Richard Bentley

For the 19th-century book publisher, see Richard Bentley (publisher).

Richard Bentley (1662-1742). Portrait by Sir James Thornhill (1675-1734). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Bentley
Born	27 January 1662 Oulton, Leeds, West Yorkshire]]
Died	14 July 1742 (aged 80) Cambridge
Nationality	English
Occupation	classical scholar, critic, theologian
Notable works	Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris (1699)

Richard Bentley (27 January 1662 – 14 July 1742) was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Life

Overview

Bentley, born in Yorkshire of humble parentage, went at the age of 14 to Cambridge, afterwards had charge of a school at Spalding, and then becoming tutor to the son of Dr. Stillingfleet (Dean of St. Paul's, afterwards Bishop of Worcester), accompanied his pupil to Oxford. After taking his degree at both universities, and entering the Church, he laid the foundation of his reputation as perhaps the greatest scholar England has produced by his letter in Mill's edition of the Chronicle of John Malelas, and his Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris (1699), which spread his fame through Europe. After receiving various preferments, including the Boyle lectureship and the Keepership of the Royal Library, he was, in 1700, appointed Master of Trinity, and afterwards was, largely owing to his own pugnacity and rapacity, which were almost equal to his learning, involved in a succession of litigations and controversies. These lasted for 20 years, and led to the temporary loss of his academic preferments and honours. In 1717, however, he was appointed Regius professor of Divinity. During the contentions referred to he continued his literary activity without abatement, and published various editions of the classics, including Horace and Terence. He was much less successful in certain emendations of Milton which he attempted. Having incurred the resentment of Pope he was rewarded by being assigned a niche in The Dunciad! His style is strong and nervous, and sparkles with wit and sarcasm. His classical controversies called forth Swift's Battle of the Books..

Youth and education

Bentley was born at Oulton near Wakefield, Yorkshire, on 27 January 1662. His grandfather had suffered in person and estate in the royalist cause, and the family were consequently in reduced circumstances. Bentley’s mother, the daughter of a stonemason in Oulton, was a woman of excellent understanding and some education, as she was able to give her son his earliest lessons in Latin.

From the grammar school of Wakefield Richard Bentley passed to St John’s College, Cambridge, being admitted a subsizar in 1676. He afterwards obtained a scholarship and earned the degrees of B.A. in 1680 and M.A. in 1683.

Early career

Bentley never succeeded to a fellowship, being appointed by his college (before he was 21) headmaster of Spalding grammar school. In this post he did not remain long, being selected by Dr Edward Stillingfleet, dean of St Paul’s, to be domestic tutor to his son. This appointment introduced Bentley at once to the society of the most eminent men of the day, threw open to him the best private library in England, and brought him into familiar intercourse with Dean Stillingfleet, a man of sound understanding, who had not shrunk from exploring some of the more solid and abstruse parts of ancient learning. The 6 years which he passed in Stillingfleet’s family were employed, with the restless energy characteristic of the man, in exhausting the remains of the Greek and Latin writers, and laying up those stores of knowledge upon which he afterwards drew as circumstances required.

In 1689 Stillingfleet became bishop of Worcester, and Bentley’s pupil went to reside at Oxford in Wadham College, accompanied by his tutor. Bentley’s introductions and his own merits placed him at once on a footing of intimacy with the most distinguished scholars in the university, Dr. John Mill, Humphrey Hody, Edward Bernard. Here he revelled in the MS. treasures of the Bodleian, Corpus and other college libraries.

In 1690 Bentley had taken deacon’s orders in the Church. In 1692 he was nominated the inaugural Boyle lecturer, a nomination which was repeated in 1694. He was offered the appointment a 3rd time in 1695 but declined it, being by that time involved in too many other undertakings. In the 1692 lectures (“A Confutation of Atheism”) he endeavors to present Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them (especially in opposition to Hobbes) into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator. He had some correspondence with Newton, then living in Trinity College, on the subject. The lectures preached in 1694 have not been published and are believed to be lost. Andrew Kippis, the editor of the Biographia Britannica, mentions MS. copies of them as in existence.

Scarcely was Bentley in priest’s orders before he was preferred to a prebendal stall in Worcester cathedral. In 1693 the keepership of the royal library becoming vacant, great efforts were made by his friends to obtain the place for Bentley, but through court interest the post was given to Mr Thynne. An arrangement, however, was made, by which the new librarian resigned in favour of Bentley, on condition that he received an annuity of £130 for life out of the salary, which only amounted to £200. To these preferments were added in 1695 a royal chaplaincy and the living of Hartlebury. In 1696 he was awarded the degree of D.D.

Bentley had official apartments in St James’s Palace, and his primary care was the royal library. He made great efforts to retrieve this collection from the dilapidated condition into which it had been allowed to fall. He employed the mediation of the earl of Marlborough to beg the grant of some additional rooms in the palace for the books. The rooms were granted, but Marlborough characteristically kept them for himself. Bentley enforced the law against the publishers, and thus added to the library nearly 1000 volumes which they had neglected to deliver. He was commissioned by the university of Cambridge to obtain Greek and Latin fonts for their classical books, and accordingly he had cast in Holland those beautiful types which appear in the Cambridge books of that date. He assisted Evelyn in his Numismata.

All Bentley’s literary appearances at this time were of this accidental character. We do not find him settling down to the steady execution of any of the great projects with which he had started. He designed, indeed, in 1694 an edition of Philostratus, but readily abandoned it to G. Olearius, (Öhlschläger), “to the joy,” says F. A. Wolf, “of Olearius and of no one else.” He supplied Graevius with collations of Cicero, and Joshua Barnes with a warning as to the spuriousness of the Epistles of Euripides, which was thrown away upon that blunderer, who printed the epistles and declared that no one could doubt their genuineness but a man perfrictae frontis aut judicii imminuti. Bentley supplied to Graevius’s Callimachus a masterly collection of the fragments with notes, published at Utrecht in 1697.

Master of Trinity College

In the year 1700 Bentley received that main preferment which, says De Quincey, “was at once his reward and his scourge for the rest of his life.” The 6 commissioners of ecclesiastical patronage unanimously recommended Bentley to the crown for the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. This college, the most splendid foundation in the University of Cambridge, and in the scientific and literary reputation of its fellows the most eminent society in either university, had in 1700 greatly fallen from its high estate. It was not that it was more degraded than the other colleges, but its former lustre made the abuse of endowments in its case more conspicuous. The eclipse had taken place during the reaction which followed 1660, and was owing to causes which were not peculiar to Trinity, but which influenced the nation at large. The names of John Pearson and Isaac Barrow, and, greater than either, that of Newton, adorn the college annals of this period. But these were quite exceptional men. They had not inspired the rank and file of fellows of Trinity with any of their own love for learning or science. Indolent and easy-going clerics, without duties, without a pursuit or any consciousness of the obligation of endowments, they haunted the college for the pleasant life and the good things they found there, creating sinecure offices in each other’s favour, jobbing the scholarships and making the audits mutually pleasant. Any excuse served for a banquet at the cost of “the house,” and the celibacy imposed by the statutes was made as tolerable as the decorum of a respectable position permitted.

To such a society Bentley came, 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. Bentley replied to their concealed dislike with open contempt, and proceeded to ride roughshod over their little arrangements. He inaugurated many beneficial reforms in college usages and discipline, executed extensive improvements in the buildings, and generally used his eminent station for the promotion of the interests of learning both in the college and in the university. But this energy was accompanied by a domineering temper, an overweening contempt for the feelings and even for the rights of others, and an unscrupulous use of means when a good end could be obtained.

Bentley, at the summit of classical learning, disdained to associate with men whom he regarded as illiterate priests. He treated them with contumely, while he was diverting their income to public purposes. The continued drain upon their purses — on one occasion the whole dividend of the year was absorbed by the rebuilding of the chapel — was the grievance which at last roused the fellows to make a resolute stand. After 10 years of stubborn but ineffectual resistance within the college, they had recourse in 1710 to the last remedy — appeal to the visitor, the bishop of Ely (Dr Moore). Their petition is an ill-drawn invective, full of general complaints and not alleging any special delinquency. Bentley’s reply (The Present State of Trinity College, &c., 1710) is in his most crushing style. The fellows amended their petition and put in a fresh charge, in which they articled 54 separate breaches of the statutes as having been committed by the master. Bentley, called upon to answer, demurred to the bishop of Ely’s jurisdiction, alleging that the crown was visitor. He backed his application by a dedication of his Horace to the lord treasurer (Harley). The crown lawyers decided the point against him; the case was heard (1714) and a sentence of ejection from the mastership ordered to be drawn up, but before it was executed the bishop of Ely died and the process lapsed.

The feud, however, still went on in various forms. In 1718 Bentley was deprived by the university of his degrees, as a punishment for failing to appear in the vice-chancellor’s court in a civil suit; and it was not till 1724 that the law compelled the university to restore them. 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 (Dr Walker), who was Bentley’s friend and refused to act. In vain were attempts made to compel the execution of the sentence, and though the feud was kept up till 1738 or 1740 (about 30 years in all) Bentley remained undisturbed.

During the period of his mastership, with the exception of the first 2 years, Bentley pursued his studies uninterruptedly, although the results in the shape of published works seem incommensurable. In 1709 he contributed a critical appendix to John Davies’s edition of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. In the following year he published his emendations on the Plutus and Nubes of Aristophanes, and on the fragments of Menander and Philemon. The last came out under the name of “Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” which he made use of 2 years later in his Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking, a reply to Anthony Collins the deist. For this he received the thanks of the university, in recognition of the service thereby rendered to the church and clergy.

In 1716, in a letter to Dr Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, he announced his design of preparing a critical edition of the New Testament. During the next 4 years, assisted by J.J. Wetstein, an eminent biblical critic, who claimed to have been the earliest to suggest the idea to Bentley, he collected materials for the work, and in 1720 published Proposals for a New Edition of the Greek Testament, with specimens of the manner in which he intended to carry it out. 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. A large number of subscribers to the work was obtained, but it was never completed.

Final years

Bentley had married in 1701 Joanna, daughter of Sir John Bernard of Brampton in Huntingdonshire. Their union lasted 40 years. Mrs Bentley died in 1740, leaving a son, Richard, and 2 daughters. A daughter, Johanna, married in 1728 Denison Cumberland (grandson of Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough). Their son was dramatist Richard Cumberland.

Of his personal habits some anecdotes are related by his grandson, Richard Cumberland, in vol. i. of his Memoirs (1807). The hat of formidable dimensions, which he always wore during reading to shade his eyes, and his preference of port to claret (which he said “would be port if it could”) are traits embodied in Pope’s caricature (Dunciad, b. 4), which bears in other respects little resemblance to the original. He did not take up the habit of smoking till he was 70. He held the archdeaconry of Ely with 2 livings, but never obtained higher preference in the church. He was offered the (then poor) bishopric of Bristol but refused it, and being asked what preferment he would consider worth his acceptance, replied, “That which would leave him no reason to wish for a removal.”

Surrounded by his grandchildren, Dr. Bentley experienced the joint pressure of age and infirmity as lightly as is consistent with the lot of humanity. He continued to amuse himself with reading; and though nearly confined to his arm-chair, was able to enjoy the society of his friends and several rising scholars, J. Markland, John Taylor, his nephews Richard and Thomas Bentley, with whom he discussed classical subjects. He was accustomed to say that he should live to be 80, adding that a life of that duration was long enough to read everything worth reading. He fulfilled his own prediction, dying of pleurisy on 14 July 1742.

Though accused by his enemies of being grasping, he left not more than £5000 behind him. A few Greek MSS., brought from Mount Athos, he left to the college library; his books and papers to his nephew, Richard Bentley. Richard, who was a fellow of Trinity, at his death in 1786 left the papers to the college library. The books, containing in many cases valuable manuscript notes, were purchased by the British Museum.

Writing

The sole literary relic of Bentley's undergraduate years is a jerky and pedantic set of English verses on the Gunpowder plot.

In his 20s, he projected and occupied himself with collections for vast literary schemes. Among these are specially mentioned a corpus of the fragments of the Greek poets and an edition of the Greek lexicographers. But his earliest publication was in connection with a writer of much inferior note. The Oxford (Sheldonian) press was about to bring out an edition (the editio princeps) from the unique MS. in the Bodleian of the Greek Chronicle (a universal history down to AD 560) of John of Antioch (date uncertain, between 600 and 1000), called John Malalas or “John the Rhetor”; and the editor, Dr John Mill, principal of St Edmund Hall, had asked Bentley to look through the sheets and make any remarks on the text.

This originated Bentley’s Epistola ad Millium, which occupies less than 100 pages at the end of the 'Oxford Malalas (1691). This short tractate at once placed Bentley at the head of all living English scholars. The ease with which, by a stroke of the pen, he restores passages which had been left in hopeless corruption by the editors of the Chronicle, the certainty of the emendation and the command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill or E. Chilmead. To the small circle of classical students (lacking the great critical dictionaries of modern times) it was at once apparent that there had arisen in England a critic whose attainments were not to be measured by the ordinary academical standard, but whom these few pages had sufficed to place by the side of the great Grecians of a former age. Unfortunately this mastery over critical science was accompanied by a tone of self-assertion and presumptuous confidence which not only checked admiration, but was calculated to rouse enmity. From this publication dates the origin of those mixed feelings of admiration and repugnance which Bentley throughout his career continued to excite among his contemporaries.

The Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, the work on which Bentley’s fame in great part rests, originated in the same casual way. William Wotton, being about to bring out in 1697 a 2nd edition of his book on Ancient and Modern Learning, claimed of Bentley the fulfilment of an old promise to write a paper exposing the spuriousness of the Epistles of Phalaris. This paper was resented as an insult by the Christ Church editor of Phalaris, Charles Boyle (afterwards earl of Orrery), who in getting the MS. in the royal library collated for his edition (1695) had had a little quarrel with Bentley. Assisted by his college friends, particularly Atterbury, Boyle wrote a reply, “a tissue,” says Dr Alexander Dyce (in his edition of Bentley’s Works, 1836-1838), “of superficial learning, ingenious sophistry, dexterous malice and happy raillery.” The reply was hailed by the public as crushing and went immediately into a 2nd edition. It was incumbent on Bentley to rejoin. This he did (1699) in what Porson styles “that immortal dissertation,” to which no answer was or could be given, although the truth of its conclusions was not immediately recognized.

The immortal Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris is not merely the most crushing blow that was ever dealt to insolent and aggressive sciolism. It rises high above the temporary arena in which Boyle's allies had displayed their incapacity, and takes rank as a permanent masterpiece of literature. To this character it has a triple claim. It is the earliest model of a new criticism, which, by a scientific method, was to bring accurate philological knowledge into relation with historical research. It is a storehouse of exact and penetrating erudition, comprehending several monographs on special subjects, which to this day retain their intrinsic value. It is a monument of controversial genius; not of that which quibbles and hectors, but of that in which the keenest wit flashes around the strictest and most lucid argument.

Bentley's Horace, long contemplated and in the end written in very great haste and brought out to propitiate public opinion at a critical period of the Trinity quarrel, appeared in 1711. In the preface he declared his intention of confining his attention to criticism and correction of the text, and ignoring exegesis. Some of his 700 or 800 emendations have been accepted, but the majority of them are now rejected as unnecessary and prosaic, although the learning and ingenuity shown in their support are remarkable.

His Terence (1726) is more important than his Horace, and it is upon this, next to the Phalaris, that his reputation mainly rests. Its chief value consists in the novel treatment of the metrical questions and their bearing on the emendation of the text. To the same year belong the Fables of Phaedrus and the Sententiae of Publius Syrus.

The Paradise Lost (1732), undertaken at the suggestion of Queen Caroline, is generally regarded as the most unsatisfactory of all his writings. It is marred by the same rashness in emendation and lack of poetical feeling as his Horace; but there is less excuse for him in this case, since the English text could not offer the same field for conjecture. 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. It is uncertain whether this was a device on the part of Bentley to excuse his own numerous corrections, or whether he really believed in the existence of this editor.

Perhaps the chief reason for regretting Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost is that it is apt to make us forget how well he has deserved of his native language. Dryden and Temple were the accepted masters of English prose in the early half of Bentley's life; in the latter half the canon was [[Joseph Addison}Addison]]. Bentley's English style has little in common with any phase of theirs: but it has much in common with the simple and racy vigour of the Pilgrim's Progress. The stamp peculiar to it is the reflex of Bentley's character. In his case, if in any, the style is the man. It is keen and direct, for he sought to go straight to the truth. It often shows an ironical delight in homely images and phrases, for as a scholar he knew how easily charlatans take refuge in fine or vague writing. It is trenchant with a thoroughly English force, and humorous in a purely English vein.

Among his minor works may be mentioned: the Astronomica of Manilius (1739), for which he had been collecting materials since 1691; 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, published after his death by Cumberland; emendations of Plautus (in his copies of the editions by Pareus, Camerarius and Gronovius, edited by Schröder, 1880, 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 collection of his Opuscula Philologica was published at Leipzig in 1781. The edition of his works by Dyce (1836-1838) is incomplete.

Legacy

Bentley was the earliest, perhaps the only, Englishman who can be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning, although perhaps not a great classical scholar. Before him there were only John Selden, and, in a more restricted field, Thomas Gataker and Pearson. But Selden, a man of stupendous learning, wanted the freshness of original genius and confident mastery over the whole region of his knowledge. “Bentley inaugurated a new era of the art of criticism. He opened a new path. With him criticism attained its majority. Where scholars had hitherto offered suggestions and conjectures, Bentley, with unlimited control over the whole material of learning, gave decisions” (Mähly). The modern German school of philology does ungrudging homage to his genius. Bentley, says Bunsen, “was the founder of historical philology.” And Jakob Bernays says of his corrections of the Tristia, “corruptions which had hitherto defied every attempt even of the mightiest, were removed by a touch of the fingers of this British Samson.” 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. And even the Dutch school of the same period, though the outcome of a native tradition, was in no small degree stimulated and directed by the example of Bentley, whose letters to the young Hemsterhuis on his edition of Julius Pollux produced so powerful an effect on him, that he became one of Bentley’s most devoted admirers.

Critical reputation

Bentley was a source of inspiration to a following generation of scholars. Himself, he sprang from the earth without forerunners, without antecedents. Self-taught, he created his own science. It was his misfortune that there was no contemporary gild of learning in England by which his power could be measured, and his eccentricities checked. In the Phalaris controversy his academical adversaries had not sufficient knowledge to know how absolute their defeat was. Garth’s couplet—

“So diamonds take a lustre from their foil,

And to a Bentley ’tis we owe a Boyle”—

expressed the belief of the wits or literary world of the time. The attacks upon him by Pope, John Arbuthnot, and others are evidence of their inability to appreciate his work. To them, textual criticism seemed mere pedantry and useless labour. It was not only that he had to live with inferiors, and to waste his energy in a struggle forced upon him by the necessities of his official position, but the wholesome stimulus of competition and the encouragement of a sympathetic circle were wanting. In a university where the instruction of youth or the religious controversy of the day were the only known occupations, Bentley was an isolated phenomenon, and we can hardly wonder that he should have flagged in his literary exertions after his appointment to the mastership of Trinity. All his vast acquisitions and all his original views seem to have been obtained before 1700. After this period he acquired little and made only spasmodic efforts—the Horace, the Terence and the Milton. The prolonged mental concentration and mature meditation, which alone can produce a great work, were wanting to him.

Recognition

In 1695 Bentley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

His "Reply to a Copy of Verses made in Imitation of Ode II Book III of Horace" was included in Dodsley's Collection of Poems in Six Volumes; by several hands.

Publications

Non-fiction

• Matter and Motion Cannot Think; or, A confutation of atheism from the faculties of the soul. London: J.H., for Henry Mortlock, 1694.
• The folly and unreasonableness of atheism. London: J.H., for Henry Mortlock, 1699.
• Eight sermons preach'd at the Honourable Robert Boyle's lecture. Cambridge, UK: M. Fenner, for W. Thurlbourn, 1735.
• A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris. London: London : Printed by J.H., for Henry Mortlock / John Hartley, 1699; London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1777.

Collected editions

• Works (edited by Alexander Dyce). (3 volumes), London: Francis Macpherson, 1836. v. 1–2. Dissertations upon the epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides, and upon the fables of Aesop; also, Epistola ad Joannem Millium – v. 3. Sermons preached at Boyle's lecture; remarks upon a discourse of free-thinking; proposals for an edition of the Greek testament.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Minor works

• Astronomica of Manilius (1739)
• 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, published after his death by his grandson, Richard Cumberland
• emendations of Plautus (in his copies of the editions by Pareus, Camerarius and Gronovius, edited by Schroder, 1880, and Sonnenschein, 1883)
• Bentleii Critica Sacra (1862), edited by AA 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 collection of his Opuscula Philologica published at Leipzig in 1781.
• A Letter to the Reverend Master of Trinity College in Cambridge, Editor of a New Greek and Latin Testament (1721)
• A confutation of atheism from the origin and frame of the world, a sermon, Volume 20 (1692)
• A Defence of natural and revealed religion: being an abridgment of the lecture founded by the Honble Robert Boyle (1737)
• Eight Sermons Preach'd at the Honourable Robert Boyle's Lecture (1724)
• Remarks upon a late Discourse of free-thinking: in a letter to N.N. (1725)
• The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism: Demonstrated from the Advantage and Pleasure of a Religious Life, The faculties of Human Souls, The Structure of Animate Bodies, & The Origin and Frame of the World: In Eight Sermons (1693)

For Bentley's letters see:

• Bentlei et doctorum-virorum ad eum Epistolae (1807)
• The Correspondence of Richard Bentley, edited by C. Wordsworth (1842)
• Bentley, Richard (1842). The Correspondence of Richard Bentley, Ed. Monk. London:Murray (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00054-3)

See also

• List of British poets
• List of literary critics

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Bentley, Richard (scholar)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 750-752.  Web. Oct. 2, 2020.
• Bartholomew, A.T.; Clark, J.W. (1908). Richard Bentley, D.D.: a Bibliography of his Works and all the Literature Called Forth by his Acts or his Writings. Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes. http://www.archive.org/details/richardbentleydd00bartuoft. Retrieved 23 February 2008. 
• Brink, C.O. http://www.lutterworth.com/jamesclarke/jc/titles/engclass.htm, English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman, James Clarke & Co (2009), ISBN 978-0-227-17299-5.
• Haugen, Kristine Louise, Richard Bentley: Poetry and Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2011).
•  Jebb, Richard Claverhouse (1885) "Bentley, Richard (1662-1742)" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 4 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 306-314  Web, Oct. 2, 2020.
• Maehly, Jakob Achilles (1868). Richard Bentley, eine Biographie. Leipzig. 
• Monk, James Henry (1833). The Life of Richard Bentley, D.D.. London: J. G. & F. Rivington.  Retrieved on 23 February 2008.
• Sandys, John Edwin (1908). A History of Classical Scholarship Vol. II: From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century (in Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 401–410. http://www.archive.org/details/historyofclassic02sanduoft. Retrieved 23 February 2008. 
• Trinity College, Cambridge (2008). "The Master of Trinity". http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=172. Retrieved 23 February 2008. 
• Wolf, F. A. (1816). Literarische Analekten. vol. i. 

External links

Poems

• Richard Bentley in the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive ("A Reply to a Copy of Verses made in Imitation of Ode II Book III of Horace")

Books

• Richard Bentley at Amazon.com
• Works by or about Richard Bentley in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

About

• Bentley, Richard (1662-1742) in the Dictionary of National Biography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.