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Bentley, Richard
Bentley, Richard (1662–1742). Scholar and polemicist. After attending Wakefield Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge, Bentley came under the patronage of Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester, and was appointed royal librarian in 1694. His reputation as an outstanding classicist was established by the controversy over the Letters of Phalaris, which Bentley showed to be forgeries. In 1700, he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge, where he remained until his death. His relations with the fellows were acrimonious and there were repeated attempts to deprive him of his mastership, all of which Bentley managed to defeat. Of his later publications, his edition of Horace (1711) was most admired. Despite their political differences, Johnson wrote handsomely of him that ‘the many attacks on him were owing to envy, and to a desire of being known, by being in competition with such a man’.
J. A. Cannon |
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JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." The Oxford Companion to British History. 2002. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jun. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." The Oxford Companion to British History. 2002. Encyclopedia.com. (June 1, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O110-BentleyRichard.html JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." The Oxford Companion to British History. 2002. Retrieved June 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O110-BentleyRichard.html |
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Bentley, Richard
Bentley, Richard (1662–1742), made his reputation as a scholar with his Letter to Mill (1691), a critical letter in Latin on the Greek dramatists. He delivered in 1692 the first Boyle lectures, printed in 1693 as The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism. He became keeper of the king's libraries in 1694, and during 1697–9 was engaged in the famous Phalaris controversy, during which he proved the Epistles of Phalaris to be spurious (see Battle of the Books) and queried the antiquity of Aesop's fables. In 1699 he was appointed master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Among his greatest critical works were his bold revisions of the texts of Horace and Manilius; he was the last great classical scholar before the divergence of Greek and Latin studies. He was caricatured in The Dunciad (IV. 201 ff.) and elsewhere.
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Cite this article
MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jun. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (June 1, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BentleyRichard.html MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved June 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BentleyRichard.html |
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Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley 1662–1742, English critic and philologist. Generally considered the greatest of English classical scholars, he was also an Anglican clergyman who became (1717) Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. An editor and critic of Greek and Latin texts, he was largely responsible for raising standards of textual criticism in the work of his many followers. His Dissertation upon The Epistles of Phalaris (1699), an exposure of a 14th cent. forgery of a purported 6th-cent. BC text, was his most celebrated work. His editions of the poems of Horace (1712) and of Marcus Manilius 's Astronomica (1739) were other outstanding works. Bentley was pilloried by Swift in the Battle of the Books and Pope in the Dunciad .
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Cite this article
"Richard Bentley." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jun. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Richard Bentley." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (June 1, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-BentleyR.html "Richard Bentley." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved June 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-BentleyR.html |
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Bentley, Richard
Bentley, Richard (1662–1742). Scholar and polemicist. After attending Wakefield Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge, Bentley was appointed royal librarian in 1694. His reputation as an outstanding classicist was established by the controversy over the Letters of Phalaris, which Bentley showed to be forgeries. In 1700, he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge. His relations with the fellows were acrimonious and there were repeated attempts to deprive him of his mastership, all of which Bentley defeated.
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Cite this article
JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." A Dictionary of British History. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jun. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." A Dictionary of British History. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (June 1, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O43-BentleyRichard.html JOHN CANNON. "Bentley, Richard." A Dictionary of British History. 2004. Retrieved June 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O43-BentleyRichard.html |
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Bentley, Richard
Bentley, Richard (1794–1871), publisher, who included T. Moore, both Disraelis, and Dickens among his authors. In 1830 he joined with Henry Colburn to found the firm of Colburn and Bentley, which in 1837 established Bentley's Miscellany. They published a popular series of ‘Standard Novels’.
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Cite this article
MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jun. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (June 1, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BentleyRichard2.html MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Bentley, Richard." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved June 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BentleyRichard2.html |
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