We infer also that Bentley did not despise ale. At any rate a great quantity was drunk at the lodge of the Master.
In 1710, when the Fellows appealed against Bentley to the Visitor of Trinity, the Bishop of Ely, this was one of the counts:—
Why have you for many years last past wasted the College Bread, Ale, Beer, Coals, Wood, Turfe, Sedge, Charcoal, Linnen, Pewter, Corn, Flower (sic), Brawn, and Bran, &c.?[199]
In a single year—1708—the expense of ale and small beer was no less at Trinity Lodge than 107l. 16s.[200]
The Fellows greatly protested against all this. And Dr. King, an old opponent of Bentley’s, made great stock of the immense consumption of bread, beer, and fuel in Bentley’s lodge:—
He wrote a piece of humour, entitled ‘Horace in Trinity College.’ The fiction supposes Horace, in fulfilment of his well-known prophecy, Visam Britannos hospitibus feros, to visit Britain and take up his abode in the Master’s lodge of Trinity College, where he gets immensely fat (Epicuri de grege porcus) by the good cheer maintained at the expense of the society.... Perhaps the most laughable matter in the piece is the representation of a medal, bearing on one side a figure of Horace, with a cup of audit ale in one hand, some college rolls in the other, and an immeasurable rotundity of person; and on the reverse E Promptuar. Col. Trin. Cant.
What the excellent bishop describes as ‘an immeasurable rotundity of person’ seems to have been far from uncommon in the Universities in these high days. We read in a note in Monk’s book, vol. ii. p. 394:—
The portly appearance of the three esquire-beadles at that day [about 1739] did much credit to university cheer. They are described by Christopher Smart, in a copy of Latin verses, by the following periphrasis:—
‘Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina Bedellorum.’
We have certainly in Pope’s Dunciad also an allusion to Bentley’s love of port (book iv.) in the following lines:—