6 well the substance of the most important discussions in the epistle yet certainly in the following sentence he prefers a charge against Bentley, which is altogether without foundation: In addressing his learned correspondent,' says Dr. Monk, he is not satisfied. with marking their intimacy by the terms φίλη κεφαλη, Milli jucundissime suavissime, &c.; but in one place he accosts him ὦ Ιωαννιδίον an indecorum which neither the familiarity of friendship, nor the license of a dead language, can justify towards the dignified head of a house.' Certainly Dr. Monk aliud agebat when he wrote this censure, which at any rate from him, who elsewhere attempts to cheapen the dignity of academic heads, would come with a peculiar want of grace. The case is this : From a long digression, which Bentley confesses to be too discursive, he suddenly recalls himself to the old Chronicler - Sed ad Antiochensem redeo (p. 486 of Lennep's republication); and then, upon an occasion of an allusion to Euripides, he goes on to expose some laughable blunders of Malelas: one of these is worth mentioning; the passage, "Ηκεσιν εἰς γῆν κυανεᾶν Συμπληγάδων it seems, the old boy had so construed, as to make zvavɛav not a genitive but an accusative, and thus made a present to geography of the yet undiscovered country of the Cyanean land. Upon this, and a previous discovery of a Scythian" Aulis,' by the sharp-sighted man of Antioch, Bentley makes himself merry; rates the geographers for their oversights; and clapping old Malelas on the back, he thus apostrophizes him — Euge vero, & 'Iwarrior; profecto aptus natus es ad omnia abdita et retrusa contemplanda!' (Well done, Johnny! you are the boy for seeing through a millstone!) Manifestly, then, the I. M. that he is here addressing is not his correspondent John Mill, but the subject of his review, John Malelas, the absurd old donkey of Antioch. This passage, therefore, in mere justice, Dr. Monk will cancel in his next edition: in fact, we cannot conceive how such a mistake has arisen with a man of his learning. 6 We must also very frankly state our disagreement with Dr. Monk upon the style (meaning the temper) of this epistle. He charges it with flippancy,' and thinks some of the expressions boastful.' We have lately read it carefully with a view to these censures; and we cannot find any foundation for them in a single instance. Se faire valoir is peculiarly the right of a young man on making his début. The mere history of the case obliges Bentley sometimes to make known the failure of Isaac Casaubon suppose, of Vossius, or of Gataker, when he had himself brilliantly succeeded: and supposing that the first of these heroes had declared a corruption desperate which Bentley restored with two strokes of his pen, was it altogether his duty to dissemble his exultation? Mere criticism, and a page covered with Greek, do not of themselves proclaim the pretensions of a scholar. It was almost necessary for Bentley to settle his own rank, by bringing himself into collision with the Scaligers, with Salmasius, and Pearson. Now, had this been done with irreverence towards those great men, we should have been little disposed to say a word in his behalf. far otherwise. In some passage or other, he speaks of all the great critics with filial duty. Erravit in re But levi, says he of one, gravioribus opinor studiis intentus, vir supra æmulationem nostram longissime positus.12 Of Pearson, in like manner, at the very moment of correcting him, he said on another occasion, that the very dust of his writings was gold. Æmilius Portus, indeed, he calls hominum futilissimus, justly incensed with him for having misled a crowd of great writers in a point of chronology. But speaking of himself, he says- Nos pusilli homunculi; and that is always his language when obliged to stand forward as an opponent of those by whose labors he had grown wise. On this work, as Bentley's first, and that which immediately made him known to all Europe, we have spent rather more words than we shall be able to do on the rest. In dismissing it, however, we cannot but express a hope, that some future editor will republish this and the other critical essays of Bentley, with the proper accuracy and beauty: in which case, without at all disturbing the present continuity of the text, it will be easy, by marginal figures and titles, to point out the true divisions and subdivisions of this elaborate epistle; for want of which it is at present troublesome to read. It sometimes happens to men of extraordinary attainments, that they are widely talked of before they come forward on the public arena. Much buz' is afloat about them in private circles: and as, in such cases, many are always ready to aid the marvellous, a small minority are sure, on the other hand, to affect the sceptical. In so critical a state of general expectation, a first appearance is everything. If this is likely to be really splendid, it is a mistaken policy which would deprecate the raising of vast expectations. On the contrary, they are of great service, pushed even to the verge of extravagance, and make people imagine the splendor of the actual success even greater than it was. Many a man is read by the light of his previous repu tation. Such a result happened to Bentley. Unfathered rumors had been wandering through the circles,' about an astonishing chaplain of the Bishop of Worcester and so great was the contrast of power and perfect ease in his late work, that his trumpeters and heralds were now thought to have made proclamation too faintly. This state of public opinion was soon indicated to Bentley by a distinction which he always looked upon as the most flattering in his long life. Robert Boyle had died on the last day but one of the year 1691. By his will this eminent Christian left an annual stipend of 501. for the foundation of a lecture in defence of religion against infidels. The appointment to this lectureship has always been regarded as a mark of honor: à fortiori, then, the first appointment. That there could have been little hesitation in the choice, is evident; for, on the 13th of February, 1692, Bentley was nominated to this office. The lectures which he preached in the discharge of his duty, are deservedly valued-presenting as much, as various, and as profound philosophy as perhaps was compatible with the popular treatment of the subject. Bentley flattered himself that, after this assault, the atheists were silent, and sheltered themselves under deism.' But this was imaginary. Spinosa, in particular, could not have had that influence, which Bentley, Sam. Clarke, and so many others have fancied: for B. D. S. Opera Posthuma,13 1677, where only his philosophic system can be found, has always been a very rare book: 14 and it was never reprinted until Professor Paulus, in our own days, published a complete edition of Spinosa's works. Bayle, it is true, gave some account of the philosophy, but a most absurd, and besides a contemptuous one. In fact, Bayle — spite of the esteem in which his acuteness was held by Warburton, and even by Leibnitz must be now classed as a spirited litterateur rather than philosopher. Hobbists, however, we may believe Bentley, that there were in abundance: but they were a weak cattle; and on Bentley's particular line of argument, even their master hardly knew his own mind. The lectures answered their end. They strengthened the public opinion of Bentley's talent, and exhibited him in a character more intimately connected with his sacred calling. Once only they were attacked from a quarter of authority. Dr. Monk, it appears to us, undervalues the force of the attack, and, perhaps unduly, ascribes it to an impulse of party zeal. Keill, a Scotchman of talent, whose excellent lectures on Natural Philosophy are still quoted as a text-book in Germany, was led, (and - our impression is — led naturally,) in his examination of Burnet's Theory of the Earth, to notice two errors of Bentley, one of which, as Dr. Monk puts it more on the footing of a verbal ambiguity than our impression of it would have warranted, we will not insist on. The other, unless our memory greatly deceives us, was this: Bentley, having heard that the moon always presents the same face to our earth, inferred, from that fact, that she had no revolution upon her own axis; upon which, Keill told him, that the fact he stated was a ground for the very opposite inference; since the effect of the moon's |