Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFATORY NOTE
- Contents
- CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE. THE LETTER TO MILL
- CHAPTER II THE BOYLE LECTURES
- CHAPTER III LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE. THE KING'S LIBRARIAN
- CHAPTER IV THE CONTROVERSY ON THE LETTERS OF PHALARIS
- CHAPTER V BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION
- CHAPTER VI TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
- CHAPTER VII BENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRINITY
- CHAPTER VIII LITERARY WORK AFTER 1700.—HORACE
- CHAPTER IX OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES. — TERENCE. — MANILIUS. — HOMER
- CHAPTER X THE PROPOSED EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
- CHAPTER XI ENGLISH STYLE. EDITION OF PARADISE LOST
- CHAPTER XII DOMESTIC LIFE. LAST YEARS
- CHAPTER XIII BENTLEY'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP
CHAPTER I - EARLY LIFE. THE LETTER TO MILL
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- PREFATORY NOTE
- Contents
- CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE. THE LETTER TO MILL
- CHAPTER II THE BOYLE LECTURES
- CHAPTER III LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE. THE KING'S LIBRARIAN
- CHAPTER IV THE CONTROVERSY ON THE LETTERS OF PHALARIS
- CHAPTER V BENTLEY'S DISSERTATION
- CHAPTER VI TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
- CHAPTER VII BENTLEY AS MASTER OF TRINITY
- CHAPTER VIII LITERARY WORK AFTER 1700.—HORACE
- CHAPTER IX OTHER CLASSICAL STUDIES. — TERENCE. — MANILIUS. — HOMER
- CHAPTER X THE PROPOSED EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
- CHAPTER XI ENGLISH STYLE. EDITION OF PARADISE LOST
- CHAPTER XII DOMESTIC LIFE. LAST YEARS
- CHAPTER XIII BENTLEY'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP
Summary
Richard Bentley was born on January 27, 1662. A remarkable variety of interest belongs to his life of eighty years. He is the classical critic whose thoroughly original genius set a new example of method, and gave a decisive bent to the subsequent course of scholarship. Among students of the Greek Testament he is memorable as the first who defined a plan for constructing the whole text directly from the oldest documents. His English style has a place of its own in the transition from the prose of the seventeenth century to that of the eighteenth. During forty years he was the most prominent figure of a great English University at a stirring period. And everything that he did or wrote bears a vivid impress of personal character. The character may alternately attract and repel; it may provoke a feeling in which indignation is tempered only by a sense of the ludicrous, or it may irresistibly appeal to our admiration; but at all moments and in all moods it is signally masterful.
His birthplace was Oulton, a township in the Parish of Rothwell, near Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His family were yeomen of the richer class, who for some generations had held property in the neighbourhood of Halifax. Bentley's grandfather had been a captain in the royalist army during the civil war, and had died while a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. The Bentleys suffered in fortune for their attachment to the cavalier party, but Thomas Bentley, Richard's father, still owned a small estate at Woodlesford, a village in the same parish as Oulton.
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- Bentley , pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1882