from his opponent; he spared no bitterness of invective, and, in his fury, rushed fairly into Bentley's toils. He was prosecuted, found guilty, and obliged to brook the humiliation of paying the costs of suit, and making a submissive apology to Bentley. The university, however, rewarded his martyrdom in their cause with the honourable post of public librarian; and he pursued his aggressions on Bentley with at least equal bitterness if more guardedness. His last pamphlet, in this controversy, ends thus: "Being conscious of no offence that my name has ever given, nor of any infamy upon it to make it odious to any man, except to himself, I am not at all ashamed of producing it. And since it is, as he says, 'to die with me and to be buried shortly in oblivion,' he must excuse me the reasonable ambition of making the most of it while I live. And that I may have some chance for being known likewise to posterity, I am resolved to fasten myself upon him, and stick as close to him as I can, in hopes of being dragged at least by his great name out of my present obscurity, and of finding some place, though an humble one, in the public annals of his story. And being willing, before we part, to give him all the encouragement I can towards answering me, I here promise that, let him be as severe and scurrilous as he pleases upon my person, morals, or learning, I will not make myself so mean as to take the law of him, or prosecute printer, publisher, or author. I shall be contented to vindicate my character with the proper weapons of a scholar, and do myself justice as well as I can ; being ambitious of no greater reputation in the world than that I shall find myself always well able to defend." Middleton's pieces in this fainous warfare were: 1. 'A Full and Impartial Account of all the late proceedings in the University of Cambridge against Dr Bentley.' 2. A Second Part of the Full and Impartial Account.' 3. Some Remarks upon a Pamphlet entitled The Case of Dr Bentley further stated."1 4. A True Account of the present state of Trinity College in Cambridge under the oppressive government of their master, Richard Bentley, late D. D.'

In his subsequent attack on Bentley's proposals for an edition of the New Testament, Middleton was less successful. His 'Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, upon the Proposals,' are exceedingly bitter, and often highly unjust, though he desires his readers "to believe that they were not drawn from him by personal spleen or envy to the author of them, but by a serious conviction that he had neither talents nor materials proper for the work he had undertaken." This is really too much for a mere Latinist to say of one who towered above all his fellows as a Greek critic. But Bentley-though he mistook his opponent this time, and directed his fury against Dr Colbatch-was not a whit behind his real antagonist in abuse, misrepresentation, and scurrility. His treatment of Colbatch was so scurrilous that the vice-chancellor and heads of the university pronounced his pamphlet a scandalous and malicious libel, and resolved to inflict a proper censure upon the author as soon as he should be discovered; for no names had yet appeared in this new controversy. Middleton then published, in his own name, an answer to Bentley's 'Defence' of his proposals, entitled 'Some Further Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, upon Proposals lately published'

By Sykes. Neither the Full and Impartial Account,' nor the Remarks' on Sykes's pamphlet, are inserted in the collection of Dr Middleton's Miscellaneous Works.

Upon the great enlargement of the public library of Cambridge by the addition of Bishop Moore's library, and his election to the office of principal librarian, Middleton published a little piece, with the title, Bibliothecæ Cantabrigiensis Ordinandæ Methodus.' This pamphlet has been praised for its elegant Latinity; but, in the dedication to the vice-chancellor, its author made use of some incautious words in reference to the jurisdiction of the court of king's bench, for which he was prosecuted and fined. Poor Colbatch had, a little time previously to this prosecution, incurred the displeasure of the same tribunal for some expressions in his 'Jus Academicum,' which Bentley's ingenuity contrived to represent as amounting to contempt of court.

In 1724 Dr Middleton, now a widower, accompanied Lord Coleraine to Italy. The author of the life of Middleton, in the 'Biographia Britannica,' relates that when Middleton arrived at Rome, one of his first objects was to get himself introduced to his brother-librarian of the Vatican. He was received with great politeness by the learned keeper; but, upon his mentioning Cambridge, and the office he held. there, he had the mortification to be informed by the Italian that he was now aware for the first time of the existence of a seminary of learning under that name in England. This touched the honour of our new librarian, says the writer referred to, who took some pains to convince his brother not only of the real existence, but of the real dignity of his university of Cambridge. At last the keeper of the Vatican acknowledged that, upon recollection, he had indeed heard of a celebrated school in England of that name, but understood it to be only a kind of nursery where youth were educated and prepared for their admission at Oxford. Dr Middleton with difficulty concealed his mortification at what was evidently a studied insult; but he resolved to make the inhabitants of Rome aware of the existence of Cambridge, and of the dignity of its librarian, by taking a handsome hotel, aud launching out into a style of living somewhat disproportioned to his estate. The story is after all not highly probable; but if true, it tells only either for the ignorance or the rudeness of him of the Vatican.

Middleton returned to Cambridge towards the close of the next year. He had not been long in his study, however, before he contrived to get into a dispute with the medical faculty, by the publication of a tract, 'De Medicorum apud veteres Romanos degentium Conditione.' Doctors Mead and Ward hastened to vindicate the honour of their profession, which they considered as called in question by Middleton's tractate; and the latter put forth a 'Defensio,' in which he contrived to make up matters with his antagonists so well, that Mead and Middleton became afterwards and remained very good friends, Middleton's next publication was entitled 'A Letter from Rome, showing an exact conformity between Popery and Paganism; or the Religion of the present Romans derived from that of their Heathen ancestors.' This work was favourably received by the Protestant public, and passed through several editions in a few years.

Thus far we may consider Middleton's character as standing rather high amongst his professional brethren; but he was now about to pur sue a course which totally destroyed all reasonable prospect of preferment in the church, and brought his own Christianity into serious questioning. In the beginning of 1730, Tindal published his famous

work, Christianity as old as the Creation,' the design of which was to destroy revelation and to establish natural religion in its stead. Among others who met and satisfactorily refuted Tindal's reasonings was Dr Waterland. But Middleton, finding fault with his method of vindicating scripture, addressed a letter of remarks to him, in which he indulged in very unseemly language towards so popular a character as Waterland. Pearce, bishop of Rochester, took up the contest for Waterland, which drew from Middleton A Defence of the Letter to Dr Waterland.' Pearce replied, and treated his antagonist as an infidel or a disguised enemy to revelation; and Middleton was called upon either to vindicate himself from the imputations of the bishop of Rochester or resign his connexions with the university. He did so in 'Some Remarks on Dr Pearce's Second Reply,' and effected at least so much in the way of explanation and apology that he was allowed to retain his appointments. In 1733, however, Dr Williams, the public orator of the university, addressed some 'Observations' to Middleton, in which he attempted to prove that the librarian was certainly an infidel, and ought to be banished from the precincts of a Christian university. Middleton, in his answer to this attack, says: "I have nothing to recant on the occasion, nothing to confess, but the same four articles that I have already confessed: 1. That the Jews borrowed some of their customs from Egypt. 2. That the Egyptians were possessed of arts and learning in Moses's time. 3. That the primitive writers, in vindicating Scripture, found it necessary sometimes to recur to allegory. 4. That the Scriptures are not of absolute and universal inspiration. These are the only crimes that I have been guilty of against religion; and by reducing the controversy to these four heads, and declaring my whole meaning to be comprised in them, I did in reality recant every thing else that, through heat and inadvertency, had dropped from me,-every thing that could be construed to a sense hurtful to Christianity." In 1735 he published a Dissertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England,' in which he argues that Caxton introduced the art of printing into England, and first practised it here, an hypothesis controverted in Bowyer and Nichols' Origin of Printing.'

In 1741 appeared his great work, 'The History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero,' in two volumes quarto. It was published by subscription, and met with great support. The duke of Newcastle and Lord Hervey exerted themselves strenuously in procuring subscribers; although the former nobleman opposed Middleton's election to the mastership of the charter-house, and procured that office for Mr Mann. Wolfius, in his edition of the four controverted orations of Cicero, says that Middleton's life of that orator has three great faults: first, that the hero is frequently exalted beyond the bounds of truth into a character of ideal virtue; secondly, that the biographer has paid undue attention to his political as contrasted with his literary character; and thirdly, that too little critical acumen has been exercised in distinguishing the true from the false in the alleged historical facts interwoven in the memoir. There is some reason for all these grounds of censure. Middleton was an enthusiast in Roman literature, and had all a biographer's partialities for his subject. In the same year in which this work appeared, Tunstall addressed a Latin epistle to Middleton, in which he points out many erroneous conclusions in Middleton's Life of Cicero,' found

ed upon corruptions or erroneous interpretations of Cicero's letters to Atticus, and his brother Quintus, and proposes a new edition of these epistles. Middleton soon afterwards published an English translation of the whole correspondence between Brutus and Cicero, with notes, and a preliminary dissertation in which he treats Tunstall with much severity. His adversary replied; and Markland engaged in the contest also by publishing Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero.'

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After the publication of some other dissertations on subjects connected with literary antiquities, Middleton got again involved in polemics by publishing An Introductory Discourse to a larger work, designed hereafter to be published, concerning the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Church from the earliest ages through several successive centuries.' This discourse, though, as announced in its title, preliminary only to a more extensive inquiry, excited much alarm, and was immediately attacked by Dr Stebbing and Dr Chapman: the former endeavoured to show that Middleton's reasonings struck at the evidences of Christianity, while the latter endeavoured to vindicate the impeached authority of the fathers. This attack Middleton parried by the publication of Remarks,' which were instantly followed by the appearance of the threatened Free Enquiry' itself. On the subject of the miraculous powers exercised in the early Christian church, Middleton's opinion is, in his own words :-" That in those first efforts of planting the gospel, after our Lord's ascension, the extraordinary gifts which he had promised were poured out in the fullest measure on the apostles, and those other disciples whom he had ordained to be the primary instruments of that great work; in order to enable them more easily to overrule the inveterate prejudices both of the Jews and Gentiles, and to bear up against the discouraging shocks of popular rage and persecution, which they were taught to expect in this noviciate of their ministry. But in process of time, when they had laid a foundation sufficient to sustain the great fabric designed to be erected upon it, and by an invincible courage had conquered the first and principal difficulties, and planted churches in all the chief cities of the Roman empire, and settled a regular ministry to succeed them in the government of the same, it may reasonably be presumed that, as the benefit of miraculous powers began to be less and less wanted in proportion to the increase of these churches, so the use and exercise of them began gradually to decline; and, as soon as Christianity had gained an establishment in every quarter of the known world, that they were finally withdrawn, and the gospel left to make the rest of its way by its own genuine strength, and the natural force of those divine graces with which it was so richly stored-Faith, Hope, and Charity,-graces which never fail to inspire all who truly possess them with a zeal and courage which no terrors can daunt nor worldly power subdue. And all this," he continues," as far as I am able to judge from the nature of the gifts themselves, and from the instances or effects of them which I have any where observed, may probably be thought to have happened while some of the apostles were still living: who, in the times even of the gospel, appear on several occasions to have been destitute of any extraordinary gifts, and of whose miracles, when we go beyond the limits of the gospel, we meet with nothing in the later histories on which we

can depend, or nothing rather but what is apparently fabulous." The publication of the 'Free Enquiry' excited an extraordinary sensation, and its author was accused of not merely "endeavouring to demolish the outworks of the church," but of assaulting the fortress itself, or at least throwing discredit on the general evidences of revelation. The Free Enquiry' has ceased to be regarded with so much alarm; and it is now considered a reasonable opinion that, after the death of the apostles and their immediate successors, the possession of miraculous aids was no longer vouchsafed to the church as a community, or to any individuals as its ministers; and, moreover, that all miracles which are related to have taken place after that period, must be subjected to the usual tests, and must stand or fall on their own merits, according to the degrees of evidence and probability. Nor is this a question at all affecting the truth of Christianity, however much it may weaken the testimony of tradition on some points. So far then we regard the 'Enquiry' as a useful and acute rather than a hurtful publication. It is only to be regretted that its author should have occasionally indulged in remarks calculated to invalidate the proof from testimony for all facts involving effects exceeding the common operations of nature. Among Dr Middleton's opponents on this question, Dodwell and Church distinguished themselves by their zeal, and were complimented by the university of Oxford with the degree of D. D., for their exertions on behalf of the authority of the fathers. Middleton left unfinished a Vindication of the Free Enquiry,' against the objections of Church and Dodwell, which was published a few months after his decease.

While a host of assailants, excited by the publication of the Free Enquiry,' were gathering around him, Middleton found means to stir up a new controversy, and with a still more formidable opponent than any who had yet assailed the Enquiry.' In 1750 Sherlock published an edition of his Discourses on Prophecy,' with an additional dissertation on the Fall. This edition Middleton selected for the subject of an 'Examination,' which appeared in the same year. It has been alleged that the secret ground of Middleton's hostility towards Sherlock's theological opinions was personal pique and resentment, because he thought the bishop had opposed his election to the mastership of the Charter-house. There is no decisive evidence as to this, nor would the reader be much gratified, we presume, with any very elaborate inquiry into the fact. Middleton contends, in opposition to Sherlock, that there is no system of prophecy, but only particular, detached, unrelated prophecies. He supposes the Fall to be an allegory. "I agree

it is so," says Warburton, speaking of Middleton's publication in a letter to his friend Hurd. In this we differ: he supposes it to be an allegory of a moral truth, namely, that man soon corrupted his ways; and seems to think, by his way of speaking, that an allegory can convey no other kind of information. I say it is an allegory of a moral fact, namely, that man had transgressed that positive command-whatever it was on the observance of which the free gift of immortality was conditionally given." Dr Rutherforth, divinity professor at Cambridge, answered this Examination;' but Middleton pursued the argument no further, his attention being in the meantime turned upon the assailants of the Free Enquiry.'

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