classical texts, which had hitherto been accepted with comparatively little criticism, have come down to us in a very corrupt state. He was as much interested as Scaliger and Casaubon in the realien of classical study; but he felt that, before we could make further progress in a sound way, we must be sure of the ground under our feet—we must purify the texts.
Bentley died in 1742. For about a century after his death we may say, speaking broadly, that no new and distinct tendency manifested itself in classical studies; none, that is to say, which was more than a continuation of lines marked out by such men as Erasmus, Scaliger, Casaubon, and, above all, by Bentley, who is peculiarly remarkable for the fecundity of his work in germs or hints, which successors developed. In his own country his successors followed him mainly in the track of textual criticism; but in Holland and Germany he has always been recognised also as the maker of an epoch in historical and literary criticism (as represented especially by his Letter to Mill, and his "Dissertation on Phalaris"), so that Bunsen could say—"historical philology is the discovery of Bentley—the heritage and glory of German learning."
The new tendency which has come into classical studies during the last forty or fifty years might be described, for the sake of brevity, as the spirit of science. I wish to explain, as clearly as possible, exactly what I mean by this statement.
