and the patient acquiesced.' Bentley died on July 14, 1742. Dr Wallis, of Stamford-an old friend and adviser who was summoned, but arrived too late-said that the measure suggested by the sufferer was that which he himself would have taken. Bentley was buried in the chapel of Trinity College, on the north side of the communion-rails. The Latin oration then customary was pronounced by Philip Yonge, afterwards Public Orator, and Bishop of Norwich. The day of Bentley's funeral was that on which George Baker left Eton for King's College,-the eminent physician to whom it was partly due that Cambridge became the University of Porson. The small square stone in the pavement of the College Chapel bears these words only : H. S. E. RICHARDUS BENTLEY S. T. P. R. Obiit XIV. Jul. 1742. Etatis 80. The words Magister Collegii would naturally have been added to the second line: but in the view of those Fellows who acknowledged the judgment of April, 1738, the Mastership had since then been vacant. In the hall of the College, where many celebrated names are commemorated by the portraits on the walls, places of honour are assigned to Bacon, Barrow, Newton, and Bentley. The features of the great scholar speak with singular force from the canvas of Thornhill, who painted him in his forty-eighth year, the very year in which his struggle with the College began. That picture, Bentley's own bequest, is in the Master's Lodge. The pose of the head is haughty, almost defiant; the large, prominent, and full of bold vivacity, have a light eyes, which are [Sanctae in them as if Bentley were looking straight at an impostor whom he had detected, but who still amused him; the nose, strong and slightly tip-tilted, is moulded as if nature had wished to show what a nose can do for the combined expression of scorn and sagacity; and the general effect of the countenance, at a first glance, is one which suggests power-frank, self-assured, sarcastic, and, I fear we must add, insolent: yet, standing a little longer before the picture, we become aware of an essential kindness in those eyes of which the gaze is so direct and intrepid; we read in the whole face a certain keen veracity; and the sense grows, this was a man who could hit hard, but who would not strike a foul blow, and whose ruling instinct, whether always a sure guide or not, was to pierce through falsities to truth. CHAPTER XIII. BENTLEY'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP. Ir will not be the object of these concluding pages to weigh Bentley's merits against those of any individual scholar in past or present times. The attempt, in such a case, to construct an order of merit amuses the competitive instinct of mankind, and may be an interesting exercise of private judgment, but presupposes a common measure for claims which are often, by their nature, incommensurable. A more useful task is to consider the nature of Bentley's place in that development of scholarship which extends from the fifteenth century to our own day. Caution may be needed to avoid drawing lines of a delusive sharpness between periods of which the characteristics. rather melt into each other. The fact remains, however, that general tendencies were successively prevalent in a course which can be traced. And Bentley stands in a well-marked relation both to those who preceded and to those who followed him. At his birth in 1662 rather more than two centuries had elapsed since the beginning of the movement which was to restore ancient literature to the modern world. During the earlier of these two centuries-from about 1450 to 1550-the chief seat of the revival had been Italy, which thus retained by a new title that intellectual primacy of Europe which had seemed on the point of passing from the lands of the south. Latin literature engrossed the early Italian scholars, who regarded themselves as literary heirs of Rome, restored to their rights after ages of dispossession. The beauty of classical form came as a surprise and a delight to these children of the middle age; they admired and enjoyed; they could not criticise. The more rhetorical parts of silver Latinity pleased them best; a preference natural to the Italian genius. And meanwhile Greek studies had remained in the background. The purest and most perfect examples of form, those which Greek literature affords,-were not present to the mind of the earlier Renaissance. Transalpine students resorted to Italy as for initiation into sacred mysteries. The highest eminence in classical scholarship was regarded as a birthright of Italians. The small circle of immortals which included Poggio and Politian admitted only one foreigner, Erasmus, whose cosmopolitan tone gave no wound to the national susceptibility of Italians, and whose conception, though larger than theirs, rested on the same basis. That basis was the imitatio veterum, the literary reproduction of ancient form. Erasmus was nearer than any of his predecessors or contemporaries to the idea of a critical. philology. His natural gifts for it are sufficiently manifest. But his want of critical method, and of the sense which requires it, appears in his edition of the Greek Testament. In the second half of the sixteenth century a new period is opened by a Frenchman of Italian origin, Joseph Scaliger. Hitherto scholarship had been busy The new effort is with the form of classical literature. to comprehend the matter. By his Latin compositions and translations Scaliger is connected with the Italian age of Latin stylists. But his most serious and characteristic work was the endeavour to frame a critical chronology of the ancient world. He was peculiarly well-fitted to effect a transition from the old to the new aim, because his industry could not be reproached with dulness. 'People had thought that æsthetic pleasure could be purchased only at the cost of criticism,' says Bernays; 'now they saw the critical workshop itself lit up with the glow of artistic inspiration.' A different praise belongs to Scaliger's great and indefatigable contemporary, Isaac Casaubon. His groans over Athenaeus, which sometimes reverberate in the brilliant and faithful pages of Mr Pattison, appear to warrant Casaubon's comparison of his toils to the labours of penal servitude ('catenati in ergastulo labores'). Bernhardy defines the merit of Casaubon as that of having been the first to popularise a connected knowledge of ancient life and manners. Two things had now been done. The charm of Latin style had been appreciated. The contents of ancient literature, both Latin and Greek, had been surveyed, and partly registered. Bentley approached ancient literature on the side which had been chiefly cultivated in the age nearest to his own. When we first find him at work, under Stillingfleet's roof, or in the libraries of Oxford, he is evidently less occupied with the form than with the matter. He reads extensively, making indexes for his own use; he seeks to possess the contents of the classical authors, whether already printed or accessible only in manuscript. An incident told by Cumberland is sug |