Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/258

Bensley bestows on the actor, since in that year a William Bensley, Esq., possibly belonging to the family of printers, died at Stanmore. According to the custom, eminently regrettable from a biographical point of view, of playbills and of early writers on the stage, Bensley is always described as Mr. Bensley.

In the account furnished in the catalogue raisonnée of the Mathews' Gallery of theatrical pictures exhibited in 1833 at the Queen's Bazaar in Oxford Street, one portrait of the actor, by Mortimer (as Hubert to the King John of Powell), and two by Dewilde (as Oakley in the 'Jealous Wife,' and Harold in the 'Battle of Hasting'), are given, but he is there spoken of as Richard Bensley. That his name was William Bensley is positively asserted in 'Notes and Queries' (6th S. x. 273). The question is set at rest, however, by a letter to Gurrick printed in the 'Garrick Correspondence' (London, 1831, ii. 73-4), which is signed Robert Bensley. Doubt is thus thrown upon the assertions that are made as to the place and period of his death, both of which at this time are practically unknown. In spite of a habit of boasting which led Bannister, according to the 'Records of a Stage Veteran,' 1836, to bring him into signal ridicule by counting up in a public address all the actions at which Bensley claimed to have been present, and by drawing thence the inference that he 'carried a stand of colours when only eighteen months old,' Bensley apppears to have been a respectable character and a sound actor. The praise of Charles Lamb is probably excessive. Lamb declares that of all the actors of his time 'Bensley had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions.... He had the true poetical enthusiasm, the rarest faculty among players. None that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.' Against this estimate may be placed that of the 'Dramatic Censor,' ii. 491, in which it is stated that 'his person is slight, his features contracted and peevish, his deportment falsely consequential, his action mostly extravagant, and his voice rather harsh.' These qualities would, of course, fit him to play Malvolio, his great character, of which Boaden (Life of Jordan) says that he was perfection, while George Colman (Random Records) declares that it was beyond all competition. O'Keefe, ii. 9, declares that Bensley, whom he often met at Colman's, was 'an exceedingly well-informed, sensible man,' and adds that 'as an actor he was most correct to the words and understood his author.' The 'Theatrical Biography,' writing with obviously unfriendly animus, says he is no actor at all. Campbell (Life of Siddons) speaks of his 'ungainly solemnity of action' and 'nasal pronunciation.' Biensley appears to have been a man of more than ordinary intelligence, who combatted with difficulty serious physical disqualifications. He is said to have married a lady with whom he fell in love in consequence of being the accidental cause of her being thrown from her horse.

[Genest's Account of the Stage; Doran's Their Majesties' Servants; Thespian Dictionary; authorities already cited.]  BENSLEY, THOMAS (d. 1833), printer, is known by his own productions and by certain mechanical adjustments (adopted by the 'Times' in 1814). His offices in Bolt Court were the same which had previously been occupied by Edward Allen, the friend of Johnson. Here he printed Macklin's folio Bible in seven volumes (1800), Hume's 'History of England,' an octavo Shakespeare, and 'The Posthumous Letters of William Huntington' (1822), which he also edited in part. In a preface to this work he complains of a fire which had destroyed his premises, with much of his valuable stock; and it appears that he was burned out on two separate occasions, suffering considerably thereby. Bensley seems to have been a steady man of business, enduring the heavy burdens imposed upon him by his patriotism and preserving a stolid, imperturbable, if fantastic and somewhat unintelligent religious faith. Bensley was one of the acting trustees of Providence Chapel, in Gray's Inn Lane, under the ministration of the notorious 'Coal-heaver Saint' [see ]; and though the maintenance of this chapel was mainly due to the generosity of the wealthy widow of a city alderman, Bensley did his part in defraying the working expenses, and helped to raise a handsome monument by Westmacott on the death of Huntington in 1813. Testimony is borne to his charitable disposition in the preface to a work by his son Benjamin, entitled 'Lost and Found,' which records the conviction and repentance of a young Birmingham engraver, sentenced to penal servitude for the forgery of Bank of England notes. Thomas Bensley had shown much kindness to this young man after his conviction, and had assisted to support his wife and child, referring to which his son writes: 'I might here say much of that parent of whose life this affair always seemed to me to present one of the brightest pages.... That father's fame