high," which were published in the Spectator, and afterwards in the works of Addison, to whom they undoubtedly belong. He was not the man to claim what was not his own. As to their being Marvell's, it is just as probable that they are Chaucer's. They present neither his language, his versification, nor his cast of thought.

We cannot better conclude, than with the following beautiful extract from a letter to a friend in affliction, which is novel on a trite subject,— that of consolation:

“HONOURED SIR,

Having a great esteem and affection for you, and the grateful memory of him that is departed being still green and fresh upon my spirit, I cannot forbear to enquire, how you have stood the second shock, at your sad meeting of friends in the country. I know that the very sight of those who have been witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a calamity. I know the contagion of grief, and infection of tears; and especially when it runs in a blood. And I myself could sooner imitate than blame those innocent relentlings of nature, so that they spring from tenderness only, and humanity, not from an implacable sorrow. The tears of a family may flow together like those little drops that compact the rainbow, and if they be placed with the same advantage towards heaven, as those are to the sun, they, too, have their splendour; and like that bow, while they unbend into seasonable showers, yet they promise that there shall not be a second flood. But the dissoluteness of grief-the prodigality of sorrow-is neither to be indulged in a man's self, nor complied with in others. Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his gowrd. He that gave his own son, may he not take ours? It is pride that makes a rebel; and nothing but the overweening of ourselves, and our own things, that raises us against Divine Providence. Whereas, Abraham's obedience was better than sacrifice. And if God please to accept both, it is indeed a farther trial, but a greater honour. "Tis true, it is a hard task to learn and teach at the same time. And where yourselves are the experiment, it is as if a man should dissect his own body, and read the anatomy lecBut I will not heighten the difficulty, while I advise the attempt. Only, as in difficult things, you would do well to make use of all that may strengthen and assist you; the word of God, the society of good men, and the books of the ancients: there is one way more, which is, by diversion, business, and activity, which are also necessary to be used in their season."

ture.

RICHARD BENTLEY, D.D.

THE life of BENTLEY is not a pleasing retrospect. It affords a painful proof that peaceful pursuits are not always pursued in peacethat the irascible passions may be excited, no less by controversies of literature, than by disputes of politics; and that mean and malignant interests are as busy in academic shades, as they can be in "high-viced cities ;"-that power is as eagerly, and unscrupulously grasped at by the scholar, as by the courtier; and that money was once as unrighteously worshipped in Trinity College, Cambridge, as now in Threadneedle Street, or Capel Court.

"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."

Of liberal learning 'tis the choicest fruit
To make a gentleman of clown or brute.

So says Ovid. This is one of the first apothegms that poor little Latiners are doomed to learn; and a beautiful one it is; displaying the value of classical learning in the clearest light. There is but one small objection to it :-it is not true.

It were well for great authors, poets, philosophers, scholars,-may be also for divines, if their memory lived only in their works—if their books were like the pyramids, which are admired the more, because we know not by whom, or for what, they were erected. Happiest, as the first and greatest of poets, is HOMER, of whose corporeal existence, not a record survives. So utterly are the footsteps of his mortal pilgrimage obliterated, that certain irrefragable doubters deny that he ever appeared in the body, and maintain that the Iliad is a meteor formed of the exhalations of a national mind, a unison of many voices, blended by the distance of a remote age; and it is pleasanter to believe even this, than to think that his life was spent in petty squabbles, and qui tam litigation or that, according to one tradition, he drowned himself from vexation, because he could not guess a miserable riddle.

It may not be an unfitting introduction to the biography of England's first Hellenist, if we attempt to fix the just value of that literature, to which BENTLEY dedicated those hours, which were not engaged in

litigious feuds, from which no distraction of affairs, no peril of estate, or reputation, ever diverted him. In the ceaseless ebb and flow of opinion, what has been unduly exalted by one age, is ofttimes as unjustly depreciated in the next, and so it has happened, that a minute acquaintance with the niceties of two dead languages, which has been honoured with the exclusive name of scholarship, and regarded as the sole type and symbol of a liberal education, is now considered by the most influential movers of popular judgment, as the specious disguise of selfcomplacent ignorance, the fruitless blossom of indefatigable idleness, at best a frivolous accomplishment, and not seldom, an insidious abettor of privileged prejudice, and of "creeds outworn." But in truth there is no more wisdom, and far less amiability, in running along with a new folly, than in sitting still in the shadow of an old one.

In the wide circuit of human capacity, there is room for every art, and every science. As that liberty which infringes on another's birthright is usurpation, so that knowledge, whatever it be, which allows not space for all knowledge to expand, is merely learned ignorance. Neither the exact sciences, which are part and parcel of the pure reason; nor the practical arts of life, which good sense constructs out of experience, are any wise defrauded, by the attention which certain intellects choose to bestow, on the remains of antiquity. It is a very useless enquiry-what kind of knowledge, or what line of occupation is best— all are good, and in a complex system of society, all are needful. The community will best be served, if each do strenuously what he can do best, without troubling himself about the comparative worth or dignity of his vocation. When we consider the excellence to which Scaliger, Bentley, Hermann, Heyne, attained in their art, we cannot reasonably doubt, that the All-giver endued them with peculiar faculties, fitted to their peculiar object, and that devoting themselves to that object, they obeyed the will of him who bestows on each man according to his divine pleasure. When we see a beautiful picture, we know that its maker was bound by special duty to paint. When we read an acute and elegant criticism, we are sure that its author is right in being a philologer. Wherever we find any branch of learning cultivated to the detriment of general information, we say not "this is overrated," but "other things are underrated," the fabric of learning has been built on too narrow a basis, and without that symmetry and inter-dependence of parts which is no less indispensable to intellectual soundness, than to visible beauty. But though the commonwealth of mind requires universal erudition, yet for the individual it is sufficient that he be wise in his own craft— the division of labour allows and demands that particular functions should appropriate particular agents-all will go well for each and all,

if there be not wanting some few overlooking and ruling geniuses, some master intellects, some architectonic sages, to keep the operatives to their work, and to restrict them to their province.

The question is not, therefore, whether critical learning be not useful and ornamental to the individual, not whether a Bentley employed, or misemployed, his faculties, but whether the predominance asserted by classical studies over all other human knowledge, is rightfully conceded. Never for a moment would we allow it to be disputed that Mozart and Handel were glorious beings, who well fulfilled their duties to nature and to society; for be it remembered, that we speak not of those higher duties to God and the soul, which are essentially the same for all degrees, ranks, ages, sexes, and capacities. Their excellence proves irrefragably that they laboured in their appointed path; nevertheless we would not willingly constitute the music masters a committee of general instruction, nor do we very highly approve the fashion, which confines every female not born to manual labour, and too many of those that have no secure or honorable prospects of exemption from servitude or toil, hour after hour to a Piano-forte, for six days in the week, if the seventh be kept holy-wasting her happy spirits in the weary iteration of sounds, in which she delights not herself, and by which therefore she cannot delight others. By parity of argument the excellence of Virgil's verses does not demonstrate the propriety of compelling every boy, who is not sent to a ship or a factory, to be a Latin versifier, nor with the well-earned reputation of PORSON and BLOMFIELD, justify that arrangement, which measures the fitness of any man to form the mind of youth, and to tend over the souls of the poor, by his skill in deciding the priority of Greek readers, and his zeal for the abdicated rights of the Folic Digamma.

In the history of classical learning in England, the most conspicuous name is that of RICHARD BENTLEY, who was one of the most prominent characters of the age to which he belonged. He was equally distinguished for the vigour of his intellect, the extent of his erudition, and the violence of his conduct. His life was long and active, and certainly not spent in an even tenor. From the manner in which it was occupied, his natural element appears to have been that of strife and contention. His literary controversies, not few in number, were conducted with much ferocity; nor was his name more familiarly known in the classical haunts of the Muses, than in the unclassical Court of King's Bench, where he had six law-suits in less than three years. The name

of Bentley occupies a very prominent place in the works of Pope, Swift, and other contemporary satirists, and is familiarly known to multitudes who have no knowledge of his writings, or of his real character.

Of this most learned and pugnacious individual, the present Bishop of Gloucester (Dr. Monk), who has cultivated similar studies, has written a most elaborate life. From the Bishop's ample details, and other sources of information, we shall endeavour to give a condensed and accurate view of Bentley's personal and literary history.

RICHARD BENTLEY was born at Oulton, a village near Leeds, in Yorkshire, on the 27th of January, 1662. His lineage was neither so high, nor so low, as it has sometimes been represented. His progenitors were of that respectable class which has supplied every profession with many of its brightest ornaments, the higher description of English yeomen. They had been settled for some generations at Heptonstall, a village about eight miles from Halifax, where they possessed property. During the civil wars, his grandfather, James Bentley, a captain in the Royal army, was taken by the enemy, and died a prisoner in Pontefract Castle. His father, Thomas Bentley, possessed a small estate at Woodlesford, in the parish of Rothwell. In the year 1661, he married Sarah, daughter of Richard Willie, a stone-mason, at Oulton, and the first offspring of their union was the subject of this memoir.

For the first elements of classical learning, he is said to have been indebted to his mother, who is represented to have been a woman of an excellent understanding. He was then sent to a day-school in the neighbouring hamlet of Methley, and afterwards to the grammar school at Wakefield. Cumberland says, that "he went through the school with singular reputation." It appears that Mr. Jeremiah Boulton was the master of Wakefield school until April, 1672, when a Mr. John Baskerville succeeded him. Of this gentleman, to whom the principal credit of Bentley's education must belong, nothing is known, but that he was of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and presided in the school at Wakefield till his death, in 1681. Not to name the school, or the masters of men illustrious for literature, has been justly called by Dr. Johnson, "a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished." For the place of his education, Bentley testified throughout life the greatest attachment, and extended to persons coming from that seminary, his encouragement and patronage.

At the time of Bentley's birth, his father was considerably advanced in life, but his mother was only nineteen. They had four children younger than himself, of whom only two, Ann and Joseph, survived their infancy. When he was thirteen years old his father died, leaving his property at Woodlesford to his eldest son, James, the offspring, as it appears, of a former marriage. Richard was committed to the care of his grandfather Willie, who determined upon sending him to the University. He was admitted at Cambridge, a Subsizar of St. John's