lovable, and full of enthusiasm and vivacity. She had a melodious voice, and' could talk enchantingly (Memories of Seventy Years, p. 141). At the end of her life her lodgings, 'poor and shabby,' were in Grafton Street (Fitzroy Square?); Fletcher, a young Scotch sculptor studying in London, would go to her there to 'arrange her turban' and 'generally make things tidy' when she was going 'to receive people well worth seeing' (ibid.) Among her visitors were Rosina Wheeler and Bulwer-Lytton, who met at her lodgings, in 1826, for the first time (Athenæum, 1 March 1884, p. 281).
In 1826 Miss Benger's health, always delicate, began to fail. She was at the time busy collecting materials for memoirs of Henri Quatre, and was contributing anonymous poems to the 'Athenæum' (which are appended to Miss Aikin's 'Memoir'). After suffering for some months, she died on 9 Jan. 1827, aged 49. Her circumstances were very straitened to the last, and her literary friends looked upon her death as a release from struggles and poverty.
[Miss Aikin's Memoir, prefixed to 2nd edition of Miss Benger's 'Anne Boleyn,' 1827; Annual Biography and Obituary, 1828, p. 52; Penny Cyclopedia; Literary Gazette, where Miss Aikin's Memoir first appeared; Lamb to Coleridge, letter xl.; Memories of Seventy Years, ed. by Mrs. Martin, pp. 141, 142; Athenæum, 1 March 1884, pp. 280, 281.]
BENHYEM, HUGO de, or BENHAM, HUGH (d. 1282), bishop of Aberdeen, succeeded Richard Pottock in the see in 1272. After his election he went to Rome, and was consecrated by Pope Martin IV. Shortly after his return to Scotland he was made arbiter of a dispute about tithes between the clergy and the laity of the kingdom, and in a provincial council held at Perth was successful in effecting an arrangement of the difference. He died in 1282 at Loch Goul (now called Bishops Loch, in the parish of New Machar), where the bishops had their lodging before the canonry was erected. Boethius ascribes his death to sudden suffocation from catarrh, but according to another tradition he was slain in an ambuscade. He was the author of 'Provincialium Statutorum Sanctiones' and 'Novæ Episcoporum Prærogativæ.'
[Boethius's Aberdonensium Episcoporum Vitæ, fo. iii.; Dempster's Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot. (1627), p. 105; Collections for Aberdeen (Spalding Club, 1843), i. 161, 236, 268, 467, 469; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 96.]
BENISCH, ABRAHAM (1811–1878), Hebraist, was born of Jewish parents at Drosau, in Bohemia, in 1811. From an early age he interested himself in the welfare of his co-religionists. For some years he studied medicine at the university of Vienna, but abandoned the study before proceeding to a degree. He left Austria in 1841 to settle in England, where he remained for the rest of his life. His Hebrew learning and his actively displayed devotion to Judaism secured for him a high reputation among the Jews in England. He was editor of the 'Jewish Chronicle' from 1864 till 1869, and again from 1875 till his death. He zealously promoted the formation of the Society of Hebrew Literature in 1870, and of the Anplo-Jewish Association in 1871. Benisch died at Hornsey on 31 July 1878. He was the author of the following works:
- 'Two Lectures on the Life and Writings of Maimonides,' 1847.
- A translation of the Old Testament, published with the Hebrew Text, in 1851.
- 'An Essay on Colenso's Criticism of the Pentateuch and Joshua,' 1863.
- 'Judaism surveyed; being a Sketch of the Rise and Development of Judaism from Moses to our days,' a series of five lectures delivered at St. George's Hall, London, in 1874.
Benisch also published an 'Elementary Hebrew Grammar' in 1852, and a 'Manual of Scripture History' in 1863.
[Information from the Rev. A. Lowy; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Athenæum, 10 Aug. 1878.]
BEN ISRAEL, MANASSEH. [See Manasseh.]
BENJAMIN, JUDAH PHILIP (1811–1884), barrister, was born in 1811. His parents were Jews of English nationality, who, in 1811, sailed from England to make their home in New Orleans. Finding before arrival in the Gulf of Mexico that the mouths of the Mississippi were blockaded by the British fleet, the ship put into St. Croix, in the West Indies, an island then belonging to Great Britain. Here Benjamin was born and lived until 1815. He was thus by birth a British subject, as was recognised fifty-five years later, when he was called to the English bar, and as is attested by a statement in his own handwriting in the books of Lincoln's Inn. In 1815 his parents settled in Wilmington, North Carolina, and here his boyhood was passed. He was entered at Yale College at the age of fourteen, but quitted it three years later (1828) without taking any degree. In 1832 he went to New Orleans, entered an attorney's office, and was called to the bar on 16 Dec. 1832. For some time he was engaged in studying law, in taking pupils, and in compiling a digest of cases decided in the local court. This, the
