BF.S'TLEY, RICHARD. 



BKNTLEY, RICHARD. 



involved him in a protncted lawsuit, much obloquy, and much 



The fellowi seem *oon to bare made up their miml that their new 

 taater (who wan likely to be le favourably regarded from hit being 

 duatrd not in their own body, bat at St John's) waa a grasping 

 arbitrary man ; and the bickerings between him and the aenior follows 

 of the college grew frequent. The moat objectionable of his acts 

 appean to hare been that of intruding fellowi into tlie body, not by 

 the regular and statntable course of (lection, but by what he termed 

 pmumption, by which candidate* were cbocen to future vaeanciea ; 

 and a* the mode wm unjustifiable, to bin choice of persons to benefit 

 by it waa bed. Toward* the close of 1709 an open rupture took 

 place between the muter and the seniors ; and it waa followed by a 

 long aeriei of ruinous litigation, by which tho college suffered grievously 

 in puree, discipline, and reputation. The seniors appealed against the 

 master to the visitor. Unfortunately a doubt existed whether the 

 Biahop of Ely or the crown was the vi.-itor ; and Bcntley , supported 

 by a party among the junior fellows, succeeded, by every artifice which 

 lepal ingenuity and indomitable pride and obstinacy could suggest, in 

 delaying the decision of this question till 1733, when the House of 

 Lords finally decided that the bishop was visitor. Biahop Greene 

 immediately summoned Bentley to appear before him, and in 1734 

 pronounced sentence of deprivation against him. But Bentley's 

 obstinacy and fertility of expedient* supported him even in tlm ex- 

 tremity. Availing himself of what appears to have been a blunder in 

 transcribing the statutes, he refused to vacate his office until the vice- 

 master had carried the sentence of the visitor into effect; which, as 

 the vice-master was one of his most devoted followers, was equivalent 

 to annulling the visitor's decision. He thus resisted, for four years, 

 the utmost efforts of his adversaries to procure execution of the 

 sentence, until the death of Bishop Greene, in May 1738, put an end 

 to the suit We hare not attempted to give even an abstract of these 

 proceedings, for an abstract could not well be made intelligible. To 

 those who have leisure for such by-gone points of curious discussion, 

 Dr. Monk's minute account of the whole suit will be full of interesting 

 information. 



In 1717 Brntley procured himself to be elected Regius Professor of 

 Divinity. He chose for the subject of hia probationary lecture a dis- 

 cussion of the celebrated text 1 St John, v. 7, on the three Heavenly 

 Witne**e>, in which, maintaining the doctrine of the Trinity, he gave 

 a history of the verse, which he decidedly rejected. This work has 

 never been printed, and Dr. Monk has not been able to discover it. 

 Not content with being at variance with the college, he placed himself 

 in the same position with respect to the whole university, in the very 

 first year of office, by an attempt to extort from those persons who 

 wen to be created doctors of divinity a larger fee than it had been 

 usual to pay. lake moat of Bentley 's actions, the claim was prosecuted 

 in a violent and offensive manner, and a warm dispute arose out of 

 this paltry beginning ; in the course of which the Master of Trinity 

 and Kegius Professor of Divinity, one of the first dignitaries of the 

 university, was, by a grace of the senate, passed by a majority of more 

 than two to oue, degraded and deprived of all hi* degrees, October 1 7, 

 1718. Against this sentence Bentley petitioned the king. The matter 

 was referred to the Privy Council, and carried thence into the Court 

 of King's Bench, which, after more than five years of undignified 

 altercation, issued a mandamus, February 7, to the university to 

 mtore Richard Bentley to all hia degrees, and to every other right 

 and privilege of which they had deprived him. 



It shows in a strong light the remarkable activity and energy of 

 BeotUy's mind, that these harassing quarrels, which must have occu- 

 pied a Ian* portion of hi* time and attention, interfered so little with 

 his critical pursuit*. Some of hi* work*, performed during this long 

 period of disturbance, we have already noticed ; we have to add a 

 large and valuable body of note* and corrections of Cicero's ' Tusculau 

 ; published in Davu's edition of that work in 1709 (' Ricbardi 

 in Ciceroni* Tiuculanas '). In 17 10 he wrote 

 on the comic poet*, Menander and Philemon, sug- 

 by Lc Clerc's edition of the fragments of those author*. The 

 was one for which Le Clrrc was utterly unfit : and it is said 

 that motive* of personal hostility had some influence in indm-ing 

 Beotley to demonstrate that he wa so, which he did with no sparing 

 hand. The work was anonymously printed in Holland (' Kmenda- 

 UOM* IB Msoandri et Philemonis Keliquia*. ex nupera edition.- Jonnnis 

 CUrid ; ubi molta Orotil t aliorutn, pliiritna vero Clcrici, errata 

 eMtigantur'), und-r the signature of 1'hileleutherus Upsiensi* : but 

 Hratlev was universally known to be the author. Under the same 

 M*M be again apprand in 1713, a* a defender of revealed religion 

 ( Kvmark* on UM Discourse of Free thinking') in his reply to Anthony 

 Collia*'* ' Defrace of Free-thinking.' His answer to the sophistry and 

 I pervading that book was judicious and effective ; and for the 

 t MTviee done to the church and clergy of England by " refu- 

 ting UM objection* and expoaiog tb* ignorance," to use the word* of 

 UM University Grace, of tu* writers calling themselves Free-thinkers, 

 IVrntl-y received the thanki of the University of Cambridge by n vote 

 of the BenaU. January 4, 1715. He also did no small service to 

 scienw, by effecting UM publication of a new and improved edition of 

 Newton'* PrioeipV which was intrusted, in 1709, by the venerable 

 author to UM management of the eminent mathematician, Roger 



Cote*. It appear* also from .Turin's preface to his edition of the 

 'Geography of Vareniu*' (Cambridge, 1712), that he was induced to 

 undertake that work by Bentley. In 1716 Bentley announced a plan 

 for publishing a new critical edition of the ' Greek Testament' and 

 explained his view* on this subject in a letter to Archbishop Wake, 

 printed in Dr. Monk's ' Life,' chap. xii. For four years be meditated 

 over this design, upon which he spared neither labour nor expert**. 

 He made fresh collations of the celebrated Alexandrine and Bexa 

 manuscript*, and of other leas important manuscript* in Kngland : 

 and he had the asaistance of the eminent biblical critic Wetatein and 

 other scholars, in collating manuscripts on the continent In 1720 he 

 published proposals and a specimen of the intended work, which was 

 to be published by subscription. A large number of subscriber* was 

 obtained, but from some unexplained cause, the work was never 

 carried into publication. Many persons ascribed this to the attacks 

 made on the author by Conyers Middleton, the historian of Cicero, a 

 violent and implacable enemy of Bentley. From this opinion Dr. Monk 

 dissent*'; and it is discountenanced by the well-known hardihood of 

 Bentley 's character, and his habitual contempt for all his adversaries. 



We have still to go back to notice a work which, perhaps with the 

 exception of the ' Dissertations on Phalaris,' is the most remarkable 

 of Bentley'* labours, his edition of Horace, undertaken in 1701, but 

 not completed till 1711. In the progress of this work he involved 

 himself in needles* difficulties ; for, contrary to the usaul practice of 

 scholars, he introduced hi* emendations (between 700 and 800 in all) 

 into the text, and, still more unusually, caused the text to be printed 

 off in 1706, long before the notes were ready. Many of the alterations, 

 it may be supposed, his mature judgment would disallow ; for in the 

 preface he expresses his regret for more than twenty of them ; and it 

 is probable that he stretched his ingenuity to defend many others 

 which he did not really approve. Many of them have been adopted 

 by the beat subsequent editors ; but the bulk of them are now rejected 

 aa unnecessary, harsh, or prosaic. Nevertheless, Bentley 's Horace is a 

 noble monument of the author's learning, critical skill, and acquaintance 

 with the Latin language. 



We can do no more than notice, and refer to Dr. Monk's ' Life,' for 

 an account of some of Bentley's minor labours, of which the most 

 important perhaps was an edition of ' Terence,' published in 1 726, which 

 deserves notice as being one of the most honourable and unexception- 

 able of the author's performances. The text professes to be corrected 

 in no less than a thousand places, and the reasons for almost every 

 change are given in the notes. It is especially remarkable for tli" 

 nicety of care in accentuation, and for the metrical skill which it 

 displays; and contains a valuable dissertation upon the metres of 

 Terence. 



In 1731 Bentley, much to the detriment of his reputation, undertook 

 to publish an edition of ' Paradise Lost.' Ho proceeded on a suppo- 

 sition, first started by Elij.ih Fcnton, that Milton, by his blindness, 

 being obliged to employ an amanuensis, his poem might reasonably 

 be supposed to have been much corrupted, between its delivery from 

 hi* own lips and its issue from the press. But Bentiey pushed tho 

 theory beyond all reasonable bounds; for he created an ideal friend, 

 whom he supposed to have filled the office of editor, and to whom he 

 atcribes not only tho numerous verbal errors, which he professes to 

 detect, but the introduction of whole lines, and even passages of many 

 verse*. In whatever point of view this work is regarded, the editor's 

 presumption is intolerable ; and his self confidence and flippant tone- 

 of criticism is equally offensive, especially when directed against a man 

 of genius so different from his own. Beutley does not appear to have 

 had much poetic feeling. His criticisms of Horace have been con- 

 demned aa prosaic, and his criticisms on Milton display the same fault 

 in a more eminent degree. Nor was he qualified by Unto or study to 

 appreciate the store of Italian and romantic learning which Milton in 

 his poem has Interwoven with his classical reading. His work unlike 

 the emendations or restorations made in our own day by a far less 

 skilful and equally prosaic hand in the text of a greater Knglixh poet 

 than even Milton excited almost universal dissatisfaction; resent- 

 ment on the part of tho admirers of Milton; distress and regret on 

 the part of those who wished well to the editor. Nevertheless, liko 

 everything else of Itentley's, it display* much critical acumen ; and the 

 ingenuity of the commentator might have been admired, if it had been 

 united with a decent share of modesty. 



The publication of Bentley's edition of Homer was an important 

 event for the student of the Greek language, since the characteristic 

 feature of it is an attempt to restore tho pronody of Homer by the 

 insertion of the long-forgotten Digaimna, This was a great undertaking 

 for a man turned of seventy, for ha did not begin it till the year 1732, 

 though his opinion relative to the Digamma seem* to have bean made 

 up several years before. Tho task was difficult; for even supposing 

 that hi* views of the lost letter were strictly correct, yet the changes 

 of orthography and language introduced in the course of many ages so 

 complicated the question, that often where the metre was before correct 

 the insertion of the Digamma rendered it unprosodiacaL Bentley did 

 inn' h, though be was not altogether successful. Payne Knight has 

 more recently renewed the attempt, but, to say the least, without it* 

 meeting with the general acceptation of scholars. Bentley's intended 

 work was broken off in 1739, when he had not completed the notes on 

 the sixth book, by a paralytic stroke. Shortly before he had published 



