5. Dr. King's Dialogues of the Dead, 1699.

and Toup. The peculiarities in it's punctuation and orthography, however, were animadverted upon at great length in the Critical Review, XLIII. pp. 7-12., by the Rev. Mr. Robertson; who assigns, as a justification of his severity, the deference due to the character of one of the most illustrious critics that has ever appeared in this nation. Not a phrase (he observes) not a letter, of his should be altered upon a mere hypothesis. In points of orthography the learned, both in our own country and in others, nay even the literati of future ages, may be curious to know the sentiments and practice of Dr. Bentley. It is, therefore, a piece of justice we owe to the Republic of Letters, to exhibit a faithful copy of a work, which will be transmitted with applause to the latest posterity."

It may be added, on Mr. Nichols' authority, as a disgraceful fact, that of the 350 copies printed of this edition by far the greater part were sold for waste paper !! It is now, in consequence, a scarce book. To adduce only one testimony, itself however upon such a subject instar omnium, in favour of this work: Bentleius in immortali istá de Phalaridis Epistolis Dissertatione, says the uncomplimenting Porson. It is, indeed, a volume of acuteness and erudition "never to die." The compositions which approach nearest to it in subtilty and conclusiveness, are perhaps the Professor's own Letters to Mr. Travis on the Three Heavenly Witnesses,' 1 John v. 7.; and Paley's "Hora Paulinæ.

For the amusement of scholars, I cannot forbear extracting from Burgess' Edition of Dawes' Miscellanea Critica a note bearing upon the learned subject of this piece of biography: Huic specimini-novam et minusculam Digamma formam F pro wetustâ illâ F feci curavit Salterus, quæ cæteris literis conveniret æquè ac 1, 9,, &c. Recordari quoque potuit notissimum Popii locum,

While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,

Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all (Dunc. iv. 217.); Ubi Satiricus ille, in versibus quidem facetis at admodum ridiculis Bentleium et Digamma suum scilicet in ludibrium vertit, ingeniosior sanè quam doctior poeta. De loco illo, cujus sales nonnihil desipuit Salteri inventum, vide quoque Fosterum, p. 133.

6. A short Account of Dr. Bentley's Humanity and Justice, 1699 (ascribed, also, to Dr. King); and 7. A short Review of the Controversy between Mr. Boyle and Dr. Bentley, 1701.

In 1696, on being admitted to the degree of D.D. at Cambridge, he preached his Commencement Sermon, on 1 Pet. iii. 15. Some time afterward, he was admitted ad eundem at Oxford.

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About this time, the University of Cambridge projected a publication of some of the classics in quarto, for the use of the Duke of Gloucester. Bentley being consulted on the design, advised Laughton, the destined editor of Virgil, to follow Heinsius very closely;' but his suggestion was neglected. Terence was published by Long, Horace by Talbot, and Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius by Mr. Annesley, afterward Earl of Anglesey. Bentley procured the types from Holland upon the occasion. By the express desire of Grævius, he published his Animadversions and Remarks upon Callimachus,' collecting at the same time and transmitting to that celebrated critic some scattered fragments of the poet, which were printed abroad in 1697. Upon this occasion being charged with having pillaged some manuscript notes of Stanley, lent to him by Sir Edward Sherburn, he published in the preface to his Dissertation on Phalaris,' a minute and copious reply; which, however, was in many particulars positively contradicted by Sir Edward himself. But whatever obligations he might have to those papers, it cannot be doubted that he contributed, likewise, great additions of his

own.

February 1, 1699-1700, on the death of Dr. Mon

tagu, with a view of restoring discipline and learning in Trinity College, he was presented by six eminent Bishops, to whom King William had committed the disposal of many of the ecclesiastical preferments in the gift of the crown, to the Mastership of that Society; upon which, he resigned his prebend of Worcester: and in June 1701, he was collated by Bishop Patrick to the Archdeaconry of Ely in the room of Dr. Saywell.

Soon after the accession of Queen Anne, he was appointed Royal Chaplain, as he had also been under her predecessor.

In 1709, from his overbearing domination at the head of his new college, and perhaps also from some unpopular reformations of offices and curtailments of salaries, in which he probably had not been wholly indifferent to his own interests, a complaint was urged against him before the Bishop of Ely (Dr. More) as visitor, by the Vice-Master, and the seven senior Fellows, accusing him among other charges of having embezzled the college-money. Upon this, he in 1710 published his Present State of Trinity College,' in which he insisted, that the Crown was the Visitor. And thus began a quarrel, which continued with unabating virulence till 1731, when the Crown asserted it's general visitatorial right, but declined interfering in the existing dispute. And thus, through certain niceties of law (as Whiston says) and ambiguities of statutes, the matter virtually terminated in Bentley's favour.*

* With respect to this protracted dispute, we are informed by Whiston that, after four years of unexceptionable conduct, Bentley was induced in a single instance to recede from that best of rules (now invariably observed in Trinity College elections) of

In 1710, he published at Amsterdam his Critical Observations upon the two first Comedies of Aris

'Detur digniori,' in the appointment to a Fellowship. And hence ensued the feud, and all it's consequences. "I will only relate here what I take to have been the realor sudos, or first beginning of his unhappy management, which I was myself a witness to. I always compare this his proceeding to the Pythagoric Y, where the ascent from the bottom is direct and unexceptionable, till you come to the divarication of the two lines; whence Virtue proceeds straight on to the right hand and Vice to the left, and where though at first the distance of the lines be very small and easily stepped over, yet does it after a while become too large for any step whatsoever. Now Dr. Bentley, as I have already intimated, for about four years had proceeded up the bottom stemvery directly, and had examined every candidate for scholarships and fellowships thoroughly, and seemed as nearly as possible to have given every one the place he really deserved; when about 1793 or 1704, he gave a fellowship to one, whom he confessed to be inferior in learning to his antagonist, though it being a new thing with him, he did it with reluctance. The reasons he gave for doing so this once, he told me, were these two; the one, that • Mr. Stubbs the less deserving, was nephew to Dr. Stubbs, Professor of the Hebrew tongue in the University, and Vice-master of the College, who was so rich that he could give the College 10,000%.' (though, by the way, I never heard that he gave it one groat): the other reason was that, if he made Mr. Stubbs fellow, his uncle would probably be his fast friend at all future elections, and by these means he could in a manner govern them all as he pleased.' Upon these two considerations, he ventured to choose Mr. Stubbs against a more deserving candidate, and so to break upon his integrity; and, I think, he never afterward returned to it which as it was of the most fatal consequence to that College, so did the Master find it very unhappy to himself also. For Mr. Stubbs not only proved a vile man, to his great disreputation; but he, together with his uncle, came before the Bishop of Ely (More) in open court, to be witnesses against him, in order to his expulsion. Hence we may all learn that old maxim, Principiis obstare, and never to begin to do an unjust or wicked thing." (Whiston's Memoirs.) Mr. Nichols, likewise, in his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,' states that Bentley con

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tophanes; and at Rheims his Emendations of the Fragments of Menander and Philemon, under the

sented to elect Zachary Pearce, afterward Bishop of Rochester, Fellow of Trinity College, on the recommendation of Lord Chief Justice Parker (subsequently Earl of Macclesfield, to whom Pearce at the age of twenty six had fortunately recommended himself by the dedication of his Cicero de Oratore in 1716) upon condition that his Lordship should unmake him again as soon as it lay in his power to give him a living." Melancholy consideration," observes Mr. Ashby, in loc. " that a young man from the foundation of Westminster, who could publish a tract of Tully's, must have a patron to ask the Master of Trinity, himself the first of scholars in the same line, that he may be a fellow!"

And yet (upon what principle, or want of principle rather, must now perhaps for ever remain unknown) the same Dr. Bentley, after inviting the ingenious Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet to his college, from respect to the memory of his father and his grandfather, to the first of whom he had been tutor and to the latter chaplain, caused him to be refused a fellowship: a disappointment, for which he shamelessly apologised by saying, that "it was a pity a gentleman of Mr. Stillingfleet's parts should be buried within the walls of a college!" But infamous conduct of this kind, whether traced to a Bentley or to one in every respect infinitely less than Bentley, cannot by any such miserable palliation be sheltered from the detestation or the contempt of honourable minds. From his Essay on Conversation,' 1757, printed in the first volume of Dodsley's Collection of Poems, it appears that this respectable man, after a lapse of upward of thirty years, still felt himself sore from Dr. Bentley's cruel and unmerited treatment. Mr. Gough, in his Anecdotes of Topography,' Art. ' Cambridgeshire,' has given an accurate account of his controversies both with his College and with the University: and there are, likewise, some authentic papers upon the subject in the Harleian MSS. Though the affair, however, never came to a trial, it appears from various circumstances (particularly, from an unanswered letter of Dr. Middleton's), that there was some foundation for the charges adduced. For Dr. Middleton's animosity he was indebted to the circumstance of having once contemptuously called him, in reference to his musical passion, fiddling Con⚫

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