Rev. Richard Bentley
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 25 June 1830; in Table Talk (1884) 98.
The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with such acrimony has been to make them appear as a set of shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. Burnet's History of his own Times is a truly valuable book. His credulity is great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a moment.