Chapter III: Part 3

Upon the extinction of the house of Valois, by the assassination of Henry III. in 1589, Henry of Navarre became the rightful owner of the French throne. But his religion interfered with his claims. The League was strong in force against him: he had few friends, few fortresses, no money, and a small army. But his courage and activity made up for the scantiness of his resources. With five thousand men he withstood the Duc de Mayenne, who was pursuing him with twenty-five thousand, and gained the battle of Arques, in spite of the disparity. This extraordinary result may probably be ascribed in great measure to the contrast of personal character in the two generals. Mayenne was slow and indolent. Of Henry it was said, that he lost less time in bed, than Mayenne lost at table; and that he wore out very little broad-cloth, but a great deal of boot-leather. A person was once extolling the skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry’s presence. “You are right,” said Henry; “he is a great captain, but I have always five hours’ start of him.” Henry got up at four in the morning, and Mayenne about ten.

The battle of Arques was fought in the year of his accession. In the following year, 1590, he gained a splendid victory at Ivri, over the Leaguers, commanded by Mayenne, and a Spanish army superior in numbers. On this occasion he made that celebrated speech to his soldiers before the battle: “If you lose sight of your standards, rally round my white plume: you will always find it in the path of honour and glory.” Nor is his exclamation to his victorious troops less worthy of record: “Spare the French!”

Paris was soon after blockaded; and the hatred of the Leaguers displayed itself with increased violence, in proportion as the King showed himself more worthy of affection. A regiment of Priests and Monks, with cuirasses on their breasts, muskets and crucifixes in their hands, paraded the streets, and heightened the passions of the populace into frenzy. At this period of fanaticism, theologians were the most influential politicians, and the dictators of the public conscience. Accordingly the Sorbonne decided that Henry, as a relapsed and excommunicated heretic, could not be acknowledged, even although he should be absolved from the censures. The Parliament swore on the Gospels, in the presence of the Legate and the Spanish Ambassador, to refuse all proposals of accommodation. The siege was pushed to such extremities, and the famine became so cruel, that bread was made of human bones ground to powder. That Henry did not then master the capital, where two hundred thousand men were maddened with want, was owing to his own lenity. He declared that he had rather lose Paris, than gain possession of it by the death of so many persons. He gave a free passage through his lines to all who were not soldiers, and allowed his own troops to send in refreshments to their friends. By this paternal kindness he lost the fruit of his labours to himself; but he also prolonged the civil war, and the calamities of the kingdom at large.

The approach of the Duke of Parma with a Spanish army obliged Henry to raise the siege of Paris. It was not the policy of the Spanish court to render the Leaguers independent of its assistance, and the Duke, satisfied with having relieved the metropolis, avoided an engagement, and returned to his government in the Low Countries, followed by Henry as far as the frontiers of Picardy. In 1591 Henry received succours from England and Germany, and laid siege to Rouen; but his prey was again snatched from him by the Duke of Parma. Again battle was offered and declined; and the retiring army passed the Seine in the night on a bridge of boats: a retreat the more glorious, as Henry believed it to be impossible. The Duke once said of his adversary, that other generals made war like lions, or wild boars; but that Henry hovered over it like an eagle.

During the siege of Paris, some conferences had been held between the chiefs of the two parties, which ended in a kind of accommodation. The Catholics of the King’s party began to complain of his perseverance in Calvinism; and some influential men who were of the latter persuasion, especially his confidential friend and minister Rosny, represented to him the necessity of a change. Even some of the reformed ministers softened the difficulty, by acknowledging salvation to be possible in the Roman church. In 1593 the ceremony of abjuration was performed at St. Denys, in presence of a multitude of the Parisians. If, as we cannot but suppose, the monarch’s conversion was owing to political motives, the apostacy must be answered for at a higher than any human tribunal: politically viewed, it was perhaps one of the most beneficial steps ever taken towards the pacification and renewal of prosperity of a great kingdom. In the same year he was crowned at Chartres, and in 1594 Paris opened her gates to him. He had but just been received into the capital, where he was conspicuously manifesting his beneficence and zeal for the public good, when he was wounded in the throat by John Châtel, a young fanatic. When the assassin was questioned, he avowed the doctrine of tyrannicide, and quoted the sermons of the Jesuits in his justification. That society therefore was banished by the Parliament, and their librarian was executed on account of some libels against the King, found in his own hand-writing among his papers.

For two years after his ostensible conversion, the King was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1595 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League necessarily was dissolved. Its chiefs exacted high terms for their submission; but the civil wars had so exhausted the kingdom, that tranquillity could not be too dearly purchased; and Henry was faithful to all his promises, even after his authority was so firmly established, that he might have broken his word with safety to all but his own conscience and honour. Although the obligations which he had to discharge were most burdensome, he found means to relieve his people, and make his kingdom prosper. The Duc de Mayenne, in Burgundy, and the Duke de Mercœur, in Britanny, were the last to protract an unavailing resistance; but the former was reduced in 1596, and the latter in 1598, and thenceforth France enjoyed almost uninterrupted peace till Henry’s death. But the Protestants gave him almost as much uneasiness as the Catholic Leaguers. He had granted liberty of conscience to the former; a measure which was admitted to be necessary by the prudent even among the latter. Nevertheless, either from vexation at his having abjured their religion, from the violence of party zeal, or disgust at being no longer the objects of royal preference, the Calvinists preferred their demands in so seditious a tone, as stopped little short of a rebellious one. While on the road to Britanny, he determined to avoid greater evils by timely compromise. The edict of Nantes was then promulgated, authorizing the public exercise of their religion in several towns, granting them the right of holding offices, putting them in possession of certain places for eight years, as pledges for their security, and establishing salaries for their ministers. The clergy and preachers demurred, but to no purpose; the Parliament ceased to resist the arguments of the Prince, when he represented to them as magistrates, that the peace of the state and the prosperity of the church must be inseparable. At the same time he endeavoured to convince the bigots among the priesthood on both sides, that the love of country and the performance of civil and political duties may be completely reconciled with difference of worship.

But it would be unjust to attribute these enlightened views to Henry, without noticing that he had a friend as well as minister in Rosny, best known as the Duc de Sully, who probably suggested many of his wisest measures, and at all events superintended their execution, and did his best to prevent or retrieve his sovereign’s errors by uncompromising honesty of advice and remonstrance. The allurements of pleasure were powerful over the enthusiastic and impassioned temperament of Henry: it was love that most frequently prevailed over the claims of duty. The beautiful Gabrielle d’Estrées became the absolute mistress of his heart; and he entertained hopes of obtaining permission from Rome to divorce Margaret de Valois, from whom he had long lived in a state of separation. Had he succeeded time enough, he contemplated the dangerous project of marrying the favourite; but her death saved him both from the hazard and disgrace. It is not by anecdotes of his amours, that we would be prone to illustrate the life of this remarkable sovereign; but the following may deserve notice as highly characteristic. Shortly after the peace with Spain, concluded by the advantageous treaty of Vervins in 1598, Henry, on his return from hunting, in a plain dress as was usual with him, and with only two or three persons about him, had to cross a ferry. He saw that the ferryman did not know him, and asked what people said about the peace. “Faith,” said the man, “I know nothing about this fine peace; every thing is still taxed, even to this wretched boat, by which I can scarcely earn a livelihood.” “Does not the King intend,” said Henry, “to set all this taxation to rights?” “The King is good kind of man enough,” answered the sturdy boatman; “but he has a mistress, who wants so many fine gowns, and so many trumpery trinkets, and we have to pay for all that. Besides, that is not the worst: if she were constant to him, we would not mind; but people do say that the jade has other gallants.” Henry, much amused with this conversation, sent for the ferryman next day, and extorted from him all that he had said the evening before, in presence of the object of his vituperation. The enraged lady insisted on his being hanged forthwith. “How can you be such a fool?” said the King; “this poor devil is put out of humour only by his poverty: for the time to come, he shall pay no tax for his boat, and then he will sing for the rest of his days, _Vive Henri, vive Gabrielle_.”

The King’s passions were not buried in the grave of La Belle Gabrielle: she was succeeded by another mistress, Henrietta d’Entragues, a woman of an artful, intriguing, and ambitious spirit, who inflamed his desires by refusals, until she extorted a promise of marriage. Henry showed this promise, ready signed, to Sully: the minister, in a noble fit of indignation, tore it to pieces. “I believe you are mad,” cried the King, in a rage. “It may be so,” answered Sully; “but I wish I was the only madman in France.” The faithful counsellor was in momentary expectation of an angry dismissal from all his appointments; but his monarch’s candour and justice, and long tried friendship, prevailed over his besetting weakness; and as an additional token of his favour, he conferred on Sully the office of Grand Master of the Ordnance. The sentence of divorce, so long solicited, was at length granted; and the King married Mary de Medicis, who bore Louis XIII. to him in 1601. The match, however, contributed little to his domestic happiness.

While France was flourishing under a vigilant and paternal administration, while her strength was beginning to keep pace with her internal happiness, new conspiracies were incessantly formed against the King. D’Entragues could not be his wife, but continued to be his mistress. She not only exasperated the Queen’s peevish humour against him, but was ungrateful enough to combine with her father, the Count d’Auvergne, and the Spanish Court, in a plot which was timely discovered. The criminals were arrested and condemned, but received a pardon. The Duke de Bouillon afterwards stirred up the Calvinists to take Sedan, but it was immediately restored. Spite of the many virtues and conciliatory manners of Henry, the fanatics could never pardon his former attachment to the Protestant cause. He was continually surrounded with traitors and assassins: almost every year produced some attempt on his life, and he fell at last by the weapon of a misguided enthusiast. Meanwhile, from misplaced complaisance to the Pope, he recalled the Jesuits, contrary to the advice of Sully and the Parliament.

Shortly before his untimely end, Henry is said by some historians, to have disclosed a project for forming a Christian republic. The proposal is stated to have been, to divide Europe into fifteen fixed powers, none of which should be allowed to make any new acquisition, but should together form an association for maintaining a mutual balance, and preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to be realized, is not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even if meditated by Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the history, or among the state papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the supposed co-operators in the scheme. His more rational design in arming went no further than to set bounds to the ambition and power of the house of Austria, both in Germany and Italy. His warlike preparations have, however, been ascribed to his prevailing weakness, in an infatuated passion for the Princess of Condé. Whatever may have been the motive, his means of success were imposing. He was to march into Germany at the head of forty thousand excellent troops. The army, provisions, and every other necessary were in readiness. Money no longer failed; Sully had laid up forty millions of livres in the treasury, which were destined for this war. His alliances were already assured, his generals had been formed by himself, and all seemed to forebode such a storm, as must probably have overwhelmed an emperor devoted to the search after the philosopher’s stone, and a king of Spain under the dominion of the inquisition. Henry was impatient to join his army; but his mind had become harassed with sinister forebodings, and his chagrin was increased by a temporary alienation from his faithful minister. He was in his way to pay a visit of reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled as it passed along a street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angoulême. This calamitous event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe, were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of implicating other powers, and plunging France into greater evils than those from which their hero had rescued them, deterred not only statesmen, but even the judges on Ravaillac’s trial, from pressing for the names of accomplices. Hardouin de Perefixe, in his History of Henry the Great, says, “If it be asked who inspired the monster with the thought? History answers that she does not know; and that in so mysterious an affair, it is not allowable to vent suspicions and conjectures as assured truths; that even the judges who conducted the examinations opened not their mouths, and spoke only with their shoulders.” There were seven courtiers in the coach when the murder took place; and the Marshal d’Estrées, in his History of the Regency of Mary de Medicis, says that the Duke d’Epernon and the Marquis de Verneuil were accused by a female servant of the latter, of having been privy to the design; but that, having failed to verify her charge before the Parliament, she was condemned to perpetual imprisonment between four walls. The circumstance that Ravaillac was of Angoulême, which was the Duke’s government, gave some plausibility to the suspicion. It was further whispered, that the first blow was not mortal; but that the Duke stooped to give facility to the assassin, and that he aimed a second which reached the King’s heart. But these rumours passed off, without fixing any well-grounded and lasting imputation on that eminent person’s character.

The assertions of Ravaillac, as far as they have any weight, discountenance the belief of an extended political conspiracy. The house of Austria, Mary de Medicis his wife, Henrietta d’Entragues his mistress, as well as the Duke d’Epernon, have been subjected to the hateful conjectures of Mazarin and other historians; but he who actually struck the blow invariably affirmed that he had no accomplice, and that he was carried forward by an uncontrollable instinct. If his mind were at all acted on from without, it was probably by the epidemic fanaticism of the times, rather than by personal influence.

Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medicis.

Of no prince recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. The whole tenor of Henry’s life exhibits a lofty, generous, and forgiving temper, the fearless spirit which loves the excitement of danger, and that suavity of feeling and manners, which, above all qualities, wins the affections of those who come within its sphere: it does not exhibit high moral or religious principle. But his weaknesses were those which the world most readily pardons, especially in a great man. If Henry had emulated the pure morals and fervent piety of his noble ancestor Louis IX., he would have been a far better king, as well as a better man; yet we doubt whether in that case, his memory would then have been cherished with such enthusiastic attachment by his countrymen.

_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

BENTLEY.

_From a Picture by Hudson,
in Trinity College, Cambridge._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

BENTLEY.

Richard Bentley was the son, not of a low mechanic, as the earlier narratives of his life assert, but of a respectable yeoman, possessed of a small estate. That fact has been established by his latest and most accurate, as well as most copious biographer, Dr. Monk, now Bishop of Gloucester. Bentley was born in Yorkshire, January 27, 1661–2, at Oulton, near Wakefield; and educated at Wakefield school, and St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he pursued his studies with unwearied industry. No fellowship to which he was eligible having fallen vacant, he was appointed Master of Spalding school, in 1682; over which he had presided only one year, when his critical learning recommended him to Dr. Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul’s, as a private tutor for his son. In 1689 he attended his pupil to Wadham College in Oxford, where he was incorporated Master of Arts on the 4th of July in that year, having previously taken that degree in his own university. Soon after the promotion of Stillingfleet to the see of Worcester, Bentley was made domestic chaplain to that learned prelate, with whom he continued on the terms of confidential intimacy incident to that connexion, till his Lordship’s death. Dr. William Lloyd, at that time Bishop of Lichfield, was equally alive to the uncommon merit of this rising scholar; and his two patrons concurrently recommended him as a fit person to open the lectures founded by the celebrated Robert Boyle, in defence of natural and revealed religion. Bentley had before this time embarked largely in literary pursuits. Among these we can only stop to mention his criticisms on the historiographer Malelas, contained in a letter appended to Dr. Mill’s edition of that author, which stamped his reputation as a first-rate scholar, especially among the learned men of the Continent.

The delivery of the first course of Boyle’s Lectures, in 1692, gave Bentley an admirable opportunity of establishing his reputation as a divine; and he taxed his abilities to the utmost to ensure success. Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia had not been published more than six years: the sublime discoveries of the author were little known, and less understood, from the general prejudice against any new theory, and the difficulty of comprehending the deep reasonings on which this one rested. Bentley determined to spare no pains in laying open this new philosophy of the solar system in a popular form, and in displaying to the best advantage the cogent arguments in behalf of the existence of a Deity, furnished by that masterly work. That nothing might be wanting to his design, he applied to the author, and received from him the solution of some difficulties. This gave rise to a curious and important correspondence; and there is a manuscript in Newton’s own hand preserved among Bentley’s papers, containing directions respecting the books to be read as a preparation for the perusal of his Principia. Newton’s four letters on this subject are preserved in Trinity College Library, and have been given to the public in the form of a pamphlet. The lecturer did not neglect, in addition to the popular illustration of the Principia, to corroborate his argument by considerations drawn from Locke’s doctrine, that the notion of a Deity is not innate. The sermons were received with loud and universal applause, and the highest opinion of the preacher’s abilities was entertained by the learned world. Bentley soon reaped the fruits of his high reputation, being appointed to a stall at Worcester in October, 1692, and made Keeper of the King’s Library in the following year. In 1694 he was again appointed to preach Boyle’s lecture. His subject was a defence of Christianity against the objections of infidels. These sermons have never been published; nor have Dr. Monk’s researches enabled him to ascertain where they are now deposited.

Bentley was scarcely settled in his office of librarian, when he became involved in a quarrel with the Hon. Charles Boyle, brother to the Earl of Ossory, who was then in the course of his education at Christ Church in Oxford, and had carried thither a more than ordinary share of classical knowledge, and a decided taste for literary pursuits. Mr. Boyle had been selected by his college to edit a new edition of the Epistles of Phalaris; and for that purpose, not by direct application, but through the medium of a blundering and ill-mannered bookseller, he had procured the use of a manuscript copy of the Epistles from the Library at St. James’s. The responsibility attendant on the custody of manuscripts, and perhaps some disgust at the channel through which the loan was negotiated, occasioned the librarian to demand restitution before the collation was finished. A notion was entertained at Christ Church, that an affront was intended both to the Epistles, which Bentley had already pronounced to be a clumsy forgery of later times, and to the advocates of their genuineness. Tory politics had probably some share in exasperating a quarrel with a scholar in the opposite interest. Be this as it may, the preface to Phalaris contained an offensive sentence, which the editor would not, or perhaps could not cancel, as the copies seem to have been delivered before the real state of the case was explained; and this gave rise to the once celebrated controversy between Boyle and Bentley. It produced a number of pieces written with learning, wit, and spirit, on both sides; but Bentley fought single-handed, while the tracts on the side of Boyle were clubbed by the wits of Christ Church; for the reputed author was attending his parliamentary duty in Ireland, while those enlisted under his colours were sustaining his cause in the English republic of letters. Of the numerous attacks on Bentley published at this period, Swift’s Battle of the Books is the only one which continues to be known by the merit of the writing. The controversy was prolonged to the year 1699, when Bentley’s enlarged dissertation upon Phalaris appeared, and obtained so complete a victory over his opponents, as to constitute an epoch not only in the writer’s life, but in the history of literature. It is avowedly controversial; but it contains a matchless treasure of knowledge, in history, chronology, antiquities, philosophy, and criticism. The preface contains his defence against the charges made on his personal character, his vindication of which is satisfactory and triumphant. So strong, however, are the prejudices of party and fashion, that many persons looked upon the controversy as a field for a grand tournament of wit and learning, exhibiting the prowess of the combatants without deciding the cause in dispute; but all those whose judgment on such questions could be of any value held the triumph of Dr. Bentley to be complete, both as to the sterling merits of the case, and his able management of its discussion. It was not long before the impression created in his favour became manifest; for, in the course of the next year, 1700, Bentley was appointed by the crown to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. On that high advancement he resigned his stall at Worcester. He was afterwards collated to the Archdeaconry of Ely, in 1781, which, besides conferring rank in the church, was endowed with two livings; and he was appointed Chaplain both to King William and Queen Anne. There is a tradition in Bentley’s family, that Bishop Stillingfleet said, “We must send Bentley to rule the turbulent Fellows of Trinity College: if any one can do it, he is the person; for he has ruled my family ever since he entered it.”

Having thus attained to affluence and honour, he married a lady to whom he had been long attached. The union was eminently happy. Mrs. Bentley’s mind was highly cultivated; she was amiable and pious; and the benevolence of her disposition availed to soften the animosity of opponents at several critical periods of her husband’s life. His new station was calculated to increase rather than to lessen the Master’s taste for critical studies. As he occasionally gave the results of his inquiries to the public, his labours, abounding in erudition and sagacity, by degrees raised him to the reputation of being the first critic of his age. Among the most remarkable of his numerous pieces, we may mention a collection of the Fragments of Callimachus, with notes and emendations, transmitted to Grævius, in whose edition of that poet’s works they appeared in 1697; and three letters on the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes, written to Kuster, and by him dissected into the form of notes, and published in his edition of that author. Copies of two of the original epistles have fortunately been preserved, and given to the world in the Museum Criticum, after more than a century. Kuster had in a great measure destroyed their interest by omissions, and by curtailing their amusing and digressive playfulness. But as they fell from Bentley’s own pen, few of his writings exhibit more acuteness, or more lively perception of the elegancies of the Greek tongue. About the same time he produced one of the ablest and most perfect of his works, his Emendations on the Fragments of Menander and Philemon. That piece indicates rather intimate acquaintance with his subject, and a feeling of security in his positions, than direct and immediate labour or research. He wrote under the assumed name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, and sent the work to be printed and published on the Continent. Under the same signature he appeared again in 1713, in his Reply to Collins’s Discourse of Freethinking. His exposure of the sophistry and fallacies pervading that book was judicious and highly effective; and for the eminent service done to the Christian religion, and the clergy of England in this work, by refuting the objections and exposing the ignorance of the writers calling themselves Freethinkers, Dr. Bentley received the public thanks of the University of Cambridge assembled in senate, January 4, 1715. But his edition of Horace is the capital work, which through good and evil report will associate his name with the Latin language so long as it endures. He completed it in 1711. The tone of the preface is arrogant and invidious: the presumption, which is the great blot in his character, both as a man and a critic, is more conspicuous in those few pages than in all his other productions. With respect to the work itself, between seven and eight hundred changes in the common readings were introduced into the text, contrary to the established practice of classical editors. The language of the notes is that of absolute dictatorship, not however without an award of fair credit to some other commentators. His Latinity, although easy and flowing, has been censured as by no means pure. Many of his readings have been confirmed and adopted by the latest and best editors; others are considered as either unnecessary, harsh, or prosaic: but, with all its faults, Bentley’s Horace is a monument of inexhaustible learning; the reader, whether convinced or not, adds to his stock of knowledge; and the very errors of such a critic are instructive.

But Bentley’s haughty temper, thus displayed in his criticisms, burst forth much more injuriously in the government of his college; where he carried himself so loftily, and gave such serious and repeated offence, that several of the Fellows exhibited a complaint against him before the Bishop of Ely, as visitor. Their object was his removal from the headship, in furtherance of which they charged him with embezzlement, in having improperly applied large sums of money to his own use; and with having adopted other unworthy and violent proceedings, to the interruption of peace and harmony in the society. In answer to these imputations he states his own case in a letter to the Bishop, which was published in octavo in 1710, under the title of the Present State of Trinity College. Such was the beginning of a long, inveterate, and mischievous quarrel; which, after a continuance of more than twenty years, ended in the Master’s favour. The Biographia Britannica, and the Life of Bentley by the present Bishop of Gloucester, necessarily give a detailed narrative of this dispute, during the progress of which several books were written, with the most determined animosity on both sides. We cannot in this instance regret the confined space, which prevents our dilating on a quarrel, unfortunate in its origin, virulent in its progress, and, in our opinion, especially discreditable to the Master.

Nor was this the only trial of a spirit sufficiently able to bear up against the storms of opposition, and by obstinate perseverance to triumph over its adversaries. During the course of the former dispute, Bentley had been promoted to the Regius Professorship of Divinity. George I. paid a visit to the university in October, 1717. It is usual on such occasions to name several persons for a doctor’s degree in that faculty by royal mandate; and the principal part of the ceremony consists in what is called the creation, that is, the presentation of the nominees to the Chancellor, if present, or to the Vice-Chancellor in his absence, by the Professor. Bentley claimed a fee of four guineas as due from each of the Doctors whom it was his office to create, in addition to a broad-piece, which had been the ancient and customary compliment. There were two gold coins under that denomination; a Jacobus, worth twenty-five shillings, and a Carolus, passing for twenty-three. Both were called in, and no gold pieces of that value have since been coined. The Professor refused to create any doctor who would not acquiesce in the fee. His arguments in favour of the claim were at least plausible; but it ill became so high a functionary to interrupt solemn proceedings, and sow discord in a learned body for a mercenary and paltry consideration. From this low origin arose a long and warm dispute, in the course of which the Master of Trinity and Regius Professor was suspended from all his degrees, October 3, 1718, and degraded on the seventeenth of that month. Of thirty Doctors present, twenty-three voted for the degradation of their brother; and of ten heads of colleges who attended all but one joined in the sentence. The principal ground for these extraordinary measures will not appear very strong to impartial posterity; it was an alleged contempt in speaking of a regular meeting of the Heads of Houses, as “the Vice-Chancellor and four or five of his friends over a bottle.” From this sentence Bentley petitioned the King for relief: and the affair was referred to a committee of the Privy Council, whence it was carried into the Court of King’s Bench, where the four Judges declared their opinions _seriatim_ against the proceedings of the university; and a peremptory mandamus was issued, February 7, 1724, after more than five years of undignified altercation, charging the Chancellor, Masters, and scholars “to restore Richard Bentley to all his degrees, and to every other right and privilege of which they had deprived him.”

Happily both for himself and the learned world, Bentley was gifted with a natural hardiness of temper, which enabled him to buffet against both these storms; so that he continued to pursue his career of literature, as if the elements had been undisturbed. November 5, 1715, he delivered a sermon on popery from the university pulpit, distinguished by learning and argument, and written in an original style, which compelled the attention of the hearers, unlike those common-place and narcotic declamations usually poured forth on that anniversary. It was printed, and has incurred the strange fate of having been purloined by Sterne, and introduced into Tristram Shandy. Part of it is read by Corporal Trim, whose feelings are so overpowered by the description of the Inquisition, that he declares “he would not read another line of it for all the world.” The sermon had the common lot of Bentley’s publications; it gave birth to a controversy. It was attacked in ‘Remarks’ by Cummins, a Calvinistic dissenter. An answer was put forth with the following title: ‘Reflections on the scandalous Aspersions on the Clergy, by the author of the Remarks.’ It is asserted in more than one life of Bentley, that he was himself the author of these Reflections; but the Bishop of Gloucester says that no one can believe this who reads half a page of the pamphlet. In 1716 Bentley had propounded the plan of a projected edition of the Greek Testament, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He brooded over this design for four years, sparing neither labour nor expense to procure the necessary materials. In 1720 he issued proposals for printing it by subscription, together with the Latin version of Jerome; to which proposals a specimen of the execution was annexed. The proposals are printed at length in the Biographia Britannica, and in Dr. Monk’s Life. They were virulently attacked by Dr. Conyers Middleton, at that time a fellow of Trinity, and a leading person in the opposition to the Master, in ‘Remarks’ on Bentley’s proposals. At this time Bentley’s enemies were endeavouring to oust him from his professorship. It was insinuated that his project was a mere pretext, to be abandoned when it had answered his temporary purpose of diverting the public mind from his personal misconduct. To these suspicions he added force by the confession, in excuse for certain marks of haste in a paper drawn up, not as a specimen of his critical powers, but simply as an advertisement, that the proposals were drawn up one evening by candle-light. Middleton followed up his blow by ‘Further Remarks:’ the publication of the Testament was suspended, nor was it ever carried into effect. That it was stopped by Middleton’s pamphlet, is an error countenanced by numerous writers of the time, but denied by Dr. Monk, who says that the discontinuance certainly was not owing to Middleton’s attack. He doubts indeed whether Bentley ever looked into the tract. A speech of his to Bishop Atterbury shortly after its appearance is quite in character: he “scorned to read the rascal’s book; but if his Lordship would send him any part which he thought the strongest; he would undertake to answer it before night.” In 1726, his Terence was published with notes, a dissertation concerning the metres, which he termed Schediasma, and, strangely placed in such a work, his speech at the Cambridge commencement in 1725. The sprightliness and good temper of this short but eloquent oration is in strong contrast with his controversial asperity: it breathes strong affection for the university, from which body a stranger might suppose that he had received the kindest treatment. But even this edition of the polished and amiable comedian was undertaken in a spirit of jealousy and resentment against Dean Hare, a former friend and rival editor, who had in truth deserved his anger, by availing himself of information derived from Bentley in an unauthorized and unhandsome manner. The notes throughout are in caustic and contemptuous language, with unceasing severity against Hare, not indeed in that violent strain of abuse which has so often marked the warfare of critics, but with cool and sneering allusions without the mention of the proper name, under the disparaging designation of _Quidam, est qui_, or _Vir eruditus_. Not content with this revenge, Bentley undertook to anticipate Hare in an edition of Phœdrus, which is characterized by Dr. Monk as a “hasty, crude, and unsupported revision” of the text of that author; in which the rashness and presumption of his criticisms were rendered still more offensive by the imperious conciseness in which his decrees were promulgated. Hare, on the contrary, had long been preparing his edition: his materials were provided and arranged, and he retaliated in an _Epistola Critica_, addressed to Dr. Bland, head-master of Eton. The spirit of the epistle is personal and bitter; and while it undoubtedly had its intended effect in exposing Bentley, it is not creditable either to the temper or to the consistency of its author.

The last of Bentley’s works which we shall notice is his unfortunate edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, given to the public in 1732. It is a sad instance of utter perversion of judgment in a man of extraordinary talent. Fenton first suggested, that the spots in that sun-like performance might be owing to the misapprehension of the amanuensis, and the ignorant blunders of a poverty-stricken printer. On this foundation Bentley, neither himself a poet, nor possessing much taste or feeling for the higher effusions of even his own favourite authors, the Greek and Latin poets, undertook to revise the language, remedy the blemishes, and reject the supposed interpolations of our national epic. He was peculiarly disqualified for such a task, not only by prosaic temperament and the chill of advanced years, but by his entire ignorance of the Italian poets and romance writers, from whose fables and imagery Milton borrowed his illustrations as freely as from the more familiar stories and modes of expression of the classical authorities. As usual with him, his notes were written hastily, and sent immediately to the press. The public disapprobation was unanimous and just: but even in this performance many acute pieces of criticism are scattered up and down, for which the world, disgusted by his audacity and flippancy, allows him no credit.

We must pass quickly over the ten remaining years of Bentley’s life. They were embittered by a fresh contest for character and station before the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. The case between the Bishop of Ely and Dr. Bentley, respecting the visitatorial jurisdiction over Trinity College in general, and over the Master in particular, was argued first in the Court of King’s Bench, and then carried by appeal to the House of Lords, where it was finally affirmed that the Bishop of Ely was visitor. In his seventy-second year Bentley underwent a second trial at Ely House, and was sentenced to be deprived of his mastership; but he eluded the execution of the sentence, and continued to perform the duties of the office which he held. At length a compromise was effected between him and some of his most active prosecutors, many of whom, as well as himself, were septuagenarians. On his proposed edition of Homer, distinguished by the restoration of the Digamma, we need not enlarge. It appears to have been broken off by a paralytic attack, in the course of 1739. In the following year he sustained the severest loss, by the death of his wife in the fortieth year of their union. His own death took place July 14, 1742, when he had completed his eightieth year. He was buried in the chapel; to which he had been a benefactor by giving £200 towards its repairs, soon after he was appointed to the mastership.

Bentley’s literary character is known in all parts of Europe where learning is known. In his private character he was what Johnson liked, a good hater: there was much of arrogance, and no little obstinacy in his composition; but it must be admitted on the other hand, that he had many high and amiable qualities. Though too prone to encounter hostility by oppression, he was warm and sincere in friendship, an affectionate husband, and a good father. In the exercise of hospitality at his lodge he maintained the dignity of the college, and rivalled the munificence even of the papal priesthood. His benefactions to the college were also liberal: but he exacted from it far more than it was willing to pay, or than any former master had received; and his name would stand fairer if his generosity had been less distinguished, provided that, at the same time, his conduct had been less grasping. We shall only add that the severity of his temper as a critic and controversial writer was exchanged in conversation for a strain of vivacity and pleasantry peculiar to himself.

Bentley had three children: a son called by his own name, and two daughters. The son was bred under his own tuition at Trinity College, where he obtained a fellowship. His contemporaries acknowledge his genius, but lament that his pursuits were so desultory and various as to exclude him from that substantial fame which his talents might have ensured. Dr. Bentley’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Mr. Humphry Ridge, a gentleman of good family in Hampshire, but was left a widow in less than a year, and returned to reside with her father. The youngest, Joanna, married Mr. Denison Cumberland, grandson to the learned Bishop of Peterborough. The first issue of this marriage was the late Richard Cumberland, well known in the republic of letters, and especially as a dramatic writer. In his memoir of his own life Mr. Cumberland gives some amusing anecdotes of his grandfather in his old age. His object seems to have been to paint the domestic character of Bentley in a pleasing light, and to counteract the prevalent opinion of his stern and overbearing manners. The old man’s personal kindness towards himself seems to have produced a deep and well merited feeling of gratitude. His communications however are of little value, for he neglected his opportunities of obtaining accurate and more important information from his mother and other relatives of the great critic.

_Engraved by F. Mackenzie._

KEPPLER.

_From a Picture in the Collection of
Godefroy Kraenner, Merchant at Ratisbon._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

KEPLER.

The matter contained in this sketch of Kepler’s history, is exclusively derived from the Life published in the Library of Useful Knowledge. To that work we refer all readers who wish to make themselves acquainted with the contents of Kepler’s writings, and with the singular methods by which he was led to his great discoveries: it will be evident, on inspection, that it would be useless to attempt farther compression of the scientific matter therein contained. Our object therefore will be to select such portions as may best illustrate his singular and enthusiastic mind, and to give a short account of his not uneventful life.

John Kepler was born December 21, 1571, Long. 29° 7´, Lat. 48° 54´, as we are carefully informed by his earliest biographer Hantsch. It is well to add that on the spot thus astronomically designated as our astronomer’s birth-place, stands the city of Weil, in the Duchy of Wirtemberg. Kepler was first sent to school at Elmendingen, where his father, a soldier of honourable family, but indigent circumstances, kept a tavern: his education was completed at the monastic school of Maulbronn, and the college of Tubingen, where he took his Master’s degree in 1591. About the same time he was offered the astronomical lectureship at Gratz, in Styria: and he accepted the post by advice, and almost by compulsion, of his tutors, “better furnished,” he says, “with talent than knowledge, and with many protestations that I was not abandoning my claim to be provided for in some other more brilliant profession.” Though well skilled in mathematics, and devoted to the study of philosophy, he had felt hitherto no especial vocation to astronomy, although he had become strongly impressed with the truth of the Copernican system, and had defended it publicly in the schools of Tubingen. He was much engrossed by inquiries of a very different character: and it is fortunate for his fame that circumstances withdrew him from the mystical pursuits to which through life he was more or less addicted; from such profitless toil as the “examination of the nature of heaven, of souls, of genii, of the elements, of the essence of fire, of the cause of fountains, of the ebb and flow of the tide, the shape of the continents and inland seas, and things of this sort,” to which, he says, he had devoted much time. The sort of spirit in which he was likely to enter on the more occult of these inquiries, and the sort of agency to which he was likely to ascribe the natural phenomena of which he speaks, may be estimated from an opinion which he gravely advanced in mature years and established fame, that the earth is an enormous living animal, with passions and affections analogous to those of the creatures which live on its surface. “The earth is not an animal like a dog, ready at every nod; but more like a bull or an elephant, slow to become angry, and so much the more furious when incensed.” “If any one who has climbed the peaks of the highest mountains throw a stone down their very deep clefts, a sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the mountain lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will immediately arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose of a ticklish animal, it shakes its head, and runs shuddering away. What so like breathing, especially of those fish who draw water into their mouths, and spout it out again through their gills, as that wonderful tide! For although it is so regulated according to the course of the moon, that in the preface to my ‘Commentaries on Mars’ I have mentioned it as probable that the waters are attracted by the moon, as iron is by the loadstone, yet if any one uphold that the earth regulates its breathing according to the motion of the sun and moon, as animals have daily and nightly alternations of sleep and waking, I shall not think his philosophy unworthy of being listened to; especially if any flexible parts should be discovered in the depths of the earth to supply the functions of lungs or gills.”

The first fruit of Kepler’s astronomical researches was entitled ‘Prodromus Dissertationis Cosmographicæ,’ the first part of a work to be called ‘Mysterium Cosmographicum,’ of which, however, the sequel was never written. The most remarkable part of the book is a fanciful attempt to show that the orbits of the planets may be represented by spheres circumscribed and inscribed in the five regular solids. Kepler lived to be convinced of the total baselessness of this supposed discovery, in which, however, at the time, he expressed high exultation. In the same work are contained his first inquiries into the proportion between the distances of the planets from the sun and their periods of revolution. He also attempted to account for the motion of the planets, by supposing a moving influence emitted like light from the sun, which swept round those bodies, as the sails of a windmill would carry any thing attached to them: of a genuine central force he had no knowledge, though he had speculated on the existence of an attractive force in the centre of motion, and rejected it on account of difficulties which he could not explain. The ‘Prodromus’ was published in 1596, and the genius and industry displayed in it gained praise from the best astronomers of the age.

In the following year Kepler withdrew from Gratz into Hungary, apprehending danger from the unadvised promulgation of some, apparently religious, opinions. During this retirement he became acquainted with the celebrated Tycho Brahe, at that time retained by the Emperor Rodolph II. as an astrologer and mathematician, and residing at the castle of Benach, near Prague. Kepler, harassed throughout life by poverty, was received by his more fortunate fellow-labourer with cordial kindness. No trace of jealousy is to be found in their intercourse. Tycho placed the observations which he had made with unremitted industry during many years in the hands of Kepler, and used his interest with the Emperor to obtain permission for his brother astronomer to remain at Benach as assistant observer, retaining his salary and professorship at Gratz. Before all was settled, however, Kepler finally threw up that office, and remained, it should seem, entirely dependent on Tycho’s bounty. The Dane was then employed in constructing a new set of astronomical tables, to be called the Rudolphine, intended to supersede those calculated on the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. He was interrupted in this labour by death, in 1601; and the task of finishing it was intrusted to Kepler, who succeeded him as principal mathematician to the Emperor. A large salary was attached to this office, but to extract any portion of it from a treasury deranged and almost exhausted by a succession of wars, proved next to impossible. He remained for several years, as he himself expresses it, begging his bread from the Emperor at Prague, during which the Rudolphine Tables remained neglected, for want of funds to defray the expenses of continuing them. He published, however, several smaller works; a treatise on Optics, entitled a Supplement to Vitellion, in which he made an unsuccessful attempt to determine the cause and the laws of refraction; a small work on a new star which appeared in Cassiopeia in 1604, and shone for a time with great splendour; another on comets, in which he suggests the possibility of their being planets moving in straight lines. Meanwhile he was continuing his labours on the observations of Tycho, and especially on those relating to the planet Mars: and the result of them appeared in 1609, in his work entitled ‘Astronomia Nova;’ or Commentaries on the motions of Mars. He engaged in these extensive calculations from dissatisfaction with the existing theories, by none of which could the observed and calculated motions of the planets be made to coincide; but without any notion whither the task was about to lead him, or of rejecting the complicated machinery of former astronomers—

the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.

His inquiries are remarkable for the patience with which he continued to devise hypotheses, one after another, and the scrupulous fidelity with which he rejected them in succession, as they proved irreconcileable with the unerring test of observation. Not less remarkable is the singular good fortune by which, while groping in the dark among erroneous principles and erroneous assumptions, he was led, by careful observation of Mars, to discover the true form of its orbit, and the true law of its motion, and the motion of all planets, round the sun. These are enunciated in two of the three celebrated theorems known by the name of Kepler’s Laws, beyond comparison the most important discoveries made in astronomy from the time of Copernicus to that of Newton, of which the first is, that the planets move in ellipses, in one of the foci of which the sun is placed the second, that the time of describing any arc is proportional, in the same orbit, to the area comprised by the arc itself, and lines drawn from the sun to the beginning and end of it.