name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis.' The following year was distinguished by the first edition of his celebrated Horace. In this, he proposed not so much to explain, as to correct, his author by the help of MSS., early editions, and conjecture; and such was his acumen, that his emendations (even when not decidedly genuine) have almost every where the air of the highest probability. Abroad, it encountered in Lẹ Clerc it's chief opponent. At home, two small volumes came out in numbers, entitled The Odes and Epodes of Horace, in Latin and English, with a Translation of Dr. Bentley's Notes. To which are added, Notes upon Notes, done in the Bentleian stile and manner;' a performance of considerable spirit and humour.

In 1713, he published, under his formerly assumed name of 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,' his admirable Re

yers. This led Middleton to deeper studies. Upon Bentley's 'Proposals' for an edition of the New Testament in 1716, he remarked, "paragraph by paragraph," with a keenness which completely cut up the project. The subscription-money (20007.) was returned, and the work pendet interruptum! Bentley's puny revenge was, under the signature J. E. (the two first vowels of his two names), to treat the Remarks' as if written by a Dr. Colbatch his enemy, senior Fellow of Trinity College, and Casuistical Professor of Divinity; thus indulging himself at once in the double gratification of abusing the accused, and showing his contempt for the real author. The former object he accomplished to a degree, which the Vice-Chancellor and his friends pronounced "a most scandalous and malicious libel: " and the latter drew from Dr. Middleton a second series of Remarks' sanctioned by his name, and as pungent as those which had preceded. M.'s very appropriate motto was, • Doctus criticus et adsuetus urere, secare, inclementer omnis generis libros tractare, apices, syllabas, voces, dictiones confodere et stilo exigere, continebitne ille ab integro et intaminato divinæ sapientiæ monumento crudeles ungues.' (P. Burmanni Orat.)

marks upon Collins' Discourse on Free-thinking,' which he dedicated to Dr. Hare.*

In 1715, he preached a sermon against Popery, on November 5, before the University; which drawing forth some remarks from an anonymous, critic, he published a reply to them in 1717.

In the intervening year, upon the death of Dr. James, he succeeded to the chair of Regius Professor of Divinity; and in right of his office became possessed of the valuable preferment of Somersham Pidley and Colne in the county of Huntingdon. He now published his proposals for an edition of the Greek Testament, in which he stated his determination not to use any manuscript of less than a thousand years of age, of which he himself possessed at that time twenty in his study. The caustic remarks, however, made upon his projects by his keen and implacable enemies frustrated the undertaking. This was of no small disservice to the cause of sacred literature. The completion of it was the principal employment of his life. For the purpose of collating MSS., one of his nephews traversed Europe at his expense. From

* Collins was destined to sustain rude attacks, likewise, from other quarters. His superficial and illiberal work being published in 1713, when party-zeal was at the highest, was instantly pronounced by the Tories, as it's author was a great stickler for the Hanover succession, the creed of the greater part of their antagonists.' The Whigs, on their part, indignantly disclaimed all connexion with a writer, who far from being of the Low Church, plainly discovered himself to be of none at all. Hence probably Steele's paper, the Guardian,' contends so frequently and so vehemently against him, not only in it's virulent Third Number (which almost denies to the Freethinker the common benefits of air and water), but also, less directly, in Nos. ix, xxvii, lv, lxii, lxx, lxxvii, lxxxiii, &c. all said to have been written by Bishop Berkeley.

his letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated April 15, 1716, the following extract is subjoined:

"Since that time I have fallen into a course of studies, that led me to peruse many of the oldest MSS. of the Greek Testament, and of the Latin too of St. Jerom, of which there are several in England a full thousand years old. The result of which has been, that I find I am able (what some thought impossible) to give an edition of the Greek Testament, exactly as it was in the best examples at the time of the Council of Nice, so that there shall not be twenty words, nor even particles, difference: and this shall carry it's own demonstration in every verse, which I affirm cannot be so done of any other ancient book Greek or Latin. So that that book, which by the present management is thought the most uncertain, shall have a testimony of certainty above all other books whatever, and an end put at once to all the various readings now or hereafter.

"The New Testament has been under a hard fate since the invention of printing. After the Complutenses and Erasmus, who had but very ordinary MSS., it has become the property of booksellers. Robert Stephens' edition, set out and regulated by himself alone, is now become the standard. The text stands, as if an Apostle was his compositor.

"No heathen author has had such ill fortune. Terence, Ovid, &c., for the first century after printing, went about with twenty thousand errors in them. But when learned men undertook them, and from the oldest MSS. set out corrected editions, those errors fell and vanished. But if they had kept to the first published text, and set the various readings only in the 2 C

VOL. V.

margin, those classic authors would be as clogged with variations as Dr. Mill's Testament is.

"Sixtus (V.) and Clemens (VIII.), at a vast expense, had an assembly of divines to revise and adjust the Latin Vulgate, and then enacted their new edition authentic but I find, though I have not discovered any thing done dolo malo, they were quite unequal to the affair. They were mere theologi, had no experience in MSS., nor made use of good Greek copies, and followed books of five hundred years before books of double that age: nay, I believe they took these new ones for the older of the two; for it is not every body, who knows the age of a MS.

"To conclude-In a word, I find that by taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephens', I can' set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and (what at first amazed me) order for order, that no two tallies nor two indentures can agree better.

"I affirm that these, so placed, will prove each other to a demonstration: for I alter not a letter of my own head, without the authority of these old witAnd the beauty of the composition (barba

nesses.

*To this he was pledged by paragraph the fifth of his Proposals. The author is very sensible, that in the Sacred Writings there is no place for conjectures or emendations. Diligence and fidelity, with some judgement and experience, are the characters here requisite. He declares, therefore, that he does not alter one letter in the text, without the authorities subjoined in the notes, &c." This, his adversary says, was done to quiet the apprehensions people were under, lest he should treat the sacred writers with as little ceremony as he had done the profane, mangle and alter them at pleasure, agreeably to his own taste and judge

rous, God knows, at best) is so improved as to make it more worthy of a revelation, and yet no one text of consequence is injured or weakened.

ment, without regard to the authority of MSS." In the sixth paragraph he adds, "If the author has any thing to suggest toward a change of the text, not supported by any copies now extant, he will offer it separately in his Prolegomena." "—" In this work, he is of no sect or party; his design is to serve the whole Christian name. He draws no consequences in his notes; makes no oblique glances upon any disputed points, old or new." He then, after announcing in his peculiar spirit (as it is alleged against him by one of his adversaries) that "he consecrates this work as a xuμ, a x σ, a charter, a Magna Charta to the whole Christian Church, to last when all the ancient MSS. there quoted may be lost and extinguished;" winds up with representing the great expense to be incurred, as the size is to be two tomes in folio, and the letter, paper, and ink the best that Europe affords; naming his coadjutor, collator, overseer, and corrector of the press, Mr. John Walker of Trinity, a young man, who is to divide with himself the issue of the enterprise, whether gain or loss; and finally states the terms of subscription for the smaller and great paper, three and five guineas respectively, of which a part is in both cases to be advanced by the subscribers.

It surely cannot be regarded as dispassionate criticism in Dr. Middleton, when we hear him asserting in reply, that Bentley had "neither talents nor materials proper for the work he had undertaken, and that religion was much more likely to receive detriment than service from it; the time, manner, and other circumstances of publishing these Proposals making it but too evident, that they were hastened out to serve quite different ends than those of common Christianity!" He affects, indeed, in the Preface to his second and avowed set of Remarks, to be alarmed at the threat of a meditated Answer to his preceding Pamphlet; recollecting that his antagonist, in his Horace, had pronounced himself non rarò datâ operâ brevior contractiorque, consultò viribus parcens, et quæ in promptu erant opes dissimulans; ut stolidi et ad depugnandum parati se in laqueos inopinantes induerent, risum jocumque nasutioribus daturi; but all his fears, he adds, on the appearance of the Reply were speedily at an end,