written of the 'thunderbolt,' and Porson of the 'immortal Dissertation'! The theory that Bentley had an immediate triumph does not represent the general impression of his own age, but reflects the later belief of critical scholars, who felt the crushing power of Bentley's reply, and imagined that every one must have felt it when it first appeared. The tamer account of the matter, besides being the truer, is also far more really interesting. It shows how long the clearest truth may have to wait.

Bentley's Dissertation was translated into Latin by the Dutch scholar, John Daniel Lennep, who edited the Letters of Phalaris. After Lennep's death, the translation and the edition were published together by Valckenaer (1777). The Dissertation was subsequently rendered into German, with notes, by Ribbeck; and only seven years ago (1874) the English text of the Dissertation (both in its first and in its second form) was reissued in Germany, with Introduction and notes, by Dr. Wilhelm Wagner. It has thus been the destiny of Bentley's work, truly a work of genius, to become in the best sense monumental. In a literature of which continual supersession is the law, it has owed this permanent place to its triple character as a storehouse of erudition, an example of method, and a masterpiece of controversy. Isaac Disraeli justly said of it that 'it heaves with the workings of a master spirit.' Bentley's learning everywhere bears the stamp of an original mind; and, even where it can be corrected by modern lights, has the lasting interest of showing the process by which an intellect of rare acuteness reached approximately true conclusions. As a consecutive argument it represents the first sustained application of strict reasoning to questions of ancient literature-a domain in which his adversaries,

echoing the sentiment of their day, declared that 'all is but a lucky guess.' As a controversial reply, it is little less than marvellous, if we remember that his very clever assailants had been unscrupulous in their choice of weapons,-freely using every sort of insinuation, however irrelevant or gross, which could tell,-and that Bentley repulsed them at every point, without once violating the usages of legitimate warfare. While he demolishes, one by one, the whole series of their relevant remarks, he steadily preserves his own dignity by simply turning back upon them the dishonour of their own calumnies and the ridicule of their own impertinence. With a dexterity akin to that of a consummate debater, he wields the power of retort in such a manner that he appears to be hardly more than the amused spectator of a logical recoil.

Shortly before Swift described Boyle as Achilles, poor Achilles was writing from Ireland, in some perturbation of spirit, to those gods who were hard at work on his armour, and confiding his hopes that it would do no harm.' It did not do much. This was the first controversy in English letters that had made anything like a public stir, and it is pleasant to think that Achilles and his antagonist appear to have been good friends afterwards: if any ill-will lingered, it was rather in the bosoms of the Myrmidons. Dr William King, who had helped to make the mischief, never forgave Bentley for his allusions to 'Humty-dumty,' and satirised him in ten 'Dialogues of the Dead' (on Lucian's model)a title which suits their dulness. Bentley is Bentivoglio, a critic who knows that the first weather-cock was set up by the Argonauts and that cushions were invented by Sardanapalus. Salter mentions a tradition, current in

1777, that Boyle, after he became Lord Orrery, visited Bentley at Trinity College, Cambridge. There is contemporary evidence, not, indeed, for such personal intercourse, but for the existence of mutual esteem. In 1721 a weekly paper, 'The Spy,' attacked Bentley in an article mainly patched up out of thefts from Boyle's book on Phalaris, and a reply appeared, called 'The Apothecary's Defence of Dr Bentley, in answer to the Spy.' 'Let me now tell it the Spy as a secret,' says the Apothecary, 'that Dr Bentley has the greatest deference for his noble antagonist (Boyle), both as a person of eminent parts and quality; and I dare say his noble antagonist thinks of Dr Bentley as of a person as great in critical learning as England has boasted of for many a century.' We remember Bentley's description of Boyle as 'a young gentleman of great hopes,' and gladly believe that the Apothecary was as well-informed as his tone would imply. Atterbury was in later life on excellent terms with Bentley.

It is long enough now since the sprinkling of a little dust' allayed the last throb of angry passion that had been roused by the Battle of the Books: but we look back across the years, and see more than the persons of the quarrel; it was the beginning of a new epoch in criticism; and it is marked by a work which, to this hour, is classical in a twofold sense, in relation to the literature of England and to the philology of Europe.

CHAPTER VI.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

TOWARDS the end of 1699, about eight months after the publication of Bentley's Dissertation on Phalaris, the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, became vacant by the removal of Dr Mountague to the Deanery of Durham. The nomination of a successor rested with six Commissioners, to whom King William had entrusted the duty of advising in the ecclesiastical and academic patronage of the Crown. They were Archbishops Tenison. and Sharp, with Bishops Lloyd, Burnet, Patrick and Moore, the last-named in place of Stillingfleet, who had died in April, 1699. On their unanimous recommendation, the post was given to Bentley. He continued to hold the office of King's Librarian; but his home thenceforth was at Cambridge.

No places in England have suffered so little as Oxford and Cambridge from the causes which tend to merge local colour in a monochrome. The academic world which Bentley entered is still, after a hundred and eighty years, comparatively near to us, both in form and in spirit. The visitor in 1700, whom the coach conveyed in twelve hours from the 'Bull' in Bishopsgate

Street to the Rose' in the Marketplace of Cambridge, found a scene of which the essential features were the same as they are to-day. The most distinctive among the older buildings of the University had long been such as we now see them; already for nearly two centuries the chapel of King's College had been standing in the completeness of its majestic beauty; the charm of the past could already be felt in the quadrangles and cloisters of many an ancient house, in pleasant shades and smooth lawns by the quiet river, in gardens with margins of bright flowers bordering time-stained walls, over which the sound of bells from old towers came like an echo of the middle age, in all the haunts which tradition linked with domestic memories of cherished names. It was only the environment of the University that was decidedly unlike the present. In the narrow streets of the little town, where feeble oil-lamps flickered at night, the projecting upper stories of the houses on either side approached each other so nearly overhead as partly to supply the place of umbrellas. The few shops that existed were chiefly open booths, with the goods displayed on a board which also served as a shutter to close the front. That great wilderness of peat-moss which once stretched from Cambridge to the Wash had not yet been drained with the thoroughness which has since reclaimed two thousand square miles of the best corn-land in England; tracts of fen still touched the outskirts of the town; snipe and marsh-fowl were plentiful in the present suburbs. To the south and south-east the country was unenclosed, as it remained, in great measure, down to the beginning of this century. A horseman might ride for miles without seeing a fence.

The broadest difference between the University life