Quotes:Bentley, Richard

Zirkoff, Boris

Bentley, Richard (1662-1742). English scholar and critic, born at Oulton, Yorkshire, and educated at St. John’s College, Oxford. Early in life became intimate with many distinguished scholars, and took orders in 1690; became keeper of the Royal library, 1693. In 1700 he was chosen master of Trinity College, where he instituted wide-spread reform against much opposition; the feud was kept up some thirty years in all, but Bentley did not lose his position. He is considered as the first Englishman, and perhaps the only one, who can be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning. Self-taught, he created his own science. The English school of Hellenists, by which the 18th century was distinguished, was Bentley’s creation; his influence reached various countries of Europe. Apart from a considerable number of editions of classical writers, such as Cicero, Aristophanes, Horace, Menander, Terence, and others, he wrote a work proposing a New Edition of the Greek Testament, intended to restore the Greek text as received by the Church at the time of the Council of Nicaea.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 7, p. 357