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remark which every reader, who knows any thing of the time, must allow to be true; and may be fully admitted by those who deprecate most decidedly both the principles and conduct of Atterbury.

After this exhibition, our readers would not thank us for disturbing the grammatical cavils of the blunderer. Some are founded in the grossest ignorance; but even had he succeeded in pointing out a flaw, we envy little the creature who could read this great, laborious, and most delightful work, with a view to pick out the faults without which no composition would be human. Such there may be :

Verum opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum.

With our youthful predilections for the style of architecture in which Trinity College is built, we cannot sympathize with the Bishop's commendations of Bentley's handsome and expensive, but Corinthian stalls and organ gallery of the gothic chapel of Trinity; there may be other points, too, which the Bishop himself might, in a future edition, think fit to revise; but the work is a valuable storehouse of literary, political, and academical information; a monument which will remain eternal as the genius of him to whose commemoration it is worthily consecrated.

ART. II.-The Insecurity of Salvation in the Church of Rome. A Sermon, preached in St. Martin's Church, Leicester, before the Venerable the Archdeacon and Clergy, on Tuesday, May 18, 1830. By the Rev. W. L. FANCOURT, D.D. Vicar of St. Mary's and AU Saints, Leicester. Leicester: T. Combe and Son. London: Rivingtons. 1830. Pp. 58. Price 2s. 6d.

THE situation in which we place Dr. Fancourt's Sermon, as an article for review, will manifest the place which it justly occupies in our estimation, for it is very rarely that we feel ourselves called upon to assign any thing more than a notice to the occasional discourses which are submitted to our perusal. But the excellent Vicar of St. Mary's challenges our especial regard, whether we weigh the admirable matter of his eloquent sermon, or consider its suitableness to the times in which we live. No longer protected by the law from the machinations of her inveterate foes, who are admitted to the privilege of framing statutory regulations for our spiritual Zion and her disciples, whom they execrate as damnable heretics, and whom to pillage, to exterminate, and to murder, they would hold to be doing God service,―the Church of England needs such honest and intrepid supporters as Dr. Fancourt, to blow the trumpet of alarm, and to rouse men from their bed of sleep and indifference. The Papist has, indeed, made a fearful inroad upon our establishment; and, no longer satisfied

engaged, have gained the approbation and pursuit of the highest intellectual powers, and been productive of the most beneficial consequences. But the biography of Bentley is contradistinguished from that of scholars generally, by a circumstance which, though less honourable to its subject, is more calculated to arrest the attention of a reader. His was not the life of the retired student, unconnected with all histories and interests save those of learning. His days, on the contrary, were past in ceaseless activity and restless turbulence ; his life is interwoven not merely with the literary but the political history of his time; it is, moreover, almost identical with the contemporary history of the University of Cambridge, and considerably connected with that of the sister university; so that a correct and well detailed account of this eminent character is in the highest degree interesting to almost every description of readers.

No writer could have been better qualified for this task, than Bishop Monk. Congeniality of pursuits and tastes enable him alike to appreciate and display the literary character of Bentley; and his subsidia have been such as few biographers can boast. In continual intercourse with those who have succeeded to Bentley's appointments, and in ready and perpetual access to stores at once copious and authentic, nothing was requisite to our author but diligence and discrimination in the inspection, use, and arrangement of materials; and these he appears to have abundantly possessed. Accordingly, there has resulted a work of great minuteness and perspicuity, and, it is impossible to doubt, of very considerable accuracy. This, which is the most essential constituent of all good biography, is the more deserving notice, as the particulars furnished by Cumberland, who, from his relationship to the great subject of the present work, is sometimes quoted as the very highest authority, are often very materially in

correct.

We proceed to collect some account of the subject of this biography, from the work itself. Bentley was born on the 27th of January, 1661-62, at Oulton, in the parish of Rothwell, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire. He was the eldest son of Thomas Bentley, a person of small independent property, by Sarah, daughter of Richard Willie, a stone-mason at Oulton. His education commenced, according to Cumberland, under the auspices of his mother, from whom he learned the Latin Accidence; it is certain that he was sent to a dayschool at the neighbouring hamlet of Methley, and afterwards to the grammar-school of Wakefield. His father having died when he was thirteen years of age, his maternal grandfather sent him, in the following year, as a subsizar to St. John's College, Cambridge, at that time the largest in the University. In 1679-80, he graduated B. A. and was sixth on the first Tripos. But at that time it was the custom for

the Vice Chancellor and the Proctors to nominate an honorary senior optime each; and the names of these students were registered next to that of the first man of the year. Bentley's place on the Tripos corresponded therefore with that of third Wrangler. It is not necessary, however, at least for Cambridge readers, to observe that there is no comparison between the standards of proficiency in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Bentley was excluded from a fellowship at St. John's, in consequence of the untoward regulation, abolished by royal authority ten years since, which only permitted two fellowships to be held at a time by men of the same county; but his merits having attracted the attention of his college, he was appointed to the mastership of Spalding Grammar School. This situation he relinquished shortly after, for the office of domestic tutor to the son of the eminent Stillingfleet, the Dean of St. Paul's. In 1683, he proceeded M. A.

It was in the leisure, the choice society, and the ample library of Dean Stillingfleet's residence, that Bentley was principally enabled to amass those stores of classical and theological learning, with which he afterwards astonished and instructed the world. Here he wrote what he called his Hexapla, a thick quarto volume, in the first column of which he set down every word of the Hebrew Bible alphabetically; and in five other columns, all the interpretations of those words which occur in the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate Latin and Septuagint, and in Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Though Bentley's language is frequently pedantic, and he has been universally charged by his adversaries with pedantry, and but languidly vindicated by his friends; yet was he so far from impertinently displaying his accomplishments, that it is to the effect of accidental circumstances, that we are indebted for our knowledge of his acquaintance with many departments of learning. While preeminent in reputation as a classical scholar, there can be little doubt, that had his great scheme for a revision of the New Testament been completed, it would have been the noblest work ever presented to Christendom; while his theological productions evince him to have been no less skilled in sacred than in profane criticism.

In 1689, Bentley accompanied his pupil to Wadham College, Oxford, of which he became a member, and was admitted ad eundem. It was here that he laid the foundation of his fame. The curators of the Sheldon press were then printing the Chronicle of Joannes Malela, a writer of the middle ages, valuable only on account of the illustration which he furnishes to chronology, and as one of the sources whence the Greek lexicographers extracted their historical notices. Bentley was solicited by Dr. Mill to print some remarks by way of Appendix. This he did in his celebrated "Epistola ad Millium." It

seems to have been the fate of Bentley to owe his highest celebrity to his masterly treatment of unworthy subjects, while his pen was no sooner employed on those which appeared to challenge it, than he inflicted a wound on his reputation. Milton, Horace, and Lucan would have ruined his fame, had he not been able to fall back on Malela, Phalaris, and Collins.

In 1692, the Honourable Robert Boyle died, founding by his will the lectureship against infidelity, which bears his name. Bentley, though only in deacon's orders, was selected to be the first champion in a cause conspicuous not only for its intrinsic merits, but associated, in this instance, with the name of one of the greatest scientific philosophers who had ever existed. All our readers are aware that this occasion produced the lectures against Atheism, which, in apposite learning, close argument, and profound views of the subject, have never been surpassed. Before the year had expired, and while he was yet in deacon's orders, the merits of these lectures had procured him a Prebend in Worcester Cathedral. The author, naturally enough, observes upon this circumstance, that "this preferment must have been highly gratifying to our young divine," "as securing a liberal independence, the first wish of a scholar." We are tempted here, and may be in some other place, to notice the blunders of the Edinburgh critic, who has reviewed this work; blunders which, if not wilful, are curious specimens of human density, and render this author's scull a desirable study for the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. The northern luminary thus enlightens his readers :-"The securing of a liberal independence, he (Bishop Monk) characterises as the first wish of a scholar." From which the bungler goes on to infer, that the Bishop meant to say the very opposite of what the merest common sense would extract from his words, making him affirm that a scholar regards an independence as the object of learning, and not learning as the object of independence!

Bentley had now acquired a high degree of celebrity; he was in intimate correspondence with many of the most eminent continental scholar's; and many a veteran in classical studies deferred, with the most profound respect, to his critical opinions. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, however indefensible, that he acquired a habit of expecting deference from all parties and all ages, and of exacting it, wherever he could, as an obligation which the world had acknowledged. His reputation and interest readily procured him in 1692-93 to be appointed life keeper of all the King's libraries in England. This appointment conducted, by a most unexpected train of circumstances, to the production of the work which has, perhaps, more than any other, fixed the basis of Bentley's critical fame. The controversy on the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns was then

agitated with considerable spirit; among others who had taken a conspicuous part in it was Sir William Temple, better known for the elegance of his style than the profundity of his learning. Sir William had appeared in behalf of the ancients; and his judgment on Phalaris is so remarkable an instance of the fallaciousness of all reasoning grounded on style, that we give it as quoted by the Bishop, propounding it as a warning to all visionary theorists. We may observe, besides, that had Sir William been aware of the forgery, it is probable that his sentiments regarding the epistles would have been different.

As the first (Esop) has been agreed by all ages since, for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original; so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian with some others have attributed them to Lucian: but I think he must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander.—Pp. 47, 48.

This eulogium was sure to attract the public attention upon Phalaris, who, even to scholars, was little familiar. Dr. Aldrich, then Dean of Christ Church, was in the habit of employing the young men of his college in editing classical works; and Phalaris, at this juncture, was the author selected to immortalize the name of the Honourable Charles Boyle. For this edition it was endeavoured to produce the collation of as many MSS. as possible; among the rest, a copy, of no great value either for accuracy or antiquity, was in the library at St. James's. The solicitation of this copy on the part of Boyle was the first step in that extraordinary literary fraud, with the general features of which all our readers are acquainted, and especially with the immortal work by which its progress was dignified from the pen of Bentley. But as the particulars of the transaction are variously stated, it may be interesting to the reader to peruse the account which Bishop Monk has compiled from the most authentic materials.

Mr. Boyle wrote to his bookseller, Thomas Bennett, whose sign was the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church Yard, simply directing him "to get this manuscript collated." From his inexperience he was not aware that in all libraries a nice and necessary caution is observed regarding their manuscript treasures; and that commissions of such a nature are not usually intrusted to a bookseller. The conduct of this Bennett produced such singular consequences, and involved in literary and personal discussions so many eminent characters, that we are under the necessity of examining it with minute accuracy. To Mr. Boyle's request he

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