BENTLEY, RICHARD English scholar and critic, was born at Oulton near Wakefield, Yorkshire, and educated at St. John's college, Cambridge. In 1683 he became tutor to the son of Dean Stillingfleet, a position which gave him access to the best private library in England, and brought him into contact with many of the learned men of the day. In 1689 he accom panied his pupil to Oxford where he soon became intimate with many distinguished scholars. Dr. John Mill, who was producing from a Bodleian ms. the editio princeps of John Malalas, re quested Bentley to look through the sheet and make remarks on the text. This gave rise to Bentley's Epistola ad Millium (1691), a short tractate which at once made it clear to students that there had arisen in England a critic fit to be ranked with the great Grecians of a former age. Unfortunately the work had a tone of presumptuous confidence which tended to rouse enmity.
In 1690 Bentley had taken deacon's orders; in 1692 he was appointed first Boyle lecturer, a nomination which was repeated in 1694. In the first series of lectures ("A Confutation of Atheism") he tried to frame the Newtonian physics, in opposition to Hobbes, into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator. In 1693 he became keeper of the Royal library, and in 1695 a fellow of the Royal Society. During these years he had produced casual literary work for other scholars, and in 1697 Wotton, who was preparing a second edition of his Ancient and Modern Learn ing, asked Bentley to write a paper exposing the spuriousness of the Epistles of Phalaris. The Christ Church editor of Phalaris, Charles Boyle, afterwards earl of Orrery, wrote a witty and super ficial reply which was hailed by the public as crushing. Bentley therefore rejoined (1699) with the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris (see PHALARIS) .
In the year 170o Bentley was chosen master of Trinity college, Cambridge, which had fallen from its high estate, and become the haunt of indolent clerics, who cared not at all for learning but much for good living. Bentley, obnoxious as a St. John's man and an intruder, unwelcome as a man of learning whose interests lay outside the walls of the college, proceeded to ride roughshod over their little arrangements. He inaugurated many reforms in usages and discipline, executed extensive improvements in the buildings, and promoted learning both in the college and in the university. But his domineering temper, his contempt for their feelings and rights, drove the fellows in 17 I o, after ineffectual resistance within the college, to appeal to the bishop of Ely. Only the bishop's death in 1714 prevented Bentley's ejection from the mastership. In 1733 he was again brought to trial before the bishop of Ely (Dr. Greene) by the fellows of Trinity and was sentenced to deprivation, but the college statutes required the sentence to be exercised by the vice-master, who refused to act. Though the feud was kept up till 1738 or 174o (about 3o years in all) Bentley remained undisturbed.
During these years he published a critical appendix to John Davies's edition of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (1709) ; emen dations on the Plutus and Nubes of Aristophanes, and on the fragments of Menander and Philemon (I 710) ; Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking (1712) . His Horace, written in very great haste at a critical period of the Trinity quarrel, appeared in 171I. Some of its 700 or Boo emendations have been accepted, but the majority of them are now rejected, despite the learning and ingenuity shown in their support. In 17 20 appeared his Proposals for a New Edition of the Greek Testament in which he proposed, by comparing the text of the Vulgate with that of the oldest Greek mss., to restore the Greek text as received by the Church at the time of the Council of Nice, but the work was never completed. His Terence (1726) deals chiefly with the bearing of metrical questions upon emendation, and it is upon this, next to the Phalaris, that his reputation mainly rests. To the same year belong the Fables of Phaedrus and the Sententiae of Publius Syrus. The Paradise Lost (1732), is generally regarded as his most unsatisfactory work. It is marred by the same rashness in emendation and lack of poetical feeling as his Horace. He put forward the idea that Milton employed both an amanuensis and an editor, who were to be held responsible for the clerical errors, alterations and interpolations which Bentley professed to detect. Among his minor works may be mentioned the Astronornica of Manilius (17 39) ; a letter on the Sigean inscription on a marble slab found in the Troad, now in the British Museum ; notes on the Theriaca of Nicander and on Lucan; emendations of Plautus (in his copies of the editions by Pareus, Camerarius and Gronov ius, edited by Schroder, 188o, and Sonnenschein, 1883). Bentleii Critica Sacra (1862), edited by A. A. Ellis, contains the epistle to the Galatians (and excerpts) , printed from an interleaved folio copy of the Greek and Latin Vulgate in Trinity college. A collec tion of his Opuscula Philologica was published at Leipzig in 1781. The edition of his works by Dyce (1836-38) is incomplete.
He had married in 170I Joanna, daughter of Sir John Bernard of Brampton in Huntingdonshire. She died in 1740, leaving a son, Richard, and two daughters; and Bentley himself died of pleurisy two years later. A few Greek mss., brought from Mount Athos, he left to the college library.
Bentley was the first, perhaps the only, Englishman who can be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning. Self-taught, he created his own science; and it was his misfortune that there was no contemporary gild of learning in England by which his power could be measured. The English school of Hellenists, by which the 18th century was distinguished, and which contains the names of R. Dawes, J. Markland, J. Taylor, J. Toup, T. Tyrwhitt, Richard Porson, P. P. Dobree, Thomas Kidd and J. H. Monk, was the creation of Bentley. Even the Dutch school of the same period, though the outcome of a native tradition, was stimulated and directed by the example of Bentley, whose letters to the young Hemsterhuis on his edition of Julius Pollux made him one of Bentley's most devoted admirers; and the German school of the 19th century did ungrudging homage to his genius as "the founder of historical philology." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-F. A. Wolf Literarische Analekten, i. (1816) ; Monk Bibliography.-F. A. Wolf Literarische Analekten, i. (1816) ; Monk Life of Bentley (1830) ; J. Maly Richard Bentley, eine Biographie (1868) ; R. C. Jebb, Bentley ("English Men of Letters" series, 1882) where a list of authorities bearing on Bentley's life and work is given. For his letters see Bentlei et doctorum virorum ad eum Epistolae (5807) ; The Correspondence of Richard Bentley, edited by C. Words worth (1842). See also J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, ii. 401-410 (1908) ; A. T. Bartholomew and J. W. Clark, Bibliography of Bentley (1908) ; J. W. Mackail, Bentley's Milton (Warton Lecture on Eng. Poetry, XV., 1924) .