Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/596

578 for his successor. He died suddenly, however, before the election took place. His principal works are, Delia Guerra diFiandria, 1632-39 ; Relazioni di G. Bentivoglio in tempo delle sue Nunziature di Fiandria e di Francia, 1631 ; Memorie, 1648; Lettere, 1631.  BENTLEY, (born, 1662; died, 1742), was born at Oulton, a township in the parish of Rothwell, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His grandfather had suffered in person and estate in the royal cause, and the family were in consequence in reduced circumstances. Bentley s mother, the daughter of a stonemason in Oulton, was a woman of excellent understanding and some educa tion, as she was able to give her son his first lessons in Latin. From the grammar school of Wakefield Richard Bentley passed to St John s College, Cambridge, being admitted subsizar in 1676. He afterwards obtained a scholarship, but never succeeded to a fellowship, being appointed by his college, before he was twenty-one, head master of Spalding grammar school. In this post he did not remain long, being selected by Dr Stillingfleet, Dean of St Paul s, to be domestic tutor to his son. This appoint ment introduced Bentley at once to the society of the most eminent men of the day. threw open to him the best private library in England, and brought him into familiar intercourse with Dean Stillingfleet, a man of sound under standing, who had not shrunk from exploring some of the more solid and abstruse parts of ancient learning. The example of such a patron seconding his natural inclinations drew Bentley into a course of thorough reading, which, however, took a philological rather than a philosophical direction. The six years which he passed in Stillingfleet s family were employed, with the restless energy character istic of the man, in exhausting the remains of the Greek and Latin writers, and laying up those stores of knowledge upon which he afterwards drew for his various occasions. In 1689 Stillingfleet became bishop of Worcester, and Bentley s pupil went to reside at Oxford in Wadham College, accompanied by his tutor. Bentley s introduc tions, and his own merits, placed him at once on a footing of intimacy with the most distinguished scholars in the university Mill, Hody, Edward Bernard. Here he revelled in the MS. treasures of the Bodleian, Corpus, and other college libraries. He projected, and occupied himself with collections for, vast literary schemes. Among these are specially mentioned a corpus of the fragments of the Greek poets, and an edition of the Greek lexicographers. But his first publication was in connection with a writer of much inferior note. The Oxford press was about bring ing out an edition (the editio princeps) of the Chronicle of John Malalas, from the unique MS. in the Bodleian ; and the editor, Dr Mill, had requested Bentley to look through the sheets, and make any remarks on the text. This originated Bentley s Epistola ad Millium, which occupies less than one hundred pages at the end of the Oxford Malalas (e Theatro Sheldoniano, 1691, 8vo). This short tractate at once placed Bentley at the head of all living English scholars. The ease with which, by a stroke of the pen, he restores passages which had been left in hope less corruption by the editors of the Chronicle, the certainty of the emendation, and the command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill, or Chilmead. To the small circle of classical students it was at once apparent that there had arisen in England a critic, whose attain ments were not to be measured by the ordinary academical standard, but whom these few pages had sufficed to place by the side of the great Grecians of a former age. Un fortunately this mastery over critical science was accom panied by a tone of self-assertion and presumptuous con fidence, which not only checked admiration, but was calculated to rouse enmity. Dr Monk, indeed, Bentley s biographer, has charged him with an indecorum of which he was not guilty. &quot; In one place,&quot; writes Dr Monk, &quot; he accosts Dr Mill as w lai/vtStov, an indecorum which neither the familiarity of friendship, nor the licence of a dead language, can justify towards the dignified head of a house.&quot; But the object of Bentley s apostrophe is not his correspondent Dr Mill, but his author John Malalas, whom in another place he playfully appeals to as &quot;Syrisce.&quot; From this publication, however, dates the origin of those mixed feelings of admiration and repugnance which Bentley through his whole career continued to excite among his contemporaries. In 1G90 Bentley had taken deacon s orders in the Established Church. In 1692 he was nominated first Boyle lecturer, a nomination which was repeated in 1694. He was offered the appointment a third time in 1695, but declined it, being by that time involved in too many other undertakings. In these first series of lectures he endea vours to present the Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them into a proof of the existence of an in telligent Creator. The second series, preached in 1694, has not been published, and is believed to be lost. Scarcely was Bentley in priest s orders before he was preferred to a prebendal stall in Worcester cathedral. And, in 1693, the keepership of the royal library becoming vacant by the death of Henri dc Justel, great efforts were made by his friends to obtain the place for Bentley. But, though there was a High Church candidate (Edmund Gibson) backed by the archbishops, the court interest prevailed, and the place was given to Mr Thynne. Mr Thynne, however, wanted only the salary and not the office, and was prevailed on to cede the place to Bentley for an annuity of 130 for life, the whole emoluments being but 200 and apartments in St James s Palace. To these- preferments were added, in 1695, a royal chaplaincy, and the living of Hartlebury. He was also about the same time elected a fellow of the Royal Society. And the recognition of Continental scholars came in tho shape of a dedication, by Groevius (John George), prefixed to a dissertation of Albert Rubens, De vita Th. Mallii, published at Utrecht in 1694. While these distinctions were being accumulated upon Bentley, his energy was making itself felt in many and various directions. His first care was the royal library, the queen s library, as it was commonly called. He made great efforts to retrieve this collection from the dilapidated condition into which it had been allowed to fall. He employed the mediation of the earl of Marlborough to beg the grant of some additional rooms in the palace for the books. The rooms were granted, but Marlborough charac teristically kept them for himself. Bentley enforced the law against the publishers, and thus added to the library nearly 1000 volumes which had been neglected to be delivered. He was commissioned by the University of Cambridge to obtain Greek and Latin founts for their classical books, and he had accordingly cast, in Holland, those beautiful types which appear in the Cambridge books of that date. He assisted Evelyn in his Numismata. All Bentley s literary appearances at this time were of this accidental character. We do not find him settling down to the steady execution of any of the great projects with which he had started. He designed, indeed, in 1694, an edition of Philostratus, but easily abandoned it to Olearius, &quot;to the joy,&quot; says F. A. Wolf, &quot;of Olearius and of no one else.&quot; He supplied Graevius with collations of Cicero, and Joshua Barnes with a warning as to the spuriousness of the -Ejristles of Euripides, which was thrown away upon that blunderer, who printed the epistles and declared that no one could doubt their genuineness but a man &quot; perfrictse 