Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/871

BENTLEY. cestcr. Bentley accdiiipaniid liis pupil to Oxford, where he had full scope for the cultivation of classical studies; and that he succeeded in acquiring therc some local reputation is evinced by his luivinjj been twice appointed to deliver the Boyle Lectures (q.v. ) on the evidences of natural and revealed religion. He entered the Church, and owed to the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester various good ecclesiastical appointments, and through the same influence became librarian of the lioval Library at Saint James's. In 1090 he ])ublished his Disscrtalion upon the Epistles of riiiihiris, which established his reputation throughout Euroj^e, and may be said to have commenced a new era in .scholarship. The prin- ciples of historical criticism were then little known, and their application to establish that the so-called Epistles of Phalaris, which professed to have been written in the Si.xth Centurj' B.C., were the forgery of a period some eight centuries later, created a considerable stir in the learned world.

In 1700 Bentley was appointed master of Trin- ity College, Cambridge; and in the following year he married ills. Joanna Bernard, the daughter of a Huntingdonshire knight. The his- tory of Bentley's mastersliip of Trinity is the narrative of an unl)roken series of quarrels and litigations, provoked by his arrogance and rapac- ity, for which, it nuist be confessed, he was fully as well known during his lifetime as for his learning. He contrived, nevertheless, to get him- self appointed regius professor of divinity, and, by his boldness and perseverance, managed to jKiss scathless through all his controversies. Notwithstanding that at one time the Bishop of Ely, the visitor of Trinity, pronounced sentence depriving him of his mastership, and that at another the senate of the university pronounced a similar sentence depriving him of his academic honors, he remained in full possession of both the former and the latter till the day of his death. This stormy life did not impair his literarj' activ- ity. He edited various classics — among others, the works of Horace — upon which he bestowed vast labor. He is, however, as much celebrated for what he proposed as for what he actually per- formed. The proposal to print an edition of the Greek New Testament, in which the received text should be corrected by a careful comparison with all the existing JISS., was then singularly bold, and evoked violent opposition. He failed in carrying out his proposal; but the principles of criticism which he maintained have since been triumphantly established, and have led to im- portant results in other hands. He also called attention to the value of the digamma in the metrical study of Homer. He is to be regarded as the founder of that school of classical criti- cism of which Porson afterwards exhibited the chief excellences, as well as the chief defects; and which, though it was itself prevented by too strict attention to minute verbal detail from ever achieving much, yet diligently collected many of the facts which men of wider views have since grouped together, to foi-m the modern science of comparative philology. Bentley died in 1742, leaving behind him one son, Richard, who inher- ited nuich of his father's taste, with, however, none of his energy, and several daughters, one of whom, .Toanna, married, and was the mother of Richard Cumberland, the dramatist. Consult: .Monk, Life of Richard Bentley (London, 1833) ; and Jebb. Bcntlei/. English Jlen of Letters Series (New York, 1882).

BENTLEY, RonERT (1821-03). An English botanist; l)orn at Hitchin (Hereford). He stud- ied medicine and botany at London University, and was professor at King's College and the Lon- don Institution. He was also associate editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal, and collaborator on the English edition of Pereira's Materia Medica and Therapeutics (1854-55). His principal works are the following: A Manual of Botany (1861; frequently republished); Principal Plants Employed in Medicine (1875 et seq.; pro- fusely illustrated) ; The Student's Guide to iitruetural, Morpholoyical, and Physiological Botany (1883) ; A Text-book of Organic Materia Medica.

BEN'TON, Angelo Ames (1837—). An American clergyman, born at Canea, Crete. He graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and at the General Theological Seminary, New York. He was professor of dogmatic theology at the University of the South (1887-94), and has published The Church Cyclopaedia (1884) and the Tome of Saint Leo (1800).

BENTON, JAME.S Gilchrist (1820-81). An American soldier and inventor. He was born at Lebanon, N. H., and was graduated at West Point in 1842. He was commandant of the Charleston (S. C.) arsenal in 1853, and for sev- eral years was instructor in ordnance and gun- nery at West Point, where he perfected a wrought-iron gun-carriage for seacoast service — the first of its kind constructed in America. This carriage was immediately adopted by the Federal Government. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War. Benton was transferred to the Ord- nance Department at Washington, and in 1863 was placed in command of the Washington arsenal. In 1800 he was transferred to the national armory at Springfield, Mass., where he remained as commandant until his death. Colo- nel Benton w'as the first to determine the veloc- ity of projectiles by the use of electricity. The successive improvements in the Springfield rifle were also mainly due to his inventive skill. Among his other inventions were improved cal- ipers for inspecting shells, a velocimeter, a spring dvnamometer, an electro-ballistic pendulum, a cap-filling machine, and a reinforcing cap for cartridge-cases. He published A Course of In- struction in Ordnance and Gunnery (1873).

BENTON, Thomas Hart (1782-1858). An American statesman of the Jacksonian epoch. He was born, of good family, near Hillsborough, N. C, and on the death of his father, his mother, a woman of character and of aml)ition for her son, took the boy to Tennessee. Here he studied law and was soon elected to the Legislature, w-here he did work as a reformer. Andrew Jack- son became his friend, but in 1813 the}' had a remarkable encounter, .Jackson getting a ball in his shoulder from Benton's brother, and Benton being thrown down-stairs. .Jackson and Benton were reconciled many years later. In the War of 1812 he was given a lieutenant-colonelcy, but did not serve efTeetively. Shortly after the seces- sion agitation of the Hartford Convention, Ben- ton became a pronounced Union man, and he held to this position. In 1815 Benton set- tled in Saint Louis, and established the Mis- souri Inquirer, a journal that occasioned for him