Richard Bentley was the son, not of a low mechanic, as the earlier narratives of his life assert, but of a respectable yeoman, possessed of a small estate. That fact has been established by his latest and most accurate, as well as most copious biographer, Dr. Monk, now Bishop of Gloucester. Bentley was born in Yorkshire, January 27, 1661–2, at Oulton, near Wakefield; and educated at Wakefield school, and St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he pursued his studies with unwearied industry. No fellowship to which he was eligible having fallen vacant, he was appointed Master of Spalding school, in 1682; over which he had presided only one year, when his critical learning recommended him to Dr. Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul’s, as a private tutor for his son. In 1689 he attended his pupil to Wadham College in Oxford, where he was incorporated Master of Arts on the 4th of July in that year, having previously taken that degree in his own university. Soon after the promotion of Stillingfleet to the see of Worcester, Bentley was made domestic chaplain to that learned prelate, with whom he continued on the terms of confidential intimacy incident to that connexion, till his Lordship’s death. Dr. William Lloyd, at that time Bishop of Lichfield, was equally alive to the uncommon merit of this rising scholar; and his two patrons concurrently recommended him as a fit person to open the lectures founded by the celebrated Robert Boyle, in defence of natural and revealed religion. Bentley had before this time embarked largely in literary pursuits. Among these we can only stop to mention his criticisms on the historiographer Malelas, contained in a letter appended to Dr. Mill’s edition of that author, which stamped his reputation as a first-rate scholar, especially among the learned men of the Continent.

The delivery of the first course of Boyle’s Lectures, in 1692, gave Bentley an admirable opportunity of establishing his reputation as a divine; and he taxed his abilities to the utmost to ensure success. Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia had not been published more than six years: the sublime discoveries of the author were little known, and less understood, from the general prejudice against any new theory, and the difficulty of comprehending the deep reasonings on which this one rested. Bentley determined to spare no pains in laying open this new philosophy of the solar system in a popular form, and in displaying to the best advantage the cogent arguments in behalf of the existence of a Deity, furnished by that masterly work. That nothing might be wanting to his design, he applied to the author, and received from him the solution of some difficulties. This gave rise to a curious and important correspondence; and there is a manuscript in Newton’s own hand preserved among Bentley’s papers, containing directions respecting the books to be read as a preparation for the perusal of his Principia. Newton’s four letters on this subject are preserved in Trinity College Library, and have been given to the public in the form of a pamphlet. The lecturer did not neglect, in addition to the popular illustration of the Principia, to corroborate his argument by considerations drawn from Locke’s doctrine, that the notion of a Deity is not innate. The sermons were received with loud and universal applause, and the highest opinion of the preacher’s abilities was entertained by the learned world. Bentley soon reaped the fruits of his high reputation, being appointed to a stall at Worcester in October, 1692, and made Keeper of the King’s Library in the following year. In 1694 he was again appointed to preach Boyle’s lecture. His subject was a defence of Christianity against the objections of infidels. These sermons have never been published; nor have Dr. Monk’s researches enabled him to ascertain where they are now deposited.

Bentley was scarcely settled in his office of librarian, when he became involved in a quarrel with the Hon. Charles Boyle, brother to the Earl of Ossory, who was then in the course of his education at Christ Church in Oxford, and had carried thither a more than ordinary share of classical knowledge, and a decided taste for literary pursuits. Mr. Boyle had been selected by his college to edit a new edition of the Epistles of Phalaris; and for that purpose, not by direct application, but through the medium of a blundering and ill-mannered bookseller, he had procured the use of a manuscript copy of the Epistles from the Library at St. James’s. The responsibility attendant on the custody of manuscripts, and perhaps some disgust at the channel through which the loan was negotiated, occasioned the librarian to demand restitution before the collation was finished. A notion was entertained at Christ Church, that an affront was intended both to the Epistles, which Bentley had already pronounced to be a clumsy forgery of later times, and to the advocates of their genuineness. Tory politics had probably some share in exasperating a quarrel with a scholar in the opposite interest. Be this as it may, the preface to Phalaris contained an offensive sentence, which the editor would not, or perhaps could not cancel, as the copies seem to have been delivered before the real state of the case was explained; and this gave rise to the once celebrated controversy between Boyle and Bentley. It produced a number of pieces written with learning, wit, and spirit, on both sides; but Bentley fought single-handed, while the tracts on the side of Boyle were clubbed by the wits of Christ Church; for the reputed author was attending his parliamentary duty in Ireland, while those enlisted under his colours were sustaining his cause in the English republic of letters. Of the numerous attacks on Bentley published at this period, Swift’s Battle of the Books is the only one which continues to be known by the merit of the writing. The controversy was prolonged to the year 1699, when Bentley’s enlarged dissertation upon Phalaris appeared, and obtained so complete a victory over his opponents, as to constitute an epoch not only in the writer’s life, but in the history of literature. It is avowedly controversial; but it contains a matchless treasure of knowledge, in history, chronology, antiquities, philosophy, and criticism. The preface contains his defence against the charges made on his personal character, his vindication of which is satisfactory and triumphant. So strong, however, are the prejudices of party and fashion, that many persons looked upon the controversy as a field for a grand tournament of wit and learning, exhibiting the prowess of the combatants without deciding the cause in dispute; but all those whose judgment on such questions could be of any value held the triumph of Dr. Bentley to be complete, both as to the sterling merits of the case, and his able management of its discussion. It was not long before the impression created in his favour became manifest; for, in the course of the next year, 1700, Bentley was appointed by the crown to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. On that high advancement he resigned his stall at Worcester. He was afterwards collated to the Archdeaconry of Ely, in 1781, which, besides conferring rank in the church, was endowed with two livings; and he was appointed Chaplain both to King William and Queen Anne. There is a tradition in Bentley’s family, that Bishop Stillingfleet said, “We must send Bentley to rule the turbulent Fellows of Trinity College: if any one can do it, he is the person; for he has ruled my family ever since he entered it.”

Having thus attained to affluence and honour, he married a lady to whom he had been long attached. The union was eminently happy. Mrs. Bentley’s mind was highly cultivated; she was amiable and pious; and the benevolence of her disposition availed to soften the animosity of opponents at several critical periods of her husband’s life. His new station was calculated to increase rather than to lessen the Master’s taste for critical studies. As he occasionally gave the results of his inquiries to the public, his labours, abounding in erudition and sagacity, by degrees raised him to the reputation of being the first critic of his age. Among the most remarkable of his numerous pieces, we may mention a collection of the Fragments of Callimachus, with notes and emendations, transmitted to GrÆvius, in whose edition of that poet’s works they appeared in 1697; and three letters on the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes, written to Kuster, and by him dissected into the form of notes, and published in his edition of that author. Copies of two of the original epistles have fortunately been preserved, and given to the world in the Museum Criticum, after more than a century. Kuster had in a great measure destroyed their interest by omissions, and by curtailing their amusing and digressive playfulness. But as they fell from Bentley’s own pen, few of his writings exhibit more acuteness, or more lively perception of the elegancies of the Greek tongue. About the same time he produced one of the ablest and most perfect of his works, his Emendations on the Fragments of Menander and Philemon. That piece indicates rather intimate acquaintance with his subject, and a feeling of security in his positions, than direct and immediate labour or research. He wrote under the assumed name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, and sent the work to be printed and published on the Continent. Under the same signature he appeared again in 1713, in his Reply to Collins’s Discourse of Freethinking. His exposure of the sophistry and fallacies pervading that book was judicious and highly effective; and for the eminent service done to the Christian religion, and the clergy of England in this work, by refuting the objections and exposing the ignorance of the writers calling themselves Freethinkers, Dr. Bentley received the public thanks of the University of Cambridge assembled in senate, January 4, 1715. But his edition of Horace is the capital work, which through good and evil report will associate his name with the Latin language so long as it endures. He completed it in 1711. The tone of the preface is arrogant and invidious: the presumption, which is the great blot in his character, both as a man and a critic, is more conspicuous in those few pages than in all his other productions. With respect to the work itself, between seven and eight hundred changes in the common readings were introduced into the text, contrary to the established practice of classical editors. The language of the notes is that of absolute dictatorship, not however without an award of fair credit to some other commentators. His Latinity, although easy and flowing, has been censured as by no means pure. Many of his readings have been confirmed and adopted by the latest and best editors; others are considered as either unnecessary, harsh, or prosaic: but, with all its faults, Bentley’s Horace is a monument of inexhaustible learning; the reader, whether convinced or not, adds to his stock of knowledge; and the very errors of such a critic are instructive.

But Bentley’s haughty temper, thus displayed in his criticisms, burst forth much more injuriously in the government of his college; where he carried himself so loftily, and gave such serious and repeated offence, that several of the Fellows exhibited a complaint against him before the Bishop of Ely, as visitor. Their object was his removal from the headship, in furtherance of which they charged him with embezzlement, in having improperly applied large sums of money to his own use; and with having adopted other unworthy and violent proceedings, to the interruption of peace and harmony in the society. In answer to these imputations he states his own case in a letter to the Bishop, which was published in octavo in 1710, under the title of the Present State of Trinity College. Such was the beginning of a long, inveterate, and mischievous quarrel; which, after a continuance of more than twenty years, ended in the Master’s favour. The Biographia Britannica, and the Life of Bentley by the present Bishop of Gloucester, necessarily give a detailed narrative of this dispute, during the progress of which several books were written, with the most determined animosity on both sides. We cannot in this instance regret the confined space, which prevents our dilating on a quarrel, unfortunate in its origin, virulent in its progress, and, in our opinion, especially discreditable to the Master.

Nor was this the only trial of a spirit sufficiently able to bear up against the storms of opposition, and by obstinate perseverance to triumph over its adversaries. During the course of the former dispute, Bentley had been promoted to the Regius Professorship of Divinity. George I. paid a visit to the university in October, 1717. It is usual on such occasions to name several persons for a doctor’s degree in that faculty by royal mandate; and the principal part of the ceremony consists in what is called the creation, that is, the presentation of the nominees to the Chancellor, if present, or to the Vice-Chancellor in his absence, by the Professor. Bentley claimed a fee of four guineas as due from each of the Doctors whom it was his office to create, in addition to a broad-piece, which had been the ancient and customary compliment. There were two gold coins under that denomination; a Jacobus, worth twenty-five shillings, and a Carolus, passing for twenty-three. Both were called in, and no gold pieces of that value have since been coined. The Professor refused to create any doctor who would not acquiesce in the fee. His arguments in favour of the claim were at least plausible; but it ill became so high a functionary to interrupt solemn proceedings, and sow discord in a learned body for a mercenary and paltry consideration. From this low origin arose a long and warm dispute, in the course of which the Master of Trinity and Regius Professor was suspended from all his degrees, October 3, 1718, and degraded on the seventeenth of that month. Of thirty Doctors present, twenty-three voted for the degradation of their brother; and of ten heads of colleges who attended all but one joined in the sentence. The principal ground for these extraordinary measures will not appear very strong to impartial posterity; it was an alleged contempt in speaking of a regular meeting of the Heads of Houses, as “the Vice-Chancellor and four or five of his friends over a bottle.” From this sentence Bentley petitioned the King for relief: and the affair was referred to a committee of the Privy Council, whence it was carried into the Court of King’s Bench, where the four Judges declared their opinions seriatim against the proceedings of the university; and a peremptory mandamus was issued, February 7, 1724, after more than five years of undignified altercation, charging the Chancellor, Masters, and scholars “to restore Richard Bentley to all his degrees, and to every other right and privilege of which they had deprived him.”

Happily both for himself and the learned world, Bentley was gifted with a natural hardiness of temper, which enabled him to buffet against both these storms; so that he continued to pursue his career of literature, as if the elements had been undisturbed. November 5, 1715, he delivered a sermon on popery from the university pulpit, distinguished by learning and argument, and written in an original style, which compelled the attention of the hearers, unlike those common-place and narcotic declamations usually poured forth on that anniversary. It was printed, and has incurred the strange fate of having been purloined by Sterne, and introduced into Tristram Shandy. Part of it is read by Corporal Trim, whose feelings are so overpowered by the description of the Inquisition, that he declares “he would not read another line of it for all the world.” The sermon had the common lot of Bentley’s publications; it gave birth to a controversy. It was attacked in ‘Remarks’ by Cummins, a Calvinistic dissenter. An answer was put forth with the following title: ‘Reflections on the scandalous Aspersions on the Clergy, by the author of the Remarks.’ It is asserted in more than one life of Bentley, that he was himself the author of these Reflections; but the Bishop of Gloucester says that no one can believe this who reads half a page of the pamphlet. In 1716 Bentley had propounded the plan of a projected edition of the Greek Testament, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He brooded over this design for four years, sparing neither labour nor expense to procure the necessary materials. In 1720 he issued proposals for printing it by subscription, together with the Latin version of Jerome; to which proposals a specimen of the execution was annexed. The proposals are printed at length in the Biographia Britannica, and in Dr. Monk’s Life. They were virulently attacked by Dr. Conyers Middleton, at that time a fellow of Trinity, and a leading person in the opposition to the Master, in ‘Remarks’ on Bentley’s proposals. At this time Bentley’s enemies were endeavouring to oust him from his professorship. It was insinuated that his project was a mere pretext, to be abandoned when it had answered his temporary purpose of diverting the public mind from his personal misconduct. To these suspicions he added force by the confession, in excuse for certain marks of haste in a paper drawn up, not as a specimen of his critical powers, but simply as an advertisement, that the proposals were drawn up one evening by candle-light. Middleton followed up his blow by ‘Further Remarks:’ the publication of the Testament was suspended, nor was it ever carried into effect. That it was stopped by Middleton’s pamphlet, is an error countenanced by numerous writers of the time, but denied by Dr. Monk, who says that the discontinuance certainly was not owing to Middleton’s attack. He doubts indeed whether Bentley ever looked into the tract. A speech of his to Bishop Atterbury shortly after its appearance is quite in character: he “scorned to read the rascal’s book; but if his Lordship would send him any part which he thought the strongest; he would undertake to answer it before night.” In 1726, his Terence was published with notes, a dissertation concerning the metres, which he termed Schediasma, and, strangely placed in such a work, his speech at the Cambridge commencement in 1725. The sprightliness and good temper of this short but eloquent oration is in strong contrast with his controversial asperity: it breathes strong affection for the university, from which body a stranger might suppose that he had received the kindest treatment. But even this edition of the polished and amiable comedian was undertaken in a spirit of jealousy and resentment against Dean Hare, a former friend and rival editor, who had in truth deserved his anger, by availing himself of information derived from Bentley in an unauthorized and unhandsome manner. The notes throughout are in caustic and contemptuous language, with unceasing severity against Hare, not indeed in that violent strain of abuse which has so often marked the warfare of critics, but with cool and sneering allusions without the mention of the proper name, under the disparaging designation of Quidam, est qui, or Vir eruditus. Not content with this revenge, Bentley undertook to anticipate Hare in an edition of Phoedrus, which is characterized by Dr. Monk as a “hasty, crude, and unsupported revision” of the text of that author; in which the rashness and presumption of his criticisms were rendered still more offensive by the imperious conciseness in which his decrees were promulgated. Hare, on the contrary, had long been preparing his edition: his materials were provided and arranged, and he retaliated in an Epistola Critica, addressed to Dr. Bland, head-master of Eton. The spirit of the epistle is personal and bitter; and while it undoubtedly had its intended effect in exposing Bentley, it is not creditable either to the temper or to the consistency of its author.

The last of Bentley’s works which we shall notice is his unfortunate edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, given to the public in 1732. It is a sad instance of utter perversion of judgment in a man of extraordinary talent. Fenton first suggested, that the spots in that sun-like performance might be owing to the misapprehension of the amanuensis, and the ignorant blunders of a poverty-stricken printer. On this foundation Bentley, neither himself a poet, nor possessing much taste or feeling for the higher effusions of even his own favourite authors, the Greek and Latin poets, undertook to revise the language, remedy the blemishes, and reject the supposed interpolations of our national epic. He was peculiarly disqualified for such a task, not only by prosaic temperament and the chill of advanced years, but by his entire ignorance of the Italian poets and romance writers, from whose fables and imagery Milton borrowed his illustrations as freely as from the more familiar stories and modes of expression of the classical authorities. As usual with him, his notes were written hastily, and sent immediately to the press. The public disapprobation was unanimous and just: but even in this performance many acute pieces of criticism are scattered up and down, for which the world, disgusted by his audacity and flippancy, allows him no credit.

We must pass quickly over the ten remaining years of Bentley’s life. They were embittered by a fresh contest for character and station before the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. The case between the Bishop of Ely and Dr. Bentley, respecting the visitatorial jurisdiction over Trinity College in general, and over the Master in particular, was argued first in the Court of King’s Bench, and then carried by appeal to the House of Lords, where it was finally affirmed that the Bishop of Ely was visitor. In his seventy-second year Bentley underwent a second trial at Ely House, and was sentenced to be deprived of his mastership; but he eluded the execution of the sentence, and continued to perform the duties of the office which he held. At length a compromise was effected between him and some of his most active prosecutors, many of whom, as well as himself, were septuagenarians. On his proposed edition of Homer, distinguished by the restoration of the Digamma, we need not enlarge. It appears to have been broken off by a paralytic attack, in the course of 1739. In the following year he sustained the severest loss, by the death of his wife in the fortieth year of their union. His own death took place July 14, 1742, when he had completed his eightieth year. He was buried in the chapel; to which he had been a benefactor by giving £200 towards its repairs, soon after he was appointed to the mastership.

Bentley’s literary character is known in all parts of Europe where learning is known. In his private character he was what Johnson liked, a good hater: there was much of arrogance, and no little obstinacy in his composition; but it must be admitted on the other hand, that he had many high and amiable qualities. Though too prone to encounter hostility by oppression, he was warm and sincere in friendship, an affectionate husband, and a good father. In the exercise of hospitality at his lodge he maintained the dignity of the college, and rivalled the munificence even of the papal priesthood. His benefactions to the college were also liberal: but he exacted from it far more than it was willing to pay, or than any former master had received; and his name would stand fairer if his generosity had been less distinguished, provided that, at the same time, his conduct had been less grasping. We shall only add that the severity of his temper as a critic and controversial writer was exchanged in conversation for a strain of vivacity and pleasantry peculiar to himself.

Bentley had three children: a son called by his own name, and two daughters. The son was bred under his own tuition at Trinity College, where he obtained a fellowship. His contemporaries acknowledge his genius, but lament that his pursuits were so desultory and various as to exclude him from that substantial fame which his talents might have ensured. Dr. Bentley’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Mr. Humphry Ridge, a gentleman of good family in Hampshire, but was left a widow in less than a year, and returned to reside with her father. The youngest, Joanna, married Mr. Denison Cumberland, grandson to the learned Bishop of Peterborough. The first issue of this marriage was the late Richard Cumberland, well known in the republic of letters, and especially as a dramatic writer. In his memoir of his own life Mr. Cumberland gives some amusing anecdotes of his grandfather in his old age. His object seems to have been to paint the domestic character of Bentley in a pleasing light, and to counteract the prevalent opinion of his stern and overbearing manners. The old man’s personal kindness towards himself seems to have produced a deep and well merited feeling of gratitude. His communications however are of little value, for he neglected his opportunities of obtaining accurate and more important information from his mother and other relatives of the great critic.