commend themselves to students. I give a few specimens below, in order that scholars may judge of their general character.* The boldness with which Bentley was disposed to correct Homer may be illustrated by a single example. Priam, the aged king of Troy, is standing beside Helen on the walls, and looking forth on the plain where warriors are moving. He sees Odysseus passing along the ranks of his followers, and asks Helen who that is. "His arms lie on the earth that feedeth many but he

*I. From Bentley's MS. notes in the margin of the Homer. Odyssey I. 23 ('Αλλ ̓ ὁ μὲν Αἰθίοπας μετεκίαθε τηλόθ ̓ ἐόντας, | Αἰθίοπας, τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν). “legendum Αἰθίοπες: si vera lectio Il. Ζ. 396.” (θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ηετίωνος, | Ηετίων, ôs evaiɛv, K.T.λ.) [Lucian speaks of "Attic solecisms "-deliberate imitations, by late writers, of the irregular grammar found in Attic writers: surely this is a gratuitous "Homeric solecism."] 29. (μνήσατο γὰρ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονος Αἰγίσθοιο.) Bentley conjectures κατὰ νοῦν ἀνοήμονος. 51. θεὰ δ ̓ ἐν δώμασι ναίει “ Eust. not. ἐν δώματα ναίει pro vulg. δώμασι, sed lego θεὰ δ ̓ ἐν πότνια ναίει. ἐνναίει absolute, ut ivvalovoi Il. 1. 154, 296. Sic Od. E. 215 eam compellens Πότνα θεά. κοὐ δώματα ἔναιεν sed σπέος. Ibidem.” [i. e., Bentley objects to the word dwμara because Calypso lived in a cave. ἐν δώματα ναίει is unquestionably right.]

But

II. From his MS. book of notes on Iliad 1.-VII. 54. Iliad III. 46 ή τοιόσδε ἐών. Amabant, credo, Hiatus; non solum tolerabant. Dedit poeta ή τοιοῦτος ἐών. 212. (μύθους καὶ μήδεα πᾶσιν ὕφαινον.) Casaubonus ad Theocritum c. Ιx. corrigit ἔφαινον. Recte. paivov μúlovs, in concione loquebantur. Sic Il. o. 295, Νήπιε, μηκέτι ταῦτα νοήματα φαῖν ̓ ἐνὶ δήμῳ. 357. (διὰ μὲν ἀσπίδος ἦλθε φαεινῆς ἔβριμον ἔγχος.) Saepe redit hic versiculus qui si vere ab Homero est, Licentia nescio qua pronuntiabitur Aĩa μèv, ut "Apɛç, "Apɛç. Non enim tribrachys pro Dactylo hic ponitur ad exprimendam Hastae celeritatem, non magis quam Molossus pes trium longarum ad tarditatem exprimendam. Quid si legat quis, Ataπpò μέv, pede Proceleusmatico, ut capitibu' nutantes pinus," "Parietibus textum caecis iter."

himself, like a leader of the flock (кríλos ws), moves along the ranks of men; yea, I liken him to a young ram with thick fleece, that passeth through a great flock of white sheep." Bentley, thinking that s must be Fús, had to get rid of Kriλog somehow. "Never yet," says Bentley, "have I seen a ram ordering the ranks of men. And what tautology! He moves along, like a ram: and I compare him to a ram!" And so he changes the ram into a word meaning "unarmed" (writing avràp los ¿wv instead of αὐτὸς δὲ κτίλος ὥς), because the arms of Odysseus are said to be lying on the ground.

Bentley had done first-rate work on some authors who would have rewarded him better than Homer-better than Horace or Manilius. It was his habit to enter collations of manuscripts, or his own conjectures, in the margins of his classical books. Some of these books are at Cambridge. Many more are in the British Museum. The Gentleman's Magazine for 1807 relates how Kidd found 60 volumes, formerly Bentley's, at the London bookseller Lackington's, to whom they had been sold by Cumberland, and from whom they were at once bought for the Museum by the Trustees. The complete list of the Bentley books in the British Museum comprises (omitting duplicates) 70 works. All, or nearly all, the manuscript notes which enrich these volumes have now been printed somewhere. The notes on Lucan, whom Bentley had intended to edit, were published by Cumberland in 1760. Among the most ingenious emendations are those on Nicander, the Greek physician of Colophon (circ. 150 B.C.), whose epic on venomous bites (Theriaca) Bentley had annotated at the request of Dr. Mead. But the province of Greek and Roman literature in which these remains most strikingly illustrate Bentley's power is, on the whole, that of the comic drama.

He had sent Küster his remarks on two plays of Aristophanes the Plutus and Clouds. All the eleven coinedies have his marginal notes in his copy of Froben's edition, now in the British Museum. These notes were first published by G. Burges in the Classical Journal, xi.— xiv. For exact scholarship, knowledge, and brilliant felicity, they are wonderfully in advance of anything which had then been done for the poet. Porson is said to have felt the joy of a truly great scholar on finding that his own emendations of Aristophanes had been anticipated, in some seventy instances, by the predecessor whom he so highly revered. Bentley's emendations of Plautus are also very remarkable. They have been published, for the first time, by Mr. E. A. Sonnenschein, in his edition of the Captivi (1880), from the Plautus in the British Museum which Bentley used; it is the second edition of Pareus (Frankfurt, 1623). All our twenty comedies have been touched more or less-the number of Bentley's conjectures in each ranging from perhaps 20 to 150 or more.

As in Aristophanes, so in Plautus, Bentley sometimes anticipated the best thoughts of later critics. Such coincidences show how much he was in advance of his age. Those conjectures of Bentley's which were afterwards made independently by such men as Porson or Ritschl were in most cases certain; in Bentley's day, however, they were as yet beyond the reach of every one else. Nor must we overlook his work on Lucretius. That library of Isaac Voss which Bentley had vainly sought to secure for Oxford carried with it to Leyden the two most important MSS. of Lucretius-one of the 9th century (Munro's A), another of the 10th (B). Bentley had to work without these. His notes-first completely published in the Glasgow edition of Wakefield (1813) - fill only 22 octavo

pages in the Oxford edition of 1818. But their quality has been recognised by the highest authority. Munro thinks that Bentley, if he had had the Leyden MSS., "might have anticipated what Lachmann did by a century and a half." Another labour also, in another field, descended from Bentlev to Lachmann: of that we must now speak.

CHAPTER X.

THE PROPOSED EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

DR. JOHN MILL published in 1707 his edition of the Greek Testament, giving in foot-notes the various readings which he had collected by the labour of thirty years. To understand the impression which this work produced, it is necessary to recall the nature of its predecessors. The Greek text of the New Testament, as then generally read, was ultimately based on two sixteenth century editions; that of Erasmus (Basel, 1516), which had been marked by much carelessness; and that due chiefly to Stunica, in the "Complutensian" Polyglott (so called from Complūtum, or Alcalá de Henares) of Cardinal Ximenes, printed in 1514, and probably published in 1522. The folio edition printed by Robert Estienne at Paris in 1550 was founded on the text of Erasmus. The Elzevir editions, of which the first appeared in 1624, gave the text of Estienne as imperfectly revised by the reformer Beza. The second Elzevir edition (1633) declared this to be "the text now received by all.” Hence it came to be known as the "Received Text."

The existence of various readings, though a well-known, was hardly a prominent fact. Some had been given in the margin of the folio Estienne; Beza had referred to others; more had been noticed by Walton in the Greek