BEN 



BEN 



and it therefore often put into the hands of students of 

 Italian. The grammarian Biagioli published an edition of 

 thme lettera il Paris, 1807. with useful note*, which has 

 been frequently reprinted fur the us of schools. In the 

 Barbehni library at Rome, are three more volumes of Bon- 

 >'* letter* in MS., of which only some have been 

 extracted and published. They wero written from Flanders 

 and France during hi- lone residence in those countries. 



BENTLEY. RICHARD, born January 27, J662. was 

 the son of a small fanner or yeoman, resident at Oulton, in 

 the pamh of Rothwell. near'Wakefield. in Yorkshire. lie 

 was educated at the grammar school of Wakcficld, and at 

 St. John's College, Cambridge ; of which he was admitted a 

 sizar. May 24, 1676. No fellowship falling vacant to winch 

 he wa eligible, he accepted the mastership of the grammar- 

 school of Spalding in Lincolnshire, early in 1682. After 

 holding that office for a year, he resigned it to become private 

 tutor to the son of Dr. Stillingfleet afterwards Bishop of 

 Worcester. He accompanied his pupil to Oxford, where he 

 was admitted to the same degree of M.A. as he held at 

 Cambridge. His residence at Oxford contributed to ad- 

 vance both his reputation and learning; he had access to 

 the manuscript treasures of the Bodleian library, and became 

 intimate with several distinguished members of the univer- 

 sity, especially Mill, the celebrated editor of the Greek Tes- 

 tamfnt. and Bernard, then Savilian Professor. A series of 

 his letters to and from the latter is published in the Museum 

 urn, v. ii. p. 333. At this time he meditated two very 

 laborious undertakings : a complete collection of ' Frag- 

 mento of the Greek Poets,' and an edition of the three 

 priooipal Greek lexicographers, Hesychius, Suidas, and the 

 Jffymotogicum Mugnum, to be printed in parallel columns 

 in tin; same page. Neither scheme, however, was carried 

 into effect. To the edition of Callimachus, published by 

 Grtovius in 1697, Bentley contributed a collection of the 

 fragments of that poet. But his reputation for scholarship 

 was established by a performance of much more con lined 

 nature a dissertation on an obscure chronicler, named Ma- 

 lalas. which was published as an Appendix to Dr. Mill's 

 edition of the author, in 1C9I. [See MALALAS. MII.I..] 

 This showed such an intimate acquaintance with Greek 

 literature, especially the drama, that it drew the eyes of 

 foreign as well as British scholars upon him, and obtained a 

 warm tribute of admiration from the great critics, Gravius 

 and Spanheim, to this new and brilliant star of British lite- 

 rature. 



Bentley was ordained deacon in March 1G90. In 1692 he 

 obtained the first nomination to the lectureship newly 

 founded under the will of Mr. Boyle, in defence of religion, 

 natural and revealed. [See BOYLB, ROBERT.] He spared no 

 labour to improve this opportunity of establishing his repu- 

 tation as a divine. He chose for his subject the confuta- 

 tion of atheism : directing his arguments more especially 

 against the system of Hobbes, of which, he says, ' the 

 taverns and coffee-houses, nay Westminster Hall and the 

 very churches were full.' The latter portion of the course 

 wan devoted to prove the existence of a Creator, from the 

 evidences of design in the constitution of the universe, as 

 exp'ained by Newton ; whose great discoveries, published 

 in the Principia. about six years before, were slowly re- 

 ceived by the learned, and continued a sealed book to the 

 world at large. To clear the points in which he himself 

 felt any difficulty, he entered into a correspondence with 

 Newton, whose replies were published in 1 756, by Bcntlcy's 

 nephew. These lectures were received with great applause, 

 and established the author'* reputation as a preacher. In 

 October, 1 69-2, he was rewarded with a stall at Worcester, and 

 in the following year was appointed keeper of the King's 

 Library. In 1694 he was re-appointed Boyle Lecturer, 

 and followed up his refutation of atheism by a defence of 

 Christianity against the attacks of infidels. This second 

 serie* of sermon* was never published, and at present no 

 trace of their existence can be found. In 1696 he took the 

 degree of D.D. at Cambridge; and on this occasion, in his 

 public exercise (or in academical language, his act), he 

 appeared again as a defender of revealed religion. 



.iley's appointment to the office of King's Librarian 



wa the a>f idenUl cause of his writing the celebrated Dit- 



f l'fi'i>'irit. The once famous 



between Bo)le ari'l arose Out of an 



alleged wa latter, relative t'i 



the loan of a MS. from (lie Kim;- Library to the II<>n. 



C. Boyle, an undcrguduate of Christ's Church, Oxford, of 



F remising talents, who had undertaken to edit the Eptttirs 

 tee BpvtK, CHARLES], and who resented the supposed 

 klight in a pettish passage in the preface (Jan. 1, 1695). 

 On seeing this, Bentley addressed to Boyle a courteoi; 

 planation of his conduct, expecting the offensive passage to 

 be cancelled or retracted ; but he obtained no satisfaction, 

 and was told he might seek his redress in any method ho 

 pleased. Two years elapsed before he took public notice 

 of the insult It so happened that Bentley hod made up 

 his mind that the Epistles ascribed to Phalaris were spu- 

 rious, before this quarrel occurred; and in 1697 he was 

 called on by his friend, the learned Wotton, to state the 

 grounds on which he came to that conclusion, in fulfilment 

 of a promise to that effect This he did in an Appendix to 

 the second edition of Wotton's Reflections on Antifnt <md 

 Modern Learning. At the end of it he notices the unjust 

 charge made against him by Boyle, whose performance he 

 criticises with much asperity. This work created a great 

 sensation, especially among the Christchurch men, who 

 chose to consider it as an insult to the whole society. 

 Boyle, however, seems to have been esteemed unequal to 

 avenge it; for a knot of the best scholars and wits of the 

 college united their pens to punish Bentley, not by fair ar- 

 gument, but by every artifice which wit and malice could 

 devise. Not only his learning, but bis character, literary, 

 moral, and personal, were attacked: and it is alike singular 

 and discreditable, that go virulent a hatred as was shown, in 

 this quarrel should have been excited by so slight a < 

 The joint work, in which the celebrated Atterbury was the 

 chief performer, appeared in March, 1698, and was entitled, 

 Dr. Bentley's Diisertations on the Epistles of Phalaris 

 and the Fables of jEsop examined, by the Hon. Charles 

 Boyle, Esq. It obtained such a degree of popularity, as 

 gives some reason for supposing that Bentley had already 

 made himself known and disliked for that presumptuous 

 arrogance which he displayed so remarkably in after-life. It 

 has been so long and so generally acknowledged that in 

 this controversy Bentley was triumphantly victorious, that 

 many may be surprised to hear of the extremely favourable 

 reception which the Oxford rejoinder obtained; the blo\v 

 was commonly thought fatal to Bentley 's reputation as a 

 scholar. 



A number of lampoons and attacks of various sorts were 

 made upon him, of which Swift's Battle of the Books is the 

 only one which has obtained celebrity. Bentley was in no 

 hurry to reply to the storm of ridicule and abuse which as- 

 sailed him on all sides : it was his maxim, he said, that no 

 man was ever written out of reputation, except by himself. 

 He therefore took time to mature his answer, and in thr be- 

 ginning of 1 699 published his enlarged Dissertations on the 

 Epistles of Phalaris, which has finally set at rest the ques- 

 tion in dispute. This, however, is the least part of the. 

 merits of the work. Professedly controversial, il embodies a 

 mass of accurate information relative to historical facts, an- 

 tiquities, chronology, and philology, such as we may safely 

 say, has rarely been collected in the same space : and the 

 reader cannot fail to admire the ingenuity with which thin;:* 

 apparently trilling, or foreign to the point in question, are 

 made effective in illustrating or proving the author s views. 

 Nothing shows so well how thoroughly digested and familiar 

 was the vast stock of reading which Bentley possessed. The 

 banter and ridicule of his opponents are returned with inte- 

 rest, and the reader is reconciled to what might seem to savour 

 too much of arrogance and the bitterness of controversy, by 

 a sense of the strong provocation given to the author. War- 

 burton, no friend to Bentley, said that he had beat the Ox- 

 ford men at their own weapons. The Oxford champions 

 expressed their intention to reply, but they probably felt their 

 ground to be cut from under their feet, for they published 

 no answer; nor was Bentley again called into the field 

 by any worthy antagonist. 



At the end of the Dissertation on Phalaris Bcntloy ex 

 amines and denies the authenticity of the epistli > ascribed 

 tn Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides, and others. He also 

 denies the genuineness of the fables which bear vKsop's 

 name (as to their form, entirely, as to their substance, in a 

 jrn-at measure), and traces the ^Esopean (\lau>iriioi fiii8ot) 

 Kaliles through a number of hands down to the rompar.i- 

 tivc'y modern and corrupt prose version now exiant. [See 

 yfisci 1 and BABRUTS.] 



On the first of February, 1700. Bentley, by the gift of tho 

 rrown, was instituted Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 

 and resigned his stall at Worcester in consequence of that ap- 



