Bentley, Richard

Bentley, Richard, 1662–1742, English critic and philologist. Generally considered the greatest of English classical scholars, 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, was his most celebrated work. He was pilloried by Jonathan Swift in the Battle of the Books.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Fox (1954); studies by R. J. White (1968) and R. F. Jones (1961).

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Bentley, Richard

(born Jan. 27, 1662, Oulton, Yorkshire, Eng.—died July 14, 1742, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) English clergyman and classical scholar. He was appointed Boyle lecturer at Oxford in 1692, became keeper of the Royal Library in 1694, and was named master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1700. He displayed his skill in textual emendation and his knowledge of ancient metre in Epistola ad Joannem Millium (1691). In Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris (1699), he proved the epistles to be spurious; his dispute with Charles Boyle over their authenticity was satirized by Jonathan Swift in The Battle of the Books (1704). He also published critical texts of classical authors, including Horace, and made linguistic contributions to the study of ancient Greek.