No More Learning

It is essential to the understanding of Law, as of Boehme, to
remember his belief in the reality and actuality of the oneness of
nature and of law: Nature is God's great book of revelation, for it
is nothing else but God's own outward manifestation of what He
inwardly is, and can do. The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no
higher, and no deeper than the mysteries of nature'. God Himself
is subject to this law. There is no question of God's mercy or of
His wrath', for it is an eternal principle that we can only receive
what we are capable of receiving; and, to ask why one person does
not gain any help from the mercy and goodness of God while
another does gain help is 'like asking why the refreshing dew of
Heaven does not do that to flint which it does to the vegetable
planter
Self-denial and mortification of the flesh are not things imposed
upon us by the mere will of God: considered in themselves, they have
nothing of goodness or holiness; but they have their ground and
reason in the nature of the thing, and are as 'absolutely necessary
to make way for the new birth, as the death of the husk and gross
part of the grain is necessary to make way for its vegetable life? '
Law's attitude towards learning, which has been somewhat
misunderstood, is a part of his belief in the 'Light Within,' which
he shares with all mystical thinkers. In judging of what he says
as to the inadequacy of book knowledge and scholarship, it is
necessary to call to mind the characteristics of his age and public.
When we remember the barren controversies about externals in
matters religious which raged all through his lifetime, and the
exaltation of the reason as the only means whereby man could
know anything of the deeper truths of existence, it is not sur-
prising that, with Law, the pendulum should swing in the opposite
direction, and that, with passionate insistence, he should be driven
to assert the utter inadequacy of the intellect by itself in all
spiritual concerns
· See The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 150—1.
? An Appeal, Works, vol. VI, p. 169.
3 Ibid. pp. 19-20.
* Ibid. pp. 69, 80.
5 The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 23, 27.
6 The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, p. 60.
· The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vo, p. 68. See, also, ibid. pp. 91–2.
8 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, pp. 118-28.


## p. 321 (#345) ############################################

Law's Prose Style
321
He, says Law, who looks to his reason as the true power and light
of his nature, betrays the same Ignorance of the whole Nature,
Power and Office of Reason as if he were to smell with his Eyes, or
see with his Nose? ' All true knowledge, he urges, must come from
within, it must be experienced; and, if it were not that man has
the divine nature in him, no omnipotence of God could open in
him the knowledge of divine things. There cannot be any know-
ledge of things but where the thing itself is; there cannot be any
knowledge of any unpossessed Matters, for knowledge can only be
yours as Sickness and Health is yours, not conveyed to you by a
Hearsay Notion, but the Fruit of your own Perception? '
Law, liberal scholar, clear reasoner and finished writer, was no
more an enemy of learning than Ruskin was an enemy of writing
and reading because he said that there were very few people in
the world who got any good by either. Their scornful remarks on
these subjects often mislead their readers; yet the aim of both
writers was not to belittle these things in themselves, but solely to
put them in their right place 8.
Law is among the greatest of English prose writers, and no
one ever more truly possessed than he 'the splendid and imperish-
able excellence of sincerity and strength. ' Those who least
understand his later views, who look upon them as 'idle fancies,'
and on the whole subject of his mystical thought as 'a melancholy
topic' are constrained to admit, not only that he writes fine and
lucid prose in A Serious Call, but that, in his mystical treatises,
his style becomes mellower and rises to greater heights than in
his earlier work. The reason for this cumulative richness is that
the history and development of Law's prose style is the history
and development of his character. As applied to him, Buffon's
epigram was strictly true. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole
nature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech and of life. Sin-
cerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking
the logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined
his prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his
considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an un-
comprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen, rather
than a profound, intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant
flashes of wit or of grim satire. On this side, his was a true
1 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. VII, pp. 50_1.
2 Ibid. p. 127.
$ Ibid. p. 93.
4 See Bigg, Charles, in his introduction to A Serious Call, pp. XXV and xxviii; also,
for a view of Law's later thought, Stephen, Leslie, English Thought in the 18th Century,
vol. 1, pp. 405—9.
21
E. L. IX.
CH. XII.


## p. 322 (#346) ############################################

322
William Law and the Mystics
eighteenth century mind, logical, sane, practical, with, at the same
time, a touch of whimsey, and a tendency to a quite unexpected
lack of balance on certain subjects. Underneath a severe and
slightly stiff exterior lay, however, emotion, enthusiasm and great
tenderness of feeling. When he was still a young man, the logical
and satirical side was strongest; in later years, this was much
tempered by emotion and tenderness.
This description of Law's character might equally serve as a
description of his style. It is strong, sincere, rhythmical, but,
except under stress of feeling, not especially melodious. A certain
stiffness and lack of adaptability, which was characteristic of the
man, makes itself felt in his prose, in spite of his free use of italics
and capital letters. Law's first object is to be explicit, to convey
the precise shade of his meaning, and, for this purpose, he chooses
the most homely similes, and is not in the least afraid of repetition,
either of words or thoughts. A good instance of his method, and
one which illustrates his disregard for iteration, his sarcastic vein
and his power of expressing his meaning in a simile, is the parable
of the pond in A Serious Call, which was versified by Byrom! .
Again, if you should see a man that had a large pond of water, yet living
in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink half a draught, for fear of
lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength, in
fetching more water to his pond, always thirsty, yet always carrying a bucket
of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the drops of rain,
gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every mire and mud, in
hopes of water, and always studying how to make every ditch empty itself
into his pond. If you should see him grow grey and old in these anxious
labours, and at last end a careful, thirsty life, by falling into his own pond,
would you not say, that such a one was not only the author of all his own
disquiets, but was foolish enough to be reckoned amongst idiots and madmen?
But yet foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the
follies, and absurd disquiets of the covetous man.
Law's use of simile and analogy in argument is characteristic.
By means of it, he lights up his position in one flash, or with
dexterity lays bare an inconsistency. His use of analogies between
natural, and mental and spiritual, processes is frequent, and is
applied with power in his later writings, when the oneness of law
in the spiritual and natural worlds became the very ground of his
philosophy. He had the command of several instruments and
could play in different keys. Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees
(1723), and The Spirit of Prayer (1749—50), while exhibiting
different sides of the man, are excellent examples of the variety and
1 Cf. The Pond, in The Poems of John Byrom (Chetham Society, 1894), part I,
pp. 196–202.


## p. 323 (#347) ############################################

Remarks, Spirit of Prayer and Serious Call 323
range of his prose. The earlier work is biting, crisp, brilliant and
severely logical, written in pithy sentences and short paragraphs,
containing a large proportion of words of one syllable, the printed
page thus presenting to the eye quite a different appearance from
that of his later work. Remarks displays to the full Law's
peculiar power of illustrating the fallacy of an abstract argument,
by embodying it in a concrete example. Mandeville's poem is a
vigorous satire in the Hudibrastic vein, and, in Law's answer, it
called out the full share of the same quality which he himself
possessed. "Though I direct myself to you,' he begins, in address-
ing Mandeville, 'I hope it will be no Offence if I sometimes
speak as if I was speaking to a Christian. ' The two assertions
of Mandeville which Law is chiefly concerned to refute are that
man is only an animal, and morality only an imposture. 'Accord-
ing to this Doctrine,' he retorts, 'to say that a Man is dishonest,
is making him just such a Criminal as a Horse that does not
dance. This is the kind of unerring homely simile which
abounds in Law's writing, and which reminds us of the swift
and caustic wit of Mrs Poyser. Other examples could be cited
to illustrate the pungency and raciness of Law's style when he
is in the mood for logical refutation. But it is only necessary
to glance at the first half page of The Spirit of Prayer to appre-
ciate the marked difference in temper and phrasing. The early
characteristics are as strong as ever; but, in addition, there is a
tolerance, a tender charm, an imaginative quality and a melody of
rhythm rarely to be found in the early work. The sentences and
phrases are longer, and move to a different measure; and, all through,
the treatise is steeped in mystic ardour, and, while possessed of a
strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has seldom surpassed,
conveys the longing of the soul for union with the Divine.
In A Serious Call, Law makes considerable use of his power
of character drawing, of which there are indications already in
Christian Perfection. This style of writing, very popular in the
seventeenth century, had long been a favourite method for con-
veying moral instruction, and Law uses it with great skill. His
sketches of Flavia and Miranda, 'the heathen and Christian sister'
as Gibbon calls them, are two of the best known and most elaborate
of his portraits. Law's foolish, inconsistent and selfish characters,
such as the woman of fashion, the scholar, the country gentleman or
the man of affairs, are more true to life, and, indeed, more sympa-
thetic to frail humanity, than the few virtuous characters he has
drawn. This is a key, perhaps, to the limitations of Law's outlook,
6
21-2


## p. 324 (#348) ############################################

324
William Law and the Mystics
and, more especially, of his influence; for, in his view, a man's work
in the world, and his more mundane characteristics, are as nothing,
so that one good person is precisely like another. Thus, a pious
physician is acceptable to God as pious, but not at all as a physician'.
A Serious Call, as a whole, is a fine example of Law's middle
style, grave, clear and rhythmical, with the strong sarcastic tend-
ency restrained; not, on the one hand, so brilliant as the Remarks,
nor, on the other, so illumined as The Spirit of Prayer. Yet, it
throbs with feeling, and, indeed, as Sir Leslie Stephen-himself not
wholly in sympathy with it—has finely said, its 'power can only be
adequately felt by readers who can study it on their knees. ' One
can well imagine how repugnant it would have been to the writer
that such a work should be criticised or appraised from a purely
literary point of view; and yet, if William Law had not been a
great literary craftsman, the lofty teaching of his Serious Call
would not have influenced, as it has, entire generations of English-
speaking people.
On the whole, the distinguishing and peculiar characteristic of
Law as a prose writer is that, for the most part, he is occupied with
things which can only be experienced emotionally and spiritually,
and that he treats them according to his closely logical habit of
mind. The result is an unusual combination of reason and emotion
which makes appeal at once to the intellect and the heart of the
reader.
Although Law's spiritual influence in his own generation was
probably more profound than that of any other man of his day,
yet he had curiously few direct followers. It is easy to see that
he was far too independent a thinker to be acceptable even to
the high churchmen whose cause he espoused, and, though he
was greatly revered by methodists and evangelists, his later
mysticism was wholly abhorrent to them? The most famous
members of the little band of disciples who visited him at Putney
were the Wesleys, John and Charles, who, two or three times
yearly, used to travel the whole distance from Oxford on foot
in order to consult their 'oracle' Later, however, there was &
rupture between them, when Wesley, on his return from Georgia
in 1738, having joined the Moravians, seems suddenly to have
realized, and to have contended, in very forcible language, that,
1 See Bigg's introduction to A Serious Call, 1899, p. xxix.
See Overton, chap. XXI, Law's opponents.
3 Works, vol. 11, Letter 1x, p. 123.


## p. 325 (#349) ############################################

John Byrom
325
although Law, in his books (A Christian Perfection and A Serious
Call), put a very high ideal before men, he had, nevertheless, omitted
to emphasize that the only means of attaining it was through the
atonement of Christ. This was largely the quarrel of Wesley, as,
'
also, of the later methodists, with mysticism in general; 'under the
term mysticism,' he writes from Georgia, 'I comprehend those and
only those who slight any of the means of grace? . ?
George Cheyne, fashionable doctor, vegetarian and mystic,
was another of Law's friends at this time ; but the most charming
and most lovable of his followers was his devoted admirer,
John Byrom. The relationship between these two men much
resembles that of Johnson and Boswell, and we find the same
outspoken brusqueness, concealing a very real affection, on the
part of the mentor, with the same unswerving devotion and
zealous record of details—even of the frequent snubs received
on the part of the disciple. Byrom, in many ways, reminds us of
Goldsmith; he possesses something of the artless simplicity, the
rare and fragrant charm, which is the outcome of a sincere and
tender nature; he has many forgivable foibles and weaknesses, a
delightful, because completely natural, style in prose and a con-
siderable variety of interests and pursuits. He travelled abroad
and studied medicine, and, though he never took a medical degree,
he was always called Doctor by his friends; he was an ardent
Jacobite, a poet, a mystic and the inventor of a system of short-
hand, by the teaching of which he increased his income until, in
1740, he succeeded to the family property near Manchester.
Byrom, though a contemporary of Law at Cambridge, evidently
did not know him personally until 1729, and his first recorded
meeting with his hero, as, also, the later ones, form some of the
most attractive passages of an entirely delightful and too little
known book, The Private Journal and Literary Remains of
John Byrom. It is from this journal that we gather most of our
information about Law at Putney, and from it that, incidentally, we
get the fullest light on his character and personality.
On 15 February 1729, Byrom bought A Serious Call, and, on
the following 4 March, he and a friend named Mildmay went down
in the Fulham coach to Putney to interview the author. This was
the beginning of an intimacy which lasted until Law's death, and
a
1 For a full account of the relations of Wesley and Law, and the text of their two
famous letters, see Overton, pp. 80–92, and see, also, the account in Byrom's Journal,
vol. 11, part 1, pp. 268–70.
2 See Byrom's Journal, vol. 11, part 1, p. 181, and for later methodist views, The
Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, by Thomas Jackson, 1841, vol. 1, pp. 52, 53, 112, 113.
8


## p. 326 (#350) ############################################

326
William Law and the Mystics
which was founded on a strong community of tastes in matters
of mystical philosophy, and on the unswerving devotion of
Byrom to his ‘master? ' They met at Cambridge, where Byrom
gave shorthand lessons, and Law shepherded his unsatisfactory
pupil ; at Putney, in Somerset gardens and, later, at King's
Cliffe
Byrom, though scarcely a poet, for he lacked imagination,
had an unusual facility for turning everything into rime. Не
sometimes wrote in very pleasing and graceful veins, and he
had an undoubted gift of epigram; but he was particularly fond
of making verse paraphrases of prose writings, and especially of
those of William Law. His two finest pieces of this kind are An
Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple (1749), which versifies Law's
Spirit of Prayer; and the letter on Enthusiasm (1752), founded
on the latter part of Law's Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's
Reply. This last poem is written with admirable clearness and
point; Law's defence of enthusiasm is one of the best things
he wrote, and Byrom does full justice to it. Enthusiasm,
meaning, more especially ' a misconceit of inspirations, the laying
claim to peculiar divine guidance or 'inner light,' resulting in
anything approaching fanaticism or even emotion, was a quality
equally abhorred and feared in the eighteenth century by philo-
sophers, divines and methodists, indeed, by everyone except
mystics. The first care of every writer and thinker was to clear
himself of any suspicion of this “horrid thing®. ' Law's argument,
which is to the effect that enthusiasm is but the kindling of the
driving desire or will of every intelligent creature, is well sum-
marized by Byrom :-
1
1
"O how much better he from whom I draw
Though deep yet clear his system-“Master Law. "
Master I call him . . . (Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple. )
See, for an example of their conversations, which, in the variety of its topics, and
distinctive character of its sentiments, throws much light on Law's thoughts and
ideals, that of Saturday, 7 June 1735.
3 Especially in his song "Why prithee now' (Poems, 1, 115), or his early pastoral,
• My Time, O ye Muses. '
* As in the famous lines upon Handel and Bononcini, often attributed to Swift
(Poems, I, 35), and the Pretender toast (Poems, 1, 572).
o Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 1662, 8 2.
• Bishop Butler, when talking once to Wesley, exclaimed, 'Sir, the pretending to
extraordinary revelation or gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid
thing. ' For an admirable account of Enthusiasm,' see The English Church in the
18th Century, by Abbey and Overton, vol. I, chap. IX; also a note by Ward, A. W. , in
Byrom's Poems, vol. 11, pt. 1, pp. 169—79; and a note by Hill, G. Birkbeck, in
Gibbon's Memoirs, 1900, p. 22.
1


## p. 327 (#351) ############################################

Henry Brooke
327
Think not that you are no Enthusiast, then!
All Men are such, as sure as they are Men.
The Thing itself is not at all to blame
'Tis in each State of human Life the same,
That which concerns us therefore, is to see
What Species of Enthusiasts we bel.
Byrom hoped that, by turning them into verse, Law's later teach-
ings might reach a larger public? , and, in this, Law evidently agreed
with him, looking upon him as a valuable ally. Byrom's work
certainly did not lack appreciation by his contemporaries; War-
burton—who had no cause to love him—thought highly of it, and
Wesley, who ascribes to him all the wit and humour of Swift,
together with much more learning, says that in his poems are
'some of the noblest truths expressed with the utmost energy of
language, and the strongest colours of poetry. '
Henry Brookewas another writer who was deeply imbued
with Boehme's thought, and his expression of it, imbedded
in that curious book The Fool of Quality (1766—70), reached,
probably, a larger public than did Law's mystical treatises 5.
In many ways, Brooke must have been a charming character,
original, tender-hearted, overflowing with sentiment, but entirely
incapable of concentration or even continuity of thought. His
book is a brave one, full of high ideals. It is an extraordinary
mixture of schoolboy pranks, romantic adventures, stories-ancient
and modern-ethical dialogues, dissertations on mystical philosophy,
political economy, the British constitution, the relation of the
sexes, the training of a gentleman and many other topics. MrMeekly
and Mr Fenton (or Clinton) are Brooke's two exponents of a
very general and diluted form of 'Behmenism. ' The existence
of the two wills, the formation of Christ within the soul, the
reflection of God's image in matter as in a mirror, the nature of
beauty, of man and of God, the fall of Lucifer and the angels, and
of Adam-all these things are discussed and explained in mystical
language, steeped in emotion and sentimente.
1 Byrom's Poems, II, 1, pp. 190_-1.
"Since different ways of telling may excite
In different minds Attention to what's right,
And men (I measure by myself) sometimes,
Averse to Reas'ning, may be taught by Rimes. ' Poems, 11, 1, 164.
3 Wesley's Journal, Monday, 12 July 1773.
• The uncle of the Henry Brooke of Dublin, who knew Law and greatly admired him.
6 Brooke also wrote a large number of plays and poems, two of the latter being full
of mystical thought, Universal Beauty (1735–6) and Redemption (1772). As to Brooke's
novels of. vol. x, chapter III, post.
6 See The Fool of Quality, ed. Baker, E. A. , 1906, pp. 30, 31, 33, 39, 133-6,
142, 258–60, 328—30, 836, 867-9, 394.
1
9


## p. 328 (#352) ############################################

328
William Law and the Mystics
The Fool of Quality found favour with John Wesley, who
reprinted it in 1781, under the title The History of Henry Earl
of Moreland. In doing this, he reduced it from five volumes to
two, omitting, as he says in his preface, 'a great part of the mystic
Divinity, as it is more philosophical than Scriptural.
' He goes on
to speak of the book with the highest praise, 'I now venture to
recommend the following Treatise as the most excellent in its kind
of any that I have seen, either in the English, or any other lan-
guage'; its greatest excellence being that it continually strikes at
the heart. . . I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless
he has a heart of stone. ' Launched thus, with the imprimatur of
their great leader, it became favourite reading with generations of
devout Wesleyans, and, in this form, passed through many editions!
Mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have
little chronological development, since mysticism can neither age nor
die. They rarely found schools of thought in their own day. It is,
therefore, not surprising that, in spite of various strains of a mystic
tendency, the mysticism of Law and his small circle of followers
had no marked influence on the main stream of eighteenth century
thought. The atmosphere of the age was antagonistic to it, and it
remained an undercurrent only, the impulse given by Law in this
direction spending itself finally among little-known dreamers and
eccentrics?
Later, some of the root - ideas of Boehme returned to
England by way of Hegel, Schelling, Jung-Stilling and Friedrich
Schlegel, or through Boehme's French disciple, Louis-Claude de
Saint-Martin. They influenced Coleridges, and profoundly modified
nineteenth century conceptions, thus preparing the way for the
better understanding of mystical thought. Blake's prophetic books
are only now, after a hundred years, beginning to find readers,
and, undoubtedly, Law's Appeal, if it were more widely known,
would, in the twentieth century, win the response for which it has
long been waiting.
1 Wesley's alterations in wording are most instructive and interesting, for he has
not hesitated to alter as well as to omit passages. Cf. Clinton's account of the
nature of man and God in Wesley, ed. of 1781, vol. II, pp. 286—7, with Brooke, 1 vol.
ed. 1906, p. 367.
3 As, for instance, Francis Okely, or, later, J. P. Greaves and Christopher Walton.
There remains, however, to be traced an influence which bore fruit in the nineteenth
century. Thomas Erskine of Linlathen was indebted to both Law and Boehme, and
he, in his turn, influenced F. D. Maurice and others.
8 Coleridge also knew both Law and Boehme at first hand; for his appreciation of
them see Biographia Literaria, chap. IX, Aids to Reflexion, conclusion, and notes to
Southey's Life of Wesley, 3rd ed. , 1846, vol. 1, p. 476. For his projected work on
Boehme, and in connection with his philosophy, see letter to Lady Beaumont, 1810, in
Memorials of Coleorton, ed. Knight, W. , 1887, vol. II, pp. 105—7.


## p. 329 (#353) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
SCHOLARS AND ANTIQUARIES
I. BENTLEY AND CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP
At the end of the seventeenth century, the history of scholar-
ship is illuminated by the great name of Richard Bentley. From
1699, when his Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris was pub-
lished, until the end of his long life in 1742, each successive work
that came from his pen was expected with impatience and welcomed
with enthusiasm by the learned all over Europe, who, by their
common use of Latin, were able more easily than now to under-
stand and to communicate with each other.
When Bentley was born in 1662, there were already men in
England of great learning. But most of these busied themselves
with theology, chronology and patristic study rather than with
the classical authors. Five names may be mentioned here. The
first of these is John Pearson, successively master of Trinity
college, Cambridge, and bishop of Chester. The Exposition of
the Creed and the Vindication of certain epistles attributed to
Ignatius of Antioch, have been already treated in an earlier
volume? Bentley wrote of him as 'the most excellent Bishop
Pearson, the very dust of whose writings is gold' John Fell
was successively dean of Christ Church and bishop of Oxford.
His chief work is a critical edition of the works of Cyprian.
The epigram by which his name is chiefly known at the present
day was probably written by Tom Brown, while an undergraduate
at Christ Church? William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph and,
later, of Worcester, is famous as one of the seven bishops. He
wrote chiefly on church history and is appealed to by Bentley
as 'that incomparable historian and chronologer. ' Henry Dodwell
was elected Camden professor of history at Oxford in 1688. The
most important of his very numerous works discussed ancient
See ante, vol. vin, p. 297.
* As to Fell, cf. ante, vol. VII, p. 457.


## p. 330 (#354) ############################################

330
Scholars and Antiquaries
chronology; and Bentley, in his Phalaris, while controverting
Dodwell's views, constantly refers to his book De Cydis, then in
the press, as 'that noble work, and to the author as 'the very
learned Mr Dodwell. ' John Moore was bishop of Ely and, as
such, became Bentley's judge in 1710. His library, one of the
best collections of books and MSS in Europe, was eventually
presented by George I to Cambridge university.
Richard Bentley was born on 27 January 1662, at Oulton,
in Yorkshire, and educated at Wakefield grammar school and
St John's college, Cambridge. He took the degree of B. A. with
distinction in 1680 and, after acting for about a year as master of
Spalding school, was chosen as tutor to his son by Stillingfleet,
then dean of St Paul's and, from 1689, bishop of Worcester. For
six years Bentley was a member of Stillingfleet's household. The
dean's library was famous and now forms part of archbishop
Marsh's library in Dublin ; but one may suppose that these books
have never again found a reader so ardent and so apt as Bentley.
Johnson once said to Boswell that he had never known a man
who studied hard, but that he concluded, from the effects, that
some men had done so; and he named Bentley as an example,
This may be illustrated by Bentley's own words :
I wrote, before I was twenty-four years of age, a sort of Hexapla; a thick
volume in quarto, in the first column of which I inserted every word of the
Hebrew Bible alphabetically; and, in five other columns, all the various inter-
pretations of those words in the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate Latin, Septuagint,
and Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, that occur in the whole Bible.
Yet biblical study was only a small part of Bentley's labours.
In 1689, when young Stillingfleet went to Oxford, Bentley went
with him and became a member of the university. To him, one of
the chief attractions of the place must have been the Bodleian
library. Two years later appeared his first published work, the
Epistola ad Millium.
The Sheldonian press was about to print a manuscript chronicle
by a medieval writer named Joannes Malelas ; and John Mill,
famous for his critical edition of the New Testament, sent the
proof-sheets of Malelas to Bentley, on condition that he should
contribute something to the book. Of the published book, the last
hundred pages are taken up by Bentley's Latin letter. Of the many
.
subjects discussed in the Epistola, the chief are the plays of the
Attic dramatists and the lexicon of Hesychius. Bentley's Epistola
gave evidence of a knowledge which embraced all the known
writers of antiquity and extended even to the unprinted MSS


## p. 331 (#355) ############################################

Epistola ad Millium
331
of the Oxford libraries. But it showed more than this : Bentley
was absolute master of his erudition and could apply it with the
nicest precision to solve the problems presented by his author,
The Greek texts which he quoted were often so corrupt as to
be unintelligible ; but, again and again, he restored meaning by
emendations as certain as they are wonderful. For such work as
this, he had one immense advantage over all his predecessors : he
had learnt for himself the laws of Greek metre, which were very
imperfectly understood even by such men as Grotius and Casaubon.
The whole work bears, in the highest degree, the impress of con-
scious power. It was soon perceived by the few men in Europe who
were competent to judge what Bentley had done that a star of
the first magnitude had risen above the horizon.
In 1692, when Robert Boyle, eminent as a natural philosopher,
had left money to found a lectureship in defence of the Christian
religion, Bentley, who had now been ordained, was chosen as the
first lecturer. He delivered eight lectures in two London churches,
taking as his subject 'A confutation of Atheism. ' The last three
lectures drew arguments from the origin and frame of the world';
and, for this part of his work, Bentley sought the aid of Isaac
Newton, whose Principia had been published five years before.
Newton sent full replies to Bentley's enquiries and expressed
satisfaction that his discoveries should be used as an argument
against atheism. Bentley showed great power as a contro-
versialist : his argument, acute and logical, is expressed in a style
of remarkable force and vigour. The lectures were printed at
once and soon translated into Latin, French, German and Dutch.
Bentley was now a man of mark, and, in 1694, he was appointed
keeper of the royal libraries, with official lodgings in St James's
palace. We learn from one of his letters that a small group of his
friends were in the habit of meeting there once or twice a week;
their names were John Evelyn, John Locke, Christopher Wren
and Isaac Newton.
From his Boyle lectures, he went back to the Greek poets.
John George Graevius, professor at Utrecht and the foremost
Latin scholar of the day, was about to issue an edition of
Callimachus ; and Bentley undertook to collect for this work all
the fragments of Callimachus extant in Greek literature. Graevius,
who had read the Epistola ad Millium with the keenest enthusiasm,
expected much of Bentley and got even more than he expected.
For Bentley discovered twice as many fragments as had been
previously known ; his metrical knowledge enabled him, in many


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332
Scholars and Antiquaries
seen.
cases, to correct them where corrupt; and his penetration could
often point out the relation of one fragment to another. No such
collection of the fragments of a classical author had ever been
Until his death in 1703 Graevius remained one of Bentley's
heartiest admirers.
The time was now coming when Bentley's friends were to be
put to the proof. By no fault of his own, he became involved in a
famous controversy, in which he was supposed, by the ignorant, to
have had the worst of it, although, in fact, he was completely
victorious over his antagonists and, in the course of his reply, also
made an immense contribution to the knowledge of antiquity.
The subject of this controversy was the genuineness of certain
letters attributed to Phalaris, the half-legendary ruler of Agri-
gentum, who roasted his enemies in a brazen bull. An idle com-
parison between ancient and modern learning, begun in France,
had spread to England ; and Sir William Temple, then eminent as
a man of letters, published an essay, in 1690, in which he gave the
preference to ancient literature, in general, and praised the letters
of Phalaris, in particular, as superior
to anything since written of the
same kind. Temple's essay having turned attention to Phalaris, a
new edition of the letters was published in 1695 by Charles Boyle,
then an undergraduate at Christ Church, a grandnephew of Robert
Boyle, the founder of the lectures. In his preface, the editor made
an insulting reference to Bentley and complained of his discourteous
conduct in refusing the use of a MS of Phalaris kept in the royal
library. Bentley wrote at once to Boyle, explaining that there
had been a mistake, and that he had intended no discourtesy; but
Boyle, acting on the advice of others, refused to make any amends.
His reply was practically a defiance to Bentley to do his worst.
Bentley was the last man to swallow such an insult, and it was not
long before he had an opportunity to say something for himself.
His friend, William Wotton, had, in 1694, entered the lists against
Sir William Temple in defence of modern learning ; and, in 1697,
a second edition of his book included an appendix in which
Bentley briefly stated his proofs that the letters of Phalaris were
spurious, and then gave the true version of the affair of the MS.
But he went further : in language of decided asperity, he pointed
out errors in Boyle's edition, blaming his teachers for them more
than ‘the young gentleman' himself.
By some of the resident members of Christ Church, this censure
was bitterly resented ; and it was determined to crush Bentley.
The members of this society were numerous and united by an


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The Phalaris Controversy 333
unusually strong corporate feeling, as nearly all of them had been
educated at Westminster. Though, in point of learning, they were
children compared to Bentley, yet they were formidable antagonists
in any controversy at the bar of public opinion. They were wits
and men of the world ; they had much influence in literary and
academic circles; and, though their erudition was meagre, they
showed a marvellous dexterity in the use of what they had. The
ringleader in the conspiracy against Bentley was Francis Atter-
burył: of the book, which appeared in 1698 and bore the name of
Charles Boyle, he wrote the greater part and revised the whole.
This joint production, to which Boyle seems to have con-
tributed nothing except his name, was read with avidity by a
public quite incompetent to judge of the matter in dispute. The
book had merits which all could understand : in a polished and
pleasant style, it exhausted every art of the controversialist in
throwing ridicule on Bentley as a dull pedant without the manners
of a gentleman or the taste of a genuine man of letters. Nor
was ridicule the only weapon employed : charges of dishonesty,
plagiarism and even heterodoxy were scattered up and down its
pages. Public opinion, prejudiced in Boyle's favour by his youth
and high birth, soon declared decisively against Bentley. It was
at this time that Swift, then residing in Sir William Temple's
family, ridiculed Bentley in his Battle of the Books ; and Garth's
poem, The Dispensary, published in 1699, is chiefly remembered
by the foolish couplet in which he expressed his agreement with
the prevailing sentiment of polite society :
So diamonds take a lustre from their foil,
And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle.
Atterbury and his friends had good reason to suppose that they
had crushed Bentley and destroyed not only his reputation for
learning but, also, his character.
But it was not easy to crush Bentley. It was about this time
that he replied to the condolence of a friend : ‘Indeed, I am in no
pain about the matter; for it is a maxim with me that no man
was ever written out of reputation but by himself. ' He set to
work to revise and enlarge what he had already written about
Phalaris, and his full reply appeared early in 1699. The Dis-
sertation did not instantly convert public opinion to Bentley's
side; but competent scholars, not, at that day, a large company,
saw at once that Bentley had not only disproved for ever the
1 As to Atterbury see the chapter Divines of the Church of England in vol. 1, post.


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334
Scholars and Antiquaries
authenticity of the letters of Phalaris, but had also made large
additions to the sum of existing knowledge on every subject which
he bad occasion to discuss. Nor was it in learning only that
Bentley's immense superiority was shown: he was a far more
cogent reasoner than his assailants ; his language, if sometimes
severe, was nowhere scurrilous; and he even came near to beating
the Oxford men with their own weapon of ridicule. If he could
not rival the rapier thrust of Atterbury, he made uncommonly
pretty play with his quarterstaff and brought it down again and
again with astonishing precision on the heads of his antagonists.
It is needless here to review the different matters illuminated
by Bentley in the course of his discussion. It will be more to the
purpose to quote two passages which illustrate his view of language
and of literature. Discussing the Greek in which the Epistles are
written, he says:
Even the Attic of the true Phalaris's age is not there represented, but a
more recent idiom and style, that by the whole thread and colour of it betrays
itself to be many centuries younger than he. Every living language, like
the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration;
some words go off and become obsolete; others are taken in and by degrees
grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense and
notion, which in tract of time makes as observable a change in the air and
features of a language as age makes in the lines and mien of a face. All are
sensible of this in their own native tongues, where continual use makes every
man a critic. For what Englishman does not think himself able, from the
very turn and fashion of the style, to distinguish a fresh English composition
from another a hundred years old ? Now, there are as real and sensible
differences in the several ages of Greek, were there as many that could discern
them. But very few are so versed and practised in that language as ever to
arrive at that subtilty of taste.
The second extract describes the matter of the Epistles and
directly contradicts the well-turned sentences in which Temple
had expressed his worthless opinion of their unequalled merit:
'T would be endless to prosecute this part and show all the silliness and
impertinency in the matter of the Epistles. For, take them in the whole
bulk, they are a fardle of commonplaces, without any life or spirit from
action and circumstance. Do but cast your eye upon Cicero's letters, or any
statesman's, as Phalaris was: what lively characters of men there! what
descriptions of place! what notifications of time! what peculiarity of circum-
stances! what multiplicity of designs and events! When you return to these
again, you feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse
with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk; not with an active,
ambitious tyrant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of
subjects.
In the same year (1699), Bentley received a practical proof
of the estimate formed of his character and learning by men


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Master of Trinity College 335
who were learned themselves. The two archbishops, with bishops
Burnet, Lloyd, Stillingfleet and Moore, had been appointed by king
William to act as a commission for filling offices in the gift of the
crown; and, by their unanimous vote, Bentley was appointed to
the mastership of Trinity college, Cambridge. He was admitted
to his new office on 1 February 1700. It is not the business of this
narrative to describe the war which began at once and went on for
thirty-eight years between Bentley and the fellows of Trinity
college. It is enough to say that Bentley was twice tried for his
misdemeanours before judges who cannot be suspected of any
bias against him, and twice sentenced to be deprived of his office.
In each case, the judge was the bishop of Ely, who had been
declared visitor of the college. In 1714, bishop Moore, who had
been one of Bentley's electors fourteen years before, died before
he could pronounce the judgment which he had written. In 1734,
bishop Greene pronounced sentence of deprivation ; yet Bentley's
ingenuity and pertinacity proved equal even to this emergency,
and he remained at Trinity lodge until his death in 1742. But
the inscription placed upon his grave in the chapel denies, by its
wording, his right to be called master of the college. In his con-
duct as master, there is much that is inexcusable, but the worst
feature is his sordid rapacity. This ugly vice seems alien to his
character, which, if proud and overbearing, showed a marked
strain of magnanimity in most of the circumstances of his life.
But there is another and a more agreeable side to Bentley's
life during these forty-two years. He did much to reform the
discipline and promote the studies of the undergraduates. He
showed great zeal in encouraging learning; and it is a remarkable
proof of the largeness of his mind that he was quite as favourable
to other studies as to those in which he had made his own reputa-
tion. Thus, the first lectures delivered by Vigani as professor
of chemistry (1702) were given in a laboratory (then called an
elaboratory) fitted up by Bentley in the rooms now occupied by
the bursar at Trinity. For Roger Cotes, Newton's greatest pupil,
he built an observatory over the central gate of the college. His
urgent pressure induced the reluctant Newton to prepare the
second and improved edition of the Principia, in 1713; and he
himself defrayed the cost of the publication. In 1705, he brought
Henry Syke, a learned orientalist, from Utrecht to be Hebrew
professor at Cambridge and made him a tutor of Trinity. To
Ludolf Küster, a Westphalian scholar then residing in Cambridge,
he gave such help as no other man living could have given, for his


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editions of Suidas and Aristophanes. More than all this, Bentley
set a great example to an academic society by the devotion of his
whole life to study. He never went abroad; it seems that, after
his marriage in 1701, he never left Cambridge except for London,
where he had still an official residence as royal librarian; he took
no exercise except a walk in his garden; he never appeared at
social gatherings, though he enjoyed the society of a few intimate
friends at his own house. The business of his life was to exhaust
learning; and he said he should be willing to die at 80, as he
should then have read everything worth reading. The books
which he published must not be supposed to mark the limits of
his study. Thus, he devoted years of labour to Homer and to the
text of the Greek Testament; and, though he published nothing
in either subject, the manuscript materials which he left have
profoundly affected the subsequent study of both. Everything
which he wrote for the press was prepared in great haste; and his
enemies said, with some appearance of truth, that his main motive
for appearing in print was his wish to conciliate public opinion,
when one of his many law-suits seemed likely to go against him.
He probably regarded his books as an interruption to the more
pressing business of study. Still, they are the landmarks of
his life; and a short account will be given here of the works
published by him after 1700.
The first of these was polemical and appeared at Utrecht in
1710, under the pseudonym Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. A certain
John Le Clerc, who, with little real learning of any kind, had
contrived to become a considerable figure in European literature,
undertook, in an evil hour, to edit the fragments of Menander
and Philemon. Of his qualifications for the enterprise, it is enough
to say that he knew little of the Greek language and nothing of
Greek metre. Bentley wrote out in great haste comments upon
323 of the fragments, exposing the incompetence of the editor and
suggesting corrections of his own. He then sent the manuscript
to Peter Burmann at Utrecht by the hands of Francis Hare, then
serving as chaplain-general to Marlborough's army. Burmann
published the notes with a preface of his own. It was at once
recognised as Bentley's work and eagerly read : in three weeks,
there was not a copy to be had. The unerring sagacity of the
critic and the liveliness of the style make it one of the most
attractive of Bentley's books.
In 1711 appeared his Horace. It was dedicated to Harley,
the tory prime minister, of whose powerful aid Bentley was then


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Edition of Horace
337
sorely in need, at a critical stage in his battle with the college.
Horace was the first Latin author whom Bentley had edited : till
then, his published work had dealt mainly with Greek writers.
The object aimed at was a complete revision of the text, and all
accessible authorities were used for the purpose ; but Bentley
relied more upon his power of emendation than upon any MSS.
His Horace presented over 700 unfamiliar readings; and these
novelties, instead of being relegated to the foot of the page, were
promoted to the text. All the old power and erudition were shown
in the notes in which the editor sought to justify his innovations.
The reader who is inclined to reject some change proposed turns
to the note and finds it almost impossible to resist the dialectical
force of the editor. But there are faults in this work wbich had
not been conspicuous before in Bentley's books—arrogance in
asserting his own merits and a tendency to think more of exhibit-
ing his own skill in argument than of discovering what his author
really wrote. For the first time, too, he begins to force upon
the
author his own standards of taste, a fault which betrayed him later
into the great literary blunder of his life. The book brought him
much praise and as much criticism. The two are pleasantly com-
bined in the language of Atterbury, now dean of Christ Church
and on civil terms with Bentley, when he acknowledged the gift of
& copy :
I am indebted to you, Sir, for the great pleasure and instruction I have
received from that excellent performance; though at the same time I cannot
but own to you the uneasyness I felt when I found how many things in
Horace there were, which, after thirty years' acquaintance with him, I did
not understand.
Bentley's next book was published under his old pseudonym
Phileleutherus Lipsiensis ; but, this time, the language was English
and very racy English too. A Discourse of Free-thinking, an
anonymous work by Anthony Collins, appeared in 1713 and was
instantly followed by a swarm of refutations. But all these
were eclipsed by Bentley's Remarks. Collins had appealed to
antiquity in support of his opinions ; but he did not know Greek
or Latin well enough to draw the true conclusions from his authors.