Horace's writings. Previous Horatian critics- -as Faber, Dacier, Masson-had aimed at dating separate poems. Bentley maintains-rightly, no doubt that the poems were originally published, as we have them, in whole books. He further assumes-with much less probability— that Horace composed in only one style at a time, first writing satires; then iambics (the 'Epodes'); then the Odes, of which book IV. and the Carmen Saeculare came between the two books of Epistles. Bentley's method is too rigid. He argues from the internal evidence too much as if a poet's works were the successive numbers of a newspaper. Yet here, too,-though some of his particular views are arbitrary or wrong, he laid down the main lines of a true scheme. Bentley's Horace immediately brought out half-adozen squibs,--none of them good,—and one or two more serious attacks. John Ker, a schoolmaster, assailed Bentley's Latinity in four Letters (1713); and some years later the same ground was taken by Richard Johnson-who had been a contemporary of Bentley's at Cambridge, and was now master of Nottingham Schoolin his Aristarchus Anti-Bentleianus (1717). The fact is that Bentley wrote Latin as he wrote English,—with racy vigour, and with a wealth of trenchant phrases; but he was not minutely Ciceronian. The two critics were able to pick some holes. One of Bentley's slips was amusing; he promises the readers of his Horace that they will find purity of idiom in his Latin notes, and calls it sermonis puritatem—which happens not to be pure Latin. In 1721 a rival Horace was published by Alexander Cunningham, a Scottish scholar of great learning and industry. His emendations are sometimes execrable, but often most ingenious. His work is marred, however, by a mean spite against Bentley, whom he constantly tries to represent as a plagiarist or a blunderer, and who ignored him. The first edition of Bentley's Horace (1711) went off rapidly, and a second was required in 1712. This was published by the eminent firm of Wetstein at Amsterdam. Paper and printing were cheaper there-an important point when the book was to reach all scholars. Thomas Bentley, the nephew, brought out a smaller edition of the work in 1713, dedicating it—with logical propriety-to Harley's son. The line in the Dunciad (II. 205), Bentley his mouth with classic flatt'ry opes,' -is fixed by Warburton on Thomas Bentley, 'a small critic, who aped his uncle in a little Horace.' Among other compliments, Bentley received one or two which he could scarcely have anticipated. Le Clerc, whom he had just been lashing so unmercifully, wrote a review in the Bibliothèque Choisie which was at once generous and judicious. Bentley also received a graceful note from Atterbury, now Dean of Christ Church. I am indebted to you, Sir,' says the Dean, 'for the great pleasure and instruction I have received from that excellent performance; though at y° same time I cannot but own to you the I felt when I found how many things uneasyness in Horace there were, which, after thirty years' acquaintance with him, I did not understand.' There is much of Horace in that. CHAPTER IX. OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES.-TERENCE. MANILIUS.-HOMER. ONE of Bentley's few intimate friends in the second half of his life was Dr Richard Mead, an eminent physician, and in other ways also a remarkable man. After graduating at the University of Padua,—which, as Cambridge men will remember, had been the second alma mater of Dr John Caius,-Dr Mead began practice at Stepney in 1696. He rose rapidly to the front rank of his profession, in which he stood from about 1720 to his death in 1754. Dibdin describes him with quaint enthusiasm. 'His house was the general receptacle of men of genius and talent, and of everything beautiful, precious or rare. His curiosities, whether books, or coins, or pictures, were laid open to the public; and the enterprising student and experienced antiquary alike found amusement and a courteous reception. He was known to all foreigners of intellectual distinction, and corresponded both with the artisan and the potentate.' In 1721-Bentley being in London at the timeMead gave him a copy of a Greek inscription just published by the accomplished antiquary, Edmund Chishull, who had been chaplain to the English Factory at Smyrna. A marble slab, about 8 feet 7 inches high and 18 inches broad, had been found in the Troad. It This slab had supported is now in the British Museum. the bust of a person who had presented some pieces of plate to the citizens of Sigeum; on the upper part, an inscription in Ionic Greek records the gifts; lower down, nearly the same words are repeated in Attic Greek, with the addition, Aesopus and his brothers made me.' Bentley dashed off a letter to Mead; there had been no bust at all, he said; the two inscriptions on the slab were merely copied from two of the pieces of plate; the artists named were the silversmiths. He was mistaken. The true solution is clearly that which has since been given by Kirchhoff. The Ionic inscription was first carved by order of the donor, a native of the Ionic Proconnesus: the lower inscription was added at Sigeum, where settlers had introduced the Attic dialect, on its being found that the upper inscription could not easily be read from beneath: Aesopus and his brothers were the stonecutters. Yet Bentley's letter incidentally throws a flash of light on a point not belonging to its main subject. A colossal statue of Apollo had been dedicated in Delos by the islanders of Naxos. On the base are these words :-OFΥΤΟΛΙΘΟΕΜΙΑΝΔΡΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΣΦΕΛΑΣ. Bentley read this (τ)οξυτοῦ [= ταὐτοῦ] λίθου εἴμ', ἀνδριὰς καὶ τὸ σφέλας, an iambic trimeter (with hiatus): 'I am of the same stone, statue and pedestal.' After this instance of rashness, it is right to record a striking success. In 1728 Chishull published an inscription from copies made by the travellers Spon and Wheeler. Bentley, in a private letter, suggested some corrections; but Chishull, who saw the criticisms without knowing the author, demurred to some of them, thinking that the copies could not have been so inexact. Some years later the stone itself was brought to England. It then appeared that the copies had been wrong, and that Bentley's conjectural reading agreed in every particular with the marble itself. That marble is in the British Museum: it was found at the ancient Chalcedon on the Bosporus, opposite Constantinople, and had supported a statue of Zeus Ourios, i.e. 'Zeus the giver of fair winds.' He had a famous temple in that neighbourhood, at the mouth of the Black Sea, where voyagers through the straits were wont to make their VOWS. The inscription (3797 in the Corpus) consists of four elegiac couplets, of which the style would justify us in supposing that they were at least as old as the age of Alexander: I translate them: ZEUS, the sure guide who sends the favouring gale, It was shortly before his death in 1742 that this proof of his acuteness was given to the world (by John Taylor), along with another. A Persian manuscript bore the date Yonane (Ionian) 1504': Bentley showed that this was reckoned from the foundation of the dynasty of Seleucidae 'Ionian' being the general oriental name for 'Hellene'-and meant the year 1193 of our era. In 1724 an edition of Terence was published by Dr Francis Hare. Bentley had long meditated such a work. He was never a jealous man. But he had a good deal of |