Bentley, Richard
, perhaps the greatest among the classical scholars of England, was born at Oulton in
Yorkshire, January 27th, 1662. After spending five years at the Wakefield Grammar School, he
entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1676, taking the Bachelor's degree in 1679. No
record has been kept of his career as an undergraduate, though he is known to have given
evidence of a strong taste for classical study. In 1682, his college gave
him the appointment of headmaster to the Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire, an office
which he shortly resigned to become tutor to the son of Dr. Stillingfleet, afterwards Bishop
of Worcester. In 1689, he went to Oxford with his pupil, and gained such reputation by his
erudition as to be twice appointed to deliver the Boyle Lectures on the “Evidences
of Religion.” In 1690 he took orders, and received from Bishop Stillingfleet various
preferments, with the office of librarian to the Royal Library at St. James's. In 1700, he
became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1717, Regius Professor of Divinity. His
arrogance, greed, and violence in his relations with his colleagues of the university made his
subsequent career one of continual strife and controversy. In 1718, the University Senate
voted to deprive him of his degrees; in 1734, his deposition as Master was pronounced; yet his
ability and force of character were such that at the time of his death he still retained his
offices as well as his degrees. He died July 14th, 1742.
As a philologist, Bentley may be truly said to have established the principles of historical
criticism and opened a new era for classical scholarship, so that in Germany to-day his name
is held in the highest honour as the greatest of England's philologists. His
Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699) gave him an
immediate reputation all over Europe. These
Epistles purported to be the
production of
Phalaris (q.v.), and to date back to
the sixth century B.C. This claim Bentley, in a paper published for Wotton, showed to be
false, whereupon the Christchurch (Oxford) editor of the
Epistles, the Hon.
Charles Boyle (afterward Earl of Orrery) attacked Bentley in a dissertation which Dyce has
characterized as “a tissue of superficial learning, dexterous malice, and happy
raillery.” To this Bentley, superior alike in scholarship and wit, made his immortal
reply, to which no answer was ever given, and which is a marvellously brilliant effort, unique
in being at once imposing in its learning and fascinating in its ingenious use of all the arts
of controversy. The best edition is Wagner's
(1874).
Other important works of Bentley are his
Letter to Mill, on the chronicler
John Malelas
(1691); an edition of Horace
(1711)—an
epoch-making masterpiece, recently edited by Zangemeister
(1869); an edition of
Terence
(1726); and an edition of
Paradise Lost
(1732), carried out on the same plan, and much less happily executed. A very remarkable
proposal of Bentley's—remarkable considering the time at which it was put
forth—was his plan, published in 1720, of printing an edition of the New Testament
in which the received Greek text should be corrected by a careful comparison of the oldest
existing Greek MSS., and with the Vulgate. This proposal, which was received with a storm of
opposition, was not carried out; but the principles laid down by Bentley have been adopted,
and have produced important results in the hands of Lachmann and other textual critics of
later times. See Monk,
Life of Bentley, 2 vols.
(1833); and
Jebb, Bentley (1882); with the article
Textual Criticism.
