Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley FRS was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellenism. In 1892, A. E. Housman called Bentley "the greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred".
Bentley's Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, published in 1699, proved that the letters in question, supposedly written in the 6th century BCE by the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris, were actually a forgery produced by a Greek sophist in the 2nd century CE. Bentley's investigation of the subject is still regarded as a landmark of textual criticism. He also showed that the sound represented in transcriptions of some Greek dialects by the letter digamma appeared also in Homeric poetry, even though it was not represented there in writing by any letter.
Bentley became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1700. His autocratic manner and contemptuous treatment of the college fellows led to extensive controversy and litigation, but he remained in that post until his death, more than four decades later. In 1717 Bentley was appointed as the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. As professor at Cambridge, Bentley introduced the first competitive written examinations in a Western university.
A fellow of the Royal Society, Bentley was interested in natural theology and the new physical sciences, subjects on which he corresponded with Isaac Newton. Bentley was in charge of the second edition of Newton's Principia Mathematica, although he delegated most of the scientific work involved to his pupil Roger Cotes.
Early life and education
Richard Bentley was born at his maternal grandparents' home at Oulton near Rothwell, Leeds, West Yorkshire, in northern England. A blue plaque near his birthplace commemorates the fact. His father was Thomas Bentley, a yeoman farmer of Oulton. His grandfather, Captain James Bentley, is said to have suffered for the Royalist cause following the English Civil War, leaving the family in reduced circumstances. Bentley's mother, the daughter of a stonemason, had some education, and was able to give her son his first lessons in Latin.He attended a day school in Methley, before being sent to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, where he was taught under the successive headmasters Jeremiah Boulton and John Baskerville, and is reported to have retained a strong affection for the school, later supporting former pupils from it. At the age of fourteen he left Wakefield to enter St John's College, Cambridge, matriculating on 24 May 1676; he received the degree of BA in 1680, when he was placed sixth in the list of mathematical honours, and proceeded MA in 1683.
Academic work
Bentley never became a college fellow, which would have been the more natural course to an academic career. Instead, he was appointed headmaster of Spalding Grammar School before he was 21 years old. Edward Stillingfleet, the dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, hired Bentley as tutor to his son. This allowed Bentley to meet eminent scholars, have access to the best private library in England, and become familiar with Dean Stillingfleet. During his six years as tutor, Bentley also made a comprehensive study of Greek and Latin writers, storing up knowledge which he would use later in his scholarship.In 1689, Stillingfleet became bishop of Worcester and Bentley's pupil went up to Wadham College, Oxford, accompanied by his tutor. At Oxford, Bentley soon met John Mill, Humphrey Hody, and Edward Bernard. He studied the manuscripts of the Bodleian, Corpus Christi, and other college libraries. He collected material for literary studies. Among these are a corpus of the fragments of the Greek poets and an edition of the Greek lexicographers.
The Oxford press was about to bring out an edition from the unique manuscript of the Chronographia in the Bodleian Library. It was a universal history in Greek by John Malalas or "John the Rhetor" of Antioch. The editor, John Mill, principal of St Edmund Hall, asked Bentley to review it and make any pertinent remarks on the text.
Bentley wrote the Epistola ad Johannem Millium, which is about a hundred pages long and was included at the end of the Oxford Malalas. That short treatise placed Bentley ahead of all living English scholars. The ease with which he restored corrupted passages, the certainty of his emendation and command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill or Edmund Chilmead. To the small circle of classical students, it was obvious that he was a critic beyond the ordinary.
Image:Bust of Richard Bently by Louis-François Roubiliac.jpg|thumb|upright|A bust of Bentley now stands in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge
In 1690, Bentley had taken deacon's orders. In 1692 he was nominated first Boyle lecturer, a nomination repeated in 1694. He was offered the appointment a third time in 1695 but declined it, as he was involved in too many other activities. In the first series of lectures, he endeavours to present Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator. He had some correspondence with Newton, then living in Trinity College, Cambridge, on the subject. The second series, preached in 1694, has not been published and is believed to be lost.
After being ordained, Bentley was promoted to a prebendal stall in Worcester Cathedral. In 1693 the curator of the royal library became vacant, and his friends tried to obtain the position for Bentley, but did not have enough influence. The new librarian, a Mr Thynne, resigned in favour of Bentley, on condition that he receive an annuity of £130 for life out of the £200 salary. In 1695 Bentley received a royal chaplaincy and the living of Hartlebury.
That same year, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1696 earned the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The scholar Johann Georg Graevius of Utrecht made a dedication to him, prefixed to a dissertation on the seventeenth-century scholar Albert Rubens, De Vita Fl. Mallii Theodori.
Dissertation on the ''Epistles'' of Phalaris
Bentley had official apartments in St James's Palace in London, and his first care was the royal library in Ashburnham House in Westminster. He worked to restore the collection from a dilapidated condition. He persuaded the Earl of Marlborough to ask for additional rooms in the palace for the books. This was granted, but Marlborough kept them for his personal use. Bentley enforced the law, ensuring that publishers delivered nearly one thousand volumes that had been purchased but not delivered.The University of Cambridge commissioned Bentley to obtain Greek and Latin fonts for their classical books; he had these made in Holland. He assisted John Evelyn in his Numismata. Bentley did not settle down to the steady execution of any of the major projects he had started. In 1694, he designed an edition of Philostratus, but abandoned it to Gottfried Olearius, "to the joy," says F. A. Wolf, "of Olearius and of no one else." He supplied Graevius with collations of Cicero, and Joshua Barnes with a warning as to the spuriousness of the Epistles of Euripides. Barnes printed the epistles anyway and declared that no one could doubt their authenticity but a man who was perfrictae frontis aut judicii imminuti. For Graevius's Callimachus, Bentley added a collection of the fragments with notes.
He wrote the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, his major academic work, almost accidentally. In 1697, William Wotton, about to bring out a second edition of his Ancient and Modern Learning, asked Bentley to write out a paper exposing the spuriousness of the Epistles of Phalaris, long a subject of academic controversy. The Christ Church editor of Phalaris, Charles Boyle, resented Bentley's paper. He had already quarrelled with Bentley in trying to get the manuscript in the royal library collated for his edition. Boyle wrote a response which was accepted by the reading public, although it was much later criticised as showing only superficial learning. The demand for Boyle's book required a second printing. When Bentley responded, it was with his dissertation. The truth of its conclusions was not immediately recognised, but it has a high reputation.
Master of Trinity College
In 1700, the commissioners of ecclesiastical patronage recommended Bentley to the Crown for the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. He arrived an outsider and proceeded to reform the college administration. He started a programme of renovations to the buildings, and used his position to promote learning. He is also credited by the British mathematician Rouse Ball with starting the first written examinations in the West in 1702, all those prior to this being oral in nature. At the same time, he antagonised the fellows, and the capital programme caused reductions in their incomes, which they resented.After ten years of stubborn but ineffectual resistance, the fellows appealed to the Visitor, the bishop of Ely. Their petition was full of general complaints. Bentley's reply is in his most crushing style. The fellows amended their petition and added a charge of Bentley's having committed 54 breaches of the statutes. Bentley appealed directly to the Crown, and backed his application with a dedication of his Horace to the lord treasurer.
The Crown lawyers decided against him; the case was heard and a sentence of expulsion from the mastership was drawn up. Before it was executed, the bishop of Ely died and the process lapsed. The feud continued in various forms at lower levels. In 1718 Cambridge rescinded Bentley's degrees, as punishment for failing to appear in the vice-chancellor's court in a civil suit. It was not until 1724 that he had them restored under the law.
In 1733 the fellows of Trinity again brought Bentley to trial before the bishop of Ely, and he was sentenced to deprivation. The college statutes required the sentence to be executed by the vice-master Richard Walker, who was a friend of Bentley and refused to act. Although the feud continued until 1738 or 1740, Bentley remained in his post.