "Hor- ace in Trinity College." Horace is supposed to have ful- filled his dream of visiting our remote island {visam Bri- tannos), but to have lost the airy form in which he pro- posed to make that excursion — under the influence of solid cheer supplied to him from the butteries of Trinity College. Instead of appearing in the spring of 1707, Bentley's Horace was not ready till December 8, 1711. The sum- mer months were the only part of the year in which he could do much ; and from his preface it would appear that between 1702 and 1711 there had been four sum- mers in which he made no progress. The notes on the text fill 448 quarto pages of small print, in double column, at the end of the volume. It is characteristic of Bentley that a great part of these notes were written in about five months — July to Nov'cmber, 1711. He says himself that his work was thrown off " in the first impetus and glow " of his thoughts, and sent to the press almost before the ink was dry. It was rather his way to brag of this ; but it must be literally true, to a great extent, of the notes. He had his own reasons for haste, and worked at high pressure. The Horace was to be an offering to Harley, who just then was the umpire of Bentley's fortunes. In the dedication to the Tory Premier, Bentley openly an- nounces himself as a converted Whig, by saying that Maecenas did not like Horace the less for having borne arms with Brutus and Cassius; not a very happy allusion, when one remembers that the poet ran away at Philippi. Bentley's Horace is a monumental proof of his in- Mil] LITKRARY WORK AFTER IVOO.— HORACP:. 125 genuity, Icarninp:, and arirnmcntativc skill. The notes abound in hints on rjrainniar and metre which liavc a gen- eral value. In rcadiiin' them one feels, too, the "impetus and glow " of wbicli their author speaks : one feels almost everywhere the powerful genius of the man. But while the Horace shows Bentley's critical method on a large scale and in a most striking form, it illustrates his defects as conspicuously as his strength. Bcntley had first dis- played his skill by restoring deeply corrupted passages of Greek writers, especially poets. Heroic remedies were required there. With his wide reading, unrivalled metri- cal knowledge, and keen insight, Bentley had been able to make some restorations which seemed little short of mirac- ulous. Hopeless nonsense, imder his touch, became lucid and coherent. The applause which followed these efforts exalted his confidence in his own gift of divination. Ilis mind was confirmed in a bent which kept him constantly on the lookout for possible improvements of word or phrase in everything that he read. Now, Horace was one of the most perilous subjects that Bentley could have chosen. Not so much because the text of Horace, as we have it, is particularly pure. There are many places in which corruption is certain, and conjecture is the only resource. But, owing to his pecul- iar cast of mind and style, Horace is one of the very last authors whose text should be touched without absolute necessity. In the Satires and Epistles his language is coloured by two main influences, subtly interfused, each of which is very diflicult, often impossible, for a modern reader to seize. One is the colloquial idiom of Roman society. The other is literary association, derived from sources, old Italian or Greek, which in many cases are lost. In the Odes, the second of these two influences is 126 BEXTLEY. [chap. naturally predominant; and in tliera the danger of tam- pering is more obvious, though perhaps not really greater, than in the Satires or Epistles. Now, Bentley's tendency f was to try Horace by the tests of clear syntax, strict logic, and normal usao-e, lie was bent on making Horace " sound " in a sense less fine, but even more rigorous, than that in which Pope is "correct." Thus, in the " Art of Poetry," Horace is speaking of a critic : " If you told him, after two or three vain attemjits, that you could not do better, he would bid you erase your work, and put your ill-turned verses on the anvil again " {et male tornatos incudi reddere versus). "Ill-turned" — "anvil!" said Bentley : "what has a lathe to do with an anvil?" And so, for male tornatos, he writes 7nale ter natos, " thrice shaped amiss." Horace elsewhere speaks of verses as incultis . . . et male natis. To Bentley's read- ing, however, it may be objected that the order of words required by the sense is ter made natos : for inale ter natos ought to mean, either " unhappily thrice-born " — like the soul of a Pythagorean, unfortunate in two migrations; or " barely thrice-born " — as if, in some process which re- quired three refinements, the tliird was scarcely completed. And then, if we are not satisfied with the simplest account of tornatos — viz., that Horace lapsed into a mixture of common metaphors — it admits of a strict defence. The verses have been put on the lathe, but have not been suc- cessfully rounded and polished. Then, says Horace's critic, they must go back to the anvil, and be forged anew, pass- ing again through that first process by which the rough material is brought into shape for the lathe. Yet Bentley was so sure of his ter natos that persons who doubted it seemed no better than " moles." Another instance will illustrate the danger of altering viii.j liti;i:arv work afteu i70!>.-ij()Uaci:. 127 touches in Horace wliicli may have been su2p;estc(l by some lost literary source. In the Odes (iii. iv. 45) Horace speaks of Jupiter as ruling '' cities and troubled realms, and gods, and the multitudes of men " (urbes . . . mortalisquc turbas). "Tell me, pray," cries Bentley, "what is the sense of 'cities' and 'the multitudes of men?' This is silly — mere tautology." And so he changes urbes, "cities," into iimbras, "the shades" of the departed. Now, as Munro has pointed out, Horace may liavc liad in mind a passage in the Epivhanmis, a philosophical poem by Kn- iiius, of which a few lines remain : where it is said of Ju- piter, "morta/is atqiie urbes beluasque omncs iuvat." One or two of Bentley 's corrections are not only admirable but almost certain (as musto Falerno for 7nisto in the Satires II. iv. 19). A few more have reason wholly on their side, and yet are not intrinsically probable. Thus in the Epistles (i. vii. 29) we have the fable of the fox, who, when lean, crept through a chink into a granary, and there grew too fat to get out again. "To the rescue," exclaims Bentley, " ye sportsmen, rustics, and naturalists ! A fox eating grain !" And so Bentley changes the fox into a field- mouse {volpecula into niieduln). But the old fabulist from whom Horace got the story, meaning to show how cunning greed may overreach itself, had chosen the animal wliich is the type of cunning, without thinking of the points on which Bentley dwells, the structure of its teeth and its digestive organs. Bentley has made altogether between 700 and 800 changes in the text of Horace: in his preface, he recalls 19 of these, but adds a new one {rectis oculis for siccis in Odes I. iii. 18: which convinced Porson). His paramount guide, he declares, has been his own faculty of divination. To this, he says, lie has owed more corrections, and cor- 128 BENTLEY. [chap. rections of greater certainty, than to the manuscripts — in using which, however, where he does use them, he nearly always shows the greatest tact. Now, criticism of a text has only one proper object — to exhibit what the author \vrote. It is a different thine: to show what he miirht have written. Bentlcy's passion for the exercise of his divining faculty hindered him from keeping this simple fact clearly before his mind. In the "Art of Poetry " (60) Horace has: ''''Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos:''^ "As woods suffer change of leaves with each declining year." Nothing could be less open to suspicion — foliis being an ordinary ablative of the part affected (like capH auribus et oculis fpr "deaf and blind"). Yet Bentley must needs change this good line into one which is bad both in style and in metre: " t^i silvis folia privos mutan- tur in annos,''^ " As woods have their leaves changed with each year;" and this he prints in his text. Speaking of Bentlcy's readings in the mass, one may say that Horace would probably have liked two or three of them — would have allowed a very few more as not much better or worse than his own — and would have rejected the immense ma- jority with a smile or a shudder. On the other hand, there is a larger sense in which Bent- ley's Horace is a model of conservative prudence. Recent German criticism has inclined to the view that Horace's works are interpolated not only with spurious passages but with whole spurious poems. Thus Mr. O. F. Gruppe act- ually rejects the whole of the beautiful ode, Tyrrhcna Regum Progenies (iii. xxix.). Another critic, Mr. Hof- mann-Peerlkamp, regrets that Bentlcy's haste blinded hira to many interpolations. Haupt, Meineke, Ritschl have favoured the same tendency. The prevailing view of Eng- lish scholarship is that the solitary interpolation in our viii.J LITEUAKV WORK AITKU ITnu.—UoU.vCE. 129 Horace consists of the fl^Ut lines {'' Lucili qnam sis men- dosus,^'' tiro.) i)rcfixcd to Satire i. 10, and probably as oUl, or nearly so, as the poem itself. 15cntley's suspicions are confined to a few single lines here and there. But there is only one line in all Horace which he positively con- demns. It is mainly a point of literary criticism, and is a curious example of his method. I give it in Latin and English (Odes iv. viii. 15) : " Xon cclcrcs f ugac Rciectacqiic rctrorsum Ilaiiiiibalis minac, Kon inccmlia Carthaf/inits hnpiac Eius qui domita nomen ab Africa Lucratus rodiit clarius indicant Laudcs, quam Calabrac Picrides." " Not the swift fli.^ht And menace backward hurled of Hannibal, Not inijnoiis Carthage sinking into fire So well gives forth his praises, who returned With title won from conquered Africa, As ye, Calabria's Muses." Now, says Bentlcy, the Scipio (Africanus maior) who defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic "War is a differ- ent person from the Scipio (Africanus minor) who burned Carthage more than half a century later. How can it be said that the defeat of Hannibal glorifies the destroyer of Carthage ? And so Bentley would leave out the burning of Carthage, and make the whole passage refer to the con- queror of Hannibal. The answer seems plain. Horace means : " The glory of the Scipios never reached a higher pinnacle than that on which it was placed by the Cala- brian poet Ennius, when he described the defeat of Han- nibal by the elder Africanus ; though that achievement was crowned by the younger Africanus, when he finally 130 BENTLEY. [chap. destroyed Carthage." The "praises" of the younger Af- ricanus are not excJusivcly his personal exploits, but the glories, both ancestral and personal, of his name. Then Bentley objects to the caesura in "iVora hicendia Carth\a- f/inis impiae.^^ But what of the undoubtedly genuine verse, " Du7n Jlagrantia de\torquet ad oscula,'''' (Odes ii. xii. 25)? "The preposition ; — he laid down the main lines of a true scheme. Bentley's Horace inmicdiatcly brought out half a dozen squibs — none of them good — and one or two more serious attacks. John Ker, a school-master, assailed Bentley's La- tinity in four Letters (1713); and some years later the same ground was taken by Richard Johnson — who had been a contemporary of Bentley's at Cambridge, and was now master of Xottinfjham School — in his '''^ Aristarchus Anti-Benthiamis'''' (1717). The fact is that Bentley wrote Latin as he wrote English — witli racy vigour, and witli a wealth of trenchant phrases; but he was not minutely Cic- eronian. The two critics were able to pick some holes. One of Bentley's slips was amusing; he promises the read- ers of his Horace that they will find purity of idiom in his Latin notes — and calls it sermonis jyuritaiem — which hap- pens not to be pure Latin. In 1721 a rival Horace was published by Alexander Cunningham, a Scottish scholar of great learning and industry. His emendations are some- times execrable, but often most ingenious. His work is marred, however, by a mean spite against Bentley, whom he constantly tries to represent as a plagiarist or a blun- derer — and who ignored him. The first edition of Bentley's Horace (1711) went off rapidly, and a second was required in 1712. This was published by the eminent firm of Wetstein at Amsterdam. Paper and printing Avcre cheaper there — an important point when the book was to reach all scholars. Thomas 132 BENTLEY. [chap, viii, Bentley, the nepbew, brought out a smaller edition of the work in 1713, dedicating it — with logical propriety — to Ilarley's son. The line in the Dunciad (ii. 205) — "Bent- ley his mouth with classic flatt'iy opes " — is fixed by War- burton on Thomas Bentley, "a small critic, who aped his uncle in a little Horace." Among other compliments, Bentley received one or two which he could scarcely have anticipated. Le Clerc, whom he had just been lashing so unmercifully, wrote a review in the Blbliotheque Choisie which was at once generous and judicious. Bentley also received a graceful note from Atterbury, now Dean of Christ Church. " I am indebted to you, Sir," says the Dean, "for the great pleasure and instruction I have re- ceived from that excellent performance ; though at y® same time I cannot but own to you the uneasyness I felt when I found how many things in Horace there were, which, after thirty years' acquaintance with him, I did not understand." There is much of Horace in that. CHArTER IX. OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES. TERENCE. — MANILIUS. HOMER. Oke of Bcntlcy's few intimate friends in the second half of his life was Dr. Richard Mead, an eminent physician, and in other ways also a remarkable man. After gradu- ating at the University of Padua — which, as Cambridge men will remember, had been the second alma mater of Dr. John Caius — Dr. Mead began practice at Stepney in 1G96. lie rose rapidly to the front rank of his profession, in which he stood from about 1720 to his death in 1754. Dibdin describes him with quaint enthusiasm. "Ilis house was the general receptacle of men of genius and talent, and of everything beautiful, precious, or rare. His curiosities, whether books, or coins, or pictures, were laid open to the public ; and the enterprising student and ex- perienced antiquary alike found amusement and a courte- ous reception. He was known to all foreigners of intellect- ual distinction, and corresponded both with the artisan and the potentate." In 1721 — Bentley being in London at the time — Mead gave him a copy of a Greek inscription just published by the accomplished antiquary, Edmund Cbishull, who had been chaplain to the English Factory at Smyrna. A mar- ble slab, about 8 feet 7 inches high and 18 inches broad, 1 134 BENTLEY, [chap. had been found in tlie Troad. It is now in the British Museum. This slab had supported the bust of a person who had presented some pieces of plate to the citizens of Sigeuni ; on the upper part, an inscription in Ionic Greek records the gifts ; lower down, nearly the same words are repeated in Attic Greek, with the addition — "^sopus and his brothers made me." Bentley dashed ofE a letter to Mead ; there had been no bust at all, he said ; the two in- scriptions on the slab were merely copied from two of the pieces of plate ; the artists named were the silversmiths. He was mistaken. The true solution is clearly that which has since been given by Kirchhoff. The Ionic inscription was first carved by order of the donor, a native of the Ionic Proconnesus ; the lower inscription Avas added at Sigeum, where settlers had introduced the Attic dialect, on its being found that the upper inscription could not easily be read from beneath ; ^sopus and his brothers were the stone-cutters. Yet Bentley's letter incidentally throws a flash of light on a point not belonging to its main subject. A colossal statue of Apollo had been dedicated in Deles by the islanders of Naxos. On the base are these words : 0/YTOAieOEMIANAPIASKAITOS*EAAS. Bentley read this {j)oFv-ov [^^-auroi'] XLQov £'ifi\ aydpiag ical to (TcpeXac, an iambic trimeter (with hiatus) : *' I am of the same stone, statue and pedestal." After this instance of rashness, it is right to record a striking success. In 1728 ChishuU published an inscrip- tion from copies made by the travellers Spon and Wheeler. Bentley, in a private letter, suggested some corrections; but Chishull, who saw the criticisms without knowing the author, demurred to some of them, thinking that the copies could not have been so inexact. Some years later the stone itself was brought to England. It then appeared K.] OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES.— Tf:UEXCE. 135 that the copies had been wroni^, and that Bcntley's con- jectural reading acjrccd in every particular with the marble itself. Tiiat marble is in the British Museum : it was found at the ancient Chalcedon on the Bosporus, opposite Constantinople, and had supported a statue of Zeus Ourios, I. e., " Zeus the giver of fair winds." lie had a famous temple in that neighbourhood, at the mouth of the Black Sea, where vovagcrs through the straits were Avont to make their vows. The inscription (3797 in the Corpus) consists of four elegiac couplets, of which the style would justify us in supposing that they were at least as old as the ago of Alexander : I translate them : "Zeus, the sure guide who sends the favouring gale, Claims a last vow before ye spread the sail : If to tlie Azure Rocks your course ye urge. Where in the strait Poseidon lifts the surge, Or through the broad .lEgean seek your liomc, Here lay your gift — and speed across the foam. Behold the god, wliosc wafting breath divine All mortals welcome : Philon raised the sign." "O" It was shortly before his death in 1742 that this proof of his acutcness was given to the world (by John Taylor), along with another. A Persian manuscript bore the date ^^Yonane (Ionian) 1504:" Bentley showed that this was reckoned from the foundation of the dynasty of Seleucidaj — " Ionian " being the general Oriental name for " Ucl- lenc" — and meant the year of 1193 of our era. In 1724 an edition of Terence was published by Dr. Francis Ilaro. Bentley had long meditated such a work. He was never a jealous man. But he had a good deal of the feeling expressed by the verse, "Shame to be mute and let barbarians speak." He put forth all his powers. At the beginning of 172G — that is, some eighteen months 136 BENTLEY. [chap. after the appearance of Hare's Terence — Bentlcy's came out. And it was not Terence only. Hare had promised tlie Fables of Phsedrus, and Bentley forestalled him by giving these in the same volume ; also the " Sentences " (273 lines) of the so-called Publius Syrus. The Terence is one of Bentlcy's titles to fame. Any attempt to criticise such an author's text demands a knowl- edge of his metres. Bentley was the first modern who threw any clear light on the metrical system of the Latin dramatists. Here, as in other cases, it is essential to re- member the point at which he took up the work. Little or nothino; of scientific value had been done before him. The prevalent view had been based on that of Priscian, who recognised in Terence only two metres, the iambic and the trochaic — the metre of which the basis is ^-, and that of which it is --•. Every verse was to be forced into one or other of these moulds, by assuming all manner of " licences " on the part of the poet. Nay, Priscian says that in his time some persons denied that there Avere any metres in Terence at all ! (" Quosdam vel ahner/are esse in Terentii comoediis metra,^^) In the preface to an edi- tion of Terence which appeared almost simultaneously with Bentlcy's, the Dutch editor, Westerhof, alludes iron- ically to a hint in Bentlcy's Horace (Sat. ii. v. 79) that it was possible to restore the Terentian metres; a sneer which it was Westerhof's fate to expiate by compiling the index for Bentlcy's second edition when it was published at Amsterdam in 1727. The scholars of the sixteenth century who had treated the subject — Glareanus, Erasmus, Faernus — had followed the "licence" theory. Bentlcy's object was to reclaim as much as possible from this sup- posed realm of " licence," and enlarge the domain of law. He points out, first, the variety of Terence's metres, and IX. J oTIir.lt CLASSICAL STUDIES.— TERRNCP:. 137 illustrates each by an Englisli verse. lie then clcfincs cer- tain metrical differences between lioman Comedy, as in Terence, and Roman epic poetry, as in Yirgil. The char- acteristic of Bcntley's views on Tercntian metre consisted in takincf acconnt of accent ("prosody" in the proper sense), and not solely of f]uantity. To jndjTC from some of Lentley's emendations in poetry, liis ear for sound was not very fine ; but his ear for rhythm was exact. Guided by this, he could see that the influence of accent in Roman Comedy sometimes overruled the epic and lyric canons of quantitative metre. In one case, however, his attention to accent led him into an erroneous refinement. In Latin, lie says, no word of two or more syllables is accented on the last syllabic : thus it is virum, not virum. Comic poets, he urges, writing for popular audiences, had to guard as much as possible against laying a metrical stress on these final syllables which could not support an accent. In the iambic trimeter they could not observe this rule everywhere. But Terence, said licntley, always observes it in the third foot. As an example, I may take this verse : "Ultro ad | mo vcii||it iin|ieam [j guatam | suam ;" where the rule, though broken in the 5th foot, is kept in the Ord. But Bentley seems not to have noticed that this is a result of metre, not of accent: it is due to the caesura. Bentley corrected tlie text of Terence in about a thou- sand places (" millo, opinor, locis," he says) — chiefly on metrical grounds. Yet in every scene of every play, ac- cording to Ritschl, he left serious blemishes. That only shows wliat was the state of the field in which Bentley broke new ground. His work must not be judged as if 138 BEXTLEY, [chap. he propounded a complete metrical doctrine. Rather he threw out a series of original remarks, right in some points, wrong in others, pregnant in alh G. Hermann and Ritschl necessarily speak of Bentley's labours on Terence with mingled praise and censure ; both, however, do full justice to the true instinct with which he led the attack on the problem. Modern studies in Latin metre and pronuncia- tion have advanced the questions treated by Bentlcy to a new stage ; but his merit remains. lie Avas the pioneer of metrical knowledge in its application to the Latin drama. A -word of mention is due to the very curious Latin speech which Bentley has printed in his Terence after the sketch of the metres. It was delivered by him on July 6, 1725, when, as Regius Professor of Divinity, he had occasion to present seven incepting doctors in that faculty. He interprets the old symbols of the doctoral degree — the cap — the book — the gold ring — the chair "believe those who have tried it — no bench is so hard") — and congratulates the University on the beneficence of George L It has been Avondered why Bentley inserted this speech in his Terence. Surely the reason is evident. He had recently been restored to those degrees which had been taken from him bv the Cambridge Senate in 1718. He seizes this opportunity of intimating to the world that he is once more in full exercise of his functions as Regius Professor of Divinity. It was in his seventy-seventh year (l739) th.at Bentley fulfilled a project of his youth by publishing an edition of Manilius. At the age of twenty-nine (1G91) he had been actively collecting materials, and had even made some progress with the text. In 1727 we find that this work, so long laid aside, stood first on the list of prom- jx.) OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES.— MANILIUS. 13'J isos to DC redeemed: and in 173G it was ready for press, A proposal for publishing it was made to Bcntley by a London "Society for the Encouragement of Learning," which aimed at protecting authors from booksellers. Bcntley declined. The Manilius was printed in 1739 by Henry Woodfall. It is a beautiful quarto; the frontis- piece is Vertue's engraving of Thornhill's portrait of Bent- ley, aetat. 48 (1710) ; a good engraving, though a con- ventional benignity tames and spoils that peculiar expres- sion which is so striking in the picture at Trinity College. Manilius is the author of an epic poem in five books, called Aslronomica: but popular astronomy is subordi- nate, in his treatment, to astrology. Strangely enough, the poet's age was so open a question with the scholars of the seventeenth century that Gcviirts actually identi- fied him with Theodoras Mallius, consul in 399 a.d., whom Claudian panegyrises. The preface to Bcntley's edition, "written by his nephew Kicliard, rightly assigns Manilius to the age of Augustus, though without giving the inter- nal proofs. These arc plain. Book i. was finished after the defeat of Varus (a.d. 9), and Book iv. before the death of Augustus (a.d. 14). F. Jacob, in his edition of the poet (rec. Berlin 1846), understands a verse in Book V. (512) as referring to the restoration by Tiberius of Pompey's Theatre, after it had been burnt down in 22 A.D. But, according to the marble of Ancyra, Augustus also had repaired that theatre at a great cost, and took credit for allowing the name of Pompey to remain in the •lodicatory inscription, instead of replacing it by his own. Clearly it is to this that the words of Manilius allude — "'Nine Pompeia manent veteris monimenta triumphV — im- plying a compliment not only to the munificence, but to the magnnnimity, of Augustus. There is no reason, then, 140 BENTLEY. [chap. for doubting that the whole poem was composed, or took its present shape, between a.d. 9 and a.d. 14. The poet gives no clue to his own origin, but his style has a strong- ly Greek tinge. Scaliger pronounced him " equal in sweetness to Ovid, and superior in majesty ;" a verdict which Bentley cites with approval. To most readers it will be scarcely intel- ligible. Where Manilius deals with the technical parts of astronomy, he displays, indeed, excellent ingenuity ; but, in the frequent passages where he imitates Lucretius, the contrast between a poet and a rhetorician is made only more glaring by an archaic diction. The episode ol Andromeda and Perseus, in his fifth book, and a passage on human reason in the second, were once greatly admired. To show him at his best, however, I should rather take one of those places where he expresses more simply a feel- ing of wonder and awe common to every age. " Where- fore see we the stars arise in their seasons, and move, as at a word spoken, on the paths appointed for them ? Of whom there is none that hastens, neither is there any that tarries behind. Why are the summer nights beautiful Avith these that change not, and the nights of winter from of old ? These things are not the work of chance, but the order of a God most high." Bentley's treatment of the text sometimes exhibits all his brilliancy : thus in Book v. ^31 the received text had — " Sic etiam magno quaedara respondere mundo Haec Natura facit, quae caeli condidit orbem." This respondere had even been quoted to show that the poem was post-classical. The MSS. have not JIaec, but QUAM ; not caeli, but caelo ; and one good MS. has mun- do est. Bentley restores : E.] OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES.— MANILIUS. Ill " Sic ctiam in magno quacdam rkspuiilica mumio est, Quaiii Xutura facit, quae caclo condidit vkiiem." "So also in the great firmament there is a commonwealth, wrought by Nature, who hath ordered a city in the heav- ens.'' Jiespondcre arose from a contraction rcxp. And urbcm is made certain by the next verses, which elaborate the comparison of the starry hierarchy to the various ranks of civic life. But this, Bcntley's last published work, shows a tendency from which his earlier criticism was comparatively free. Not content with amending, he rejects very many verses as spurious. The total number is no less than 170 out of 4220 lines which the poem con- tains. In the vast majority of cases, the ground of rejec- tion is wholly and obviously inadequate. As an example of his rashness here, we may take one passage — which, I venture to think, he has not understood. At the begin- ning of Book IV, Manilius is reciting the glories of Rome : " Quid rcfcram Caiinas admotaque moenibus arma? Varroncmque fuga magnum (quod vivere possit Postquc tuos, Thrasimenc, lacus) Fabiunique morando ? ^ccepisse iuffum vidas Carthayinis arces V "Why should I tell of Cannae, and of (Carthaginian) arms carried to the v.alls of Rome? Why tell of Varro, great in his flight, . . . and Fabius, in his delay ? Or how the conquered towers of Car thage received our yoke ?" Yarro's "flight" is his escape from the field of Canna?, after which he saved the remnant of the Roman army. The words, " quod vivere possit Postque tuos, Thrasimene, lacus,^'' arc untranslatable. Bentley seems to have under- stood : " in that he can live, and that, too, after the battle at Lake Thrasimene ;" but, to say no more, que forbids this. And then he rejects the whole line, ^^ Accept sse — 7* 142 BENTLEY. [chap. arces.''^ Why ? Because " yokes " arc put on peoples, not on " towers !" Now the oldest manuscript (Gembla- censis) has not vivere, but vincere : the MSS. have not quod (a conjecture), but quam. They have also moran- TEM (not morando), victae (not victas). I should read : " Quid referam Cannas admotaque moenibus arma ? Varronemque fuga magnum, Fabiumque morautem ? Postque tuos, Thrasimene, lacus quom vincere posset, Accepisse iugum victae Carthagiuis arces ?" "and that — though after the fight by thy waters, Thrasipiene, she could hope to conquer — the towers of conquered Carthage re&eived our yoke." The words " quora vincere posset" allude to the irami- ncnt peril of Rome after Hannibal's great victory at Lake Thrasimene, when the fall of the city seemed inevitable if the conqueror should march upon it. (Cp. Liv. xxii, 7 f.) It remains to speak of another labour which Bentley was not destined to complete, but which, oven in its com- paratively slight relics, offers points of great interest — bis Homer. The first trace of Homeric criticism by Bentley occurs in a letter which he wrote to his friend Davies, of Queens' College, just after Joshua Barnes had published his edi- tion of the Iliad and Odyssey (1*711). Barnes, who was unreasonably offended with Bentley, refers in his preface to a certain " hostile person," a very Zoilus. " If he mean me," says Bentley, " I have but dipped yet into his notes, and yet I find everywhere just occasion of censure." Bentley then shows that Barnes had made an arbitrary change in a line of the Iliad {avrap for aWci in xiv. 101), throua'h not seeinsr that a reading; which had stood in all former editions, and which had puzzled the Greek com- IX.] OTIIEU CLASSICAL STLDIKS.— lluMl'K. 113 niL'iitator Eiistatliius, was a mere blunder {uiroKrayiov/Tiy for nTroKaTrrai'iovmi'). Ill 1713 Dcntloy luiblished his "llomarks" on tlie "Discourse of Frce-tliiiiking" by Antliony Collins. Collins had spoken of the Iliad as "the epitome of all arts and sciences," adding that Jlomcr "de- signed his poem for eternity, to please and instruct man- kind." " Take my word for it," says Bentlcy, " poor Uomcr, in those circumstances and early times, had never such aspiring thoughts. He wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment ; the Ilias ho made for the men, and the Odysseis for the other sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the form of an epic poem till Pisistratus's time, above [2nd edition: 1st, about] 500 years after." There is some am- biguity in the phrase, " a sequel of songs and rhapsodies." It seems improbable that Bentlcy meant, "a connected series." AYhen Bentloy wrote this, the origin of the Ilomeric poems had not yet become a subject of modern contro- versy. It would be unfair to press his casual utterance as if it were a carefully defined statement. Yet it is inter- esting to note the general outlines of the belief which sat- isfied a mind so bold and so acute. He supposes, then, that a poet named Homer lived about 1050 b.c. This poet " wrote " (by which, perhaps, he meant no more than "composed") both the Iliad and the Odyssey. But neither of them was given to the world by Homer as a single epic. Each consisted of many short lays, which Uomer recited separately. These lays circulated merely as detached pieces, until they were collected about 550 B.C. into the two epics which we possess. Seventy -two years later F, A. "Wolf published his Prol- 144 BENTLEY. [chap. egomcna. The early epic poetry of Greece, Wolf argues, was transmitted by oral recitation, not by writing. But our Iliad and Odyssey could not have been composed without writing. We must conclude, then, that the Ho- meric poems were originally, in Bcntley's phrase, " a se- quel of songs and rhapsodies." These " loose songs " were first written down and arranged by the care of Peisistra- tus. Thus Bentley's sentence contains the germ of the view which Wolf developed. Yet it would be an error to conceive Bentley here as an original sceptic, who threw out the first pregnant hint of a new theory. Bentley's re- lation to the modern Homeric question is of a different kind. The view which he expresses was directly derived by him from notices in ancient writers ; as when Pausa- nias says that the Homeric poems, before their collection by Peisistratus, had been " scattered, and preserved only by memory, some here, some there." Cicero, Plutarch, Dioge- nes Laertius, the Platonic Hijijmrchus, Heraclcides Ponti- cus, were other witnesses to whom Bentley could appeal. He brought forward and approved that old tradition at a time when the original unity of each epic was the re- ceived belief. It was not till the latter part of the eigh- teenth century that the passion for returning from " art " to " nature " prepared a welcome for the doctrine that the Iliad and the Odyssey are parcels of primitive folk-songs. But then we note the off-hand way in which Bentley's statement assumes points which have since vexed Ho- meric research. He assumes that the Jliad and Odyssey are made np of parts which were originally intended for detached recitations : an inference to which the structure of the poems is strongly adverse. He accepts without re- serve the tradition regarding Peisistratus. By the ancient saying that the Iliad was written for men and the Odys- ix.J OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES.-^IIOMEK. 115 scy far women, Bcntlcy probably understood no more than that the Iliad deals with war, and the Odyssey with the trials of a true wife. There is, indeed, a further sense in which we might say that the Iliad, with its liistorical spirit, was masculine, and the Odyssey, with its fairy-land wonders and its tender pathos, more akin to das EwUjwci- hlichc ; but we cannot read that meaning into Bentley's words. He seems to liavc found no such difference be- tween the characters of the two epics as constrained liim to become a " separator." lie had not felt, what is now so generally admitted, that the Odyssey bears the marks of a later time than the Iliad. Briefly, then, wc cannot properly regard Bentley as a forerunner of the Homeric controversy on its literary or historical side, pre-eminently as his critical gifts would have fitted him to take up the question. lie knew the ancient sources on which "Wolf afterwards worked, but he had not given his mind to sift- ing thcra. Bentley's connexion with Homeric criticism is Avholly on the side of the text, and chiefly in regard to metre. In 1726 Bentley was meditating an edition of Homer, but intended first to finish his labours on the New Testa- ment. In 1732 he definitely committed himself to the Ilomeric task. At that time the House of Lords had be- fore it the question Avhether the Bishop of Ely could try Bentley. As the Horace had been dedicated to Harley, so the Homer was to be dedicated to Lord Carteret, a peer who was favourable to tlie Master of Trinity's cause, and who encouraged the design by granting or procuring the loan of manuscripts. In 1734 we find Bentley at work on Homer. But, though he made some progress, nothing was published. Trinity College possesses the only relics of his Homeric work. 146 BENTLEY. [chap. First, tbere is a copy of II. Estienne's folio Poetae Graeci. In this Bentley had read through the Iliad, Odys- sey, and Homeric Hymns, writing very brief notes in the margin, which are either his own corrections, or readings from manuscripts or grammarians. In the Hymns the notes become rarer ; and it is evident that all were written rapidly. This is the book which Trinity College sent in 1790 to Gottingen, for the use of Heyne, who warmly ac- knowledges the benefit in the preface to his edition of tbe Iliad. Secondly, a small quarto manuscript book contains somewhat fuller notes by Bentley on the first six books of tbe Iliad. These notes occupy 43 pages of the book, ceasing abruptly at verse 54 of Iliad vii. Lastly, there is the manuscript draft of Bentley's notes on the digamma, the substance of which has been published by J. W. Don- aldson in his New Crati/lus. The distinctive feature of Bentley's Homeric work is the restoration of the digamma. Bentley's discovery was too much in advance of his age to be generally received otherwise than with ridicule or disbelief. Even F. A. Wolf, who yielded to few in his admiration of the English critic, could speak of the digamma as merely an illusion which, in old age, mocked the genius of Bentley {senile ludibrium ingenii Bcntleiani). At the present day, when the philo- logical fact has so long been seen in a clearer light, it is easy to underrate the originality and the insight which the first pereeption of it showed. In reading Homer, Bentley had been struck by such things as these. The words, " and Atreides the king^'' are in Homer, Atreides te anax. Now the e in te would nat- urally be cut off before the first a in anax^ making t'anax. But the poet cannot have meant to cut it off, since that would spoil the metre. Why, then, was he able to avoid IX.] OTIIi;il CLASSICAL STUDIE-S.-IIoMLU. li? cutting it off? Because, said Bcntley, in Homer's time the word anax dic is merely the ablative of o-c, the Sanskrit yO.t. Apart from the restoration of the diganma, the relics of Bentley's work on Homer present other attempts at emendation. These are always acute and ingenious; but the instances arc rare indeed in whicli thcv would now 150 BENTLEY. [chap. commend themselves to students, I give a few specimens below, in order that scholars may judge of their general character.* The boldness with which Bentley was dis- posed to correct Homer may be illustrated by a single ex- ample. Priam, the aged king of Troy, is standing beside Helen on the walls, and looking forth on the plain where warriors arc moving. He sees Odysseus passing along the ranks of his followers, and a,sks Helen who that is. " His arms lie on the earth that feedeth many : but he * I. From Bentley's MS. notes in the margin of the Homer. Odyssey i. 23 ('AW u i.iiv AlQiOTrag jiETtKiaQt rrjXoO' iovrac, \ Ai9toTrag,Toi SixOa dedalaTai, iaxaroi dvSptJv). "legendum AifliOTrte: si vera lectio II. Z. 39G." {Qvydrijp [jiEya\))ropos 'HEriujvog, \ 'Heriujv, og tvauv, k.t.X.) [Lucian speaks of "Attic solecisms" — deliberate imitations, by late writers, of the irregular grammar found in At- tic writers: surely this is a gratuitous "Homeric solecism."] 29. (fivljaaTo yap Kara Ovjxov dfivfiovoQ AiyiaOoio.) Bentley conjectures Kara vovi' cti'oi'jf^oi'OQ, 51. 0td 8' iv cufiaai vaiu "Eust. not. iv Sw[iaTa vaid pro vulg. dojfiacn, sed lego 9eu S' iv irorvia vaiei. evvakt absolute, ut ivvaiovai II. 1. 154, 296. Sic Od. E. 215 eam compellens ndrva 6ed. kou Swixara h'ctitv sed OTreog. Ibidem." [i. e., Bentley objects to tiie word vwjiaTa because Calypso lived in a cave. But iv Cwfiara vain is unquestionably right.] II. From his MS. hook of notes on Iliad i.-vii. 54. Iliad III. 46 ?; ToioaSe iwv. Araabant, credo, Hiatus ; non solum tolerabant. Dedit poeta j) roioiirog iwv. 212. {/ivOovg K«t firjdia irdmv vfaivov.) Casaubonus ad Theocritum c. ix. corrigit ttpaivov. Eecte. 'i(paivov fivOovg, in concione loquebantur. Sic II. o-. 295, 'Ni]irie, iiijKeri ravTa volji-iaTa Syr/a>i" Greek text formed at Antioch at some time between 250 and 350 a.d. The " Syrian " text was eclectic, drawing on both the aberrant Pre-Syrian types, " Western " and "Alexandrian," as well as on texts independent of those two aberrations. In a revised form the Syrian text finally 164 BENTLEY. [chap. prevailed ; a result due partly to the subsequent oontrao- tion of Greek Christendom, partly to its centralisation at Constantinople, the ecclesiastical daughter of Antioch. Four manuscripts of the " uncial "class (written in cap- itals, as distinguished from " cursive ") stand out as the oldest Greek copies of the New Testament. Two belong probably to the middle of the fourth century. One of these is the Vatican manuscript, of which Bentley had no detailed knowledge at the time when he published his " Proposals." Its text is Pre-Syrian, and thus far unique, that in most parts it is free from both Western and Alex- andrian corruptions. The other fourth century manuscript is the Sinaitic, of which the New Testament portion first came into Tischendorf's hands in 1859. This also is Pre- Syrian, but with elements both Western and Alexandrian. The Codex Alexandrinus, which Bentley's age deemed the oldest and best, is fundamentally Syrian in the Gospels : in the other books it is still partially Syrian, though Pre- Syrian readings. Western and Alexandrian included, are proportionally more numerous. Thus it contains through- out at least one disturbing element which is absent from the Sinaitic, and at least three which in most of the books are absent from the Vaticanus. The fourth of the oldest uncials is one which Wetstein twice collated at Paris for Bentley — that known as the Codex Ephraemi, because some writings attributed to Ephraem Syrus have been traced over the New Testament. It is coeval with the Alexandrinus, belonging to the fifth century; and, while partly Syrian, it also contains much derived from the ear- lier texts. In addition to the general but erroneous belief as to the unique value of the Alexandrine manuscript, a singular accident (noticed by Dr. Hort) must have greatly strengthened Bentley's belief in the decisiveness of the X.J PROrOSED EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 105 aerrcement between that document and the Vuh'ate. Je- rome, in prc[)arin!5 the Vulgate, appears to have used a Greek manuscript wliich liappcncd to liave many peculiar readings in common with the Alcvandrinus, and to have been partly derived from the same original. The reader will now be able to imagine tlie effect which must liavc been gradually wrouglit on Bentley's mind, as he came to know the Vaticanus better. With his rare tact and insight, he could hardly fail to perceive tliat thi.s was a document of first-rate importance, yet one of which the evidence could not be satisfactorily reconciled with the comparatively simple hypothesis which he had based on the assumed primacy of the Alexandrine. For his im- mediate purpose, it was of far less importance tliat he was partly in error as to his Latin standard. His view on that subject is connected with a curious instance of his bold- ness in conjectural criticism. Referring to " interprcta- tioncs" or versions of the Bible, Augustine once says, " Let the Italian {Itala) be preferred to the rest, since it combines greater closeness with clearness " {De Doctr. Chr. 11. 15). Bentley, with a rashness which even he seldom exceeded, declared that the "Italian version is a mere dream :" Itala, in Augustine, should be ilia. Archbishop Potter's xisitata, viewed merely as an emendation, was far more intrinsically probable; but Cardinal "Wiseman's ar- guments in his letters (1832-3) — reinforced by Lachmann's illustrations — have placed it beyond reasonable doubt that Augustine really wrote Itala. As to his meaning, all that is certain is that he intended to distinguish this " Italian " text from the " African " [codices Afros) which be men- tions elsewhere. Of a Latin version, or Latin versions, prior to Jerome's — which was a^eccnsion, with the aid of Greek MSS., not a now and original vcr.-;ion — Bcntlcy 8* 166 BENTLEY. [chap. could scarce!}^ know anything. The documents were first made accessible in Bianchini's Evanc/eliarium Quadruplex (1749), and the Benedictine Sabatier's Bihllorum Sacro- rum Latinae Versiones Antlquae (l751). It must be re- membered, however, that Bentley's aim was to restore the text as received in the fourth century ; he did not profess to restore the text of an earlier age. Bentley's edition would have given to the world the readings of all the older Greek MSS. then known, and an apparatus, still unequalled in its range of authorities, for the text of the Latin Vulgate New Testament : but it would have done more still. Whatever might have been its defects, it would have represented the earliest attempt to construct a text of the New Testament directly from the most ancient documents, without reference to any printed edition. A century passed before such an attempt was again made. Bentley's immediate successors in this field did not work on his distinctive lines. In 1726 Ben- gel's Greek Testament was almost ready for the press, and he writes thus : " What principally holds me back is the delay of Bentley's promised edition. . . . Bentley possesses invaluable advantages; but he has prepossessions of his own which may prove very detrimental to the Received Text:" this "received text" being, in fact, the Syrian text in its mediseval form. Bengel's text, published at Tiibin- gen in 1734, was not based on Bentley's principles, though the value of these is incidentally recognised in his discus- sions. Wetstein's edition of 1751-2 supplied fresh ma- terials ; in criticism, however, he represents rather a re- action from Bentley's view, for his tendency was to find traces of corruption in any close agreement between the ancient Greek MSS. and the ancient versions. Gries- bach prepared the way for a properly critical text by .\.) rUuruSKD EIJITION of TIIK new TIISI'AMKNT. 1(57 seeking an historical basis in the gencalof,'y of the docn- inents, Jiiit it was L'lclimann, in his small edition of 1831, who first gave a modified fulfilment to IJentiey's design, by publishing a text irrespective of the printed tradition, and based wholly on the ancient authorities. Lachmann also applied Bcntley's principle of Greek and Latin consent. As Bentley had proposed to use the Vulgate Latin, so Lachmann used what he deemed the best MSS. of the Old Latin — combined with some Latin Fathers and with such Greek MSS. as were manifestly of the same type. Lach- mann compared this group of witnesses from the AVest with the other or "Eastern"' Greek authorities; and, where they agreed, he laid stress on that agreement as a security for the genuineness of readings. Bentley had intended to print the Greek text and the Vulgate Latin side by side. Lachmann, in his larger edition (1840- 1852), so far executed this plan as to print at the foot of the page a greatly improved Vulgate text, based chiefly on the two oldest MSS. For Lachmann, however, the au- thority of the Vulgate was only accessory {^^ Ilieronpno pro se auctore non utimur "), on account of the higher an- tiquity of the Old Latin. Those who taunted Lachmann with "aping" Bentley ("simia Bentleii ") misrepresented both. It is to Lachmann and to Tregcllcs that we prima- rily owe the revived knowledge and appreciation in this country of Bentley's labours on the New Testament, to which Tischendorf also accords recognition in his edition of 1859. Bentley's place in the history of sacred criticism agrees with the general character of his work in other provinces. His ideas were in advance of his age, and also of the means at his disposal for executing them. lie gave an 168 BENTLEY. [chap. x. initial impulse, of which the effect could not be destroyed by the limitation or defeat of his personal labours. After a hundred years of comparative neglect, his conception re- appeared as an element of acknowledged value in the methods of riper research. The edition of the New Tes- tament published last year (1881) by Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort represents a stage of criticism which necessarily lay beyond Bentley's horizon. Yet it is the maturest em- bodiment of principles which had in him their earliest ex- ponent ; and those very delays which closed over his great design may in part be regarded as attesting his growing perception of the rule on which the Cambridge Editors so justly lay stress: "Knowledge of documents should pre- cede final judgment upon readings." CHAPTER XL ENGLISH STYLE. — EDITION OF " PARADISE LOST." As a writer of Englisli, Bcntlcy is represented by the Dis- sertation on Fhalaris, the Boyle Lectures, tlie Remarks on a Discourse of Free-tbinking, sermons, and letters. These fall mainly within the period from 1690 to 1730. Dur- ing the earlier half of Bentley's life the canon of polite prose was Dryden or Temple ; during the latter half it was Addison. Bentley's English is stamped, as we shall sec, with the raind of his age, but has been very little in- fluenced by any phase of its manner. His style is thor- oughly individual ; it is, in fact, the man. The most striking trait is the nervous, homely English. " Com- mend me to the man that with a thick hide and solid forehead can stand blufE against plain matter of fact." " If the very first Epistle, of nine lines only, has taken me up four pages in scouring, what a sweet piece of work should I have of it to cleanse all the rest for them !" "^Vlas, poor Sophist! 'twas ill luck he took none of the money, to fee his advocates lustily ; for this is like to be a hard brush." The " polite " writers after the Restora- tion bad discarded such English as vulgar; and we have seen that Boyle's Oxford friends complained of Bentley's "descending to low and mean A»-ays of speech." But, if wc allow for the special influcice of scriptural language 170 BEXTLEY. [chap. on tlic PUgrini's Progress, Bentley drew from the same well as John Biuu-an, who died when Bentley was sixteen. Yet Bentley's simple English is racy in a way peculiar to him. It has the tone of a strong mind which goes straight to the truth ; it is pointed with the sarcasm of one whose own knowledge is thorough and exact, but who is accustomed to find imposture wrapped up in fine or vague words, and takes an ironical delight in using the very homeliest images and phrases which accurately fit the matter in hand. No one has excelled Bentley in the power of making a pretentious fallacy absurd by the mere force of translation into simple terms ; no writer of Eng- lish has shown greater skill in touching the hidden springs of its native humour. Here Bentley is the exponent, in his own way, of a spirit which animated the age of Addison and Pope — the assertion of clear common-sense — the desire, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says, " to expel the mystery which had served as a cloak for charlatans." Bentley's English style reflects, however, another side on which he was not in sympathy with the tendencies of contemporary literature. A scholar of profound learning and original vigour had things to say wliich could not always be said with the sparkling ease of coffee-house conversation. Bentley's colloquialism is that of strenuous argument, not that of polished small talk. As an outward symbol of his separateness from the " wits," we may observe his use of the Latin element in English. The sermons of Jeremy Taylor, whose life closed soon after Bentley's began, abound in portentous Latin words — longanimity, recidivatlon, coadunation. Bent- ley has nothing like these ; yet the Boyle party, who charged his style with vulgarity, charged it also with ped- antry. XI.] EN(JLI.SII STVLK. 171 lie answers this in tlic Dissertation on I'lialaiis, " If such a ffeneral censure had been always fastened upon those that enrich our lantj;iiaf;e from the Latin and Greek stores, wliat a fine condition had our hmguaj^c been in I 'Tis well known, it has scarce any words, beside monosyl- lables, of its native growth ; and were all the rest imported anil iiitrodiiced by pedants? . . . Tiie words in iny book, which he excepts against, arc commentitious, rcjmdiute, con- cede, aliene, vernacular, timid, ne(/oce,putid, and idiom; ev- ery one of which were in print, before I used them; and most of them, before I was born." We note in passing that all but three of this list — commentitious, putid, ncrfoce — have lived; and we remember Dc Quincey's story about neyoce — that wIkii he was a boy at school (about the year 1798) the use of this word by the master suggested to him that otium cum dignitate might be rendered " oce in combina- tion with diirnitv" — which made him lauirh aloud, and thereby forfeit all " oce " for three days. Then lieiitley remarks that the " Examiner's " illustrious relative, Robert Boyle, had used ignore and recognosce — " wliich nobody has yet thought fit to follow him in." It is curious to find De Quincey saying, in 1830, that ignore is Irish, and obsolete in England " except in the use of grand juries ;" and even in 1857, it seems, some purists demurred to it. " I would rather use, not my own words only, but even these too" — Bcntley concludes — "than that single word of the Examiners, cotemporary, which is a downright bar- barism. For the Latins never use co for con, except be- fore a vowel, as coequal, coeternal ; but, before a conso- nant, they either retain the n, as contemporary, constitu- tion; or melt it into another letter, as collection, comprehen- sion. So that the Examiner's cotemporary is a word of his cojjositiov, for which the learned world will cogratulatc him.'' 112 BEXTLEY. [cuap. Bentley's view as to the probable future of the English language appears from another place in the Dissertation. " The great alterations it has undergone in the two last centuries [1500-1700] are principally owing to that vast stock of Latin words which we have transplanted into our ^ own soil: which being now in a manner exhausted, one may easily presage that it will not have such changes in the two next centuries. Nay, it were no difhcult contriv- ance, if the public had any regard to it, to make the Eng- lish tongue immutable, unless hereafter some foreign na- tion shall invade and overrun us." This is in seeming contrast with Bentley's own description of language as an organism liable to continual change, " like the perspiring bodies of living creatures in perpetual motion and altera- tion." But the inconsistency, I think, is only apparent. lie refers to the English vocabulary as a whole. By " im- mutable" he docs not mean to exclude the action of time on details of form or usage, but rather points to such a standard as the French Academy sought to fix for the French language. Since the end of the seventeenth cen- tury, the ordinary English vocabulary has lost some for- eign words, and acquired others ; on the whole, the foreign element has probably not gained ground. Here is a rough test. Mr. Marsh has estimated the percentage of English to non-English words in several English classics. Swift's is about 70 (in one essay, only 68) ; Gibbon's, 70 ; John- son's, 72 ; Macaulay's, 75. Bentley's own average would, I think, be nearly, if not quite, as high as Macaulay's, and for a like reason ; his literary diction was comparatively close to the living speech of educated men in his day. This, indeed, is a marked feature of all Bentley's work, whatever the subject or form may be ; the author's per- sonality is so vividly present in it that it is less like writ- ing than speaking. xi.J ENGLISH STYLE. 173 As in Sliakspoarc, wc meet with those faults of grammar which people were apt to make in talking, or which had even come to be thought idiomatic, through the habit of the ear, Bentley can say, "neither of these two improve- ments are registered" — ^^ those sort of requests" — "I'll dispute with nobody about nolhinr/" (meaning, "about anything") — " no goat had been there neither.'''' This sym- pathy with living speech, and comparative negligence of rigid syntax, may help us to sec how Bcntley's genius was in accord with Greek, the voice of life, rather than with Latin, the expression of law. The scholarly trait of Bent- ley's style is not precise composition, but propriety in the use of words, whether of English or of Latin growth. Some of these Latinisms, thougli etymologioally right, seem odd now: "an acuteness /ani/Vm?* to him," /. e., pe- culiarly his own : "excision^' for "utter destruction:" "a plain and picnctua I testimony" — /. c, just to the point. Yet, on the whole, Bcntley's vocabulary contains a de- cidedly larger proportion of pure English than was then usual in the higher literature. No one is less pedantic. At his best he is, in his own way, matchless : at his worst, he is sometimes rough or clumsy ; but he is never weak, and never anything else than natural. His style in hand- to-hand critical combat — as in the Phalaris Dissertation — is that by which he is best known. I may here give a sliort specimen of a different manner, from a Sermon which he preached at St. James's in 1717. lie is speak- ing on the words, "none of us livcth to himself" (Ro- mans xiv. 7) : " Without society and covcrnmont, man would he found in a worse condition than tlie very heasts of the tkld. Tliat divine ray of rea- son, which is his privilege above the brutes, would only serve in that case to make him more sensible of his wants, and more uneasy and 174 BEXTLEY. [chap. melancliolio under them. Now, if society and mutual friendship be so essential and necessary to the happiness of manliind, 'tis a clear consequence, that all such obligations as are necessary to maintain society and friendship are incumbent on every man. No one, there- fore, that lives in society, and expects his share in the benefits of it, can be said to live to himself. " No, he lives to his prince and his country; he lives to his parents and his family ; he lives to his friends and to all under his trust ; he lives even to foreigners, under the mutual sanctions and stipulations of alliance and commerce ; nay, he lives to the whole race of man- kind : whatsoever has the character of man, and wears the same im- age of God that he does, is truly his brother, and, on account of that natural consanguinity, has a just claim to his kindness and benevo- lence. . . . The nearer one can arrive to this universal charity, this benevolence to all human race, the more he has of the divine charac- ter imprinted on his soul; for Ood is love, says the apostle; he de- lights in the happiness of all his creatures. To this public principle we owe our thanks for the inventors of sciences and arts; for the founders of kingdoms, and first institutors of laws ; for the heroes that hazard or abandon their own lives for the dearer love of their country ; for the statesmen that generously sacrifice their private profit and case to establish the public peace and prosperity for ages to come. "And if nature's still voice be listened to, this is really not only the noblest, but the pleasantest employment. For though gratitude, and a due acknowledgment and return of kindness received, is a de- sirable good, and implanted in our nature by God himself, as a spur to mutual beneficence, yet, in the whole, 'tis certainly much more pleasant to love than to be beloved again. For the sweetness and felicity of life consists in duly exerting and employing those sociable passions of the soul, those natural inclinations to charity and com- passion. And he that has given his mind a contrary turn and bias, that has made it the seat of selfishness and of unconcernment for all about him, has deprived himself of the greatest comfort and relish of life. Whilst he foolishly designs to live to himself alone, he loses that very thing which makes life itself desirable. So that, in a word, if we are created by our Maker to enjoy happiness and con- tentment in our being ; if we are born for society, and friendship, and mutual assistance ; if we are designed to live as men, and not as XI.] ENCSLISII STYLE. 175 wild beasts of the desert ; we must truly say, in the words of our text, that none of us liveth to himself.'^ It will be noticed that in tlic above extract there are no sentences of unwieldy lengtii, no involved constructions, such as usually oncunibered the more elaborate prose of the seventeenth century. Comparatively short sentences, and lucid structure, are general marks of Dcntley's English ; and here, again, he reflects the desire of his age for clear- ness. It has been said that the special work of the cigli- teentli century was to form prose style. Bentlcy has his peculiar i)lacc among its earlier masters. Mention is due to the only English versos which he is known to have written after boyhood. When Jolinson recited them, Adam Smith remarked that they were "very well; very well." " Yes, they are very well, sir," said Johnson; "but you may observe in what manner they are well. They are the forcible verses of a man of strong mind, but not accustomed to write verse ; for there is some uncouthness in the expression." A Trinity undergraduate had written a graceful imitation of Horace's Ode, Angus- tarn amice pauperiem 2Jati (in. ii.) ; with which Bentley was so much pleased that he straightway composed a par- ody on it. The gist of the young man's piece is that an exemplary student is secure of applause and happiness ; Bentley sings that he is pretty sure to be attacked, and very likely to be shelved. The choice of typical men is interesting ; Xewton, and the geologist, John AVoodward, for science ; Sclden, for erudition ; for theological contro- versy, Whiston, whom the University had expelled on ac- count of his Arianism. (The following is Monk's version : Boswell's differs in a few points, mostly for the worse; but in V. 1 1 rightly gives " days and nights " for " day and night.") 1Y6 BENTLEY. " Who strives to mount Parnassus' hill, And thence poetic laurels bring, Must first acquire due force and skill. Must fly with swan's or eagle's wing. " Who Nature's treasures would explore, Iler mj'steries and arcana know. Must high, as lofty Newton, soar, Must stoop, as delving Woodward, low. " Who studies ancient laws and rites, Tongues, arts, and arms, all history, Must drudge, like Selden, days and nights. And iu the endless labour die. [chap. " Who travels* in religious jarrs, * ^ '^^aiVs, Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays, Like Whiston, wanting pyx and stars, In ocean wide or sinks or strays. " But grant our hero's hope, long toil And comprehensive genius crown, All sciences, all arts his spoil. Yet what reward, or what renown ? " Entt, innate in vulgar souls, Envy steps in and stops his rise ; Envy with poison'd tarnish fouls His lustre, and his worth decries. " He lives inglorious or in want. To college and old books confin'd ; Instead of learn'd, he's call'd pedtlnt ; Dunces advanc'd, he's left behind : Yet left content, a genuine stoic he, Great without patron, rich without South-sea." The third line from the end is significant. He had been mentioned for a bishopric once or twice, but passed XI.] EDITIOS OF rAPiADISE LOST. 177 over. Tn 1709, when Chichester was vacant, Baron Span- lioiin ami the Earl of Pembroke (then Lon.1 Ilit^h Aihni- ral) liad vainly used their interest for Bentley. We have seen that in 1724 — about two years after these verses were written — he declined the sec of Bristol. Now we must consider Bentley's criticisms on Paradise Lost. In 1725 an edition of that poem had appeared with a Life of Milton by Elijah Fenton (1G83-1730), who helped Pope in translating the Odyssey. Fenton inci- dentally suggested some corrections of words which, ho thought, might have taken the place of other words simi- lar in sound. This seems to have put Bentley on his mettle : at any rate, he is said to have meditated notes in 172G. His edition of Paradise Lost appeared in 1732, and is said to have been immediately due to a wish ex- pressed by Queen Caroline " that the great critic should exercise his talents upon an edition" of Milton, "and thus gratify those readers who could not enjoy his celebrated lucubrations on classical writers." It may safely be as- sumed, however, that the royal lady did not contemplate any such work as our Aristarchus produced. Probably she thought that the learning, especially classical learning, which enters so largely into Milton's epic would afford a good field for illustrative commentary to a classical scholar. '"Tis but common justice" — Bentley's preface begins — " to let the purchaser know what he is to expect in this new edition of Paradise Lost. Our celebrated Author, when he compos'd this poem, being obnoxious to the Gov- ernment, poor, friendless, and, what is worst of all, blind with a gutta screna, could only dictate his verses to be writ by another." The amanuensis made numerous mis- takes in spelling and pointing; Bentley says that he has tacitly corrected these merely clerical errors. But there 1Y8 BEXTLEY. [chap, was a more serious offender than the amanuensis ; namely, the editor. This person owes his existence to Bentley's vio-orous imao-ination. "The friend or acquaintance, who- ever he was, to whom Milton committed his copy and the overseeing of the press, did so vilely execute that trust, that Paradise under his ignorance and audaciousness may be said to be tivice losV This editor is responsible for many careless changes of word or phrase; for instance: " on the secret top Of Horeb or of Sinai—" "secret" is this editor's blunder for "sacred." Bentley gives 48 examples of such culpable carelessness. But even that is not the worst. " This supposed Friend (call'd in these Notes the Editor), knowing Milton's bad circum- stances" — the evil days and evil tongues — profited by them to perpetrate a deliberate fraud of tlie most heart- less kind. Having a turn for verse-writing, he actually interpolated many lines of his own ; Bentley gives 66 of them as examples. They can always be "detected by their own silliness and unfitness." So mucb for the half- educated amanuensis and the wholly depraved editor. But Milton himself has made some " slips and inadvertencies too ;" there are " some inconsistences [sic] in the system and plan of his poem, for want of his revisal of the whole before its publication." Sixteen examples are then given. These are beyond merely verbal emendation. They re- quire " a change both of words and sense." Bentley lays stress on the fact that he merely suggests remedies for the errors due to Milton himself, but does not "obtrude" them ; adding, " it is hoped, even these will not be found absurd, or disagreeing from the Miltonian character;" and he quotes from Virgil : " I, too, have written verses : me XI.] EDITION OF I'AliADISE LOST. 179 also the shepherds call a sinj^er ; but I will not liii^htly be- lieve thoni." This is perhaps the only thing in the pref- ace that distinctly suggests senility; it afterwards gave rise to this doggrel : "How could vile sycophants contrive A lie so gross to raise, Which even Bentley can't believe, Though spoke in his own praise ?" The preface concludes with a glowing tribute to Milton's great poetn. Labouring under all this " miserable de- formity by the press," it could still charm, like " Terence's beautiful Virgin, who, in spite of neglect, sorrow, and beg- garly habit, did yet appear so very amiable." There is some real pathos in the following passage — remarkable as the only one (so far as I know) in Bentley's writings where be alludes to the long troubles of his College life as causes oi pain, and not merely of interruption: " But I wonder- not so much at the poem itself, though worthy of all wonder ; as that the author could so abstract his thoughts from his own troubles, as to be able to make it ; that confin'd in a narrow and to him a dark chamber, surrounded with cares and fears, he could spatiatc at large through the compass of the whole universe, and through all heaven beyond it ; could survey all periods of time, from before the creation to the consummation of all things. This theory [/.<•., contemplation], no doubt, was a great solace to him in his affliction ; but it shows in him a greater strength of spirit, that made him capable of such a solace. And it would almost seem to me to be peculiar to him ; had not experience by others taught me, that there is that power in the human mind, supported with inno- cence and conscia virtus; that can make it quite shake off all out- ward uneasinesses, and involve itself secure and pleas'd in its own integrity and entertainment." Bentley appears to have fully anticipated the strong prejudice which his recension of Milton would have to 180 BENTLEY. [chap. meet,--- Forty years ago, he says, " it would have been prudence to have suppress'd" it, "for fear of injuring one's rising fortune." But now seventy years admonish- ed him to pay his critical debts, regardless of worldly loss or gain. "I made the Notes extempore, and put them to the press as soon as made ; without any apprehension of growing leaner by censures or plumper by commenda- tions." So ends the preface. Bentley's work on Milton is of a kind which can be fairly estimated by a few specimens, for its essential char- acter is the same throughout. We need not dwell on those " inconsistencies in the plan and system of the poem " which Bentley ascribes to Milton himself. Some of these are real, others vanish before a closer examina- tion ; but none of those which really exist can be removed without rewriting the passages affected. Bentley admits this ; and to criticise his changes would be merely to com- pare the respective merits of Milton and Bentley as poets. Nor, again, need we concern ourselves with those alleged faults of the amanuensis in spelling and pointing which are tacitly corrected. The proper test of Bentley's work, as a critical recension of Paradise Lost, is his treatment of those blemishes which he imputes to the supposed "editor." These are of two kinds — wilful interpolations and inadvertent changes. An example of alleged inter- polation is afforded by the following passage {Par. Lost, i. 338-355), where the fallen angels are assembling at the summons of their leader : " As when the potent rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile ; xi.J KI)ITn)N' OF PAUADISI-: LOST. 181 So nurabcrless were those bad Angels seen Iloveriiif; on wing under the cope of Hell, 'Twixt upper, neliier, and tiurrounding fires ; Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great Sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain : A nmllilude like tckich the populous North Poiired never from Jicr frozen loiii.1 to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when Iter barbarous soris Came like a delude on the South, and spread Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan samls^ The last five lines arc rejected by Bcntlcy as due to tbc fraudulent editor. Here is his note: "After he [Milton] had compared the Devils for number to th« cloud of locusts that darkeu'd all Egypt, as before to the leaves that cover the ground in autumn [v. 302, 'Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Yallombrosa'], 'tis both to clog and to lessen the thought, to mention here the Northern Excursions, when all hu- man race would be too few. Besides the diction is faulty ; frozen loins are improper for piopulousness ; Gibraltar is a new name, since those inroads were made ; and to spread from thence to the Libyan sands, is to spread over the surface of the sea." It would be idle to multiply instances of "interpola- tion:" this is a fair average sample. I will now illustrate the other class of " editorial'' misdeeds — careless altera- tions. Book VI. 509 : '' Up they turned Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath The originals of Nature in their crude Conception ; sulphurous and nitrous foam TJiey found, they mingled, and, with subtle art Concocted and adustcd, they reduced To blackest grain, and into store conveyed." Bentley annotates : 9 182^/ BEXTLEY. [chap. " It must be very subtle Art, even in Devils themselves, to adust brimstone and saltpetre. But then he mentions only these two ma- terials, which without cliarcoal can never make gunpowder." Here, then, is tlie last part of the passage, rescued from the editor, and restored to Milton : " Sulphurous and nitrous foam Tliey pound, they mingle, mid with sooty chark Concocted and adusted, they reduce To blackest grain, and into store convey,'''' Let us take next the last lines of the poem (xii. 641 f.) : " They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat. Waved over by that flaming brand ; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon ; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. TJiey, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary tvay^ Addison had remarked that the poem would close bet- ter if the last two lines were absent. Bentloy — without naming Addison, to whom he alludes as "an ingenious and celebrated writer " — deprecates their omission. " Without them Adam and Eve would be left in the Territory and Suburbane of Paradise, in the very view of the dreadful faces.''^ At the same time Bentley holds that the two lines have been gravely corrupted by the editor. These are his grounds : " Milton tells us before, that Adam, upon hearing Michael's pre- dictions, was even surcharg'd with joy (xii. 3Y2) ; was replete with joy and wonder (468) ; was in doubt, whether he should repent of, or rejoice in, his fall (475); was in great peace of thought (.558) ; and Eve herself was not sad, but full of consolation (620). Why then XI.] EDITION ol' r.lJLlD/SE LOST. 183 doc3 this distich dismiss our first parents in anguish, and the reader in melancholy? And how can the expression be justified, 'with wan- d'ring steps and slow?' Why wan'driiif/^ Erratic steps? Very improper : when in the line before, they were guided by Providence. And why slow? when even Eve profess'd her readiness and alacrity for the journey (611)- '■^"' now had on ; In me is no Jilai/.^ And why 'their solitary way?' All words to represent a sorrowful part- ing? when even their former walks in Paradise were as solitary as their way now : there being nobody besides them two, both here and there. Shall I therefore, after so many prior presumptions, presume at last to offer a distich, as close as may be to the author's words, and entirely agreeable to his scheme ? ' 77icn hand in hand tcith social steps tlicir way Through Eden took, with heav'nly comfort clieer'd.^ " The total iimnber of emendations proposed by Bentley in Paradise Lost ratlicr exceeds 800. Not a word of the received text is altered in his edition ; but the parts be- lieved to be corrupt arc printed in italics, with the pro- posed remedy in the margin. Most of the new readings aim at stricter propriety in the use of language, better logic, or clearer syntax — briefly, at " correctness." It is a significant fact that Pope liked many of them, and wrote ^' pulchre,^'' "6ene," "-^ rede" opposite them in his copy of Bcntley's edition — in spite of that line in the Dunciad which describes our critic as "having humbled Milton's strains." But even where wc concede that the new read- ing is what Milton ought to have given, wc can nearly al- ways feel morally certain that he did not give it. I have found only one instance which strikes me as an exception. It is in that passage of Book vi. (332) which describes Satan wounded by the sword of the archangel Michael : "From the gash A stream of ncctarous humour issuing flowed Sanguine, such aa celestial Spirits may bleed." BENTLEY. [chap. " Nectar " is the wine of the gods ; Homer has another name for the etherial juice which flows in their veins. Thus when Diomedes wounds the goddess Aplirodite: " Tlte immortal blood of the goddess flowed forth, even ichor, such as floivs in the veins of blessed gods (Iliad, v. 389). For " ncctarous " Bentlcy proposed " ichorous." The form of Milton's verse — " such as celestial Spirits may bleed" — indicates that he was thinking of the Iliad, and no poet was less likely than Milton to confuse " nec- tar" with "ichor." Bentley's correction, if not true, de- serves to be so. Johnson has characterised Bentley's hypothesis of the "editor" in well-known terms — "a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought it true ; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he in private allowed it to be false." Bent- ley cannot be impaled on the second horn of the dilemma. No one who has read his preface, or, who understands the bent of his mind, will entertain the idea that he wished to impose on his readers by a fiction which he himself did not believe. Monk has another explanation. " The ideal agency of the reviser of Paradise Lost was only a device to take off the odium of perpetually condemning and al- tering the words of the great poet. ... At the same time, he was neither deceived himself, nor intended to deceive others." But Monk has not observed that a passage in Bentley's preface expressly excludes this plausible view. " If any one " (says Bentley) " fancy this Persona of an editor to be a mere Fantom, a Fiction, an Artifice to skreen Milton himself; let him consider these four and sole changes made in the second edition : i. 505, v. 638, xi. 485, 551. ... If the Editor durst insert his forgeries, even in the second edition, when the Poem and its Author had slowly grown to a vast reputation ; what durst he not do in the XI.] EDITIUX OF VAlLilJlSE J.OXT. 185 first, under the poet's poverty, infamy, ami an universal odiiun from the royal and triumphant party T The Par- adise Ri'fjaincd and the Samson Ar/onistes arc uncor- ruptcd, Bcntley adds, because Milton had then dismissed this editor. There can be no doubt, I tliink, that Bcntley's theory of the depraved editor was broached in perfect good faitli. Ti'ue, he supposes this editor to have taken fewer liberties with Book XII. — an assumption which suited his desire to publish before I'ailianiont met. But that is only an in- stance of a man brinp;ing himself to believe just what lie wishes to believe. How he could believe it, is another question. If he had consulted the Life of Milton by the poet's nephew, Edward Phillips (1G94), he would have found some adverse testimony. Paradise Lost was origi- nally written down in small groups of some ten to thirty verses by any hand that happened to be near Milton at the time. But, when it was complete, Phillips helped his uncle in carefully revising it, with minute attention to those matters of spelling and pointing in which the aman- uensis might have failed. The first edition (1667), so far from being " miserably deformed by the press," was re- markably accurate. As Mr. ^lasson says, " very great care must have been bestowed on the revising of the proofs, cither by Milton himself, or by some competent person who had undertaken to sec the book through the press for him. It seems likely that Milton himself caused page after page to be read over slowly to him, and occasionally even the words to be spelt out." Bentley insists that the chanijes in the second edition of 1674 were due to the editor. Phillips says of this second edition: "amended, enlarg'd, and differently dispos'd as to the number of books" [xii. instead of x., books vii. and x. being now -180 BENTLEY. [chap. divided] *' by his own hand, that is by his own appoint- ment." But the habit of mind which Bentley had formed by free conjectural criticism was such as to pass lightly over any such difficulties, even if he had clearly realised them. lie felt confident in his own power of improving Milton's text ; and he was eager to exercise it. The fact of Milton's blindness suggested a view of the text which he adopted ; not, assuredly, without believing it ; but with a belief rendered more easy by his wish. Bentley's Paradise Lost raises an obvious question. We know that his emendations of Milton are nearly all bad. The general style of argument which he applies to Milton is the same which he applies to the classical au- thors. Are his emendations of these also bad ? I should answer : Many of his critical emendations, especially Lat- in, are bad ; but many of them are good in a way and in a degree for which Paradise Lost afforded no scope. It is a rule applicable to most of Bentley's corrections, that tlicir merit varies inversely with the sounducss of the text. Where the text seemed altogether hopeless, he was at his best; where it was corrupted, but not deeply, he was usu- ally good, though often not convincing; where it was true, yet difficult, through some trick (faulty in itself, perhaps) of individual thought or style, he was apt to meddle over- nmch. It was his forte to make rough places smooth ; his foible, to make smooth places rough. If Paradise Lost had come to Bentley as a manuscript, largely defaced by grave blunders and deeply-seated corruptions, his restora- tion of it would probably have deserved applause. The fact that his edition was regarded as a proof of dotage, shows how erroneously his contemporaries had conceived the qualities of his previous work. Bentley's mind was logical, positive, acute ; wonderfully acute, where intellect- XI. ] KUITION dl' I'AUADlSE LOST. 187 luil problems were not comiilicatcd with moral sympathies. Suiulitii; Uasljcs of picrcinif insight over a wide and then dim field, he made discoveries; among other things, he found probable or certain answers to many verbal riddles. His "faculty of divination" was to liimself a special source uf joy and pride; nor unnaturally, when wc recall its most brilliant feats. ]}ut verbal emendation was oidy one phase of his work; and, just because it was with him a mental indulgence, almost a passion, wo must guard against as- suming that the averar/e success with which he applied it is the chief criterion of his power. The faults of Bentlcy's Paradise Lost are, in kind, the faults of his Horace, but arc more evident to an English reader, and arc worse in degree, since the English text, unlike the Latin, affords no real ground for suspicion. The intellectual acuteness which marks the Horace is pres- ent also iu the notes on Paradise Lost, but seldom wins ad- miration, more often appears ridiculous, because the Eng- lish reader can usually see that it is grotesquely misplaced. A great and characteristic merit of Bentley's classical work, its instructiveness to students of a foreign language and literature, is necessarily absent here. And the book was got ready for the press with extreme haste. Still, the edi- tor of Paradise Lost is not the Iloratian editor gone mad. He is merely tlic Iloratian editor showing increased rash- ness in a still more unfavourable field, where failure was at once so gratuitous and so conspicuous as to look like self- caricature, whilst there was no proper scope for the dis- tinctive qualities of his genius. As to poetical taste, wc may at least make some allowance for the standards of the '"correct" period: let us think of Johnson's remarks on Milton's versification, and remember that some of Bentley's improvements on Milton were privately admired by Pope. CHAPTER XII. DOMESTIC LIFE. LAST YEARS. At the age of thirty-eight, when explaining his delay to answer Charles Boyle, Bentley spoke of his own " natural aversion to all quarrels and broils." This has often, per- haps, been read with a smile by those who thought of his later feuds. I believe that it was quite true. Bentley was a born student. He was not, by innate impulse, a Avriter, still less an aspirant to prizes of the kind for which men chiefly wrangle. But his self-confidence had been exalted by the number of instances in which he had been able to explode fallacies, or to detect errors Avhich had escaped the greatest of previous scholars. He became a dogmatic be- liever in the truth of his own instinctive perceptions. At last, opposition to his decrees struck him as a proof of deficient capacity, or else of moral obliquity. This habit of mind insensibly extended itself from verbal criticism into other fields of judgment. He grew less and less fit to deal with men on a basis of equal rights, because he too often carried into official or social intercourse the temper formed in his library by intellectual despotism over the blunders of the absent or the dead. He was rather too apt to treat those who differed from him as if they were various readings that had cropped up from "scrub manu- scripts," or " scoundrel copies," as he has it in his reply to CIIAI-. XII ] DOMESTIC LIFK.— LAST VFARS. 189 Micldleton. lie liked to efface sucli persons as he would c.\i>unge false concords, or to correct tli'in as ho would remedy flaiijrant instances of hiatus. This was what made him so specially unfit for the peaceable administration of a College. It was hard for him to he primus iiitcr jntrcs — first among peers, but harder still to be primus intra pa- rieles — to live within the same walls with those peers. The frequent personal association which the circumstances of his office involved was precisely calculated to show him constantly on bis worst side, lie would probably have made a better bishop — though not, perhaps, a very good one — just because his contact would have been less close and continual with those over whom he was placed. Bentlcy had many of the qualities of a beneficent ruler, but hardly of a constitutional ruler. If he had been the sole heir of Peisistratus, he would have bestowed tlie best gifts of paternal government on those Athenian black- smiths to whom he compared Joshua Barnes, and no swords would have been wreathed with myrtle in honour of a tyrannicide. This warm-hearted, imperious man, with affections the stronger because they were not diffuse, was seen to the greatest advantage in family life, cither because bis mon- archy was undisputed, or because there he could reign without governing. His happy marriage brought him four children — Elizabeth and Joanna — a son, "William, who died in earliest infancy — and Richard, the youngest, born in 1V08, who grew to be an accomplished but eccentric and rather aimless man ; enough of a dilettante to win the good graces of Horace Walpole, and too little of a depend- ent to keep them. It is pleasant to turn from the College feuds, and to think that within its precincts there was at least such a 0* -190 BENTLEY. [chap. refuse from strife as the home in wLicb these children grew up. The habits of the Bentley household were sim- ple, and such as adapted themselves to the life of an inde- fatigable student. Bentley usually breakfasted alone in his library, and, at least in later years, was often not visible till dinner. When the Spectator was coming out, lie took great delight in hearing the children read it aloud to him, and — as Joanna told her son — " was so particularly amused by the character of Sir Roger de Coverley, that he took his literary decease most seriously to heart." After even- ing prayers at ten, the family retired, while Bentley, "hab- ited in his dressing-gown," returned to his books. In 1708 his eyes suffered for a short time from reading at night; but he kept up the habit long afterwards. The celebrated "Proposals for Printing" the Greek Testament wei'e drawn up by candle-light in a single evening. Lat- terly, he had a few intimate friends at Cambridge — some five or six Fellows of the College, foremost among whom was Richard Walker — and three or four other members of the University ; just as in London his intercourse was chiefly with a very small and select group — Newton, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Dr. Mead, and a few more. " His estab- lishment," says his grandson, " was respectable, and his table afiluently and hospitably served." " Of his pecun- iary affairs he took no account; he had no use for money, and dismissed it entirely from his thoughts.". Mrs. Bent- ley managed everything. Can this be the Bentley, it will be asked, who built the staircase and the hen-house, and who practised extortion on the Doctors of Divinity ? The fact seems to be, as Cumberland puts it, that Bentley had no love of money for its own sake. Many instances of his liberality are on record, especially to poor students, or in literary matters. But he had a strong feeling for the dig- XII.] noMKSTK" LIFK.— LAST VKAIIS. 101 nity of his station, ami a frank conviction tliat tlic College oui;lit to honour itself by sccinc^ that his surroundings were appropriate; and he had also a Yorkshircinan's share of the British dislike to being cheated. ]>cnf ley's total income was, for his position, but moderate, aii(l his testa- mentary provision for his family was sufficiently slender to exempt him from the charge of penurious hoarding. At one time Mrs. Bcntley and the children used to make an annual journey to London, where the Master of Trinity, as Royal Librarian, had official lodgings at Cotton House. Then there was an occasional visit to the Bernards in Huntingdonshire, or to Hampshire, after Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, had married Mr. HumphrL-y liidge of that county; and this was as ranch variety as the wisdom of our ancestors desired. At Cambridge Bcntley took scarcely any exercise, except in pacing up and down a terrace-walk by the river, which was made when the Mas- ter's garden was laid out in 171V. "We hear, however, of his joining a fishing expedition to Over, a place about six miles from Cambridge, though some may doubt whether Bcntley had the right temperament for that pursuit. After middle age he was peculiarly liable to severe colds — a result of sedentary life — and was obliged to avoid draughts as much as possible. From 1727 he ceased to preside in the College Hall at festivals; and at about the same time he nominated a deputy at the " acts " in the Divinity School. In 1729 it was complained that for many years he had discontinued bis attendance in the College Chapel. One incident has good evidence. On an evening in 1724, just after his degrees had been re- stored, he went to the Chapel ; the door-lock of the Mas- ter's stall was so rusty that he could not open it. Here arc some contemporary verses preserved by Granger : 192 BENTLEY. [chap. " The virger tugs with fruitless pains ; The rust invincible remains. Who can describe his woful plight, Plac'd thus in view, in fullest light, A spectacle of mirth, expos'd To sneering friends and giggling foes ? Then first, as 'tis from fame rcceiv'd (But fame can't always be believ'd), A blush, the sign of new-born grace, Gleam'd through the horrors of his face. He held it shameful to retreat. And worse to take the lower seat. The virger soon, with nimble bound, At once vaults o'er the wooden mound, And gives the door a furious knock, Which forc'd the disobedient lock." After iVSi lie practically ceased to attend the meetings of the Seniority : the last occasion on which he presided was Nov. 8, 1737. His inability or reluctance to leave his house is shown in 1739 by a curious fact. A Fellow of a College had been convicted of atheistical views by a private letter which another member of the same society had picked up in tlie quadrangle — and read. The meeting of the Vice-chancellor's Court at which sentence was to be passed was held at Trinity Lodge. Dr. Monk regards this as a " compliment to the father of the University," but there was also a simpler motive. Only eight Heads of Houses had attended in the Schools ; nine were re- quired for a verdict; and, feeling the improbability of Bentley coming to them, they went to Bentley. On see- ing the accused — a puny person — the Master of Trinity observed, "What! is that the atheist? I expected to have seen a man as big as Burrough the beadle !" Sen- tence was passed — expulsion from the University. It seems to have been soon after this, in 1739, that xii.l DOMESTIC LIFK.— LAST VKAUS. l'J3 Bcntloy had a paralytic stroke — not a scvcro one, Iiow- cvcr. Ho was tlienccfortli unablu to move easily willioiit assistance, but we have his grandson's authority for sayini; that Bentk'V " to the last lionr of his life possessed his faculties tirin and in their fullest vigour." lie called him- self— Markland says — "an old trunk, which, if you let it alone, will last a long time ; but if yon jumble it by mov- ing, will soon fall to pieces." Joanna Bentley, the second daughter, was licr father's favourite child — "Jug" was his pet-name for her — and she seems to have inherited much of his vivacity, with rather more of his turn for humorous satire than was at that period thought quite decorous in the gentle sex. ner son seems inclined to apologise for it; and ]>r. Monk, too, faintly hints bis regret. At the age of eleven she was the "Phoebe" of a Pastoral in the Spectator — the "Colin" being Jolin Byrom, B.A., of Trinity; and, after causing several members of the College to sigh, and a few to sing, Joanna was married, in 1728, to Dcnisou Cumberland, of Trinity — a grandson of the distinguished Bishop of Peterborough. Their son, Richard Cumberland, was a versatile author. Besides novels, comedies, and an epic poem, he wrote tlie once popular Observer, and An- ecdotes of Spanish Painters. Goldsmith called him "the Terence of England ;" Walter Scott commented on his tendency " to reverse the natural and useful practice of courtship, and to throw upon the softer sex the task of wooinc:;" but Cumberland's name has no record more pleasing than those Memoirs to which we chiefly owe our knowledge of Bentley's old age. It was early in 1740 that death parted the old man from tlie companion who had shared so many years of storm or sunshine beyond the doors, but always of happi- 194 BExXTLEY. [chap. ness Avitliin tliem. Richard Cumberland was eight years old when JNLs. Bentley died. " I have a perfect recollec- tion of tiic person of my grandmother, and a full impres- sion of her manners and habits, which, though in some degree tinctured with hereditary reserve and the primi- tiv'c cast of character, were entirely free from the hyp- ocritical cant and affected sanctity of the Oliverians." (Iler family, the Bernards, were related to the Cromwells.) A most favourable impression is given by a letter — one of those printed by Dr. Luard at the end of Rud's Diary — in which she discusses the prospect (in 1732) of the Col- lege case being decided against Bentley, Iler life had been gentle, kindly, and unselfish ; her last words, which her daughter Joanna heard, were — " It is all bright, it is all glorious." Dreary indeed must have been Bentley's solitude now, but for his daughters. Elizabeth had re- turned to her father's house after the death of her hus- band, Mr. Ridge ; and henceforth Mrs. Cumberland was much at Trinity Lodge, with her two children — Richard, and a girl somewhat older. And now we get the best possible testimony to the lovable elements in Bentley's nature — the testimony of children. " He was the un- wearied patron and promoter of all our childish sports. . . . I have broken in upon him many a time " (says Cumber- land) "in his hours of study, when he would put his book aside, ring his hand-bell for his servant, and be led to his shelves to take down a picture-book for my amusement. I do not say that his good-nature always gained its object, as the pictures which his books generally supplied rae ■with were anatomical drawings of dissected bodies, . . . but he had nothing better to produce." " Once, and only once, I recollect his giving rae a gentle rebuke for making a most outrageous noise in the room over his library, and XII. ] DOMESTIC LU'Jv— LAST VKAKS. I'jo disturbinij liim in Iiis studios; I Iia ;i|i[)relion8ion of aiii^or I'liiiii liim, iiinl cuiilidfiitly aiiswcivd tliat I c«Mild lint Iirl|) it, as I liaattledi)iv and .sliiittlceock with Master Goocli, the Bisliup of Ely's son." (This w.ls the Dr. Gooch wlio, as Yice-chancelh)r, had suspended Bentley's dcLjrces.) "And I have been at this sport with his father," he repHed ; "but thine lias been the more amusing game ; so there's no liarm «h>ne.'' The boy's holidays from his school at 13ury St. Edmund's were now often spent at Trinity Lodge, and in the bright memories which they left with him his gramlfather was the centra! figure. " I was admitted to dine at his table, had my seat next to his chair, served him iii many little offices." Bent- ley saw what pleasure these gave the boy, and invented occasions to employ him. Bentloy's "ordinary style of conversation was naturally lofty" — his grandson says. He also used thou and thee more than was usually considered polite, and this gave his talk a somewhat dictatorial tone. "But the native can- dour and inherent tenderness of his heart could not long be veiled from observation, for his feelings and affections were at once too impulsive to be long repressed, and he too careless of concealment to attempt at qualifying them." Instances of his good-nature are quoted which are highly characteristic in other ways too. At that time the Master and Seniors examined candidates for Fellow- ships orally as well as on paper. If Bcntley saw that a candidate was nervous, he " was never known to press him," says Cumberland; rather he "would take all the pains of expounding on himself" — and credit the embar- rassed youth with the answer. Once a burglar who had stolen some of Bentlcy's plate was caught " with the very articles upon him," and "Commissary Greaves" was for 19G BENTLEV. [chap. sending him to gaol. Bentley interposed. " Why tell the man he is a thief ? lie knows that well enongh, with- out thy information, Greaves. — Hark ye, fellow, thou see'st the trade which thou hast taken up is an unprofita- ble trade ; therefore get thee gone, lay aside an occupa- tion by which thou can'st gain nothing but a halter, and follow that by which thou may'st earn an honest liveli- Iiood." Everybody remonstrated, but the burglar was set at large. This was a thoroughly Bentleian way of show- ing how the quality of mercy can bless him that gives and him that takes. He never bestowed a thoufjht on the principle ; lie was preoccupied by his own acute and con- fident perception that this man would not steal again ; and he disposed of Commissary Greaves as if he had been a mere gloss, a redundant phrase due to interpola- tion. Next to the Vice -master. Dr. Walker — to whom in 1739 the duties of Master were virtually transferred — Bentlcy's most frequent visitors were a few scholars — such as Jeremiah Markland, an ingenious critic, with a real feel- ing for language ; Walter Taylor, the Regius Professor of Greek ; John Taylor, the well-known editor of Lysias and Demosthenes; and the two nephews, Thomas and Richard Bentley. At seventy, he learned to smoke ; and he is be- lieved to have liked port, but to have said of claret that " it would be port if it could." He would sometimes speak of his early labours and aims, but the literary sub- ject uppermost in his mind seems to have been his Ho- mer. One evening, when Richard Cumberland was at the Lodge in his holidays, his school-master, Arthur Kinsman, called with Dr. W^alker. Kinsman " began to open his school-books upon Bentley, and had drawn him into Ho- mer; Greek now rolled in torrents from the lips of Bent- XII. I DOMESTIC LIFK.— LAST YKAUS. li>7 ley, ... ill a strain delectable, indeed, to the ear, but not very edifying to poor little me and the ladies." In March, 1742 — about four months before Bentley's death — the fourth book of the Dunciad came out, with I'ope's highly-wrought but curiously empty satire on the greatest scholar then living in England or in Europe. Bentley heads an academic throng who offer homage at the throne of Dulness: "Before them raarch'd that awful Aristarcli, Plow'd was his front witli many a deep remark : His hat, which never vail'd to human pride, Walker with rev'rcnce took, and laid aside." Then Bentley introduces himself to the goddess as "Tliy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pain3 Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains." Tiie final touch — "Walker, our hat! — nor more he deign'd to say " — was taken from a story current then. Philip Miller, the botanist, had called on Bentley at Trini- ty Lodge, and after dinner plied him with classical ques- tions, until Bentley, having exhausted such mild hints as " Drink your wine, sir !" exclaimed, " "Walker ! my hat " — and left tlie room. Cumberland remembers the large, broad-brimmed hat hanging on a peg at the back of Bent- ley's arm-chair, who sometimes wore it in his study to shade his eyes ; and after his death it could be seen in tlie College-rooms of the friend with whose name Pope has linked it. Pope had opened fire on Bentley long before this. The first edition of the Dunciad (1728) had the line — ^^ Bent- ley his mouth with classic flatt'ry opes" — but in the edi- tion of 1729 "Bentley" was changed to Welstcd ; and when — after Bentley's death — his name was once more 198 BENTLEY. [chap. placed there, it was explained as referring to Thomas Bent- ley, the nephew. Then, in the *' Epistle to Arbuthnot " (IVSS), Pope coupled Bentley with the Shakspearian critic Theobald— "Tibbalds" rhyming to "ribalds;" and in the Epistle imitating that of Horace to Augustus (1737), after criticising Milton, adds: " Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book, Like slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook." Some indignant protest from Thomas Bentley seems to have roused Pope's ire to the more elaborate attack in the fourth book of the Dunclad. Why did Pope dislike Bent- ley ? " I talked against his Homer " — this was Bentley's own account of it — " and the portentous cub never for- gives." It is more likely that some remarks had been re- peated to Pope, than that Bentley should have said to the poet at Bishop Attcrbury's table, " A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." This was gossip dramatising the cause of the grudge. Then Pope's friend- ship with Atterbury and Swift would lead him to take the Boyle view of the Phalaris affair. And Warburton, Pope's chief ally of the Dunciad period, felt towards Bentley that peculiar form of jealous antipathy with which an inac- curate writer on scholarly subjects will sometimes regard scholars. 'After Bentley's death, Warburton spoke of him as " a truly great and injured man," &c. ; before it, he in- variably, though timidly, disparaged him. Swift never as- sailed Bentley after the Tale of a Tub. But Arbuthnot, another member of the Scriblerus Club, parodied Bentley's Horace and Phaidrus in the Miscellanies of 1727; and published a supplement to Gulliver's Travels, describing " The State of Learning in the Empire of Lilliput." " Bul- lum is a tall, raw-boned man, I believe near six inches and XII. J DOMESTIC LIFE.— LAST VKAKS. I'j'j a liair ]ii:^li ; from his infancy lie applied liimself with groat industry to the old Blcfuscudian language, in which he made such a progress that he almost forgot his native Lilliputian" — an unlucky stroke, seeing that Bcntley's command of Enirlish was one of his marked crifts. This, however, is characteristic of all the satire directed against IJentley by the literary men who allowed a criticism of taste, but treated a criticism of texts as soulless pedantry. There is plenty of banter, but not one point. And the cause is plain — they understood nothing of Bcntley's work. Take I'ope's extended satire in the fourth Dunciad. It is merely a series of variations, as brilliant and as thin as Thalberg's setting of " Home, sweet home," on tlie simple theme, "Dull Bentley." A small satellite of Pope, one David Mallet, wrote a "Poem on \'erbal Criticism," in which he greets Bentley as " great eldest-born of Dul- ness !" Mallet deserves to be remembered with Garth. In June, 1742, having completed ciglity years and some months, Bentley was still able to examine for the Craven University Scholarships — when Christopher Smart was one of the successful competitors. A few weeks later the end came. His grandson tells it thus: "He was seized with a complaint" (pleuritic fever, it was said) "that in his opinion seemed to indicate a necessity of immediate bleed- ing; Dr. Ilcberden, then a young physician practising in Cambridge, was of a contrary opinion, and the patient ac- quiesced." Bentley died on July 14, 1742. Dr. AVallis, of Stamford — an old friend and adviser who was sum- moned, but arrived too late — said that the measure sug- gested by the sufferer was that which he himself would have taken. Bentley was buried in the chapel of Trinity College, on the north side of the communion-rails. The Latin oration 200 BENTLEY. [chap. then customary was pronounced by Philip Yonge, after- Avards Public Orator, and Bishop of Norwich. The day of Bentley's funeral was that on which George Baker left Eton for King's College — the eminent physician to Avhom it was partly due that Cambridge became the University of Porson. The small square stone in the pavement of the College Chapel bears these words only : II- ^- ^- [Sanctae RICHARDUS BENTLEY S. T. P. R. p^otstoT Obiit xiT. Jul. 1V42. ^'^'"'-^ ^tatis 80. The words Magister Collegii would naturally have been added to the second line ; but in the view of those Fel- lows who acknowledged the judgment of April, 1738, the Mastership had since then been vacant. In the hall of the College, where many celebrated names are commemorated by the portraits on the walls, places of honour are assigned to Bacon, Barrow, Newton, and Bentley. The features of the great scholar speak with singular force from the can- vas of Thornhill, who painted him in his forty-eighth year, the very year in which his struggle with the College be- gan. That picture, Bentley's own bequest, is in the Mas- ter's Lodge. The pose of the head is haughty, almost defiant ; the eyes, which are large, prominent, and full of bold vivacity, have a light in them as if Bentley were looking straight at an impostor whom he had detected, but who still amused him; the nose, strong and slightlv tip -tilted, is moulded as if Nature had wished to show what a nose can do for the combined expression of scorn and sagacity; and the general effect of the countenance, at a first glance, is one which suggests power — frank, self- assured, sarcastic, and, I fear we must add, insolent : yet, xii.j DOMESTIC LIFE.— LAST YEARS. 201 standing a little Ioniser before the picture, \vc become aware of an essential kindness in those eyes of which the gaze is so direct and intrepid ; we read in the whulc face a certain keen veracity ; and the sense grows — this was a man who could hit hard, but who would not strike a foul blow, and whose ruling instinct, whether always a sure guide or not, was to pierce through falsities to truth. CHAPTER XIII. bentley's place in the history of scholarship. It Avill not be the object of these concluding pages to weigh Bentley's merits against those of any individual scholar in past or present times. The attempt, in such a case, to construct an order of merit amuses the competi- tive instinct of mankind, and may be an interesting ex- ercise of private judgment, but presupposes a common measure for claims which are often, by their nature, in- commensurable. A more useful task is to consider the nature of Bentley's place in that development of scholar- ship which extends from the fifteenth century to our own day. Caution may be needed to avoid drawing lines of a delusive sharpness between periods of which the char- acteristics rather melt into each other. The fact remains, however, that general tendencies were successively preva- lent in a course which can be traced. And Bentley stands in a well-marked relation both to those who preceded and to those who followed him. At his birth in 1662 rather more than two centuries had elapsed since the beginning of the movement which was to restore ancient literature to the modern world. Duiunof the earlier of these two centuries — from about 1450 to 1550 — the chief seat of the revival had been Italy, which thus retained by a new title that intellectual ciiAP.xiii.j PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHir. 203 primacy of Europe which had seemed on the point of passing from the hinds of tlic South. Latin literature engrossed the early Italian scholars, who regarded them- selves as literary heirs of Rome, restored to their rights after ages of dispossession. The beauty of classical form came as a surprise and a delight to these children of the middle age ; they admired and enjoyed ; they could not criticise. The more rhetorical parts of silver Latinity pleased them best ; a preference natural to the Italian genius. And meanwhile Greek studies had remained in the background. The purest and most perfect examples of form — those which Greek literature affords — were not present to the mind of the earlier Renaissance. Transalp- ine students resorted to Italy as for initiation into sacred mysteries. The highest eminence in classical scholarship was regarded as a birthright of Italians. The small circle of immortals which included Poggio and Politian admit- ted only one foreigner, Erasmus, whose cosmopolitan tone gave no wound to the national susceptibility of Italians, and whose conception, though larger than theirs, rested on the same basis. That basis was the imitatio veterum, the literary reproduction of ancient form. Erasmus was near- er than any of his predecessors or contemporaries to the idea of a critical philology. Uis natural gifts for it are suflBciently manifest. But his want of critical method, and of the sense which requires it, appears in his edition of the Greek Testament. In the second half of the sixteenth century a new period is opened by a Frenchman of Italian origin, Joseph Scal- iger. Hitherto scholarship had been busy with the form of classical literature. The new effort is to comprehend the matter. By liis Latin compositions and translations Scahger is connected with the Italian age of Latin stylists. 204 BENTLEY. [chap. But his most serious and cliaractcristic work was the en- deavour to frame a critical chronology of the ancient world. He was peculiarly well-fitted to effect a transition from the old to the new aim, because his industry could not be reproached with dulncss. "People had thought that aes- thetic pleasure could be purchased only at the cost of crit- icism," says Bernays; "now they saw the critical work- shop itself lit up with the glow of artistic inspiration." A different praise belongs to Scaliger's great and indefatiga- ble contemporary, Isaac Casaubon. His groans over Ath- cnseus, which sometimes reverberate in the brilliant and faithful pages of Mr. Pattison, appear to warrant Casau- bon's comparison of his toils to the labours of penal servi- tude {"catenati in ergastulo labores''^). Bernhardy defines the merit of Casaubon as that of having been the first to popularise a connected knowledge of ancient life and man- ners. Two things had now been done. The charm of Latin style had been appreciated. The contents of ancient literature, both Latin and Greek, had been surveyed, and partly registered. Bentley approached ancient literature on the side which had been chiefly cultivated in the age nearest to his own. When we first find him at work, under Stillingfleet's roof, or in the libraries of Oxford, he is evidently less occupied with the form than with the matter. He reads extensive- ly, making indexes for his own use ; he seeks to possess the contents of the classical authors, Avhether already printed or accessible only in manuscript. An incident told by Cumberland is suggestive. Bentley was talking one day with his favourite daughter, when she hinted a regret that he had devoted so much of his time to criti- cism, rather than to original composition. He acknowl- edged the justice of the remark. " But the wit and genius XIII.] TLACK IX THE HISTORY OF SCHOLARSniP. 205 of those old heathens," he said, *' beguiled nic : and as I despaired of raising myself up to their standard upon fair ground, I thought the only chance I had of looking over their heads was to get upon their shoulders," These arc the words of a man who had turned to ancient literature in the spirit of Scaliger rather than in that of the Italian Latinists. But in the Letter to Mill — when Bentley was only twenty-eight — we perceive that his wide reading had al- ready made him alive to the necessity of a work which no previous scholar had thoroughly or successfully undertaken. This work was the purification of the classical texts. They were still deformed by r. mass of errors which could not even be detected without the aid of accurate knowledge, grammatical and metrical. The great scholars before Bentley, with all their admirable merits, had in this re- spect resembled aeronauts, gazing down on a beautiful and varied country, in which, however, the pedestrian is liable to be stopped by broken bridges or quaking swamps. These difficulties of the ground, to which Bentley's patient march had brought him, engaged his first care. No care could hope to be successful — this he saw clearly — unless armed w'ith the resources which previous scholarship had provided. The critic of a text should command the stylist's tact in language, and also the knowledge of the commentator. In the Latin preface to his edition of Horace, Bentley explains that his work is to be textual, illustrative ; and then proceeds : "All honour to the learned men who have expatiated in the field of commcntaiy. They have done a most valuable woik, which would now have to be done from the beginning, if tiicy had not been before- hand ; a work without which my reader cannot hope to pass the threshold of these present labours. That wide reading and erudi- 10 206 BENTLEY. [chap. tion, that knowledge of all Greek and Latin antiquity, in which the commentaries have their very essence, are merely subordinate aids to textual criticism. A man should have all that at his fingers' ends, before he can venture, without insane rashness, to pass criticism on any ancient author. But, besides this, there is need of the keenest judgment, of sagacity and quickness, of a certain divining tact and inspiration {divinandi quadam peritia et fiavTiKy), as was said of Aristarchus— a faculty which can be acquired by no constancy of toil or length of life, but comes solely by the gift of nature and the happy star." Let it be noted that Beutley's view is relative to his own day. It is because such men as Casaubon have gone before that he can thus define his own purpose. Learn- ing, inspired by insigbt, is now to be directed to the at- tainment of textual accuracy. Beutley's distinction is not so mucli the degree of his insight — rare as this was — but rather his method of applying it. It might be said : Bentley turned the course of scholarship aside from grand- er objects, philosophical, historical, literary, and forced it into a narrow verbal groove. If Bentley's criticism had been verbal only — which it was not — such an objection would still be unjust. We in these days are accustomed to Greek and Latin texts which, though they may be still more or less unsound, are seldom so unsound as largely to obscure the author's meaning, or seriously to mar our en- joyment of his work as a work of art. But for this state of things we have mainly to thank the impulse given by Bentley. In Bentley's time very many Latin authors, and nearly all Greek authors, were known only through texts teeming with every fault that could spring from a scribe's igno- rance of grammar, metre, and sense. Suppose a piece of very bad English handwriting, full of erasures and cor- rections, sent to be printed at a foreign press. The for- XIII.] PLACE IX THE IIISTOIIY OK .SCIlOLAIl-SIllI'. 'lul eigii printoi's first proof would bu likely to contain some flagrant errors which a very slight acr|uaintancc with our language would suffice to amend, and also many other errors which an Englishuian could correct with more or less confidence, but in which a foreign corrector of the press would not even perceive anything amiss. In 1700 most of the classical texts, especially Greek, were very much what such a proof-sheet would be if only those fla- grant errors liad been removed which a very imperfect knowledge of English would reveal. Relatively to his con- temporaries, Bentley might be compared with the English- man of our supposed case, and his predecessors with the foreign correctors of the press. Space fails for examples, but I may give one. Aa epi- gram of Callimachus begins thus : Ti)v a\it]v Evci]fioc, iy not allowing the mere authority of tradition tu supersede the free exercise of independent judgment; and by always rcraerabering that the very right of sueh judgment to in- dependence must rest on the patience, the intelligence, the completeness with which the tradition itself Las been surveyed. THE END. ENGl.lSll MEN OK IJ-nTERS. EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. The fullowiujj Volumes are now ready : JOHNSON LrsLiK SrKnir.N. G I i;i50N J. C. MoKisoN. SCOTT n.u. ntTTON. SIl ELLEY J. A. SvMO.M.8. lir.M E T. H. IIixi.EV. ( ;( H.DSMITII Wii.i.i AM Bi.AOK. I)KI'X)E William Minto. liUltNS J. C. SiiAiRP. SPEXSEU H. W. Ciiuuoii. THACKERAY Anthony TnoM.orK. IJl'KKE John Morley, MILTON Mark Pattison, HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr. SOUTHEY E. DowDEN. CHAUCER A. W. Ward. BUN YAN J. A. Froui.e, COWPEa GoLDWiN Smitu. rOPE Leslie Stkimien, I5YR0N John Nicuou LOCKE Tuomab Fowleb. WORDSWORTH F. MvEr.s. URYDEN G. Saintsucuv. LANDOR Sidney Colvin. 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