BENTLEY

[Richard Bentley was born in 1662: educated at Wakefield Grammar School, whence he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, at the age of fourteen and after taking his degree became tutor in the family of Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul's. He took orders in 1690, and in 1691 wrote his Latin letter to Dr. Mill, on the Chronicle of Malelas, which marked him out as the first scholar of his day. In this and the following year he delivered the first course of the Boyle lectures in defence of Christianity, and in its preparation, mastered, with singular power, the leading points in Newton's system. He was appointed keeper of the Royal Libraries in 1694, and after being concerned in the controversy between Temple and Boyle on the one side and Wotton on the other, in regard to the so-called Letters of Phalaris, he was appointed Master of Trinity, Cambridge, in 1699. one long struggle between himself and the Fellows. his Horace in 1726 his Terence: and in 1732 a critical edition of Paradise Lost. He died in 1742.]

His career there was In 1711 he published

BENTLEY'S title to fame is based on his work as a grammarian, a commentator, and a critic: but notwithstanding singular aberrations of taste (which are seen chiefly in his emendations on Horace and Milton), his work in that field is so consummate, and it so completely out-distanced that of all his contemporaries, that it has gained for him an indisputable place in our literary annals. As a scholar, his chief work was a critical emendation of the classical texts. His aim was not so much to catch the beauties of form as to attain to rigid and logical accuracy. To this end he furnished himself, by enormous industry, with an apparatus of knowledge to which none of his contemporaries could pretend ; and he was able to apply this with all the vigour of a mind singularly alert and elastic, and a most incisive logical faculty. For the slovenly scholarship which thought it was enough to catch something of the spirit and motive underlying the masterpieces of classical antiquity, he had no tolerance and no patience and his controversial methods are often rough and merciless, but always

lively, vigorous, and masterful. They are seen at their best in the Dissertation upon Phalaris, which was his contribution to the controversy on the merits of ancients and moderns: and in his Remarks on the Discourse of Free-thinking (by Collins-the luckless sceptic who found himself the butt at once of Swift's sarcasm and of Bentley's argument).

Bentley, like some of the scholars of an earlier age, prompted perhaps by the desire to avoid any classical pedantry, affected a style which was homely and colloquial even to the verge of vulgarity. He was accused by his opponents of " descending to low and mean ways of speech," and the accusation is not entirely unjust. But as Professor Jebb says, "his style is thoroughly individual it is, in fact, the man (His English) 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."

H. CRAIK.

AN APOLOGY FOR RESENTMENT

I WILL here crave the reader's leave to make one general apology for anything, either in my Dissertation or my Defence of it, that may seem too severe. I desire but this favour, or justice rather, that he would suppose my case to be his own: and then, if he will say sincerely, that he should have answered so many calumnies with fewer marks of resentment, I am content to lie under his censure. But it is a very difficult thing for a person unconcerned and out of the reach of harm, to be a fair arbitrator here. He will be apt to think the injured party too angry; because he cannot have as great a passion in seeing the ill-usage, as the other has in feeling it. Even Job himself, with all his patience, was accused of losing his temper by his companions that had no share in his sufferings. Besides, there is a common fault in human nature, which I crave leave to express in Greek, étiɣaipekakía. There is a secret pleasure, they say, in seeing another man under the risk of a shipwreck, while one's self is safe on the shore; and so we find the world is delighted to see one worried and run down, while themselves are made the spectators, and entertained with the diversion. 'Twas an excellent saying of Solon's, and worthy of the wisest of the famous seven; who, when he was asked, Πῶς ἥκιστα ἀδικοῖεν οἱ ἄνθρωποι; What would rid the world of injuries? If the bystanders, says he, would have the same resentment with those that suffer the wrong; Ei oμoíws ἄχθοιντο τοῖς ἀδικουμένοις οἱ μὴ ἀδικούμενοι. If the reader will but follow that great man's advice, and have an equal sense of ill-usage as if it had fallen upon himself; I dare then challenge him to think, if he can, that I have used too much severity.

I do not love the unmanly work of making long complaints of injuries; which, I think, is the next fault to deserving them. Much less will I imitate Mr. B.,1 who has raked together those few words of my Dissertation that had the least air of resentment, 1 Mr. Boyle.

and repeated them six times over. For, if I was to enter into the particulars of his abuses, I must transcribe his whole book, which from beginning to end, is nothing else but a rhapsody of errors and calumnies.

But there is one rudeness that I ought not to omit; because it falls upon others as much as myself. I am satisfied, says he, how unnatural a step it is for an amanuensis to start up professor of divinity. I am persuaded every ingenuous reader must be offended at his insolence who could suffer such stuff as this to come out of his mouth; which is a double affront, both to the whole order of bishops, and to a whole University. As if a person, who in his youth had been an amanuensis to a bishop, was upon that account made unfit to be Doctor of Divinity; as if a whole University, which was pleased to confer that degree upon him, were neither fit judges of his merit, nor knew their own duty.

I should never account it any disgrace to have served the Right Reverend the Bishop of Worcester in any capacity of a scholar. But I was never amanuensis to his lordship nor to anybody else; neither did his lordship ever make use of any amanuensis: so little regard has this examiner either to decency or truth. I was tutor to his lordship's son, and afterwards chaplain to himself; and I shall always esteem it both my honour and my happiness to have spent fourteen years of my life in his family and acquaintance, whom even envy itself will allow to be the glory of our church and nation; who, by his vast and comprehensive genius, is as great in all parts of learning as the greatest next himself are in any. And I have the satisfaction to believe, that this excellent person has not the worse opinion of my probity or my learning, for all the calumnies that the examiner has cast upon me.

As for the general character that Mr. B. endeavours to fix upon me, that I have no learning, no judgment, no reasoning, no knowledge in books, except indexes and vocabularies, with many other expressions of the utmost contempt, that make up the greatest part of his book; I do not think myself concerned to answer them. These things shall never make a dispute between us; he shall be as great as he thinks himself, and I as little as he thinks me. But then it will lie upon him to dispute with some other persons, who have been pleased to declare publicly such an esteem of me and my writings, as does not altogether agree with Mr. B.'s.

(From the Preface to the Dissertation on Phalaris.)

THE COMMONPLACES OF SCEPTICISM

AND now we come to a new argument, from the conduct of the priests; which by a tedious induction is branched out into ten instances, and takes up half a hundred pages.

will be the grand result?

And what

Nae iste hercle magno jam conatu magnas nugas dixerit.

The sum of it is no more than this: the priests cannot agree among themselves about several points of doctrine, the attributes of God, the canon of Scripture, etc.; and therefore I will be of no religion at all. This threadbare obsolete stuff, the most obvious surmise that any wavering fool catches at when he first warps towards atheism, is dressed up here as if it was some new and formidable business.

What great feats can our author now promise himself from this; which, after it has been tried age after age, never had influence on mankind either in religious concerns or common life? Till all agree, I'll stand neuter. Very well; and till all the world speaks one language, pray be you mute and say nothing. It were much the wiser way, than to talk as you have done! By this rule, the Roman gentry were to learn no philosophy at all, till the Greeks could unite into one sect; nor make use of any physician, till the empirics and methodists concurred in their way of practice. How came Christianity to begin, since the objection now brought to pull it down was as visible and potent then as now? or how has it subsisted so long, since all the present discord in opinions does not near amount to the sum of what Epiphanius alone collected above a thousand years ago? Nay, how came our author's new sect to be rising and growing, since the atheists are as much at variance among themselves, and can settle and centre in nothing? Or, if they should resolve to conspire in one certain system, they would be atheists indeed still, but they would lose the title of free-thinkers.

This is the total of his long induction; but let us see his conduct in the parts of it. Some fathers thought God to be material; this he has said, and I have answered before in remark the 10th. Several ancient Christian priests of Egypt were so gross as to conceive God to be in the shape of a man.