, only son of the preceding, was a man of various and considerable accomplishments, with wit,
, only son of the preceding, was
a man of various and considerable accomplishments, with
wit, genius, and elegant manners; but was imprudent in
his conduct, frequently involved in distresses, and reduced
to situations uncongenial with his feelings, and unfavourable to the cultivation and encouragement of his talents.
He was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, lived for
some years after his marriage in the South of France, and in
the island of Jersey, and afterwards, about 1763, at Teddington, near Twickenham, in consequence of his intimacy
with Mr. Horace Walpole. His nephew informs us that
“they carried on, for a long time, a sickly kind of friendship, which had its hot fits and cold tits, was suspended
and renewed, but never totally broken.
” Mr. Bentley was
the designer of many of the gothic embellishments of
Strawberry-hill, and made also the designs for an edition
of Gray’s works, printed there. In one of these he -personifies himself as a monkey, sitting under a withered tree
with a pallet in his hand, while Gray reposes under the
shade of a flourishing laurel. “Such a design,
” says Mr.
Cumberland, “with figures so contrasted, might flatter
Gray, and gratify the trivial taste of Walpole; but in my
poor opinion it is a satire on copper-plate, and my uncle
has most completely libelled both his poet and his patron,
without intending so to do.
” In Walpole, he certainly
did not find a very liberal patron, yet it is said that he enjoyed a place of about JiOO a year by that gentleman’s
means, and had also the profits of the “Lucan,
” printed
at Strawberry-hill, amounting to about 40. For the
translation of “Hentzner’s Account of England,
” on
which Mr. Walpole employed him, he was promised clOO;
but this, according to Mr. Cole’s account, his patron reserved for his family.