he would say, 'could not discover that I was pondering it in my mind, and fixing it more firmly in my memory, than if I had been bawling it out amongst the rest of my school-fellows.'

"Once, and only once, I recollect his giving me a gentle rebuke for making a most outrageous noise in the room over his library, and disturbing him in his studies; I had no apprehension of anger from him, and confidently answered, that I could not help it, as I had been at battledore and shuttlecock with Master Gooch, the Bishop of Ely's son. ' And I have been at this sport with his father,' he replied; but thine has been the more amusing game; so there's no harm done.'

"These are puerile anecdotes, but my history itself is only in its nonage; and even these will serve in some degree to establish what I affirmed, and present his character in those mild and unimposing lights, which may prevail with those who know him only as a critic and controversialist

As slashing Bentley with his desperate hook,

to reform and soften their opinions of him.

"He recommended it as a very essential duty in parents to be particularly attentive to the first dawnings of reason in their children; and his own practice was the best illustration of his doctrine; for he was the most patient hearer and most favorable interpreter of first attempts at argument and meaning that I ever knew. When I was rallied

by my mother, for roundly asserting that I never slept, I remember full well his calling on me to account for it; and when I explained it by saying I never knew myself to be asleep, and therefore supposed I never slept at all, he gave me credit for my defence, and said to my mother, Leave your boy in possession of his opinion; he has as clear a conception of sleep, and at least as comfortable an one, as the philosophers who puzzle their brains about it, and do not rest so well.'

"Though Bishop Lowth, in the flippancy of controversy, called the author of The Philoleutherus Lipsiensis and detector of Phalaris aut Caprimulgus aut fossor, his genius has produced those living witnesses, that must for ever put that charge to shame and silence.-Against such idle ill-considered words, now dead as the language they were conveyed in, the appeal is near at hand; it lies no further off than to his works, and they are upon every reading-man's shelves; but those, who would have looked into his heart, should have stepped into his house, and seen him in his private and domestic hours; therefore it is that I adduce these little anecdotes and trifling incidents, which describe the man, but leave the author to defend himself.

"His ordinary style of conversation was naturally lofty, and his frequent use of thou and thee, with his familiars, carried with it a kind of dictatorial tone, that savoured more of the closet than the court; this is readily admitted, and this on

C

first approaches might mislead a stranger; but the native candour and inherent tenderness of his heart could not long be veiled from observation, for his feelings and affections were at once too impulsive to be long repressed, and he too careless of concealment to attempt at qualifying them. Such was his sensibility towards human sufferings, that it became a duty with his family to divert the conversation from all topics of that sort; and if he touched upon them himself he was betrayed into agitations, which if the reader ascribes to paralytic weakness, he will very greatly mistake a man, who to the last hour of his life possessed his faculties firm and in their fullest vigour; I therefore bar all such misinterpretations as may attempt to set the mark of infirmity upon those emotions, which had no other source and origin but in the natural and pure benevolence of his heart.

"He was communicative to all without distinction, that sought information, or resorted to him for assistance; fond of his college almost to enthusiasm, and ever zealous for the honour of the purple gown of Trinity. When he held examinations for fellowships, and the modest candidate exhibited marks of agitation and alarm, he never failed to interpret candidly of such symptoms; and on those occasions he was never known to press the hesitating and embarrassed examinant, but oftentimes on the contrary would take all the pains of expounding on himself, and credit the exonerated

candidate for answers and interpretations of his own suggesting. If this was not rigid justice, it was, at least in my conception of it, something better and more amiable; and how liable he was to deviate from the strict line of justice, by his partiality to the side of mercy, appears from the anecdote of the thief, who robbed him of his plate, and was seized and brought before him with the very articles upon him; the natural process in this man's case pointed out the road to prison; my grandfather's process was more summary, but not quite so legal. While Commissary Greaves, who was then present, and of counsel for the college er officio, was expatiating on the crime, and prescribing the measures obviously to be taken with the offender, Doctor Bentley interposed, saying, 'Why tell the man he is a thief? he knows that well enough, without thy information, Greaves.Harkye, fellow, thou see'st the trade which thou hast taken up is an unprofitable trade, therefore get thee gone, lay aside an occupation by which thou can'st gain nothing but a halter, and follow that by which thou may'st earn an honest livelihood.' Having said this, he ordered him to be set at liberty against the remonstrances of the byestanders, and insisting upon it that the fellow was duly penitent for his offence, bade him go his way and never steal again.

"I leave it with those, who consider mercy as one of man's best attributes, to suggest a plea for

the informality of this proceeding, and to such I will communicate one other anecdote, which I do not deliver upon my own knowledge, though from unexceptionable authority, and this is, that when Collins had fallen into decay of circumstances, Dr. Bentley, suspecting he had written him out of credit by his Philoleutherus Lipsiensis, secretly contrived to administer to the necessities of his baffled opponent, in a manner that did no less credit to his delicacy than to his liberality.

"A morose and over-bearing man will find himself a solitary being in creation; Doctor Bentley, on the contrary, had many intimates; judicious in forming his friendships, he was faithful in adhering to them. With Sir Isaac Newton, Doctor Mead, Doctor Wallis of Stamford, Baron Spanheim, the lamented Roger Cotes, and several other distinguished and illustrious contemporaries, he lived on terms of uninterrupted harmony, and I have good authority for saying, that it is to his interest and importunity with Sir Isaac Newton, that the inestimable publication of the Principia was ever resolved upon by that truly great and luminous philosopher. Newton's portrait by Sir James Thornhill, and those of Baron Spanheim, and my grandfather, by the same hand, now hanging in the Master's lodge of Trinity, were the bequest of Doctor Bentley. I was possessed of letters, in Sir Isaac's own hand, to my grandfather, which, together with the corrected volume of