William Bentley and the Ideal of Universal Information in the Enlightened Republic

Abstract

Abstract When the Reverend William Bentley died at age sixty in 1819 he was a famous man, a scholarly celebrity. Recently honored with a doctor of divinity degree from his alma mater, Harvard, his eminence had long been recognized by election to leading American learned societies: the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. To John Adams, Bentley was “Doctor of Physics, Dr. of Philosophy, Dr. of Laws, and D.D.”1 Proficient in some twenty ancient and modern languages, a keen student of philology, scriptural criticism, and human and natural history, Bentley was, with Thomas Jefferson, one of the great polymaths of the early Republic. Indeed Jefferson, seeking the best scholars to guide the University of Virginia, invited Bentley to become its founding president. For breadth and depth of learning Bentley, whose personal library of 4000 volumes ranked with America’s greatest private collections, had few peers.