to be evaded or abused; strongly recommending, that to all such enquiries answer should be given according to the strictest truth, and information dealt to us in the clear. vest terms, as a sacred duty never to be departed from. I have broken in upon him many a time in his hours of study, when he would put his book aside, ring his hand-bell for his servant, and be led to his shelves to take down a picture book for my amusement. I do not say that his good nature always gained its object, as the pictures which his books generally supplied me with were anatomical drawings of dissected bodies, very little cal. culated to communicate delight; but he had nothing better to produce; and surely such an effort on his part, however unsuccessful, was no feature of a cynic: a cynic should be made of sterner stuff. I have had from him, at times, whilst standing at his elbow, a complete and entertaining narrative of his school-boy days, with the characters of his different masters very humourously displayed, and the punishments described, which they at times would wrongfully inflict upon him for seeming to be idle and regardless of his task," When the dunces," 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 bauling it out amongst the rest of my schoolfellows."

"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

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 dawn. ings 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 favourable 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 3Z2 flippancy

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 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 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 was 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, there

al.

"He was communicative to all without distinction, that sought in. formation, or resorted to him for assistance; fond of his coll ge most to enthusiasm, and ever zealous for the honour of the purple gown of Trinity. When he held examina tions for fellowships, and the modest candidate exhibited marks of agita tion 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 often times on the contrary, would take all the pains of expounding on him self, and credit the exonerated cadidate for answers and interpreta tions 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 m tural 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 exp tiating on the crime, and prescrib ing 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 in

formation

formation Greaves.-Harkye, fellow, thou seest the trade which thou has taken up is an unprofitable trade, therefore get thee gone, lay aside an occupation by which thou canst gain nothing but a halter, and follow that by which thou mayest earn an honest livelihood." Having said this, he ordered him to be set at liberty, against the remou. strances of the bye-standers, 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 con sider mercy as one of man's best at tributes, 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 Col. lins had fallen into decay of circumstances, doctor 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 Wallace, 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 bis

interest and importunity with sit 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 Span. heim and my grandfather, by the same haud, 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, to. gether with the corrected volume of bishop Cumberland's Laws of Nature, I lately gave to the library of that flourishing and illustrious college.

"The irreparable loss of Roger Cotes in early life, of whom Newton had pronounced-Now the world' will know something, doctor Bentley never mentioned but with the deep. est regret; he had formed the highest expectations of new lights and discoveries in philosophy, from the penetrating force of his extraordinary genius, and on the tablet devoted to his memory in the cha. pel of Trinity College, doctor Bent. ley has recorded his sorrows and those of the whole learned world, in the following beautiful and pathetic epitaph:

H. S. E.

"Rogerus Roberti filius Cotes, Hujus Collegii S. Trinitatis Socius, Et Astronomiæ et experimentalis Philosophiæ Professor Plumianus : Qui immatura morte præreptus,

Pauca quidem ingenii sui
Pignora reliquit,

Sed egregia, sed admiranda,
Ex intimis Matheseôs penetralibus,
Felici Solertiâ tum primum eruta;
Post magnam illum Newtonum
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