PERSONAL

The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for the moderns; and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had vowed, with his own hands, to knock down two of the ancient chiefs, who guarded a small pass on the superior rock; but, endeavouring to climb up, was cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy weight, and tendency towards his centre.-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1698?1704, Battle of the Books.

Bentley will always be an ill-bred pedant; can the leopard change his skin? -PRIOR, MATTHEW, 1713, Letter to Bolingbroke, July 13.

Yesterday I heard that, whereas Dr. Bentley talked much of putting out a new edition of Homer, he is now mighty warm about an edition of Ovid; for no other reason but out of spite to Peter Burman, a foreigner, who hath lately published Ovid. Thus does this poor, old, spiteful man turn all his thoughts upon revenge, and spends his time in mere trifles. HEARNE, THOMAS, 1727, MS., Aug. 30.

Bullum is a tall raw-boned man, I believe near six inches and a half high; from his infancy he applied himself, with great industry, to the old Blefuscudian language, in which he made such a progress, that he almost forgot his native Lilliputian

and at this time he can neither write nor speak two sentences, without a mixture of old Blefuscudian. These qualifications, joined to an undaunted forward spirit, and a few good friends, prevailed with the Emperor's grandfather to make him keeper of his library, and a Mulro in the Gomflastru; though most men thought him fitter to be one of the Royal Guards. These places soon helped him to riches, and upon the strength of them he soon began to despise every body, and to be despised by every body. This engaged

him in many quarrels, which he managed in a very odd manner; whenever he thought himself affronted, he immediately flung a great book at his adversary, and if he could, felled him to the earth; but if his adversary stood his ground and flung another book at him, which was sometimes done with great violence, then he complained to the Grand Justiciary, that these affronts were designed to the Emperor, and that he was singled out only as being the Emperor's servant. By this trick he got that great officer to favour him, which made his enemies cautious, and him insolent. ARBUTHNOT, JOHN, 1727, State of Learning in the Empire of Lilliput.

Dr. Bentley, when he came to town, was accustomed, in his visits to Lord Carteret, sometimes to spend the evenings with his Lordship. One day old Lady Granville reproached her son with keeping the country clergyman, who was with him the night before, till he was intoxicated. Lord Carteret denied the charge; upon which the lady replied, that the clergyman could not have sung in so ridiculous a manner, unless he had been in liquor. The truth of the case was, that the singing thus mistaken by her Ladyship, was Dr. Bentley's endeavour to instruct and entertain his noble friend, by reciting Terence according to the true cantilena of the ancients. -KIPPIS, ANDREW, 1778-93, ed., Biographia Britannica, vol. II, p. 280.

I had a sister somewhat elder than myself. Had there been any of that sternness in my grandfather, which is so falsely imputed to him, it may well be supposed we should have been awed into silence in his presence, to which we were admitted every day. Nothing can be further from the truth; he was the unwearied patron and promoter of all our childish sports and sallies; at all times ready to detach himself from any topic of conversation to take an interest and

The

bear his part in our amusements. eager curiosity natural to our age, and the questions it gave birth to, so teazing to many parents, he, on the contrary, attended to and encouraged, as the claims of infant reason never to be evaded or abused; strongly recommending, that to all such inquiries answers should be given according to the strictest truth, and information dealt to us in the clearest terms, as a sacred duty never to be departed from. I have broken in upon him many a time in his hours of study, when he would put his book aside, ring his handbell for his servant, and be led to his shelves to take down a picture-book for my amusement. . His domestic

habits, when I knew him, were still those of unabated study; he slept in the room adjoining to his library, and was never with his family till the hour of dinner; at these times he seemed to have detached himself most completely from his studies; never appearing thoughtful and abstracted, but social, gay, and possessing perfect serenity of mind and equability of temper. He never dictated topics of conversation to the company he was with, but took them up as they came in his way, and was a patient listener to other people's discourse, however trival or uninteresting it might be.-CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, 1806, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 9,18.

The habits of Dr. Bentley's domestic life continued in the same simple and uniform course for many years. The greater part of each day he passed in his study, where he breakfasted alone; he joined his family at the other meals, and at ten o'clock for evening prayers; after which they retired for their night's repose. Habited in his dressing-gown, he pursued his studies with the same application as had distinguished the earlier periods of his life. The tempestuous feuds in which he was now embarked appear neither to have deranged his habits, nor affected his health. The only change which they produced in his course of life was by obliging him to make more frequent journeys to London, and pass a longer time at his residence in Cotton House. . . . It appears to me that his passions were not always under the controul, nor his actions under the guidance, of Christian principles; that, in consequence, pride and ambition, the faults to which his nature.

was most exposed, were suffered to riot without restraint; and that hence proceeded the display of arrogance, selfishness, obstinacy, and oppression, by

which it must be confessed that his career was disfigured. That nature however had not denied to him certain amiable qualities of the heart, and that he possessed in a considerable degree many of the social and endearing virtues, is proved beyond a doubt by the warm and steady affection with which he was regarded by his family and his intimate friends.-MONK, JAMES HENRY, 1830-33, Life of Richard Bentley, vol. II, pp. 117, 416.

In his domestic relations, Bentley was not only blameless, but exemplary; and domestic virtue always brings its own reward. Whatever brawls disturbed him without, "he still had peace at home," nor did he carry his despotic rule and contumelious language to his own fireside; if he called his children names, they were names of fondness. If he erred, it was in too partial a regard to his kindred or dependents. For forty years he was the affectionate husband of a virtuous wife, who never had reason to complain that his controversies or his lawsuits had soured his temper.-COLERIDGE, HARTLEY, 1833, Biographia Borealis, p. 173.

His spirit, daring even to rashnessself-confident, even to negligence-and proud, even to insolent ferocity,-was awed for the first and for the last time— awed, not into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes; above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In almost everything that he has written we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only here that his genius and learning appear to have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper. -MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1836, Sir William Temple, Edinburgh Review; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

In the hall of the College, where many celebrated names are commemorated by the portraits on the walls, places of honour are assigned to Bacon, Barrow, Newton, and Bentley. The features of the great scholar speak with singular force from the canvas of Thornhill, who painted him in his forty-eighth year, the very year

in which his struggle with the College began. That picture, Bentley's own bequest, is in the Master's Lodge. The pose of the head is haughty, almost defiant; the eyes, which are large, prominent, and full of bold vivacity, have a light in them as if Bentley were looking straight at an impostor whom he had detected, but who still amused him; the nose, strong and slightly tip-tilted, is moulded as if Nature had wished to show what a nose can do for the combined expression of scorn and sagacity; and the general effect of the countenance, at a first glance, is one which suggests power-frank, selfassured, sarcastic, and, I fear we must add, insolent: yet, standing a little longer before the picture, we become aware of an essential kindness in those eyes of which the gaze is so direct and intrepid;

we read in the whole face a certain keen veracity; and the sense grows--this was a man who could hit hard, but who would not strike a foul blow, and whose ruling instinct, whether always a sure guide or not, was to pierce through falsities to truth.-JEBB, RICHARD CLAVERHOUSE, 1882, Bentley (English Men of Letters), p. 200.

You will think furthermore of this Dr. Bentley as living through all his fierce battles of criticisms and of college mastership to an extreme old age, and into days when Swift and Pope and Steele and Addison were all gone a gray, rugged, persistent, captious old man, with a great, full eye that looked one through and through, and with a short nose, turned up-as if he always scented a false quantity in the air.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 12.

MASTERSHIP OF TRINITY

I find the gentlemen of both Universitys equally amused upon our friend Dr Bentley's promotion to Trinity College Mastership. PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1699-1700, Letter to J. Jackson, Jan. 22.

We may strip him of his titles, but we never can, we see, of his insolence; he has ceased to be Doctor, and may cease to be Professor, but he can never cease to be Bentley. There he will triumph over the University to the last; all its learning being unable to polish, its manners to soften, or its discipline to tame the superior obstinacy of his genius.

There is something so singularly rude and barbarous in his way of treating all mankind, that whoever has occasion to relate it, will, instead of aggravating, find himself obliged to qualify and soften the harshness of his story, lest it should pass for incredible.-MIDDLETON, CONYERS, 1719, A Full and Impartial Account of the Late Proceedings in the University of Cambridge against Dr. Bentley.

Between Bentley and his antagonists the differences were vital. Bentley had a good heart; generally speaking, his antagonists had not. Bentley was overbearing, impatient of opposition, domineering, sometimes tyrannical. He had, and deservedly, a very lofty opinion of himself; he either had, or affected, too mean a one of his antagonists. Sume superbiam quæsitam meritis was the motto which he avowed. Coming to the gov ernment of a very important college, at a time when its discipline had been greatly relaxed and the abuses were many, his reforms (of which some have been retained even to this day) were pushed with too high a hand; he was too negligent of any particular statute that stood in his way; showed too harsh a disregard to the feelings of gentlemen; and too openly disdained the arts of conciliation. Yet this same man was placable in the highest degree; was generous; needed not to be conciliated by sycophantic arts; and, at the first moment when his enemies would make an opening for him to be so, was full of forgiveness. His literary quarrels, which have left the impression that he was irritable or jealous, were (without one exception) upon his part mere retorts to the most insufferable provocations; and, though it is true that, when once teased into rousing himself out of his lair, he did treat his man with rough play, left him ugly remembrances of his leonine power, and made himself merry with his distressed condition, yet, on the other hand, in his utmost wrath, there was not a particle of malice.-DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 1830-57, Richard Bentley, Collected Writings, ed. Masson, vol. IV, p. 122.

The Fellows, as a body, were liable to no such charges as Bentley in his anger brought against them; not a few of them were eminent in the University; and if there were any whose lives would not bear