Ml 



MIDDLETON, OOSYEBa 



MIDDLKTON, CONYERS. 



When George L vieitod the University of Cambridge in 1717, Mid- 

 dleton, with several others. WM created Doctor of Divinity ; but 

 Bertley, who WM Regies Professor of Divinity, refu-ed to confer the 

 degree unless a lee of four guineu WM given to him in addition to the 

 broad piice which WM the ancient and customary compliment on this 

 Thu demand WM resisted by Middleton, who however at 

 nted to pay it, on condition that the money should be 

 __l if it should be determined that it WM an illegal demand. 

 Middleton sued Bentley for it in the vice-chancellor's court; and 

 Bertley, refusing to pay the money or to acknowledge the jurisdiction 

 of the court, WM deprived of all his degrees by a grace of the senate, 

 October 17, 1718. f BKSILKT.] Aa Bentley wu a firm supporter of 

 the Whig ministry then in power, it wu feared that a commission 

 might be itsoed by the crown to inquire into the state of the uni- 

 versity ; and Middleton, to justify himself an I his friends, accordingly 

 published ' A full and impartial Account of all the late Proceedings in 

 the University of Cambridge against Dr. Bentley,' which, says Dr. 

 Monk, " wu the first publuhed specimen of a style, which, for elo- 

 ganoa, purity, and ease, yields to none in the whole compass of the 

 gj[H-Vi language. The acrimonious and resentful feeling which 

 prompted every Una is in some measure disguised by the pleasing lan- 

 guage, the harmony of the periods, and the vein of scholarship which 

 enliven the whole tract" (' Life of Bentley,' p. 388.) 



A few months afterwards, Middleton published ' A Second Part of 

 the full and impartial Account of all the late Proceedings,' &c., and 

 also ' A true Account of the present State of Trinity College, in Cam- 

 bridge, under the oppressive Government of their Muter, R. Bentley, 

 late D.D.' In the latter pamphlet Middleton had declared " that the 

 fellows of Trinity College had not been able to find any proper court 

 in Kogland which would receive their complaint* ;" and Bentley per- 

 ceiving that hia adversary had been guilty of an expression which 

 might be considered u libel upon the whole administration of 

 justice in the kingdom, brought an action against him in the Court of 

 King's Bench, in which the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The 

 coutt however wu unwilling to pronounce sentence, and the matter 

 eventually dropped by Middleton'a begging pardon of Bentley and 

 ooneeiiling to psy all the expenses of the action, which must have been 

 poneldsisbls, tince the share of the expenses of the prosecution not 

 allowed by the muter of the court, and paid by Trinity College, 

 amounted to 1501. 



While this matter wu pending, Bentley published Proposals for a 

 new edition of the Greek Testament, with a specimen of the intended 

 work. The proposals and specimen were drawn up by candle-light 

 one evening, according to Bentley's own confession ; and the whole 

 sheet bore marks of precipitation and haste. Middleton eagerly 

 availed himself of the opportunity which the carelessness of his great 



iy bad afforded him, and accordingly publuhed a severe critique 

 upon it, in a pamphlet entitled ' Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, 

 upon the Proposals lately published by R. Bentley for a new edition 

 of the Greek Testament,' and followed up his attack by Some further 

 Remark* ' a few weeks afterwards. Although Middleton professed, in 

 the wiMeaueuiiiit of the pamphlet, that " bis remarks were not 

 drawn from him by personal spleen or envy to the author of the Pro- 

 posals, bat by a serious conviction that he bad neither talents nor 

 materials proper for the work he had undertaken, and that religion 

 WM much more likely to receive detriment than service from it," the 

 whole tenor and stylo of the pamphlet showed that it wu the result 

 of the mot virulent personal animosity, end he in fact descended to 

 the lowest abuse against his antagonist ; but it must be allowed that 

 in this respect he wu not much more than a match for the master of 

 Trinity. 



As Middleton had been put to great expense and trouble by hia 

 recent prosecution, bis friends in the university, regarding him u a 

 softWer in a public eaiue, resolved to bestow some public mark of 

 dieUootioo upon him, and accordingly established a new office of 

 pdooipal librarian, to which Middlton wu elected notwithstanding 

 the violent opposition of the other party. Shortly after his election 

 he published a plan for arranging the university library, which wu 

 BibUotbecej Caotabrigiensis Ordinand* Mcthodu 



_ .Jcthodua quiedam,' 



n ; in the dedication of which to the vice chancellor be expressed 

 himself In a manner which appeared to call in question the jurisdiction 

 of the Court of King's Bench, for which be wu again prosecuted by 

 Bertie*, aad condemned to pay a no* of SOL 



Having lost his wife shortly after this, he travelled on the Continent, 

 and spent some months in Rome in 1724. On his return to England 

 be renewed his suit against Bentley for the recovery of the four 

 goiaoaa. who at length paid the money to Middlston in 1 7^5. In 1 726 

 he pabUabed a abort treatise, 'De Medicorum apud veteres Romanes 

 dcgenliom CondlUooe Diasertetio; qua to. .ervilem atque ignobilrm 

 earn fuisee oetenditur ;' which wu considered an insult upon the whole 

 _LC on ' 8tT r pemphlete were published in answer to 

 IS to wbU Middleton replied in the following year. 



UI7 Middleton publuhed his celebrated Utter from Rome,' in 

 which be attempted to show that " the religion of the present Romans 

 WM derived from that of their heathen ancestors." and that in parti- 



fllS^V 11 ^.* * 00 ^ dre " of lb Prt""- 4c -. in the Roman 



lurefa, w.re taken from the pagan religion. This work wu 



received with great favour by the learned, and went through four 



editions in the author's lifetime ; but the free manner in which he 

 attacked the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church gave offence to 

 many divines of Ms own communion, who suspected and maintained 

 that the author had as little respect for the miracles of the apostles 

 as for those of the Roman Catholic saints. This suspicion wu con- 

 firmed by his next publication in 1731, which wu a letter to Dr. 

 Waterland, containing some remarks on Waterland's reply to Tindal'a 

 attack upon revealed religion, in a work written by the latter, which 

 wu entitled ' Christianity u Old u the Creation.' This letter, which 

 wu first published anonymously, but was soon known to be written 

 by Middleton, gave the greatest offence to the clergy. 1'earce, bishop 

 of Rochester, replied to it; and so strong wu the feeling against 

 Middleton, that he was nearly deprived of his degrees, and nearly 

 degraded from bis office of public librarian. Finding it necessary to 

 make an explicit avowal of his sentiment! with regard to religion, 

 Middletoo published in 1732 'Some Remarks on a Reply to the Defence 

 of the Letter to Dr. Waterland, wherein the Author's sentiments u to 

 all the principal points in di'puts are fully and clearly explained,' in 

 which he expressly averted his belief in Christianity, and disclaimed 

 all intention of attacking the evidences of revealed religion. It must 

 however be admitted that Middleton had spoken of the Scriptures in 

 a manner that was calculated to give just cause of offence, and there 

 is abundance of evidence in his writings to prove that he regarded 

 Christianity in scarcely any other light than a ropublication of the law 

 of nature, and that he endeavoured, like a certain class of modern 

 divines in Germany, to reduce as far as possible everything super- 

 natural in the Bible to mere natural phenomena. He expressly main- 

 tained that there were contradictions in the four evangelists which 

 could not be reconciled (' Reflections on the Variations found in the 

 four Kvangeliste ') ; he accused Matthew " of wilfully suppressing or 

 negligently omitting three successive descents from father to son in 

 the first chapter of his Gospel " (' Works,' vol. it, p. U, 4to ed.) ; he 

 asserted that the apostles were sometime* mistaken in their appli- 

 cations of prophecies relating to Christ (' Works,' vol. ii., p. 5ii) ; he 

 considered the " story of the fall of man as a fable or allegory " 

 (' Works,' vol. it, p. 131) ; and with respect to the prophecy given at 

 the fall, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, 

 he did not hesitate to declare, in another part of his ' Works ' (voL iii., 

 p. 183), "that men who inquire into things will meet with many 

 absurdities which reason must wink at, and many incredibilities which 

 faith must digest, before they can admit the authority of this prophecy 

 upon the evidence of this historical narration." Such being the 

 opinions of Middleton (and passages of a similar nature might be 

 multiplied to almost any extent from hia works), it cannot excite sur- 

 prise that he should have been regarded by his brethren with suspicion, 

 and have been looked upon, notwithstanding his assertions to thu 

 contrary, u a disbeliever iu the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. 



While theso discussions wore going on, Middleton waa appointed to 

 tho professorship of natural history, which had been recently founded 

 by Dr. Woodward, which appointment he resigned in 173i, and soon 

 after married again. In the following year he published ' A Dis- 

 sertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England,' showing that 

 it waa first introduced and practised by our countryman William 

 Caxton at Westminster, and not, u commonly supposed, by a foreign 

 printer at Oxford. In 1711 he published by subscription hia most 

 celebrated work, ' The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero,' 

 Loud., 2 vols. 4to. There were 3000 subscriber* to this work, and 

 the profits ariiing from its sale were so considerable as to enable 

 Middleton to purchase a small estate at Hildershain, six miles from 

 Cambridge, where he chiefly resided during the remainder of his life. 

 Middletou's ' Life of Cicero ' is written, like all his other work*, in a 

 pleasing and perspicuous stylo ; but the strong bios of the author in 

 favour of his hero has frequently led him to become the panegyrist of 

 very questionable actions, and even to misrepresent, perhaps not 

 intentionally, those events which did not reflect credit on tho 

 character of his favourite. [CicEBo, vol. ii., col. 247.] Dr. Parr, 

 in a preface to a republication of Uellendcnus, entitled 'De Statu,' 

 asterts that Middleton, in liia ' Life of Cicero,' borrowed very largely 

 from a work of BelUudenus on the character, literary merits, 

 and philosophical opinions of Cicero, which in entitled 'l3e Triuua 

 Luimuibus Romanorum.' 



Two years alterwards, Middleton published a translation of Cicero's 

 letters to Brutus, and of Brutus's to Cicero, with the Latin text, and 

 s prefatory dissertation, in which he defended the authenticity of the 

 Kpifttlea against the objections of TuustalL who maintained that they 

 were tho composition of lome sophist. The arguments of Middleton 

 were combated by Markland in his ' Remarks on the Epistles of 

 Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero, in a letter to a friend.' 



[M.UlkLAND.J 



In 1746 he published 'Germans queedam Antiquitatis eruditoo 

 Monuments,' Ac., in which be gave an account of the various s|tfci- 

 mens of ancient art which he had collected during his residence at 

 Rome. Two years afterwards he published his 'Treatise on the 

 Roman Senate,' in which he maintained that all vacancies iu the 

 senate were filled up by the people; and in the same year he published. 

 ' An Introductory Discourse to a larger work, designed hereafter to 

 t>c published, concerning the Miraculous Powers which are supposed 

 to have subsisted in the Christian Church from tho earliest ages,' 



