is well accounted for by Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Richmondshire, p. 296, vol. ii., who observes,

"One of the injunctions given by the Council of Edward VI. to the Commissioners sent about the kingdom, for the purpose of reformation, was this- That all ringing with holy bells (and before the Reformation, all church bells, save one, were baptised or consecrated) to drive away devils, and all ringing or knowling of bells, save one, should be utterly forborne. This prompted the avarice of churchwardens, or parishes at large, to dispose of all their bells, save one, (which, for the same reason, was sure to be the least) as useless and superstitious.' But the fondness for the cheerful sound of a peal of bells gradually returning upon the people, the ancient complement was restored."

At this period, or under Elizabeth, therefore, I date the destruction of all the Saint's Bells in the kingdom of the larger kind-that is, such as were not hand bells.

I have hinted at one bell often found in our ecclesiastical structures, and which was not consecrated. This bell, I have reason to think, never hung among the peal in the tower, but in a lone recess like the Saint's Bell, and had no such inscription around it as others had. It was the bell used upon all secular occasions; was the alarmbell in cases of fire, or approach, peradventure, of an invading enemy. From Stow's Annals, p. 286, and other works, it seems there was such a bell in London, before Henry III.'s reign, and I am well assured that such a bell was very common throughout the kingdom. The large bell in Tong Church, heretofore mentioned, was, perhaps, more likely to have been this bell than the passing bell. The latter had commonly ora pro nobis," inscribed upon it. Were this without inscription, I should certainly pronounce it the secular bell, used upon various occasions of festivity, or rather parish business.

Yours, &c.

N. S.

[July,

era.

Some of our modern innovators, the officious and tasteless improvers on genuine Christian architecture, have certainly inflicted severe injury on too many of our sacred piles: but it is generally believed that better feelings. and better taste now prevail-that even those who neither know much of, or care much about the real beauty and true spirit of ecclesiastical architecture, pay some deference to public opinion, and are more influenced by dread of censure, than solicitous to deserve praise. I am induced to make these remarks, in consequence of hearing that, among the projected alterations in York Cathedral, it is proposed to take down and remove the organ screen. The bare mention of such a deedsuch a misdeed-is almost enough to call up the ghost of the late John Carter. Were he living, he would buckle on his armour and poise his lance in defence of that most beautiful, most interesting, most sumptuous piece of architectural design and sculptural adornments. He, like a Knight Templar of old, would desert his home, his domestic health, and all its comforts to guard the sacred temple of his adoration and devotion. He would watch it by day, as well as night, and attack any Saracen, Turk, or Goth, that dared to violate its holy shrine. Alas! "the days of chivalry" are fled-fanaticism prevails, and one of its high priests has fired the Cathedral now alluded to. He is pronounced mad by a jury, and sentenced to linger and rant in a vulgar crypt. Other fanatics, however, still roam at large, to the annoyance of good sense and good taste. Some of these, for nothing less than fanaticism,

[July,

Life of Richard Bentley, D.D. Master of Trinity College, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, with an account of his Writings, and Anec dotes of contemporary Public Characters, By J. H. Monk, D.D. Dean of Peterborough (now Bishop of Gloucester).

TO recount the various advantages attendant on biography, were a work of supererogation. It was the pithy and just remark of our great moralist and critic, that "there is scarcely any person, however obscure, the story of whose life might not, if faithfully recorded, be made instructive to his fellow men." And although this will not excuse the excessive minuteness with which it has been long the cus tom to record the lives of even comparatively insignificant persons, yet few will deny that Biography, in order to be useful, must be circumstantial; and all must grant that the lives of men who were the most eminent of their class, whether as literati or persons eu gaged in the active pursuits of life (es pecially if their existence was long, and passed in intercourse with other emi nent persons) must be written in considerable detail, being in some measure the history, literary or civil, of the time when they lived.

Now no persons were ever more decidedly the first of their class than Newton and Bentley; and yet, though we have long since had biographies of the former in some degree commensurate with his unrivalled fame, yet of the latter, until the present work, nothing worthy the name of a Biography had ever appeared. It is true that to competently accomplish such a work powers of no ordinary calibre are required. Yet when we consider that our own country has since the time of Bentley produced several who had the requisite endowments, it does seem not a little strange that such a work should never have been accomplished until the present time. Of those who were preeminently qualified for such a work, there have been Samuel Johnson, Rich ard Porson, Samuel Parr, and C. J.

Blomfield. But besides these, there have been, and are, other persons, who, though ranking one degree below the above, have had and have the power of executing it to the satisfaction of the learned world. Among these is the distinguished scholar to whom we at length owe the present learned and most able and highly interesting piece of Biography. And when we consider that with his other eminent endowments, he unites that of being of the same college with Bentley, and having occupied highly important stations in the University of Cambridge for twenty years, we can with truth say that the work has fallen into the very hands which of all others we could have wished, and we cannot but congratulate the writer on having been, at length, (most worthily indeed) raised to the Episcopal Bench.

Now, to so considerable an addition to the literature of our country, it is alike our duty and our wish to bestow an attention, if not proportioned to its importance, yet as great as the nature of our Journal will admit. We shall therefore assign far more than the usual hunits to our critique, and in forming it we shall not follow the custom of our quarterly essayists, but pursue a plan which shall let the Author stand prominent, and the Reviewer be kept in the back ground. We shall consult, if not our own fame, the instruction of our readers, by giving (as a sort of foretaste of the literary banquet in the work before us), a brief but correct outline of the Life of Bentley, formed chiefly from the present work, and comprehending such extracts as shall present a fair sample of the performance. We shall add such remarks as may strike us on some of the more important cir cumstances as they arise, and which may be not wholly undeserving of the notice of the learned and candid Biographer, who may, we can augur, anticipate an early opportunity of making use of the suggestions which may be offered by any of our fraternity.

The illustrious subject of this biog

1830.]

raphy, the Prince of modern Critics, was born at Oulton, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, 27th July, 1661-2. His parents were of that respectable class, which, as Dr. Monk observes, has supplied every profession with some of its greatest ornaments,-yeomen of the higher order (such as by our ancestors were called Franklins), settled at Hep tonstall in Halifax, who possessed some property, which appears to have suffered in the civil wars, in which Bentley's grandfather acted as a sort of Captain of Volunteers in the Royal army. His father possessed a small estate at Woodlesford near Halifax, and in 1661 married the daughter of a stonemason at Oulton, of some consideration, as having held a Major's commis sion in the Royal army. The first offspring of their union was the illustrious subject of this biography, who was called Richard, after his grandfather. And to this circumstance, perhaps, we owe much of what followed, as that might not a little influence his grandfather to so freely employ his little property in his education. It is not a little remarkable that the greatest of modern scholars received the first rudiments of classical instruction from a female, his mother, a woman of su perior understanding, by whom he was taught the Latin accidence. He was first sent to a neighbouring day school, and afterwards to the very respectable grammar school of Wakefield, then under Mr. J. Baskerville, and which had afterwards the honour of producing Archbishop Potter; thus counting two Regius Professors of Divinity. To the place of his education Bentley was through life strougly attached. When he was thirteen years of age his father died, leaving his property to James, his son by a former marriage; and Richard was consigned to the care of his maternal grandfather, who lost no time in sending him (though at so tender an age) to College, and who bequeathed him two-thirds of the property of the small house in which Bentley was born, (of which the present work has an interesting picture,) with seven acres of land adjoining. Bentley was admitted a subsizar of St. John's College, then the largest in the University, and under the government of Dr. Turner, af-, terwards Bishop of Ely, and one of the seven prelates who made so noble a stand for the Church in the time of James II. Of his studies at the University our learned Biographer has been

29

able to communicate no more than what may be inferred from the attainments which he subsequently exhibited. He, however, there faid the foundation for those extensive classical (and especially metrical) attainments for which he stands unrivalled. That he had conceived some of his metrical discoveries even at that early age, appears from his Dissertation on the Metres of Terence. Our learned Biographer observes, that the academical prizes, which now serve as a stimulus to the genius and exertions of students, and are the means of recording their early merits, had then no existence. But, as he observes, the collision of talent sure to occur in so large a society must have powerfully operated on such a mind as Bentley's. The studies of the schools then consisted of logic, ethics, natural philosophy, and mathematics. That Bentley attained a considerable knowledge of the mathematics, is inferred by Dr. Monk from the close and logical character of his style, and yet more from his selection of the Newtonian discoveries, a prominent subject of his Boyle's Lectures, and the familiarity he there displays with that kind of reasoning. Among the students of the same year, under Bentley, were Dr. Garth, John Dennis the critic, Richard Johnson the grammarian, and William Wotton; the best authenticated instance of prodigious juvenile learning on record, at least of those whose precocity of talent has been justified by subsequent attainments. Bentley held no exhibition from his school, and his finances were, no doubt, at first slender, till after two years he obtained a scholarship. At the regular period, Bentley, in the eighteenth year of his age, commenc ed B.A. with his name sixth in the first tripos. But, as the Vice-Chancellor and two Proctors then nominated each one student to a place among the honours immediately after the first man of the year, this (as Dr. Monk observes) makes Bentley's place third on the list. Bentley had now completed his educa tion with distinction, but was excluded from a Fellowship by a provision of the College statutes, which confined the number of Fellows from each county to two. For a couple of years after he took his degree, our diligent biographer can trace no notice of him. He was doubtless occupied in laying up those. stores of that knowledge which he soon afterwards displayed. At the expiration of that time, the Head Mastership

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66

of Spalding School was conferred upon him by his College. And when we consider his extreme youth, the commission of so important a trust implies a high opinion both of his scholarship and steadiness. In this situation Bentley continued only a year, insomuch that during his lifetime it was very little known that our great Aristarchus had ever filled such a post. Had the junto of wits who combined their efforts to bring down this Goliath, got a knowledge of this circumstance, they would have been but too happy to have added pedagogue" to their constant appellation of pedant." The want of a house of residence at Spalding, however, soon induced Bentley to resign the school for a situation as private tutor to the son of Dean Stillingfleet. He was too, we suspect, much influenced by that long-sight which minds of such a calibre as Bentley's usually possess, and which was so remarkable in one who bore no small resemblance to Bentley, Dr. S. Parr. He, no doubt, saw that such a post would consign him to perpetual and hopeless obscurity; whereas the situation with Dean Stillingfleet gave him some chance of making his merits known, and advancing himself in life. Had he continued at Spalding, he would probably have been a Richard Johnson rather than a Richard Bentley; and some grammatical commentaries, or splenetic effusions of hypercriticism against his more fortunate compeers, would have probably been all that he would have produced. In truth, the very crisis of his fate for life turned on the pivot of his acceptance or rejection of this situation with the Dean, where he enjoyed the use of one of the best private libraries in the world, with the improvement which was sure to be derived from the society of one of the most learned men in Europe. Bentley took his M.A. degree at the usual time, and then, for some years, his connection with the University terminated; the Dean in whose family he lived residing principally in London. During this period, he prosecuted his studies with every advantage, and no doubt laid up much of those treasures of knowledge from which, in after times, he so readily drew forth, like the prudent householder in the parable, things new and old." At this time, too, though his chief attention was devoted to Classics, yet he bestowed a considerable share of study on Theology and the Criticism of the New Tes

[July.

tament, and in order thereto applied himself closely to the Oriental ́languages, and formed for his own use a sort of Hexapla, out of the various interpretations of Hebrew words in the ancient versions, and also wrote a quarto volume of various readings and emendations on the Hebrew text, derived from those versions, which (as we think) in the immaturity of his judgment, Bentley then appreciated too highly; being, we suspect, an Antipunctuist, and therefore no very sound Hebraist. The advances Bentley had made at that early age are the more remarkable, when we consider that he enjoyed none of those aids which are now so well adapted to smooth the path of the Classical and Biblical student. Grammatical learning was then very imperfectly known, and there was moreover a great want of good lexicons and indexes, which supply such valuable assistance to the scholars of the present day. But Bentley, in reliance on his own exertions, and drawing from his own resources, struck out an original path in criticism, in which his own consummate sagacity and subtilty of genius enabled him to obtain unrivalled pre-eminence.

In order to effect the important purposes in view, he did not rely on his memory (which, unlike the case of his predecessors Scaliger and Salmasius, and his successors Porson and Parr, was not extraordinary), but on the habit which he practised through life, of noting down (usually in the margin of his books) the thoughts which suggested themselves to his mind. Nay, he even formed for his own use indexes of various authors; a course, by the way, which was diligently followed by the mighty critics and philologists of the Dutch school. Bentley did not (from the unsettled state of the Church in the reign of James II.) enter into holy orders till some years after the usual age. But, upon his patron Dean Stillingfleet being promoted to the Bishoprick of Worcester, he took Deacon's orders, March 16th, 1689-90, from the Bishop of London, and was appointed Chaplain to his Patron. He a little before had accompanied his pupil James Stillingfleet, to a residence in Wadham College, Oxford, as his private tutor, and was incorporated M.A. of that University. Here he resided some time under very favourable circumstances; his connection with the Bishop of Worcester having introduced him to