Something of the same sentiment accompanied us at intervals through this "Life of Bentley" and the records which it involves of Cambridge. Where upon this earth shall peace be found, if not within the cloistral solitudes of Oxford and Cambridge? Cities of Corinthian beauty and luxury; with endowments and patronage beyond the revenues of considerable nations; in libraries, in pictures, in cathedrals, surpassing the kings of the earth; and with the resources of capital cities combining the deep tranquillity of sylvan villages ;-places so favoured by time, accident, and law, approach the creations of romance more nearly than any other known realities of Christendom. Yet in these privileged haunts of meditation, hallowed by the footsteps of Bacon and Milton, still echoing to those of Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton, did the leading society of Cambridge, with that man at their head who, for scholarship, was confessedly "the foremost man of all this world," through a period of forty years fight and struggle with so deadly an acharnement; sacrificed their time, energy, fortune, personal liberty, and conscience, to the prosecution of their immortal hatreds; vexed the very altars with their fierce dissensions; and went to their graves so perfectly unreconciled that, had the classical usage of funeral cremation been restored, we might have looked for the old miracle of the Theban Brothers, and expected the very flames which consumed the hostile bodies to revolt asunder and violently refuse to mingle. Some of the combatants were young men at the beginning of the quarrel; they were grey-headed, palsied, withered, doting, before it ended. Some had outlived all distinct memory, except of their imperishable hatreds. Many died during its progress; and sometimes their deaths, by disturbing the

1 On the expulsion of Edipus from the throne of the Grecian Thebes, his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, succeeded him, under an agreement to reign alternately. Once, however, in possession, the scoundrel Eteocles ignored the compact. His defrauded brother sought military aid, and, by the potent favour of his father-in-law Adrastus, assembled seven armies- -one against each of the seven Theban gates. But finally the quarrel was settled by a duel between the two brothers. Both perished. And such was their reciprocal hatred that, on the common funeral-pyre where the two corpses were placed, even the flames parted asunder to the right and the left, refusing to ascend together.

equilibrium of the factions, had the effect of kindling into fiercer activity those rabid passions which, in a Christian community, they should naturally have disarmed or soothed.

Of feuds so deadly, so enduring, and which continue to interest at the distance of a hundred and forty years, everybody will desire to know who, in a criminal sense, was the author. The usual way of settling such questions is to say that there were "faults on both sides "—which, however, is not always the case; nor, when it is, are the faults always equal. The Bishop of Gloucester, who gives the fullest materials yet published for a just decision, leaves us to collect it for ourselves. Meantime, I suspect that his general award would be against Bentley; for, though disposed to be equitable, he is by no means indulgent to his hero; and he certainly thinks too highly of Colbatch, the most persevering of all Bentley's enemies, and a malicious old toad. If that, however, be Dr. Monk's leaning, there are others (with avenues, perhaps as good, to secret information) whose bias was the other way. In particular, I find Dr. Parr, about forty years after Bentley's death, expressing his opinion thus to Dr. Charles Burney: "I received great entertainment from your account of our Aristarchus; it is well written and well directed; for, in spite of vulgar prejudice, Bentley was eminently right, and the College infamously wrong." (Dr. Parr's Works, vol. vii. p. 389.) My own belief sets in stormily towards the same conclusion. But, even if not, I would propose that at this time of day Bentley should be pronounced right, and his enemies utterly in the wrong. Whilst living, indeed, or whilst surviving in the persons of his friends and relations, the meanest of little rascals has a right to rigorous justice. But, when he and his are all bundled off to Hades, it is far better, and more considerate to the feelings of us public, that a little dog should be sacrificed than a great one; for by this means the current of one's sympathy with an illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstructions, and enabled to flow unbroken, which might else be unpleasantly distracted between his talents, on the one hand, and his knavery, on the other. And one general remark I must make upon the conduct of this endless feud, no matter who began it, which will show Bentley's title to the benefit

of the rule I have proposed. People not nice in discriminating are apt to confound all the parties to a feud under one undistinguishing sentence of reproach; and, whatever difference they are compelled to allow in the objective features of a quarrel (ie. its grounds), yet in all the subjective features (temper, charity, candour) they see none at all. But, in fact, between Bentley and his antagonists the differences were vital. Bentley had a good heart; generally speaking, his antagonists had not. Bentley was overbearing, impatient of opposition, domineering, sometimes tyrannical. He had, and deservedly, a very lofty opinion of himself; he either had, or affected, too mean a one of his antagonists. Sume superbiam quæsitam meritis was the motto which he avowed. Coming to the government of a very important college, at a time when its discipline had been greatly relaxed and the abuses were many, his reforms (of which some have been retained even to this day) were pushed with too high a hand; he was too negligent of any particular statute that stood in his way; showed too harsh a disregard to the feelings of gentlemen; and too openly disdained the arts of conciliation. Yet this same man was placable in the highest degree; was generous; needed not to be conciliated by sycophantic arts; and, at the first moment when his enemies would make an opening for him to be so, was full of forgiveness. His literary quarrels, which have left the impression that he was irritable or jealous, were (without one exception) upon his part mere retorts to the most insufferable provocations; and, though it is true that, when once teased into rousing himself out of his lair, he did treat his man with rough play, left him ugly remembrances of his leonine power, and made himself merry with his distressed condition, yet, on the other hand, in his utmost wrath, there was not a particle of malice. How should there? As a scholar, Bentley had that happy exemption from jealousy which belongs almost inevitably to conscious power in its highest mode. Reposing calmly on his own supremacy, he was content that pretenders of every size and sort should flutter through their little day, and be carried as far beyond their natural place as the intrigues of friends or the caprice of the public could effect. Unmolested, he was sure never to molest. Some people have a "letch for

unmasking.impostors, or for avenging the wrongs of others. Porson, for example—what fiend of mischief drove him to intermeddle with Mr. Archdeacon Travis? How Quixotic again in appearance-how mean in its real motive-was Dr. Parr's defence of Leland and Jortin, or, to call it by its true name, Dr. Parr's attack upon Bishop Hurd! But Bentley had no touch of this temper. When instances of spurious. pretensions came in his way, he smiled grimly and goodnaturedly in private, but forbore (sometimes after a world of provocations) to unmask them to the public.1

Some of his most bitter assailants, as Kerr, and Johnson of Nottingham, he has not so much as mentioned; and it remains a problem to this day whether, in his wise love of peace, he forbore to disturb his own equanimity by reading the criticisms of a malignant enemy, or, having read them, generously refused to crush the insulter. Either way, the magnanimity was equal-for a man of weak irritability is as little able to abstain from hearkening after libels upon himself as he is from retorting them. Early in life (“Epist. ad Mill.") Bentley had declared, "Non nostrum est keiμévois éπepßaive" ("It is no practice of mine to trample upon the

1 Take, for instance, his conduct to Barnes, the Cambridge Professor of Greek. Bentley well knew that Barnes was an indifferent scholar, whose ponderous erudition was illuminated by neither accuracy of distinction nor elegance of choice. Yet Barnes spoke of himself in the most inflated terms, as though he had been the very Laureate of the Greek muses; and, not content with these harmless vaunts, scattered in conversation the most pointed affronts to Bentley, as the man under whose superiority he secretly groaned. All this Bentley refused to hear; praised him whenever he had an opportunity, even after Barnes intruded himself into the Phalaris dispute; and did him effectual services. At length Barnes published his Homer, and there shot his final arrow against Bentley, not indeed by name, but taking care to guide it to his mark by words scattered in all companies. Bentley was now roused to put an end to this petty molestation. But how? He wrote a most masterly examination of a few passages in the new edition; addressed it as a confidential letter to Dr. Davies, a common friend, desiring him to show it to the professor, by way of convincing him how easy a task such a critic would find it to ruin the character of the book, and thus appealing to his prudence for a cessation of insults; but at the same time assuring Dr. Davies that he would on no account offer any public disparagement to a book upon which Barnes had risked a little fortune. Could a more generous way have been devised for repelling public insults?

prostrate"); and his whole career in literature reflected a commentary upon that maxim. To concede was to disarm him. How opposite the temper of his enemies! One and all, they were cursed with bad tempers and unforgiving hearts. Cunningham,1 James Gronovius, and Johnson, Conyers Middleton,2 and Colbatch, all lost their peace of mind,

It

1 With respect to this elegant and acute scholar, the most formidable of Bentley's literary opponents, the following remarkable statement is made by Dr. Monk (p. 461):-"Between Alexander Cunningham, the historian, and Alexander Cunningham, the editor of Horace, there are so many particulars of resemblance that Thompson, the translator of the history, was forced, after a minute inquiry, to remain in suspense whether or not they were the same individual. appears that they were both Scotchmen, had both been travelling tutors, both resided at the Hague, both at the same period, both were intimate with certain distinguished public characters, both were eminent chess-players, both accomplished scholars, and both lived to an advanced age. These and many other coincidences long baffled all inquiry respecting the identity or diversity of the two namesakes and it has, I believe, but recently been ascertained beyond a doubt that the critic died at the Hague in 1730, and the historian died in London in 1737."-How truly disgusting that they would not die at the same time and place! For in that case the confusion or false identity of the two men would have been permanent and inextricable. As it is, I understand from a learned Scottish friend that, in certain papers which he communicated some years ago to Dr. Irving for his Life of Buchanan, and which doubtless will there be found, this curious case of Doppelgänger is fully cleared up.-This was written about seven-and-twenty years ago; and the whole case has had time to slip away from my remembrance. But "the learned Scottish friend" must have been Sir William Hamilton: for he was an inexhaustible fountain of interesting literary memorabilia. Yet, on the other hand, it is remarkable that Sir William had for many years ceased to hold any friendly intercourse with Dr. Irving, being most justly incensed by his obstinate mismanagement of the Advocates' Library. Sir William was early in life one amongst the official "curators" of that great national institu

tion.

2 This celebrated man was the most malignant of a malignant crew. In his Review of Bentley's Proposals for Editing the Greek Text of the Greek Testament, he stings like a serpent, -more rancorous party pamphlets never were written. He hated Waterland with the same perfect malignity; and his letters to Warburton, published in a quarto collection of his Miscellaneous Tracts, show that he could combine the part of sycophant, upon occasion, with that of assassin-like lampooner. It is, therefore, no unacceptable retribution in the eyes of those who honour the memory of Dan. Waterland and Bentley, men worth a hecatomb of Middletons, that the reputation of this venomous writer