witty, but only when the misrepresentations of malevolence are seconded by talent, and prevent a candid enquiry into works of merit. When Dryden indignantly exclaims of his "numerous little enemies," that in his verse "their names to all succeeding times Shall live, in spite of their own doggrel rhymes,” we know the utter contemptibility of those enemies, and therefore sympathize in the great poet's indignation: but when the venerable name of Bentley is assailed by the satire of Pope, and his writings condemned with indiscriminate censure, we are constrained, in very humanity, to deprecate such barbarity, and to. cry out, shame! on the prejudices of the satirist. That the wounds inflicted by the pen of the satirist on the re putation of Bentley are not quite incurable, we have good reason to hope: but there is little doubt, that the generality of readers, who have not examined the voluminous writings of this profound critic, are too apt to take on credit the character of him drawn by Pope in the fourth book of the Dunciad. With full confidence in the truth of this character, and delighted with the humour of its delineation, they hastily condemn, as a haughty and illiberal pedant, a man who was an ornament to the world of literature, who was the most profound scholar this country has produced, and the boldest and most successful champion of ancient learning. This bitter libel upon Bentley, (for a libel it is of the most barbarous kind),—though it is upon the whole too diffuse, and might gain something in strength from a skilful condensation,is yet written in Pope's best manner, with an easy, uninterrupted flow of wit, which is but too well pointed by a violent feeling of personal malignity. The opening of his address to the Goddess of Dulness, is irresistibly ludicrous :-- "Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne : Thy mighty Scholiast, whose unweary'd pains, But, says that most ingenious of critics, Warton, "his Horace ought not to be ranked with his Milton, as containing many acute remarks and happy emendations; and therefore did not make It may be questioned whether Porson was so profound a scholar as Bentley undoubtedly, he was a more elegant one, and he had the advantage of his predecessor in a superior taste. make Horace dull." Here, then, is a vigorous defence of Benta ley! Here, then, is a candour, which really does "descend With bigot zeal to combat for its friend!" But, what? Is there nothing more to be said of Bentley than that he did not absolutely "make Horace dull?" Nothing of his critical sagacity and extensive learning?—But, poor Warton! he was an Oxonian; and, at the time he wrote, Oxford was yet sore with the flagellation which Bentley had given her. That Pope, in his animosity against the great scholar, should ridicule the discovery of the Digainma,-unmindful or ignorant of the vast service which the discovery had conferred on his own Homer, that he should speak with contempt of Suidas, Gellius, and Stobæus, as "dictionary-writers of impertinent facts and barbarous words," is not very surprising, because, as Dr. Jortin observes, he knew very little of their works: but that Warbur ton, the learned, the profound, the classical Warburton, should not only countenance, but even by his own act aid and abet so gross a calumny,-seems to be such an act of voluntary self-degradation, as no consideration of personal partialities can ex. cuse, and scarcely any deed of literary treason can parallel. In spite, however, of the absurd raillery of the "unlicensed Greek" of Suidas, the value of his work has remained undiminished and uncontested; and for the admirable use Bentley has made of it, he has been rewarded with the thanks and the admiration of every scholar in Europe. To pass over the intermediate parts of this facetious caricature, the conclusion is distinguished by the same mock-heroic dignity as the beginning: there is the same ludicrous air of sullen pride, the same abrupt and contemptuous self-importance: and the comparison, in the last line, to Ajax' spectre, gives an admirable finishing to the whole picture : "But wherefore waste I words? I see advance Walker, we are told, was Bentley's constant friend in college. But it gives an additional air of ludicrousness to the dignity of the critic, to remember, that Walker was moreover Vice-master of Trinity College at the time that Bentley was Master; and how laughable an effect arises from this contemptuous employ ment of inferior officers, will be immédiately recognized by those who have witnessed Kemble's exquisite touch of burlesque in the character of Coriolanus, where, with a proud disdain of so un worthy worthy an accoutrement, he throws his shield to his lieutenant to carry for him! * If it be unjust in a satirist to present to his readers an exagger. ation of faults which do exist, though in a less degree,-to make a purposed concealment of excellencies, or by a ludicrous perversion to turn those very excellencies into ridicule, then we must take the part of Bentley, and acknowledge, that Pope's hos tility against him, as it originated in a mean and petty cause, vented itself in unfair and unreasonable invective. Yet Bentley had his faults; and these faults are exposed by Warburton, in a long and excellent note on the imitations of Horace, with a candour which has not scrupled to do justice to the merits of our great Aristarchus, and which would have been yet more honourable to the commentator, if it had not been displayed after Pope's death. In this note, however, one of his most objection. able faults is unnoticed, viz. the unsparing severity which he has exercised towards the errors of those who differed from him. It would have been strange indeed, if this fault had been very strongly censured by a man so self-confident and so vehement ás Warburton and if a clamour has been justly raised against it by others, it is at least fair to pay so much deference to Bentley, as to judge him by the same rule of forbearance, by which he has judged others. "If," says he, in his Preface to his Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, ("immortalis ista dissertatio," as it is called by Porson)" if a magisterial air and too much heat and passion appear in their writings, a candid reader will forgive it, and say, Sume superbiam quæsitam meritis: he'll impute some of it to their temper, but the most to the ill usage they met with from envy and detraction." Now, he who could make such allowances for the want of temper betrayed by others, and could generously impute it to "the ill usage they met with from envy and detraction," may reasonably demand the same allowances for himself: he may, surely, be supposed to have written from his own feelings, and to have made a kind of tacit acknowledgement, that his own temper had been somewhat soured by illiberal de traction, and that a just indignation had produced in him a spirit of unjust virulence. Certain it is, that no man ever endured a heavier load of envy and reproach, than he; and this might fur. nish some apology for his occasional warmth of temper: and, at the same time, he has used a singular temperance, as remote as possible from dogmatism and insolence, in refuting the errors of the " very learned Mr. Dodwell;" nor has he been at all sparing of praise and respect, where they were due,-as in speaking of Casauban, Scaliger, &c. Book II. Epist. 1, v. 104, M The The other great fault of Bentley cannot be so easily defended, It is his want of poetical taste, which has given the chief occa sion to his enemies to reproach him; which has reduced him to a place in the same satire with the Dennises, the Durfeys, and the Blackmores; and which has done much towards withering the laurels he had acquired by his stupendous learning. As a commentator on Horace, he has displayed much arrogance and tastelessness,mixed, however, with much ingenuity and a considerable degree of successful criticism :-but his Milton is altogether a à publication, consisting of conjectures without taste and without plausibility, of ignorance supported by impudence, and wild fancies patched up by vanity. Ex. gr. in Book I., for that expressive passage, Leviathan, which God of all his works Bentley says, "Read— Leviathan, whom God the vastest made Of all the kinds that swim the ocean stream." Here we see "slashing Bentley with his desperate hook," and employing it in the most unmerciful manner. But this single specimen will satisfy the admirers of Bentley, that his "Emendations" of Milton must be given up to oblivion, as a work of which there is no hope: and, after such a specimen, it is a peculiar gratification to turn to the fairer side of the great critic's character, to contemplate his amazing learning, and the depth of his researches; the solidity of his knowledge, and the be. nefits which resulted from it to the commonwealth of literature. There seems to be no branch of learning with which this wonderful scholar was not acquainted; none, in which he was not thoroughly versed. He had read the writings of the ancients upon all subjects; and he had so read them, as to retain not merely a superficial knowledge of their contents, but an intimate and minute acquaintance with their several parts: he compre hended, at the same time, the general spirit and meaning of the whole, and the various bearings and connections of the inferior divisions. And he appears to have enjoyed so happy a memory, that what he had once made his own, was always ready at hand when required for use: upon whatever subject he was engaged, whether critical or historical, he brought forward to its elucidation a vast store of learning, which he did not squander away for the purpose of ostentatious parade, of unnecessary quotation, and unintelligible ccafusion, but employed for illustration and and improvement, and that, too, with such a felicity of appli cation as no man ever possessed in an equal degree with himself. This excellent qualification shines in the fullest perfection in his Dissertation on Phalaris; a work, of which it may, without much danger, be said, that it contains more learning than any other single book in the English language.-Mr. Boyle, of Oxford, it seems, had published certain Epistles which he ascribed to Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum. These Epistles, Bentley, from an honest conviction, one would think, and regard to truth, des clared to be spurious; and he immediately published to the world the grounds of this opinion. That Boyle should feel offended at this declaration, is not very wonderful, though very illiberal; but it is generally believed that he was assisted by the rest of the Oxford wits in the scurrilous answer which he prepared to Bentley's publication. In this answer the reasoning of Dr. Bentley is controverted, his meaning is distorted, and his abilities are vilified; and he is rewarded with such harsh appellations, as but. ill become the disputations of scholars and of gentlemen. It. was after this provocation that Bentley rose up with his gigantic strength, and went forth to the contest armed with a just indignation: he summoned all his powers, his accumulated stores of learning were employed with successful skill, and he gained an easy, but complete victory over the combined forces of the University of Oxford. He exposed the cavils and false logic of his adversaries, he corrected their errors, and chastised their impertinence; and, finally, he left no man unconvinced, that the Epistles of Phalaris no more belong to Phalaris than to the Nabob of Oude. In addition to the important service of exposing the imposture of these Epistles, he interspersed in the work so much adventi tious information,―he corrected, “currente calamo," so many corrupt passages of so many different writers,-and he cleared up so many obscure points of history, that if he had failed of making out a case of the forgery of the letters, his book would still have been, for its internal merits, inestimably valuable. But Bentley was not a mere scholar, he was not a mere thing patched up by the pedantry of schools, and stuffed with a collection of words and sentences and languages :--such accomplishments could never have qualified him to encounter with such success the sneers of the ignorant and the assaults of the male_ volent-he possessed a strong natural genius, which was hap pily seconded by his learning; and 'these qualifications were so admirably blended together, that they extricated him from diffi culties, in which neither of them singly could have availed any thing, in which neither the "rude ingenium," nor the "studium sine divite venâ," could have accomplished his deliverance. His character M 2 |