Bishop Cumberland's Laws of Nature, I lately gave to the library of that flourishing and illustrious college.

"His domestic habits, when I knew him, were still those of unabated study; he slept in the room adjoining to his library, and was never with his family till the hour of dinner; at these times he seemed to have detached himself most completely from his studies; never appearing thoughtful and abstracted, but social, gay, and possessing perfect serenity of mind and equability of temper. He never dictated topics of conversation to the company he was with, but took them up as they came in his way, and was a patient listener to other people's discourse, however trivial or uninteresting it might be. When The Spectators were in publication I have heard my mother say, he took great delight in hearing them read to him, and was so particularly amused by the character of Sir Roger de Coverley, that he took his literary decease most seriously at heart. She also told me, that, when in conversation with him on the subject of his works, she found occasion to lament that he had bestowed so great a portion of his time and talents upon criticism, instead of employing them upon original composition, he acknowledged the justice of her regret with extreme sensibility, and remained for a considerable time thoughtful, and seemingly embarrassed by the nature of her remark; at last recollecting himself, he said, 'Child,

I am sensible I have not always turned my talents to the proper use for which, I should presume, they were given to me; yet I have done something for the honour of my God, and the edification of my fellow creatures; but the wit and genius of those old heathens beguiled me, and as I despaired of raising myself up to their standard, upon fair ground, I thought the only chance I had of looking over their heads was to get upon their shoulders.'

"Of his pecuniary affairs he took no account; he had no use for money, and dismissed it entirely from his thoughts; his establishment in the mean time was respectable, and his table affluently and hospitably served. All these matters were conducted and arranged in the best manner possible, by one of the best women living: for such, by the testimony of all who knew her, was Mrs. Bentley, daughter of Sir John Bernard, of Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, a family of great opulence and respectability, allied to the Cromwells and Saint Johns, and by intermarriages connected with other great and noble houses. I have perfect recollection of the person of my grandmother, and a full impression of her manners and habits, which, though in some degree tinctured with hereditary reserve and the primitive cast of character, were entirely free from the hypocritical cant and affected sanctity of the Oliverians. Her whole life was modelled on the purest principles of piety, benevolence, and christian charity; and in her dying

moments, my mother being present and voucher of the fact, she breathed out her soul in a kind of beatific vision, exclaiming in rapture as she expired-It is all bright, it is all glorious!"

To these anecdotes of Bentley I will add one or two more, not generally known, being scattered through temporary publications. They are too

good to be lost, and yet too certain to be lost, unless incorporated with topics of greater weight; they will repay the trouble of reading, and they may perhaps assist some future biographer of Bentley to render his work amusing, if his materials prevent him from making it instructive.

Bentley had a long controversy with the Bishop of Ely, respecting some alleged malpractices of his in his government of Trinity College, Cambridge. Bentley defended himself vigorously, and finally succeeded in exculpating himself; but, during the inquiry that was instituted on both sides, Atterbury hinted to him, in conversation, that he would likely lose his cause, in consequence of the discovery of an old writing, bearing date in James the First's time, and which bore against the validity of his pretensions. Bentley, who had no great affection for Atterbury, and believed him to be secretly attached to the Pretender's cause, replied, with some severity, “I know very well what your lordship means; it bears date, I think, anno tertio Jacobi primi: it would have more weight with your lordship, if it were dated anno primo Jacobi tertii."

Pope, who condescended to borrow whatever he could apply to his wants, and was not very scrupulous from whom he took, whether from friend or foe, from the eminent or from the mean, has engrafted upon the reasonings of Bolingbroke, in the Essay on Man, some very just and philosophical notions which Bentley had promulgated in one of his sermons. It is not certain, indeed, that the thoughts are original even in Bentley; some of them had undoubtedly been expressed by Locke, (Essay on Human Understanding, B. 11. Ch. XXIII. Sect. 12.) and they are all such as might naturally suggest themselves to an acute mind employed upon similar topics of reflection. But the plagiarism is here perhaps more decisive, from the remarkable coincidence which will be found between the mode of illustration employed by the divine and afterwards by the poet, and the sequence of the ideas, which is nearly the same in both. It may serve as another proof likewise, that the irritable bard acknowledged the prudence and propriety of the Roman maxim, fas est ab hoste doceri.

Pope, in the first Epistle of his Essay on Man, asks,

Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.

Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,

T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?

Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,

To smart and agonize at every pore?

Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain;

If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that heav'n had left him still
The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill;
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies ?

The reader will be struck with the similarity between this passage and the following extract from Bentley's Sermon on Acts xvII. 27. Part I. delivered at Boyle's Lecture.

"If the eye were so acute, as to rival the finest microscopes, and to discern the smallest hair upon the leg of a gnat, it would be a curse and not a blessing to us it would make all things appear rugged and deformed: the sight of our own selves would affright us: the smoothest skin would be set over with rugged scales and bristly hairs. And beside, we could not see, at one view, above what is now the space of an inch, and it would take a considerable time to survey the then mountainous bulk of our own bodies. So, likewise, if our sense of hearing were exalted proportionably to the former, what a miserable condition would mankind be in? Whither could we retire from perpetual humming and buzzing? Every breath of wind would incommode and disturb us: we should have no quiet or sleep in the silentest nights and most solitary places; and we must inevitably be stricken deaf or dead with the noise of a clap of thunder. And the like inconvenience would