Background
Richard Bentley was born Jan. 27, 1662, at Oulton, Yorkshire. His father, Thomas Bentley, was a yeoman who owned a small estate near Oulton.
Richard Bentley was born Jan. 27, 1662, at Oulton, Yorkshire. His father, Thomas Bentley, was a yeoman who owned a small estate near Oulton.
Bentley received his first training in Latin grammar from his mother and was then sent to Wakefield Grammar School.
He proved himself a good student, standing third in his class at St. John's College Cambridge when he received his B.A. in 1680 (M.A. in 1683).
In 1689 Stillingfleet became bishop of Worcester, and Bentley's pupil went to reside at Oxford in Wadham College, accompanied by his tutor.
Bentley's introductions and his own merits placed him at once on a footing of intimacy with the most distinguished scholars in the university, Dr John Mill, Humphrey Hody, Edward Bernard.
In the first series of lectures (" A Confutation of Atheism ") he endeavours to present the Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them (especially in opposition to Hobbes) into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator.
He had some correspondence with Newton, then living in Trinity College, on the subject.
The second series, preached in 1694, has not been published and is believed to be lost.
In 1693 the keepership of the royal library becoming vacant, great efforts were made by his friends to obtain the place for Bentley, but through court interest the post was given to Mr Thynne.
To these preferments were added in 1693 a royal chaplaincy and the living of Hartlebury.
The recognition of continental scholars came in the shape of a dedication, by Graevius, prefixed to a dissertation of Albert Rubens, De Vita Flavii Mallii Theodori, published at Utrecht in 1694.
While these distinctions were being accumulated upon Bentley, his energy was making itself felt in many and various directions.
He made great efforts to retrieve this collection from the dilapidated condition into which it had been allowed to fall.
The rooms were granted, but Marlborough characteristically kept them for himself.
He was commissioned by the university of Cambridge to obtain Greek arid Latin founts for their classical books, and accordingly he had cast in Holland those beautiful types which appear in the Cambridge books of that date.
He assisted Evelyn in his Numismata.
All Bentley's literary appearances at this time were of this accidental character.
We do not find him settling down to the steady execution of any of the great projects with which he had started.
He designed, indeed, in 1694 an edition of Philostratus, but readily abandoned it to G. Olearius, (Ohlschlager), " to the joy, " says F. A. Wolf, " of Olearius and of no one else. "
Bentley supplied to Graevius's Callimachus a masterly collection of the fragments with notes, published at Utrecht in 1697.
The Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, the work on which Bentley's fame in great part rests, originated in the same casual way.
This paper was resented as an insult by the Christ Church editor of Phalaris, Charles Boyle, afterwards earl of Orrery, who in getting the MS. in the royal library collated for his edition (1695) had had a little quarrel with Bentley.
In the year 1700 Bentley received that main preferment which, says De Quincey, "was at once his reward and his scourge for the rest of his life. "
The six commissioners of ecclesiastical patronage unanimously recommended Bentley to the crown for the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge.
It was not that it was more degraded than the other colleges, but its former lustre made the abuse of endowments in its case more conspicuous.
The eclipse had taken place during the reaction which followed 1660, and was owing to causes which were not peculiar to Trinity, but which influenced the nation at large.
The names of John Pearson and Isaac Barrow, and, greater than either, that of Newton, adorn the college annals of this period.
But these were quite exceptional men.
They had not inspired the rank and file of fellows of Trinity with any of their own love for learning or science.
Indolent and easy-going clerics, without duties, without a pursuit or any consciousness of the obligation of endowments, they haunted the college for the pleasant life and the good things they found there, creating sinecure offices in each other's favour, jobbing the scholarships and making the audits mutually pleasant.
He inaugurated many beneficial reforms in college usages and discipline, executed extensive improvements in the buildings, and generally used his eminent station for the promotion of the interests of learning both in the college and in the university.
But this energy was accompanied by a domineering temper, an overweening contempt for the feelings and even for the rights of others, and an unscrupulous use of means when a good end could be obtained.
Bentley, at the summit of classical learning, disdained to associate with men whom he regarded as illiterate priests.
He treated them with contumely, while he was diverting their income to public purposes.
The continued drain upon their purses-on one occasion the whole dividend of the year was absorbed by the rebuilding of the chapel-was the grievance which at last roused the fellows to make a resolute stand.
After ten years of stubborn but ineffectual resistance within the college, they had recourse in 1710 to the last remedy-an appeal to the visitor, the bishop of Ely (Dr Moore).
Bentley's reply (The Present State of Trinity College, b"c. , 1710) is in his most crushing style.
Bentley, called upon to answer, demurred to the bishop of Ely's jurisdiction, alleging that the crown was visitor.
The crown lawyers decided the point against him; the case was heard (1714) and a sentence of ejection from the mastership ordered to be drawn up, but before it was executed the bishop of Ely died and the process lapsed.
The feud, however, still went on in various forms.
In 1718 Bentley was deprived by the university of his degrees, as a punishment for failing to appear in the vice-chancellor's court in a civil suit; and it was not till 1724 that the law compelled the university to restore them.
In 1733 he was again brought to trial before the bishop of Ely (Dr Greene) by the fellows of Trinity and was sentenced to deprivation, but the college statutes required the sentence to be exercised by the vice-master (Dr Walker), who was Bentley's friend and refused to act.
In vain were attempts made to compel the execution of the sentence, and though the feud was kept up till 1738 or 1740 (about thirty years in all) Bentley remained undisturbed. During the period of his mastership, with the exception of the first two years, Bentley pursued his studies uninterruptedly, although the results in the shape of published works seem incommensurable.
Among his minor works may be mentioned: the Astronomica of Manilius (1739), for which he had been collecting materials since 1691; a letter on the Sigean inscription on a marble slab found in the Troad, now in the British Museum; notes on the Theriaca of Nicander and on Lucan, published after his death by Cumberland; emendations of Plautus (in his copies of the editions by Pareus, Camerarius and Gronovius, edited by Schroder, 1880, and Sonnenschein, 1883).
Bentleii Critica Sacra (1862), edited by A. A. Ellis, contains the epistle to the Galatians (and excerpts), printed from an interleaved folio copy of the Greek and Latin Vulgate in Trinity College.
A collection of his Opuscula Philologica was published at Leipzig in 1781.
Their union lasted forty years.
He was accustomed to say that he should live to be eighty, adding that a life of that duration was long enough to read everything worth reading.
Bentley was the first, perhaps the only, Englishman who can be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning, although perhaps not a great classical scholar.
Before him there were only John Selden, and, in a more restricted field, Thomas Gataker and Pearson. His most famous work - Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris (1699).
Bentley was married to Joanna. They had three children together
His father, Thomas Bentley, was a yeoman who owned a small estate near Oulton.
