Bentley wrote the "Epistola ad Johannem Millium", which is about a hundred pages long and was included at the end of the "Oxford Malalas" (1691). That short treatise placed Bentley ahead of all living English scholars. The ease with which he restored corrupted passages, the certainty of his emendation and command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill or Edmund Chilmead. To the small circle of classical students (lacking the great critical dictionaries of modern times), it was obvious that he was a critic beyond the ordinary.