as a Grecian editor, and the still more egregious folly of supposing his blunders sacred, and of expecting to silence criticism by bullying. As soon as the "Emendations" appeared, the author was immediately detected amid the small band of Greek scholars. Most likely he only disguised his name for the pleasure of hearing it guessed. It was agreeable to be told that he must have written the book because nobody else could have written it. In three weeks not a copy remained unsold, a proof of popularity almost unparalelled in the annals of classic lore; which arose less from the merit of the work itself, great as it may be, than from the delight which the literati experienced in the humiliation of one whose critical censures they had long dreaded. Yet if Le Clerc had few friends, Bentley had many enemies. Old Gronovius, who impartially hated both, issued a diatribe, entitled "Infamia Emendationum in Menandrum nuper editarum." Bergler, whose Greek learning was really considerable, reviewed the controversy in the Leipsic Acta Eruditorum, in a mild conciliatory spirit, and John Cornelius de Pauw, of Utrecht, an unfortunate scholar, whose name we have never seen, in latin or English, uncoupled with terms of vituperation, reviled Phileleutherus in a production to which, in allusion to the grasping disposition of his adversary, he subscribes the subriquet of Philargyrius Cantabrigiensis,-Love-Gold, of Cambridge. To this composition, which is said to be abusive even beyond the usual measure of scholastic virulence, Le Clerc, who would have acted wisely to withdraw from a contest in which he could never recover his laurels, added a preface, and Salvini, the Florentine, appended some feeble notes. To none of these retorts did Bentley deign a reply.

At length, on the 8th of December, the great critic put the last hand to his Horace, just in time to lay it at the feet of Lord Oxford, in a dedication, which formed the first public proof of his adherence to the victorious tories. It was originally intended for Lord Halifax, but before the time of publication, Halifax had ceased to be a minister, and Harley had succeeded to the vacant place of patron, which then seemed essential to the formation of a cabinet. To Harley, then, was Horace given, with an address, not much more adulatory than custom authorised. In one respect, the topic of compliment was well chosen. Harley, not content to owe his earldom of Oxford to his political service, claimed descent from the Veres and Mortimers, the feudal possessors of that peerage, and Bentley took care to humour him in this vanity. Whether the genealogical pretensions of the Lord Treasurer were just or not, is of little consequence: certainly Bolingbroke, the colleague of his triumph, and partaker of his subsequent persecutions, treated them with ridicule “as mere

jovial inspirations from the fumes of claret;" but perhaps Harley was rather the honester man of the two. This change in Bentley's political connexions did not escape chastisement from Pope, or his understrapper, the annotator of the Dunciad, who makes it the ground of a most unprovoked attack on his nephew Thomas, who is thus mentioned in the remark on verse 205, Book 2:

"Bentley his mouth with classic flattery ope's,

And the puff'd orator bursts out in Tropes.

"Not spoken of the famous Doctor Richard Bentley, but of one Thomas Bentley, a small critic, who aped his uncle in a little Horace. The great one was intended to be dedicated to Lord Halifax, but the ministry changing, it was given to Lord Oxford. So the little Horace was dedicated to his son, the Lord Harley." It may be added, that this sarcasm propably asserts an untruth; ten to one, it was Richard Bentley whom Pope intended all the while.

The appearance of Horace was the signal for a fresh list of animadverters to direct their shafts against the editor. Among these, the most humourous was his old adversary, Dr. King, a very small poet, whose vulgar trash still occupies a place in collections from which Sidney, Marvell, and a hundred worthier names are excluded. His tirade on this occasion is not void of drollery. It describes Horace as visiting England according to his own prophecy, and taking up his abode in Trinity College, where he puts all to confusion,-consumes immoderate quantities of college bread and ale, and grows immensely fat. Epicuri de greqe porcus. But Bentley had more formidable antagonists.-John Ker, and Johnson of Nottingham, two schoolmasters, attacked his Latinity, which, though vigorous and Roman in the mould of the sentences and cast of thought, sometimes admitted words and expressions of doubtful purity. Alexander Cunningham, a learned Scotchman, resident at the Hague, at a later period, directed his attacks, which were not to be despised, against the temerity of Bentley's Emendations. Few persons will be much interested in the origin, the ins and outs, or even the right and wrong of these paper For poor Schoolmasters, like Ker and Johnson, it was a good mode of advertising their academies, to appear before the world as adversaries of Bentley. Ker, moreover, was a dissenter, and, as such, apprehensive of the high church party, to which Bentley had just proclaimed his adhesion.

wars.

If however, the publication of the Horace exposed the editor to much ridicule and some just criticism, it procured him the most flattering testimonials from the learned both at home and abroad. Among others, Atterbury, the old antagonist of our critic, then dean of Christ Church,

was among the first to offer his congratulations in a neat and brief epistle, in which, after thanking Bentley for his "noble present," and expressing his obligations for the great pleasure and instruction he had received from that excellent performance, he confesses "the uneasiness he felt when he found how many things in Horace there were, which after thirty years acquaintance with him, he did not understand." Atterbury was a courtier, and knew well how much flattery man will bear. It is pleasant to remark that the Phalaris controversy, so profitable to literature, left no rankling stings in the minds of those by whom it was conducted. Among all the pamphlets, which for more than twenty years were levelled at Bentley's fortune and reputation, not one can be ascribed to a member of the Christ Church league. The battle had been honourably fought and fairly won: the prowess of the knights was proved, and thenceforth they lived on terms of courtesy, if not of friendship.

On the merits and defects of Bentley's Horace, none but the accomplished scholar can expatiate, and none but professional scholars could feel much interest in the discussion. The intrusion of the conjectural readings into the text has been censured as altogether unwarrantable. Many of them go to crop the most delicate flowers of Horatian fancy, and sheer away the love-locks which the world has doated on. The value of the work consists in the extraordinary display of learning and ingenuity which the defence of these innovations called forth, in the skilful allegation of parallel passages; in the wonderful adroitness with which every line and every letter that supports the proposed change is hunted out from the obscurest corners of Roman literature, and made to bear on the case in point, and in the logical dexterity with which apparent objections are turned into confirmations. Vast as was Bentley's reading, none of it was superfluous, for he turns it all to account; his felicity in fixing his eye at once on what he needed, in always finding the evidence that he wanted, often where no one else would have thought of looking for it, is almost preturnatural. His learning suggested all the phrases that might be admitted in any given passage; but his taste did not always lead him to select the best.

Shortly after the completion of the Horace, the Doctor's erudition was employed in a service of more general interest, and more intimately connected with his sacred profession. A certain small party were industriously conspiring to bring out infidelity in a more pleasing and popular form than it had hitherto assumed. The reveries of the Italian platonists, and the metaphysical subtleties of Bruno and Spinoza, were too refined and learned to be widely mischievous; the slavish politics of Hobbes made his hard-headed materialism unfashionable

after the revolution, and the obscene, blaspheming Atheism of Charles the Second's revellers condemned itself to execration. Still Deism, which even under the reign of the Puritans had secretly leagued itself with Republicanism, found too many advocates; some hovered on the confines of latitudinarianism and unbelief, and others, seduced perhaps by excessive admiration of heathen writers and heathen institutions, persuaded themselves that Christianity, whether true or false, was not necessary either to the perfection of the individual, or the welfare of society. Well knowing that if the conscience were once relieved from the obligation of believing, no proof nor evidence would long constrain the understanding to assent, the revolters against revelation took upon themselves the title of Free-thinkers, and wrote and spoke to set forth the duty and expediency of liberating the thinking faculty from the tyranny of creeds and dogmata. They also dwelt much upon the intrinsic excellence, the bliss and loveliness of virtue, and its fitness to the nature of man, the necessary benevolence of the Deity, and the like topics, which do not read so very unlike Christianity, as to alarm the simple pious, though they do implicitly destroy the foundations, by disowning the necessity of the Christian scheme. Such at least were the doctrines of Shaftesbury, the most elegant writer, and the most philosophic mind of the whole fraternity; whose opinions, on subjects purely philosophic, are worthy of respect. Others, there doubtless were, who addressed themselves to a lower rank of intellect, and maintained the natural indifference, or the irresponsible fatality of actions. Among those free-thinkers, who prided themselves on keeping terms with morality, was Anthony Collins, a man of fortune and fashion; and unlike the herd of modern infidels, a gentleman altogether presentable; whose plausible address and ready talents had formerly gained the confidence of Locke. He had also a shewy second-hand acquaintance with the ancient writers, which made him the oracle of a small society which met at the Grecian Coffee-house, near Temple-bar. Early in 1713, appeared Mr. Collins's "Discourse of Free-thinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect called Free-thinkers." The book created a great sensation. It was, of course, extolled by such as openly professed, or covertly inclined to the opinions of the author, and was probably even more admired by the cowardly and unwilling believers; for there is nothing so great as an infidel in the eyes of those that would be infidels if they dare. Even sound christians are apt to exaggerate the talents of their opponents: and moreover there is always a strong prejudice in favour of audacity; and ever will be, as long as fear-not love,-slavish acquiescence, not rational conviction, (which pre-supposes true freethinking,)—are made the basis of moral and religious education. Collins's

book is said, by those who have read it, to be discreditable in a literary point of view; composed of rash assertions and flimsy sophisms, thickly fenced with garbled quotations and misinterpretations of Plato, Cicero, and other ancient writers, whom by a most absurd anachronism, or yet absurder equivoque, he would prove to have been free-thinkers. It was this affectation of reading and scholarship that called Bentley into the field.* Under his old signature of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, he encountered and demolished the infidels, and made the Christian alarmists ashamed of their fears.

Bentley had in fact, but little to do. For a scholar, to whom every relic of antiquity was familiar as Propria quæ Maribus to a Master of the lower form, to convict a half learned and dishonest småtterer of false citation and misapplication, was child's play. But, in the course of his examinations, he had an opportunity of doing Christianity a real service. The recent labours of Dr. Mill to rectify the text of the Greek Testament had brought to light a body of thirty thousand various readings; a discovery by which many of the weak brethren were frightened, as if a fatal flaw had been detected in the title deeds of their everlasting inheritance. It is easy to conceive what use a Collins would make of these discrepancies; and Protestantism would not submit to an authority like that of the Council of Trent, which gave an ex-post-facto sanctity to the Vulgate, with all its errors on its head. But Bentley re-assured the faith of the fearful, by shewing that an immense majority of these variations did not affect the sense at all, and that none disturbed any cardinal doctrine. Collins was not even an honest man, for he reprinted his work in Holland, purified from the gross cases of ignorance exposed by Bentley, and then circulating this expurgate edition, (which he had taken care to mask by a false title page,) in England, he persuaded his party that the passages in question were forgeries of

* Besides Bentley, Collins was answered by Hoadley, and by Whiston; the pretence of free-thinking was exposed by Berkeley, (afterwards Bishop of Cloyne,) in the third number of the Guardian; and Ibbot, a chaplain to Arch-bishop Tenison, made the confutation of his discourse the subject of his Boylean Lectures. Swift, who probably despised Antony's shallowness, more than he abhorred his irreligion, gave an "Abstract," in which the arguments of Collins, and his invectives against the highchurch clergy are exhibited in an improved style, and without the pedantic quotations which fill more than half of the original work. This plain statement, which displays the tenets of the free-thinkers in their true and naked proportions, he delivers in the character of a Whig, thus identifying Whiggism and Infidelity, in order to cast odium on his political opponents: a most unfair manoeuvre, though executed with the Dean's accustomed success.

A full examination and exposure of Collins's book may be found in Leland's "Deistical Writers."