Of this most learned and pugnacious individual, the present Bishop of Gloucester (Dr. Monk), who has cultivated similar studies, has written a most elaborate life. From the Bishop's ample details, and other sources of information, we shall endeavour to give a condensed and accurate view of Bentley's personal and literary history.

RICHARD BENTLEY was born at Oulton, a village near Leeds, in Yorkshire, on the 27th of January, 1662. His lineage was neither so high, nor so low, as it has sometimes been represented. His progenitors were of that respectable class which has supplied every profession with many of its brightest ornaments, the higher description of English yeomen. They had been settled for some generations at Heptonstall, a village about eight miles from Halifax, where they possessed property. During the civil wars, his grandfather, James Bentley, a captain in the Royal army, was taken by the enemy, and died a prisoner in Pontefract Castle. His father, Thomas Bentley, possessed a small estate at Woodlesford, in the parish of Rothwell. In the year 1661, he married Sarah, daughter of Richard Willie, a stone-mason, at Oulton, and the first offspring of their union was the subject of this memoir.

For the first elements of classical learning, he is said to have been indebted to his mother, who is represented to have been a woman of an excellent understanding. He was then sent to a day-school in the neighbouring hamlet of Methley, and afterwards to the grammar school at Wakefield. Cumberland says, that "he went through the school with singular reputation." It appears that Mr. Jeremiah Boulton was the master of Wakefield school until April, 1672, when a Mr. John Baskerville succeeded him. Of this gentleman, to whom the principal credit of Bentley's education must belong, nothing is known, but that he was of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and presided in the school at Wakefield till his death, in 1681. Not to name the school, or the masters of men illustrious for literature, has been justly called by Dr. Johnson, “a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished." For the place of his education, Bentley testified throughout life the greatest attachment, and extended to persons coming from that seminary, his encouragement and patronage.

At the time of Bentley's birth, his father was considerably advanced in life, but his mother was only nineteen. They had four children younger than himself, of whom only two, Ann and Joseph, survived their infancy. When he was thirteen years old his father died, leaving his property at Woodlesford to his eldest son, James, the offspring, as it appears, of a former marriage. Richard was committed to the care of his grandfather Willie, who determined upon sending him to the University. He was admitted, at Cambridge, a Subsizar of St. John's

College, under the tuition of the Rev. Joseph Johnston. The master of the college was Dr. Francis Turner, afterwards Bishop of Ely. Of the peculiar direction of Bentley's academical studies, no record has been preserved. That he then laid the foundation of his accurate and extensive knowledge of the classics, and attained that nice perception of their poetical measures, for which he stands unrivalled, cannot be doubted.

The academical prizes which now serve to stimulate the exertions of students, had, at that period, no existence; but it is necessary to recollect, that a mind constituted like that of Bentley's required no stimulus of this nature. Youthful genius, when it enters upon its proper career, proceeds with an impulse that seems to be instinctive; and not unfrequently nourishes a secret contempt for all those objects which are most attractive to minds of a secondary mould. Bentley, who was never oppressed with a distrust of his own powers or attainments, must speedily have felt a consciousness of superiority over all his classical instructors; and, like every other scholar who makes any bold excursions beyond the common limits, he must, to a great extent, have been his own preceptor.

Having continued at college for upwards of two years, he became a scholar on the foundation of Dr Downman, and at the expiration of the third year, he succeeded to one of the Yorkshire scholarships, founded by Sir Marmaduke Constable. At the regular period he commenced Batchelor of Arts, in company with a greater number of students than have ever taken their degree at the same time, till the last two or three years. In the list of honours, his place corresponds with that of third wrangler, according to the present distribution. From a fellowship of his college he was excluded by a provision in the statutes, which prohibits more than two fellows being chosen from the same county. He was, however, appointed head master of the Grammar-school at Spald ing, in Lincolnshire. The commission of so important a trust to a youth, who had only completed the twentieth year of his age, is not merely a testimony of his scholarship, but implies an opinion favourable to his general character. On attaining the age of majority, he disposed of his interest in the Oulton property to his brother James, and the money thus procured he devoted to the purchase of books, which are not less necessary to a scholar, than tools to a carpenter.*

The office of a country schoolmaster generally fixes the destiny of

For particulars relative to the Oulton property, Bentley's ancestors, and other matters connected with the place of his nativity, Dr. Monk acknowledges himself indebted to his friend John Blaydes, Esq., Jun., whose father is possessed of the property in question.

its possessor for life, and forces him to be contented with the humble, but honourable fame to be acquired in the discharge of its duties. But Bentley was designed for a different sphere: he did not preside over the school more than a twelvemonth,-too short a period to afford means of estimating his merits as an instructor, and scarcely sufficient to place his name upon record in that capacity.

He next accepted the office of domestic tutor to the son of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Paul's. For this appointment he was indebted to St. John's College, of which the Dean had been a Fellow. To a young man of talents and merit, hardly any situation could have been more advantageous. It was not only favourable to the cultivation of his talents, but to the views of advancement in the clerical profession.

Bentley took his degree of Master of Arts in July, 1683, after which his personal connection with Cambridge was discontinued for the space of seventeen years. In the mean time, prosecuting his studies with all the advantages of books and literary society, he amassed and digested that prodigious fund of knowledge, which displays itself in his earliest publications.

The Revolution of eighty-eight, among various greater and lesser consequences, produced a new batch of Bishops, to supply the sees vacated by the scrupulous Non-jurors, who, though of stout spirits, were of timid consciences, and, after braving the wrath of a bigot in prosperity, preserved unbroken allegiance to a monarch in exile, spite of the metaphysical figment of the original contract, and the audacious falsehood about the warming pan. Many may doubt whether they acted wisely;-none will deny that they thought nobly. Well had it been, had this secession, or deprivation, produced no worse effects than the promotion of Stillingfleet to the diocese of Worcester, for he was a man whose massive erudition, and sound book-mindedness, were edified by piety, and illumined by good sense. About the same time, Bentley, with his pupil, the younger Stillingfleet, removed to Oxford, and was incorporated Master of Arts, July 4th, 1689, being admitted of Wadham College. Whatever of living learning Oxford had then to boast, was doubtless assiduously sought out by Bentley, but his favourite companions were the MSS. of the Bodleian, and its weighty volumes, the silent language of the dead.

In the ardour of youthful ambition, Bentley projected editions of the Greek grammarians, and Latin poets. The project which he contemplated as the foundation of his fame, was a complete collection of the fragments of the Greek poets; "an undertaking," as Dr. Monk remarks, "the magnitude and difficulty of which those only can appreciate, who

have endeavoured to collect the quotations of any one poet, scattered through the whole range of classical authors, as well as of grammarians, scholiasts, and lexicographers." This work, however, he never executed, but of his competency for such a task, he has left sufficient evidence in his collection of the fragments of Callimachus, afterwards communicated to Grævius. At the suggestion, as it is supposed, of the very learned Bishop Lloyd, he undertook the stupendous task of publishing a complete edition of the Greek Lexicographers; but where so much is attempted, little is often accomplished. The general design, which was too vast to be properly executed by one individual, appears to have been abandoned after a short' interval; but it is much to be regretted that he did not publish an edition of Hesychius, an author in whom he professes to have made upwards of five thousand corrections. Of his familiarity with this lexicographer, he exhibited a sufficient specimen in his earliest publication, subjoined to Dr. Hody's edition of the chronicle of Joannes Malela Antiochenus, which was printed at Oxford in the year 1691. "The various and accurate learning, and the astonishing sagacity displayed in his epistle to Mill," says Dr. Monk, "attracted the attention of every person capable of judging upon such subjects. The originality of Bentley's style, the boldness of his opinions, and his secure reliance upon unfailing stores of learning, all marked him out as a scholar to be ranked with Scaliger, Casaubon, and Gataker." Such was the production which established the fame of Bentley, at the age of twenty-nine, in the highest rank of literary eminence; and from that moment the eyes of every scholar in Europe were fixed upon his operations. "Great is the number of persons who have since appeared with success in this department,” continues Dr. Monk, "it would not be easy to name a critical essay, which for accuracy, ingenuity, and original learning, can take place of the "Appendix to Malelas."

Bentley's next appearance before the public was in the character of a divine. He had received deacon's orders from Compton, Bishop of London, in the year 1690, and soon afterwards was appointed one of the Bishop of Worcester's chaplains.

The Honourable ROBERT BOYLE died on the 30th of December, 1691. Wishing that at his death, he might promote the same cause to which he had devoted his life, he bequeathed by his will, a salary of £50 a year, to found a lectureship for the defence of religion, against infidels. The lecturer was to be chosen annually, and to deliver eight discourses in the year, in one of the churches of the metropolis. The care of the trust was bequeathed to four trustees, who forthwith nominated Mr. Bentley lecturer for the first year. We can hardly conceive a greater

compliment to the merits of a young man only in deacon's orders, than the selection of him from the whole clerical profession, as the champion of the faith delivered down by the Apostles. He mentions this distinction at different periods of his life, in such terms as to shew that he considered it the greatest honour with which he was ever invested. The eight discourses which he preached in consequence of this appointment, are in a great degree directed against the principles of Hobbes and Spinoza. According to Dr. Monk, "Bentley claims the undoubted merit of having in these sermons been the first to display the discoveries of NEWTON, in a popular form, and to explain their irresistible force in the proof of a Deity." Before he ventured to print his lectures, he consulted that great philosopher, respecting some of the arguments he had founded upon those discoveries; and his different queries were answered in four letters. Newton's Letters on this occasion have been long before the public; they commence with two remarkable declarations, the object of which he had in view while writing his immortal work, and a disavowal of that intuitive genius for which the world gave him credit; he says, "when I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men, for the belief of a Deity, and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the public any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought."

Bentley's reputation for talent and learning was greatly augmented by the publication of his lectures; of which the sixth edition, including other three discourses, was printed at Cambridge in the year 1735. The lectures were translated into Latin by Jablouski, who was himself a writer of distinguished learning. Nor did the merit of the author remain without its reward: in the year 1692, soon after he had taken priest's orders, he obtained a Prebend in the cathedral of Worcester; and in the course of the following year, he succeeded Henry de Justel, as keeper of the King's Library. Such was the auspicious commencement of Boyle's Lectures, an institution to which we owe some of the ablest theological pieces in our language; among which we may mention "Clarke's Discourses on the Being and Attributes of God," and "Newton's Dissertation on the Prophecies."

The reputation which Bentley had now acquired was not unattended with its usual consequences, envy and detraction. The envy produced by Bentley's endowments, was increased by a certain haughtiness discoverable in his conversation and demeanour. There was a traditional anecdote current during his life, which shews the opinions prevalent upon this subject. It is that "a nobleman dining at his patron's, and happenning to sit next to Bentley, was so much struck with his infor