tension of the consummate genius and vast acquirements of the subject of his biography. He regrets that Bentley wasted his time upon conjectural criticism, instead of ap plying himself to the deistical controversy. The Remarks upon a late Discourse of FreethinJcing , by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, 8vo, 1713, to which Dr Monk alludes, is indeed a very characteristic piece of writing; but it gives no more idea of what Bentley was as a master of ancient learn ing than does his pamphlet, The Present State of Trinity College, quoted before. Indeed, of all Bentley s publica tions there is not one which can be taken as an adequate sample of the critic, as a work at once monumental and characteristic. Bentley is most imperfectly represented by any one of his books. They have all the same occa sional stamp. This is the case not only with the most popular of these, the Dissertation on Phalaris. The Hora- tius of 1712 was brought out to propitiate public opinion at a critical period of the struggle with the fellows of Trinity ; the proposals for a recension of the New Testa ment text, 1720, had a similar origin; the Ttrentius of 1725 was occasioned by his resentment of Hare s conduct. The Milton was undertaken at the request of Queen Caro line, but also at an anxious conjuncture of the great quarrel. Nearly all his lesser performances were called forth by friends invoking his aid for their own schemes. What he wrote, he wrote with rapidity, rather with precipitation. If we try to form our idea of the man, not from this or that extempore effusion, but from all that he did or was, we shall find that Bentley was the first, perhaps the only Englishman who can be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning. Before him we have only Selden to name, or, in a more restricted field, Gataker and Pearson. But Selden, with stupendous learning, wanted that which Bentley shared with Scaliger or Wolf, the freshness of original genius and confident mastery over the whole region of his knowledge. " Bentley is not," says Mahly, " one among the great classical scholars, but he inaugurates a new era of the art of criticism. He opened a new path. With him criticism attained its majority. When scholars had hitherto offered suggestions and conjectures, Bentley, with unlimited control over the whole material of learning, gave decisions." The modern German school of philology, usually so unjust to foreigners, yet does ungrudging homage to the genius of this one Englishman. Bentley, says Bunsen, " was the founder of historical philology." And Bernays says of his corrections of the Tristia, " corrup tions which had hitherto defied every attempt even of the mightiest, were removed by a touch of the fingers of this British Samson." The English school of Hellenists, by which the 18th century was distinguished, and which con tains the names of Dawes, Markland, Taylor, Toup, Tyr- whitt, Person, Dobree, Kidd, and Monk, was the weation of Bentley. And even the Dutch school of the same period, though the outcome of a native tradition, was in no small degree stimulated and directed by Bentley s example. Ruhnken has recorded the powerful effect produced upon the young Hemsterhuys by Bentley s letter to him on the occasion of his Pollux; at first humiliated to despair by the revelation to him of his own ignorance ; then stimu lated to higher effort by the consideration that commenda
tion from such a man was not words of mere compliment.Bentley was a source of inspiration to a following genera tion of scholars. Himself, he sprang from the earth without forerunners, without antecedents. Self-taught, he created his own science. It was his misfortune that there was no contemporary guild of learning in England by which his power could be measured, and his eccentricities checked. In the Phalaris controversy his academical adversaries had not sufficient knowledge to know how absolute their defeat was. Garth s couplet
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" So diamonds take a lustre from their foil, And to a Bentley tis we owe a Boyle " expressed the belief of the wits, or literary world, of the time. It was not only that he had to live with inferiors,, and to waste his energy in a struggle forced upon him by the necessities of his official position, but the wholesome stimulus of competition and the encouragement of a sym pathetic circle were wanting. In a university where the instruction of youth, or the religious controversy of the day, were the only known occupations, Bentley was an isolated phenomenon, and we can hardly wonder that he should have flagged in his literary exertions after his ap pointment to the mastership of Trinity. All his vast acquisitions and all his original views seem to have been obtained before 1700. After this period he acquired little, and made only spasmodic efforts the Hoi-ace, the Terence, and the Milton. The prolonged mental concentration, and mature meditation, of which alone a great work can be born, were wanting to him.
Bibliography.—1. Epistola ad Millium, at end of Malalcc Chronicon, Oxon. 1691 ; 2d ed., 1713. 2. The Folly and Unrea sonableness of Atheism, 4to, Lond. 1693 (1st Boyle Lecture). 3. Dissertation on Phalaris, &c., at end of "NVotton s Reflections, &c., 8vo, Lond. 1697; 2d ed., much enlarged, 1699; 3d ed., Lond. 1777 ; reprinted, 12mo, Berlin, 1875 ; Latin translation by Len- nep, 4to, Groningen, 1777. 4. Horatius, 4to, Cantab. 1711. 5. Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherua Lipsiensis, 8vo, Lond. 1713 ; 8th ed., Camb. 1743 ; translated into French by Armand de la Chapelle, Amst. 1738. 6. Emendationes in Menandri ct Philcmonis Rcliquias, 8vo, Cantab. 1713. 7. Pro posals for a new edition of the Greek Testament, 4to, Lond. 1721. 8. Tcrcntius, 4to, Cantab. 1726. 9. Milton s Paradise Lost, 4to, Lond. 1732. 10. Manilius Astronomicon, 4to, Lond. 1739. 11. Critica Sacra ; Notes on the Greek and Latin Text of the New Tes tament, ed. by A. A. Ellis, 8vo, Camb. 1862.
The Works of Richard Bentley, D.D., collected and edited by the I!ev. Alexander Dyce, 3 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1836. These volumes contain the Dissertation on Phalaris, in its enlarged and in its original form as it was appended to Wotton s Reflections, 1696 ; the Boyle Lectures of 1692 ; Remarks upon a Discourse of Freethinking, 1713 ; Proposals for printing a new edition of the Greek Testament, 1721 ; Ejnstola ad Millium, 1691 ; and some smaller pieces. JBentlci ct Doctorum Virorum ad eum, Epistolce, 4to, Lond. 1807 ; 2d ed., enlarged, 8vo, Lips. 1825. Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1842. Monk s Life of Bentley, 4to, Lond. 1830 ; 2d ed., 2 vols. 8vo., Lond. 1833. Richard Bentley, Eine Biographic, von Jacob Mdhly, 8vo, Leips. 1868.
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quantity in gum benzoin, and found also in dragon s blood (the resin of Calamus Draco) and some allied substances. It is, besides, prepared by numerous reactions from organic substances, being now largely made from naphthalin, one of the products of the distillation of coal tar. Benzoic acid is extracted from gum benzoin by the process of sub limation. The resin, coarsely powdered, is submitted to a heat of 300 3 Fahr. in a close vessel, by which the acid is expelled and may be condensed in receivers. By the sublimation process the acid carries away with it a small portion of essential oil, which gives its peculiar sweet odour to sublimed benzoic acid. It may also be separated from gum benzoin by boiling the powdered gum in lime, filtering off the compound of resin and lime, and concentrating the remaining solution of benzoate of calcium, from which benzoic acid is precipitated by hydrochloric acid. The benzoic acid may then be purified by sublimation, but thus prepared it is destitute of odour. It crystallizes into beautiful white silky flexible needles, and yields on heating an acrid, irritating vapour which excites coughing. It is distinguished from the closely allied substance, cinnamic acid, by withstanding the action of boiling dilute nitric acid, which changes the other into bitter almond oil, the hydride of benzoyl. Benzoic acid is rarely employed in medicine alone, but in composition as benzoate of ammonia it acts as a stimulant of mucous membranes, and is occa
sionally given in chronic bronchial affections. It is an
