tion. Bentley's Counsel advised the Vice - master, Dr. Hacket, to refrain from acting until he had taken legal opinion. Meanwhile Bentley continued to act as Master, to the indignation of his adversaries, and the astonishment. of the world. An examination for College scholarships was going on just then. On such occasions in former years Bentley had often set the candidates to write on some theme suggestive of his own position. Thus, at the height of his monarchy, he gave them, from Virgil, “No one of this number shall go away without a gift from me;" and once, at a pinch in his wars, from Homer, " Despoil others, but keep hands off Hector." This time he had a very apposite text for the young composers, from Terence: "This is your plea now-that I have been turned out: look you, there are ups and downs in all things." Dr. Hacket, however, had no mind to stand long in the breach; and on May 17, 1734, he resigned the Vice-mastership. He was succeeded by Dr. Richard Walker, a friend on whom Bentley could rely. During the next four years, every resource which ingenuity could suggest was employed to force Dr. Walker into executing the sentence of deprivation on Bentley. A petition was presented by Colbatch's party to the House of Lords, which the peers, after a debate, permitted to be withdrawn. Dr. Walker now effected a compromise between Bentley and some of the hostile Fellows. But Colbatch persevered. Three different motions were made in the Court of King's Bench; first, for a writ to compel Dr. Walker to act; next, for a writ to compel the Bishop of Ely to compel Dr. Walker to act; then, for a writ to compel the Bishop to do his own duty as General Visitor. All in vain. On April 22, 1738, the Court rejected the last of these appli cations.

That day marks the end of the strife begun in February, 1710: it had thus lasted a year longer than the Peloponnesian War. It has two main chapters. The first is the fourteen years' struggle from 1710 to 1724, in which Miller was the leader down to his withdrawal in 1719. The years 1725-1727 were a pause. Then the ten years' struggle, from 1728 to 1738, was organised and maintained by Colbatch. Meanwhile many of the persons concerned were advanced in age. Three weeks after the King's Bench had refused the third mandamus, Bishop Greene died at the age of eighty. Dr. Colbatch was seventy-five. Bentley himself was seventy-seven. If he had wanted another classical theme for the candidates in the scholarship examination, he might have given them

"One man by his delay hath restored our fortunes." He was under sentence of deprivation, but only one person could statutably deprive him; that person declined to move; and no one could make him move. Bentley therefore remained master of the field-and of the College.

We remember the incorrigible old gentleman in the play, whose habit of litigation was so strong that, when precluded from further attendance on the public lawcourts, he got up a little law-court at home, and prosecuted his dog. Bentley's occupation with the King's Bench ceased in April, 1738. In July he proceeded against Dr. Colbatch at Cambridge in the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of Ely, for the recovery of certain payments called "proxies," alleged to be due from Colbatch, as Rector of Orwell, to Bentley, as Archdeacon of the diocese. The process lasted eighteen months, at the end of which Dr. Colbatch had to pay six years' arrears and costs.

Looking back on Bentley's long war with the Fellows,

one asks, Who was most to blame? De Quincey approves Dr. Parr's opinion-expressed long after Bentley's death -that the College was wrong, and Bentley right. But De Quincey goes further. Even granting that Bentley was wrong, De Quincey says, we ought to vote him right, for by this means the current of one's sympathy with an illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstructions." It is good to be in sympathy with an illustrious man, but it is better still to be just. The merits of the controversy between Bentley and the Fellows have two aspects, legal and moral. The legal question is simple. Had Bentley, as Master, brought himself within the meaning of the fortieth Elizabethan Statute, and deserved the penalty of deprivation? Certainly he had. It was so found on two distinct occasions, twenty years apart, after a prolonged investigation by lawyers. Morally, the first question is: Was Bentley obliged to break the Statutes in order to keep some higher law? He certainly was not. It cannot be shown that the Statutes were in conflict with any project which he entertained for the good of the College; and, if they had been so, the proper course for him was not to violate them, but to move constitutionally for their alteration. A further moral question concerns the nature of his personal conduct towards the Fellows. This conduct might conceivably have been so disinterested and considerate as to give him some equitable claim on their forbearance, though they might feel bound to resist the course which he pursued. His conduct was, in fact, of an opposite character. On a broad view of the whole matter, from 1710 to 1738, the result is this. Legally, the College had been right, and Bentley wrong. Morally, there had been faults on both parts; but it was Bentley's intolerable behaviour which first, and after long forbearance,

forced the Fellows into an active defence of the common interests. The words "Farewell peace to Trinity College" were pronounced by Bentley. It is not a relevant plea that his academic ideal was higher than that of the men whose rights he attacked.

The College necessarily suffered for a time from these long years of domestic strife which had become a public scandal. Almost any other society, perhaps, would have been permanently injured. But Trinity College had the strength of unique traditions, deeply rooted in the history of the country; and the excellent spirit shown by its best men, in the time which immediately followed Bentley's, soon dispelled the cloud. When the grave had closed over those feuds, the good which Bentley had done lived in better tests of merit, and in the traditional association of the College with the encouragement of rising sciences.

Now we must turn to an altogether different side which, throughout these stormy years, is presented by the activity of this extraordinary man.

CHAPTER VIII.

LITERARY WORK AFTER 1700.-HORACE.

FROM the beginning of 1700 to the summer of 1702 Bentley was constantly occupied with University or College affairs. On August 2, 1702, he writes to Graevius at Utrecht: "You must know that for the last two years I have hardly had two days free for literature." This was perhaps the longest decisive interruption of literary work in his whole life. Nearly all his subsequent writings were finished in haste, and many of them were so timed as to appear at moments when he had a special reason for wishing to enlist sympathy. But his studies, as distinguished from his acts of composition, appear to have been seldom broken off for more than short spaces, even when he was most harassed by external troubles. His wonderful nerve and will enabled him to concentrate his spare hours on his own reading, at times when other men would have been able to think of nothing but threatened ruin.

His early years at Trinity College offer several instances of his generous readiness to help and encourage other scholars. One of these was Ludolph Küster, a young Westphalian then living at Cambridge, whom Bentley assisted with an edition of the Greek lexicographer Suidas, and afterwards with an edition of Aristophanes. Another was a young Dutchman, destined to celebrity-Tiberius