of Bentley was still further developed; the haughty consciousness of his intellectual powers; the tone of immeasurable superiority; the scorn which he heaps upon his antagonists, sometimes verging upon insolence; the animated but often coarse and even pedantic vein of wit. We are inclined to agree with Dr. Monk in rejecting the opinion of Johnson, that he had his eye upon the writings of Dr. South.' Bentley would not have condescended to imitate, and every sentence is instinct with the nature of the man. The following passage may be considered not less characteristic of Bentley himself, than of Bentley's style; though we must remember, that no single extract can give a fair notion of a work, the great merit of which consists in its highly sustained, comprehensive, and closely consecutive argument. But its force, its vehemence, its seriousness, and even occasional solemnity; its rudeness, its contemptuousness: its almost vulgar personality, may convey to those who are neither acquainted with the writer or his works, not altogether an inadequate impression of both. It is the close of his refutation of the Atomic Theory. 'It would behove the atheists to give over such trifling as this, and resume the old solid way of refuting religion. They should deny the being of the soul, because they cannot see it. This would be an invincible argument against us; for we can neither exhibit it to their touch, nor expose it to their view, nor show them the colour and complexion of a soul. They should dispute, as a bold brother of theirs did, that he was sure there was no God, because (says he) if there was one, he would have struck me to hell with thunder and lightning, that have so reviled and blasphemed him. This would be an objection indeed. Alas! all that we could answer is in the next words to the text, "That God hath appointed a day in which he will judge all the world in righteousness," and the goodness, and forbearance, and long suffering of God, which are some of his attributes, and essential perfections of his Being, ought not to be abused and perverted into arguments against his Being. But if this will not do, we must yield ourselves overcome; for we neither can nor desire to "command fire to come down from heaven and consume them," and give them such experimental conviction of the existence of God. So that they ought to take these methods if they would successfully attack religion. But if they will still be meddling with atoms, be hammering and squeezing understanding out of them, I would advise them to make use of their own understanding for the instance. Nothing, in my opinion, could run us down more effectually than that, for we readily allow, that if any understanding can possibly be produced by such clashing of senseless atoms, it is that of an atheist, which has the finest pretensions and the best title to it. We know it is "The fool that hath said in his heart, there is no God ;" and it is no less a truth than a paradox, that there are no greater fools than atheistical wits, and none so credulous as infidels. No article of religion, though as demonstrable as the nature of the thing can admit, hath credibility credibility enough for them; and yet these same cautious and quicksighted gentlemen can write and swallow down this sottish opinion about percipient atoms, which exceeds in incredibility all the fictions of Æsop's Fables. For is it not every whit as likely, or more," that cocks and bulls might discourse," and hinds and panthers hold conferences about religion, as that atoms can do so?-that atoms can invent arts and sciences, can institute society and government, can make leagues. and confederacies, can devise methods of peace and stratagems of war? And, moreover, the modesty of mythology deserves to be commended; the scenes there are laid at a distance: it is, Once upon a time, in the days of yore, in the land of Utopia, there was a dialogue between an oak and a cedar-whereas the atheist is so impudently silly, as to bring the farce of his atoms upon the theatre of the present age; to make dull, senseless matter transact all public and private affairs, by sea and by land, in houses of parliament, and closets of princes. Can any credulity be comparable to this? If a man should affirm, that an ape, casually meeting with pen, ink, and paper, and falling to scribble, did happen to write exactly the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, would an atheist believe such a story? And yet he can easily digest as incredible as that-That the innumerable members of a human body, which, in the style of Scripture, are all written in the book of God, and may admit of almost infinite variations and transpositions above the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, were at first fortuitously scribbled, and by mere accident compacted into this beautiful, and noble, and most-wonderfully useful frame, which we now see it carry. But this will be the argument of my next discourse, which is the second proposition drawn from the text; that the admirable structure of human bodies, whereby they are fitted to live and move and be vitally informed by the soul, is unquestionably the workmanship of a most wise, and powerful, and beneficent Maker. To which Almighty Creator, together with the Son and Holy Ghost, be all honour, and glory, and majesty, and power, both now and from henceforth evermore. Amen.'-Sermon 2.* The There is another part of these sermons remarkable as apparently containing the germ of two well-known passages in the works of Bentley's most bitter satirists. If the eye were so acute as to rival the finest microscopes, and to discern the smallest hair upon the leg of a gnat, it would be a curse and not a blessing to us; it would make all things appear rugged and deformed; the most finely polished crystal would be uneven and rough; the sight of our own selves would affright us; the smoothest skin would be beset all over with rugged scales and bristly hairs. So, likewise, if our sense of hearing were exalted proportionably to the former, what a miserable condition would mankind be in! What whisper would be low enough but many would overhear it? What affairs that most require it could be transacted with secrecy? and whither could we retire from perpetual humming and buzzing? Every breath of wind would incommode and disturb us; we should have no quiet or sleep in the silentest night and most solitary places; and we must inevitably be struck deaf or dead with the noise of a clap of thunder. And the like inconvenience would follow if the sense of feeling was advanced to such a degree as the atheist requires. . . . . . . We could not bear the assault of an insect, or a feather, or a puff of air without pain. There are examples now of wounded persons that have roared for anguish and tor ment The public might here distinctly read the character of a man, which the acute discrimination of Stillingfleet, if traditionary anecdote be true, had already divined. A nobleman dining at his patron's, and happening to sit next to Bentley, was so much struck with his information and powers of argument, that he remarked to the Bishop after dinner, "My Lord, that chaplain of yours is certainly a very extraordinary man.""Yes," said Stillingfleet," had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe." Still so far Bentley stood in a most eminent and advantageous position with the public; he had assumed at one step the foremost rank as a scholar and divine; and though some faint murmurs might be abroad of his overbearing manners and impetuous temper, nothing that he had published fixed upon him the charge of insolence or discourtesy. The atheists, if any one would have ventured to avow the name, were, by common consent, fere nature; not only did they deserve no quarter, but not even common civility. The arrogance and ignorance,' observes Dr. Monk, 'of which he convicts the atheistical pretenders, were legitimate objects of scorn and contempt;' a sentence to which we might subscribe, if scorn and contempt were as likely means of reclaiming them as calm and dignified expostulation and argument, and quite as consistent with the spirit of the New Testament. But the time was approaching when a controversy, with which, in its origin, he had no concern, and in which, it should seem, he was almost reluctantly involved, threw him into a state of implacable hostility with a most powerful party; held him up as the object of incessant scorn to a knot of the most successful and merciless satirists, at perhaps the most brilliant period of English wit; was perhaps the original cause of his becoming, at a later period, the ment at the discharge of ordnance, though at a very great distance; what insupportable torture then should we be under upon a like concussion in the air, when all the whole body would have the tenderness of a wound.' — Sermon 3. 'Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. T" inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres ; How would he wish that heaven had left him still The whisp'ring zephyr and the purling rill.' How exquisitely has the poet wrought out the coarse and strong material of the divine into his own fine and diaphanous texture! And in one sentence of the above quotation, do we not find the thought, and almost the expressions, of the humorous, but not over cleanly, passage in Gulliver's Travels, which describes the effect of the persons of the Brobdignagian maids of honour on the acute eyesight of Grildrig? YOL. XLVI. NO. XCI. K powerful powerful butt of the poetry of Pope and the prose of Swift; even for a time obscured and lowered, in the general estimation, his pre-eminence as a classical scholar while, at the same time, a feud, at first so fatal, turned out eventually most favourable to his reputation; showed him capable of coping, single handed, with this formidable league; and, finally, at least in the judgment of posterity, vindicated his immeasurable superiority in his own pecu liar province to those who, with the activity and brilliant promise of Dares, were at last driven from the ground by the unconquerable strength and superior weight of this Entellus of controversy. It is probable that, although not yet committed in public, the self-sufficiency and haughty manners of Bentley may have created a strong prejudice against him; we can scarcely doubt that he left behind him at Oxford the character of a rude and domineering, if not pedantic, scholar; which, with his appearing under the patronage of a Whig bishop, would make him anything but acceptable with the courtly and Tory society of Christ Church. Indeed, among his intimate friends at Oxford, none of the celebrated names of that distinguished body appear. These political and personal motives of dislike, as well as the jealousy of his rapid preferment, as prebendary of Worcester and King's librarian, laid the train for the violent explosion of rancour and animosity with which he was assailed. Nothing, we would humbly submit, could be more barren and unprofitable than the original controversy, commenced in France by Fontenelle and Perrault, and taken up in this country by Sir W. Temple, about the comparative excellence of ancient and modern learning.' The influence of the age on the genius of the individual poet or philosopher; the causes which have led to the developement of the highest poetry, or oratory, or philosophy at particular periods; the direction given to powerful minds by the circumstances of their country, their state of society, their religion; these are the legitimate investigations of the noblest criticism, the most valuable speculations of true philosophy. But what useful or instructive purpose can be secured by the mere balance of the merits of one great period against another; by the array of great names against great names, artists against artists, poets against poets, philosophers against philosophers, and then comparing the sum total on either side-while, after all, so many important circumstances must of necessity be left out of the account; while the merit of each must at last be relative to his age?-Dante or Milton could no more have been Homer, than Pythagoras Newton; such discussions therefore can lead to no valuable result. Something however may be urged in justification of Sir W. Temple's Essay. We may well suppose that his elegant and accom plished plished mind might be indignant at the quiet complacency with which the French writers, who commenced the attack upon the ancients, set up some of their own flimsiest and now forgotten, as well as their best writers, against the great masters of ancient learning and eloquence. Balsac was balanced against Cicero, Voiture against Pliny, while Corneille was considered more than a match for the triumvirate of Athenian dramatists. In fact, the controversy is chiefly remarkable as a record of the prevailing taste: it took place while what is called the classical school of modern literature was in the ascendant; and was, after all, a comparison chiefly between the ancient writers and their imitators. Of the native strength of modern invention and thought, the writers on both sides seem equally and almost entirely ignorant. Swift, as Dr. Monk well observes, did more justice to his countrymen, and to the moderns, than Temple. He admits Milton and even Tasso into his array of poets; but probably his opinion of Tasso would have been that of Boileau echoed by Addison; but where are Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Spenser, Shakspeare, Calderon? Bacon is omitted by Sir W. Temple, though placed in a post of honour by Swift. Newton is overlooked by both, or sneered at as one of the men of Gresham;' and nothing can surpass the condescending superciliousness of Temple's allusion to the two great discoveries of his day. There is nothing new in astronomy, except the Copernican system, nor in physic, unless Harvey's circulation of the blood. But whether either of them be modern discoveries, or derived from old fountains, is disputed nay it is so too, whether they are true or no; for though reason may seem to favour them more than the contrary opinions, yet sense can very hardly allow them; and to satisfy mankind both these must concur. But if they are true, yet these two great discoveries have made no change in the conclusions of astronomy, nor in the practice of physic, and so have been of little use to the world, though perhaps of much honour to the authors.'* Swift's Battle of the Books,' in which his peculiar comic vein had the fullest play, was an appropriate close to a controversy better suited for an humorous essay than a grave discussion; and in this clever satire, Swift, as far as the most caustic humour, the most ludicrous caricature of the character, the habits, and pursuits of Bentley, occasionally the finest and occasionally the coarsest sarcasm can degrade and humiliate, amply avenged the cause of his patron, Temple. But fortunately for his own peace, Bentley was cased in the rhinoceros skin of his own pride; and indeed, as far as Temple was concerned, had no great reason to reproach himself with want of respect or courtesy to that eminent and virtuous man. His great crime (for we must revert to |