Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries (3/3) (2024)

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Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries (1837, two volumes) is a book by Henry Hallam.

CHAPTER XXV.

 HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE FROM 1600 TO 1650.

 SECT. I.

_Invention of logarithms by Napier--New geometry of Kepler andCavalieri--Algebra--Harriott--Descartes--Astronomy--Kepler--Galileo--Copernican system begins to prevail--Cartesian theory of theworld--Mechanical discoveries of Galileo--Descartes--Hydrostatics--Optics._

|State of science in 16th century.|

1. In the second volume of this work, we have followed the progress ofmathematical and physical science down to the close of the sixteenthcentury. The ancient geometers had done so much in their own provinceof lines and figures, that little more of importance could beeffected, except by new methods extending the limits of the science,or derived from some other source of invention. Algebra had yielded amore abundant harvest to the genius of the sixteenth century; yetsomething here seemed to be wanting to give that science a characterof utility and reference to general truth; nor had the formulæ ofletters and radical signs that preceptible beauty which often wins usto delight in geometrical theorems of as little apparent usefulness intheir results. Meanwhile, the primary laws, to which all mathematicalreasonings, in their relation to physical science, must beaccommodated, lay hidden, or were erroneously conceived; and none ofthese sciences, with the exception of astronomy, were beyond theirmere infancy, either as to observation or theory.[601]

 [601] In this chapter my obligations to Montucla are so continual that I shall make no single reference to his Histoire des Mathématiques, which must be understood to be my principal authority.

|Tediousness of calculations.|

2. Astronomy, cultivated in the latter part of the sixteenth centurywith much industry and success, was repressed, among other moreinsuperable obstacles, by the laborious calculations it required. Thetrigonometrical tables of sines, tangents, and secants, if they wereto produce any tolerable accuracy in astronomical observation, must becomputed to six or seven places of decimals, upon which the regularprocesses of multiplication and division were perpetually to beemployed. The consumption of time, as well as risk of error which thisoccasioned, was a serious evil to the practical astronomer.

|Napier’s invention of logarithms.|

3. John Napier, laird of Merchiston, after several attempts todiminish this labour by devices of his invention, was happy enough todiscover his famous method of logarithms. This he first published atEdinburgh, in 1614, with the title, Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio,seu Arithmeticarum Supputationum Mirabilis Abbreviatio. He died in1618, and in a posthumous edition, entitled Mirifici LogarithmorumCanonis Descriptio, 1618, the method of construction, which had beenat first withheld, is given; and the system itself, in consequenceperhaps of the suggestion of his friend Briggs, underwent some change.

|Their nature.|

4. The invention of logarithms is one of the rarest instances ofsagacity in the history of mankind; and it has been justly noticed asremarkable, that it issued complete from the mind of its author, andhas not received any improvement since his time. It is hardlynecessary to say, that logarithms are a series of numbers, arranged intables parallel to the series of natural numbers, and of such aconstruction, that by adding the logarithms of two of the latter weobtain the logarithm of their product; by subtracting the logarithm ofone number from that of another we obtain that of their quotient. Thelongest processes therefore of multiplication and division are spared,and reduced to one of mere addition or subtraction.

|Property of numbers discovered by Stifelius.|

5. It has been supposed that an arithmetical fact, said to bementioned by Archimedes, and which is certainly pointed out in thework of an early German writer, Michael Stifelius, put Napier in theright course for this invention. It will at least serve to illustratethe principle of logarithms. Stifelius shows that if in a geometricalprogression, we add the indices of any terms in the series, we shallobtain the index of the products of those terms. Thus, if we comparethe geometrical progression, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, with thearithmetical one which numbers the powers of the common ratio, namely,0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, we see that by adding two terms of the latterprogression, as 2 and 3, to which 4 and 8 correspond in thegeometrical series, we obtain 5, to which 32, the product of 4 by 8,corresponds; and the quotient would be obtained in a similar manner.But though this, which becomes self-evident, when algebraicalexpressions are employed for the terms of a series, seemed at the timerather a curious property of numbers in geometrical progression, itwas of little value in facilitating calculation.

|Extended to magnitudes.|

6. If Napier had simply considered numbers in themselves, asrepetitions of unity, which is their only intelligible definition, itdoes not seem that he could ever have carried this observation uponprogressive series any farther. Numerically understood, the terms of ageometrical progression proceed _per saltum_; and in the series2, 4, 8, 16, it is as unmeaning to say that 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, in anypossible sense, have a place, or can be introduced to any purpose, asthat ½, ¼, ⅛, 1/16 or other fractions are true numbers at all.[602]The case, however, is widely different when we use numbers as merelythe signs of something capable of continuous increase or decrease ofspace, of duration, of velocity. These are, for our convenience,divided by arbitrary intervals, to which the numerical unit is made tocorrespond. But as these intervals are indefinitely divisible, theunit is supposed capable of division into fractional parts, each ofthem a representation of the ratio which a portion of the intervalbears to the whole. And thus also we must see, that as fractions ofthe unit bear a relation to uniform quantity, so all the integralnumbers, which do not enter into the terms of a geometricalprogression, correspond to certain portions of variable quantity. If abody falling down an inclined plane acquires a velocity at one pointwhich would carry it through two feet in a second, and at a lowerpoint one which would carry it through four feet in the same time,there must, by the nature of a continually accelerated motion, be somepoint between these where the velocity might be represented by thenumber three. Hence, wherever the numbers of a common geometricalseries, like 2, 4, 8, 16, represent velocities at certain intervals,the intermediate numbers will represent velocities at intermediateintervals; and thus it may be said that all numbers are terms of ageometrical progression, but one which should always be considered aswhat it is--a progression of continuous, not discrete quantity,capable of being indicated by number, but not number itself.

 [602] Few books of arithmetic, or even algebra, as far as I know, draw the reader’s attention at the outset to this essential distinction between discrete and continuous quantity, which is sure to be overlooked in all their subsequent reasonings. Wallis has done it very well; after stating very clearly that there are no proper numbers but integers he meets the objection, that fractions are called intermediate numbers. Concedo quidem sic responderi posse; concedo etiam numeros quos fractos vocant, sive fractiones, esse quidam uni et nulli quasi intermedios. Sed addo, quod jam transitur εις αλλο γενος [eis allo genos]. Respondetur enim non de _quot_, sed de quanto. Pertinet igitur hæc responsio propriè loquendo, non tam ad quantitatem discretam, seu numerum, quam ad continuam; prout hora supponitur esse quid continuum in partes divisibile, quamvis quidem harum partium ad totum ratio numeris exprimatur. Mathesis Universalis, c. 1.

|By Napier.|

7. It was a necessary consequence, that if all numbers could betreated as terms of a progression, and if their indices could be foundlike those of an ordinary series, the method of finding products ofterms by addition of indices would be universal. The means that Napieradopted for this purpose were surprisingly ingenious; but it would bedifficult to make them clear to those who are likely to require it,especially without the use of lines. It may suffice to say that hisprocess was laborious in the highest degree, consisting of theinterpolation of 6931472 mean proportionals between 1 and 2, andrepeating a similar and still more tedious operation for all primenumbers. The logarithms of other numbers were easily obtained,according to the fundamental principle of the invention, by addingtheir factors. Logarithms appear to have been so called, because theyare the sum of these mean ratios, λογων αριθμος [logôn arithmos].

|Tables of Napier and Briggs.|

8. In the original tables of Napier the logarithm of 10 was 3.0225850.In those published afterwards (1618), he changed this for 1.0000000,making of course that of 100, 2.0000000, and so forth. Thisconstruction has been followed since; but those of the first methodare not wholly neglected; they are called hyperbolical logarithms,from expressing a property of that curve. Napier found a coadjutorwell worthy of him in Henry Briggs, professor of geometry at Greshamcollege. It is uncertain from which of them the change in the form oflogarithms proceeded. Briggs, in 1618, published a table of logarithmsup to 1,000, calculated by himself. This was followed in 1624 by hisgreater work, Arithmetica Logarithmica, containing the logarithms ofall natural numbers as high as 20,000, and again from 90,000 to100,000. These are calculated to fourteen places of decimals, thusreducing the error, which strictly speaking, must always exist fromthe principle of logarithmical construction, to an almostinfinitesimal fraction. He had designed to publish a second table,with the logarithms of sines and tangents to the 100th part of adegree. This he left in a considerably advanced state; and it waspublished by Gellibrand in 1633. Gunter had as early as 1620 given thelogarithms of sines and tangents on the sexagesimal scale, as far asseven decimals. Vlacq, a Dutch bookseller, printed in 1628 atranslation of Brigg’s Arithmetica Logarithmica, filling up theinterval from 20,000 to 90,000 with logarithms calculated to elevendecimals. He published also in 1633 his Trigonometrica Artificialis,the most useful work, perhaps, that had appeared, as it incorporatedthe labours of Briggs and Gellibrand, but with no great regard to thelatter’s fair advantage. Kepler came like a master to the subject; andobserving that some foreign mathematicians disliked the theory uponwhich Napier had explained the nature of logarithms, as not rigidlygeometrical, gave one of his own to which they could not object. Butit may probably be said that the very novelty to which the disciplesof the ancient geometry were averse, the introduction of the notion ofvelocity into mathematical reasoning, was that which linked theabstract science of quantity with nature, and prepared the way forthat expansive theory of infinites which bears at once upon thesubtlest truths that can exercise the understanding, and the mostevident that can fall under the senses.

|Kepler’s new geometry.|

9. It was, indeed, at this time that the modern geometry, which, if itdeviates something from the clearness and precision of the ancient,has incomparably the advantage over it in its reach of application,took its rise. Kepler was the man that led the way. He published, in1615, his Nova Stereometria Doliorum, a treatise on the capacity ofcasks. In this he considers the various solids which may be formed bythe revolution of a segment of a conic section round a line which isnot its axis, a condition not unfrequent in the form of a cask. Manyof the problems which he starts he is unable to solve. But what ismost remarkable in this treatise is that he here suggests the boldidea, that a circle may be deemed to be composed of an infinite numberof triangles, having their bases in the circumference, and theircommon apex in the centre; a cone, in like manner, of infinitepyramids, and a cylinder of infinite prisms.[603] The ancients hadshown, as is well known, that a polygon inscribed in a circle, andanother described about it, may, by continual bisection of theirsides, be made to approach nearer to each other than any assignabledifferences. The circle itself lay, of course, between them. Euclidcontents himself with saying that the circle is greater than anypolygon that can be inscribed in it, and less than any polygon thatcan be described about it. The method by which they approximated tothe curve space by continual increase or diminution of the rectilinealfigure was called exhaustion, and the space itself is properly calledby later geometers the limit. As curvilineal and rectilineal spacescannot possibly be compared by means of superposition, or by showingthat their several constituent portions could be made to coincide, ithad long been acknowledged impossible by the best geometers toquadrate by a direct process any curve surface. But Archimedes hadfound, as to the parabola, that there was a rectilineal space, ofwhich he could indirectly demonstrate that it was equal, that is,could not be unequal, to the curve itself.

 [603] Fabroni, Vitæ Italorum, i., 272.

|Its difference from the ancient.|

10. In this state of the general problem, the ancient methods ofindefinite approximation having prepared the way, Kepler came to hissolution of questions which regarded the capacity of vessels.According to Fabroni, he supposed solids to consist of an infinitenumber of surfaces, surfaces of an infinity of lines, lines ofinfinite points.[604] If this be strictly true, he must have leftlittle, in point of invention, for Cavalieri. So long as geometry isemployed as a method of logic, an exercise of the understanding onthose modifications of quantity which the imagination cannotgrasp, such as points, lines, infinites, it must appear almost anoffensive absurdity to speak of a circle as a polygon with an infinitenumber of sides. But when it becomes the handmaid of practical art, oreven of physical science, there can be no other objection, than alwaysarises from incongruity and incorrectness of language. It has beenfound possible to avoid the expressions attributed to Kepler; but theyseem to denote in fact nothing more than those of Euclid orArchimedes; that the difference between a magnitude and its limit maybe regularly diminished, till, without strictly vanishing, it becomesless than any assignable quantity, and may consequently be disregardedin reasoning upon actual bodies.

 [604] Idem quoque solida cogitavit ex infinito numero superflcierum existere, superficies autem ex lineis infinitis, ac lineis ex infinitis punctis. Ostendit ipse quantum ea ratione brevior fieri via possit ad vera quædam captu difficiliora, cum antiquarum demonstrationum circuitus ac methodus inter se comparandi figuras circ*mscriptas et inscriptas iis planis aut solidis, quæ mensuranda essent, ita declinarentur. Ibid.

|Adopted by Galileo.|

11. Galileo, says Fabroni, trod in the steps of Kepler, and in hisfirst dialogue on mechanics, when treating on a cylinder cut out of ahemisphere, became conversant with indivisibles (familiarem haberecœpit cum indivisibilibus usum). But in that dialogue he confused themetaphysical notions of divisible quantity, supposing it to becomposed of unextended indivisibles; and not venturing to affirm thatinfinites could be equal or unequal to one another, he preferred tosay, that words denoting equality or excess could only be used as tofinite quantities. In his fourth dialogue on the centre of gravity, hecomes back to the exhaustive method of Archimedes.[605]

 [605] Fabroni, Vitæ Italorum, i., 272.

|Extended by Cavalieri.|

12. Cavalieri, professor of mathematics at Bologna, the generallyreputed father of the new geometry, though Kepler seems to have sogreatly anticipated him, had completed his method of indivisibles in1626. The book was not published till 1635. His leading principle isthat solids are composed of an infinite number of surfaces placed oneabove another as their indivisible elements. Surfaces are formed inlike manner by lines, and lines by points. This, however, he assertswith some excuse and explanation; declaring that he does not use thewords so strictly, as to have it supposed that divisible quantitiestruly and literally consist of indivisibles, but that the ratio ofsolids is the same as that of an infinite number of surfaces, and thatof surfaces the same as of an infinite number of lines; and to put anend to cavil, he demonstrated that the same consequences would followif a method should be adopted, borrowing nothing from theconsideration of indivisibles.[606] This explanation seems to havebeen given after his method had been attacked by Guldin in 1640.

 [606] Non eo rigore a se voces adhiberi, ac si dividuæ quantitates verè ac propriè ex indivisibilibus existerent; verumtamen id sibi duntaxat velle, ut proportio solidorum eadem esset ac ratio superficierum omnium numero inflnitarum, et proportio superficierum eadem ac illa infinitarum linearum: denique ut omnia, quæ contra dici poterant, in radice præcideret, demonstravit, easdem omnino consecutiones erui, si methodi aut rationes adhiberentur omnino diversæ, quæ nihil ab indivisibilium consideratione penderent. Fabroni.

 Il n’est aucun cas dans la géometrie des indivisibles, qu’on ne puisse facilement reduire à la forme ancienne de démonstration. Ainsi, c’est s’arrêter à l’écorce que de chicaner sur le mot d’indivisibles. Il est impropre si l’on veut, mais il n’en résulte aucun danger pour la géometrie; et loin de conduire à l’erreur, cette méthode, au contraire, a été utile pour atteindre à des vérités qui avoient échappé jusqu’alors aux efforts des géométres. Montucla, vol. ii., p. 39.

|Applied to the ratios of solids.|

13. It was a main object of Cavalieri’s geometry to demonstrate theproportions of different solids. This is partly done by Euclid, butgenerally in an indirect manner. A cone, according to Cavalieri, iscomposed of an infinite number of circles decreasing from the base tothe summit, a cylinder of an infinite number of equal circles. Heseeks, therefore, the ratio of the sum of all the former to that ofall the latter. The method of summing an infinite series of terms inarithmetical progression was already known. The diameters of thecircles in the cone decreasing uniformly were in arithmeticalprogression, and the circles would be as their squares. He found thatwhen the number of terms is infinitely great, the sum of all thesquares described on lines in arithmetical progression is exactly onethird of the greatest square multiplied by the number of terms. Hence,the cone is one third of a cylinder of the same base and altitude, andthe same may be shown of other solids.

|Problem of the cycloid.|

14. This bolder geometry was now very generally applied in difficultinvestigations. A proof was given in the celebrated problems relativeto the cycloid, which served as a test of skill to the mathematiciansof that age. The cycloid is the curve described by a point in acircle, while it makes one revolution along a horizontal base, as inthe case of a carriage wheel. It was far more difficult to determineits area. It was at first taken for the segment of a circle. Galileoconsidered it, but with no success. Mersenne, who was also unequal tothe problem, suggested it to a very good geometer, Roberval, who,after some years, in 1634, demonstrated that the area of the cycloidis equal to thrice the area of the generating circle. Mersennecommunicated this discovery to Descartes, who, treating the matter aseasy, sent a short demonstration of his own. On Roberval’s intimatingthat he had been aided by a knowledge of the solution, Descartes foundout the tangents of the curve, and challenged Roberval and Fermat todo the same. Fermat succeeded in this, but Roberval could not achievethe problem, in which Galileo also and Cavalieri failed; though itseems to have been solved afterwards by Viviani. “Such,” saysMontucla, “was the superiority of Descartes over all the geometers ofhis age, that questions which most perplexed them cost him but anordinary degree of attention.” In this problem of the tangents (and itmight not, perhaps, have been worth while to mention it otherwise inso brief a sketch), Descartes made use of the principle introduced byKepler, considering the curve as a polygon of an infinite number ofsides, so that an infinitely small arc is equal to its chord. Thecycloid has been called by Montucla, the Helen of geometers. Thisbeauty was, at least, the cause of war, and produced a longcontroversy. The Italians claim the original invention as their own;but Montucla seems to have vindicated the right of France to everysolution important in geometry. Nor were the friends of Roberval andFermat disposed to acknowledge so much of the exclusive right ofDescartes as was challenged by his disciples. Pascal, in his historyof the cycloid, enters the lists on the side of Roberval. This was notpublished till 1658.

|Progress of algebra.|

15. Without dwelling more minutely on geometrical treatises of lessimportance, though in themselves valuable, such as that of Gregory St.Vincent, in 1647, or the Cyclometricus of Willebrod Snell, in 1621, wecome to the progress of analysis during this period. The works ofVieta, it may be observed, were chiefly published after the year 1600.They left, as must be admitted, not much in principle for the moresplendid generalisations of Harriott and Descartes. It is notunlikely, that the mere employment of a more perfect notation wouldhave led the acute mind of Vieta to truths which seem to us, who areacquainted with them, but a little beyond what he discovered.

|Briggs. Girard.|

16. Briggs, in his Arithmetica Logarithmica, was the first who clearlyshowed what is called the Binomial Theorem, or a compendious method ofinvolution, by means of the necessary order of co-efficients in thesuccessive powers of a binomial quantity. Cardan had partially, andVieta much more clearly, seen this, nor was it likely to escape one soobservant of algebraic relations as the latter. Albert Girard, aDutchman, in his Invention Nouvelle en Algebre, 1629, conceived abetter notion of negative roots than his predecessors. Even Vieta hadnot paid attention to them in any solution. Girard, however, not onlyassigns their form, and shows, that in a certain class of cubicequations there must always be one or two of this description, butuses this remarkable expression: “A negative solution means ingeometry that the _minus_ recedes as the _plus_ advances.”[607] Itseems manifest that till some such idea suggested itself to the mindsof analysts, the consideration of negative roots, though they couldnot possibly avoid perceiving their existence, would merely haveconfused their solutions. It cannot, therefore, be surprising that notonly Cardan and Vieta, but Harriott himself, should have disregardedthem.

 [607] La solution par moins s’explique en géometrie en retrogradant, et le moins recule ou le plus avance. Montucla, p. 112.

|Harriott.|

17. Harriott, the companion of Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia, and thefriend of the Earl of Northumberland, in whose house he spent thelatter part of his life, was destined to make the last great discoveryin the pure science of algebra. Though he is mentioned here afterGirard, since the Artis Analyticæ Praxis was not published till 1631,this was ten years after the author’s death. Harriott arrived at acomplete theory of the genesis of equations, which Cardan and Vietahad but partially conceived. By bringing all the terms on one side, soas to make them equal to zero, he found out that every unknownquantity in an equation has as many values as the index of its powersin the first term denotes; and that these values, in a necessarysequence of combinations, from the co-efficients of the succeedingterms into which the decreasing powers of the unknown quantity enter,as they do also, by their united product, the last or known term ofthe equation. This discovery facilitated the solution of equations, bythe necessary composition of their terms which it displayed.It was evident, for example, that each root of an equation must be afactor, and consequently a divisor, of the last term.[608]

 [608] Harriott’s book is a thin folio of 180 pages, with very little besides examples; for his principles are shortly and obscurely laid down. Whoever is the author of the preface to this work cannot be said to have suppressed or extenuated the merits of Vieta, or to have claimed anything for Harriott but what he is allowed to have deserved. Montucla justly observes, that Harriott _very rarely_ makes an equation equal to zero, by bringing all the quantities to one side of the equation.

18. Harriott introduced the use of small letters instead of capitalsin algebra; he employed vowels for unknown, consonants for knownquantities, and joined them to express their product.[609] There iscertainly not much in this; but its evident convenience renders itwonderful that it should have been reserved for so late an era.Wallis, in his History of Algebra, ascribes to Harriott a long list ofdiscoveries, which have been reclaimed for Cardan and Vieta, the greatfounders of the higher algebra, by Cossali and Montucla.[610] Thelatter of these writers has been charged, even by foreigners, withsimilar injustice towards our countryman; and that he has beenprovoked by what he thought the unfairness of Wallis to something likea depreciation of Harriott, seems as clear as that he has himselfrobbed Cardan of part of his due credit in swelling the account ofVieta’s discoveries. From the general integrity, however, ofMontucla’s writings, I am much inclined to acquit him of any wilfulpartiality.

 [609] Oughtred, in his Clavis Mathematica, published in 1631, abbreviated the rules of Vieta, though he still used capital letters. He also gives succinctly the praxis of algebra, or the elementary rules we find in our common books, which, though what are now first learned, were, from the singular course of algebraical history, discovered late. They are, however, given also by Harriott. Wallisii Algebra.

 [610] These may be found in the article Harriott of the Biographia Britannica. Wallis, however, does not suppress the honour due to Vieta quite as much as is intimated by Montucla.

|Descartes.|

19. Harriott had shown what were the hidden laws of algebra, as thescience of symbolical notation. But one man, the pride of France andwonder of his contemporaries, was destined to flash light upon thelabours of the analyst, and to point out what those symbols, so darklyand painfully traced, and resulting commonly in irrational or evenimpossible forms, might represent and explain. The use of numbers, orof letters denoting numbers, for lines and rectangles capable ofdivision into aliquot parts, had long been too obvious to beoverlooked, and is only a compendious abbreviation of geometricalproof. The next step made was the perceiving that irrational numbers,as they are called, represent incommensurable quantities; that is, ifunity be taken for the side of a square, the square-root of two willrepresent its diagonal. Gradually the application of numerical andalgebraical calculation to the solution of problems respectingmagnitude became more frequent and refined.[611] It is certain,however, that no one before Descartes had employed algebraic formulæin the construction of curves; that is, had taught the inverseprocess, not only how to express diagrams by algebra, but how to turnalgebra into diagrams. The ancient geometers, he observes, werescrupulous about using the language of arithmetic in geometry, whichcould only proceed from their not perceiving the relation between thetwo; and this has produced a great deal of obscurity and embarrassmentin some of their demonstrations.[612]

 [611] See note in Vol. II., p. 445.

 [612] Œuvres de Descartes, v. 323.

|His application of algebra to curves.|

20. The principle which Descartes establishes is that every curve, ofthose which are called geometrical, has its fundamental equationexpressing the constant relation between the absciss and the ordinate.Thus, the rectangle under the abscisses of a diameter of the circle isequal to the square of the ordinate, and the other conic sections, aswell as higher curves, have each their leading property, whichdetermines their nature, and shows how they may be generated. A simpleequation can only express the relation of straight lines; the solutionof a quadratic must be found in one of the four conic sections; andthe higher powers of an unknown quantity lead to curves of a superiororder. The beautiful and extensive theory developed by Descartes inthis short treatise displays a most consummate felicity of genius.That such a man, endowed with faculties so original, should haveencroached on the just rights of others, is what we can only believewith reluctance.

|Suspected plagiarism from Harriott.|

21. It must, however, be owned that independently of the suspicions ofan unacknowledged appropriation of what others had thought before him,which unfortunately hang over all the writings of Descartes, he hastaken to himself the whole theory of Harriott on the nature ofequations in a manner which, if it is not a remarkable case ofsimultaneous invention, can only be reckoned a very unwarrantableplagiarism. For not only he does not name Harriott, but he evidentlyintroduces the subject as an important discovery of his own, and inone of his letters asserts his originality in the most positivelanguage.[613] Still it is quite possible that, prepared as the wayhad been by Vieta, and gifted as Descartes was with a wonderfullyintuitive acuteness in all mathematical reasoning, he may in this, asin other instances, have struck out the whole theory by himself.Montucla extols the algebra of Descartes, that is, so much of it ascan be fairly claimed for him without any precursor, very highly; andsome of his inventions in the treatment of equations have long beencurrent in books on that science. He was the first who showed whatwere called impossible or imaginary roots, though he never assignsthem, deeming them no quantities at all. He was also perhaps the firstwho fully understood negative roots, though he still retains theappellation, false roots, which is not so good as Harriott’s epithet,privative. According to his panegyrist, he first pointed out that inevery equation (the terms being all on one side) which has noimaginary roots, there are as many changes of signs as positive roots,as many continuations of them as negative.

 [613] Tant s’en faut que les choses que j’ai écrites puissent être aisément tirées de Viéte, qu’au contraire ce qui est cause que mon traité est difficile à entendre, c’est que j’ai tâché à n’y rien mettre que ce que j’ai crû n’avoir point été su ni par lui ni par aucun autre; comme on peut voir si on confére ce que j’ai écrit du nombre des racines qui sont en chaque équation, dans la page 372, qui est l’endroit où je commence à donner les règles de mon algèbre, avec ce que Viéte en a écrit tout à la fin de son livre, De Emendatione Æquationum; car on verra que je le determine généralement en toutes équations, au lieu que lui n’en aiant donné que quelques exemples particuliers, dont il fait toutefois si grand état qu’il a voulu conclure son livre par là, il a montre qu’il ne le pouvoit déterminer en général. Et ainsi j’ai commencé où il avoit achevé, ce que j’ai fait toutefois sans y penser; car j’ai plus feuilleté Viéte depuis que j’ai reçu votre dernière que je n’avois jamais fait auparavant, l’ayant trouvé ici par hasard entre les mains d’un de mes amis; et entre nous, je ne trouve pas qu’il en ait tant su que je pensois, non obstant qu’il fût fort habile. This is in a letter to Mersenne in 1637. Œuvres de Descartes, vol. vi., p. 300.

 The charge of plagiarism from Harriott was brought against Descartes in his lifetime: Roberval, when an English gentleman showed him the Artis Analyticæ Praxis, exclaimed eagerly, Il l’a vu! il l’a vu! It is also a very suspicious circ*mstance, if true, as it appears to be, that Descartes was in England the year (1631) that Harriott’s work appeared. Carcavi, a friend of Roberval, in a letter to Descartes in 1649, plainly intimates to him that he has only copied Harriott as to the nature of equations Œvres des Descartes, vol. x., p. 373. To this accusation Descartes made no reply. See Biographia Britannica, art. Harriott. The Biographie Universelle unfairly suppresses all mention of this, and labours to depreciate Harriott.

 See Leibnitz’s catalogue of the supposed thefts of Descartes in Vol. III., p. 267, of this work.

|Fermat.|

22. The geometer next in genius to Descartes, and perhaps nearer tohim than to any third, was Fermat, a man of various acquirements, ofhigh rank in the parliament of Toulouse, and of a mind incapable ofenvy, forgiving of detraction, and delighting in truth, with almosttoo much indifference to praise. The works of Fermat were notpublished till long after his death in 1665; but his frequentdiscussions with Descartes, by the intervention of their commoncorrespondent Mersenne, render this place more appropriate for theintroduction of his name. In these controversies Descartes neverbehaved to Fermat with the respect due to his talents; in fact, no onewas ever more jealous of his own pre-eminence, or more unwilling toacknowledge the claims of those who scrupled to follow him implicitly,and who might in any manner be thought rivals of his fame. Yet it isthis unhappy temper of Descartes which ought to render us moreunwilling to credit the suspicions of his designed plagiarism from thediscoveries of others; since this, combined with his unwillingness toacknowledge their merits, and affected ignorance of their writings,would form a character we should not readily ascribe to a man of greatgenius, and whose own writings give many apparent indications ofsincerity and virtue. But in fact there was in this age a greatprobability of simultaneous invention in science, from developingprinciples that had been partially brought to light. Thus Robervaldiscovered the same method of indivisibles as Cavalieri, and Descartesmust equally have been led to this theory of tangents by that ofKepler. Fermat also, who was in possession of his principaldiscoveries before the geometry of Descartes saw the light, derivedfrom Kepler his own celebrated method, de maximis et minimis;a method of discovering the greatest or least value of a variablequantity, such as the ordinate of a curve. It depends on the sameprinciple as that of Kepler. From this he deduced a rule for drawingtangents to curves different from that of Descartes. This led to acontroversy between the two geometers, carried on by Descartes, whoyet is deemed to have been in the wrong, with his usual quickness ofresentment. Several other discoveries, both in pure algebra andgeometry, illustrate the name of Fermat.[614]

 [614] A good article on Fermat, by M. Maurice, will be found in the Biographie Universelle.

|Algebraic geometry not successful at first.|

23. The new geometry of Descartes was not received with the universaladmiration it deserved. Besides its conciseness and the inroad it madeon old prejudices as to geometrical methods, the general boldness ofthe author’s speculations in physical and metaphysical philosophy, aswell as his indiscreet temper, disinclined many who ought to haveappreciated it; and it was in his own country, where he had ceased toreside, that Descartes had the fewest admirers. Roberval made someobjections to his rival’s algebra, but with little success. Acommentary on the treatise of Descartes by Schooten, professor ofGeometry at Leyden, first appeared in 1649.

|Astronomy.--Kepler.|

24. Among those who devoted themselves ardently and successfully toastronomical observations at the end of the sixteenth century, wasJohn Kepler, a native of Wirtemburg, who had already shown that he waslikely to inherit the mantle of Tycho Brahe. He published someastronomical treatises of comparatively small importance in the firstyears of the present period. But in 1609 he made an epoch in thatscience by his Astronomia Nova αιτιολογτος, [aitiologêtos], orCommentaries on the Planet Mars. It had been always assumed that theheavenly bodies revolve in circular orbits round their centre, whetherthis were taken to be the sun or the earth. There was, however, anapparent eccentricity or deviation from this circular motion, which ithad been very difficult to explain, and for this Ptolemy had devisedhis complex system of epicycles. No planet showed more of thiseccentricity than Mars; and it was to Mars that Kepler turned hisattention. After many laborious researches he was brought by degreesto the great discovery, that the motion of the planets, among which,having adopted the Copernican system, he reckoned the earth, is notperformed in circular but in elliptical orbits, the sun not occupyingthe centre but one of the foci of the curve; and, secondly, that it isperformed with such a varying velocity, that the areas described bythe radius vector, or line which joins this focus to the revolvingplanet, are always proportional to the times. A planet, therefore,moves less rapidly as it becomes more distant from the sun. These arethe first and second of the three great laws of Kepler. The third wasnot discovered by him till some years afterwards. He tells us himselfthat on the 8th May, 1618, after long toil in investigating theproportion of the periodic times of the planetary movements to theirorbits, an idea struck his mind, which, chancing to make a mistake inthe calculation, he soon rejected. But a week after, returning to thesubject, he entirely established his grand discovery, that the squaresof the times of revolution are as the cubes of the mean distances ofthe planets. This was first made known to the world in his MysteriumCosmo graphicum, published in 1619; a work mingled up with manystrange effusions of a mind far more eccentric than any of the planetswith which it was engaged. In the Epitome Astronomiæ Copernicanæ,printed the same year, he endeavours to deduce this law from histheory of centrifugal forces. He had a very good insight into theprinciples of universal gravitation, as an attribute of matter; butseveral of his assumptions as to the laws of motion are not consonantto truth. There seems indeed to have been a considerable degree ofgood fortune in the discoveries of Kepler; yet, this may be deemed thereward of his indefatigable laboriousness, and of the ingenuousnesswith which he renounced any hypothesis that he could not reconcilewith his advancing knowledge of the phenomena.

|Conjectures as to comets.|

25. The appearance of three comets in 1619 called once more theastronomers of Europe to speculate on the nature of those anomalousbodies. They still passed for harbingers of worldly catastrophies; andthose who feared them least could not interpret their apparentirregularity. Galileo, though Tycho Brahe had formed a juster notion,unfortunately took them for atmospheric meteors. Kepler, though hebrought them from the far regions of space, did not suspect the natureof their orbits, and thought that, moving in straight lines,they were finally dispersed and came to nothing. But a Jesuit, Grassi,in a treatise, De Tribus Cometis, Rome, 1618, had the honour ofexplaining what had baffled Galileo, and first held them to be planetsmoving in vast ellipses round the sun.[615]

 [615] The Biographie Universelle, art. Grassi, ascribes this opinion to Tycho.

|Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s satellites.|

26. But long before this time the name of Galileo had become immortalby discoveries which, though they would certainly have soon been madeby some other, perhaps far inferior, observer, were happily reservedfor the most philosophical genius of the age. Galileo assures us that,having heard of the invention of an instrument in Holland whichenlarged the size of distant objects, but knowing nothing of itsconstruction, he began to study the theory of refractions till hefound by experiment, that by means of a convex and concave glass in atube, he could magnify an object threefold. He was thus encouraged tomake another which magnified thirty times; and this he exhibited inthe autumn of 1609 to the inhabitants of Venice. Having made a presentof his first telescope to the senate, who rewarded him with a pension,he soon constructed another; and in one of the first nights ofJanuary, 1610, directing it towards the moon, was astonished to seeher surface and edges covered with inequalities. These he consideredto be mountains, and judged by a sort of measurement that some of themmust exceed those of the earth. His next observation was of the milkyway; and this he found to derive its nebulous lustre from myriads ofstars not distinguishable through their remoteness, by the unassistedsight of man. The nebulæ in the constellation Orion he perceived to beof the same character. Before his delight at these discoveries couldhave subsided, he turned his telescope to Jupiter, and was surprisedto remark three small stars, which, in a second night’s observation,had changed there places. In the course of a few weeks, he was able todetermine by their revolutions, which are very rapid, that these aresecondary planets, the moons or satellites of Jupiter; and he hadadded a fourth to their number. These marvellous revelations of naturehe hastened to announce in a work, aptly entitled Sidereus Nuncius,published in March, 1610. In an age when the fascinating science ofastronomy had already so much excited the minds of philosophers, itmay be guessed with what eagerness this intelligence from the heavenswas circulated. A few, as usual, through envy or prejudice, affectedto contemn it. But wisdom was justified of her children. Kepler, inhis Narratio de observatis a se Quatuor Jovis Satellitibus, 1610,confirmed the discoveries of Galileo. Peiresc, an inferior name, nodoubt, but deserving of every praise for his zeal in the cause ofknowledge, having with difficulty procured a good telescope, saw thefour satellites in November, 1610, and is said by Gassendi to haveconceived at that time the ingenious idea that their occultationsmight be used to ascertain the longitude.[616]

 [616] Gassendi Vita Peirescii, p. 77.

|Other discoveries by him.|

27. This is the greatest and most important of the discoveries ofGalileo. But several others were of the deepest interest. He foundthat the planet Venus had phases, that is, periodical differences ofapparent form like the moon; and that these are exactly such as wouldbe produced by the variable reflection of the sun’s light on theCopernican hypothesis; ascribing also the faint light on that part ofthe moon which does not receive the rays of the sun, to the reflectionfrom the earth, called by some late writers earth-shine; which, thoughit had been suggested by Mæstlin, and before him by Leonardo da Vinci,was not generally received among astronomers. Another strikingphenomenon, though he did not see the means of explaining it, was thetriple appearance of Saturn, as if smaller stars were conjoined as itwere like wings to the planet. This, of course, was the ring.

|Spots of the sun discovered.|

28. Meantime the new auxiliary of vision which had revealed so manywonders could not lie unemployed in the hands of others. Apublication, by John Fabricius, at Wittenberg, in July, 1611, DeMaculis in Sole visis, announced a phenomenon in contradiction ofcommon prejudice. The sun had passed for a body of liquid flame, or,if thought solid, still in a state of perfect ignition. Kepler had,some years before, observed a spot, which he unluckily mistook for theorb of Mercury in its passage over the solar orb. Fabricius was notpermitted to claim this discovery as his own. Scheiner, a Jesuit,professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, asserts in a letter, dated12th of November, 1611, that he first saw the spots in the month ofMarch in that year, but he seems to have paid little attention to thembefore that of October. Both Fabricius, however, and Scheinermay be put out of the question. We have evidence, that Harriottobserved the spots on the sun as early as December 8th, 1610. Themotion of the spots suggested the revolution of the sun round itsaxis, completed in twenty-four days, as it is now determined; andtheir frequent alterations of form, as well as occasionaldisappearance, could only be explained by the hypothesis of a luminousatmosphere in commotion, a sea of flame, revealing at intervals thedark central mass of the sun’s body which it envelopes.

|Copernican system held by Galileo.|

29. Though it cannot be said, perhaps, that the discoveries of Galileowould fully prove the Copernican system of the world to those who werealready insensible to reasoning from its sufficiency to explain thephenomena, and from the analogies of nature, they served tofamiliarise the mind to it, and to break down the strong rampart ofprejudice which stood in its way. For eighty years, it has been said,this theory of the earth’s motion had been maintained without censure;and it could only be the greater boldness of Galileo in its assertionwhich drew down upon him the notice of the church. But, in theseeighty years since the publication of the treatise of Copernicus, hisproselytes had been surprisingly few. They were now becoming morenumerous: several had written on that side; and Galileo had begun toform a school of Copernicans who were spreading over Italy. TheLincean society, one of the most useful and renowned of Italianacademies, founded at Rome by Frederic Cesi, a young man of noblebirth, in 1603, had, as a fundamental law, to apply themselves tonatural philosophy; and it was impossible that so attractive andrational a system as that of Copernicus could fail of pleasing anacute and ingenious nation strongly bent upon science. The church,however, had taken alarm; the motion of the earth was conceived to beas repugnant to Scripture as the existence of antipodes had once beenreckoned; and in 1616, Galileo, though respected and in favour withthe court of Rome, was compelled to promise that he would not maintainthat doctrine in any manner. Some letters that he had published on thesubject were put, with the treatise of Copernicus and other works,into the Index Expurgatorius, where, I believe, they stillremain.[617]

 [617] Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo. Fabroni, Vitæ Italorum, vol. i. The former seems to be mistaken in supposing that Galileo did not endeavour to prove his system compatible with Scripture. In a letter to Christina, the Grand duch*ess of Tuscany, the author (Brenna) of the Life in Fabroni’s work, tells us, he argued very elaborately for that purpose. In ea videlicet epistolâ philosophus noster ita disserit, ut nihil etiam ab hominibus, qui omnem in sacrarum literarum studio consumpsissent ætatem, aut subtilius aut verius aut etiam accuratius explicatum expectari potuerit, p. 118. It seems, in fact, to have been this over-desire to prove his theory orthodox, which incensed the church against it. See an extraordinary article on this subject in the eighth number of the Dublin Review (1838). Many will tolerate propositions inconsistent with orthodoxy, when they are not brought into immediate juxtaposition with it.

|His dialogues, and persecution.|

30. He seems, notwithstanding this, to have flattered himself that,after several years had elapsed, he might elude the letter of thisprohibition by throwing the arguments in favour of the Ptolemaic andCopernican systems into the form of a dialogue. This was published in1632; and he might, from various circ*mstances, not unreasonably hopefor impunity. But his expectations were deceived. It is well knownthat he was compelled by the Inquisition at Rome, into whose hands hefell, to retract, in the most solemn and explicit manner, thepropositions he had so well proved, and which he must have stillbelieved. It is unnecessary to give a circ*mstantial account,especially as it has been so well done in a recent work, the Life ofGalileo, by Mr. Drinkwater Bethune. The papal court meant to humiliateGalileo, and through him to strike an increasing class of philosopherswith shame and terror; but not otherwise to punish one, of whom eventhe inquisitors must, as Italians, have been proud; his confinement,though Montucla says it lasted for a year, was very short. Hecontinued, nevertheless, under some restraint for the rest of hislife, and though he lived at his own villa near Florence, was notpermitted to enter the city.[618]

 [618] Fabroni. His Life is written in good Latin, with knowledge and spirit, more than Tiraboschi has ventured to display.

 It appears from some of Grotius’s Epistles, that Galileo had thought, about 1635, of seeking the protection of the United Provinces. But on account of his advanced age he gave this up: fessus senio constituit manere in quibus est locis, et potius quæ ibi sunt incommoda perpeti, quam malæ ætati migrandi onus, et novas parandi amicitias imponere. The very idea shows that he must have deeply felt the restraint imposed upon him in his country. Epist. Grot. 407, 446.

|Descartes alarmed by this.|

31. The church was not mistaken in supposing that she shouldintimidate the Copernicans, but very much so in expecting to suppressthe theory. Descartes was so astonished at hearing of the sentence onGalileo, that he was almost disposed to burn his papers, or at leastto let no one see them. “I cannot collect,” he says, “that he who isan Italian, and a friend of the pope, as I understand, has beencriminated on any other account than for having attempted to establishthe motion of the earth. I know that this opinion was formerlycensured by some cardinals; but I thought I had since heard that noobjection was now made to its being publicly taught even atRome.”[619] It seems not at all unlikely that Descartes was induced,on this account, to pretend a greater degree of difference fromCopernicus than he really felt, and even to deny, in a certain senseof his own, the obnoxious tenet of the earth’s motion.[620] He was notwithout danger of a sentence against truth nearer at hand; CardinalRichelieu having had the intention of procuring a decree of theSorbonne to the same effect, which, by the good sense of some of thatsociety, fell to the ground.[621]

 [619] Vol. vi., p. 239. He says here, of the motion of the earth, Je confesse que s’il est faux, tous les fondemens de ma philosophie le sont aussi.

 [620] Vol. vi., p. 50.

 [621] Montucla, ii., p. 297.

|Progress of Copernican system.|

32. The progress, however, of the Copernican theory in Europe, if itmay not actually be dated from its condemnation at Rome, was certainlynot at all slower after that time. Gassendi rather cautiously tookthat side; the Cartesians brought a powerful reinforcement; Bouillaudand several other astronomers of note avowed themselves favourable toa doctrine which, though in Italy it lay under the ban of the papalpower, was readily saved on this side of the Alps by some of thesalutary distinctions long in use to evade that authority.[622] But inthe middle of the seventeenth century, and long afterwards, there weremathematicians of no small reputation, who struggled staunchly for theimmobility of the earth; and except so far as Cartesian theories mighthave come in vogue, we have no reason to believe that any personsunacquainted with astronomy, either in this country or on thecontinent, had embraced the system of Copernicus. Hume has censuredBacon for rejecting it; but if Bacon had not done so, he would haveanticipated the rest of his countrymen by a full quarter of a century.

 [622] Id., p. 50.

|Descartes denies general gravitation.|

33. Descartes, in his new theory of the solar system, aspired toexplain the secret springs of nature, while Kepler and Galileo hadmerely showed their effects. By what force the heavenly bodies wereimpelled, by what law they were guided, was certainly a very differentquestion from that of the orbit they described or the period of theirrevolution. Kepler had evidently some notion of that universallymutual gravitation which Hooke saw more clearly, and Newtonestablished on the basis of his geometry.[623] But Descartes rejectedthis with contempt. “For,” he says “to conceive this we must not onlysuppose that every portion of matter in the universe is animated, andanimated by several different souls which do not obstruct one another,but that those souls are intelligent and even divine; that they mayknow what is going on in the most remote places, without any messengerto give them notice, and that they may exert their powers there.”[624]Kepler, who took the world for a single animal, a leviathan thatroared in caverns and breathed in the ocean tides, might have found itdifficult to answer this, which would have seemed no objection at allto Campanella. If Descartes himself had been more patient towardsopinions which he had not formed in his own mind, that constant divineagency, to which he was, on other occasions, apt to resort, could notbut have suggested a sufficient explanation of the gravity of matter,without endowing it with self-agency. He had, however, fallen upon acomplicated and original scheme; the most celebrated, perhaps, thoughnot the most admirable, of the novelties which Descartes brought intophilosophy.

 [623] “If the earth and moon,” he says, “were not retained in their orbits, they would fall one on another, the moon moving about 33/34 of the way, the earth the rest, supposing them equally dense.” By this attraction of the moon he accounts for tides. He compares the attraction of the planets towards the sun to that of heavy bodies towards the earth.

 [624] Vol. x., p. 560.

|Cartesian theory of the world.|

34. In a letter to Mersenne, January 9th, 1639, he shortly states thatnotion of the material universe, which he afterwards published in thePrincipia Philosophiæ. “I will tell you,” he says, “that I conceive,or rather I can demonstrate, that besides the matter which composesterrestrial bodies, there are two other kinds; one very subtle, ofwhich the parts are round or nearly round like grains of sand, andthis not only occupies the pores of terrestrial bodies, butconstitutes the substance of all the heavens; the other incomparablymore subtle, the parts of which are so small and move with suchvelocity, that they have no determinate figure, but readily take atevery instant that which is required to fill all the little intervalswhich the other does not occupy.”[625] To this hypothesis of a doubleæther he was driven by his aversion to admit any vacuum in nature; therotundity of the former corpuscles having been produced, as hefancied, by their continual circular motions, which had rubbed offtheir angles. This seems at present rather a clumsy hypothesis, but itis literally that which Descartes presented to the world.

 [625] Vol. viii., p. 73.

35. After having thus filled the universe with different sorts ofmatter, he supposes that the subtler particles, formed by theperpetual rubbing off of the angles of the larger in their progresstowards sphericity, increased by degrees till there was a superfluitythat was not required to fill up the intervals; and this, flowingtowards the centre of the system, became the sun, a very subtle andliquid body, while in like manner, the fixed stars were formed inother systems. Round these centres the whole mass is whirled in anumber of distinct vortices, each of which carries along with it aplanet. The centrifugal motion impels every particle in these vorticesof each instant to fly off from the sun in a straight line; but it isretained by the pressure of those which have already escaped and forma denser sphere beyond it. Light is no more than the effect ofparticles seeking to escape from the centre, and pressing one onanother, though perhaps without actual motion.[626] The planetaryvortices contain sometimes smaller vortices, in which the satellitesare whirled round their principal.

 [626] J’ai souvent averti que par la lumière je n’entendois pas tant le mouvement que cette inclination ou propension que ces petit* corps ont à se mouvoir, et que ce que je dirois du mouvement, pour être plus aisément entendu, se devoit rapporter à cette propension; d’où il est manifeste qua selon moi l’on ne doit entendre autre chose par les couleurs que les différentes variétés qui arrivent en ces propensions. Vol. vii., p. 193.

36. Such, in a few words, is the famous Cartesian theory, which,fallen in esteem as it now is, stood its ground on the continent ofEurope, for nearly a century, till the simplicity of the Newtoniansystem, and, above all, its conformity to the reality of things,gained an undisputed predominance. Besides the arbitrary suppositionsof Descartes, and the various objections that were raised against theabsolute plenum of space and other parts of his theory, it has beenurged that his vortices are not reconcilable, according to the laws ofmotion in fluids, with the relation, ascertained by Kepler, betweenthe periods and distances of the planets; nor does it appear why thesun should be in the focus, rather than in the centre of their orbits.Yet, within a few years it has seemed not impossible, that a part ofhis bold conjectures will enter once more with soberer steps into theschools of philosophy. His doctrine as to the nature of light,improved as it was by Huygens, is daily gaining ground over that ofNewton; that of a subtle æther pervading space, which in fact isnearly the same thing, is becoming a favourite speculation, if we arenot yet to call it an established truth; and the affirmative of aproblem, which an eminent writer has started, whether this æther has avorticose motion round the sun, would not leave us very far from thephilosophy it has been so long our custom to turn into ridicule.

|Transits of Mercury and Venus.|

37. The passage of Mercury over the sun was witnessed by Gassendi in1631. This phenomenon, though it excited great interest in that age,from its having been previously announced, so as to furnish a test ofastronomical accuracy, recurs too frequently to be now considered asof high importance. The transit of Venus is much more rare. Itoccurred on December 4, 1639, and was then only seen by Horrox, ayoung Englishman of extraordinary mathematical genius. There is reasonto ascribe an invention of great importance, though not perhaps ofextreme difficulty, that of the micrometer, to Horrox.

|Laws of Mechanics.|

|Statics of Galileo.|

38. The satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus are not soglorious in the scutcheon of Galileo as his discovery of the trueprinciples of mechanics. These, as we have seen in the former volume,were very imperfectly known till he appeared; nor had the additions tothat science since the time of Archimedes been important. The treatiseof Galileo, Della Scienza Mecanica, has been said, I know not on whatauthority, to have been written in 1592. It was not published,however, till 1634, and then only in a French translation by Mersenne,the original not appearing till 1649. This is chiefly confined tostatics, or the doctrine of equilibrium; it was in his dialogues onmotion, Della Nuova Scienza, published in 1638, that he developed hisgreat principles of the science of dynamics, the moving forces ofbodies. Galileo was induced to write his treatise on mechanics, as hetells us, in consequence of the fruitless attempts he witnessed inengineers to raise weights by a small force, “as if with theirmachines they could cheat nature, whose instinct as it were byfundamental law is that no resistance can be overcome except by asuperior force.” But as one man may raise a weight to the height of afoot by dividing it into equal portions, commensurate to his power,which many men could not raise at once, so a weight, which raisesanother greater than itself, may be considered as doing so bysuccessive instalments of force, during each of which it traverses asmuch space as a corresponding portion of the larger weight. Hence thevelocity, of which space uniformly traversed in a given time is themeasure, is inversely as the masses of the weights; and thus theequilibrium of the straight lever is maintained, when the weights areinversely as their distance from the fulcrum. As this equilibrium ofunequal weights depends on the velocities they would have if set inmotion, its law has been called the principle of virtual velocities.No theorem has been of more important utility to mankind. It is one ofthose great truths of science, which combating and conquering enemiesfrom opposite quarters, prejudice and empiricism, justify the name ofphilosophy against both classes. The waste of labour and expense inmachinery would have been incalculably greater in modern times, couldwe imagine this law of nature not to have been discovered; and astheir misapplication prevents their employment in a proper direction,we owe in fact to Galileo the immense effect which a right applicationof it has produced. It is possible, that Galileo was ignorant of thedemonstration given by Stevinus of the law of equilibrium in theinclined plane. His own is different; but he seems only to considerthe case when the direction of the force is parallel to that of theplane.

|His Dynamics.|

39. Still less was known of the principles of dynamics than of thoseof statics, till Galileo came to investigate them. The acceleration offalling bodies, whether perpendicularly or on inclined planes, wasevident; but in what ratio this took place, no one had succeeded indetermining, though many had offered conjectures. He showed that thevelocity acquired was proportional to the time from the commencementof falling. This might now be demonstrated from the laws of motion;but Galileo, who did not perhaps distinctly know them, made use ofexperiment. He then proved by reasoning that the spaces traversed infalling were as the squares of the times or velocities; that theirincrements in equal times were as the uneven numbers, 1, 3, 5, 7, andso forth; and that the whole space was half what would have beentraversed uniformly from the beginning with the final velocity. Theseare the great laws of accelerated and retarded motion, from whichGalileo deduced most important theorems. He showed that the time inwhich bodies roll down the length of inclined planes is equal to thatin which they would fall down the height, and in different planes isproportionate to the height; and that their acquired velocity is inthe same ratios. In some propositions he was deceived; but the scienceof dynamics owes more to Galileo than to any one philosopher. Themotion of projectiles had never been understood; he showed it to beparabolic; and in this he not only necessarily made use of a principleof vast extent, that of compound motion, which, though it is clearlymentioned in one passage by Aristotle[627] and may probably be impliedin the mechanical reasonings of others, does not seem to have beenexplicitly laid down by modern writers, but must have seen theprinciple of curvilinear deflection by forces acting in infinitelysmall portions of time. The ratio between the times of vibration inpendulums of unequal length, had early attracted Galileo’s attention.But he did not reach the geometrical exactness of which this subjectis capable.[628] He developed a new principle as to the resistance ofsolids to the fracture of their parts, which, though Descartes asusual treated it with scorn, is now established in philosophy. “Oneforms, however,” says Playfair, “a very imperfect idea of thisphilosopher from considering the discoveries and inventions, numerousand splendid as they are, of which he was the undisputed author. It isby following his reasonings, and by pursuing the train of histhoughts, in his own elegant, though somewhat diffuse expositionof them, that we become acquainted with the fertility of hisgenius, with the sagacity, penetration, and comprehensiveness of hismind. The service which he rendered to real knowledge is to beestimated not only from the truths which he discovered, but from theerrors which he detected; not merely from the sound principles whichhe established, but from the pernicious idols which he overthrew. Ofall the writers who have lived in an age which was yet only emergingfrom ignorance and barbarism, Galileo has most entirely the tone oftrue philosophy, and is most free from any contamination of the times,in taste, sentiment, and opinion.”[629]

 [627] Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo, p. 80.

 [628] Fabroni.

 [629] Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclop. Britain.

|Mechanics of Descartes.|

40. Descartes, who left nothing in philosophy untouched, turned hisacute mind to the science of mechanics, sometimes with signal credit,sometimes very unsuccessfully. He reduced all statics to oneprinciple, that it requires as much force to raise a body to a givenheight, as to raise a body of double weight to half the height. Thisis the theorem of virtual velocities in another form. In many respectshe displays a jealousy of Galileo, and an unwillingness to acknowledgehis discoveries, which puts himself often in the wrong. “I believe,”he says, “that the velocity of very heavy bodies which do not movevery quickly in descending increases nearly in a duplicate ratio; butI deny that this is exact, and I believe that the contrary is the casewhen the movement is very rapid.”[630] This recourse to the air’sresistance, a circ*mstance of which Galileo was well aware, in orderto diminish the credit of a mathematical theorem, is unworthy ofDescartes; but it occurs more than once in his letters. He maintainedalso, against the theory of Galileo, that bodies do not begin to movewith an infinitely small velocity, but have a certain degree of motionat the first instance, which is afterwards accelerated.[631] In thistoo, as he meant to extend his theory to falling bodies, the consentof philosophers has decided the question against him. It was acorollary from these notions that he denies the increments of spacesto be according to the progression of uneven numbers.[632] Nor wouldhe allow that the velocity of a body augments its force, though it isa concomitant.[633]

 [630] Œuvres de Descartes, vol. viii., p. 24.

 [631] Il faut savoir, quoique Galilée et quelques autres disent au contraire, que les corps qui commencent à descendre, ou à se mouvoir en quelque façon que ce soit, ne passent point par tous les degrés de tardiveté; mais que des le premier moment ils ont certaine vitesse qui s’augmente après de beaucoup, et c’est de cette augmentation que vient la force de la percussion. viii., 181.

 [632] Cette proportion d’augmentation selon les nombres impairs, 1, 3, 5, 7, &c., qui est dans Galilée et que je crois vous avoir aussi écrite autrefois, ne peut être vraie, qu’en supposant deux ou trois choses qui sont très fausses, dont l’une est que le mouvement croisse par degrés depuis le plus lent, ainsi que le songe Galilée, et l’autre que la résistance de l’air n’empêche point. Vol. ix., p. 349.

 [633] Je pense que la vitesse n’est pas la cause de l’augmentation de la force, encore qu’elle l’accompagne toujours. Id. p. 356, See also vol. viii., p. 14. He was probably perplexed by the metaphysical notion of causation, which he knew not how to ascribe to mere velocity. The fact that increased velocity is a condition or antecedent of augmented force could not be doubted.

|Law of motion laid down by Descartes.|

41. Descartes, however, is the first who laid down the laws of motion;especially that all bodies persist in their present state of rest oruniform rectilineal motion till affected by some force. Many hadthought, as the vulgar always do, that a continuance of rest wasnatural to bodies, but did not perceive that the same principle ofinertia or inactivity was applicable to them in rectilineal motion.Whether this is deducible from theory, or depends wholly onexperience, by which we ought to mean experiment, is a question weneed not discuss. The fact, however, is equally certain; and henceDescartes inferred that every curvilinear deflection is produced bysome controlling force, from which the body strives to escape in thedirection of a tangent to the curve. The most erroneous part of hismechanical philosophy is contained in some propositions as to thecollision of bodies, so palpably incompatible with obvious experiencethat it seems truly wonderful he could ever have adopted them. But hewas led into these paradoxes by one of the arbitrary hypotheses whichalways governed him. He fancied it a necessary consequence from theimmutability of the divine nature that there should always be the samequantity of motion in the universe; and rather than abandon thissingular assumption he did not hesitate to assert, that two hardbodies striking each other in opposite directions would be reflectedwith no loss of velocity; and, what is still more outrageouslyparadoxical, that a smaller body is incapable of communicating motionto a greater; for example, that the red billiard-ball cannotput the white into motion. This manifest absurdity he endeavoured toremove by the arbitrary supposition, that when we see, as weconstantly do, the reverse of his theorem take place, it is owing tothe air, which, according to him, renders bodies more susceptible ofmotion, than they would naturally be.

|Also those of compound forces.|

42. Though Galileo, as well as others, must have been acquainted withthe laws of the composition of moving forces, it does not appear thatthey had ever been so distinctly enumerated as by Descartes, in apassage of his Dioptrics.[634] That the doctrine was in some measurenew may be inferred from the objections of Fermat; and Clerselier,some years afterwards, speaks of persons “not much versed inmathematics, who cannot understand an argument taken from the natureof compound motion.”[635]

 [634] Vol. v., p. 18.

 [635] Vol. vi., p. 508.

|Other discoveries in mechanics.|

43. Roberval demonstrated what seems to have been assumed by Galileo,that the forces on an oblique or crooked lever balance each other,when they are inversely as the perpendiculars drawn from the centre ofmotion to their direction. Fermat, more versed in geometry thanphysics, disputed this theorem which is now quite elementary.Descartes, in a letter to Mersenne, ungraciously testifies hisagreement with it.[636] Torricelli, the most illustrious disciple ofGalileo, established that when weights balance each other in allpositions, their common centre of gravity does not ascend or descend,and conversely.

 [636] Je suis de l’opinion, says Descartes, de ceux qui disent que _pondera sunt in æquilibrio quando sunt in ratione reciproca linearum perpendicularium_, &c., vol. xi., p. 357. He would not name Roberval; one of those littlenesses which appear too frequently in his letters and in all his writings. Descartes in fact could not bear to think that another, even though not an enemy, had discovered anything. In the preceding page he says: C’est une chose ridicule que de vouloir employer la raison du levier dans la poulie, ce qui est, si j’ai bonne mémoire, une imagination de Guide Ubalde. Yet this imagination is demonstrated in all our elementary books on mechanics.

|In Hydrostatics and pneumatics.|

44. Galileo, in a treatise entitled, Delle Cose che stanno nell’Acqua,lays down the principles of hydrostatics already established byStevin, and among others what is called the hydrostatical paradox.Whether he was acquainted with Stevin’s writings, may be perhapsdoubted; it does not appear that he mentions them. The more difficultscience of hydraulics was entirely created by two disciples ofGalileo, Castellio and Torricelli. It is one everywhere of highimportance, and especially in Italy. The work of Castellio, DellaMisura dell’Acque Correnti, and a continuation, were published atRome, in 1628. His practical skill in hydraulics, displayed incarrying off the stagnant waters of the Arno, and in many other publicworks, seems to have exceeded his theoretical science. An error, intowhich he fell, supposing the velocity of fluids to be as the heightdown which they had descended, led to false results. Torricelli provedthat it was as the square root of the altitude. The latter of thesetwo was still more distinguished by his discovery of the barometer.The principle of the syphon or sucking-pump, and the impossibility ofraising water in it more than about thirty-three feet, were both wellknown; but even Galileo had recourse to the clumsy explanation thatnature limited her supposed horror of a vacuum to this altitude. Itoccurred to the sagacity of Torricelli that the weight of theatmospheric column pressing upon the fluid which supplied the pump wasthe cause of this rise above its level; and that the degree of risewas consequently the measure of that weight. That the air had weightwas known, indeed, to Galileo and Descartes; and the latter not onlyhad some notion of determining it by means of a tube filled withmercury, but in a passage which seems to have been much overlooked,distinctly suggests as one reason why water will not rise aboveeighteen _brasses_ in a pump, “the weight of the water whichcounterbalances that of the air.”[637] Torricelli happily thought ofusing mercury, a fluid thirteen times heavier, instead of water, andthus invented a portable instrument by which the variations of themercurial column might be readily observed. These he found tofluctuate between certain well known limits, and in circ*mstanceswhich might justly be ascribed to the variations of atmosphericgravity. This discovery he made in 1643; and in 1648, Pascal, by hiscelebrated experiment on the Puy de Dome, established the theory ofatmospheric pressure beyond dispute. He found a considerabledifference in the height of the mercury at the bottom and the top ofthat mountain; and a smaller yet perceptible variation was proved ontaking the barometer to the top of one of the loftiest churches inParis.

 [637] Vol. vii., p. 437.

|Optics.--Discoveries of Kepler.|

|Invention of the telescope.|

45. The science of optics was so far from falling behind otherbranches of physics in this period, that, including the two greatpractical discoveries which illustrate it, no former or latergeneration has witnessed such an advance. Kepler began, in the year1604, by one of his first works, Paralipomena ad Vitellionem, a titlesomewhat more modest than he was apt to assume. In this supplement tothe great Polish philosopher of the middle ages, he first explainedthe structure of the human eye, and its adaptation to the purposes ofvision. Porta and Maurolycus had made important discoveries, but leftthe great problem untouched. Kepler had the sagacity to perceive theuse of the retina as the canvas on which images were painted. In histreatise, says Montucla, we are not to expect the precision of our ownage; but it is full of ideas novel and worthy of a man of genius. Hetraced the causes of imperfect vision in its two principal cases,where the rays of light converge to a point before or behind theretina. Several other optical phenomena are well explained by Kepler;but he was unable to master the great enigma of the science, the lawof refraction. To this he turned his attention again in 1611, when hepublished a treatise on Dioptrics. He here first laid the foundationof that science. The angle of refraction, which Maurolycus hadsupposed equal to that of incidence, he here assumed to be one thirdof it; which, though very erroneous as a general theorem, wassufficiently accurate for the sort of glasses he employed. It was hisobject to explain the principle of the telescope; and in this he wellsucceeded. That admirable invention was then quite recent. Whateverendeavours have been made to carry up the art of assisting vision bymeans of a tube to much more ancient times, it seems to be fullyproved that no one had made use of combined lenses for that purpose.The slight benefit which a hollow tube affords by obstructing thelateral ray, must have been early familiar, and will account forpassages which have been construed to imply what the writers neverdreamed of.[638] The real inventor of the telescope is not certainlyknown. Metius of Alkmaer long enjoyed that honour; but the best claimseems to be that of Zachary Jens, a dealer in spectacles atMiddleburg. The date of the invention, or at least of its publicity,is referred, beyond dispute, to 1609. The news of so wonderful anovelty spread rapidly through Europe; and in the same year, Galileo,as has been mentioned, having heard of the discovery, constructed, byhis own sagacity, the instrument which he exhibited at Venice. It is,however, unreasonable to regard himself as the inventor; and in thisrespect his Italian panegyrists have gone too far. The original sortof telescope, and the only one employed in Europe for above thirtyyears, was formed of a convex object-glass with a concave eye-glass.This, however, has the disadvantage of diminishing too much the spacewhich can be taken in at one point of view; “so that,” says Montucla,“one can hardly believe that it could render astronomy such service asit did in the hands of a Galileo or a Scheiner.” Kepler saw theprinciple upon which another kind might be framed with both glassesconvex. This is now called the astronomical telescope, and was firstemployed a little before the middle of the century. The former, calledthe Dutch telescope, is chiefly used for short spying-glasses.

 [638] Even Dutens, whose sole aim is to depreciate those whom modern science has most revered, cannot pretend to show that the ancients made use of glasses to assist vision. Origine des Découvertes, i., 218.

|Of the microscope.|

46. The microscope has also been ascribed to Galileo; and so far withbetter cause, that we have no proof of his having known the previousinvention. It appears, however, to have originated, like thetelescope, in Holland, and perhaps at an earlier time. CorneliusDrebbel, who exhibited the microscope in London about 1620, has oftenpassed for the inventor. It is suspected by Montucla that the firstmicroscopes had concave eye-glasses; and that the present form withtwo convex glasses is not older than the invention of the astronomicaltelescope.

|Antonio de Dominis.|

47. Antonio de Dominis, the celebrated archbishop of Spalatro, in abook published in 1611, though written several years before, De RadiisLucis in Vitris Perspectivis et Iride, explained more of the phenomenaof the rainbow than was then understood. The varieties of colour hadbaffled all inquirers, though the bow itself was well known to be thereflection of solar light from drops of rain. Antonio de Dominis, toaccount for these, had recourse to refraction, the known means ofgiving colour to the solar ray; and guiding himself by the experimentof placing between the eye and the sun a glass bottle of water, fromthe lower side of which light issued in the same order of colours asin the rainbow, he inferred that after two refractions and oneintermediate reflection within the drop, the ray came to the eyetinged with different colours, according to the angle at which it hadentered. Kepler, doubtless ignorant of De Dominis’s book, hadsuggested nearly the same. “This, though not a complete theory of therainbow, and though it left a great deal to occupy the attention,first of Descartes, and afterwards of Newton, was probably just, andcarried the explanation as far as the principles then understoodallowed it to go. The discovery itself may be considered as an anomalyin science, as it is one of a very refined and subtle nature, made bya man who has given no other indication of much scientific sagacity oracuteness. In many things, his writings show great ignorance ofprinciples of optics well known in his time, so that Boscovich, anexcellent judge in such matters, has said of him, ‘hom*o opticarumrerum supra quod patiatur ea ætas imperitissimus.’”[639] Montucla ishardly less severe on De Dominis, who, in fact, was a man of moreingenious than solid understanding.

 [639] Playfair, Dissertation on Physical Philosophy, p. 119.

|Dioptrics of Descartes.--Law of refraction.|

48. Descartes announced to the world in his Dioptrics, 1637, that hehad at length solved the mystery which had concealed the law ofrefraction. He showed that the sine of the angle of incidence at whichthe ray enters, has, in the same medium, a constant ratio to that ofthe angle at which it is refracted, or bent in passing through. Butthis ratio varies according to the medium; some having a much morerefractive power than others. This was a law of beautiful simplicityas well as extensive usefulness; but such was the fatality, as wewould desire to call it, which attended Descartes, that this discoveryhad been indisputably made twenty years before by a Dutch geometer ofgreat reputation, Willibrod Snell. The treatise of Snell had neverbeen published; but we have the evidence both of Vossius and Huygens,that Hortensius, a Dutch professor, had publicly taught the discoveryof his countryman. Descartes had long lived in Holland; privately, itis true, and by his own account reading few books; so that in this, asin other instances, we may be charitable in our suspicions; yet it isunfortunate that he should perpetually stand in need of suchindulgence.

|Disputed by Fermat.|

49. Fermat did not inquire whether Descartes was the originaldiscoverer of the law of refraction but disputed its truth. Descartes,indeed, had not contented himself with experimentally ascertaining it,but, in his usual manner, endeavoured to show the path of the ray bydirect reasoning. The hypothesis he brought forward seemed not veryprobable to Fermat, nor would it be permitted at present. His rival,however, fell into the same error; and starting from an equallydubious supposition of his own, endeavoured to establish the true lawof refraction. He was surprised to find that, after a calculationfounded upon his own principle, the real truth of a constant ratiobetween the sines of the angles came out according to the theorem ofDescartes. Though he did not the more admit the validity of thelatter’s hypothetical reasoning, he finally retired from thecontroversy with an elegant compliment to his adversary.

|Curves of Descartes.|

50. In the Dioptrics of Descartes, several other curious theorems arecontained. He demonstrated that there are peculiar curves, of whichlenses may be constructed, by the refraction from whose superficiesall the incident rays will converge to a focal point, instead of beingspread, as in ordinary lenses, over a certain extent of surface,commonly called its spherical aberration. The effect of employing suchcurves of glass would be an increase of illumination, and a moreperfect distinctness of image. These curves were called the ovals ofDescartes; but the elliptic or hyperbolic speculum would answer nearlythe same purpose. The latter kind has been frequently attempted; but,on account of the difficulties in working them, if there were no otherobjection, none but spherical lenses are in use. In Descartes’stheory, he explained the equality of the angles of incidence andreflection in the case of light, correctly as to the result, thoughwith the assumption of a false principle of his own, that no motion islost in the collision of hard bodies such as he conceived light to be.Its perfect elasticity makes his demonstration true.

|Theory of the rainbow.|

51. Descartes carried the theory of the rainbow beyond the point whereAntonio de Dominis had left it. He gave the true explanation of theouter bow, by a second intermediate reflection of the solarray within the drop: and he seems to have answered the question mostnaturally asked, though far from being of obvious solution, why allthis refracted light should only strike the eye in two arches withcertain angles and diameters, instead of pouring its prismatic lustreover all the rain-drops of the cloud. He found that no pencil of lightcontinued, after undergoing the processes of refraction and reflectionin the drop, to be composed of parallel rays, and consequently topossess that degree of density which fits it to excite sensation inour eyes, except the two which make those angles with the axis drawnfrom the sun to an opposite point at which the two bows are perceived.

CHAPTER XXVI.

 HISTORY OF SOME OTHER PROVINCES OF LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650.

 SECT. I.

 ON NATURAL HISTORY.

 _Zoology--Fabricius on Language of Brutes--Botany._

|Aldrovandus.|

1. The vast collections of Aldrovandus on zoology, though they may beconsidered as representing to us the knowledge of the sixteenthcentury, were, as has been seen before, only published in a small partbefore its close. The fourth and concluding part of his Ornithologyappeared in 1603; the History of Insects in 1604. Aldrovandus himselfdied in 1605. The posthumous volumes appeared in considerableintervals: that on molluscous animals and zoophytes in 1606; on fishesand cetacea in 1613; on whole-hoofed quadrupeds in 1616; on digitatequadrupeds, both viviparous and oviparous, in 1637; on serpents in1640; and on cloven-hoofed quadrupeds in 1642. There are also volumeson plants and minerals. These were all printed at Bologna, and most ofthem afterwards at Frankfort; but a complete collection is very rare.

|Clusius.|

2. In the Exotica of Clusius, 1605, a miscellaneous volume on naturalhistory, chiefly, but not wholly, consisting of translations orextracts from older works, we find several new species of simiæ, themanis, or scaly ant-eater of the old world, the three-toed sloth, andone or two armadillos. We may add also the since extinguished race,that phœnix of ornithologists, the much-lamented dodo. This portlybird is delineated by Clusius, such as it then existed in theMauritius.

|Rio and Marcgraf.|

3. In 1648, Piso on the Materia Medica of Brazil, together withMarcgraf’s Natural History of the same country, was published atLeyden, with notes by De Laet. The descriptions of Marcgraf are good,and enable us to identify the animals. They correct the imperfectnotions of Gesner, and add several species which do not appear in hiswork, or perhaps in that of Aldrovandus: such as the tamandua, orBrasilian ant-eater; several of the family of cavies; the coati-mondi,which Gesner had perhaps meant in a defective description; the lama,the pacos, the jaguar, and some smaller feline animals; the prehensileporcupine, and several ruminants. But some, at least, of these hadbeen already described in the histories of the West Indies, byHernandez d’Oviedo, Acosta, and Herrera.

|Jonston.|

4. Jonston, a Pole of Scots origin, collected the information of hispredecessors in a Natural History of Animals, published in successiveparts from 1648 to 1652. The History of Quadrupeds appeared in thelatter year. “The text,” says Cuvier, “is extracted, with some taste,from Gesner, Aldrovandus, Marcgraf, and Mouffet; and it answered itspurpose as an elementary work in natural history, till Linnæus taughta more accurate method of classifying, naming, and describing animals.Even Linnæus cites him continually.”[640] I find in Jonston a prettygood account of the chimpanzee (Orang-otang Indorum, ab Angoladelatus), taken perhaps from the Observationes Medicæ of Tulpius.[641]The delineations in Jonston being from copper-plates, are superior tothe coarse wood-cuts of Gesner, but fails sometimes very greatly inexactness. In his notions of classification, being little else than acompiler, it may be supposed that he did not advance a step beyond hispredecessors. The Theatrum Insectorum by Mouffet, an English physicianof the preceding century, was published in 1634; it seems to becompiled in a considerable degree from the unpublished papers ofGesner and foreign naturalists, whom the author has rather tooservilely copied. Haller, however, is said to have placed Mouffetabove all entomologists before the age of Swammerdam.[642]

 [640] Biogr. Univ.

 [641] Grotius; Epist. ad Gallos, p. 21., gives an account of a chimpanzee, monstrum hominis dicam an bestiæ? and refers to Tulpius. The doubt of Grotius as to the possible humanity of this quam similis turpissima bestia nobis, is not so strange as the much graver language of Linnæus.

 [642] Biogr. Univ. Chalmers. I am no judge of the merits of the book; but if the following sentence of the English translation does it no injustice, Mouffet must have taken little pains to do more than transcribe. “In Germany and England I do not hear that there are any _grasshoppers_ at all; but if there be, they are _in both countries_ called Bow-krickets, or Baulm-krickets,” p. 989. This translation is subjoined to Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, collected out of Gesner and others, in an edition of 1658. The first edition of Topsell’s very ordinary composition was in 1608.

|Fabricius on the language of brutes.|

5. We may place under the head of zoology a short essay by Fabriciusde Aquapendente on the language of brutes; a subject very curious initself, and which has by no means sufficiently attracted notice evenin this experimental age. It cannot be said that Fabricius entersthoroughly into the problem, much less exhausts it. He divides thesubject into six questions:--1. Whether brutes have a language, and ofwhat kind: 2. How far it differs from that of man, and whether thelanguages of different species differ from one another: 3. What is itsuse: 4. In what modes animals express their affections: 5. What meanswe have of understanding their language: 6. What is their organ ofspeech. The affirmative of the first question he proves by authorityof several writers, confirmed by experience, especially of hunters,shepherds, and cowherds, who know by the difference of sounds whatanimals mean to express. It may be objected that brutes utter sounds,but do not speak. But this is merely as we define speech; and heattempts to show that brutes by varying their utterance do all that wedo by _literal_ sounds. This leads to the solution of the secondquestion. Men agree with brutes in having speech, and in formingelementary sounds of determinate time; but ours is more complex; theseelementary sounds, which he calls _articulos_, or joints of thevoice, being quicker and more numerous. Man, again, forms his soundsmore by means of the lips and tongue, which are softer in him thanthey are in brutes. Hence, his speech runs into great variety andcomplication, which we call language, while that of animals within thesame species is much more uniform.

6. The question as to the use of speech to brutes is not difficult.But he seems to confine this utility to the expression of particularemotions, and does not meddle with the more curious inquiry, whetherthey have a capacity of communicating specific facts to one another;and if they have, whether this is done through the organs of thevoice. The fourth question is, in how many modes animals express theirfeelings. These are by look, by gesture, by sound, by voice, bylanguage. Fabricius tells us that he had seen a dog, meaning to expelanother dog from the place he wished himself to occupy, begin bylooking fierce, then use meaning gestures, then growl, and finallybark. Inferior animals, such as worms, have only the two former sortsof communication. Fishes, at least some kinds, have a power ofemitting a sound, though not properly a voice; this may be by the finsor gills. To insects also he seems to deny voice, much more language,though they declare their feelings by sound. Even of oxen, stags, andsome other quadrupeds, he would rather say that they have no voicethan language. But cats, dogs, and birds, have a proper language. All,however, are excelled by man, who is truly called μεροψ [meropsi],from his more clear and distinct articulations.

7. In the fifth place, however difficult it may appear to understandthe language of brutes, we know that they understand what is said tothem; how much more, therefore, ought we, superior in reason, tounderstand them. He proceeds from hence to an analysis of thepassions, which he reduces to four: joy, desire, grief, and fear.Having thus drawn our map of the passions, we must ascertain byobservation what are the articulations of which any species of animalsis capable, which cannot be done by description. His own experimentswere made on the dog and the hen. Their articulations are sometimescomplex; as, when a dog wants to come into his master’s chamber, hebegins by a shrill small yelp, expressive of desire, which becomesdeeper, so as to denote a mingled desire and annoyance, and ends in alamentable howl of the latter feeling alone. Fabricius gives severalother rules deduced from observation of dogs, but ends by confessingthat he has not fully attained his object, which was to furnisheveryone with a compendious method of understanding the language ofanimals: the inquirer must therefore proceed upon these rudiments, andmake out more by observation and good canine society. He showsfinally, from the different structure of the organs of speech, that nobrute can ever rival man; their chief instrument being the throat,which we use only for vowel sounds. Two important questions are hardlytouched in this little treatise: first, as has been said, whetherbrutes can communicate specific facts to each other; and secondly, towhat extent they can associate ideas with the language of man. Theseought to occupy our excellent naturalists.

|Botany--Columna.|

8. Columna, belonging to the Colonna family, and one of the greatestbotanists of the sixteenth century, maintained the honour of thatscience during the present period, which his long life embraced. Inthe academy of the Lincei, founded by Prince Fredric Cesi about 1606,and to which the revival of natural philosophy is greatly due Columnatook a conspicuous share. His Ecphrasis, a history of rare plants, waspublished in two parts at Rome, in 1606 and 1616. In this he laid downthe true basis of the science, by establishing the distinction ofgenera, which Gesner, Cæsalpin, and Camerarius had already conceived,but which it was left for Columna to confirm and employ. He alone, ofall the contemporary botanists, seems to have appreciated the luminousideas which Cæsalpin had bequeathed to posterity.[643] In hisposthumous observations on the natural history of Mexico by Hernandez,he still farther developed the philosophy of botanical arrangements.Columna is the first who used copper instead of wood to delineateplants; an improvement which soon became general. This was in theΦυτοβασανος, [Phytobasanos], sive Plantarum aliquot Historia, 1594.There are errors in this work; but it is remarkable for the accuracyof the descriptions, and for the correctness and beauty of thefigures.[644]

 [643] Biogr. Univ.

 [644] Id. Sprengel.

|John and Gaspar Bauhin.|

9. Two brothers, John and Gaspar Bauhin, inferior in philosophy toColumna, made more copious additions to the nomenclature anddescription of plants. The elder, who was born in 1541, and hadacquired some celebrity as a botanist in the last century, lived tocomplete, but not to publish, an Historia Plantarum Universalis, whichdid not appear till 1650. It contains the descriptions of 5,000species, and the figures of 3,577, but small and ill executed. Hisbrother, though much younger, had preceded him, not only by thePhytopinax in 1596, but by his chief work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici,in 1623. “Gaspar Bauhin,” says a modern botanist, “is inferior to hisbrother in his descriptions and in sagacity; but his delineations arebetter, and his synonyms more complete. They are both below Clusius indescription, and below several older botanists in their figures. Intheir arrangement they follow Lobel, and have neglected the lightswhich Cæsalpin and Columna had held out. Their chief praise is to havebrought together a great deal of knowledge acquired by theirpredecessors, but the merit of both has been exaggerated.”[645]

 [645] Biog. Univ. Pulteney speaks more highly of John Bauhin. “That which Gesner performed for zoology, John Bauhin effected in botany. It is, in reality, a repository of all that was valuable in the ancients, in his immediate predecessors, and in the discoveries of his own time, relating to the history of vegetables, and is executed with that accuracy and critical judgment which can only be exhibited by superior talents.” Hist. of Botany in England, i. 190.

|Parkinson.|

10. Johnson, in 1636, published an edition of Gerard’s Herbal. But theTheatrum Botanicum of Parkinson, in 1640, is a work, says Pulteney, ofmuch more originality than Gerard’s and it contains abundantly morematter. We find in it near 3,800 plants; but many descriptions recurmore than once. The arrangement is in seventeen classes, partlyaccording to the known or supposed qualities of the plant, and partlyaccording to their external character.[646] “This heterogeneousclassification, which seems to be founded on that of Dodoens, showsthe small advances that had been made towards any truly scientificdistribution; on the contrary, Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson, hadrather gone back, by not sufficiently pursuing the example of Lobel.”

 [646] P. 146.

 SECT. II.

 ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.

_Claims of early Writers to the Discovery of the Circulation of theBlood--Harvey--Lacteal Vessels discovered by Asellius--Medicine._

|Valves of the veins discovered.|

11. The first important discovery that was made public in this centurywas that of the valves of the veins; which is justly ascribed toFabricius de Aquapendente, a professor at Padua; because, though someof these valves are described even by Berenger, and furtherobservations were made on the subject by Sylvius, Vesalius, and otheranatomists, yet Fallopius himself had in this instance thrown back thescience by denying their existence, and no one before Fabricius hadgeneralised the discovery. This he did in his public lectures as earlyas 1524; but his tract De Venarum Ostiolis appeared in 1603. Thisdiscovery, as well as that of Harvey, has been attributed to FatherPaul Sarpi, whose immense reputation in the north of Italy accreditedevery tale favourable to his glory. But there seems to be no sort ofground for either supposition.

|Theory of the blood’s circulation.|

12. The discovery of a general circulation in the blood has done suchhonour to Harvey’s name, and has been claimed for so many others, thatit deserves more consideration than we can usually give to anatomicalscience. According to Galen, and the general theory of anatomistsformed by his writings, the arterial blood flows from the heart to theextremities, and returns again by the same channels, the venous bloodbeing propelled, in like manner, to and from the liver. The discoveryattributed to Harvey was, that the arteries communicate with theveins, and that all the blood returns to the heart by the lattervessels. Besides this general or systemic circulation, there is onecalled the pulmonary, in which the blood is carried by certainarteries through the lungs, and returned again by corresponding veins,preparatory to its being sent into the general sanguineous system; sothat its course is through a double series of ramified vessels, eachbeginning and terminating at the heart, but not at the same side ofthe heart; the left side, which from a cavity called its ventriclethrows out the arterial blood by the aorta, and by another called itsauricle receives that which has passed through the lungs by thepulmonary vein, being separated by a solid septum from the right side,which, by means of similar cavities, receives the blood of all theveins, excepting those of the lungs, and throws it out into thepulmonary artery. It is thus evident, that the word pulmonarycirculation is not strictly proper, there being only one for the wholebody.

|Sometimes ascribed to Servetus.|

13. The famous work of Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio, has excitedthe attention of the literary part of the world, only by the unhappyfate it brought upon the author, and its extreme scarcity, but by aremarkable passage wherein he has been supposed to describe thecirculation of the blood. That Servetus had a just idea of thepulmonary circulation and the aeration of the blood in the lungs, ismanifest by this passage, and is denied by no one; but it has been theopinion of anatomists that he did not apprehend the return of the massof the blood through the veins to the right auricle of the heart.[647]

 [647] In the first volume of this work, p. 643, I have observed that Levasseur had come much nearer to the theory of a general circulation than Servetus. But the passage in Levasseur, which I knew only from the quotation in Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie, i., 373, does not, on consulting the book itself, bear out the inference which Portal seems to deduce; and he has, not quite rightly, omitted all expressions which he thought erroneous. Thus Levasseur precedes the first sentence of Portal’s quotation by the following: Intus (in corde) sunt sinus seu ventriculi duo tantum, septo quodam medio discreti, _per cujus foramina_ sanguis et spiritus communicatur. In utroque duo vasa habentur. For this he quotes Galen; and the perforation of the septum of the heart is known to be one of Galen’s errors. Upon the whole, there seems no ground for believing that Levasseur was acquainted with the general circulation; and though his language may at first lead us to believe that he speaks of that through the lungs, even this is not distinctly made out. Sprengel, in his History of Medicine, does not mention the name of Levasseur (or Vassæus, as he was called in Latin) among those who anticipated, in any degree, the discovery of circulation. The book quoted by Portal is Vassæus in Anatomen Corporis Humani Tabulæ Quatuor, several times printed between 1540 and 1560.

 Andrès (Origine e Progressio d’Ogni Litteratura, vol. xiv., p. 37) has put in a claim for a Spanish farrier, by name Reina, who, in a book printed in 1552, but of which there seems to have been an earlier edition (Libro di Maniscalcheria hecho y ordenado por Francisco de la Reyna), asserts, in few and plain words, as Andrès quotes them in Italian, that the blood goes in a circle through all the limbs. I do not know that the book has been seen by anyone else; and it would be desirable to examine the context, since other writers have seemed to know the truth without really apprehending it.

 That Servetus was only acquainted with the pulmonary circulation, has been the general opinion. Portal, though in one place he speaks with less precision, repeatedly limits the discovery to this; and Sprengel does not entertain the least suspicion that it went farther. Andrès (xiv. 38), not certainly a medical authority, but conversant with such, and very partial to Spanish claimants, asserts the same. If a more general language may be found in some writers, it may be ascribed to their want of distinguishing the two circulations. A medical friend who, at my request, perused and considered the passage in Servetus, as it is quoted in Allwoerden’s life, says in a letter, “All that this passage implies which has any reference to the greater circulation, may be comprised in the following points:--1. That the heart transmits a vivifying principle along the arteries and the blood which they contain to the anastomosing veins; 2. That this living principle vivifies the liver and the venous system generally; 3. That the liver produces the blood itself, and transmits it through the vena cava to the heart, in order to obtain the vital principle, by performing the lesser circulation, which Servetus seems perfectly to comprehend.

 “Now, according to this view of the passage, all the movement of the blood _implied_ is that which takes place from the liver, through the vena cava to the heart, and that of the lesser circulation. It would appear to me that Servetus is on the brink of the discovery of the circulation; but that his notions respecting the transmission of his ‘vitalis spiritus,’ diverted his attention from that great _movement_ of the blood itself, which Harvey discovered.... It is clear, that the quantity of blood sent to the heart for the elaboration of the vital spiritus, is, according to Servetus, only that furnished by the liver to the vena cava inferior. But the blood thus introduced is represented by him as performing the circulation through the lungs very regularly.”

 It appears singular that, while Servetus distinctly knew that the septum of the heart, paries ille medius, as he calls it, is closed, which Berenger had discovered, and Vesalius confirmed (though the bulk of anatomists long afterwards adhered to Galen’s notion of perforation), and consequently, that some other means must exist for restoring the blood from the left division of the heart to the right, he should not have seen the necessity of a system of vessels to carry forward this communication.

|To Columbus.|

14. Columbus is acknowledged to have been acquainted with thepulmonary circulation. He says of his own discovery, that no one hadobserved or consigned it to writing before. Arantius, according toPortal, has described the pulmonary circulation still better thanColumbus, while Sprengel denies that he has described it all. It isperfectly certain, and is admitted on all sides, that Columbus did notknow the systemic circulation: in what manner he disposed of the blooddoes not very clearly appear; but, as he conceived a passage to existbetween the ventricles of the heart, it is probable, though his wordsdo not lead to this inference, that he supposed the aerated blood tobe transmitted back in this course.[648]

 [648] The leading passage in Columbus (De Re Anatomica, lib. vii., p. 177, edit. 1559), which I have not found quoted by Portal or Sprengel, is as follows: Inter hos ventriculos septum adest, per quod fere omnes existimant sanguini a dextro ventriculo ad sinistrum aditum patefieri; id ut fieret facilius, in transitu ob vitalium spirituum generationem demum reddi; sed longa errant via; nam sanguis per arteriosam venam ad pulmonem fertur; ibique attenuatur; deinde cum aere una per arteriam venalem ad sinistrum cordis ventriculum defertur; quod nemo hactenus aut animadvertit aut scriptum reliquit; licet maximè et ab omnibus animadvertendum. He afterwards makes a remark, in which Servetus had preceded him, that the size of the pulmonary artery (vena arteriosa) is greater than would be required for the nutrition of the lungs alone. Whether he knew of the passages in Servetus or no, notwithstanding his claim of originality is not perhaps manifest: the coincidence as to the function of the lungs in aerating the blood is remarkable; but, if Columbus had any direct knowledge of the Christianismi Restitutio, he did not choose to follow it in the remarkable discovery that there is no perforation in the septum between the ventricles.

|And to Cæsalpin.|

15. Cæsalpin, whose versatile genius entered upon every field ofresearch, has, in more than one of his treatises relating to verydifferent topics, and especially in that upon plants, some remarkablepassages on the same subject, which approach more nearly than any wehave seen to a just notion of the general circulation, and have ledseveral writers to insist on his claim as a prior discoverer toHarvey. Portal admits that this might be regarded as a fairpretension, if he were to judge from such passages; but there areothers which contradict this supposition, and show Cæsalpin to havehad a confused and imperfect idea of the office of the veins.Sprengel, though at first he seems to incline more towards thepretensions of Cæsalpin, comes ultimately almost to the sameconclusion; and giving the reader the words of most importance, leaveshim to form his own judgment. The Italians are more confident:Tiraboschi and Corniani, neither of whom are medical authorities, putin an unhesitating claim for Cæsalpin as the discoverer of thecirculation of the blood not without unfair reflections onHarvey.[649]

 [649] Tiraboschi, x., 49. Corniani, vi., 8. He quotes, on the authority of another Italian writer, il giudizio di que illustri Inglesi, i fratelli Hunter, i quali, esaminato bene il processo di questa causa, _si maravigliano della sentenza data in favore del loro concittadino_. I must doubt, till more evidence is produced, whether this be true.

 The passage in Cæsalpin’s Quæstiones Peripateticæ is certainly the most resembling a statement of the entire truth that can be found in any writer before Harvey. I transcribe it from Dutens’s Origine des Découvertes, vol. ii., p. 23. Idcirco pulmo per venam arteriis similem ex dextro cordis ventriculo fervidum hauriens sanguinem, eumque per anastomosin arteriæ venali reddens, quæ in sinistrum cordis ventriculum tendit, transmisso interim aere frigido per asperæ arteriæ canales, qui juxta arteriam venalem protenduntur, non tamen osculis communicantes, ut putavit Galenus solo, tactu temperat. Huic sanguinis circulationi ex dextro cordis ventriculo per pulmones in sinistrum ejusdem ventriculum optimè respondent ea quæ ex dissectione apparent. Nam duo sunt vasa in dextrum ventriculum desinentia, duo etiam in sinistrum: duorum autem unum intromittit tantum, alterum educit, membranis eo ingenio constitutis. Vas igitur intromittens vena et magna quidem in dextro, quæ cava appellatur; parva autem in sinistro ex pulmone introducens, cujus unica est tunica, ut cæterarum venarum. Vas autem educens arteria est magna quidem in sinistro, quæ aorta appellatur; parva autem in dextro, ad pulmones derivans, cujus similiter duæ sunt tunicæ, ut in cæteris arteriis.

 In the treatise De Plantis we have a similar, but shorter passage. Nam in animalibus videmus alimentum per venas duci ad cor tanquam ad officinam caloris insiti, et adepta inibi ultima perfectione, per arterias in universum corpus distribui agente spiritu, qui ex eodem alimento in corde gignitur. I have taken this from the article of Cæsalpin in the Biographie Universelle.

|Generally unknown before Harvey.|

16. It is thus manifest that several anatomists of the sixteenthcentury were on the verge of completely detecting the law by which themotion of the blood is governed; and the language of one is so strong,that we must have recourse, in order to exclude his claim, to theirresistible fact that he did not confirm by proof his own theory, norannounce it in such a manner as to attract the attention of the world.Certainly, when the doctrine of a general circulation was advanced byHarvey, he both announced it as a paradox, and was not deceived inexpecting that it would be so accounted. Those again who strove todepreciate his originality, sought intimations in the writings of theancients, and even spread a rumour that he had stolen the papers ofFather Paul; but it does not appear that they talked, like somemoderns, of plagiarism from Levasseur or Cæsalpin.

|His discovery.|

17. William Harvey first taught the circulation of the blood inLondon, in 1619; but his Exercitatio de Motu Cordis was not publishedtill 1628. He was induced, as is said, to conceive the probability ofthis great truth, by reflecting on the final cause of those valves,which his master, Fabricius de Aquapendente, had demonstrated in theveins; valves whose structure was such as to prevent the reflux of theblood towards the extremities. Fabricius himself seems to have beenignorant of this structure, and certainly of the circulation; for hepresumes that they serve to prevent the blood from flowing like ariver towards the feet and hands, and from collecting in one part.Harvey followed his own happy conjecture by a long inductive processof experiments on the effects of ligatures, and on the observed motionof the blood in living animals.

|Unjustly doubted to be original.|

18. Portal has imputed to Harvey an unfair silence as to Servetus,Columbus, Levasseur, and Cæsalpin, who had all preceded him in thesame track. Tiraboschi copies Portal, and Corniani speaks of theappropriation of Cæsalpin’s discovery by Harvey. It may be replied,that no one can reasonably suppose Harvey to have been acquainted withthe passage in Servetus. But the imputation of suppressing the meritsof Columbus is grossly unjust, and founded upon ignorance orforgetfulness of Harvey’s celebrated Exercitation. In the proœmium tothis treatise he observes, that almost all anatomists have hithertosupposed with Galen, that the mechanism of the pulse is the same asthat of respiration. But he not less than three times makes anexception for Columbus, to whom he most expressly refers the theory ofa pulmonary circulation.[650] Of Cæsalpin he certainly saysnothing; but there seems to be no presumption that he was acquaintedwith that author’s writings. Were it even true that he had been guidedin his researches by the obscure passages we have quoted, could thisset aside the merit of that patient induction by which he establishedhis own theory? Cæsalpin asserts at best, what we may say he divined,but did not know to be true; Harvey asserts what he had demonstrated.The one is an empiric in a philosophical sense, the other a legitimateminister of truth. It has been justly said, that he alone discoverswho proves; nor is there a more odious office, or a more sophisticalcourse of reasoning, than to impair the credit of great men, as Dutenswasted his erudition in doing, by hunting out equivocal and insulatedpassages from older writers, in order to depreciate the originality ofthe real teachers of mankind.[651] It may indeed be thought wonderfulthat Servetus, Columbus, or Cæsalpin should not have more distinctlyapprehended the consequences of what they maintained, since it seemsdifficult to conceive the lesser circulation without the greater; butthe defectiveness of their views is not to be alledged as acounterbalance to the more steady sagacity of Harvey. The solution oftheir falling so short is that they were right, not indeed quite byguess, but upon insufficient proof; and that the consciousness of thisembarrassing their minds, prevented them from deducing inferenceswhich now appear irresistible. In every department of philosophy, theresearches of the first inquirers have often been arrested by similarcauses.[652]

 [650] Pæne omnes huc usque anatomici medici et philosophi supponunt cum Galeno eundem usum esse pulsus, quam respirationis. But though he certainly claims the doctrine of a general circulation as wholly his own, and counts it a paradox which will startle everyone, he as expressly refers (p. 38 and 41 of the Exercitatio) that of a pulmonary transmission of the blood to Columbus, peritissimo, doctissimoque anatomico; and observes, in his proœmium, as an objection to the received theory, quomodo probabile est (_uti notavit Rualdus Columbus_) tanto sanguine opus esse ad nutritionem pulmonum, cum hoc vas, vena videlicet arteriosa (hoc est, uti tum loquebantur, arteria pulmonalis) exsuperet magnitudine utrumque ramum distributionis venæ cavæ descendentis cruralem, p. 16.

 [651] This is the general character of a really learned and interesting work by Dutens Origine des Découvertes attribuées aux Modernes. Justice is due to those who have first struck out, even without following up, original ideas in any science; but not at the expense of those who, generally without knowledge of what had been said before, have deduced the same principles from reasoning or from observation, and carried them out to important consequences. Pascal quotes Montaigne for the shrewd remark, that we should try a man who says a wise thing, for we may often find that he does not understand it. Those who entertain a morbid jealousy of modern philosophy, are glad to avail themselves of such hunters into obscure antiquity as Dutens, and they are seconded by all the envious, the uncandid, and by many of the unreflecting among mankind. With respect to the immediate question, the passages which Dutens has quoted from Hippocrates and Plato, have certainly an appearance of expressing a real circulation of the blood by the words περιοδος [periodos] and περιφερομενου αἱματος [peripheromenou ahimatos]; but others, and especially one from Nemesius, on which some reliance has been placed, mean nothing more than the flux and reflux of the blood, which the contraction and dilatation of the heart was supposed to produce. See Dutens, vol. ii., p. 8-13. Mr. Coleridge has been deceived in the same manner by some lines of Jordano Bruno, which he takes to describe the circulation of the blood: whereas, they merely express its movement to and fro, _meat et remeat_, which might be by the same system of vessels.

 [652] The biographer of Harvey in the Biographie Universelle strongly vindicates his claim. Tous les hommes instruits conviennent aujourd’hui que Harvey est la véritable auteur de cette belle découverte.... Césalpin pressentoit la circulation artérielle, en supposant que le sang rétourne des extrémités au cœur; mais ces assertions ne furent point prouvées; elles ne se trouvèrent étayées par aucune expérience, par aucun fait; et l’on peut dire de Césalpin qu’il divina presque la grande circulation dont les lois lui furent totalement inconnues; la découverte en était réservée a Guillaume Harvey.

|Harvey’s treatise on Generation.|

19. Harvey is the author of a treatise on generation, wherein hemaintains that all animals, including men, are derived from an egg. Inthis book, we first find an argument maintained against spontaneousgeneration, which, in the case of the lower animals, had beengenerally received. Sprengel thinks this treatise prolix, and notequal to the author’s reputation.[653] It was first published in 1651.

 [653] Hist. de la Médecine, iv., 299. Portal, ii., 477.

|Lacteals discovered by Assellius.|

20. Next in importance to the discovery of Harvey, is that ofAssellius as to the lacteal vessels. Eustachius had observed thethoracic duct in a horse. But Asellius, more by chance, as he owns,than by reflection, perceived the lacteals in a fat dog whom he openedsoon after it had eaten. This was in 1622, and his treatise, DeLacteis Venis, was published in 1627.[654] Harvey did not assent tothis discovery, and endeavoured to dispute the use of the vessels; noris it to his honour that even to the end of his life he disregardedthe subsequent confirmation that Pecquet and Bartholin hadfurnished.[655] The former detected the common origin of the lactealand lymphatic vessels in 1647, though his work on the subjectwas not published till 1651. But Olaus Rudbeck was the first whoclearly distinguished these two kinds of vessels.

 [654] Portal, ii., 461. Sprengel, iv., 201. Peiresc soon after this got the body of a man fresh hanged after a good supper, and had the pleasure of confirming the discovery of Asellius by his own eyes. Gassendi, Vita Peirescii, p. 177.

 [655] Sprengel, iv., 203.

|Optical discoveries of Scheiner.|

21. Scheiner, the Jesuit, proved that the retina is the organ ofsight, and that the humours serve only to refract the rays which paintthe object on the optic nerve. This was in a treatise entitled,Oculus, hoc est, Fundamentum Opticum, 1619.[656] The writings ofseveral anatomists of this period, such as Riolan, Vesling, Bartholin,contain partial accessions to the science; but it seems to have beenless enriched by great discoveries, after those already named, than inthe preceding century.

 [656] Sprengel, iv., 270.

|Medicine--Van Helmont.|

22. The mystical medicine of Paracelsus continued to have manyadvocates in Germany. A new class of enthusiasts sprung from the sameschool, and calling themselves Rosicrucians, pretended to curediseases by faith and imagination. A true Rosicrucian, they held, hadonly to look on a patient to cure him. The analogy of magnetism,revived in the last and present age, was commonly employed.[657] Ofthis school the most eminent was Van Helmont, who combined theParacelsian superstitions with some original ideas of his own. Hisgeneral idea of medicine was that its business was to regulate thearchæus, an immaterial principle of life and health; to which, likeParacelsus, he attributed a mysterious being and efficacy. The seat ofthe archæus is in the stomach; and it is to be effected either by ascheme of diet or through the imagination. Sprengel praises VanHelmont for overthrowing many current errors, and for announcingprinciples since pursued.[658] The French physicians adhered to theHippocratic school, in opposition to what Sprengel calls theChemiatric, which, more or less, may be reckoned that of Paracelsus.The Italians were still renowned in medicine. Sanctorius, De MedicinaStatica, 1614, seems the only work to which we need allude. It isloaded with eulogy by Portal, Tiraboschi, and other writers.[659]

 [657] All in nature, says Croll of Hesse, one of the principal theosophists in medicine, is living; all that lives has its vital force, or astrum, which cannot act without a body, but passes from one to another. All things in the macrocosm are found also in the microcosm. The inward or astral man is Gabalis, from which the science is named. This Gabalis or imagination, is as a magnet to external objects, which it thus attracts. Medicines act by a magnetic force. Sprengel, iii., 362.

 [658] Vol. v., p. 22.

 [659] Portal, ii., 391. Tiraboschi, xi., 270. Biog. Univ.

 SECT. III.

_On Oriental Literature--Hebrew Learning--Arabic and other EasternLanguages._

|Diffusion of Hebrew.|

23. During no period of equal length, since the revival of letters,has the knowledge of the Hebrew language been, apparently, so muchdiffused among the literary world as in that before us. The frequentsprinkling of its characters in works of the most miscellaneouserudition, will strike the eye of every one who habitually consultsthem. Nor was this learning by any means so much confined to theclergy as it has been in later times, though their order naturallyfurnished the greater portion of those who laboured in that field.Some of the chief Hebraists of this age were laymen. The study of thislanguage prevailed most in the protestant countries of Europe, and itwas cultivated with much zeal in England. The period between the lastyears of Elizabeth and the Restoration, may be reckoned that in whicha knowledge of Hebrew has been most usual among our divines.

|Language not studied in the best method.|

24. Upon this subject, I can only assert what I collect to be theverdict of judicious critics.[660] It seems that the Hebrew languagewas not yet sufficiently studied in the method most likely to give aninsight into its principles, by comparing it with all the cognatetongues, latterly called Semitic, spoken in the neighbouring parts ofAsia, and manifestly springing from a common source. Postel, indeed,had made some attempts at this in the last century, but his learningwas very slight; and Schindler published in 1612 a LexiconPentaglottum, in which the Arabic, as well as Syriac and Chaldaic,were placed in apposition with the Hebrew text. Louis De Dieu, whose“Remarks on all the Books of the Old Testament,” were published atLeyden in 1648, has frequently recourse to some of the kindredlanguages, in order to explain the Hebrew.[661] But the firstinstructors in the latter had been Jewish rabbis; and the Hebraists ofthe sixteenth age had imbibed a prejudice, not unnatural thoughunfounded, that their teachers were best conversant with the languageof their forefathers.[662] They had derived from the same source anextravagant notion of the beauty, antiquity, and capacity of theHebrew; and, combining this with still more chimerical dreams of amystical philosophy, lost sight of all real principles of criticism.

 [660] The fifth volume of Eichhorn’s Geschichte der Cultur is devoted to the progress of Oriental literature in Europe, not very full in characterising the various productions it mentions, but analytically arranged, and highly useful for reference. Jenisch, in his preface to Meninski’s Thesaurus (Vienna, 1780), has traced a sketch of the same subject. We may have trusted in some respects to Simon, Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament. The biographical dictionaries, English and French, have, of course, been resorted to.

 [661] Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 494.

 [662] This was not the case with Luther, who rejected the authority of the rabbis, and thought none but Christians could understand the Old Testament. Simon, p. 375. But Munster, fa*gius, and several others, who are found in the Critici Sacri, gave way to the prejudice in favour of rabbinical opinions, and their commentaries are consequently too Judaical, p. 496.

|The Buxtorfs.|

25. The most eminent Hebrew scholars of this age were the two Buxtorfsof Basle, father and son, both devoted to the rabbinical school. Theelder, who had become distinguished before the end of the precedingcentury, published a grammar in 1609, which long continued to bereckoned the best, and a lexicon of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, in1623, which was not superseded for more than a hundred years. Manyother works relating to these three dialects, as well as to that ofthe later Jews, do honour to the erudition of the elder Buxtorf; buthe is considered as representing a class of Hebraists which, in themore comprehensive Orientalism of the eighteenth century, has lostmuch of its credit. The son trod closely in his father’s footsteps,whom he succeeded as professor of Hebrew at Basle. They held thischair between them more than seventy years. The younger Buxtorf wasengaged in controversies which had not begun in his father’s lifetime.Morin, one of those learned protestants who had gone over to thechurch of Rome, systematically laboured to establish the authority ofthose versions which the church had approved, by weakening that of thetext which passed for original.[663] Hence, he endeavoured to show,though this could not logically do much for his object, that theSamaritan Pentateuch, lately brought to Europe, which is not in adifferent language, but merely the Hebrew written in Samaritancharacters, is deserving of preference above what is called theMasoretic text, from which the protestant versions are taken. Thevariations between these are sufficiently numerous to affect afavourite hypothesis, borrowed from the rabbis, but strenuouslymaintained by the generality of protestants, that the Hebrew text ofthe Masoretic recension is perfectly incorrupt.[664] Morin’s opinionwas opposed by Buxtorf and Hottinger, and by other writers even of theRomish church. It has, however, been countenanced by Simon andKennicott. The integrity, at least, of the Hebrew copyist, wasgradually given up, and it has since been shown that they differgreatly among themselves. The Samaritan Pentateuch was first publishedin 1645, several years after this controversy began, by Sionita,editor of the Parisian Polyglott. This edition, sometimes called bythe name of Le Jay, contains most that is in the Polyglott of Antwerp,with the addition of the Syriac and Arabic versions of the OldTestament.

 [663] Simon, p. 522.

 [664] Id. p. 522. Eichhorn, v., 464.

|Vowel points rejected by Cappel.|

26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of Louis Cappel,professor of that language at Saumur, the Arcanum PunctuationisRevelatum, in 1624. He maintained in this an opinion promulgated byElias Levita, and held by the first reformers and many otherprotestants of the highest authority, though contrary to that vulgarorthodoxy which is always omnivorous, that the vowel points of Hebrewwere invented by certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. Theyhad been generally deemed coeval with the language, or at leastbrought in by Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprisingthat such an hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind, andCappel was obliged to publish his work in Holland. The protestantslooked upon it as too great a concession in favour of the Vulgate;which having been translated before the Masoretic punctuation, onCappel’s hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim tostand on higher ground, and was not to be judged by these innovations.After twenty years, the younger Buxtorf endeavoured to vindicate theantiquity of vowel-points; but it is now confessed that the victoryremained with Cappel, who has been styled the father of Hebrewcriticism. His principal work is the Critica Sacra, published at Parisin 1650, wherein he still farther discredits the existing manuscriptsof the Hebrew scriptures, as well as the Masoretic punctuation.[665]

 [665] Simon, Eichhorn, &c. A detailed account of this controversy about vowel-points between Cappel and the Buxtorfs will be found in the 12th volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle; and a shorter précis in Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i., p. 242.

|Hebrew scholars.|

27. The rabbinical literature, meaning as well the Talmud and otherancient books, as those of the later ages since the revival ofintellectual pursuits among the Jews of Spain and the East, gaveoccupation to a considerable class of scholars. Several of thesebelong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Lightfoot, Selden, andPoco*cke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by Cunæus in JusRegium Hebræorum, 1623, and especially by Selden, both in the UxorHebraica, and in the treatise De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxtaHebræos. But no one has left a more durable reputation in thisliterature than Bochart, a protestant minister at Caen. His GeographiaSacra, published in 1646, is not the most famous of his works, but theonly one which falls within this period. It displays great learningand sagacity; but it was impossible, as has been justly observed, thathe could thoroughly elucidate this subject at a time when we knewcomparatively little of modern Asia, and had few good books oftravels. A similar observation might of course be applied to hisHierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture. Both these works,however, were much extolled in the seventeenth century.

|Chaldee and Syriac.|

28. In the Chaldee and Syriac languages, which approach so closely toHebrew, that the best scholars in the latter are rarely unacquaintedwith them, besides the Buxtorfs, we find Ferrari, author of a Syriaclexicon, published at Rome in 1622; Louis de Dieu of Leyden, whoseSyriac grammar appeared in 1626; and the Syriac translation of the OldTestament in the Parisian Polyglott, edited by Gabriel Sionita, in1642. A Syriac college for the Maronites of Libanus, was founded atRome by Gregory XIII.; but it did not as yet produce anything ofimportance.

|Arabic.|

|Erpenius.|

|Golius.|

29. But a language incomparably more rich in literary treasures, andlong neglected by Europe, began now to take a conspicuous place in theannals of learning. Scaliger deserves the glory of being the firstreal Arabic scholar; for Postel, Christman, and a very few more of thesixteenth century, are hardly worth notice. His friend, Casaubon, whoextols his acquirements, as usual, very highly, devoted himself sometime to this study. But Scaliger made use of the language chiefly toenlarge his own vast sphere of erudition. He published nothing on thesubject; but his collections became the base of Rapheling’s Arabiclexicon; and it is said that they were far more extensive than whatappears in that work. He who properly added this language to thedomain of learning was Erpenius, a native of Gorcum, who, at an earlyage, had gained so unrivalled an acquaintance with the Orientallanguages as to be appointed professor of them at Leyden in 1613. Heedited the same year the above-mentioned lexicon of Rapheling, andpublished a grammar, which might not only be accounted the firstcomposed in Europe that deserved the name, but became the guide tomost later scholars. Erpenius gave several other works to the world,chiefly connected with the Arabic version of the Scriptures.[666]Golius, his successor in the Oriental chair at Leyden, besidespublishing a lexicon of the language, which is said to be still themost copious, elaborate, and complete that has appeared,[667] andseveral editions of Arabic writings, poetical and historical,contributed still more extensively to bring the range of Arabianliterature before the world. He enriched with a hundred and fiftymanuscripts, collected in his travels, the library of Leyden, to whichScaliger had bequeathed forty.[668] The manuscripts belonging toErpenius found their way to Cambridge; while, partly by themunificence of Laud, partly by later accessions, the Bodleian Libraryat Oxford became extremely rich in this line. The much largercollection in the Escurial seems to have been chiefly formed underPhilip III. England was now as conspicuous in Arabian as in Hebrewlearning. Selden, Greaves, and Poco*cke, especially the last, who wasprobably equal to any Oriental scholar whom Europe had hithertoproduced, by translations of the historical and philosophical writingsof the Saracenic period, gave a larger compass to generalerudition.[669]

 [666] Biogr. Univ.

 [667] Jenisch, præfatio in Meninski Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, p. 110.

 [668] Biogr. Univ.

 [669] Jenisch, Eichhorn, Biogr. Universelle, Biogr. Britannica.

|Other Eastern languages.|

30. The remaining languages of the East are of less importance. TheTurkish had attracted some degree of attention in the sixteenthcentury; but the first grammar was published by Megiser, in 1612, avery slight performance; and a better at Paris, by Du Ryer, in1630.[670] The Persic grammar was given at Rome by Raymondi, in 1614;by De Dieu, at Leyden, in 1639; by Greaves, at London, in 1641 and1649.[671] An Armenian dictionary, by Rivoli, in 1621, seems the onlyaccession to our knowledge of that ancient language during thisperiod.[672] Athanasius Kircher, a man of immense erudition, restoredthe Coptic, of which Europe had been wholly ignorant. Those farthereastward had not yet begun to enter much into the studies of Europe.Nothing was known of the Indian; but some Chinese manuscripts had beenbrought to Rome and Madrid as early as 1580; and not long afterwards,two Jesuits, Roger and Ricci, both missionaries in China, were thefirst who acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language to translatefrom it.[673] But scarcely any farther advance took place before themiddle of the century.

 [670] Eichhorn, v., 367.

 [671] Id. 320.

 [672] Eichhorn, 351.

 [673] Id. 64.

 SECT. IV.

 _On Geography and History._

|Purchas’s Pilgrim.|

31. Purchas, an English clergyman, imbued by nature, like Hakluyt,with a strong bias towards geographical studies, after having formedan extensive library in that department, and consulted, as heprofesses, above 1,200 authors, published the first volume of hisPilgrim, a collection of voyages in all parts of the world, in 1613;four more followed in 1625. The accuracy of this useful compiler hasbeen denied by those who have had better means of knowledge, andprobably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but his labour was far morecomprehensive. The Pilgrim was at all events a great source ofknowledge to the contemporaries of Purchas.[674]

 [674] Biogr. Univ. Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels. The latter does not value Purchas highly for correctness.

|Olearius and Pietro della Valle.|

32. Olearius was ambassador from the Duke of Holstein to Moscovy andPersia from 1633 to 1639. His travels, in German, were published in1647, and have been several times reprinted and translated. He haswell described the barbarism of Russia and the despotism of Persia; heis diffuse and episodical, but not wearisome; he observes well andrelates faithfully: all who have known the countries he has visitedare said to speak well of him.[675] Pietro della Valle is a far moreamusing writer. He has thrown his travels over Syria and Persia intothe form of letters written from time to time, and which he professesto have recovered from his correspondents. This perhaps is not a veryprobable story, both on account of the length of the letters, and thewant of that reference to the present time and to small passing eventswhich authentic letters commonly exhibit. His observations, however,on all the countries he visited, especially Persia, are apparentlysuch as consist with the knowledge we have obtained from latertravellers. Gibbon says that none have better observed Persia, but hisvanity and prolixity are insufferable. Yet I think that Della Vallecan hardly be reckoned tedious; and if he is a little egotistical, theusual and almost laudable characteristic of travellers, this gives aliveliness and racy air to his narrative. What his wife, the LadyMaani, an Assyrian Christian, whom he met with at Bagdad, and whoaccompanied him through his long wanderings, may really have been, wecan only judge from his eulogies on her beauty, her fidelity, and hercourage; but she throws an air of romance over his adventures, notunpleasing to the reader. The travels of Pietro della Valle took placefrom 1614 to 1626; but the book was first published at Rome in 1650,and has been translated into different languages.

 [675] Biogr. Univ.

|Lexicon of Ferrari.|

33. The Lexicon Geographicum of Ferrari, in 1627, was the chiefgeneral work on geography; it is alphabetical, and contains 9,600articles. The errors have been corrected in later editions, so thatthe first would probably be required in order to estimate theknowledge of its author’s age.[676]

 [676] Salfi, xi., 418. Biogr. Universelle.

|Maps of Blaew.|

34. The best measure, perhaps, of geographical science, are the mapspublished from time to time, as perfectly for the most part, we maypresume, as their editors could render them. If we compare the map ofthe world in the “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Novus Atlas” of Blaew,in 1648, with that of the edition of Ortelius, published at Antwerp in1612, the improvements will not appear exceedingly great. America isstill separated from Asia by the straights of Anian about lat. 60; butthe coast to the south is made to trend away more than before;on the N.E. coast we find Davis’s Sea, and Estotiland has vanished togive way to Greenland. Canada is still most inaccurate, though thereis a general idea of lakes and rivers better than in Ortelius.Scandinavia is far better, and tolerably correct. In the South, Terradel Fuego terminates in Cape Horn, instead of being united to TerraAustralis; but in the East, Corea appears as an oblong island; the Seaof Aral is now set down, and the wall of China is placed north of thefiftieth parallel. India is very much too small, and the shape of theCaspian Sea is wholly inaccurate. But a comparison with the map inHakluyt, mentioned in our second volume, will not exhibit so muchsuperiority of Blaew’s Atlas. The latter, however, shows moreknowledge of the interior country, especially in North America, and abetter outline in many parts, of the Asiatic coast. The maps ofparticular regions in Europe are on a large scale, and numerous.Speed’s maps 1646, appear by no means inferior to those of Blaew; butseveral of the errors are the same. Considering the progress ofcommerce, especially that of the Dutch, during this half century, wemay rather be surprised at the defective state of these maps.

|Davila and Bentivoglio.|

35. Two histories of general reputation were published in the Italianlanguage during these fifty years; one of the civil wars in France byDavila, in 1630, and another of those in Flanders by CardinalBentivoglio. Both of these had the advantage of interesting subjects;they had been sufficiently conversant with the actors to know much andto judge well, without that particular responsibility which tempts anhistorian to prevarication. They were both men of cool and sedatetempers, accustomed to think policy a game in which the strong playwith the weak, obtuse, especially the former, in moral sentiment, buton this account not inclined to calumniate an opposite party, or towithhold admiration from intellectual power. Both these histories maybe read over and over with pleasure; if Davila is too refined, if heis not altogether faithful, if his style wants the elegance of someolder Italians, he more than redeems all this by the importance of hissubject, the variety and picturesqueness of his narration, and theacuteness of his reflections. Bentivoglio is reckoned, as a writer,among the very first of his age.

|Mendoza’s Wars of Granada.|

|Mezeray.|

|English historians.|

|English histories.|

36. The History of the War of Granada, that is, the rebellion of theMoriscos in 1565, by the famous Diego de Mendoza, was publishedposthumously in 1610. It is placed by the Spaniards themselves on alevel with the most renowned of the ancients. The French have nowtheir first general historian, Mezeray, a writer esteemed for hislively style and bold sense, but little read, of course, in an agelike the last or our own, which have demanded an exactness in matterof fact, and an extent of historical erudition, which was formerlyunknown. We now began, in England, to cultivate historicalcomposition, and with so much success, that the present period was farmore productive of such works as deserve remembrance than a wholecentury that next followed. But the most considerable of these havealready been mentioned. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s History of Henry VIII.ought here to be added to the list, as a book of good authority,relatively at least to any that preceded, and written in a manly andjudicious spirit. Camden’s Life of Elizabeth is also a solid andvaluable history. Bacon’s Life of Henry VII. is something more; it isthe first instance in our language of the application of philosophy toreasoning on public events in the manner of the ancients and theItalians. Praise upon Henry is too largely bestowed; but it was in thenature of Bacon to admire too much a crafty and selfish policy; and hethought also, no doubt, that so near an ancestor of his own sovereignshould not be treated with severe impartiality.

 SECT. V.

 _On general State of Literature._

|Universities.|

37. Of the Italian and other continental universities, we have littleto say beyond what may be collected from the general tenor of thisliterary history, that they contributed little to those departments ofknowledge to which we have paid most attention, and adheringpertinaciously to their ancient studies, were left behind in theadvance of the human mind. They were, indeed, not less crowded withscholars than before, being the necessary and prescribed road tolucrative professions. In theology, law, and medicine, sciences, thetwo former of which, at least, did not claim to be progressive, theymight sustain a respectable posture; in philosophy, and even in politeletters, they were less prominent.

|Bodleian library founded.|

38. The English universities are in one point of view very differentfrom those of the rest of Europe. Their great endowments created aresident class, neither teachers nor students, who might devote anunbroken leisure to learning with the advantage of that command ofbooks which no other course of life could have afforded: It is truethat in no age has the number of these been great; but the diligenceof a few is enough to cast a veil over the laziness of many. Thecentury began with an extraordinary piece of fortune to the universityof Oxford, which formed in the seventeenth century, whatever it maysince have been, one great cause of her literary distinction. SirThomas Bodley, with a munificence which has rendered his name moreimmortal than the foundation of a family could have done, bestowed onthe university a library collected by him at great cost, building amagnificent room for its reception, and bequeathed large funds for itsincrease. The building was completed in 1606; and Casaubon has, veryshortly afterwards, given such an account of the university itself, aswell as of the Bodleian library, as will perhaps be interesting to thereader, though it contains some of those mistakes into which astranger is apt to fall.

|Casaubon’s account of Oxford.|

39. “I wrote you word,” he says, in July 1613, to one of hiscorrespondents, “a month since, that I was going to Oxford, in orderto visit that university and its library, of which I had heard much.Everything proved beyond my expectation. The colleges are numerous;most of them very rich. The revenues of these colleges maintain abovetwo thousand students, generally of respectable parentage, and someeven of the first nobility; for what we call the habits of pedagogues(pædagogica vitæ ratio) is not found in these English colleges.Learning is here cultivated in a liberal style; the heads of houseslive handsomely, even splendidly, like men of rank. Some of them canspend ten thousand livres [about 1,000_l_. at that time, if Imistake not] by the year. I much approved the mode in which pecuniaryconcerns are kept distinct from the business of learning.[677] Manystill are found, who emulate the liberality of their predecessors.Hence, new buddings rise every day; even some new colleges are raisedfrom the foundation; some are enlarged, such as that of Merton, overwhich Savile presides, and several more. There is one begun byCardinal Wolsey, which if it should be completed, will be worthy ofthe greatest admiration. But he left at his death many buildings whichhe had begun in an unfinished state, and which no one expects to seecomplete. None of the colleges, however, attracted me so much as theBodleian library, a work rather for a king than a private man. It iscertain that Bodley, living or dead, must have expended 200,000 livreson that building. The ground plot is the figure of the letter T. Thepart which represents the perpendicular stem was formerly built bysome prince, and is very handsome; the rest was added by Bodley withno less magnificence. In the lower part is a divinity school, to whichperhaps nothing in Europe is comparable. It is vaulted with peculiarskill. The upper story is the library itself, very well built, andfitted with an immense quantity of books. Do not imagine that suchplenty of manuscripts can be found here, as in the royal library (ofParis); there are not a few manuscripts in England, but nothing towhat the king possesses. But the number of printed books is wonderful,and increasing every year; for Bodley has bequeathed a considerablerevenue for that purpose. As long as I remained at Oxford, I passedwhole days in the library; for books cannot be taken out, but thelibrary is open to all scholars for seven or eight hours every day.You might always see therefore many of these greedily enjoying thebanquet prepared for them, which gave me no small pleasure.”[678]

 [677] Res studiosorum et rationes separatæ sunt, quod valde probavi. I have given the translation which seemed best; but I may be mistaken.

 [678] Casaub. Epist., 899.

40. The Earl of Pembroke, Selden, and above all, archbishop Laud,greatly improved the Bodleian library. It became, especially throughthe munificence of that prelate, extremely rich in Orientalmanuscripts. The Duke of Buckingham presented a collection made byErpenius to the public library at Cambridge, which, though far behindthat of the sister university, was enriched by many donations andbecame very considerable. Usher formed the library of Trinity College,Dublin; an university founded on the English model, with noblerevenues, and a corporate body of fellows and scholars to enjoy them.

|Catalogue of Bodleian library.|

41. A catalogue of the Bodleian library was published by James in1620. It contains about 20,000 articles. Of these no great numberare in English, and such as there are chiefly since the year1600; Bodley, perhaps, had been rather negligent of poetry and plays.The editor observes that there were in the library three or fourthousand volumes in modern languages. This catalogue is not classed,but alphabetical; which James mentions as something new, remarking atthe same time the difficulty of classification, and that in the Germancatalogues we find grammars entered under the head of philosophy. Onepublished by Draud, Bibliotheca Classica, sive Catalogus Officinalis,Frankfort, 1625, is hardly worth mention. It professes to be a generallist of printed books; but as the number seems to be not more than30,000, all in Latin, it must be very defective. About two fifths ofthe whole are theological. A catalogue of the library of Sion College,founded in 1631, was printed in 1650; it contains eight or ninethousand volumes.[679]

 [679] In Museo Britannico.

|Continental libraries.|

42. The library of Leyden had been founded by the first prince ofOrange. Scaliger bequeathed his own to it; and it obtained theoriental manuscripts of Golius. A catalogue had been printed by PeterBertius as early as 1597.[680] Many public and private librarieseither now began to be formed in France, or received great accessions;among the latter, those of the historian De Thou, and the presidentSeguier.[681] No German library, after that of Vienna, had been soconsiderable as one formed in the course of several ages by theelectors Palatine at Heidelberg. It contained many rare manuscripts.On the capture of the city by Tilly, in 1622, he sent a number ofthese to Rome, and they long continued to sleep in the recesses of theVatican. Napoleon, emulous of such a precedent, obtained thirty-eightof the Heidelberg manuscripts by the treaty of Tolentino, which weretransmitted to Paris. On the restitution of these in 1815, it wasjustly thought that prescription was not to be pleaded by Rome for therest of the plunder, especially when she was recovering what she hadlost by the same right of spoliation; and the whole collection hasbeen replaced in the library of Heidelberg.

 [680] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, c. 3.

 [681] Id. ibid.

|Italian academies.|

43. The Italian academies have been often represented as partaking inthe alleged decline of literary spirit during the first part of theseventeenth century. Nor is this reproach a new one. Boccalini, afterthe commencement of this period, tells us that these institutions,once so famous, had fallen into decay, their ardent zeal in literaryexercises and discussions having abated by time, so that while theyhad once been frequented by private men, and esteemed by princes, theywere now abandoned and despised by all. They petition Apollo,therefore, in a chapter of his Ragguagli di Parnasso, for a reform.But the god replies that all things have their old age and decay, andas nothing can prevent the neatest pair of slippers from wearing outso nothing can rescue academies from a similar lot; hence, he can onlyadvise them to suppress the worst, and to supply their places byothers.[682] If only such a counsel were required, the institution ofacademies in general would not perish. And, in fact, we really findthat while some societies of this class came to nothing, as is alwaysthe case with self-constituted bodies, the seventeenth century hadbirths of its own to boast, not inferior to the older progeny of thelast age. The Academy of Humourists at Rome was one of these. It arosecasually at the marriage of a young nobleman of the Mancini family,and took the same line as many had done, reciting verses anddiscourses, or occasionally representing plays. The tragedy ofDemetrius, by Rocco, one of this academy, is reckoned among the bestof the age. The Apatisti of Florence took their name from Fioretti,who had assumed the appellation of Udeno Nisielo, Academico Apatista.The Rozzi of Siena, whom the government had suppressed in 1568,revived again in 1605, and rivalled another society of the same city,the Intronati. The former especially dedicated their time to pastoral,in the rustic dialect (comedia rusticale), a species of dramaticwriting that might amuse at the moment, and was designed for no otherend, though several of these farces are extant. [683]

 [682] Ragg., xviii., c. 1.

 [683] Salfi, vol. xii.

|The Lincei.|

44. The Academy della Crusca, which had more solid objects for theadvantages of letters in view, has been mentioned in another place.But that of the Lincei, founded by Frederic Cesi, stands upon a higherground than any of the rest. This young man was born at Rome in 1585,son of the duke of Acqua Sparta, a father and a family known only fortheir pride and ignorance. But nature had created in Cesi aphilosophic mind; in conjunction with a few of similar dispositions,he gave his entire regard to science, and projected himself, at theage of eighteen, an academy, that is, a private association offriends for intellectual pursuits, which, with reference to theirdesire of piercing with acute discernment into the depths of truth, hedenominated the Lynxes. Their device was that animal, with its eyesturned towards heaven, and tearing a Cerberus with its claws; thusintimating that they were prepared for war against error andfalsehood. The church, always suspicious, and inclined to make commoncause with all established tenets, gave them some trouble, thoughneither theology nor politics entered into their scheme. Thisembraced, as in their academies, poetry and elegant literature; butphysical science was their peculiar object. Porto, Galileo, Colonna,and many other distinguished men, both of Italy and the Transalpinecountries, were enrolled among the Lynxes; and Cesi is said to haveframed rather a visionary plan of a general combination ofphilosophers, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, which should extenditself to every part of Europe. The constitutions of this imaginaryorder were even published in 1624; they are such as could not havebeen realised, but from the organization and secrecy that seem to havebeen their elements, might not improbably have drawn down apersecution upon themselves, or even rendered the name of philosophyobnoxious. Cesi died in 1630, and his academy of Lynxes did not longsurvive the loss of their chief.[684]

 [684] Salfi, xi., 102. Tiraboschi, xi., 42, 243.

|Prejudice for antiquity diminished.|

45. The tide of public opinion had hitherto set regularly in onedirection; ancient times, ancient learning, ancient wisdom and virtue,were regarded with unqualified veneration; the very course of naturewas hardly believed to be the same, and a common degeneracy wasthought to have overspread the earth and its inhabitants. This hadbeen at its height in the first century after the revival of letters,the prejudice in favour of the past, always current with the old, whoaffect to dictate the maxims of experience, conspiring with thegenuine lustre of classical literature and ancient history, whichdazzled the youthful scholar. But this aristocracy of learning was nowassailed by a new power which had risen up in sufficient strength todispute the pre-eminence. We, said Bacon, are the true ancients; whatwe call the antiquity of the world was but its infancy. This thoughtequally just and brilliant, was caught up and echoed by many; it willbe repeatedly found in later works. It became a question whether themoderns had not really left behind their progenitors; and though ithas been hinted, that a dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther thanthe giant, this is, in one sense, to concede the point indispute.[685]

 [685] Ac quemadmodum pygmæus humeris gigantis insidens longius quam gigas prospicere, neque tamen se gigante majorem habere aut sipi multum tribuere potest, ita nos veterum laboribus vigiliisque in nostros usus conversis adjicere aliquid, non supercilia tollere, aut parvi facere, qui ante nos fuerunt, debemus. Cyprianus, Vita Campanellæ, p. 15.

46. Tassoni was one of the first who combated the establishedprejudice by maintaining that modern times are not inferior toancient; it well became his intrepid disposition.[686] But Lancilotti,an Italian ecclesiastic, and member of several academies, pursued thissubject in an elaborate work, intended to prove--first, that the worldwas neither morally worse nor more afflicted by calamities than it hadbeen; secondly, that the intellectual abilities of mankind had notdegenerated. It bears the general title, L’Hoggidi, To-Day; and isthroughout a ridicule of those whom he calls Hoggidiani, perpetualdeclaimers against the present state of things. He is a very copiousand learned writer, and no friend to antiquity; each chapter beingentitled Disinganno, and intended to remove some false prejudice. Thefirst part of this work appeared in 1623, the second, after theauthor’s death, not till 1658. Lancilotti wrote another book withsomewhat a similar object, entitled Farfalloni degl’Antichi Istorici,and designed to turn the ancient historians into ridicule; with a gooddeal of pleasantry, but chiefly on account of stories which no one inhis time would have believed. The same ground was taken soonafterwards by an English divine, George Hakewill, in his “Apology, orDeclaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government ofthe World,” published in 1627. This is designed to prove that there isnot that perpetual and universal decay in nature which many suppose.It is an elaborate refutation of many absurd notions which seem tohave prevailed; some believing that even physical nature, the sun andstars, the earth and waters, were the worse for wear. A greater numberthought this true of man; his age, his size, his strength, his powersof mind were all supposed to have been deteriorated. Hakewillpatiently and learnedly refuted all this. The moral character ofantiquity he shows to be much exaggerated, animadverting especially onthe Romans. The most remarkable, and certainly the most disputablechapters, are those which relate to the literary merits of ancient andmodern times. He seems to be one of the first who ventured to put in aclaim for the latter. In this he anticipates Wotton, who had more tosay. Hakewill goes much too far in calling Sydney’s Arcadia “nothinginferior to the choicest piece among the ancients”; and even thinks“he should not much wrong Virgil by matching him with Du Bartas.” Thelearning shown in this treatise is very extensive, but Hakewill has notaste, and cannot perceive any real superiority in the ancients.Compared with Lancilotti, he is much inferior in liveliness, perhapseven in learning; but I have not observed that he has borrowedanything from the Italian, whose publication was but four yearsearlier.

 [686] Salfi, xi., 381.

|Browne’s Vulgar Errors.|

47. Browne’s Inquiry into Vulgar Errors displays a great deal oferudition, but scarcely raises a high notion of Browne himself as aphilosopher, or of the state of physical knowledge in England. Theerrors he indicates are such as none but illiterate persons, we shouldthink, were likely to hold; and I believe that few on the Continent,so late as 1646, would have required to have them exploded with suchan ostentation of proof. Who did not know that the phœnix is a fable?Browne was where the learned in Europe had been seventy years before,and seems to have been one of those who saturate their minds with badbooks till they have little room for anything new that is better. Aman of so much credulity and such an irregular imagination as Brownewas almost sure to believe in witchcraft and all sorts of spiritualagencies. In no respect did he go in advance of his age, unless wemake an exception for his declaration against persecution. He seems tohave been fond of those trifling questions which the bad taste of theschoolmen and their contemporaries introduced; as whether a man hasfewer ribs than a woman, whether Adam and Eve had navels, whetherMethusaleh was the oldest man; the problems of children put to adults.With a strong curiosity and a real love of truth, Browne is a strikinginstance of a merely empirical mind; he is at sea with sails and arudder, but without a compass or log-book; and has so little notion ofany laws of nature, or of any inductive reasoning either as toefficient or final causes, that he never seems to judge anything to betrue or false except by experiment.

|Life and character of Peiresc.|

48. In concluding our review of the sixteenth century, we selectedPinelli, as a single model of the literary character, which loving andencouraging knowledge, is yet too little distinguished by any writingsto fall naturally within the general subject of these volumes. Theperiod which we now bring to a close will furnish us with a much moreconsiderable instance. Nicholas Peiresc was born in 1580, of anancient family in Provence, which had for some generations heldjudicial offices in the parliament of Aix. An extraordinary thirst forevery kind of knowledge characterized Peiresc from his earliest youth,and being of a weak constitution, as well as ample fortune, though heretained, like his family, an honourable post in the parliament, histime was principally devoted to the multifarious pursuits of anenlightened scholar. Like Pinelli, he delighted in the rarities of artand antiquity; but his own superior genius, and the vocation of thatage towards science, led him on to a far more extensive field ofinquiry. We have the life of Peiresc written by his countryman andintimate friend Gassendi; and no one who has any sympathy with scienceor with a noble character will read it without pleasure. Few booksindeed of that period are more full of casual information.

49. Peiresc travelled much in the early part of his life; he was atRome in 1600, and came to England and Holland in 1606. The harddrinking, even of our learned men,[687] disconcerted his southernstomach; but he was repaid by the society of Camden, Savile, andCotton. The king received Peiresc courteously, and he was present atthe opening of parliament. On returning to his native province, hebegan to form his extensive collections of marbles and medals, butespecially of natural history in every line. He was, perhaps, thefirst who observed the structure of zoophytes, though he seems not tohave suspected their animal nature. Petrifactions occupied much of histime; and he framed a theory of them which Gassendi explains atlength, but which, as might be expected, is not the truth.[688] Botanywas among his favourite studies, and Europe owes to him, according toGassendi, the Indian jessamine, the gourd of Mecca, the real Egyptianpapyrus, which is not that described by Prosper Alpinus. He firstplanted ginger, as well as many other Oriental plants, in an Europeangarden, and also the cocoa-nut, from which, however, he could notobtain fruit.

 [687] Gassendi, Vita Peiresc, p. 51.

 [688] P. 147.

50. Peiresc was not less devoted to astronomy; he had no sooner heardof the discoveries of Galileo than he set himself to procure atelescope, and had in the course of the same year, 1610, the pleasureof observing the moons of Jupiter. It even occurred to him that thesemight serve to ascertain the longitude, though he did not follow upthe idea. Galileo indeed, with a still more inventive mind, and withmore of mathematics, seems to have stood in the way of Peiresc. Hetook, as far as appears, no great pains to publish his researches,contenting himself with the intercourse of literary men, who passednear him, or with whom he could maintain correspondence. Severaldiscoveries are ascribed to him by Gassendi; of their originality, Icannot venture to decide. “From his retreat,” says another biographer,“Peiresc gave more encouragement to letters than any prince, more eventhan the Cardinal de Richelieu, who sometime afterwards founded theFrench Academy. Worthy to have been called by Bayle the_attorney-general_ of literature, he kept always on the level ofprogressive science, published manuscripts at his own expense,followed the labours of the learned throughout Europe, and gave theman active impulse by his own aid.” Scaliger, Salmasius, Holstenius,Kircher, Mersenne, Grotius, Valois, are but some of the great names ofEurope whom he assisted by various kinds of liberality.[689] Hepublished nothing himself, but some of his letters have been collected.

 [689] Biogr. Universelle.

51. The character of Peiresc was amiable and unreserved among hisfriends; but he was too much absorbed in the love of knowledge forinsipid conversation. For the same reason, his biographer informs us,he disliked the society of women, gaining nothing valuable from thetrifles and scandal upon which alone they could converse.[690]Possibly the society of both sexes at Aix, in the age of Peiresc, wassuch as, with no excessive fastidiousness, he might avoid. In hiseagerness for new truths, he became somewhat credulous; an error notperhaps easy to be avoided, while the accumulation of facts proceededmore rapidly than the ascertainment of natural laws. But for a genuineliberality of mind and extensive attainments in knowledge, very fewcan be compared to Peiresc; nor among those who have resembled him inthis employment of wealth and leisure, do I know that any names havedescended to posterity with equal lustre, except our two countrymen ofthe next generation, who approached so nearly to his character andcourse of life, Boyle and Evelyn.

 [690] Gassendi, p. 219.

CHAPTER XXVII.

 HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

_Dutch Scholars--Jesuit and Jansenist Philologers--Delphin Editions--French Scholars--English Scholars--Bentley._

|James Frederic Gronovius.|

1. The death of Salmasius, about the beginning of this period, left achasm in critical literature which no one was equal to fill. But thenearest to this giant of philology was James Frederic Gronovius, anative of Hamburg, but drawn, like several more of his countrymen, tothe universities of Holland, the peculiarly learned state of Europethrough the seventeenth century. The principal labours of Gronoviuswere those of correcting the text of Latin writers; in Greek we findvery little due to him.[691] His notes form an useful and considerablepart of those which are collected in what are generally styled theVariorum editions, published, chiefly after 1660, by the Dutchbooksellers. These contain selections from the older critics, some ofthem, especially those first edited, indifferently made and oftenmutilated; others with more attention to preserve entire the originalnotes. These, however, are, for the most part, only critical, as ifexplanatory observations were below the notice of an editor; though,as Le Clerc says, those of Manutius on Cicero’s epistles cost him muchmore time than modern editors have given to their conjectures.[692] Ingeneral, the Variorum editions were not greatly prized, with theexception of those by the two Gronovii and Grævius.[693]

 [691] Baillet. Critiques Grammairiens, n. 548. Blount. Biogr. Univ.

 [692] Parrhasiana, i., 233.

 [693] A list of the Variorum editions will be found in Baillet, Critiques Grammairiens, n. 604.

|James Gronovius.|

|Grævius.|

2. The place of the elder Gronovius, in the latter part of thispresent period, was filled by his son. James Gronovius, byindefatigable labour, and by a greater number of editions which bearhis name, may be reckoned, if not a greater philologer, one not lesscelebrated than his father. He was, at least, a better Greek critic,and in this language, though far below those who were about to arise,and who did, in fact, eclipse him long before his death, Bentley andBurman, he kept a high place for several years.[694] Grævius, anotherGerman whom the Dutch universities had attracted and retained,contributed to the Variorum editions, chiefly those of Latin authors,an erudition not less copious than that of any contemporary scholar.

 [694] Baillet, n. 548. Niceron, ii., 177.

|Isaac Vossius.|

3. The philological character of Gerard Vossius himself, if we mightbelieve some partial testimonies, fell short of that of his son Isaac;whose Observations on Pomponius Mela, and an edition of Catullus, didhim extraordinary credit, and have placed him among the firstphilologers of this age. He was of a more lively genius, and perhapshardly less erudition, than his father, but with a paradoxicaljudgment, and has certainly rendered much less service toletters.[695] Another son of a great father, Nicolas Heinsius, has bynone been placed on a level with him; but his editions of Prudentiusand Claudian are better than any that had preceded them.

 [695] Niceron, vol. xiii.

|Decline of German learning.|

|Spanheim.|

4. Germany fell lower and lower in classical literature. A writer, aslate as 1714, complains, that only modern books of Latin were taughtin the schools, and that the students in the universities despised allgrammatical learning. The study, “not of our own language, which weentirely neglect, but of French,” he reckons among the causes of thisdecay in ancient learning; the French translations of the classics ledmany to imagine that the original could be dispensed with.[696]Ezekiel Spanheim, envoy from the court of Brandenburg to that of LouisXIV., was a distinguished exception; his edition of Julian, and hisnotes on several other writers, attest an extensive learning, whichhas still preserved his name in honour. As the century drew nigh toits close, Germany began to revive; a few men of real philologicallearning, especially Fabricius, appeared as heralds of those greaternames which adorn her literary annals in the next age.

 [696] Burckhardt, De Linguæ Latinæ hodie neglectæ Causis Oratio, p. 34.

|Jesuit colleges in France.|

5. The Jesuits had long been conspicuously the classical scholars ofFrance; in their colleges the purest and most elegant Latinity wassupposed to be found; they had early cultivated these graces ofliterature, while all polite writing was confined to the Latinlanguage, and they still preserved them in its comparative disuse.“The Jesuits,” Huet says, “write and speak Latin well, but their styleis almost always too rhetorical. This is owing to their keepingregencies (an usual phrase for academical exercises) from their earlyyouth, which causes them to speak incessantly in public, and becomeaccustomed to a sustained and polished style above the tone of commonsubjects.”[697] Jouvancy, whose Latin orations were published in 1700,has had no equal, if we may trust a panegyric, since Maffei andMuretus.[698]

 [697] Huetiana, p. 71.

 [698] Biogr. Univ.

|Port-Royal writers. Lancelot.|

6. The Jansenists appeared ready at one time to wrest this palm fromtheir inveterate foes. Lancelot threw some additional lustre roundPort-Royal by the Latin and Greek grammars, which are more frequentlycalled by the name of that famous cloister than by his own. Both werereceived with great approbation in the French schools, except, Isuppose, where the Jesuits predominated, and their reputation lastedfor many years. They were never so popular though well known, in thiscountry. “The public,” says Baillet of the Greek grammar, which israther the more eminent of the two, “bears witness that nothing of itskind has been more finished. The order is clear and concise. We findin it many remarks, both judicious and important for the fullknowledge of the language. Though Lancelot has chiefly followedCaninius, Sylburgius, Sanctius, and Vossius, his arrangement is new,and he has selected what is most valuable in their works.”[699] Infact, he professes to advance nothing of his own, being more indebted,he says, to Caninius than to anyone else. The method of Clenardus hedisapproves, and thinks that of Ramus intricate. He adopts thedivision into three declensions. But his notions of the propermeaning of the tenses are strangely confused and erroneous: severalother mistakes of an obvious nature, as we should now say, will occurin his syntax; and, upon the whole, the Port-Royal grammar does notgive us a high idea of the critical knowledge of the seventeenthcentury, as to the more difficult language of antiquity.

 [699] Baillet, n. 714.

|Latin grammars. Perizonius.|

7. The Latin, on the other hand, had been so minutely and laboriouslystudied, that little more than gleanings after a great harvest couldbe obtained. The Aristarchus of Vossius, and his other grammaticalworks, though partly not published till this period, have beenmentioned in the last volume. Perizonius, a professor at Franeker, andin many respects one of the most learned of this age, published a goodedition of the Minerva of Sanctius in 1687. This celebrated grammarhad become very scarce, as well as that of Scioppius, which containednothing but remarks upon Sanctius. Perizonius combined the two withnotes more ample than those of Scioppius, and more bold in differingfrom the Spanish grammarian.

|Delphin editions.|

8. If other editions of the classical authors have been preferred bycritics, none, at least of this period, have been more celebrated thanthose which Louis XIV., at the suggestion of the Duke de Montausier,caused to be prepared for the use of the Dauphin. The object in viewwas to elucidate the Latin writers, both by a continual gloss in themargin, and by such notes as should bring a copious mass of ancientlearning to bear on the explanation, not of the more difficultpassages alone, but of all those in which an ordinary reader mightrequire some aid. The former of these is less useful, and lesssatisfactorily executed than the latter; for the notes, it must beowned that, with much that is superfluous even to tolerable scholars,they bring together a great deal of very serviceable illustration. Thechoice of authors as well as of editors was referred to Huet, whofixed the number of the former at forty. The idea of an index on amore extensive plan than in any earlier editions, was also due toHuet, who had designed to fuse those of each work into one moregeneral, as a standing historical analysis of the Latin language.[700]These editions are of very unequal merit, as might be expected fromthe number of persons employed, a list of whom will be found inBaillet.[701]

 [700] Huetiana, p. 92.

 [701] Critiques Grammairiens, n. 605.

|Le Fevre and the Daciers.|

9. Tanaquil Faber, thus better known than by his real name, Tanneguyle Fevre, a man learned, animated, not fearing the reproach ofparadox, acquired a considerable name among French critics by severaleditions, as well as by other writings in philology. But none of hisliterary productions were so celebrated as his daughter, Anne leFevre, afterwards Madame Dacier. The knowledge of Greek though oncenot very uncommon in a woman, had become prodigious in the days ofLouis XIV.; and when this distinguished lady taught Homer and Sapphoto speak French prose, she appeared a phœnix in the eyes of hercountrymen. She was undoubtedly a person of very rare talents andestimable character; her translations are numerous, and reputed to becorrect, though Niceron has observed that she did not raise Homer inthe eyes of those who were not prejudiced in his favour. Her husbandwas a scholar of kindred mind and the same pursuits. Their union wasfacetiously called the wedding of Latin and Greek. But each of thislearned couple was skilled in both languages. Dacier was a greattranslator; his Horace is perhaps the best known of his versions; butthe Poetics of Aristotle have done him most honour. The Daciers had tofight the battle of antiquity against a generation both ignorant andvain-glorious, yet keen-sighted in the detection of blemishes, anddisposed to avenge the wrongs of their fathers who had been trampledupon by pedants with the help of a new pedantry, that of the court andthe mode. With great learning they had a competent share of goodsense, but not perhaps a sufficiently discerning taste, or livelinessenough of style, to maintain a cause that had so many prejudices ofthe world now enlisted against it.[702]

 [702] Baillet. Niceron, vol. iii. Bibliothèque Universelle, x. 295, xxii. 176, xxiv. 241, 261, Biogr. Univers.

|Henry Valois. Complaints of decay of learning.|

10. Henry Valois might have been mentioned before for his edition ofAmmianus Marcellinus in 1636, which established his philologicalreputation. Many other works in the same line of criticism followed;he is among the great ornaments of learning in this period. Nor wasFrance destitute of others that did her honour. Cotelier, it is said,deserved by his knowledge of Greek to be placed on a level with thegreat scholars of former times. Yet there seems to have been somedecline, at least toward the close of the century, in thatprodigious erudition which had extinguished the preceding period. “Forwe know no one,” says Le Clerc, about 1699, “who equals in learning,in diligence and in the quantity of his works, the Scaligers, theLipsii, the Casaubons, the Salmasii, the Meursii, the Vossii, theSeldens, the Gronovii, and many more of former times.”[703] Thoughperhaps in this reflection there was something of the customary biasagainst the present generation, we must own that the writings ofscholars were less massive, and consequently gave less apparentevidence of industry than formerly. But in classical philology atleast, a better day was about to arise, and the first omen of it camefrom a country not yet much known in that literature.

 [703] Parrhasiana, vol. i., p. 225. Je viens d’apprendre, says Charles Patin in one of his letters, que M. Gronovius est mort à Leyden. Il restoit presque tout seul du nombre des savans d’Hollande. Il n’est plus dans ce pais-là des gens faits comme Jos. Scaliger, Baudius, Heinsius, Salmasius, et Grotius. (P. 582.)

|English learning. Duport.|

11. It has been observed in the last volume, that while England wasvery far from wanting men of extensive erudition, she had not been atall eminent in ancient or classical literature. The proof which theabsence of critical writings, or even of any respectable editions,furnishes, appears weighty; nor can it be repelled by sufficienttestimony. In the middle of the century James Duport, Greek professorat Cambridge, deserves honour by standing almost alone. “He appears,”says a late biographer, “to have been the main instrument by whichliterature was upheld in this university during the civil disturbancesof the seventeenth century; and though little known at present, heenjoyed an almost transcendant reputation for a great length of timeamong his contemporaries as well as in the generation whichimmediately succeeded.”[704] Duport however has little claim to thisreputation except by translations of the writings of Solomon, the bookof Job, and the Psalms, into Greek hexameters, concerning which hisbiographer gently intimates that “his notions of versification werenot formed in a severe or critical school,” and by what has certainlybeen more esteemed, his Homeri Gnomologia, which Le Clerc and bishopMonk agree to praise, as very useful to the student of Homer. Duportgave also some lectures on Theophrastus about 1656, which wereafterwards published in Needham’s edition of that author. “In these,”says Le Clerc, “he explains words with much exactness, and so as toshow that he understood the analogy of the language.”[705] “They areupon the whole calculated,” says the bishop of Gloucester, “to give nounfavourable opinion of the state of Greek learning in the universityof that memorable crisis.”

 [704] Museum Criticum, vol. ii., p. 672 (by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol).

 [705] Bibliothèque Choisie, xxv., 18.

|Greek not much studied.|

12. It cannot be fairly said that our universities declined in generallearning under the usurpation of Cromwell. They contained, on thecontrary, more extraordinary men than in any earlier period, but notgenerally well affected to the predominant power. Greek, however,seems not much to have flourished, even immediately after therestoration. Barrow, who was chosen Greek professor in 1660, complainsthat no one attended his lectures. “I sit like an Attic owl,” he says,“driven out from the society of all other birds.”[706] Accordingindeed to the scheme of study retained from a more barbarous age, noknowledge of the Greek language appears to have been required from thestudents, as necessary for their degrees. And if we may believe asatirical writer of the time of Charles II., but one whose satire hadgreat circulation and was not taxed with falsehood the general stateof education both in the schools and universities was as narrow,pedantic, and unprofitable, as can be conceived.[707]

 [706] See a biographical memoir of Barrow prefixed to Hughe’s edition of his works. This contains a sketch of studies pursued in the university of Cambridge from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, brief indeed, but such as I should have been glad to have seen before, p. 62. No alteration in the statutes, so far as they related to study, was made after the time of Henry VIII. or Edward VI.

 [707] Eachard’s Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy. This little tract was published in 1670, and went through ten editions by 1696.

|Gataker’s Cinnus and Antonius.|

13. We were not, nevertheless, destitute of men distinguished forcritical skill, even from the commencement of this period. The firstwas a very learned divine, Thomas Gataker, one whom a foreign writerhas placed among the six protestants most conspicuous, in hisjudgment, for depth of reading. His Cinnus, sive AdversariaMiscellanea, published in 1651, to which a longer work, entitledAdversaria Posthuma, is subjoined in later editions, may be introducedhere; since, among a far greater number of scriptural explanations,both of these miscellanies contain many relating to profane antiquity.He claims a higher place for his edition of Marcus Antoninus the nextyear. This is the earliest edition, if I am not mistaken, of anyclassical writer published in England with original annotations. Thoseof Gataker evince a very copious learning, and the edition is stillperhaps reckoned the best that has been given of this author.

|Stanley’s Æschylus.|

14. Thomas Stanley, author of the History of Ancient Philosophy,undertook a more difficult task, and gave in 1663 his celebratededition of Æschylus. It was, as every one has admitted, by farsuperior to any that had preceded it; nor can Stanley’s real praise beeffaced though it may be diminished, by an unfortunate charge that hasbeen brought against him, of having appropriated to himself theconjectures, most of them unpublished, of Casaubon, Dorat, andScaliger, to the number of at least three hundred emendations of thetext. It will hardly be reckoned a proof of our nationality, that aliving English scholar was the first to detect and announce thisplagiarism of a critic, in whom we had been accustomed to take pride,from these foreigners.[708] After these plumes have been withdrawn,Stanley’s Æschylus will remain a great monument of critical learning.

 [708] Edinburgh Review, xix., 494. Museum Criticum, ii., 498. (Both by the Bishop of London.)

|Other English philologers.|

15. Meric Casaubon by his notes on Persius, Antoninus, and DiogenesLaertius, Pearson by those on the last author, Gale on Iamblichus,Price on Apuleius, Hudson, by his editions of Thucydides and Josephus,Potter by that of Lycophron, Baxter of Anacreon, attested the progressof classical learning in a soil so well fitted to give it nourishment.The same William Baxter published the first grammar, not quiteelementary, which had appeared in England, entitled, De Analogia, seuArte Latinæ Linguæ Commentarius. It relates principally to etymology,and to the deduction of the different parts of the verb from a stem,which he conceives to be the imperative mood. Baxter was a man of someability, but, in the style of critics, offensively contemptuoustowards his brethren of the craft.

|Bentley.|

|His epistle to Mill.|

16. We must hasten to the greatest of English critics in this, orpossibly any other age, Richard Bentley. His first book was theEpistle to Mill, subjoined to the latter’s edition of the chronicle ofJohn Malala, a Greek writer of the lower empire. In a desultory andalmost garrulous strain, Bentley pours forth an immense store of novellearning and of acute criticism, especially on his favourite subject,which was destined to become his glory, the scattered relics of theancient dramatists. The style of Bentley, always terse and lively,sometimes humorous and drily sarcastic, whether he wrote in Latin orin English, could not but augment the admiration which his learningchallenged. Grævius and Spanheim pronounced him the rising star ofBritish literature, and a correspondence with the former began in1692, which continued in unbroken friendship till his death.

|Dissertation on Phalaris.|

17. But the rare qualities of Bentley were more abundantly displayed,and before the eyes of a more numerous tribunal, in his famousdissertation on the epistles ascribed to Phalaris. This was provoked,in the first instance, by a few lines of eulogy on these epistles bySir William Temple, who pretended to find in them indubitable marks ofauthenticity. Bentley, in a dissertation subjoined to Wotton’sReflections on Modern and Ancient Learning, gave tolerably conclusiveproofs of the contrary. A young man of high family and respectablelearning, Charles Boyle, had published an edition of the Epistles ofPhalaris, with some reflection on Bentley for personal incivility; acharge which he seems to have satisfactorily disproved. Bentleyanimadverted on this in his dissertation. Boyle the next year, withthe assistance of some leading men at Oxford, Aldrich, King, andAtterbury, published his Examination of Bentley’s Dissertation onPhalaris; a book generally called, in familiar brevity, Boyle againstBentley.[709] The Cambridge giant of criticism replied in an answerwhich goes by the name of Bentley against Boyle. It was the firstgreat literary war that had been waged in England; and like that ofTroy, it has still the prerogative of being remembered after theEpistles of Phalaris are almost as much buried as the walls of Troyitself. Both combatants were skillful in wielding the sword: the armsof Boyle, in Swift’s language, were given him by all the gods; but hisantagonist stood forward in no such figurative strength, master of alearning to which nothing parallel had been known in England, and thatdirected by an understanding prompt, discriminating, not idlysceptical, but still farther removed from trust in authority,sagacious in perceiving corruptions of language, and ingenious, at theleast, in removing them, with a style rapid, concise, amusing, andsuperior to Boyle in that which he had most to boast, a sarcasticwit.[710]

 [709] “The principal share in the undertaking fell to the lot of Atterbury; this was suspected at the time, and has since been placed beyond all doubt by the publication of a letter of his to Boyle.” Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 69.

 [710] In point of classical learning the joint stock of the confederacy bore no proportion to that of Bentley; their acquaintance with several of the books upon which they comment appears only to have begun upon that occasion, and sometimes they are indebted for their knowledge of them to their adversary; compared with his boundless erudition, their learning was that of school boys, and not always sufficient to preserve them from distressing mistakes. But profound literature was at that period confined to few, while wit and raillery found numerous and eager readers. It may be doubtful whether Busby himself, by whom every one of the confederated band had been educated, possessed knowledge which would have qualified him to enter the lists in such a controversy.” Monk’s Bentley, p. 69. Warburton has justly said, that Bentley by his wit foiled the Oxford men at their own weapons.

18. It may now seem extraordinary to us, even without looking at theanachronisms or similar errors which Bentley has exposed, that any oneshould be deceived by the Epistles of Phalaris. The rhetoricalcommon-places, the cold declamation of the sophist, the care to pleasethe reader, the absence of that simplicity, with which a man who hasnever known restraint in disguising his thoughts or choosing hiswords, is sure to express himself, strike us in the pretended lettersof this buskined tyrant, the Icon Basilice of the ancient world. Butthis was doubtless thought evidence of their authenticity by many, whomight say, as others have done in a happy vein of metaphor, that theyseemed not written with a pen but with a sceptre. The argument fromthe use of the Attic dialect by a Sicilian tyrant, contemporary withPythagoras, is of itself conclusive, and would leave no doubt in thepresent day.

|Disadvantages of scholars in that age.|

19. “It may be remarked,” says the Bishop of Gloucester, “that ascholar at that time possessed neither the aids nor the encouragementswhich are now presented to smooth the paths of literature. Thegrammars of the Latin and Greek languages were imperfectly anderroneously taught; and the critical scholar must have felt severelythe absence of sufficient indices, particularly of the voluminousscholiasts, grammarians, and later writers of Greece, in theexamination of which no inconsiderable portion of a life might beconsumed. Bentley relying upon his own exertions and the resources ofhis own mind, pursued an original path of criticism, in which theintuitive quickness and subtlety of his genius qualified him to excel.In the faculty of memory so important for such pursuits, he hashimself candidly declared that he was not particularly gifted.Consequently, he practised throughout life the precaution of noting inthe margin of his books the suggestions and conjectures which rushedinto his mind during their perusal. To this habit of laying upmaterials in store, we may partly attribute the surprising rapiditywith which some of his most important works were completed. He wasalso at the trouble of constructing for his own use indices of authorsquoted by the principal scholiasts, by Eustathius and other ancientcommentators, of a nature similar to those afterwards published byFabricius in his Bibliotheca Græca; which latter were the produce ofthe joint labour of various hands.”[711]

 [711] Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 12.

 SECT. II.

 ON ANTIQUITIES.

 _Grævius and Gronovius--Fabretti--Numismatic Writers--Chronology_.

|Thesauri of Grævius and of Gronovius.|

20. The two most industrious scholars of their time, Grævius andGronovius, collected into one body such of the numerous treatises onRoman and Greek antiquities, as they thought most worthy ofpreservation in an uniform and accessible work. These form theThesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum by Grævius, in twelve volumes, theThesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum by Gronovius, in thirteen volumes; theformer published in 1694, the first volumes of the latter in 1697.They comprehend many of the labours of the older antiquaries alreadycommemorated from the middle of the sixteenth to that of theseventeenth century, and some also of a later date. Among these, inthe collection of Grævius, are a treatise of Albert Rubens, son of thegreat painter, on the dress of the Romans, particularly the laticlave(Antwerp, 1665), the enlarged edition of Octavius Ferrarius on thesame subject, several treatises by Spanheim and Ursatus, andthe Roma Antica of Nardini, published in 1666. Gronovius gave a placein his twelfth volume (1702) to the very recent work of a youngEnglishman, Potter’s Antiquities, which the author, at the request ofthe veteran antiquary, had so much enlarged, that the Latintranslation in Gronovius is nearly double in length the first editionof the English.[712] The warm eulogies of Gronovius attest the meritof this celebrated work. Potter was but twenty-three years of age; hehad of course availed himself of the writings of Meursius, but he hasalso contributed to supercede them. It has been said that he is lessexact in attending to the difference of times and places than ourfiner criticism requires.[713]

 [712] The first edition of Potter’s Antiquities was published in 1697 and 1698.

 [713] Biogr. Univ.

|Fabretti.|

21. Bellori, in a long list of antiquarian writings, Falconieri inseveral more, especially his Inscriptiones Athleticæ, maintained thehonour of Italy in this province so justly claimed as her own.[714]But no one has been accounted equal to Raphael Fabretti, by judges socompetent as Maffei, Gravina, Fabroni, and Visconti.[715] Hisdiligence in collecting inscriptions was only surpassed by hissagacity in explaining them; and his authority has been preferred tothat of any other antiquary.[716] His time was spent in delving amongruins and vaults to explore the subterranean treasures of Latium; noheat nor cold nor rain nor badness of road could deter him from thesesolitary peregrinations. Yet the glory of Fabretti must be partlyshared with his horse. This wise and faithful animal, named MarcoPolo, had acquired, it is said, the habit of standing still, and as itwere pointing, when he came near an antiquity; his master candidlyowning that several things which would have escaped him had beendetected by the antiquarian quadruped.[717] Fabretti’s principal worksare three dissertations on the Roman aqueducts, and on the Trajancolumn. Little, says Fabroni, was known before about the Roman galleysor their naval affairs in general.[718] Fabretti was the first whor*duced lapidary remains into classes, and arranged them so as toillustrate each other; a method, says one of his most distinguishedsuccessors, which has laid the foundations of the science.[719] Aprofusion of collateral learning is mingled with the main stream ofall his investigations.

 [714] Salfi, vol. xi., 364.

 [715] Fabretti’s life has been written by two very favourable biographers, Fabroni, in Vitæ Italorum, vol. vi., and Visconti, in the Biography Universelle.

 [716] Fabroni, p. 187, Biogr. Univ.

 [717] Fabroni, p. 192.

 [718] P. 201.

 [719] Biogr. Univ.

|Numismatics. Spanheim--Vaillant.|

22. No one had ever come to the study of medals with such stores oferudition as Ezekiel Spanheim. The earlier writers on the subject,Vico, Erizzo, Angeloni, were not comparable to him, and had ratherdwelt on the genuineness or rarity of coins than on their usefulnessin illustrating history. Spanheim’s Dissertations on the Use ofMedals, the second improved edition of which appeared in 1671, firstconnected them with the most profound and critical research intoantiquity.[720] Vaillant, travelling into the Levant, brought homegreat treasures of Greek coinage, especially those of the Seleucidæ,at once enriching the cabinets of the curious and establishinghistorical truth. Medallic evidence, in fact, may be reckoned amongthose checks upon the negligence of historians, which having beenretrieved by industrious antiquaries, have created that caution, anddiscerning spirit which has been exercised in later times upon facts,and which, beginning in scepticism, passes onward to a more rational,and therefore more secure, conviction of what can fairly be proved.Jobert, in 1692, consolidated the researches of Spanheim, Vaillant,and other numismatic writers in his book, entitled La Science desMedailles, a better system of the science than had beenpublished.[721]

 [720] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xxii.

 [721] Biogr. Univ.

|Chronology. Usher.|

23. It would, of course, not be difficult to fill these pages withbrief notices of other books that fall within the extensive range ofclassical antiquity. But we have no space for more than a mereenumeration, which would give little satisfaction. Chronology hasreceived some attention in former volumes. Our learned archbishopUsher might there have been named, since the first part of his Annalsof the Old Testament, which goes down to the year of the world 3828,was published in 1650. The second part followed in 1654. This has beenthe chronology generally adopted by English historians, as well as byBossuet, Calmet, and Rollin, so that for many years it might be calledthe orthodox scheme of Europe. No former annals of the world had beenso exact in marking dates and collating sacred history with profane.It was, therefore, exceedingly convenient for those who, possessing nosufficient leisure or learning for these inquiries, might veryreasonably confide in such authority.

|Pezron.|

24. Usher, like Scaliger and Petavius, had strictly conformed to theHebrew chronology in all scriptural dates. But it is well known thatthe Septuagint version, and also the Samaritan Pentateuch, differgreatly from the Hebrew and from each other, so that the age of theworld has nearly 2,000 years more antiquity in the Greek than in theoriginal text. Jerome had followed the latter in the Vulgate; and inthe seventeenth century it was usual to maintain the incorrupt purityof the Hebrew manuscripts, so that when Pezron, in his Antiquité desTemps Devoilée, 1687, attempted to establish the Septuagintchronology, it excited a clamour in some of his church, as derogatoryto the Vulgate translation. Martianay defended the receivedchronology, and the system of Pezron gained little favour in thatage.[722] It has since become more popular, chiefly, perhaps, onaccount of the greater latitude it gives to speculations on the originof kingdoms and other events of the early world, which are certainlysomewhat cramped in the common reckoning. But the Septuagintchronology is not free from its own difficulties, and the internalevidence seems rather against its having been the original. Where twomust be wrong, it is possible that all three may be so; and the mostjudicious inquirers into ancient history have of late been coming tothe opinion, that, with some few exceptions, there are no means ofestablishing accurate dates before the Olympiads. While the moreancient history itself, even in leading and important events, is soprecarious as must be acknowledged, there can be little confidence inchronological schemes. They seem, however, to be very seducing, sothat those who enter upon the subject as sceptics become believers intheir own theory.

 [722] Biogr. Univ. arts. Pezron and Martianay. Bibliothèque Univ., xxiv., 103.

|Marsham.|

25. Among those who addressed their attention to particular portionsof chronology, Sir John Marsham ought to be mentioned. In his CanonChronicus Ægyptiacus, he attempted, as the learned were still moreprone than they are now, to reconcile conflicting authorities withoutrejecting any. He is said to have first started the ingenious ideathat the Egyptian dynasties, stretching to such immense antiquity,were not successive but collateral.[723] Marsham fell, like manyothers after him, into the unfortunate mistake of confoundingSesostris with Sesac. But in times when discoveries that Marsham couldnot have anticipated, were yet at a distance, he is extolled by mostof those who had laboured, by help of the Greek and Hebrew writersalone, to fix ancient history on a stable foundation, as the restorerof the Egyptian annals.

 [723] Biograph. Britannica. I have some suspicion that this will be found in Lydiat.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

 HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

_Papal Power limited by the Gallican Church--Dupin--Fleury--ProtestantControversy--Bossuet--His Assaults on Protestantism--Jansenism--Progress of Arminianism in England--Trinitarian Controversy--Defencesof Christianity--Pascal’s Thoughts--Toleration--Boyle--Locke--FrenchSermons--And English--Other Theological Works._

|Decline of papal influence.|

1. It has been observed in the last volume that while little or nodecline could be perceived in the general church of Rome at theconclusion of that period which we then had before us, yet the papalauthority itself had lost a part of that formidable character, which,through the Jesuits, and especially Bellarmin, it had some yearsbefore assumed. This was now still more decidedly manifest; thetemporal power over kings was not, certainly, renounced, for Romenever retracts anything; nor was it, perhaps, without ItalianJesuits to write in its behalf; but the common consent of nationsrejected it so strenuously, that on no occasion has it been broughtforward by any accredited or eminent advocate. There was also agrowing disposition to control the court of Rome; the treaty ofWestphalia was concluded in utter disregard of her protest. But suchmatters of history do not belong to us, when they do not bear a closerelation to the warfare of the pen. Some events there were which havehad a remarkable influence on the theological literature of France,and indirectly of the rest of Europe.

|Dispute of Louis XIV. with Innocent XI.|

2. Louis XIV., more arrogant, in his earlier life, than bigoted,became involved in a contest with Innocent XI., by a piece of hisusual despotism and contempt of his subjects’ rights. He extended in1673 the ancient prerogative, called the regale, by which the kingenjoyed the revenues of vacant bishoprics, to all the kingdom, thoughmany Sees had been legally exempt from it. Two bishops appealed to thepope, who interfered in their favour more peremptorily than the timeswould permit. Innocent, it is but just to say, was maintaining thefair rights of the church, rather than any claim of his own. But thedispute took at length a different form. France was rich in prelatesof eminent worth, and among such, as is evident, the Cisalpinetheories had never lain dormant since the councils of Constance andBasle. Louis convened the famous assembly of the Gallican clergy in1682. Bossuet, who is said to have felt some apprehensions lest thespirit of resistance should become one of rebellion, was appointed toopen this assembly; and his sermon on that occasion is among his mostsplendid works. His posture was, indeed, magnificent: he standsforward, not so much the minister of religion as her arbitrator; wesee him poise in his hands earth and heaven, and draw that boundaryline which neither was to transgress; he speaks the language ofreverential love towards the mother church, that of St. Peter, and thefairest of her daughters to which he belongs, conciliating theirtransient feud; yet, in this majestic tone which he assumes, noarrogance betrays itself, no thought of himself as one endowed withtranscendant influence; he speaks for the church, and yet we feel thathe raises himself above those for whom he speaks.[724]

 [724] This sermon will be found in Œuvres de Bossuet, vol. ix.

|Four articles of 1682.|

3. Bossuet was finally entrusted with drawing up the four articles,which the assembly, rather at the instigation, perhaps, of Colbertthan of its own accord, promulgated as the Gallican creed on thelimitations of papal authority. These declare: 1. That kings aresubject to no ecclesiastical power in temporals, nor can be deposeddirectly or indirectly by the chiefs of the church; 2. That thedecrees of the council of Constance as to the papal authority are infull force and ought to be observed; 3. That this authority can onlybe exerted in conformity with the canons received in the Gallicanchurch; 4. That, though the pope has the principal share indetermining controversies of faith, and his decrees extend to allchurches, they are not absolutely final, unless the consent of thecatholic church be superadded. It appears that some bishops would havewillingly used stronger language, but Bossuet foresaw the risk of anabsolute schism. Even thus the Gallican church approached so nearly toit that, the pope refusing the usual bulls to bishops nominated by theking, according to the concordat, between thirty and forty Sees, atlast, were left vacant. No reconciliation was effected till 1693, inthe pontificate of Innocent XII. It is to be observed, whether theFrench writers slur this over or not, that the pope gained the honoursof war; the bishops who had sat in the assembly of 1682, writingseparately letters which have the appearance of regretting, if notretracting, what they had done. These were, however, worded withintentional equivocation; and as the court of Rome yields to none insuspecting the subterfuges of words, it is plain that it contenteditself with an exterior humiliation of its adversaries. The oldquestion of the regale was tacitly abandoned; Louis enjoyed all he haddesired, and Rome might justly think herself not bound to fight forthe privileges of those who had made her so bad a return.[725]

 [725] I have derived most of this account from Bausset’s life of Bossuet, vol. ii. Both the bishop and his biographer shuffle a good deal about the letter of the Gallican prelates in 1693. But when the Roman legions had passed under the yoke at the Caudine forks, they were ready to take up arms again.

|Dupin on the ancient discipline.|

5. The doctrine of the four articles gained ground perhaps in thechurch of France through a work of great boldness, and derivingauthority from the learning and judgment of its author, Dupin.In the height of the contest, while many were considering how far theGallican church might dispense with the institution of bishops atRome, that point in the established system which evidently secured thevictory to their antagonist, in the year 1686, he published a treatiseon the ancient discipline of the church. It is written in Latin, whichhe probably chose as less obnoxious than his own language. It may betrue, which I cannot affirm or deny, that each position in this workhad been advanced before; but the general tone seems undoubtedly moreadverse to the papal supremacy than any book which could have comefrom a man of reputed orthodoxy. It tends, notwithstanding a fewnecessary admissions, to represent almost all that can be called poweror jurisdiction in the see of Rome as acquired, if not abusive, andwould leave, in a practical sense, no real pope at all; mere primacybeing a trifle, and even the right of interfering by admonition beingof no great value, when there was no definite obligation to obey. Theprinciple of Dupin is that the church having reached her perfection inthe fourth century, we should endeavour, as far as circ*mstances willadmit, to restore the discipline of that age. But, even in theGallican church, it has generally been held that he has urged hisargument farther than is consistent with a necessary subordination toRome.[726]

 [726] Bibliothèque Universelle, vi., 109. The book is very clear, concise, and learned, so that it is worth reading through by those who would understand such matters. I have not observed that it is much quoted by English writers.

|Dupin’s Ecclesiastical Library.|

6. In the same year, Dupin published the first volume of a morecelebrated work, his Nouvelle Bibliothèque des AuteursEcclesiastiques, a complete history of theological literature, atleast within the limits of the church, which, in a long series ofvolumes, he finally brought down to the close of the seventeenthcentury. It is unquestionably the most standard work of that kindextant, whatever deficiencies may have been found in its execution.The immense erudition requisite for such an undertaking may haverendered it inevitable to take some things at second hand, or to fallinto some errors; and we may add other causes less necessary, theyouth of the writer in the first volumes, and the rapidity with whichthey appeared. Integrity, love of truth, and moderation, distinguishthis ecclesiastical history, perhaps beyond any other. Dupin is oftennear the frontier of orthodoxy, but he is careful, even in the eyes ofjealous catholics, not quite to overstep it. This work was soontranslated into English, and furnished a large part of such knowledgeon the subject as our own divines possessed. His free way of speaking,however, on the Roman supremacy and some other points, excited theanimadversion of more rigid persons, and among others of Bossuet, whostood on his own vantage-ground, ready to strike on every side. Themost impartial critics have been of Dupin’s mind; but Bossuet, likeall dogmatic champions Of orthodoxy, never sought truth by ananalytical process of investigation, assuming his own possession of itas an axiom in the controversy.[727]

 [727] Bibliothèque Universelle, iii. 39, vii. 335, xxii. 120. Biogr. Universelle. Œuvres de Bossuet, vol. xxx. Dupin seems not to have held the superiority of bishops to priests jure divino, which nettles our man of Meaux. Ces grands critiques sont peu favorables aux supériorités ecclésiastiques, et n’aiment guère plus celles des evêques que celle du pape, p. 491.

|Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History.|

7. Dupin was followed a few years afterwards by one not his superiorin learning and candour (though deficient in neither), but in skill ofnarration and beauty of style, Claude Fleury. The first volume of hisEcclesiastical History came forth in 1691; but a part only of the longseries falls within this century. The learning of Fleury has been saidto be frequently not original; and his prolixity to be too great foran elementary historian. The former is only blameable when he hasconcealed his immediate authorities; few works of great magnitude havebeen written wholly from the prime sources; with regard to hisdiffuseness, it is very convenient to those who want access to theoriginal writers, or leisure to collate them. Fleury has been calledby some credulous and uncritical; but he is esteemed faithful,moderate, and more respectful or cautious than Dupin. Yet many of hisvolumes are a continual protest against the vices and ambition of themediæval popes, and his Ecclesiastical History must be reckoned amongthe causes of that estrangement, in spirit and affection, from thecourt of Rome which leavens the literature of France in the eighteenthcentury.

|His Dissertations.|

8. The dissertations of Fleury, interspersed with his history, weremore generally read and more conspicuously excellent. Concise, butneither dry nor superficial; luminous, yet appearing simple;philosophical without the affectation of profundity, seizingall that is most essential in their subject without the tediousness ofdetail or the pedantry of quotation; written, above all, with thatclearness, that ease, that unaffected purity of taste, which belong tothe French style of that best age, they present a contrast not only tothe inferior writings on philosophical history with which our ageabounds, but, in some respects, even to the best. It cannot be a crimethat these dissertations contain a good deal which, after more than acentury’s labour in historical inquiry, has become more familiar thanit was.

|Protestant Controversy in France.|

9. The French protestants, notwithstanding their disarmed condition,were not, I apprehend, much oppressed under Richelieu and Mazarin. Butsoon afterwards an eagerness to accelerate what was taking placethrough natural causes, their return into the church, brought on aseries of harassing edicts, which ended in the revocation of that ofNantes. During this time, they were assailed by less terrible weapons,yet such as required no ordinary strength to resist, the polemicalwritings of the three greatest men in the church of France, Nicole,Arnauld, and Bossuet. The two former were desirous to efface thereproaches of an approximation to Calvinism, and of a disobedience tothe Catholic church, under which their Jansenist party was labouring.Nicole began with a small treatise, entitled La Perpétuité de la Foide l’Eglise Catholique, touchant l’Eucharistie, in 1664. This aimed toprove that the tenet of transubstantiation had been constant in thechurch. Claude, the most able controvertist among the Frenchprotestants, replied in the next year. This led to a much moreconsiderable work by Nicole and Arnauld conjointly, with the sametitle as the former; nor was Claude slow in combating hisdouble-headed adversary. Nicole is said to have written the greaterportion of this second treatise, though it commonly bears the name ofhis more illustrious colleague.[728]

 [728] Biogr. Univ.

|Bossuet’s exposition of Catholic faith.|

10. Both Arnauld and Nicole were eclipsed by the most distinguishedand successful advocate of the Catholic church, Bossuet. HisExposition de la Foi Catholique was written in 1668, for the use oftwo brothers of the Dangeau family; but having been communicated toTurenne, the most eminent protestant that remained in France, itcontributed much to his conversion. It was published in 1671; andthough enlarged from the first sketch, does not exceed eighty pages inoctavo. Nothing can be more precise, more clear, or more free from allcircuity and detail than this little book; everything is put in themost specious light; the authority of the ancient church, recognisedby the majority of protestants, is alone kept in sight. Bossuet limitshimself to doctrines established by the Council of Trent, leaving outof the discussion not only all questionable points, but, what isperhaps less fair, all rites and usages, however general, orsanctioned by the regular discipline of the church, except so far asformally approved by that council. Hence, he glides with a transientstep over the invocation of saints and the worship of images, butpresses with his usual dexterity on the inconsistencies and weakconcessions of his antagonists. The Calvinists, or some of them, hademployed a jargon of words about real presence, which he exposes withadmirable brevity and vigour.[729] Nor does he gain less advantage infavour of tradition and church authority from the assumption ofsomewhat similar claims by the same party. It has often been alledgedthat the Exposition of Bossuet was not well received by many on hisown side. And for this there seems to be some foundation, though theProtestant controvertists have made too much of the facts. It waspublished at Rome in 1678, and approved in the most formal manner byInnocent XI. the next year. But it must have been perceived toseparate the faith of the church, as it rested on dry propositions,from the same faith living and embodied in the every-day worship ofthe people.[730]

 [729] Bossuet observes that most other controversies are found to depend more on words than substance, and the difference becomes less the more they are examined; but in that of the eucharist the contrary is the case, since the Calvinists endeavour to accommodate their phraseology to the Catholics, while essentially they differ. Vol. xviii., p. 135.

 [730] The writings of Bossuet against the Protestants occupy nine volumes, xviii.-xxvi., in the great edition of his works. Versailles, 1816. The Exposition de la Foi is in the eighteenth. Bausset, in his life of Bossuet, appears to have refuted the exaggerations of many Protestants as to the ill reception of this little book at Rome. Yet there was a certain foundation for it. See Bibliothèque Universelle, vol. xi., p. 455.

|His conference with Claude.|

11. Bossuet was now the acknowledged champion of the Roman church inFrance; Claude was in equal pre-eminence on the other side. Thesegreat adversaries had a regular conference in 1678. Mademoisellede Duras, a protestant lady, like most others of her rank atthat time, was wavering about religion, and in her presence thedispute was carried on. It entirely turned on church authority. Thearguments of Bossuet differed only from those which have often beenadduced by the spirit and conciseness with which he presses them. Wehave his own account which of course gives himself the victory. It wasalmost as much of course that the lady was converted; for it is seldomthat a woman can withstand the popular argument on that side, when shehas once gone far enough to admit the possibility of its truth bygiving it a hearing. Yet Bossuet deals in sophisms which, thoughalways in the mouths of those who call themselves orthodox, arecontemptible to such as know facts as well as logic. “I urged,” hesays, “in a few words what presumption it was to believe that we canbetter understand the word of God than all the rest of the church, andthat nothing would thus prevent there being as many religions aspersons.”[731] But there can be no presumption in supposing that wemay understand anything better than one who has never examined it atall; and if this rest of the church, so magnificently brought forward,have commonly acted on Bossuet’s principle, and thought itpresumptuous to judge for themselves; if out of many millions ofpersons a few only have deliberately reasoned on religion, and therest have been, like true zeros, nothing in themselves, but much insequence; if also, as is most frequently the case, thispresumptuousness is not the assertion of a paradox or novelty, but thepreference of one denomination of Christians, or of one tenetmaintained by respectable authority to another, we can only scorn theemptiness, as well as resent the effrontery of this common-place thatrings so often in our ears. Certainly, reason is so far fromcondemning a deference to the judgment of the wise and good, thatnothing is more irrational than to neglect it; but when this isclaimed for those whom we need not believe to have been wiser andbetter than ourselves, nay, sometimes whom without vain-glory we mayesteem less, and that so as to set aside the real authority of themost philosophical, unbiassed, and judicious of mankind, it is notpride or presumption, but a sober use of our faculties that rejectsthe jurisdiction.

 [731] Œuvres de Bossuet, xxiii., 290.

|Correspondence with Molanus and Leibnitz.|

12. Bossuet once more engaged in a similar discussion about 1691.Among the German Lutherans there seems to have been for a long time alurking notion that on some terms or other a reconciliation with thechurch of Rome could be effected; and this was most countenanced inthe dominions of Brunswick, and above all in the university ofHelmstadt. Leibnitz himself and Molanus, a Lutheran divine, were thenegotiators on that side with Bossuet. Their treaty, for such it wasapparently understood to be, was conducted by writing; and when weread their papers on both sides, nothing is more remarkable than thetone of superiority which the catholic plenipotentiary, if such hecould be deemed without powers from anyone but himself, has thoughtfit to assume. No concession is offered, no tenet explained away; thesacramental cup to the laity, and a permission to the Lutheran clergyalready married to retain their wives after their re-ordination, isall that he holds forth; and in this, doubtless, he could have had noauthority from Rome. Bossuet could not veil his haughty countenance,and his language is that of asperity and contemptuousness instead ofmoderation. He dictates terms of surrender as to a besieged city whenthe breach is already practicable, and hardly deigns to show hisclemency by granting the smallest favour to the garrison. It iscurious to see the strained constructions, the artifices of silence,to which Molanus has recourse in order to make out some pretence forhis ignominious surrender. Leibnitz, with whom the correspondencebroke off in 1693, and was renewed again in 1699, seems not quite soyielding as the other; and the last biographer of Bossuet suspectsthat the German philosopher was insincere or tortuous in thenegotiation. If this were so, he must have entered upon it less of hisown accord, than to satisfy the princess Sophia, who, like many of herfamily, had been a little wavering, till our act of settlement becamea true settlement to their faith. This bias of the court of Hanover isintimated in several passages. The success of this treaty of union, orrather of subjection, was as little to be expected as it wasdesirable; the old spirit of Lutheranism was much worn out, yet theremust surely have been a determination to resist so unequal acompromise. Rome negotiated as a conqueror with these beatenCarthaginians; yet no one had beaten them but themselves.[732]

 [732] Œuvres de Bossuet, vols. xxv. and xxvi.

|His Variations of Protestant Churches.|

13. The warfare of the Roman church may be carried on either in aseries of conflicts on the various doctrines wherein the reformersseparated from her, or by one pitched battle on the main question of aconclusive authority somewhere in the church. Bossuet’s temper, aswell as his inferiority in original learning, led him in preference tothe latter scheme of theological strategy. It was also manifestly thatcourse of argument which was most likely to persuade the unlearned. Hefollowed up the blow which he had already struck against Claude in hisfamous work on the Variations of Protestant Churches. Never did hisgenius find a subject more fit to display its characteristicimpetuosity, its arrogance, or its cutting and merciless spirit ofsarcasm. The weaknesses, the inconsistent evasions, the extravagancesof Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, and Beza pass, one after another, beforeus, till these great reformers seem like victim prisoners to be hewndown by the indignant prophet. That Bossuet is candid in statement, oreven faithful in quotation, I should much doubt; he gives the words ofhis adversaries in his own French, and the references are not made toany specified edition of their voluminous writings. The main point, ashe contends it to be, that the protestant churches (for he does notconfine this to persons), fluctuated much in the sixteenth century, issufficiently proved; but it remained to show that this was a reproach.Those who have taken a different view from Bossuet may perhaps thinkthat a little more of this censure would have been well incurred; thatthey have varied too little rather than too much; and that it is farmore difficult, even in controversy with the church of Rome, towithstand the inference which their long creeds and confessions, aswell as the language too common with their theologians, have furnishedto her more ancient and catholic claim of infallibility, than tovindicate those successive variations which are analogous to thenecessary course of human reason on all other subjects. The essentialfallacy of Romanism, that truth must ever exist visibly on earth, isimplied in the whole strain of Bossuet’s attack on the variances ofprotestantism: it is evident that variance of opinion proves errorsomewhere; but unless it can be shown that we have any certain methodof excluding it, this should only lead us to be more indulgent towardsthe judgment of others, and less confident of our own. The notion ofan intrinsic moral criminality in religious error is at the root ofthe whole argument; and till protestants are well rid of this, thereseems no secure mode of withstanding the effect which the vast weightof authority asserted by the Latin church, even where it has not theaid of the Eastern, must produce on timid and scrupulous minds.

|Anglican writings against Popery.|

14. In no period has the Anglican church stood up so powerfully indefence of the protestant cause as in that before us. From the era ofthe restoration to the close of the century the war was unremittingand vigorous. And it is particularly to be remarked, that theprincipal champions of the church of England threw off that ambiguoussyncretism which had displayed itself under the first Stuarts, and,comparatively at least with their immediate predecessors, avoidedevery admission which might facilitate a deceitful compromise. We canonly mention a few of the writers who signalised themselves in thiscontroversy.

|Taylor’s Dissuasive.|

15. Taylor’s Dissuasive from Popery was published in 1664; and inthis, his latest work, we find the same general strain of protestantreasoning, the same rejection of all but scriptural authority, thesame free exposure of the inconsistencies and fallacies of tradition,the same tendency to excite a sceptical feeling as to all except theprimary doctrines of religion, which had characterised the Liberty ofProphesying. These are mixed, indeed, in Taylor’s manner, with a fewpassages (they are, I think, but few), which singly taken might seemto breathe not quite this spirit; but the tide flows for the most partthe same way, and it is evident that his mind had undergone no change.The learning, in all his writings is profuse; but Taylor never leavesme with the impression that he is exact and scrupulous in itsapplication. In one part of this Dissuasive from Popery, having beenreproached with some inconsistency, he has no scruple to avow that ina former work he had employed weak arguments for a laudablepurpose.[733]

 [733] Taylor’s Works, x., 304. This is not surprising, as in his Ductor Dubitantium, xi., 484, he maintains the right of using arguments and authorities in controversy, which we do not believe to be valid.

|Barrow.--Stillingfleet.|

16. Barrow, not so extensively learned as Taylor, who had read rathertoo much, but inferior, perhaps, even in that respect to hardly anyone else, and above him in closeness and strength of reasoning,combated against Rome in many of his sermons, and especiallyin a long treatise on the papal supremacy. Stillingfleet followed, aman deeply versed in ecclesiastical antiquity, of an argumentativemind, excellently fitted for polemical dispute, but perhaps by thosehabits of his life rendered too much of an advocate to satisfy animpartial reader. In the critical reign of James II., he may beconsidered as the leader on the protestant side; but Wake, Tillotson,and several more would deserve mention in a fuller history ofecclesiastical literature.

|Jansenius.|

17. The controversies always smouldering in the Church of Rome,sometimes breaking into flame, to which the Anti-Pelagian writings ofAugustin had originally given birth, have been slightly touched in ourformer volumes. It has been seen that the rigidly predestinariantheories had been condemned by the court of Rome in Baius, that theopposite doctrine of Molina had narrowly escaped censure, that it wassafest to abstain from any language not verbally that of the church,or of Augustin whom the church held incontrovertible. But now a moreserious and celebrated controversy, that of the Jansenists, pierced,as it were, to the heart of the church. It arose before the middle ofthe century. Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, in his Augustinus, published,after his death, in 1640, gave, as he professed, a faithful statementof the tenets of that father. “We do not inquire,” he says, “what menought to believe on the powers of human nature, or on the grace andpredestination of God, but what Augustin once preached with theapprobation of the church, and has consigned to writing in many of hisworks.” This book is in three parts: the first containing a history ofthe Pelagian controversy, the second and third an exposition of thetenets of Augustin. Jansenius does not, however, confine himself somuch to mere analysis, but that he attacks the Jesuits Lessius andMolina, and even reflects on the bull of Pius V. condemning Baius,which he cannot wholly approve.[734]

 [734] A very copious history of Jansenism, taking it up from the council of Trent, will be found in the fourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, p. 139-398, from which Mosheim has derived most of what we read in his Ecclesiastical History. And the History of Port-Royal was written by Racine, in so perspicuous and neat a style, that, though we may hardly think with Olivet that it places him as high in prose writing as his tragedies do in verse, it entitles him to rank in the list, not a very long one, of those who have succeeded in both. Is it not probable, that in some scenes of Athalie he had Port-Royal before his eyes? The history and the tragedy were written about the same time. Racine, it is rather remarkable, had entered the field against Nicole in 1666, chiefly indeed to defend theatrical representations, but not without many sarcasms against Jansenism.

|Condemnation of his Augustinus in France.|

18. Richelieu, who is said to have retained some animosity againstJansenius on account of a book called Mars Gallicus, which he hadwritten on the side of his sovereign the king of Spain, designed toobtain the condemnation of the Augustinus by the French clergy. TheJesuits, therefore, had gained ground so far that the doctrines ofAugustin were out of fashion, though few besides themselves venturedto reject his nominal authority. It is certainly clear that Janseniusoffended the greater part of the church. But he had some powerfuladvocates, and especially Antony Arnauld, the most renowned of afamily long conspicuous for eloquence, for piety, and for oppositionto the Jesuits. In 1649, after several years of obscure dispute,Cornet, syndic of the faculty of Theology in the University of Paris,brought forward for censure seven propositions, five of which becameafterwards so famous, without saying that they were found in the workof Jansenius. The faculty condemned them, though it had never beenreckoned favourable to the Jesuits; a presumption that they were atleast expressed in a manner repugnant to the prevalent doctrine. YetLe Clerc, to whose excellent account of this controversy in thefourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle we are chieflyindebted, declares his own opinion that there may be some ambiguity inthe style of the first, but that the other four are decidedlyconformable to the theology of Augustin.

|And at Rome.|

19. The Jesuits now took the course of calling in the authority ofRome. They pressed Innocent X. to condemn the five propositions, whichwere maintained by some doctors in France. It is not the policy ofthat court to compromise so delicate a possession as infallibility bybringing it to the test of that personal judgment, which is ofnecessity the arbiter of each man’s own obedience. The popes have infact rarely taken a part, independently of councils, in these schooldebates. The bull of Pius V., a man too zealous by character to regardprudence, in which he condemned many tenets of Baius, had not, norcould it, give satisfaction to those who saw with their own eyes thatit swerved from the Augustinian theory. Innocent was, at first,unwilling to meddle with a subject which, as he owned to a friend, hedid not understand. But after hearing some discussions, he grew moreconfident of his knowledge, which he ascribed, as in duty bound, tothe inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and went so heartily along with theAnti-Jansenists, that he refused to hear the deputies of the otherparty. On the 31st of May, 1653, he condemned the five propositions,four as erroneous, and the fifth in stronger language; declaring,however, not in the bull, but orally, that he did not condemn thetenet of efficacious grace (which all the Dominicans held), nor thedoctrine of Saint Augustin, which was, and ever would be that of thechurch.

|The Jansenists take a distinction.|

20. The Jansenists were not bold enough to hint that they did notacknowledge the infallibility of the pope in an express and positivedeclaration. Even if they had done so, they had an evident recognitionof this censure of the five propositions by their own church, andmight dread its being so generally received as to give the sanctionwhich no catholic can withstand. They had recourse, unfortunately, toa subterfuge which put them in the wrong. They admitted that thepropositions were false, but denied that they could be found in thebook of Jansenius. Thus, each party was at issue on a matter of fact,and each erroneously, according at least to the judgment of the mostlearned and impartial protestants. The five propositions express thedoctrine of Augustin himself; and if they do this, we can hardly doubtthat they express that of Jansenius. In a short time, this ground ofevasion was taken from their party. An Assembly of French prelates inthe first place, and afterwards Alexander VII., successor of Innocent X.,condemned the propositions, as in Jansenius, and in the senseintended by Jansenius.

|And are persecuted.|

21. The Jansenists were now driven to the wall: the Sorbonne in 1655,in consequence of some propositions of Arnauld, expelled him from thetheological faculty; a formulary was drawn up to be signed by theclergy, condemning the propositions of Jansenius, which was finallyestablished in 1661; and those who refused, even nuns, underwent aharassing persecution. The most striking instance of this, which stillretains an historical character, was the dissolution of the famousconvent of Port-Royal, over which Angelica Arnauld, sister of thegreat advocate of Jansenism, had long presided with signal reputation.This nunnery was at Paris, having been removed in 1644 from an ancientCistertian convent of the same name, about six leagues distant, andcalled for distinction Port-Royal des Champs. To this now unfrequentedbuilding some of the most eminent men repaired for study, whosewritings being anonymously published, have been usually known by thename of their residence. Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Lancelot, De Sacy,are among the Messieurs de Port-Royal, an appellation so glorious inthe seventeenth century. The Jansenists now took a distinction, veryreasonable, as it seems, in its nature, between the authority whichasserts or denies a proposition, and that which does the like as to afact. They refused to the pope, that is, in this instance, to thechurch, the latter infallibility. We cannot prosecute this part ofecclesiastical history farther; if writings of any literary importancehad been produced by the controversy, they would demand our attention;but this does not appear to have been the case. The controversybetween Arnauld and Malebranche may perhaps be an exception. Thelatter, carried forward by his original genius, attempted to deal withthe doctrines of theology as with metaphysical problems, in his Traitéde la Nature et de la Grace. Arnauld animadverted on this in hisRéflexions Philosophiques et Théologiques. Malebranche replied inLettres du Père Malebranche à un de ses Amis. This was published in1686, and the controversy between such eminent masters of abstrusereasoning began to excite attention. Malebranche seems to have retiredfirst from the field. His antagonist had great advantages in thedispute, according to received systems of theology, with which he wasmuch more conversant, and perhaps on the whole in the philosophicalpart of the question. This however cannot be reckoned entirely aJansenistic controversy, though it involved those perilousdifficulties which had raised that flame.[735]

 [735] An account of this controversy will be found at length in the second volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle.

|Progress of Arminianism.|

|Courcelles.|

22. The credit of Augustin was now as much shaken in the protestant,as in the catholic regions of Europe. Episcopius had given to theRemonstrant party a reputation which no sect so inconsiderable in itsseparate character has ever possessed. The Dutch Arminians were at notime numerous; they took no hold of the people; they had fewchurches, and though not persecuted by the lenient policy of Holland,were still under the ban of an orthodox clergy, as exclusive andbigoted as before. But their writings circulated over Europe, and madea silent impression on the adverse party. It became less usual tobring forward the Augustinian hypothesis in prominent or unequivocallanguage. Courcelles, born at Geneva, and the successor of Episcopiusin the Remonstrant congregation at Amsterdam, with less genius thanhis predecessor, had, perhaps, a more extensive knowledge ofecclesiastical antiquity. His works were much in esteem with thetheologians of that way of thinking; but they have not fallen in myway.

|Limborch.|

23. Limborch, great-nephew of Episcopius, seems more than any otherArminian divine to have inherited his mantle. His most important workis the Theologia Christiana, containing a system of divinity andmorals, in seven books and more than 900 pages, published in 1686. Itis the fullest delineation of the Arminian scheme; but as theArminians were by their principle free inquirers, and not, like otherchurches, bondsmen of symbolical formularies, no one book can strictlybe taken as their representative. The tenets of Limborch, are, in themajority of disputable points, such as impartial men have generallyfound in the primitive or Ante-Nicene fathers; but in some he probablydeviates from them, steering far away from all that the protestants ofthe Swiss reform had abandoned as superstitious or unintelligible.

|Le Clerc.|

24. John Le Clerc, in the same relationship to Courcelles thatLimborch was to Episcopius, and like him transplanted from Geneva tothe more liberal air, at that time, of the United Provinces, claims ahigh place among the Dutch Arminians; for though he did not maintaintheir cause either in systematic or polemical writings, his commentaryon the Old Testament, and still more his excellent and celebratedreviews, the Bibliothèques Universelle, Choisie, and Ancienne etModerne, must be reckoned a perpetual combat on that side. Thesejournals enjoyed an extraordinary influence over Europe, and deservedto enjoy it. Le Clerc is generally temperate, judicious, appeals to nopassion, displays a very extensive, though not perhaps a very deeperudition, lies in wait for the weakness and temerity of those hereviews, thus sometimes gaining the advantage over more learned menthan himself. He would have been a perfect master of that sort ofcriticism, then newly current in literature, if he could haverepressed an irritability in matters personal to himself, and a degreeof prejudice against the Romish writers, or perhaps those styledorthodox in general, which sometimes disturbs the phlegmaticsteadiness with which a good reviewer, like a practised sportsman,brings down his game.[736]

 [736] Bishop Monk observes that Le Clerc “seems to have been the first person who understood the power which may be exercised over literature by a reviewer.” Life of Bentley, p. 209. This may be true, especially as he was nearly the first reviewer, and certainly better than his predecessors. But this remark is followed by a sarcastic animadversion upon Le Clerc’s ignorance of Greek metres, and by the severe assertion, that “by an absolute system of terror, he made himself a despot in the republic of letters.” The former is so far true, that he neither understood the Greek metres as well as Bentley and Porson, or those who have trod in their steps, nor supposed that all learning was concentred in that knowledge, as we seemed in danger of supposing within my memory. The latter is not warranted by the general character of Le Clerc’s criticisms, which, where he has no personal quarrel, is temperate and moderate, neither traducing men, nor imputing motives; and consequently unlike certain periodical criticism of a later date.

|Sancroft’s Fur Prædestinatus.|

25. The most remarkable progress made by the Arminian theology was inEngland. This had begun under James and Charles; but it was then takenup in conjunction with that patristic learning, which adopted thefourth and fifth centuries as the standard of orthodox faith. Perhapsthe first very bold and unambiguous attack on the Calvinistic systemwhich we shall mention came from this quarter. This was an anonymousLatin pamphlet, entitled Fur Prædestinatus, published in 1651, andgenerally ascribed to Sancroft, at that time a young man. It is adialogue between a thief under sentence of death and his attendantminister, wherein the former insists upon his assurance of beingpredestinated to salvation. In this idea there is nothing but what issufficiently obvious; but the dialogue is conducted with some spiritand vivacity. Every position in the thief’s mouth is taken fromeminent Calvinistic writers, and what is chiefly worth notice, is thatSancroft, for the first time, has ventured to arraign the greatestheroes of the Reformation; not only Calvin, Beza, and Zanchius, butwho had been hitherto spared, Luther and Zuingle. It was in the natureof a manifesto from the Arminian party, that they would not defer infuture to any modern authority.[737]

 [737] The Fur Prædestinatus is reprinted in D’Oyly’s Life of Sancroft. It is much the best proof of ability that the worthy archbishop ever gave.

|Arminianism in England.|

26. The loyal Anglican clergy, suffering persecution at the hands ofCalvinistic sectaries, might be naturally expected to cherish theopposite principles. These are manifest in the sermons of Barrow,rather perhaps by his silence than his tone, and more explicitly inthose of South. But many exceptions might be found among leading men,such as Sanderson; while in an opposite quarter, among the youngergeneration who had conformed to the times, arose a more formidablespirit of Arminianism, which changed the face of the English church.This was displayed among those who, just about the epoch of theRestoration, were denominated Latitude-men, or more commonlyLatitudinarians, trained in the principles of Episcopius andChillingworth, strongly averse to every compromise with popery, andthus distinguished from the high church party, learned rather inprofane philosophy than in the fathers, more full of Plato andPlotinus than Jerome or Chrysostom, great maintainers of naturalreligion and of the eternal laws of morality, not very solicitousabout systems of orthodoxy, and limiting very considerably beyond thenotions of former ages, the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Thisis given as a general character, but varying in the degree of itsapplication to particular persons. Burnet enumerates as the chief ofthis body of men, More, Cudworth, Whichcot, Tillotson, Stillingfleet;some, especially the last, more tenacious of the authority of thefathers and of the church than others, but all concurring in theadoption of an Arminian theology.[738] This became so predominantbefore the revolution, that few English divines of eminence remained,who so much as endeavoured to steer a middle course, or to dissembletheir renunciation of the doctrines which had been sanctioned at thesynod of Dort by the delegates of their church. “The TheologicalInstitutions of Episcopius,” says a contemporary writer, “were at thattime (1685) generally in the hands of our students of divinity in bothuniversities, as the best system of divinity that had appeared.”[739]And he proceeds afterwards: “The Remonstrant writers, among whom therewere men of excellent learning and parts, had now acquired aconsiderable reputation in our universities by the means of some greatmen among us.” This testimony seems irresistible; and as one hundredyears before the Institutes of Calvin were read in the same academicalstudies, we must own, unless Calvin and Episcopius shall be maintainedto have held the same tenets, that Bossuet might have added a chapterto the Variations of Protestant Churches.

 [738] Burnet’s History of His Own Times, i., 187. Account of the new sect called Latitudinarians, in the collection of tracts, entitled Phœnix, vol. ii., p. 499.

 [739] Nelson’s Life of Bull, in Bull’s Works, vol. viii., p. 257.

|Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica.|

27. The methods adopted in order to subvert the Augustinian theologywere sometimes direct, by explicit controversy, or by an oppositetrain of scriptural interpretation in regular commentaries; morefrequently perhaps indirect, by inculcating moral duties, andespecially by magnifying the law of nature. Among the first class, theHarmonia Apostolica of Bull seems to be reckoned the principal work ofthis period. It was published in 1669, and was fiercely encountered atfirst, not merely by the presbyterian party, but by many of thechurch, the Lutheran tenets as to justification by faith being stilldeemed orthodox. Bull establishes as the groundwork of his harmonybetween the apostles Paul and James, on a subject where their languageapparently clashes in terms, that we are to interpret St. Paul by St.James, and not St. James by St. Paul, because the latest authority,and that which may be presumed to have explained what was obscure inthe former, ought to prevail;[740] a rule doubtless applicable in manycases, whatever it may be in this. It, at least, turned to hisadvantage; but it was not so easy for him to reconcile his opinionswith those of the reformers, or with the Anglican articles.

 [740] Nelson’s Life of Bull.

|Hammond--Locke--Wilkins.|

28. The Paraphrase and Annotations of Hammond on the New Testament,give a different colour to the Epistles of St. Paul, from that whichthey display in the hands of Beza and the other theologians of thesixteenth century. And the name of Hammond stood so high with theAnglican clergy, that he naturally turned the tide of interpretationhis own way. The writings of Fowler, Wilkins, and Whichcot are chieflyintended to exhibit the moral lustre of Christianity, and tomagnify the importance of virtuous life. The first of these venturedon an express defence of Latitudinarianism; but in general those towhom their adversaries gave that name declined the invidiousprejudices which they knew to be associated with it. Wilkins left anunfinished work on the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion.Twelve chapters only, about half the volume, were ready for the pressat his death; the rest was compiled by Tillotson as well as thematerials left by the author would allow; and the expressions employedlead us to believe that much was due to the editor. The latter’spreface strongly presses the separate obligation of natural religion,upon which both the disciples of Hobbes, and many of the less learnedsectaries, were at issue with him.

|Socinians in England.|

29. We do not find much of importance written on the Trinitariancontroversy before the middle of the seventeenth century, except bythe Socinians themselves. But the case was now very different. Thoughthe Polish or rather German Unitarians did not produce moredistinguished men than before, they came more forward in the field ofdispute. Finally, expelled from Poland in 1660, they sought refuge inmore learned, as well as more tolerant, regions, and especially in thegenial soil of religious liberty, the United Provinces. Even here,they enjoyed no avowed toleration; but the press, with a very slightconcealment of place, under the attractive words, Eleutheropolis,Irenopolis, or Freystadt, was ready to serve them with its naturalimpartiality. They began to make a slight progress in England; thewritings of Biddle were such as even Cromwell, though habituallytolerant, did not overlook; the author underwent an imprisonment bothat that time and after the Restoration. In general, the Unitarianwriters preserved a disguise. Milton’s treatise, not long sincebrought to light, goes on the Arian hypothesis, which had probablybeen countenanced by some others. It became common, in the reign ofCharles II., for the English divines to attack the Anti-Trinitariansof each denomination.

|Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicenæ.|

30. An epoch is supposed to have been made in this controversy, by thefamous work of Bull, Defensio Fidei Nicenæ. This was not primarilydirected against the heterodox party. In the Dogmata Theologica ofPetavius, published in 1644, that learned Jesuit, laboriouslycompiling passages from the fathers, had come to the conclusion thatmost of those before the Nicene council had seemed, by their language,to run into nearly the same heresy as that which the council hadcondemned, and this inference appeared to rest on a long series ofquotations. The Arminian Courcelles, and even the English philosopher,Cudworth, the latter of whom was as little suspected of a heterodoxleaning, as Petavius himself, had come to the same result; so that aconsiderable triumph was given to the Arians, in which the Socinians,perhaps at that time more numerous, seem to have thought themselvesentitled to partake. Bull had, therefore, to contend with authoritiesnot to be despised by the learned.

31. The Defensio Fidei Nicenæ was published in 1685. It did not wantanswerers in England; but it obtained a great reputation, and anassembly of the French clergy, through the influence of Bossuet,returned thanks to the author. It was, indeed, evident that Petavius,though he had certainly formed his opinion with perfect honesty, waspreparing the way for an inference, that if the primitive fatherscould be heterodox on a point of so great magnitude, we must look forinfallibility, not in them nor in the diffusive church, but in generalcouncils presided over by the pope, or ultimately in the pope himself.This, though not unsuitable to the notions of some Jesuits, wasdiametrically opposite to the principles of the Gallican church, whichprofessed to repose on a perpetual and catholic tradition.

|Not satisfactory to all.|

32. Notwithstanding the popularity of this defence of the Nicenefaith, and the learning it displays, the author was far from endingthe controversy, or from satisfying all his readers. It was alledgedthat he does not meet the question with which he deals; that the wordὁμοουσιος [hom*oousios], being almost new at the time of the council,and being obscure and metaphysical in itself, required a precisedefinition to make the reader see his way before him, or, at least,one better than Bull has given, which the adversary might probablyadopt without much scruple; that the passages adduced from the fathersare often insufficient for his purpose; that he confounds the eternalessence with the eternal personality or distinctness of the Logos,though well aware, of course, that many of the early writers employeddifferent names (ενδιαθετος [endiathetos] and προφορικος[prophorikos]) for these; and that he does not repel some of thepassages which can hardly bear an orthodox interpretation. It wasurged, moreover, that his own hypothesis, taken altogether, is but apalliated Arianism; that by insisting, for more than one hundredpages, on the subordination of the Son to the Father, he came close towhat since has borne that name, though it might not be precisely whathad been condemned at Nice, and could not be reconciled with theAthanasian creed, except by such an interpretation of the latter as isneither probable, nor has been reputed orthodox.

|Mystics.|

|Fenelon.|

33. Among the theological writers of the Roman church, and in a lessdegree among protestants, there has always been a class notinconsiderable for numbers or for influence, generally denominatedmystics, or, when their language has been more unmeasured, enthusiastsand fanatics. These may be distinguished into two kinds, though itmust readily be understood that they may often run much into oneanother; the first believing that the soul, by immediate communionwith the Deity, receives a peculiar illumination and knowledge oftruths, not cognisable by the understanding; the second lesssolicitous about intellectual than moral light, and aiming at suchpure contemplation of the attributes of God, and such an intimateperception of spiritual life as may end in a sort of absorption intothe divine essence. But I should not probably have alluded to anywritings of this description, if the two most conspicuous luminariesof the French church, Bossuet and Fenelon, had not clashed with eachother in that famous controversy of Quietism, to which theenthusiastic writings of Madame Guyon gave birth. The “Maximes desSaints” of Fenelon I have never seen: the editions of his entire worksas they affect to be, do not include what the church has condemned;and the original book has probably become scarce. Fenelon appears tohave been treated by his friend, shall we call him? or rival, withremarkable harshness. Bossuet might have felt some jealousy at therapid elevation of the archbishop of Cambray: but we need not haverecourse to this; the rigour of orthodoxy in a temper like his willaccount for all. There could be little doubt but that many saintshonoured by the church had uttered things quite as strong as any thatFenelon’s work contained. Bossuet however succeeded in obtaining itscondemnation at Rome. Fenelon was of the second class above-mentionedamong the mystics, and seems to have been absolutely free from suchpretences to illumination as we find in Behmen or Barclay. The puredisinterested love of God was the main spring of his religious theory.The Divine Œconomy of Poiret, 1686, and the writings of a Germanquietist, Spener, do not require any particular mention.[741]

 [741] Bibl. Universelle, v., 412; xvi., 224.

|Change in the character of theological literature.|

34. This later period of the seventeenth century was marked by anincreasing boldness in religious inquiry; we find more disregard ofauthority, more disposition to question received tenets, a moresuspicious criticism, both as to the genuineness and the credibilityof ancient writings, a more ardent love of truth, that is, ofperceiving and understanding what is true, instead of presuming thatwe possess it without any understanding at all. Much of this wasassociated, no doubt, with the other revolutions in literary opinion;with the philosophy of Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Bayle, andLocke, with the spirit which a slightly learned, yet acute generationof men rather conversant with the world than with libraries, to whomthe appeal in modern languages must be made, was sure to breathe, withthat incessant reference to proof which the physical sciences taughtmankind to demand. Hence, quotations are comparatively rare in thetheological writings of this age; they are better reduced to their dueoffice of testimony as to fact, sometimes of illustration or betterstatement of an argument, but not so much alledged as argument orauthority in themselves. Even those who combated on the side ofestablished doctrines were compelled to argue more from themselves,lest the public, their umpire, should reject, with an oppositeprejudice, what had enslaved the prejudices of their fathers.

|Freedom of many writings.|

35. It is well known that a disbelief in Christianity became veryfrequent about this time. Several books more or less appear toindicate this spirit, but the charge has often been made with nosufficient reason. Of Hobbes, enough has been already said, andSpinosa’s place as a metaphysician will be in the next chapter. HisTractatus Theologico-Politicus, published anonymously at Amsterdam,with the false date of Hamburg, in 1670, contains many observations onthe Old Testament, which, though they do not really affect its generalauthenticity and truth, clashed with the commonly received opinion ofits absolute inspiration. Some of these remarks were, if not borrowed,at least repeated in a book of more celebrity, Sentimens de quelquesTheologiens d’Hollande sur l’Histoire Critique du Père Simon. Thiswork is written by Le Clerc, but it has been doubted whether he is theauthor of some acute, but hardy, remarks on the inspiration ofscripture which it contains. These, however, must be presumed tocoincide for the most part with his own opinion; but he has afterwardsdeclared his dissent from the hypothesis contained in these volumes,that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. The ArchæologiaPhilosophica of Thomas Burnet is intended to question the literalhistory of the creation and fall. But few will pretend that either LeClerc or Burnet were disbelievers in revelation.

|Thoughts of Pascal.|

36. Among those who sustained the truth of Christianity by argumentrather than authority, the first place both in order of time and ofexcellence is due to Pascal, though his Thoughts were not publishedtill 1670, some years after his death, and, in the first edition, notwithout suppressions. They have been supposed to be fragments of amore systematic work that he had planned, or perhaps only reflectionscommitted to paper, with no design of publication in their actualform. But, as is generally the case with works of genius we do noteasily persuade ourselves that they could have been improved by anysuch alteration as would have destroyed their type. They are atpresent bound together by a real coherence through the predominantcharacter of the reasonings and sentiments, and give us everythingthat we could desire in a more regular treatise without the tediousverbosity which regularity is apt to produce. The style is not sopolished as in the Provincial Letters, and the sentences are sometimesill constructed and elliptical. Passages almost transcribed fromMontaigne have been published by careless editors as Pascal’s.

37. But the Thoughts of Pascal are to be ranked, as a monument of hisgenius, above the Provincial Letters, though some have asserted thecontrary. They burn with an intense light; condensed in expression,sublime, energetic, rapid, they hurry away the reader till he isscarcely able or willing to distinguish the sophisms from the truththey contain. For that many of them are incapable of bearing a calmscrutiny is very manifest to those who apply such a test. The notes ofVoltaire, though always intended to detract, are sometimesunanswerable; but the splendour of Pascal’s eloquence absolutelyannihilates, in effect on the general reader, even this antagonist.

38. Pascal had probably not read very largely, which has given anampler sweep to his genius. Except the Bible and the writings ofAugustin, the book that seems most to have attracted him was theEssays of Montaigne. Yet no men could be more unlike in personaldispositions and in the cast of their intellect. But Pascal, thoughabhorring the religious and moral carelessness of Montaigne, foundmuch that fell in with his own reflections in the contempt of humanopinions, the perpetual humbling of human reason, which runs throughthe bold and original work of his predecessor. He quotes no book sofrequently; and, indeed, except Epictetus, and once or twiceDescartes, he hardly quotes any other at all. Pascal was too acute ageometer, and too sincere a lover of truth to countenance the sophismsof mere Pyrrhonism; but, like many theological writers, in exaltingfaith he does not always give reason her value, and furnishes weaponswhich the sceptic might employ against himself. It has been said thathe denies the validity of the proofs of natural religion. This seemsto be in some measure an error, founded on mistaking the objections heputs in the mouths of unbelievers for his own. But it must, I think,be admitted that his arguments for the being of a God are too often_à tutiori_, that it is the safer side to take.

39. The Thoughts of Pascal on miracles abound in proofs of hisacuteness and originality; an originality much more striking when werecollect that the subject had not been discussed as it has since, butwith an intermixture of some sophistical and questionable positions.Several of them have a secret reference to the famous cure of hisniece, Mademoiselle Perier, by the holy thorn. But he is embarrassedwith the difficult question whether miraculous events are sure testsof the doctrine they support, and is not wholly consistent in hisreasoning, or satisfactory in his distinctions. I am unable topronounce whether Pascal’s other observations on the rational proofsof Christianity are as original as they are frequently ingenious andpowerful.

40. But the leading principle of Pascal’s theology, that from which hededuces the necessary truth of revelation, is the fallen nature ofmankind; dwelling less upon scriptural proofs, which he takesfor granted, than on the evidence which he supposes man himself tosupply. Nothing, however, can be more dissimilar than his beautifulvisions to the vulgar Calvinism of the pulpit. It is not the sordid,groveling, degraded, Caliban of that school, but the ruined archangelthat he delights to paint. Man is so great, that his greatness ismanifest, even in his knowledge of his own misery. A tree does notknow itself to be miserable. It is true that to know we are miserableis misery; but still it is greatness to know it. All his misery proveshis greatness; it is the misery of a great lord, of a king,dispossessed of their own. Man is the feeblest branch of nature, butit is a branch that thinks. He requires not the universe to crush him.He may be killed by a vapour, by a drop of water. But if the wholeuniverse should crush him, he would be nobler than that which causeshis death, because he knows that he is dying, and the universe wouldnot know its power over him. This is very evidently sophistical anddeclamatory; but it is the sophistry of a fine imagination. It wouldbe easy, however, to find better passages. The dominant idea recurs inalmost every page of Pascal. His melancholy genius plays in wild andrapid flashes, like lightning round the scathed oak, about the fallengreatness of man. He perceives every characteristic quality of hisnature under these conditions. They are the solution of every problem,the clearing up of every inconsistency that perplexes us. “Man,” hesays very finely, “has a secret instinct that leads him to seekdiversion and employment from without; which springs from the sense ofhis continual misery. And he has another secret instinct, remainingfrom the greatness of his original nature, which teaches him thathappiness can only exist in repose. And from these two contraryinstincts there arises in him an obscure propensity, concealed in hissoul, which prompts him to seek repose through agitation, and even tofancy that the contentment he does not enjoy will be found, if bystruggling yet a little longer he can open a door to rest.”[742]

 [742] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 121.

41. It can hardly be conceived that any one would think the worse ofhuman nature or of himself by reading these magnificent lamentationsof Pascal. He adorns and ennobles the degeneracy he exaggerates. Theruined aqueduct, the broken column, the desolated city, suggest noideas but of dignity and reverence. No one is ashamed of a miserywhich bears witness to his grandeur. If we should persuade a labourerthat the blood of princes flows in his veins, we might spoil hiscontentment with the only lot he has drawn, but scarcely kill in himthe seeds of pride.

42. Pascal, like many others who have dwelt on this alledgeddegeneracy of mankind, seems never to have disentangled his mind fromthe notion that what we call human nature has not merely an arbitraryand grammatical, but an intrinsic objective reality. The common andconvenient forms of language, the analogies of sensible things, whichthe imagination readily supplies, conspire to delude us into thisfallacy. Each man is born with certain powers and dispositions whichconstitute his own nature; and the resemblance of these in all hisfellows produces a general idea, or a collective appellation,whichever we may prefer to say, called the nature of man; but fewwould in this age contend for the existence of this as a substancecapable of qualities, and those qualities variable, or subject tomutation. The corruption of human nature is therefore a phrase whichmay convey an intelligible meaning, if it is acknowledged to be merelyanalogical and inexact, but will mislead those who do not keep this inmind. Man’s nature, as it now is, that which each man and all menpossess, is the immediate workmanship of God, as much as at hiscreation; nor is any other hypothesis consistent with theism.

43. This notion of a real universal in human nature, presents to us inan exaggerated light those anomalies from which writers of Pascal’sschool are apt to infer some vast change in our original constitution.Exaggerated, I say, for it cannot be denied, that we frequentlyperceive a sort of incoherence, as it appears at least to ourdefective vision, in the same individual; and, like threads of varioushues shot through one web, the love of vice and of virtue, thestrength and weakness of the heart, are wonderfully blended inself-contradictory and self-destroying conjunction. But even if weshould fail altogether in solving the very first steps of thisproblem, there is no course for a reasonable being, except toacknowledge the limitations of his own faculties; and it seems ratherunwarrantable, on the credit of this humble confession, that we do notcomprehend the depths of what has been withheld from us, to substitutesomething far more incomprehensible and revolting to our moral andrational capacities in its place. “What,” says Pascal, “can bemore contrary to the rules of our wretched justice, than to damneternally an infant incapable of volition, for an offence wherein heseems to have had no share, and which was committed six thousand yearsbefore he was born? Certainly, nothing shocks us more rudely than thisdoctrine; and yet, without this mystery, the most incomprehensible ofall, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Man is more inconceivablewithout this mystery, than the mystery is inconceivable to man.”

44. It might be wandering from the proper subject of these volumes ifwe were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether, while the creationof a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable ofmysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the connection ofmoral and physical evil in mankind with his place in that creation;and especially, whether the law of continuity, which it has notpleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily structure, andwhich binds that, in the unity of one great type, to the lower formsof animal life by the common conditions of nourishment, reproduction,and self-defence, has not rendered necessary both the physicalappetites and the propensities which terminate in self: whether,again, the superior endowments of his intellectual nature, hissusceptibility of moral emotion, and of those disinterested affectionswhich, if not exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than anyinferior being; above all, the gifts of conscience, and a capacity toknow God, might not be expected, even beforehand, by their conflictwith the animal passions, to produce some partial inconsistencies,some anomalies at least, which he could not himself explain, in socompound a being. Every link in the long chain of creation does notpass by easy transition into the next. There are necessary chasms,and, as it were, leaps, from one creature to another, which, thoughnot exceptions to the law of continuity, are accommodations of it to anew series of being. If man was made in the image of God, he was alsomade in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who hasweighed the stars, and made the lightning his slave, approaches tothat of a speechless brute, who wanders in the forests of Sumatra.Thus, standing on the frontier land between animal and angelicnatures, what wonder that he should partake of both! But these arethings which it is difficult to touch; nor would they have been hereintroduced, but in order to weaken the force of positions soconfidently asserted by many, and so eloquently by Pascal.

|Vindications of Christianity.|

45. Among the works immediately designed to confirm the truth ofChristianity, a certain reputation was acquired, through the knownerudition of its author, by the Demonstratio Evangelica of Huet,bishop of Avranches. This is paraded with definitions, axioms, andpropositions, in order to challenge the name it assumes. But theaxioms, upon which so much is to rest, are often questionable orequivocal; as, for instance: Omnis prophetia est verax, quæ prædixitres eventu deinde completas--equivocal in the word _verax_. Huetalso confirms his axioms by argument, which shows that they are nottruly such. The whole book is full of learning; but he frequentlyloses sight of the points he would prove, and his quotations fallbeside the mark. Yet he has furnished much to others, and possibly noearlier work on the same subject is so elaborate and comprehensive.The next place, if not a higher one, might be given to the treatise ofAbbadie, a French refugee, published in 1684. His countrymen bestow onit the highest eulogies; but it was never so well known in England,and is now almost forgotten. The oral conferences of Limborch withOrobio, a Jew of considerable learning and ability, on the propheciesrelating to the Messiah, were reduced into writing and published; theyare still in some request. No book of this period among many that werewritten, reached so high a reputation in England as Leslie’s ShortMethod with the Deists, published in 1694: in which he has started anargument, pursued with more critical analysis by others, on thepeculiarly distinctive marks of credibility that pertain to thescriptural miracles. The authenticity of this little treatise has beenidly questioned on the Continent, for no better reason than that atranslation of it has been published in a posthumous edition (1732) ofthe works of Saint Real, who died in 1692. But posthumous editions arenever deemed of sufficient authority to establish a literary titleagainst possession; and Prosper Marchand informs us, that severalother tracts, in this edition of Saint Real, are erroneously ascribedto him. The internal evidence that the Short Method was written by aprotestant should be conclusive.[743]

 [743] The Biographie Universelle, art. Leslie, says: Cet ouvrage, qui passe pour ce qu’il a fait de mieux, lui a été contesté. Le Docteur Gleigh [sic] a fait de grands efforts pour prouver qu’il appartenait à Leslie, quoiqu’il fût publié parmi les ouvrages de l’Abbe de Saint Real, mort en 1692. It is melancholy to see this petty spirit of cavil against an English writer in so respectable a work as the Biographic Universelle. No _grands efforts_ could be required from Dr. Gleig or anyone else, to prove that a book was written by Leslie, which bore his name, which was addressed to an English peer, and had gone through many editions; when there is literally no claimant on the other side; for a posthumous edition, forty years after an author’s death, without attestation, is no literary evidence at all, even where a book is published for the first time, much less where it has a known _status_ as the production of a certain author. This is so manifest to anyone who has the slightest tincture of critical judgment, that we need not urge the palpable improbability of ascribing to Saint Real, a Romish ecclesiastic, an argument which turns peculiarly on the distinction between the scriptural miracles and those alledged upon inferior evidence. I have lost, or never made, the reference to Prosper Marchand; but the passage will be found in his Dictionnaire Historique, which contains a full article on Saint Real.

|Progress of tolerant principles.|

46. Every change in public opinion which this period witnessed,confirmed the principles of religious toleration, that had taken rootin the earlier part of the century; the progress of a larger and morecatholic theology, the weakening of bigotry in the minds of laymen,and the consequent disregard of ecclesiastical clamour, not only inEngland and Holland, but to a considerable extent in France; we mighteven add, the violent proceedings of the last government, in therevocation of the edict of Nantes, and the cruelties which attendedit. Louis XIV., at a time when mankind were beginning to renounce thevery theory of persecution, renewed the ancient enormities of itspractice, and thus unconsciously gave the aid of moral sympathy andindignation to the adverse argument. The Protestant refugees ofFrance, scattered among their brethren, brought home to all minds thegreat question of free conscience; not with the stupid and impudentlimitation which even protestants had sometimes employed, that truthindeed might not be restrained, but that error might; a broaderfoundation was laid by the great advocates of toleration in thisperiod, Bayle, Limborch, and Locke, as it had formerly been by Taylorand Episcopius.[744]

 [744] The Dutch clergy, and a French minister in Holland, Jurieu, of great polemical fame in his day, though now chiefly known by means of his adversaries, Bayle and Le Clerc, strenuously resisted both the theory of general toleration, and the moderate or liberal principles in religion which were connected with it. Le Clerc passed his life in fighting this battle, and many articles in the Bibliothèque Universelle relate to it.

|Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary.|

47. Bayle, in 1686, while yet the smart of his banishment was keenlyfelt, published his Philosophical Commentary on the text in Scripture,“Compel them to come in;” a text which some of the advocates ofpersecution were accustomed to produce. He gives in the first partnine reasons against this literal meaning, among which none arephilological. In the second part he replies to various objections.This work of Bayle does not seem to me as subtle and logical as he waswont to be, notwithstanding the formal syllogisms with which hecommences each of his chapters. His argument against compulsoryconversions, which the absurd interpretation of the text by hisadversaries required, is indeed irresistible; but this is far fromsufficiently establishing the right of toleration itself. It appearsnot very difficult for a skilful sophist, and none was more so thanBayle himself, to have met some of his reasoning with a speciousreply. The sceptical argument of Taylor, that we can rarely be sure ofknowing the truth ourselves, and consequently of condemning in otherswhat is error, he touches but slightly; nor does he dwell on thepolitical advantages which experience has shown a full toleration topossess. In the third part of the Philosophical Commentary, he refutesthe apology of Augustin for persecution; and a few years afterwards hepublished a supplement answering a book of Jurieu, which had appearedin the mean time.

|Locke’s Letter on Toleration.|

48. Locke published anonymously his Letter on Toleration in 1689. Theseason was propitious; a legal tolerance of public worship had firstbeen granted to the dissenters after the revolution, limited indeed tosuch as held most of the doctrines of the church, but preparing thenation for a more extensive application of its spirit. In the Libertyof Prophesying, Taylor had chiefly in view to deduce the justice oftolerating a diversity in religion from the difficulty of knowing thetruth. He is not very consistent as to the political question, andlimits too narrowly the province of tolerable opinions. Locke goesmore expressly to the right of the civil magistrate, not omitting, butdwelling less forcibly on the latitudinarian scepticism of hispredecessor. His own theory of government came to his aid. The clergyin general, and perhaps Taylor himself, had derived the magistrate’sjurisdiction from paternal power. And as they apparently assumed thispower to extend over adult children, it was natural to give those whosucceeded to it in political communities, a large sway over the moraland religious behaviour of subjects. Locke, adopting the oppositetheory of compact, defines the commonwealth to be a society of menconstituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing theirown civil interests. He denies altogether that the care of soulsbelongs to the civil magistrate, as it has never been committed tohim. “All the power of civil government relates only to men’s civilinterests, is confined to the things of this world, and hath nothingto do with the world to come.”

49. The admission of this principle would apparently decide thecontroversy, so far as it rests on religious grounds. But Locke hasrecourse to several other arguments independent of it. He proves, withno great difficulty, that the civil power cannot justly, orconsistently with any true principle of religion, compel men toprofess what they do not believe. This, however, is what very fewwould, at present, be inclined to maintain. The real question was asto the publicity of opinions deemed heterodox, and especially insocial worship; and this is what those who held the magistrate topossess an authority patriarchal, universal, and arbitrary, and whowere also rigidly tenacious of the necessity of an orthodox faith, andperfectly convinced that it was no other than their own, would hardlybe persuaded to admit by any arguments that Locke has alledged. Butthe tendency of public opinion had begun to manifest itself againstboth these tenets of the high-church party, so that, in the eighteenthcentury, the principles of general tolerance became too popular to bedisputed with any chance of attention. Locke was engaged in acontroversy, through his first letter on toleration, which produced asecond and a third; but it does not appear that these, though longerthan the first, have considerably modified its leading positions.[745]It is to be observed that he pleads for the universal toleration ofall modes of worship not immoral in their nature, or involvingdoctrines inimical to good government; placing in the latter categorysome tenets of the church of Rome.

 [745] Warburton has fancied that Locke’s real sentiments are only discoverable in his first Letter on Toleration, and that in the two latter he “combats his intolerant adversary quite through the controversy with his own principles, well foreseeing, that at such a time of prejudice arguments built on received opinions would have greatest weight, and make quickest impression on the body of the people whom it was his business to gain.” Biogr. Britannica, art. Locke.

|French Sermons.|

50. It is confessed by Goujet that, even in the middle of theseventeenth century, France could boast very little of pulpiteloquence. Frequent quotations from heathen writers and from theschoolmen, with little solid morality and less good reasoning, make upthe sermons of that age.[746] But the revolution in this style, as inall others, though perhaps gradual, was complete in the reign ofLouis XIV. A slight sprinkling of passages from the fathers, and stillmore frequently from the Scriptures, but always short, and seeming torise out of the preacher’s heart, rather than to be sought for in hismemory, replaced that intolerable parade of a theological common placebook, which had been as customary in France as in England. The stylewas to be the perfection of French eloquence, the reasoning persuasiverather than dogmatic, the arrangement more methodical and distributivethan at present, but without the excess we find in our old preachers.This is the general character of French sermons; but those who mostadorned the pulpit, had of course their individual distinctions.Without delaying to mention those who are now not greatly remembered,such as La Rue, Hubert, Mascaron, we must confine ourselves to threeof high reputation, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, and Fléchier.

 [746] Bibliothèque Française, vol. ii., p. 283.

|Bourdaloue.|

51. Bourdaloue, a Jesuit, but as little of a Jesuit in the worstacceptation of the word, as the order has produced, is remarkablysimple, earnest, practical: he convinces rather than commands; and byconvincing he persuades; for his discourses tend always to some duty,to something that is to be done or avoided. His sentences are short,interrogative, full of plain and solid reasoning, unambitious inexpression, and wholly without that care in the choice of words andcadences which we detect in Bossuet and Fléchier. No one would callBourdaloue a rhetorician, and though he continually introduces thefathers, he has not caught their vices of language.[747]

 [747] The public did justice to Bourdaloue, as they generally do to a solid and impressive style of preaching. Je crois, says Goujet, p. 300, que tout le monde convient qu’aucun autre ne lui est supérieur. C’est le grand maître pour l’éloquence de la chaire; c’est le prince des prédicateurs. Le public n’a jamais été partagé sur son sujet; la ville et la cour l’ont également estimé et admiré. C’est qu’il avoit réuni en sa personne tous les grands caractères de la bonne éloquence; la simplicité du discours Chrétien avec la majesté et la grandeur, le sublime avec l’intelligible et le populaire, la force avec la douceur, la véhémence avec l’onction, la liberté avec la justesse, et le plus vive ardeur avec la plus pure lumière.

|Compared with Bossuet.|

52. Bourdaloue is almost in the same relation to Bossuet, as Patru toLe Maistre, though the two orators of the pulpit are far above thoseof the bar. As the one is short, condensed, plain, reasoning, andthough never feeble, not often what is generally called eloquent, sothe other is animated, figurative, rather diffuse and prodigal ofornament, addressing the imagination more than the judgment, rich andcopious in cadence, elevating the hearer to the pitch of his ownsublimity. Bossuet is sometimes too declamatory; and Bourdaloueperhaps sometimes borders on dryness. Much in the sermons of theformer is true poetry; but he has less of satisfactory and persuasivereasoning than the latter. His tone is also, as in all his writings,too domineering and dogmatical for those who demand something beyondthe speaker’s authority when they listen.

|Funeral discourses of Bossuet.|

53. The sermons, however, of Bossuet, taken generally, are notreckoned in the highest class of his numerous writings; perhapsscarcely justice has been done to them. His genius, on the other hand,by universal confession, never shone higher than in the six which bearthe name of Oraisons Funèbres. They belong in substance so much morenaturally to the province of eloquence than of theology, that I shouldhave reserved them for another place, if the separation would not haveseemed rather unexpected to the reader. Few works of genius perhaps inthe French language are better known, or have been more prodigallyextolled. In that style of eloquence which the ancients calleddemonstrative, or rather descriptive (επιδεικτικος [epideiktikos]),the style of panegyric or commemoration, they are doubtless superiorto those justly celebrated productions of Thucydides and Plato thathave descended to us from Greece; nor has Bossuet been equalled by anylater writer. Those on the Queen of England, on her daughter theduch*ess of Orleans, and on the Prince of Condé, outshine the rest; andif a difference is to be made among these, we might, perhaps, aftersome hesitation, confer the palm on the first. The range of topics isso various, the thoughts so just, the images so noble and poetical,the whole is in such perfect keeping, the tone of awful contemplation,is so uniform, that if it has not any passages of such extraordinarybeauty as occur in the other two, its general effect on the mind ismore irresistible.[748]

 [748] An English preacher of conspicuous renown for eloquence was called upon, within no great length of time, to emulate the funeral discourse of Bossuet on the sudden death of Henrietta of Orleans. He had before him a subject incomparably more deep in interest, more fertile in great and touching associations--he had to describe, not the false sorrow of courtiers, not the shriek of sudden surprise that echoed by night in the halls of Versailles, not the apocryphal penitence of one so tainted by the world’s intercourse, but the manly grief of an entire nation in the withering of those visions of hope which wait upon the untried youth of royalty, in its sympathy with grandeur annihilated, with beauty and innocence precipitated into the tomb. Nor did he sink beneath this subject, except as compared with Bossuet. The sermon to which my allusion will be understood, is esteemed by many the finest effort of this preacher; but if read together with that of its prototype, it will be laid aside as almost feeble and unimpressive.

54. In this style, much more of ornament, more of what speaks in thespirit, and even the very phrase, of poetry, to the imagination andthe heart, is permitted by a rigorous criticism, than in forensic orin deliberative eloquence. The beauties that rise before the author’svision are not renounced; the brilliant colours of his fancy are notsubdued; the periods assume a more rhythmical cadence, and emulate,like metre itself, the voluptuous harmony of musical intervals; thewhole composition is more evidently formed to delight; but it willdelight to little purpose, or even cease, in any strong sense of theword, to do so at all, unless it is ennobled by moral wisdom. In thisBossuet was pre-eminent; his thoughts are never subtle or far-fetched;they have a sort of breadth, a generality of application, which ispeculiarly required in those who address a mixed assembly, and whichmany that aim at what is profound and original are apt to miss. It maybe confessed, that these funeral discourses are not exempt from somedefects, frequently inherent in panegyrical eloquence; they aresometimes too rhetorical, and do not appear to show so little effortas some have fancied; the amplifications are sometimes too unmeasured,the language sometimes borders too nearly on that of the stage; aboveall, there is a tone of adulation not quite pleasing to a calmposterity.

|Fléchier.|

55. Fléchier (the third name of the seventeenth century, for Massillonbelongs only to the next), like Bossuet, has been more celebrated forhis funeral sermons than for any others; but, in this line, it isunfortunate for him to enter into unavoidable competition with onewhom he cannot rival. The French critics extol Fléchier for thearrangement and harmony of his periods; yet, even in this, accordingto La Harpe, he is not essentially superior to Bossuet; and, to anEnglish ear, accustomed to the long swell of our own writers, and ofthe Ciceronian school in Latin, he will probably not give so muchgratification. He does not want a moral dignity, or a certainelevation of thought, without which the funeral panegyric must becontemptible; but he has not the majestic tone of Bossuet; he doesnot, like him, raise the heroes and princes of the earth in order toabase them by paintings of mortality and weakness, or recall thehearer in every passage to something more awful than human power, andmore magnificent than human grandeur. This religious solemnity, socharacteristic in Bossuet, is hardly felt in the less emphaticsentences of Fléchier. Even where his exordium is almost worthy ofcomparison, as in the funeral discourse on Turenne, we find himdegenerate into a trivial eulogy, and he flatters both more profuselyand with less skill. His style is graceful, but not withoutaffectation and false taste. La Harpe has not ill compared him toIsocrates among the orators of Greece, the place of Demosthenes being,of course, reserved for Bossuet.[749]

 [749] The native critics ascribe a reform in the style of preaching to Paolo Segneri, whom Corniani does not hesitate to call, with the sanction, he says, of posterity, the father of Italian eloquence. It is to be remembered, that in no country has the pulpit been so much degraded by empty declamation, and even by a stupid buffoonery. “The language of Segneri,” the same writer observes, “is always full of dignity and harmony. He inlaid it with splendid and elegant expressions, and has thus obtained a place among the authors to whom authority has been given by the Della Crusca dictionary. His periods are flowing, natural, and intelligible, without the affectation of obsolete Tuscanisms, which pass for graces of the language with many.” Tiraboschi, with much commendation of Segneri, admits that we find in him some vestiges of the false taste he endeavoured to reform. The very little that I have seen of the sermons of Segneri, gives no impression of any merit that can be reckoned more than relative to the miserable tone of his predecessors. The following specimen is from one of his most admired sermons:--E Cristo non potrà ottenere da voi che gli rimettiate un torto, un affronto, un aggravio, una parolina? Che vorreste da Christo? Vorreste ch’egli vi si gettasse supplichevole a’ piedi a chiedergli questa grazia? Io son quasi per dire ch’egli il farebbe; perchè se non dubiti di prostrarsi a’ piedi di un traditore, qual’era Guida, di lavarglieli, di asciugarglieli, di baciarglieli, non si vergognerebbe, cred’io, di farsi vedere ginocchioni a’ piè vostri. Ma vi fa bisogno di tanto per muovervi a compiacerlo? Ah Cavalieri, Cavalieri, io non vorrei questa volta farvi arrossire. Nel resto io so di certo, che se altrettanto fosse a voi domandato da quella donna che chiamate la vostra dama, da quella, di cui forsennati idolatrate il volto, indovinate le voglie, ambite le grazie, non vi farete pregar tanto a concederglielo. E poi vi fate pregar tanto da un Dio per voi crocefisso? O confusione! O vitupero! O vergogna! Raccolta di Prose Italiane (in Classici Italiani), vol. ii., p. 345.

 This is certainly not the manner of Bossuet, and more like that of a third-rate Methodist among us.

|English sermons--Barrow.|

56. The style of preaching in England was less ornamental, and spokeless to the imagination and affections, than these celebrated writersof the Gallican church; but in some of our chief divines it had itsown excellencies. The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, acomprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled. Nobetter proof can be given than his eight sermons on the government ofthe tongue; copious and exhaustive without tautology or superfluousdeclamation, they are, in moral preaching, what the best parts ofAristotle are in ethical philosophy, with more of development and amore extensive observation. It would be said of these sermons, andindeed, with a few exceptions, of all those of Barrow, that they arenot what is called evangelical; they indicate the ascendancy of anArminian party, dwelling far more than is usual in the pulpit on moraland rational, or even temporal, inducements, and sometimes hardlyabstaining from what would give a little offence in later times.[750]His quotations also from ancient philosophers, though not sonumerous as in Taylor, are equally uncongenial to our ears. In hisstyle, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we maycensure a redundancy and excess of apposition; it is not sufficient toavoid strict tautology; no second phrase (to lay down a general rulenot without exception) should be so like the first, that the readerwould naturally have understood it to be comprised therein. Barrow’slanguage is more antiquated and formal than that of his age; and heabounds too much in uncommon words of Latin derivation, frequentlysuch as appear to have no authority but his own.

 [750] Thus, in his sermon against evil speaking (xvi.), Barrow treats it as fit “for rustic boors or men of coarsest education and employment, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions and bicker about their petty concernments in such strains, who also, not being capable of a fair reputation, or sensible of disgrace to themselves, do little value the credit of others, or care for aspersing it. But such language is unworthy of those persons, and cannot easily be drawn from them, who are wont to exercise their thoughts about nobler matters,” &c. No one would venture this now from the pulpit.

|South.|

57. South’s sermons begin, in order of date, before the Restoration,and come down to nearly the end of the century. They were muchcelebrated at the time, and retain a portion of their renown. This isby no means surprising. South had great qualifications for thatpopularity which attends the pulpit, and his manner was at that timeoriginal. Not diffuse, not learned, not formal in argument likeBarrow, with a more natural structure of sentences, a more pointed,though by no means a more fair and satisfactory turn of reasoning,with a style clear and English, free from all pedantry, but aboundingwith those colloquial novelties of idiom, which, though now becomevulgar and offensive, the age of Charles II. affected, sparing nopersonal or temporary sarcasm, but, if he seems for a moment to treadon the verge of buffoonery, recovering himself by some stroke ofvigorous sense and language; such was the witty Dr. South, whom thecourtiers delighted to hear. His sermons want all that is calledunction, and sometimes even earnestness, which is owing, in a greatmeasure, to a perpetual tone of gibing at rebels and fanatics; butthere is a masculine spirit about them, which, combined with theirpeculiar characteristics, would naturally fill the churches where hemight be heard. South appears to bend towards the Arminian theology,without adopting so much of it as some of his contemporaries.

|Tillotson.|

59. The sermons of Tillotson were, for half a century, more read thanany in our language. They are now bought almost as waste paper, andhardly read at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, asabundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckonedverbose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great adegree as some of his eminent predecessors; but there is certainlylittle vigour or vivacity in his style. Full of the Romishcontroversy, he is perpetually recurring to that “world’s debate;” andhe is not much less hostile to all the Calvinistic tenets. What ismost remarkable in the theology of Tillotson is his strong assertion,in almost all his sermons, of the principles of natural religion andmorality, not only as the basis of all revelation, without adependence on which it cannot be believed, but as nearly coincidentwith Christianity in its extent, a length to which few at presentwould be ready to follow him. Tillotson is always of a tolerant andcatholic spirit, enforcing right actions rather than orthodoxopinions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigotsof his own age.

|Expository Theology.|

60. It has become necessary to draw towards a conclusion of thischapter; the materials are far from being exhausted. In expository,or, as some call it, exegetical theology, the English divines hadalready taken a conspicuous station. Andrès, no partial estimator ofProtestant writers, extols them with marked praise.[751] Those whobelonged to the earlier part of the century form a portion of a vastcollection, the Critici Sacri, published by one Bee, a bookseller, in1660. This was in nine folio volumes; and in 1669, Matthew Pool, anonconforming minister, produced his Synopsis Criticorum, in fivevolumes, being, in great measure, an abridgment and digest of theformer. Bee complained of the infraction of his copyright, or ratherhis equitable interest; but such a dispute hardly pertains to ourhistory.[752] The work of Pool was evidently a more original labourthan the former. Hammond, Patrick, and other commentators, do honourto the Anglican church in the latter part of the century.

 [751] I soli Inglesi, che ampio spazio non dovrebbono occupare in questo capo dell’esegetica sacra, se l’istituto della nostr’opera ci permettesse tener dietro a tutti i più degni della nostra stima? Vol. xix., p. 253.

 [752] Chalmers.

|Pearson on the Creed.|

61. Pearson’s Exposition of the Apostle’s Creed, published in 1659, isa standard book in English divinity. It expands beyond the literalpurport of the creed itself to most articles of orthodox belief, andis a valuable summary of arguments and authorities on that side. Thecloseness of Pearson, and his judicious selection of proofs,distinguish him from many, especially the earlier, theologians. Somemight surmise that his undeviating adherence to what he calls thechurch is hardly consistent with independence of thinking; but,considered as an advocate, he is one of much judgment and skill. Suchmen as Pearson and Stillingfleet, would have been conspicuous at thebar, which we could not quite affirm of Jeremy Taylor.

|Simon’s Critical Histories.|

62. Simon, a regular priest of the congregation called The Oratory,which has been rich in eminent men, owes much of his fame to hisCritical History of the Old Testament. This work, bold in many of itspositions, as it then seemed to both the Catholic and Protestantorthodox, after being nearly strangled by Bossuet in France, appearedat Rotterdam in 1685. Bossuet attacked it with extreme vivacity, butwith a real inferiority to Simon, both in learning and candour.[753]Le Clerc on his side carped more at the Critical History than it seemsto deserve. Many paradoxes, as they then were called, in his famouswork are now received as truth, or at least pass without reproof.Simon may possibly be too prone to novelty, but a love of truth aswell as great acuteness are visible throughout. His Critical Historyof the New Testament was published in 1689, and one or two more worksof a similar description before the close of the century.

 [753] Défense de la Tradition des Saints Pères. Œuvres de Bossuet, vol. v., and Instructions sur la Version du N. T., imprimée à Trevoux, Id. vol. iv., 313. Bausset, Vie de Bossuet, iv., 276.

63. I have, on a former occasion, adverted, in a correspondingchapter, to publications on witchcraft, and similar superstitions.Several might be mentioned at this time; the belief in such tales wasassailed by a prevalent scepticism which called out their advocates.Of these, the most unworthy to have exhibited their great talents insuch a cause were our own philosophers Henry More and Joseph Glanvil.The Sadducismus Triumphatus, or Treatise on Apparitions, by thelatter, has passed through several editions, while his ScepsisScientifica has hardly been seen, perhaps, by six living persons. ADutch minister, by name Bekker, raised a great clamour against himselfby a downright denial of all power to the devil, and consequently tohis supposed instruments, the ancient beldams of Holland and othercountries. His Monde Enchanté, originally published in Dutch, is infour volumes, written in a systematic manner and with tediousprolixity. There was no ground for imputing infidelity to the author,except the usual ground of calumniating everyone who quits the beatenpath in theology; but his explanations of scripture in the case of thedemoniacs and the like are, as usual with those who have taken thesame line, rather forced. The fourth volume which contains severalcurious stories of imagined possession, and some which resemble whatis now called magnetism, is the only part of Bekker’s once celebratedbook that can be read with any pleasure. Bekker was a Cartesian, andhis theory was built too much on Cartesian assumptions of theimpossibility of spirit _acting_ on body, which are easilyparried by denying his inference from them.

CHAPTER XXIX.

 HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1650 TO 1700.

_Aristotelians--Logicians--Cudworth--Sketch of the Philosophy ofGassendi--Cartesianism--Port-Royal Logic--Analysis of the Search forTruth of Malebranche, and of the Ethics of Spinosa--Glanvil--Locke’sEssay on the Human Understanding._

|Aristotelian metaphysics.|

1. The Aristotelian and scholastic metaphysics, though shaken on everyside, and especially by the rapid progress of the Cartesian theories,had not lost their hold over the theologians of the Roman church, oreven the protestant universities, at the beginning of this period, andhardly at its close. Brucker enumerates several writers of thatclass in Germany;[754] and we find, as late as 1693, a formalinjunction by the Sorbonne, that none who taught philosophy in thecolleges under its jurisdiction should introduce any novelties, orswerve from the Aristotelian doctrine.[755] The Jesuits, ratherunfortunately for their credit, distinguished themselves as strenuousadvocates of the old philosophy, and thus lost the advantage they hadobtained in philology as enemies of barbarous prejudice, andencouragers of a progressive spirit in their disciples. Rapin, one oftheir most accomplished men, after speaking with little respect of theNovum Organum, extols the disputations of the schools as the bestmethod in the education of young men, who, as he fancies, have toolittle experience to delight in physical science.[756]

 [754] Vol. iv. See his long and laborious chapter on the Aristotelian philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; no one else seems to have done more than copy Brucker.

 [755] Cum relatum esset ad Societatem (Sorbonicam) nonnullos philosophiæ, professores, ex iis etiam aliquando qui ad Societatem anhelant, novas quasdam doctrinas in philosophicis sectari, minusque Aristotelicæ doctrinæ studere, quam hactenus usurpatum fuerit in Academiâ Parisiensi, censuit Societas injungendum esse illis, imo et iis qui docent philosophiam in collegiis suo regimini creditis, ne deinceps novitatibus studeant, aut ab Aristotelica doctrina deffectant. 31 Dec. 1693. Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum, iii., 150.

 [756] Réflexions sur la Poétique, p. 368. He admits, however, that to introduce more experiment and observation would be an improvement. Du reste il y a apparence que les loix, qui ne souffrent point d’innovation dans l’usage des choses universellement établies, n’autoriseront point d’autre méthode que celle qui est aujourd’hui en usage dans les universités; afin de ne pas donner trop de licence à la passion qu’on a naturellement pour les nouvelles opinions, dont le cours est d’une dangereuse conséquence dans un état bien réglé; vu particulièrement que la philosophie est un des organes dont se sert la religion pour s’expliquer dans ses décisions.

|Their decline. Thomas White.|

2. It is a difficult and dangerous choice, in a new state of publicopinion (and we have to make it at present), between that which mayitself pass away, and that which must efface what has gone before.Those who clung to the ancient philosophy believed that Bacon andDescartes were the idols of a transitory fashion, and that the wisdomof long ages would regain its ascendancy. They were deceived, andtheir own reputation has been swept off with the systems to which theyadhered. Thomas White, an English catholic priest, whose Latinappellation is Albius, endeavoured to maintain the Aristotelianmetaphysics and the scholastic terminology in several works, andespecially in an attack upon Glanvil’s Vanity of Dogmatizing. Thisbook, entitled Sciri, I know only through Glanvil’s reply in hissecond edition, by which White appears to be a mere Aristotelian. Hewas a friend of Sir Kenelm Digby, who was himself, though a man ofconsiderable talents, incapable of disentangling his mind from thePeripatetic hypotheses. The power of words indeed is so great, theillusions of what is called realism, or of believing that generalterms have an objective exterior being, are so natural, and especiallyso bound up both with our notions of essential, especiallytheological, truth, and with our popular language, that no man couldin that age be much censured for not casting off his fetters, evenwhen he had heard the call to liberty from some modern voices. We findthat even after two centuries of a better method, many are alwaysready to fall back into a verbal process of theorising.

|Logic.|

3. Logic was taught in the Aristotelian method, or rather in onewhich, with some change for the worse, had been gradually founded uponit. Burgersdicius, in this and in other sciences, seems to have beenin repute; Smiglecius also is mentioned with praise.[757] These livedboth in the former part of the century. But they were superceded, atleast in England, by Wallis, whose Institutio Logicæ ad Communes UsusAccommodata was published in 1687. He claims as an improvement uponthe received system, the classifying singular propositions amonguniversals.[758] Ramus had made a third class of them, and in this heseems to have been generally followed. Aristotle, though it does notappear that he is explicit on the subject, does not rank them asparticular. That Wallis is right cannot be doubted by anyone whor*flects at all; but his originality we must not assert. The same hadbeen perceived by the authors of the Port-Royal Logic; a work to whichhe has made no allusion.[759] Wallis claims also as his own the methodof reducing hypothetical to categorical syllogisms, and proves itelaborately in a separate dissertation. A smaller treatise, still muchused at Oxford, by Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logicæ, 1691, is clearand concise, but seems to contain nothing very important; and healludes to the Art de Penser in a tone of insolence, which must rouseindignation in those who are acquainted with that excellent work.Aldrich’s censures are, in many instances, mere cavil andmisrepresentation; I do not know that they are right in any.[760] Ofthe Art de Penser itself we shall have something to say in the courseof this chapter.

 [757] La Logique de Smiglecius, says Rapin, est un bel ouvrage. The same writer proceeds to observe that the Spaniards of the preceding century had corrupted logic by their subtleties. En se jettant dans des spéculations creuses qui n’avoient rien de réel, leur philosophes trouvèrent l’art d’avoir de la raison malgré le bon sens, et de donner de la couleur, et même je ne scai quoi de specieuse, à ce qui étoit de plus déraisonnable, p. 382. But this must have been rather the fault of their metaphysics than of what is strictly called logic.

 [758] Atque hoc signanter notatum velim, quia novus forte hic videar, et præter aliorum loquendi formulam hæc dicere. Nam plerique logici propositionem quam vocant singularem, hoc est, de subjecto individuo sive singulari, pro particulari habent, non universali. Sed perperam hoc faciunt, et præter mentem Aristotelis (qui, quantum memini, nunquam ejusmodi singularem, την κατα μερος [tên kata meros] appellat aut pro tali habet) et præter rei naturam: Non enim hic agitur de particularitate subjecti (quod ατομον [atomon] vocat Aristotelis, non κατα μερος [kata meros]) sed de partialitate prædicationis.... Neque ego interim novator censendus sum qui hæc dixerim, sed illi potius novatores qui ab Aristotelica doctrina recesserint; eoque multa introduxerint incommoda de quibus suo loco dicetur, p. 125. He has afterwards a separate dissertation or thesis to prove this more at length. It seems that the Ramists held a third class of propositions, neither universal nor particular, to which they gave the name of _propria_, equivalent to singular.

 [759] Art de Penser, part ii., chap. iii.

 [760] One of Aldrich’s charges against the author of the Art de Penser is, that he brings forward as a great discovery the equality of the angles of a chiliagon to 1996 right angles; and another is, that he gives as an example of a regular syllogism one that has obviously five terms; thus expecting the Oxford students, for whom he wrote, to believe, that Antony Arnauld neither knew the first book of Euclid, nor the mere rudiments of common logic.

|Stanley’s History of Philosophy.|

4. Before we proceed to those whose philosophy may be reckonedoriginal or at least modern, a very few deserve mention who haveendeavoured to maintain or restore that of antiquity. Stanley’sHistory of Philosophy, in 1655, is in great measure confined tobiography, and comprehends no name later than Carneades. Most isderived from Diogenes Laertius; but an analysis of the Platonicphilosophy is given from Alcinous, and the author has compiled one ofthe Peripatetic system from Aristotle himself. The doctrine of theStoics is also elaborately deduced from various sources. Stanley onthe whole brought a good deal from an almost untrodden field; but heis merely a historian, and never a critic of philosophy. He does notmention Epicurus at all, probably because Gassendi had so well writtenthat philosopher’s life.

|Gale’s Court of Gentiles.|

5. Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, partly in 1669 and partly in lateryears, is incomparably a more learned work, than that of Stanley. Itsaim is to prove that all heathen philosophy, whether barbaric orGreek, was borrowed from the Scriptures, or at least from the Jews.The first part is entitled Of Philology, which traces the same leadingprinciple by means of language; the second, Of Philosophy: the thirdtreats of the Vanity of Philosophy, and the fourth of ReformedPhilosophy, “wherein Plato’s moral and metaphysic or prime philosophyis reduced to an useful form and method.” Gale has been reckoned amongPlatonic philosophers, and indeed he professes to find a greatresemblance between the philosophy of Plato and his own. But he is adetermined Calvinist in all respects, and scruples not to say,“Whatever God wills is just, because he wills it;” and again, “Godwilleth nothing without himself because it is just, but it istherefore just because he willeth it. The reasons of good and evilextrinsic to the divine essence are all dependent on the divine will,either decernent or legislative.”[761] It is not likely that Platowould have acknowledged such a disciple.

 [761] Part iv., p. 339.

|Cudworth’s Intellectual System.|

6. A much more eminent and enlightened man than Gale, Ralph Cudworth,by his Intellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678, butwritten several years before, placed himself in a middle point betweenthe declining and rising schools of philosophy; more independent ofauthority, and more close, perhaps, in argument than the former, butmore prodigal of learning, more technical in language, and lessconversant with analytical and inductive processes of reasoning thanthe latter. Upon the whole, however, he belongs to the school ofantiquity, and probably his wish was to be classed with it. Cudworthwas one of those whom Hobbes had roused by the atheistic and immoraltheories of the Leviathan; nor did any antagonist perhaps of thatphilosopher bring a more vigorous understanding to the combat. Thisunderstanding was not so much obstructed in its own exercise by a vasterudition, as it was sometimes concealed by it from the reader.Cudworth has passed more for a recorder of ancient philosophy, thanfor one who might stand in a respectable class among philosophers; andhis work, though long, being unfinished, as well as full ofdigression, its object has not been fully apprehended.

|Its object.|

7. This object was to establish the liberty of human actions againstthe fatalists. Of these he lays it down that there are three kinds,the first atheistic; the second admitting a Deity, but one actingnecessarily and without moral perfections; the third granting themoral attributes of God, but asserting all human actions to begoverned by necessary laws which he has ordained. The first book ofthe Intellectual System, which alone is extant, relates wholly to theproofs of the existence of a Deity against the atheistic fatalists,his moral nature being rarely or never touched; so that the greaterand more interesting part of the work, for the sake of which theauthor projected it, was never written, unless we take for fragmentsof it some writings of the author preserved in the British Museum.

|Sketch of it.|

8. The first chapter contains an account of the ancient corpuscularphilosophy, which, till corrupted by Leucippus and Democritus,Cudworth takes to have been not only theistic, but more consonant totheistic principles than any other. These two, however, brought in afatalism grounded on their own atomic theory. In the second chapter hestates very fully and fairly all their arguments, or rather all thathave ever been adduced on the atheistic side. In the third heexpatiates on the hylozoic atheism, as he calls it, of Strato, whichaccounts the world to be animated in all its parts but without asingle controlling intelligence, and adverts to another hypothesis,which gives a vegetable but not sentient life to the world.

|His plastic nature.|

9. This leads Cudworth to his own famous theory of a plastic nature, adevice to account for the operations of physical laws without thecontinued agency of the Deity. Of this plastic energy he speaks inrather a confused and indefinite manner giving it in one place a sortof sentient life, or what he calls “a drowsy unawakened cogitation,”and always treating it as an entity or real being. This language ofCudworth, and indeed the whole hypothesis of a plastic nature, wasunable to stand the searching eye of Bayle, who, in an article of hisdictionary, pointed out its unphilosophical and dangerous assumptions.Le Clerc endeavoured to support Cudworth against Bayle, but withlittle success.[762] It has had, however, some partizans, thoughrather among physiologists than metaphysicians. Grew adopted it toexplain vegetation; and the plastic nature differs only, as Iconceive, from what Hunter and Abernethy have called life in organisedbodies by its more extensive agency; for if we are to believe thatthere is a vital power, not a mere name for the sequence of phenomena,which marshals the molecules of animal and vegetable substance, we cansee no reason why a similar energy should not determine othermolecules to assume geometrical figures in crystallization. The erroror paradox consists in assigning a real unity of existence, and a realpower of causation, to that which is unintelligent.

 [762] Biblothèque Choisie, vol. v.

|His account of old philosophy.|

10. The fourth chapter of the Intellectual System, of vast length, andoccupying half the entire work, launches into a sea of old philosophy,in order to show the unity of a supreme God to have been a generalbelief of antiquity. “In this fourth chapter,” he says “we werenecessitated by the matter itself to run out into philology andantiquity, as also in the other parts of the book we do often give anaccount of the doctrine of the ancients; which, however, someover-severe philosophers may look upon fastidiously or undervalue anddepreciate, yet as we conceived it often necessary, so possibly maythe variety thereof not be ungrateful to others, and this mixture ofphilology throughout the whole sweeten and allay the severity ofphilosophy to them; the main thing which the book pretends to, in themeantime, being the philosophy of religion. But for our part, weneither call philology, nor yet philosophy, our mistress, but serveourselves of either as occasion requireth.”[763]

 [763] Preface, p. 37.

11. The whole fourth chapter may be reckoned one great episode, and asit contains a store of useful knowledge on ancient philosophy, it hasnot only been more read than the remaining part of the IntellectualSystem, but has been the cause, in more than one respect, that thework has been erroneously judged. Thus, Cudworth has been reckoned, byvery respectable authorities, in the Platonic school of philosophers,and even in that of the later Platonists; for which I perceive littleother reason than that he has gone diffusely into a supposedresemblance between the Platonic and Christian Trinity. Whether weagree with him in this or no, the subject is insulated, and belongsonly to the history of theological opinion; in Cudworth’s ownphilosophy he appears to be an eclectic, not the vassal of Plato,Plotinus, or Aristotle, though deeply versed in them all.

|His arguments against atheism.|

12. In the fifth and last chapter of the first and only book of theIntellectual System, Cudworth, reverting to the various atheisticalarguments which he had stated in the second chapter, answers them atgreat length, and though not without much erudition, perhaps more thanwas requisite, yet depending chiefly on his own stores of reasoning.And inasmuch as even a second-rate philosopher ranks higher inliterary precedence than the most learned reporter of other men’sdoctrine, it may be unfortunate for Cudworth’s reputation that heconsumed so much time in the preceding chapter upon mere learning,even though that should be reckoned more useful and valuable than hisown reasonings. These, however, are frequently valuable, and, as Ihave intimated above, he is partially tinctured by the philosophy ofhis own generation, while he endeavours to tread in the ancient paths.Yet he seems not aware of the place which Bacon, Descartes, andGassendi were to hold; and not only names them sometimes with censure,hardly with praise, but most inexcusably throws out severalintimations that they had designedly served the cause of atheism. Thedisposition of the two former to slight the argument from finalcauses, though it might justly be animadverted upon, could not warrantthis most uncandid and untrue aspersion. But justice was even-handed;Cudworth himself did not escape the slander of bigots; it was idlysaid by Dryden, that he had put the arguments against a Deity so well,that some thought he had not answered them, and if Warburton may bebelieved, the remaining part of the Intellectual System was neverpublished, on account of the world’s malignity in judging of thefirst.[764] Probably it was never written.

 [764] Warburton’s preface to Divine Legation, vol. ii.

13. Cudworth is too credulous and uncritical about ancient writings,defending all as genuine, even where his own age had been sceptical.His terminology is stiff and pedantic, as is the case with all ourolder metaphysicians, abounding in words, which the English languagehas not recognised. He is full of the ancients, but rarely quotes theschoolmen. Hobbes is the adversary with whom he most grapples; thematerialism, the resolving all ideas into sensation, the low moralityof that writer, were obnoxious to the animadversion of so strenuous anadvocate of a more elevated philosophy. In some respects, Cudworthhas, as I conceive, much the advantage; in others, he will generallybe thought by our metaphysicians to want precision and logicalreasoning; and, upon the whole, we must rank him, in philosophicalacumen, far below Hobbes, Malebranche, and Locke, but also far aboveany mere Aristotelians, or retailers of Scotus and Aquinas.

|More.|

14. Henry More, though by no means less eminent than Cudworth in hisown age, ought not to be placed on the same level. More fell not onlyinto the mystical notions of the later Platonists, but even of theCabbalistic writers. His metaphysical philosophy was borrowed in greatmeasure from them; and though he was in correspondence with Descartes,and enchanted with the new views that opened upon him, yet we findthat he was reckoned much less of a Cartesian afterwards, and evenwrote against parts of the theory.[765] The most peculiar tenet ofMore was the extension of spirit; acknowledging and even striving forthe souls’ immateriality, he still could not conceive it to beunextended. Yet it seems evident that if we give extension as well asfigure, which is implied in finite extension, to the singleself-conscious monad, qualities as heterogeneous to thinking asmaterial impenetrability itself, we shall find it in vain to deny thepossibility at least of the latter. Some, indeed, might questionwhether what we call matter is any real being at all, except asextension under peculiar conditions. But this conjecture need not herebe pressed.

 [765] Baillet, Vie de Descartes, liv. vii. It must be observed that More never wholly agreed with Descartes. Thus they differed about the omnipresence of the Deity; Descartes thought that he was partout à raison de sa puissance, et qu’à raison de son essence il n’a absolument aucune rélation au lieu. More, who may be called a lover of extension, maintained a strictly local presence. Œuvres de Descartes, vol. x., p. 239.

|Gassendi.|

|His Logic.|

15. Gassendi himself, by the extensiveness of his erudition,may be said to have united the two schools of speculative philosophy,the historical and the experimental, though the character of his minddetermined him far more towards the latter. He belongs in point oftime rather to the earlier period of the century; but his SyntagmaPhilosophicum having been published in 1658, we have deferred thereview of it for this volume. This posthumous work, in two volumesfolio, and nearly 1600 pages closely printed in double columns, isdivided into three parts, the Logic, the Physics, and the Ethics; thesecond occupying more than five-sixths of the whole. The Logic isintroduced by two proœmial books; one containing a history of thescience from Zeno of Elea, the parent of systematic logic, to Baconand Descartes;[766] the other, still more valuable, on the criteria oftruth; shortly criticising also, in a chapter of this book, theseveral schemes of logic which he had merely described in the former.After stating very prolixly, as is usual with him, the arguments ofthe sceptics against the evidence of the senses, and those of thedogmatics, as he calls them, who refer the sole criterion of truth tothe understanding, he propounds a sort of middle course. It isnecessary, he observes, before we can infer truth, that there shouldbe some sensible sign, αισθητον σημειον [aisthêton sêmeion]; for,since all the knowledge we possess is derived from the sense, the mindmust first have some sensible image, by which it may be led to aknowledge of what is latent and not perceived by sense. Hence, we maydistinguish in ourselves a double criterion; one by which we perceivethe sign--namely, the senses; another, by which we understand throughreasoning the latent thing--namely, the intellect or rationalfaculty.[767] This he illustrates by the pores of the skin, which wedo not perceive, but infer their existence by observing the permeationof moisture.

 [766] Prætereundum porro non est ob eam, quâ est, celebritatem Organum, sive logica Francisci Baconis Verulamii. He extols Bacon highly, but gives an analysis of the Novum Organum without much criticism. De Logicæ Origine, c. x.

 Logica Verulamii, Gassendi says in another place, tota ac per se ad physicam, atque adeo ad veritatem notitiamve rerum germanam habendam contendit. Præcipuè autem in eo est, ut bene imaginemur, quatenus vult esse imprimis exuenda omnia præjudicia ac novas deinde notiones ideasve ex novis debitèque factis experimentis inducendas. Logica Cartesii rectè quidem Verulamii imitatione ab eo exorditur, quod ad bene imaginandum prava prejudicia exuenda, recta vero induenda vult, &c., p. 90.

 [767] P. 81. If this passage be well attended to, it will show how the philosophy of Gassendi has been misunderstood by those who confound it with the merely sensual school of metaphysicians. No one has more clearly, or more at length, distinguished the αισθητον σημειον [aisthêton sêmeion], the sensible associated sign, from the unimaginable objects of pure intellect, as we shall soon see.

|His theory of ideas.|

16. In the first part of the treatise itself on Logic, to which thesetwo books are introductory, Gassendi lays down again his favouriteprinciple, that every idea in the mind is ultimately derived from thesenses. But while what the senses transmit are only singular ideas,the mind has the faculty of making general ideas out of a number ofthese singular ones when they resemble each other.[768] In this partof his Logic he expresses himself clearly and unequivocally aconceptualist.

 [768] P. 93.

17. The Physics were expanded with a prodigality of learning uponevery province of nature. Gassendi is full of quotation, and hissystematic method manifests the comprehensiveness of his researches.In the third book of the second part of the third section of thePhysics, he treats of the immateriality, and, in the fourteenth, ofthe immortality of the soul, and maintains the affirmative of bothpropositions. This may not be what those who judge of Gassendi merelyfrom his objections to the Meditations of Descartes have supposed. Buta clearer insight into his metaphysical theory will be obtained fromthe ninth book of the same part of the Physics, entitled, DeIntellectu, on the Human Understanding.

|And of the nature of the soul.|

18. In this book, after much display of erudition on the tenets ofphilosophers, he determines the soul to be an incorporeal substance,created by God, and infused into the body, so that it resides in it asan informing and not merely a present nature, forma informans, et nonsimpliciter assistens.[769] He next distinguishes intellection orunderstanding from imagination or perception; which is worthy ofparticular notice, because in his controversy with Descartes he hadthrown out doubts as to any distinction between them. We have inourselves a kind of faculty which enables us, by means of reasoning,to understand that which by no endeavours we can imagine or representto the mind.[770] Of this the size of the sun, or innumerableother examples might be given; the mind having no idea suggested bythe imagination of the sun’s magnitude, but knowing it by a peculiarprocess of reasoning. And hence we infer that the intellectual soul isimmaterial, because it understands that which no material imagepresents to it, as we infer also that the imaginative faculty ismaterial, because it employs the images supplied by sense. It is truethat the intellect makes use of these sensible images, as stepstowards its reasoning upon things which cannot be imagined; but theproof of its immateriality is given by this, that it passes beyond allmaterial images, and attains a true knowledge of that whereof it hasno image.

 [769] P. 440.

 [770] Itaque est in nobis intellectûs species, qua ratiocinando eo provehimur, ut aliquid intelligamus, quod imaginari, vel cujus habere obversantem imaginem, quantumcunque animi vires contenderimus, non possimus.... After instancing the size of the sun, possunt consimilia sexcenta afferri.... Verum quidem istud sufficiat, ut constet quinpiam nos intelligere quod imaginari non liceat, et intellectum ita esse distinctum a phantasia, ut cum phantasia habeat materiales species, sub quibus res imaginatur, non habeat tamen intellectus, sub quibus res intelligat: neque enim ullam, v. g. habet illius magnitudinis quam in sole intelligit; sed tantum vi propria, seu ratiocinando, eam esse in sole magnitudinem comprehendit, ac pari modo cætera. Nempe ex hoc efficitur, ut rem sine specie materiali intelligens, esse immaterialis debeat; sicuti phantasia ex eo materialis arguitur, quod materiali specie utatur. Ac utitur quidem etiam intellectus speciebus phantasia perceptis, tanquam gradibus, ut ratiocinando assequatur ea, quæ deinceps sine speciebus phantasmatisve intelligit: sed hoc ipsum est quod illius immaterialitatem arguit, quod ultra omnem speciem materialem se provehat, quidpiamque cujus nullam habeat phantasma revera agnoscat.

19. Buhle observes that in what Gassendi has said on the power of themind to understand what it cannot conceive, there is a forgetfulnessof his principle, that nothing is in the understanding which has notbeen in the sense. But, unless we impute repeated contradictions tothis philosopher, he must have meant that axiom in a less extendedsense than it has been taken by some who have since employed it. Bythat which is “in the understanding,” he could only intend definiteimages derived from sense, which must be present before the mind canexercise any faculty, or proceed to reason up to unimaginable things.The fallacy of the sensualist school, English and French, was toconclude that we can have no knowledge of that which is not “in theunderstanding;” an inference true in the popular sense of words, butfalse in the metaphysical.

|Distinguishes ideas of reflection.|

20. There is, moreover, Gassendi proceeds, a class of reflexoperations, whereby the mind understands itself and its own faculties,and is conscious that it is exercising such acts. And this faculty issuperior to any that a material substance possesses; for no body canact reflexly on itself, but must move from one place to another.[771]Our observation, therefore, of our own imaginings must be by a powersuperior to imagination itself; for imagination is employed on theimage, not on the perception of the image, since there is no image ofthe act of perception.

 [771] Alterum est genus reflexarum actionum, quibus intellectus seipsum, suasque functioneo intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animadvertit. Videlicet hoc munus est omni facultate corporea superius; quoniam quicquid corporeum est, ita certo loco, sive permanenter, sive succedenter alligatum est, ut non versus se, sed solum versus aliud diversum a se procedere possit.

21. The intellect also not only forms universal ideas, but perceivesthe nature of universality. And this seems peculiar to mankind; forbrutes do not show anything more than a power of association byresemblance. In our own conception of an universal, it may be urged,there is always some admixture of singularity, as of a particularform, magnitude, or colour; yet we are able, Gassendi thinks, to stripthe image successively of all these particular adjuncts.[772] Heseems, therefore, as has been remarked above, to have held theconceptualist theory in the strictest manner, admitting the reality ofuniversal ideas even as images present to the mind.

 [772] Et ne instes in nobis quoque, dum universale concipimus, admisceri semper aliquid singularitatis, ut certæ magnitudinis, certæ figuræ, certi coloris, &c., experimur tamen, nisi [sic] simul, saltem successivè spoliari à nobis naturam qualibet speciali magnitudine, qualibet speciali figura, quolibet speciali colore; atque ita de cæteris.

|Also intellect from imagination.|

22. Intellection being the proper operation, of the soul, it isneedless to inquire whether it does this by its own nature, or by apeculiar faculty called understanding, nor should we trouble ourselvesabout the Aristotelian distinction of the active and passiveintellect.[773] We have only to distinguish this intellection frommere conception derived from the phantasy, which is necessarilyassociated with it. We cannot conceive God in this life, except undersome image thus supplied; and it is the same with all otherincorporeal things. Nor do we comprehend infinite quantities, but havea sort of confused image of indefinite extension. This is surely aright account of the matter; and if Stewart had paid any attention tothese and several other passages, he could not have so muchmisconceived the philosophy of Gassendi.

 [773] P. 446.

23. The mind, as long as it dwells in the body, seems to have nointelligible species, except phantasms derived from sense. These hetakes for impressions on the brain, driven to and fro by the animalspirits till they reach the _phantasia_, or imaginative faculty,and cause it to imagine sensible things. The soul, in Gassendi’stheory, consists of an incorporeal part or intellect, and of acorporeal part, the phantasy or sensitive soul, which he conceives tobe diffused throughout the body. The intellectual soul instantlyperceives, by its union with the phantasy, the images impressed uponthe latter, not by impulse of these sensible and material species, butby intuition of their images in the phantasy.[774] Thus, if I rightlyapprehend his meaning, we are to distinguish, first, the species inthe brain, derived from immediate sense or reminiscence; secondly, theimage of these conceived by the phantasy; thirdly, the act ofperception in the mind itself, by which it knows the phantasy to haveimagined these species, and knows also the species themselves to have,or to have had, their external archetypes. This distinction of the_animus_, or reasonable, from the _anima_, or sensitivesoul, he took, as he did a great part of his philosophy, fromEpicurus.

 [774] Eodem momento intellectus ob intimam sui præsentiam cohærentiamque cum phantasia rem eandem contuetur, p. 450.

24. The phantasy and intellect proceed together, so that they mightappear at first to be the same faculty. Not only, however, are theydifferent in their operation even as to objects which fall under thesenses, and are represented to the mind, but the intellect has certainoperations peculiar to itself. Such is the apprehensions of thingswhich cannot be perceived by sense, as the Deity, whom, though we canonly imagine as corporeal, we apprehend or understand to beotherwise.[775] He repeats a good deal of what he had before said onthe distinctive province of the understanding, by which we reason onthings incapable of being imagined; drawing several instances from thegeometry of infinites, as in asymptotes, wherein, he says, somethingis always inferred by reasoning which we presume to be true, and yetcannot reach by any effort of imagination.[776]

 [775] Hoc est autem præter phantasiæ cancellos, intellectûsque ipsius proprium, potestque adeo talis apprehensio non jam imaginatio, sed intelligentia vel intellectio dici. Non quod intellectus non accipiat ansam ab ipsa phantasia ratiocinandi esse aliquid ultra id, quod specie imagineve repræsentatur, neque non simul comitantem talem speciem vel imaginationem habeat; sed quod apprehendat, intelligatve aliquid, ad quod apprehendendum sive percipiendum assurgere phantasia non possit, ut quæ omnino terminetur ad corporum speciem, seu imaginem, ex qua illius operatio imaginatio appallatur. Ibid.

 [776] In quibus semper aliquid argumentando colligitur, quod et verum esse intelligimus et imaginando non assequimur tamen.

|His philosophy misunderstood by Stewart.|

25. I have given a few extracts from Gassendi, in order to confirmwhat has been said, his writings being little read in England, and hisphilosophy not having been always represented in the same manner. DeGérando has claimed, on two occasions, the priority for Gassendi inthat theory of the generation of ideas which has usually been ascribedto Locke.[777] But Stewart protests against this alledged similarityin the tenets of the French and English philosophers. “The remark,” hesays, “is certainly just, if restrained to Locke’s doctrine asinterpreted by the greater part of philosophers on the continent; butit is very wide of the truth, if applied to it as now explained andmodified by the most intelligent of his disciples in this country. Themain scope, indeed, of Gassendi’s argument against Descartes is tomaterialise that class of our ideas which the Lockists, as well as theCartesians, consider as the exclusive objects of the power of_reflection_, and to show that these ideas are all ultimatelyresolvable into images or conceptions borrowed from things external.It is not, therefore, what is sound and valuable in this part ofLocke’s system, but the errors grafted on it in the comments of someof his followers, that can justly be said to have been borrowed fromGassendi. Nor has Gassendi the merit of originality even in theseerrors; for scarcely a remark on the subject occurs in his works, butwhat is copied from the accounts transmitted to us of the Epicureanmetaphysics.”[778]

 [777] Histoire comparée des Systèmes (1804), vol. i., p. 301, and Biogr. Universelle, art. Gassendi. Yet in neither of these does M. de Gérando advert expressly to the peculiar resemblance between the system of Gassendi and Locke, in the account they give of ideas of reflection. He refers, however, to a more particular essay of his own, on the Gassendian philosophy, which I have not seen. As to Locke’s positive obligations to his predecessor, I should be, perhaps, inclined to doubt whether he, who was no great lover of large books, had read so unwieldy a work as the Syntagma Philosophicum; but the abridgment of Bernier would have sufficed.

 [778] Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia.

26. It will probably appear to those who consider what I have quotedfrom Gassendi, that in his latest writings he did not differ so muchfrom Locke, and lead the way so much to the school of the Frenchmetaphysicians of the eighteenth century as Stewart has supposed. Theresemblance to the Essay on the Human Understanding, in severalpoints, especially in the important distinction of what Locke hascalled ideas of reflection from those of sense, is too evident to bedenied. I am at the same time unable to account in a satisfactorymanner for the apparent discrepancy between the language of Gassendiin the Syntagma Philosophicum, and that which we find in hisobjections to the Meditations of Descartes. No great interval of timehad intervened between the two works; for the correspondence withDescartes bears date in 1641, and it appears by that with Louis, Countof Angoulême, in the succeeding year, that he was already employed onthe first part of the Syntagma Philosophicum.[779] Whether he urgedsome of his objections against the Cartesian metaphysics with a regardto victory rather than truth, or, as would be the more candid, andperhaps more reasonable hypothesis, he was induced by the acuteness ofhis great antagonist, to review and reform his own opinions, I mustleave to the philosophical reader.[780]

 [779] Gassendi Opera, vol. i., p. 130. These letters are interesting to those who would study the philosophy of Gassendi.

 [780] Baillet, in his Life of Descartes, would lead us to think that Gassendi was too much influenced by personal motives in writing against Descartes, who had mentioned the phenomena of parhelia, without alluding to a dissertation of Gassendi on the subject. The latter, it seems, owns in a letter to Rivet that he should not have examined so closely the metaphysics of Descartes, if he had been treated by him with as much politeness as he had expected. Vie de Descartes, liv. vi. The retort of Descartes, O caro! (see chap. xx. of this work, p. 497) offended Gassendi, and caused a coldness; which, according to Baillet, Sorbière aggravated acting a treacherous part in exasperating the mind of Gassendi.

|Bernier’s epitome of Gassendi.|

27. Stewart had evidently little or no knowledge of the SyntagmaPhilosophicum. But he had seen an Abridgment of the Philosophy ofGassendi by Bernier, published at Lyons in 1678, and finding in thisthe doctrine of Locke on ideas of reflection, conceived that it didnot faithfully represent its own original. But this was hardly a veryplausible conjecture; Bernier being a man of considerable ability, anintimate friend of Gassendi, and his epitome being so far from concisethat it extends to eight small volumes. Having not indeed collated thetwo books, but read them within a short interval of time, I can saythat Bernier has given a faithful account of the philosophy ofGassendi, as it is contained in the Syntagma Philosophicum, for hetakes notice of no other work; nor has he here added anything of hisown. But in 1682 he published another little book, entitled, Doutes deM. Bernier sur quelques uns des principaux Chapitres de son Abrégé dela Philosophie de Gassendi. One of these doubts relates to theexistence of space; and in another place he denies the reality ofeternity or abstract duration. Bernier observes, as Descartes haddone, that it is vain and even dangerous to attempt a definition ofevident things, such as motion, because we are apt to mistake adefinition of the word for one of the thing; and philosophers seem toconceive that motion is a real being, when they talk of abilliard-ball communicating or losing it.[781]

 [781] Even Gassendi has defined duration “an incorporeal flowing extension,” which is a good instance of the success that can attend such definitions of simple ideas.

|Process of Cartesian philosophy.|

28. The Cartesian philosophy, which its adversaries had expected toexpire with its founder, spread more and more after his death, nor hadit ever depended on any personal favour or popularity of Descartes,since he did not possess such except with a few friends. The churchesand schools of Holland were full of Cartesians. The old scholasticphilosophy became ridiculous, its distinctions, its maxims werelaughed at, as its adherents complain; and probably a more fatal blowwas given to the Aristotelian system by Descartes than even by Bacon.The Cartesian theories were obnoxious to the rigid class oftheologians; but two parties of considerable importance in Holland,the Arminians and the Coccejans, generally espoused the newphilosophy. Many speculations in theology were immediately connectedwith it, and it acted on the free and scrutinising spirit which beganto sap the bulwarks of established orthodoxy. The Cartesians weredenounced in ecclesiastical synods, and were hardly admitted to anyoffice in the church. They were condemned by several universities, andespecially by that of Leyden, in 1678, for the position that the truthof scripture must be proved by reason.[782] Nor were they less exposedto persecution in France.[783]

 [782] Leyden had condemned the whole Cartesian system as early as 1651, on the ground that it was an innovation on the Aristotelian philosophy so long received; and ordained, ut in Academia intra Aristotelicæ philosophiæ limites, quæ hic hactenus recepta fuit, nos contineamus, utque in posterum nec philosophiæ, neque nominis Cartesiani in disputationibus lectionibus aut publicis aliis exercitiis, nec pro nec contra mentio fiat. Utrecht, in 1644, had gone farther, and her decree is couched in terms which might have been used by anyone who wished to ridicule university prejudice by a forgery. Rejicere novam istam philosophiam, primo quia veteri philosophiæ, quam Academiæ toto orbi terrarum hactenus optimo consilio docuere, adversatur, ejusque fundamenta subvertit; deinde quia juventutem a veteri et sana philosophia avertit, impeditque quo minus ad _culmen eruditionis provehatur_; eo quod istius præsumptæ philosophiæ adminiculo et _technologemata in auctorum libris professorumque lectionibus et disputationibus usitata, percipere, nequit_; postremo quod ex eadem variæ falsæ et absurdæ opiniones partim consignantur, partim ab improvida juventute deduci possint pugnantes cum cæteris disciplinis et facultatibus, atque imprimis cum orthodoxa theologia; censere igitur et statuere omnes philosophiam in hac academia docentes imposterum a tali instituto et incepto abstinere debere, contentos _modica libertate dissentiendi_ in singularibus nonnullis opinionibus ad aliarum celebrium Academiarum exemplum hic usitata, ita ut veteris et receptæ philosophiæ fundamenta non labefactent. Tepel. Hist. Philos. Cartesianæ, p. 75.

 [783] An account of the manner in which the Cartesians were harassed through the Jesuits is given by M. Cousin, in the Journal des Sçavans, March, 1838.

29. The Cartesian philosophy, in one sense, carried in itself theseeds of its own decline; it was the Scylla of many dogs; it taughtmen to think for themselves, and to think often better than Descarteshad done. A new eclectic philosophy, or rather the genuine spirit offree inquiry, made Cartesianism cease as a sect, though it left muchthat had been introduced by it. We owe thanks to these Cartesians ofthe seventeenth century for their strenuous assertion of reasonagainst prescriptive authority: the latter part of this age wassignalised by the overthrow of a despotism which had fought every inchin its retreat, and it was manifestly after a struggle, on thecontinent, with this new philosophy, that it was ultimatelyvanquished.[784]

 [784] For the fate of the Cartesian philosophy in the life of its founder, see the life of Descartes by Baillet, 2 vols., in quarto, which he afterwards abridged in 12mo. After the death of Descartes, it may be best traced by means of Brucker. Buhle, as usual, is a mere copyist of his predecessor. He has, however, given a fuller account of Regis. A contemporary History of Cartesian Philosophy by Tepel contains rather a neatly written summary of the controversies it excited both in the lifetime of Descartes and for a few years afterwards.

|La Forge. Regis.|

30. The Cartesian writers of France, the Low Countries, and Germany,were numerous and respectable. La Forge of Saumur first developed thetheory of occasional causes to explain the union of soul and body,wherein he was followed by Geulinx, Regis, Wittich, andMalebranche.[785] But this and other innovations displeased thestricter Cartesians who did not find them in their master. Clauberg inGermany, Clerselier in France, Le Grand in the Low Countries, shouldbe mentioned among the leaders of the school. But no one has left socomprehensive a statement and defence of Cartesianism, as Jean SilvainRegis, whose système de la Philosophie, in three quarto volumes,appeared at Paris in 1690. It is divided into four parts, on Logic,Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. In the three latter, Regis claimsnothing as his own except some explanations, “All that I have said,being due to M. Descartes, whose method and principles I havefollowed, even in explanations that are different from his own.” Andin his Logic he professes to have gone little beyond the author of theArt de Penser.[786] Notwithstanding this rare modesty, Regis is not awriter unworthy of being consulted by the studious of philosophy, nordeficient in clearer and fuller statements than will always be foundin Descartes. It might even be said that he has many things whichwould be sought in vain through his master’s writings, though I amunable to prove that they might not be traced in those of theintermediate Cartesians. Though our limits will not permit any furtheraccount of Regis, I will give a few passages in a note.[787]

 [785] Tennemann (Manuel de la Philosophie, ii., 99.) ascribes this theory to Geulinx. See also Brucker, v. 704.

 [786] It is remarkable that Regis says nothing about figures and modes of syllogism: Nous ne dirons rien des figures ne des syllogismes en général; car bien que tout cela puisse servir de quelque chose pour la spéculation de la logique, il n’est au moins d’aucun usage pour la pratique, laquelle est l’unique but que nous nous sommes proposés dans ce traité, p. 37.

 [787] Regis, in imitation of his master, and perhaps with more clearness, observes that our knowledge of our own existence is not derived from reasoning, mais par une connoissance simple et intérieure, qui précède toutes les connoissances acquisés, et qui j’appelle _conscience_. En effet, quand je dis que je connais ou que je crois connoître, ce _je_ presuppose lui-même mon existence, étant impossible que je connoisse, ou seulement que je croye connoître et que je ne sois pas quelque chose d’existant, p. 68. The Cartesian paradox, as it has been deemed, that thinking is the essence of the soul, Regis has explained away. After coming to the conclusion, Je suis donc une pensée, he immediately corrects himself: Cependant je crains encore de me définir mal, quand je dis que je suis une pensée, qui a la propriété de douter et d’avoir de la certitude; car quelle apparence y a t’il que ma nature, qui doit être une chose fixe et permanente, consiste dans la pensée, puisque je sais par expérience que mes pensées sont dans un flux continuel, et que je ne pense jamais à la même chose deux momens de suite? mais quand je considère la difficulté de plus près, je conçois aisément qu’elle vient de ce que le mot de _pensée_ est équivoque, et que je m’en sers indifféremment pour signifier la pensée qui constitue ma nature, et pour designer les différentes manières d’être de cette pensée; ce qui est une erreur extrême, car il y a cette différence entre la pensée qui constitue ma nature, et les pensées, qui n’en sont que les manières d’être, que la première est une pensée fixe et permanente, et que les autres sont des pensées changeantes et passagères. C’est pourquoi, afin de donner une idée exacte de ma nature, je dirai que je suis une pensée qui existe en elle-même, et qui est le sujet de toutes mes manières de penser. Je dis que je suis une pensée pour marquer ce que la pensée qui constitute ma nature à de commun avec la pensée en général qui comprend sous soi toutes les manières particulières de penser: et j’ajoute, qui existe en elle-même, et qui est le sujet de différentes manières de penser, pour designer ce que cette pensée a de particulier que la distingue de la pensée en général, vu qu’elle n’existe que dans l’entendement de celui qui la conçoit, ainsi que toutes les autres natures universelles, p. 70.

 Every mode supposes a substance wherein it exists. From this axiom Regis deduces the objective being of space, because we have the ideas of length, breadth, and depth, which cannot belong to ourselves, our souls having none of these properties; nor could the idea be suggested by a superior being, if space did not exist, because they would be the representations of non entity, which is impossible. But this transcendental proof is too subtle for the world.

 It is an axiom of Regis that we only know things without us by means of ideas, and that things of which we have no ideas, are in regard to us as if they did not exist at all. Another axiom is that all ideas, considered in respect to their representative property, depend on objects as their types, or _causes exemplaires_. And a third, that the “cause exemplaire” of ideas must contain all the properties which the ideas represent. These axioms, according to him, are the bases of all certainty in physical truth. From the second axiom he deduces the objectivity or “cause exemplaire” of his idea of a perfect being; and his proof seems at least more clearly put than by Descartes. Every idea implies an objective reality; for otherwise there would be an effect without a cause. In this we have the sophisms and begging of questions of which we may see many instances in Spinosa.

 In the second part of the first book of his metaphysics, Regis treats of the union of soul and body, and concludes that the motions of the body only act on the soul by a special will of God, who has determined to produce certain thoughts simultaneously with certain bodily motions, p. 124. God is the efficient first cause of all effects, his creatures are but secondarily efficient. But as they act immediately, we may ascribe all model beings to the efficiency of second causes. And he prefers this expression to that of occasional causes, usual among the Cartesians, because he fancies the latter rather derogatory to the fixed will of God.

|Huet’s Censure of Cartesianism.|

31. Huet, bishop of Avranches, a man of more general erudition thanphilosophical acuteness, yet not quite without this, arraigned thewhole theory in his Censura Philosophiæ Cartesianæ. He had been formany years, as he tells us, a favourer of Cartesianism, but hisretractation is very complete. It cannot be denied that Huet strikeswell at the vulnerable parts of the Cartesian metaphysics, and exposestheir alternate scepticism and dogmatism with some justice. In otherrespects he displays an inferior knowledge of the human mind and ofthe principles of reasoning to Descartes. He repeats Gassendi’s cavilthat, Cogito, ergo sum, involves the truth of Quod cogitat, est. TheCartesians, Huet observes, assert the major, or universal, to bededuced from the minor; which, though true in things known byinduction, is not so in propositions necessarily known, or as theschools say, à priori, as that the whole is greater than its part. Itis not, however, probable that Descartes would have extended his replyto Gassendi’s criticism so far as this; some have referred ourknowledge of geometrical axioms to experience, but this seems notagreeable to the Cartesian theory.

|Port-Royal Logic.|

32. The influence of the Cartesian philosophy was displayed in atreatise of deserved reputation, L’Art de Penser, often calledthe Port-Royal Logic. It was the work of Antony Arnauld, with someassistance, perhaps, by Nicole. Arnauld was not an entire Cartesian;he had himself been engaged in controversy with Descartes; but hisunderstanding was clear and calm, his love of truth sincere, and hecould not avoid recognising the vast superiority of the new philosophyto that received in the schools. This logic accordingly is perhaps thefirst regular treatise on that science that contained a protestation,though in very moderate language, against the Aristotelian method. Theauthor tells us that after some doubt he had resolved to insert a fewthings rather troublesome and of little value, such as the rules ofconversion and the demonstration of the syllogistic figures, chieflyas exercises of the understanding, for which difficulties are notwithout utility. The method of syllogism itself he deems littleserviceable in the discovery of truth; while many things dwelt upon inbooks of logic, such as the ten categories, rather injure than improvethe reasoning faculties, because they accustom men to satisfythemselves with words, and to mistake a long catalogue of arbitrarydefinitions for real knowledge. Of Aristotle he speaks in morehonourable terms than Bacon had done before, or than Malebranche didafterwards; acknowledging the extraordinary merit of some of hiswritings, but pointing out with an independent spirit his failings asa master in the art of reasoning.

33. The first part of L’Art de Penser is almost entirely metaphysical,in the usual sense of that word. It considers ideas in their natureand origin, in the chief differences of the objects they represent, intheir simplicity of composition, in their extent, as universal,particular, or singular, and lastly in their distinctness orconfusion. The word idea, it is observed, is among those which are soclear that we cannot explain them by means of others, because none canbe more clear and simple than themselves.[788] But here it may bedoubtful whether the sense in which the word is to be taken, muststrike everyone in the same way. The clearness of a word does notdepend on its association with a distinct conception in our own minds,but on the generality of this same association in the minds of others.

 [788] C. 1.

34. No follower of Descartes has more unambiguously than this authordistinguished between imagination and intellection, though he givesthe name of idea to both. Many suppose, he says, that they cannotconceive a thing when they cannot imagine it. But we cannot imagine afigure of 1,000 sides, though we can conceive it and reason upon it.We may indeed get a confused image of a figure with many sides, butthese are no more 1,000 than they are 999. Thus, also, we have ideasof thinking, affirming, denying, and the like, though we have noimagination of these operations. By ideas therefore we mean not imagespainted in the fancy, but all that is in our minds when we say that weconceive anything, in whatever manner we may conceive it. Hence, it iseasy to judge of the falsehood of some opinions held in this age. Onephilosopher has advanced that we have no idea of God; another that allreasoning is but an assemblage of words connected by an affirmation.He glances here at Gassendi and Hobbes.[789] Far from all our ideascoming from the senses, as the Aristotelians have said, and asGassendi asserts in his Logic, we may say on the contrary that no ideain our minds is derived from the senses except occasionally (paroccasion); that is, the movements of the brain, which is all theorgans of sense can effect, give occasion to the soul to formdifferent ideas which it would not otherwise form, though these ideashave scarce ever any resemblance to what occurs in the organs of senseand in the brain, and though there are also very many ideas, which,deriving nothing from any bodily image, cannot without absurdity bereferred to the senses.[790] This is perhaps a clearer statement of animportant truth than will be found in Malebranche or in Descarteshimself.

 [789] The reflection on Gassendi is a mere cavil, as will appear by remarking what he has really said, and which we have quoted a few pages above. The Cartesians were resolute in using one sense of the word idea, while Gassendi used another. He had himself been to blame in his controversy with the father of the new philosophy, and the disciples (calling the author of L’Art de Penser such in a general sense) retaliated by equal captiousness.

 [790] C. 1.

35. In the second part, Arnauld treats of words and propositions. Muchof it may be reckoned more within the province of grammar than oflogic. But as it is inconvenient to refer the student to works of adifferent class, especially if it should be the case that no goodgrammars, written with a regard to logical principles, were then to befound, this cannot justly be made an objection. In the latter chaptersof this second part, he comes to much that is strictly logical, andtaken from ordinary books on that science. The third part relates tosyllogisms, and notwithstanding the author’s low estimation of thatmethod, in comparison with the general regard for it in the schools,he has not omitted the common explanations of mood and figure, endingwith a concise but good account of the chief sophisms.

36. The fourth and last part is entitled, On Method, and contains theprinciples of connected reasoning, which he justly observes to be moreimportant than the rules of single syllogisms, wherein few make anymistake. The laws of demonstration given by Pascal, are here laid downwith some enlargement. Many observations not wholly bearing on merelylogical proof, are found in this part of the treatise.

37. The Port-Royal Logic, though not, perhaps, very much read inEngland, has always been reckoned among the best works in thatscience, and certainly had a great influence in rendering it moremetaphysical, more ethical (for much is said by Arnauld on the moraldiscipline of the mind in order to fit it for the investigation oftruth), more exempt from technical barbarisms and trifling definitionsand divisions. It became more and more acknowledged that the rules ofsyllogism go a very little way in rendering the mind able to follow acourse of enquiry without error, much less in assisting it to discovertruth; and that even their vaunted prerogative of securing us fromfallacy is nearly ineffectual in exercise. The substitution of theFrench language, in its highest polish, for the uncouth Latinity ofthe Aristotelians, was another advantage of which the Cartesian schoollegitimately availed themselves.

|Malebranche.|

38. Malebranche, whose Recherche de la Vérité was published in 1674,was a warm and almost enthusiastic admirer of Descartes, but his mindwas independent, searching, and fond of its own inventions; heacknowledged no master, and in some points dissents from the Cartesianschool. His natural temperament was sincere and rigid; he judges themoral and intellectual failings of mankind with a severe scrutiny, anda contemptuousness not generally unjust in itself, but displaying toogreat confidence in his own superiority. This was enhanced by areligious mysticism, which enters, as an essential element, into hisphilosophy of the mind. The fame of Malebranche, and still more thepopularity in modern times of his Search for Truth, has been affectedby that peculiar hypothesis, so mystically expressed, the seeing allthings in God, which has been more remembered than any other part ofthat treatise. “The union,” he says, “of the soul to God is the onlymeans by which we acquire a knowledge of truth. This union has indeedbeen rendered so obscure by original sin, that few can understand whatit means; to those who follow blindly the dictates of sense andpassion it appears imaginary. The same cause has so fortified theconnection between the soul and body that we look on them as onesubstance, of which the latter is the principal part. And hence, wemay all fear that we do not well discern the confused sounds withwhich the senses fill the imagination from that pure voice of truthwhich speaks to the soul. The body speaks louder than God himself; andour pride makes us presumptuous enough to judge without waiting forthose words of truth, without which we cannot truly judge at all. Andthe present work,” he adds, “may give evidence of this; for it is notpublished as being infallible. But let my readers judge of my opinionsaccording to the clear and distinct answers they shall receive fromthe only Lord of all men after they shall have interrogated him bypaying a serious attention to the subject.” This is a strong evidenceof the enthusiastic confidence in supernatural illumination whichbelongs to Malebranche, and which we are almost surprised to findunited with so much cool and acute reasoning as his writings contain.

|His style.|

39. The Recherche de la Vérité is in six books; the first five on theerrors springing from the senses, from the imagination, from theunderstanding, from the natural inclinations, and from the passions.The sixth contains the method of avoiding these, which, however, hasbeen anticipated in great measure throughout the preceding.Malebranche has many repetitions, but little, I think, that can becalled digressive, though he takes a large range of illustration, anddwells rather diffusely on topics of subordinate importance. His styleis admirable; clear, precise, elegant, sparing in metaphors, yet notwanting them in due place, warm, and sometimes eloquent, a littleredundant, but never passionate or declamatory.

|Sketch of his theory.|

40. Error, according to Malebranche, is the source of all humanmisery; man is miserable because he is a sinner, and he would not sinif he did not consent to err. For the will alone judges and reasons,the understanding only perceives things and their relations; adeviation from common language, to say the least, that seems quiteunnecessary.[791] The will is active and free; not that we can avoidwilling our own happiness; but it possesses a power of turning theunderstanding towards such objects as please us, and commanding it toexamine everything thoroughly, else we should be perpetually deceived,and without remedy, by the appearances of truth. And this liberty weshould use on every occasion: it is to become slaves, against the willof God, when we acquiesce in false appearances; but it is in obedienceto the voice of eternal truth which speaks within us, that we submitto those secret reproaches of reason, which accompany our refusal toyield to evidence. There are, therefore, two fundamental rules, onefor science, the other for morals; never to give an entire consent toany propositions, except those which are so evidently true, that wecannot refuse to admit them without an internal uneasiness andreproach of our reason; and, never fully to love anything, which wecan abstain from loving without remorse. We may feel a greatinclination to consent absolutely to a probable opinion; yet, onreflection, we shall find that we are not compelled to do so by anytacit self-reproach if we do not. And we ought to consent to suchprobable opinions for the time until we have more fully examined thequestion.

 [791] L. i., c. 2.

41. The sight is the noblest of our senses, and if they had been givenus to discover truth, it is through vision that we should have doneit. But it deceives us in all it represents, in the size of bodies,their figures and motions, in light and colours. None of these aresuch as they appear, as he proves by many obvious instances. Thus, wemeasure the velocity of motion by duration of time and extent ofspace; but of duration the mind can form no just estimate, and the eyecannot determine equality of spaces. The diameter of the moon isgreater by measurement when she is high in the heavens; it appearsgreater to our eyes in the horizon.[792] On all sides we are besetwith error through our senses. Not that the sensations themselves,properly speaking, deceive us. We are not deceived in supposing thatwe see an orb of light before the sun has risen above the horizon, butin supposing that what we see is the sun itself. Were we evendelirious, we should see and feel what our senses present to us,though our judgment as to its reality would be erroneous. And thisjudgment we may withhold by assenting to nothing without perfectcertainty.

 [792] L. i., c. 9. Malebranche was engaged afterwards in a controversy with Regis on this particular question of the horizontal moon.

42. It would have been impossible for a man endowed with suchintrepidity and acuteness as Malebranche to overlook the question, sonaturally raised by this sceptical theory, as to the objectiveexistence of an external world. There is no necessary connection, heobserves, between the presence of an idea in the soul, and theexistence of the thing which it represents, as dreams and deliriumprove. Yet we may be confident that extension, figure, and movement,do generally exist without us when we perceive them. These are notimaginary; we are not deceived in believing their reality, though itis very difficult to prove it. But it is far otherwise with colours,smells, or sounds, for these do not exist at all beyond the mind. Thishe proceeds to show at considerable length.[793] In one of theillustrations subsequently written in order to obviate objections, andsubjoined to the Recherche de la Vérité, Malebranche comes again tothis problem of the reality of matter, and concludes by subvertingevery argument in its favour, except what he takes to be the assertionof Scripture. Berkeley, who did not see this in the same light, hadscarcely a step to take in his own famous theory, which we mayconsider as having been anticipated by Malebranche, with the importantexception that what was only scepticism and denial of certainty in theone, became a positive and dogmatic affirmation in the other.

 [793] L. i., c. 10.

43. In all our sensations there are four things distinct inthemselves, but which, examined as they arise simultaneously, we areapt to confound; these are the action of the object, the effect uponthe organ of sense, the mere sensation, and the judgment we form as toits cause. We fall into errors as to all these, confounding thesensation with the action of bodies, as when we say there is heat inthe fire, or colour in the rose, or confounding the motion of thenerves with sensation, as when we refer heat to the hand; but most ofall, in drawing mistaken inferences as to the nature of objects fromour sensations.[794] It may be here remarked that what Malebranche hasproperly called the judgment of the mind as to the cause of itssensations, is precisely what Reid denominates perception; a term lessclear, and which seems to have led some of his school into importanterrors. The language of the Scottish philosopher appears to imply thathe considered perception as a distinct and original faculty of themind, rather than what it is, a complex operation of the judgment andmemory, applying knowledge already acquired by experience. Neither he,nor his disciple Stewart, though aware of the mistakes that havearisen in this province of metaphysics by selecting our instances fromthe phenomena of vision instead of the other senses, have avoided thesame source of error. The sense of sight has the prerogative ofenabling us to pronounce instantly on the external cause of oursensation; and this perception is so intimately blended with thesensation itself, that it has not to our minds, whatever may be thecase with young children, the least appearance of a judgment. But weneed only make our experiment upon sound or smell, and we shall atonce acknowledge that there is no sort of necessary connection betweenthe sensation and our knowledge of its corresponding external object.We hear sounds continually, which we are incapable of referring to anyparticular body; nor does anyone, I suppose, deny that it is byexperience alone we learn to pronounce, with more or less of certaintyaccording to its degree, on the causes from which these sensationsproceed.

 [794] C. 12.

44. Sensation he defines to be “a modification of the soul in relationto something which passes in the body to which she is united.” Thesesensations we know by experience; it is idle to go about defining orexplaining them; this cannot be done by words. It is an error,according to Malebranche, to believe that all men have like sensationsfrom the same objects. In this he goes farther than Pascal, who thinksit probable that they have, while Malebranche holds it indubitable,from the organs of men being constructed differently, that they do notreceive similar impressions; instancing music, some smells andflavours, and many other things of the same kind. But it is obvious toreply that he has argued from the exception to the rule; the greatmajority of mankind agreeing as to musical sounds (which is thestrongest case that can be put against his paradox), and most othersensations. That the sensations of different men, subject to suchexceptions, if not strictly alike, are, so to say, in a constantratio, seems as indisputable as any conclusion we can draw from theirtestimony.

45. The second book of Malebranche’s treatise relates to theimagination, and the errors connected with it. “The imaginationconsists in the power of the mind to form images of objects byproducing a change in the fibres of that part of the brain, which maybe called principal because it corresponds with all parts of the body,and is the place where the soul, if we may so speak, immediatelyresides.” This he supposes to be where all the filaments of the brainterminate; so difficult was it, especially in that age, for aphilosopher, who had the clearest perception of the soul’simmateriality, to free himself from the analogies of extended presenceand material impulse. The imagination, he says, comprehends twothings; the action of the will and the obedience of the animal spiritswhich trace images on the brain. The power of conception dependspartly upon the strength of those animal spirits, partly on thequalities of the brain itself. For just as the size, the depth, andthe clearness of the lines in an engraving depend on the force withwhich the graver acts, and on the obedience which the copper yields toit, so the depth and clearness of the traces of the imagination dependon the force of the animal spirits, and on the constitution of thefibres of the brain; and it is the difference of these which occasionsalmost the whole of that vast difference we find in the capacities ofmen.

46. This arbitrary, though rather specious hypothesis, which, in thepresent more advanced state of physiology, a philosopher might not inall points reject, but would certainly not assume, is spread out byMalebranche over a large part of his work, and especially the secondbook. The delicacy of the fibres of the brain, he supposes, is one ofthe chief causes of our not giving sufficient application to difficultsubjects. Women possess this delicacy, and hence have moreintelligence than men as to all sensible objects; but whatever isabstract is to them incomprehensible. The fibres are soft in children,and become stronger with age, the greatest perfection of theunderstanding being between thirty and fifty; but with prejudiced men,and especially when they are advanced in life, the hardness of thecerebral fibre confirms them in error. For we can understand nothingwithout attention, nor attend to it without having a strong imagein the brain, nor can that image be formed without a suppleness andsusceptibility of motion in the brain itself. It is, therefore, highlyuseful to get the habit of thinking on all subjects, and thus to givethe brain a facility of motion analogous to that of the fingers inplaying on a musical instrument. And this habit is best acquired byseeking truth in difficult things while we are young, because it isthen that the fibres are most easily bent in all directions.[795]

 [795] L. ii., c. 1.

47. This hypothesis, carried so far as it has been by Malebranche,goes very great lengths in asserting not merely a connection betweenthe cerebral motions and the operations of the mind, but somethinglike a subordination of the latter to a plastic power in the animalspirits of the brain. For if the differences in the intellectualpowers of mankind, and also, as he afterwards maintains, in theirmoral emotions, are to be accounted for by mere bodily configurationas their regulating cause, little more than a naked individuality ofconsciousness seems to be left to the immaterial principle. No one,however, whether he were staggered by this difficulty or not, had amore decided conviction of the essential distinction between mind andmatter than this disciple of Descartes. The soul, he says, does notbecome body, nor the body soul, by their union. Each substance remainsas it is, the soul incapable of extension and motion, the bodyincapable of thought and desire. All the alliance between soul andbody, which is known to us, consists in a natural and mutualcorrespondence of the thoughts of the former with the traces on thebrain, and of its emotions with the traces of the animal spirits. Assoon as the soul receives new ideas, new traces are imprinted on thebrain; and as soon as external objects imprint new traces, the soulreceives new ideas. Not that it contemplates these traces, for it hasno knowledge of them; nor that the traces contain the ideas, sincethey have no relation to them; nor that the soul receives her ideasfrom the traces, for it is inconceivable that the soul should receiveanything from the body, and become more enlightened, as somephilosophers (meaning Gassendi) express it, by turning itself towardsthe phantasms in the brain. Thus, also, when the soul wills that thearm should move, the arm moves, though she does not even know whatelse is necessary for its motion; and thus, when the animal spiritsare put into movement, the soul is disturbed, though she does not evenknow that there are animal spirits in the body.

48. These remarks of Malebranche it is important to familiarise to ourminds; and those who reflect upon them will neither fall into thegross materialism to which many physiologists appear prone, nor, onthe other hand, out of fear of allowing too much to the bodily organs,reject any sufficient proof that may be adduced for the relationbetween the cerebral system and the intellectual processes. Theseopposite errors are by no means uncommon in the present age. But,without expressing an opinion on that peculiar hypothesis which isgenerally called phrenology, we might ask whether it is not quite asconceivable that a certain state of portions of the brain may be theantecedent condition of memory or imagination, as that a certain stateof nervous filaments may be, what we know it is, an invariableantecedent of sensation. In neither instance can there be anyresemblance or proper representation of the organic motion transferredto the soul; nor ought we to employ, even in metaphor, the analogiesof impulse or communication. But we have two phenomena, between which,by the constitution of our human nature, and probably by that of thevery lowest animals, there is a perpetual harmony and concomitance; anultimate fact, according to the present state of our faculties, whichmay, in some senses, be called mysterious, inasmuch as we can neitherfully apprehend its final causes, nor all the conditions of itsoperation, but one which seems not to involve any appearance ofcontradiction, and should therefore not lead us into the uselessperplexity of seeking a solution that is almost evidently beyond ourreach.

49. The association of ideas is far more extensively developed byMalebranche in this second book than by any of the old writers, noteven, I think, with the exception of Hobbes; though he is too fond ofmixing the psychological facts which experience furnishes with hisprecarious, however plausible, theory of cerebral traces. Many of hisremarks are acute and valuable. Thus, he observes that writers whomake use of many new terms in science, under the notion of being moreintelligible, are often not understood at all, whatever care they maytake to define their words. We grant in theory their right to do this;but nature resists. The new words, having no ideas previouslyassociated with them, fall out of the reader’s mind, except inmathematics, where they can be rendered evident by diagrams. In allthis part, Malebranche expatiates on the excessive deference shown toauthority, which, because it is great in religion, we suppose equallyconclusive in philosophy, and on the waste of time which mere readingof many books entails; experience, he says, having always shown thatthose who have studied most are the very persons who have led theworld into the greatest errors. The whole of the chapters on thissubject is worth perusal.

50. In another part of this second book, Malebranche has opened a newand fertile vein, which he is far from having exhausted, on what hecalls the contagiousness of a powerful imagination. Minds of thischaracter, he observes, rule those which are feebler in conception:they give them by degrees their own habit, they impress their owntype; and as men of strong imagination are themselves for the mostpart very unreasonable, their brains being cut up, as it were, by deeptraces, which leave no room for anything else, no source of humanerror is more dangerous than this contagiousness of their disorder.This he explains, in his favourite physiology, by a certain naturalsympathy between the cerebral fibres of different men, which beingwanting in anyone with whom we converse, it is vain to expect that hewill enter into our views, and we must look for a more sympathetictissue elsewhere.

51. The moral observations of Malebranche are worth more than thesehypotheses with which they are mingled. Men of powerful imaginationexpress themselves with force and vivacity, though not always in themost natural manner, and often with great animation of gesture; theydeal with subjects that excite sensible images, and from all this theyacquire a great power of persuasion. This is exercised especially overpersons in subordinate relations; and thus children, servants, orcourtiers adopt the opinions of their superiors. Even in religion,nations have been found to take up the doctrines of their rulers, ashas been seen in England. In certain authors, who influence our mindswithout any weight of argument, this despotism of a strong imaginationis exercised, which he particularly illustrates by the examples ofTertullian, Seneca, and Montaigne. The contagious power of imaginationis also manifest in the credulity of mankind as to apparitions andwitchcraft; and he observes that where witches are burned, there isgenerally a great number of them, while, since some parliaments haveceased to punish for sorcery, the offence has diminished within theirjurisdiction.

52. The application which these striking and original views will bear,spreads far into the regions of moral philosophy, in the largest senseof that word. It is needless to dwell upon, and idle to cavil at thephysiological theories to which Malebranche has had recourse. Falselet them be, what is derived from the experience of human nature willalways be true. No one general phenomenon in the intercommunity ofmankind with each other is more worthy to be remembered, or moreevident to an observing eye, than this contagiousness, as Malebranchephrases it, of a powerful imagination, especially when assisted by anycirc*mstances that secure and augment its influence. The history ofevery popular delusion, and even the petty events of every day inprivate life, are witnesses to its power.

53. The third book is entitled, Of the Understanding or Pure Spirit(l’Esprit Pur). By the pure understanding he means the faculty of thesoul to know the reality of certain things without the aid of imagesin the brain. And he warns the reader that the inquiry will be founddry and obscure. The essence of the soul, he says, following hisCartesian theory, consists in thinking, as that of matter does inextension; will, imagination, memory, and the like, are modificationsof thought or forms of the soul, as water, wood, or fire aremodifications of matter. This sort of expression has been adopted byour metaphysicians of the Scots school in preference to the ideas ofreflection, as these operations are called by Locke. But by the wordthought (pensée) he does not mean these modifications, but the soul orthinking principle absolutely, capable of all these modifications, asextension is neither round nor square, though capable of either form.The power of volition, and, by parity of reasoning we may add, ofthinking, is inseparable from the soul, but not the acts of volitionor thinking themselves; as a body is always movable though it be notalways in motion.

54. In this book it does not seem that Malebranche has been verysuccessful in distinguishing the ideas of pure intellect from thosewhich the senses or imagination present to us; nor do we clearly seewhat he means by the former, except those of existence and a few more.But he now hastens to his peculiar hypothesis as to the mode ofperception. By ideas he understands the immediate object of the soul,which all the world, he supposes, will agree not to be the same withthe external object of sense. Ideas are real existences; for they haveproperties, and represent very different things; but nothing can haveno property. How then do they enter into the mind, or become presentto it? Is it, as the Aristotelians hold, by means of speciestransmitted from the external objects? Or are they producedinstantaneously by some faculty of the soul? Or have they been createdand posited, as it were, in the soul, when it began to exist? Or doesGod produce them in us whenever we think or perceive? Or does the soulcontain in herself in some transcendent manner whatever is in thesensible world? These hypotheses of elder philosophers, some of whichare not quite intelligibly distinct from each other, Malebranchehaving successively refuted, comes to what he considers the onlypossible alternative--namely, that the soul is united to anall-perfect Being, in whom all that belongs to his creatures iscontained. Besides the exclusion of every other supposition which, byhis sorites he conceives himself to have given, he subjoins severaldirect arguments in favour of his own theory, but in general soobscure and full of arbitrary assumption that they cannot be stated inthis brief sketch.[796]

 [796] L. iii., c. 6.

55. The mysticism of this eminent man displays itself throughout thispart of his treatise, but rarely leading him into that figurative andunmeaning language from which the inferior class of enthusiasts arenever free. His philosophy which has hitherto appeared so sceptical,assumes now the character of intense irresistible conviction. Thescepticism of Malebranche is merely ancillary to his mysticism. Hisphilosophy, if we may use so quaint a description of it, issubjectivity leading objectivity in chains. He seems to triumph in hisrestoration of the inner man to his pristine greatness, by subduingthose false traitors and rebels, the nerves and brain, to whom, sincethe great lapse of Adam, his posterity had been in thrall. It has beenjustly remarked by Brown, that in the writings of Malebranche, as inall theological metaphysicians of the catholic church, we perceive thecommanding influence of Augustin.[797] From him, rather than, in thefirst instance, from Plato or Plotinus, it may be suspected thatMalebranche, who was not very learned in ancient philosophy, derivedthe manifest tinge of Platonism that, mingling with his warmadmiration of Descartes, has rendered him a link between two famoussystems, not very harmonious in their spirit and turn of reasoning.But his genius more clear, or at least disciplined in a more accuratelogic than that of Augustin, taught him to dissent from that father bydenying objective reality to eternal truths, such as that two and twoare equal to four; descending thus one step from unintelligiblemysticism.

 [797] Philosophy of the Human Mind, Lecture xxx. Brown’s own position, that “the idea _is_ the mind,” seems to me as paradoxical, in expression at least, as anything in Malebranche.

56. “Let us repose,” he concludes, “in this tenet, that God is theintelligible world, or the place of spirits, like as the materialworld is the place of bodies; that it is from his power they receiveall their modifications; that it is in his wisdom they find all theirideas; and that it is by his love they feel all their well-regulatedemotions. And since his power and his wisdom and his love are buthimself, let us believe with St. Paul, that he is not far from each ofus, and that in him we live and move, and have our being.” Butsometimes Malebranche does not content himself with these fineeffusions of piety. His theism, as has often been the case withmystical writers, expands till it becomes as it were dark withexcessive light, and almost vanishes in his own effulgence. He haspassages that approach very closely to the pantheism of Jordano Brunoand Spinosa; one especially, wherein he vindicates the Cartesianargument for a being of necessary existence in a strain which perhapsrenders that argument less incomprehensible, but certainly cannot besaid, in any legitimate sense, to establish the existence of aDeity.[798]

 [798] L. iii. c. 8.

57. It is from the effect which the invention of so original andstriking an hypothesis, and one that raises such magnificentconceptions of the union between the Deity and the human soul, wouldproduce on a man of an elevated and contemplative genius, that we mustaccount for Malebranche’s forgetfulness of much that he hasjudiciously said in part of his treatise, on the limitation of ourfaculties and the imperfect knowledge we can attain as to ourintellectual nature. For, if we should admit that ideas aresubstances, and not accidents of the thinking spirit, it wouldstill be doubtful whether he has wholly enumerated, or conclusivelyrefuted, the possible hypotheses as to their existence in the mind.And his more direct reasonings labour under the same difficulty fromthe manifest incapacity of our understandings to do more than formconjectures and dim notions of what we can so imperfectly bring beforethem.

58. The fourth and fifth books of the Recherche de la Vérité treat ofthe natural inclinations and passions, and of the errors which springfrom those sources. These books are various and discursive, and verycharacteristic of the author’s mind; abounding with a mysticaltheology, which extends to an absolute negation of secondary causes,as well as with poignant satire on the follies of mankind. In everypart of his treatise, but especially in these books, Malebranchepursues with unsparing ridicule two classes, the men of learning, andthe men of the world. With Aristotle and the whole school of hisdisciples he has an inveterate quarrel, and omits no occasion ofholding them forth to contempt. This seems to have been in a greatmeasure warranted by their dogmatism, their bigotry, theirpertinacious resistance to modern science, especially to the Cartesianphilosophy, which Malebranche in general followed. “Let them,” heexclaims, “prove, if they can, that Aristotle, or any of themselves,has deduced one truth in physical philosophy from any principlepeculiar to himself, and we will promise never to speak of him but ineulogy.”[799] But, until this gauntlet should be taken up, he thoughthimself at liberty to use very different language. “The works of theStagyrite,” he observes, “are so obscure and full of indefinite words,that we have a colour for ascribing to him the most opposite opinions.In fact, we make him say what we please, because he says very little,though with much parade; just as children fancy bells to say anything,because they make a great noise, and in reality say nothing at all.”

 [799] L. iv., c. 3.

59. But such philosophers are not the only class of the learned hedepreciates. Those who pass their time in gazing through telescopes,and distribute provinces in the moon to their friends, those who poreover worthless books, such as the Rabbinical and other Orientalwriters, or compose folio volumes on the animals mentioned inScripture, while they can hardly tell what are found in their ownprovince, those who accumulate quotations to inform us not of truth,but of what other men have taken for truth, are exposed to his sharp,but doubtless exaggerated and unreasonable ridicule. Malebranche, likemany men of genius, was much too intolerant of what might givepleasure to other men, and too narrow in his measure of utility. Heseems to think little valuable in human learning but metaphysics andalgebra.[800] From the learned he passes to the great, and afterenumerating the circ*mstances which obstruct their perception oftruth, comes to the blunt conclusion that men “much raised above therest by rank, dignity, or wealth, or whose minds are occupied ingaining these advantages, are remarkably subject to error, and hardlycapable of discerning any truths which lie a little out of the commonway.”[801]

 [800] It is rather amusing to find that, while lamenting the want of a review of books, he predicts that we shall never see one, on account of the prejudice of mankind in favour of authors. The prophecy was falsified almost at the time. On regarde ordinairement les auteurs comme des hommes rares et extraordinaires et beaucoup élevés au-dessus des autres; on les révère donc au lieu de les mépriser et de les punir. Ainsi il n’y a guères d’apparence que les hommes érigent jamais un tribunal pour examiner et pour condamner tous les livres, qui ne font que corrompre la raison, c. 8.

 La plupart des livres de certains savans ne sont fabriqués qu’à coups de dictionnaires, et ils n’ont guères lû que les tables des livres qu’ils citent, ou quelques lieux communs, ramassés de différens auteurs. On n’oseroit entrer d’avantage dans le détail de ces choses, ni en donner des exemples, de peur de choquer des personnes aussi fières et aussi bilieuses que sont ces faux savans; car on ne prend pas plaisir à se faire injurier en Grec et en Arabe.

 [801] C. 9.

60. The sixth and last book announces a method of directing ourpursuit of truth, by which we may avoid the many errors to which ourunderstandings are liable. It promises to give them all the perfectionof which our nature is capable, by prescribing the rules we shouldinvariably observe. But it must, I think, be confessed that there isless originality in this method than we might expect. We find,however, many acute and useful, if not always novel, observations onthe conduct of the understanding, and it may be reckoned among thebooks which would supply materials for what is still wanting tophilosophical literature, an ample and useful logic. We are sofrequently inattentive, he observes, especially to the pure ideas ofthe understanding, that all resources should be employed to fix ourthoughts. And for this purpose we may make use of the passions, thesenses, or the imagination, but the second with less danger than thefirst, and the third than the second. Geometrical figures he rangesunder the aids supplied to the imagination rather than to the senses.He dwells much at length on the utility of geometry in fixing ourattention, and of algebra in compressing and arranging our thoughts.All sciences, he well remarks, and I do not know that it had been saidbefore, which treat of things distinguishable by more or less inquantity, and which consequently may be represented by extension, arecapable of illustration by diagrams. But these, he conceives, areinapplicable to moral truths, though sure consequences may be derivedfrom them. Algebra, however, is far more useful in improving theunderstanding than geometry, and is in fact, with its sisterarithmetic, the best means that we possess.[802] But as men likebetter to exercise the imagination than the pure intellect, geometryis the more favourite study of the two.

 [802] L. vi., c. 4. All conceptions of abstract ideas, he justly remarks in another place, are accompanied with some imagination, though we are often not aware of it; because these ideas have no natural images or traces associated with them, but such only as the will of man or chance has given. Thus, in analysis, however general the ideas, we use letters and signs, always associated with the ideas of the things, though they are not really related, and for this reason do not give us false and confused notions. Hence, he thinks, the ideas of things which can only be perceived by the understanding, may become associated with the traces on the brain, l. v., c. 2. This is evidently as applicable to language as it is to algebra.

 Cudworth has a somewhat similar remark in his Immutable Morality, that the cogitations we have of corporeal things are usually, in his technical style, both noematical and phantasmatical together, the one being as it were the soul, and the other the body of them. “Whenever we think of a phantasmatical universal or universalised phantasm, or a thing which we have no clear intellection of (as for example of the nature of a rose in general), there is a complication of something noematical and something phantasmatical together; for phantasms themselves as well as sensations are always individual things.” P. 143.

|Character of Malebranche.|

61. Malebranche may perhaps be thought to have occupied too much ofour attention at the expense of more popular writers. But for thisvery reason, that the Recherche de la Vérité is not at present muchread, I have dwelt long on a treatise of so great celebrity in its ownage, and which, even more perhaps than the metaphysical writings ofDescartes, has influenced that department of philosophy. Malebranchenever loses sight of the great principle of the soul’s immateriality,even in his long and rather hypothetical disquisitions on theinstrumentality of the brain in acts of thought; and his language isfar less objectionable on this subject than that of succeedingphilosophers. He is always consistent and clear in distinguishing thesoul itself from its modifications and properties. He knew well andhad deeply considered the application of mathematical and physicalscience to the philosophy of the human mind. He is very copious anddiligent in illustration, and very clear in definition. His principalerrors, and the sources of them in his peculiar temperament, haveappeared in the course of these pages. And to these we may add hismaintaining some Cartesian paradoxes, such as the system of vortices,and the want of sensation in brutes. The latter he deduced from theimmateriality of a thinking principle, supposing it incredible, thoughhe owns it had been the tenet of Augustin, that there could be animmaterial spirit in the lower animals, and also from theincompatibility of any unmerited suffering with the justice ofGod.[803] Nor was Malebranche exempt from some prejudices ofscholastic theology; and though he generally took care to avoid itstechnical language, is content to repel the objection to his denial ofall secondary causation from its making God the sole author of sin, bysaying that sin being a privation of righteousness, is negative, andconsequently requires no cause.

 [803] This he had borrowed from a maxim of Augustin: sub justo Deo quisquam nisi mereatur, miser esse non potest; whence, it seems that father had inferred the imputation of original sin to infants; a happy mode of escaping the difficulty.

|Compared with Pascal.|

62. Malebranche bears a striking resemblance to his great contemporaryPascal, though they were not, I believe, in any personal relation toeach other, nor could either have availed himself of the other’swritings. Both of ardent minds, endowed with strong imagination andlively wit, sarcastic, severe, fearless, disdainful of popular opinionand accredited reputations; both imbued with the notion of a vastdifference between the original and actual state of man, and thussolving many phenomena of his being; both, in different modes anddegrees, sceptical, and rigorous in the exaction of proof; bothundervaluing all human knowledge beyond the regions of mathematics;both of rigid strictness in morals, and a fervid enthusiastic piety.But in Malebranche there is a less overpowering sense of religion; hiseye roams unblenched in the light, before which that of Pascal hadbeen veiled in awe; he is sustained by a less timid desire of truth,by greater confidence in the inspirations that are breathed into hismind; he is more quick in adopting a novel opinion, but less apt toembrace a sophism in defence of an old one; he has less energy, butmore copiousness and variety.

|Arnauld on true and false ideas.|

63. Arnauld, who, though at first in personal friendship withMalebranche, held no friendship in a balance with his rigid love oftruth, combated the chief points of the other’s theory in a treatiseon true and false ideas. This work I have never had the good fortuneto see; it appears to assail a leading principle of Malebranche, theseparate existence of ideas, as objects in the mind independent anddistinguishable from the sensation itself. Arnauld maintained, as Reidand others have since done, that we do not perceive or feel ideas, butreal objects, and thus led the way to a school which has been calledthat of Scotland, and has had a great popularity among our latermetaphysicians. It would require a critical examination of his work,which I have not been able to make, to determine precisely what werethe opinions of this philosopher.[804]

 [804] Brucker. Buhle. Reid’s Intellectual Powers.

64. The peculiar hypothesis of Malebranche, that we see all things inGod, was examined by Locke in a short piece, contained in thecollection of his works. It will readily be conceived that twophilosophers, one eminently mystical and endeavouring upon this highlytranscendental theme to grasp in his mind and express in his languagesomething beyond the faculties of man, the other as characteristicallyaverse to mystery, and slow to admit any thing without proof, wouldhave hardly any common ground even to fight upon. Locke, therefore,does little else than complain that he cannot understand whatMalebranche has advanced; and most of his readers will probably findthemselves in the same position.

|Norris.|

65. He had, however, an English supporter of some celebrity in his ownage, Norris; a disciple, and one of the latest we have had, of thePlatonic school of Henry More. The principal metaphysical treatise ofNorris, his Essay on the Ideal World, was published in two parts, 1701and 1702. It does not therefore come within our limits. Norris is morethoroughly Platonic than Malebranche, to whom, however, he pays greatdeference, and adopts his fundamental hypothesis on seeing all thingsin God. He is a writer of fine genius, and a noble elevation of moralsentiments, such as predisposes men for the Platonic schemes oftheosophy. He looked up to Augustin with as much veneration as toPlato, and respected more, perhaps, than Malebranche, certainly morethan the generality of English writers, the theological metaphysiciansof the schools. With these he mingled some visions of a latermysticism. But his reasonings will seldom bear a close scrutiny.

|Pascal.|

66. In the Thoughts of Pascal we find many striking remarks on thelogic of that science with which he was peculiarly conversant, andupon the general foundations of certainty. He had reflected deeplyupon the sceptical objections to all human reasoning, and, thoughsometimes out of a desire to elevate religious faith at its expense,he seems to consider them unanswerable, he was too clear-headed tobelieve them just. “Reason,” he says, “confounds the dogmatists, andnature the sceptics.”[805] “We have an incapacity of demonstration,which one cannot overcome; we have a conception of truth which theothers cannot disturb.”[806] He throws out a notion of a more completemethod of reasoning than that of geometry, wherein everything shall bedemonstrated, which, however, he holds to be unattainable;[807] andperhaps on this account he might think the cavils of pyrrhonisminvincible by pure reason. But as he afterwards admits that we mayhave a full certainty of propositions that cannot be demonstrated,such as the infinity of number and space, and that such incapabilityof direct proof is rather a perfection than a defect, this notion of agreater completeness in evidence seems neither clear norconsistent.[808]

 [805] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 205. Il faut que chacun prenne parti, et se range nécessairement ou au dogmatisme, ou au pyrrhonisme; car qui penseroit demeurer neutre seroit pyrrhonien par excellence; cette neutralité est l’essence du pyrrhonisme, p. 204. I do not know that I understand this; is it not either a self-evident proposition or a sophism?

 [806] P. 208.

 [807] Pensées de Pascal, part i., art. 2.

 [808] Comme la cause qui les rend incapables de démonstration n’est pas leur obscurité, mais au contraire leur extrême évidence, ce manque de preuve n’est pas un défaut, mais plutôt une perfection.

67. Geometry, Pascal observes, is almost the only subject, asto which we find truths wherein all men agree. And one cause of thisis that geometers alone regard the true laws of demonstration. Theseas enumerated by him are eight in number. 1. To define nothing whichcannot be expressed in clearer terms than those in which it is alreadyexpressed. 2. To leave no obscure or equivocal terms undefined. 3. Toemploy in the definition no terms not already known. 4. To omitnothing in the principles from which we argue unless we are sure it isgranted. 5. To lay down no axiom which is not perfectly evident. 6. Todemonstrate nothing which is as clear already as we can make it. 7. Toprove everything in the least doubtful, by means of self-evidentaxioms, or of propositions already demonstrated. 8. To substitutementally the definition instead of the thing defined. Of these rules,he says, the first, fourth, and sixth are not absolutely necessary inorder to avoid error, but the other five are indispensable. Yet,though they may be found in books of logic, none but the geometershave paid any regard to them. The authors of these books seem not tohave entered into the spirit of their own precepts. All other rulesthan those he has given are useless or mischievous; they contain, hesays, the whole art of demonstration.[809]

 [809] Œuvres de Pascal, i., 66.

68. The reverence of Pascal, like that of Malebranche, for what isestablished in religion does not extend to philosophy. We do not findin them, as we may sometimes perceive in the present day, all sorts ofprejudices against the liberties of the human mind clusteringtogether, like a herd of bats, by an instinctive association. He hasthe same idea as Bacon, that the ancients were properly the childrenamong mankind. Not only each man, he says, advances daily in science,but all men collectively make a constant progress, so that allgenerations of mankind during so many ages may be considered as oneman, always subsisting and always learning; and the old age of thisuniversal man is not to be sought in the period next to his birth, butin that which is most removed from it. Those we call ancients weretruly novices in all things; and we who have added to all they knewthe experience of so many succeeding ages, have a better claim to thatantiquity which we revere in them. In this, with much ingenuity andmuch truth, there is a certain mixture of fallacy, which I shall notwait to point out.

69. The genius of Pascal was admirably fitted for acute observation onthe constitution of human nature, if he had not seen everythingthrough a refracting medium of religious prejudice. When this does notinterfere to bias his judgment, he abounds with fine remarks, thoughalways a little tending towards severity. One of the most useful andoriginal is the following: “When we would show anyone that he ismistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers thesubject, for his view of it is generally right on this side, and admitto him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with thisacknowledgment that he was not wrong in his judgment, but onlyinadvertent in not looking at the whole of the case. For we are lessashamed of not having seen the whole, than of being deceived in whatwe do see; and this may perhaps arise from an impossibility of theunderstanding’s being deceived in what it does see, just as theperceptions of the senses, as such, must be always true.”[810]

 [810] Id., p. 149. Though Pascal here says that the perceptions of the senses are always true, we find the contrary asserted in other passages; he is not uniformly consistent with himself.

|Spinosa’s ethics.|

70. The Cartesian philosophy has been supposed to have produced ametaphysician very divergent in most of his theory from that school,Benedict Spinosa. No treatise is written in a more rigidly geometricalmethod than his Ethics. It rests on definitions and axioms, from whichthe propositions are derived in close, brief, and usually perspicuousdemonstrations. The few explanations he has thought necessary arecontained in scholia. Thus a fabric is erected, astonishing andbewildering in its entire effect, yet so regularly constructed, thatthe reader must pause and return on his steps to discover an error inthe workmanship, while he cannot also but acknowledge the good faithand intimate persuasion of having attained the truth, which the acuteand deep-reflecting author everywhere displays.

|Its general originality.|

71. Spinosa was born in 1632; we find by his correspondence withOldenburg, in 1661, that he had already developed his entire scheme,and in that with De Vries in 1663, the propositions of the Ethics arealluded to numerically, as we now read them.[811] It was therefore thefruit of early meditation, at its fearlessness, its general disregardof the slow process of observation, its unhesitating dogmatism, mightlead us to expect. In what degree he had availed himself of priorwriters is not evident; with Descartes and Lord Bacon he was familiar,and from the former he had derived some leading tenets; but heobserves both in him and Bacon what he calls mistakes as to the firstcause and origin of things, their ignorance of the real nature of thehuman mind, and of the true sources of error.[812] The pantheistictheory of Jordano Bruno is not very remote from that of Spinosa; butthe rhapsodies of the Italian, who seldom aims at proof, can hardlyhave supplied much to the subtle mind of the Jew of Amsterdam. Buhlehas given us an exposition of the Spinosistic theory.[813] But severalpropositions in this I do not find in the author, and Buhle has atleast, without any necessity, entirely deviated from the arrangementhe found in the Ethics. This seems as unreasonable in a work sorigorously systematic, as it would be in the elements of Euclid; and Ibelieve the following pages will prove more faithful to the text. Butit is no easy task to translate and abridge a writer of suchextraordinary conciseness as well as subtlety; nor is it probable thatmy attempt will be intelligible to those who have not habituatedthemselves to metaphysical inquiry.

 [811] Spinosæ Opera Posthuma, p. 398-460.

 [812] Cartes et Bacon tam longè a cognitione primæ causæ et originis omnium rerum aberrarunt.... Veram naturam humanæ mentis non cognoverunt ... veram causam erroris nunquam operati sunt.

 [813] Hist. de la Philosophie, vol. iii., p. 440.

|View of his metaphysical theory.|

72. The first book or part of the Ethics is entitled, Concerning God,and contains the entire theory of Spinosa. It may even be said thatthis is found in a few of the first propositions; which being granted,the rest could not easily be denied; presenting, as it does, littlemore than new aspects of the former, or evident deductions from them.Upon eight definitions and seven axioms reposes this philosophicalsuperstructure. A substance, by the third definition, is that, theconception of which does not require the conception of anything elseas antecedent to it.[814] The attribute of a substance is whatever themind perceives to constitute its essence.[815] The mode of a substanceis its accident or affection, by means of which it is conceived.[816]In the sixth definition he says: I understand by the name of God abeing absolutely infinite; that is, a substance consisting of infiniteattributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.Whatever expresses an essence, and involves no contradiction, may bepredicated of an absolutely infinite being.[817] The most important ofthe axioms are the following: From a given determinate cause theeffect necessarily follows; but if there be no determinate cause, noeffect can follow.--The knowledge of an effect depends upon theknowledge of the cause, and includes it.--Things that have nothing incommon with each other cannot be understood by means of each other;that is, the conception of one does not include that of the other.--Atrue idea must agree with its object.[818]

 [814] Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est, et per se concipitur; hoc est, id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat. The last words are omitted by Spinosa in a letter to De Vries (p. 463), where he repeats this definition.

 [815] Per attributum intelligo id quod intellectus de substantia percipit, tanquam ejusdem essentiam constituens.

 [816] Per modum intelligo substantiæ affectiones, sive id, quod in alio est, per quod etiam concipitur.

 [817] Per Deum intelligo Ens absolutè infinitum, hoc est, substantiam constantem infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque æternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit. Dico absolutè infinitum, non autem in suo genere; quicquid enim in suo genere tantum infinitum est, infinita de eo attributa negare possumus; quod autem absolutè infinitum est, ad ejus essentiam pertinet, quicquid essentiam exprimit et negationem nullam involvit.

 [818] Axiomata, iii., iv., v., and vi.

73. Spinosa proceeds to his demonstrations upon the basis of theseassumptions alone. Two substances, having different attributes, havenothing in common with each other; and hence one cannot be the causeof the other, since one may be conceived without involving theconception of the other; but an effect cannot be conceived withoutinvolving the knowledge of the cause.[819] It seems to be in thisfourth axiom, and in the proposition grounded upon it, that thefundamental fallacy lurks. The relation between a cause and effect issurely something different from our perfect comprehension of it, orindeed from our having any knowledge of it at all; much less can thecontrary assertion be deemed axiomatic. But if we should concede thispostulate, it might perhaps be very difficult to resist the subsequentproofs, so ingeniously and with such geometrical rigour are theyarranged.

 [819] Prop. ii. and iii.

74. Two or more things cannot be distinguished, except by thediversity of their attributes, or by that of their modes. For there isnothing out of ourselves except substances and their modes. But therecannot be two substances of the same attribute, since there would beno means of distinguishing them except their modes or affections; andevery substance, being prior in order of time to its modes, may beconsidered independently of them; hence, two such substances could notbe distinguished at all. One substance therefore cannot be the causeof another; for they cannot have the same attribute, that is, anythingin common with one another.[820] Every substance therefore isself-caused; that is, its essence implies its existence.[821] It isalso necessarily infinite, for it would otherwise be terminated bysome other of the same nature and necessarily existing; but twosubstances cannot have the same attribute, and therefore cannot bothpossess necessary existence.[822] The more reality or existence anybeing possesses, the more attributes are to be ascribed to it. This hesays appears by the definition of an attribute.[823] The proofhowever, is surely not manifest, nor do we clearly apprehend what hemeant by degrees of reality or existence. But of this theorem he wasvery proud. I look upon the demonstration, he says in a letter, ascapital (palmariam) that the more attributes we ascribe to any being,the more we are compelled to acknowledge its existence; that is, themore we conceive it as true and not a mere chimera.[824] And from thishe derived the real existence of God, though the former proof seemscollateral to it. God, or a substance consisting of infiniteattributes, each expressing an eternal and infinite power, necessarilyexists.[825] For such an essence involves existence. And, besidesthis, if anything does not exist, a cause must be given for itsnon-existence, since this requires one as much as existenceitself.[826] The cause may be either in the nature of the thing, as,e. gr. a square circle cannot exist by the circle’s nature, or insomething extrinsic. But neither of these can prevent the existence ofGod. The later propositions in Spinosa are chiefly obvious corollariesfrom the definitions and a few of the first propositions which containthe whole theory, which he proceeds to expand.

 [820] Prop. vi.

 [821] Prop. vii.

 [822] Prop. viii.

 [823] Prop. ix.

 [824] P. 463. This is in the letter to De Vries, above quoted.

 [825] Prop. xi.

 [826] If twenty men exist, neither more nor less, an extrinsic reason must be given for this precise number, since the definition of a man does not involve it. Prop. viii., Schol. ii.

75. There can be no substance but God. Whatever is, is in God, andnothing can be conceived without God.[827] For he is the solesubstance, and modes cannot be conceived without a substance; butbesides substance and mode nothing exists. God is not corporeal, butbody is a mode of God, and therefore uncreated. God is the permanent,but not the transient cause of all things.[828] He is the efficientcause of their essence, as well as their existence, since otherwisetheir essence might be conceived without God, which has been shown tobe absurd. Thus, particular things are but the affections of God’sattributes, or modes in which they are determinately expressed.[829]

 [827] Prop. xiv.

 [828] Deus est omnium rerum causa immanens, sed non transiens. Prop. xviii.

 [829] Prop. xxv. and Coroll.

76. This pantheistic scheme is the fruitful mother of many paradoxes,upon which Spinosa proceeds to dwell. There is no contingency, buteverything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature, bothas to its existence and operation; nor could anything be produced byGod otherwise than as it is.[830] His power is the same as hisessence; for he is the necessary cause both of himself and of allthings, and it is as impossible for us to conceive him not to act asnot to exist.[831] God, considered in the attributes of his infinitesubstance, is the same as nature, that is, _natura naturans_; butnature, in another sense, or _natura naturata_, expresses but themodes under which the divine attributes appear.[832] And intelligence,considered in act, even though infinite, should be referred to_natura naturata_; for intelligence, in this sense, is but a modeof thinking, which can only be conceived by means of our conception ofthinking in the abstract, that is, by an attribute of God.[833] Thefaculty of thinking, as distinguished from the act, as also those ofdesiring, loving, and the rest, Spinosa explicitly denies to exist atall.

 [830] Prop. xxix.-xxxiii.

 [831] Prop. xxxix. and part ii. prop. iii. Schol.

 [832] Schol. in prop. xxix.

 [833] Prop. xxxi. The atheism of Spinosa is manifest from this single proposition.

77. In an appendix to the first chapter, De Deo, Spinosa controvertswhat he calls the prejudice about final causes. Men are bornignorant of causes, but merely conscious of their own appetites, bywhich they desire their own good. Hence, they only care for the finalcause of their own actions or those of others, and inquire no fartherwhen they are satisfied about these. And finding many things inthemselves and in nature, serving as means to a certain good, whichthings they know not to be provided by themselves, they have believedthat someone has provided them, arguing from the analogy of the meansthey in other instances themselves employ. Hence, they have imaginedgods, and these gods they suppose to consult the good of men in orderto be worshipped by them, and have devised every mode of superstitiousdevotion to ensure the favour of these divinities. And finding in themidst of so many beneficial things in nature not a few of an oppositeeffect, they have ascribed them to the anger of the gods, on accountof the neglect of men to worship them; nor has experience ofcalamities, falling alike on the pious and impious, cured them of thisbelief, choosing rather to acknowledge their ignorance of the reasonwhy good and evil are thus distributed, than to give up their theory.Spinosa thinks the hypothesis of final causes refuted by hisproposition, that all things happen by eternal necessity. Moreover, ifGod were to act for an end, he must desire something which he wants;for it is acknowledged by theologians that he acts for his own sake,and not for the sake of things created.

78. Men having satisfied themselves that all things were created forthem, have invented names to distinguish that as good which tends totheir benefit; and believing themselves free, have gotten the notionsof right and wrong, praise and dispraise. And when they can easilyapprehend and recollect the relations of things, they call them wellordered, if not ill ordered; and then say that God created all thingsin order, as if order were anything, except in regard to ourimagination of it; and thus they ascribe imagination to God himself,unless they mean that he created things for the sake of imaginingthem.

79. It has been sometimes doubted whether the Spinosistic philosophyexcludes altogether an infinite intelligence. That it rejected a moralprovidence or creative mind is manifest in every proposition. HisDeity could at most be but a cold, passive intelligence, lost to ourunderstandings and feelings in its metaphysical infinity. It was not,however, in fact, so much as this. It is true that in a few passageswe find what seems at first a dim recognition of the fundamentalprinciple of theism. In one of his letters to Oldenburg, he asserts aninfinite power of thinking, which, considered in its infinity,embraces all nature as its object, and of which the thoughts proceedaccording to the order of nature, being its correlative ideas.[834]But afterwards he rejected the term, power of thinking, altogether.The first proposition of the second part of the Ethics, or thatentitled, On the Mind, runs thus: Thought is an attribute of God, or,God is a thinking being. Yet this, when we look at the demonstration,vanishes in an abstraction destructive of personality.[835] And, infact, we cannot reflect at all on the propositions already laid downby Spinosa, without perceiving that they annihilate every possiblehypothesis in which the being of a God can be intelligibly stated.

 [834] Statuo dari in natura potentiam infinitam cogitandi quæ quatenus infinita in se continet totam naturam objectivè, et cujus cogitationes procedunt eodem modo ac natura, ejus nimirum edictum, p. 441. In another place he says, perhaps at some expense of his usual candour. Agnosco interim, id quod summam mihi præbet satisfactionem et mentis tranquillitatem, cuncta potentia Entis summè perfecti et ejus immutabili ita fieri decreto, p. 498. What follows is in the same strain. But Spinosa had wrought himself up, like Bruno, to a mystical personification of his infinite unity.

 [835] Singulares cogitationes, sive hæc et illa cogitatio, modi sunt, qui Dei naturam certo et determinto modo exprimunt. Competit ergo Dei attributum, cujus conceptum singulares omnes cogitationes involvunt, per quod etiam concipiuntur. Est igitur cogitatio unum ex infinitis Dei attributis quod Dei æternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit, sive Deus est res cogitans.

80. The second book of the Ethics begins, like the first, withdefinitions and axioms. Body he defines to be a certain anddeterminate mode expressing the essence of God, considered asextended. The essence of anything he defines to be that, according tothe affirmation or negation of which the thing exists or otherwise. Anidea is a conception which the mind forms as a thinking being. And heprefers to say conception than perception, because the latter seems toimply the presence of an object. In the third axiom he says: Modes ofthinking, such as love, desire, or whatever name we may give to theaffections of the mind, cannot exist without an idea of their object,but an idea may exist with no other mode of thinking.[836] Andin the fifth: We perceive no singular things besides bodies and modesof thinking; thus distinguishing, like Locke, between ideas ofsensation and of reflection.

 [836] Modi cogitandi, ut amor, cupiditas, vel quocunque nomine affectus animi insigniuntur, non dantur nisi in eodem individuo detur idea rei amatæ, desideratæ, &c. At idea dari potest, quamvis nullus alius detur cogitandi modus.

81. Extension, by the second proposition, is an attribute of God aswell as thought. As it follows from the infinite extension of God,that all bodies are portions of his substance, inasmuch as they cannotbe conceived without it, so all particular acts of intelligence areportions of God’s infinite intelligence, and thus all things are inhim. Man is not a substance, but something which is in God, and cannotbe conceived without him; that is, an affection or mode of the divinesubstance expressing its nature in a determinate manner.[837] Thehuman mind is not a substance, but an idea constitutes its actualbeing, and it must be the idea of an existing thing.[838] In this heplainly loses sight of the percipient in the perception; but it wasthe inevitable result of the fundamental sophisms of Spinosa toannihilate personal consciousness. The human mind, he afterwardsasserts, is part of the infinite intellect of God; and when we say,the mind perceives this or that, it is only that God, not as infinite,but so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, has suchor such ideas.[839]

 [837] Prop. x.

 [838] Quod actuale mentis humanæ esse constituit, nihil aliud est quam idea rei alicujus singularis actu existentis. This is an anticipation of what we find in Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, the negation of a substance, or Ego, to which paradox no one can come except a professed metaphysician.

 [839] Prop. xi., coroll.

82. The object of the human mind is body actually existing.[840] Heproceeds to explain the connection of the human body with the mind,and the association of ideas. But in all this advancing alwayssynthetically and by demonstration, he becomes frequently obscure ifnot sophistical. The idea of the human mind is in God, and is unitedto the mind itself in the same manner as the latter is to thebody.[841] The obscurity and subtlety of this proposition are notrelieved by the demonstration; but in some of these passages we mayobserve a singular approximation to the theory of Malebranche. Both,though with very different tenets on the highest subjects, had beentrained in the same school; and if Spinosa had brought himself toacknowledge the personal distinctness of the Supreme Being from hisintelligent creation, he might have passed for one of those mysticaltheosophists, who were not averse to an objective pantheism.

 [840] Prop. xiii.

 [841] Mentis humanæ datur etiam in Deo idea, sive cognitio, quæ in Deo eodem modo sequitur, et ad Deum odem modo refertur, ac idea sive cognitio corporis humani. Prop. xx. Hæc mentis idea eodem modo unita est menti, ac ipsa mens unita est corpori.

83. The mind does not know itself, except so far as it receives ideasof the affections of the body.[842] But these ideas of sensation donot give an adequate knowledge of an external body, nor of the humanbody itself.[843] The mind therefore has but an inadequate andconfused knowledge of anything, so long as it judges only byfortuitous perceptions; but may attain one clear and distinct byinternal reflection and comparison.[844] No positive idea can becalled false; for there can be no such idea without God, and all ideasin God are true, that is, correspond with their object.[845] Falsitytherefore consists in that privation of truth, which arises frominadequate ideas. An adequate idea he has defined to be one whichcontains no incompatibility, without regard to the reality of itssupposed correlative object.

 [842] Prop. xxiii.

 [843] Prop. xxv.

 [844] Schol., Prop. xxix.

 [845] Prop. xxxii., xxxiii., xxxv.

84. All bodies agree in some things, or have something in common: ofthese all men have adequate ideas;[846] and this is the origin of whatare called common notions, which all men possess; as extension,duration, number. But to explain the nature of universals, Spinosaobserves, that the human body can only form at the same time a certainnumber of distinct images; if this number be exceeded, they becomeconfused; and as the mind perceives distinctly just so many images ascan be formed in the body, when these are confused, the mind will alsoperceive them confusedly, and will comprehend them under oneattribute, as Man, Horse, Dog; the mind perceiving a number of suchimages, but not their differences of stature, colours and the like.And these notions will not be alike in all minds, varying according tothe frequency with which the parts of the complex image have occurred.Thus those who have contemplated most frequently the erect figure ofman will think of him as a perpendicular animal, others as two-legged,others as unfeathered, others as rational. Hence, so many disputesamong philosophers who have tried to explain natural things by mereimages.[847]

 [846] Prop. viii.

 [847] Schol., prop. xl.

85. Thus we form universal ideas; first, by singulars, represented bythe senses confusedly, imperfectly and disorderly; secondly, by signs,that is, by associating the remembrance of things with words; both ofwhich he calls imagination, or primi generis cognitio; thirdly, bywhat he calls reason, or secundi generis cognitio; and fourthly, byintuitive knowledge, or tertii generis cognitio.[848] Knowledge of thefirst kind is the only source of error; the second and third beingnecessarily true.[849] These alone enable us to distinguish truth fromfalsehood. Reason contemplates things not as contingent but necessary;and whoever has a true idea, knows certainly that his idea is true.Every idea of a singular existing thing involves the eternal andinfinite being of God. For nothing can be conceived without God, andthe ideas of all things, having God for their cause, considered underthe attribute of which they are modes, must involve the conception ofthe attribute, that is, the being of God.[850]

 [848] Schol. ii., prop. xl.

 [849] Prop. xli., xlii, et sequent.

 [850] Prop. xlv.

86. It is highly necessary to distinguish images, ideas, and words,which many confound. Those who think ideas consists in images whichthey perceive, fancy that ideas of which we can form no image are butarbitrary figments. They look at ideas, as pictures on a tablet, andhence do not understand that an idea, as such, involves an affirmationor negation. And those who confound words with ideas, fancy they canwill something contrary to what they perceive, because they can affirmor deny it in words. But these prejudices will be laid aside by himwho reflects that thought does not involve the conception ofextension; and therefore that an idea, being a mode of thought,neither consists in images nor in words, the essence of which consistsin corporeal motions, not involving the conception of thought.[851]

 [851] Schol., prop. xlix.

87. The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal andinfinite being of God. But men cannot imagine God as they can bodies,and hence have not that clear perception of his being which they haveof that of bodies, and have also perplexed themselves by associatingthe word God with sensible images, which it is hard to avoid. This isthe chief source of all error, that men do not apply names to thingsrightly. For they do not err in their own minds, but in thisapplication; as men who cast up wrong see different numbers in theirmind from those in the true result.[852]

 [852] Prop. xlvii. Atque hinc pleræque oriuntur controversiæ, nempe, quia homines mentem suam non recte explicant, vel quia alterius mentem male interpretantur.

88. The mind has no free will, but is determined by a cause, whichitself is determined by some other, and so for ever. For the mind isbut a mode of thinking and, therefore cannot be the free cause of itsown actions. Nor has it any absolute faculty of loving, desiring,understanding; these being only metaphysical abstractions.[853] Willand understanding are one and the same thing; and volitions are onlyaffirmations or negations, each of which belongs to the essence of theidea affirmed or denied.[854] In this there seems to be not only anextraordinary deviation from common language, but an absence of anymeaning which, to my apprehension at least, is capable of being givento his words. Yet we have seen something of the same kind said byMalebranche; and it will also be found in a recently published work ofCudworth,[855] a writer certainly uninfluenced by either of these, sothat it may be suspected of having some older authority.

 [853] Prop. xlviii.

 [854] Prop. xlix.

 [855] See Cudworth’s Treatise on Free will (1838), p. 20, where the will and understanding are purposely, and, I think, very erroneously confounded.

|Spinosa’s theory of action and passion.|

89. In the third part of this treatise, Spinosa comes to theconsideration of the passions. Most who have written on moralsubjects, he says, have rather treated man as something out of nature,or as a kind of imperium in imperio, than as part of the generalorder. They have conceived him to enjoy a power of disturbing thatorder by his own determination, and ascribed his weakness andinconstancy not to the necessary laws of the system, but to somestrange defect in himself, which they cease not to lament, deride, orexecrate. But the acts of mankind, and the passions from which theyproceed, are in reality but links in the series, and proceed inharmony with the common laws of universal nature.

90. We are said to act when anything takes place within us, orwithout us, for which we are an adequate cause; that is, when it maybe explained by means of our own nature alone. We are said to be actedupon, when anything takes place within us which cannot wholly beexplained by our own nature. The affections of the body which increaseor diminish its power of action, and the ideas of those affections, hedenominates passions (affectus). Neither the body can determine themind to thinking, nor can the mind determine the body to motion orrest. For all that takes place in body must be caused by God,considered under his attribute of extension, and all that takes placein mind must be caused by God under his attribute of thinking. Themind and body are but one thing, considered under differentattributes; the order of action and passion in the body being the samein nature with that of action and passion in the mind. But men, thoughignorant how far the natural powers of the body reach, ascribe itsoperations to the determination of the mind, veiling their ignorancein specious words. For if they alledge that the body cannot actwithout the mind, it may be answered that the mind cannot think tillit is impelled by the body, nor are the volitions of the mind anythingelse than its appetites, which are modified by the body.

91. All things endeavoured to continue in their actual being; thisendeavour being nothing else than their essence, which causes them tobe, until some exterior cause destroys their being. The mind isconscious of its own endeavour to continue as it is, which is, inother words, the appetite that seeks self-preservation; what the mindis thus conscious of seeking, it judges to be good, and not inversely.Many things increase or diminish the power of action in the body, andall such things have a corresponding effect on the power of thinkingin the mind. Thus, it undergoes many changes, and passes throughdifferent stages of more or less perfect power of thinking. Joy is thename of a passion, in which the mind passes to a greater perfection orpower of thinking; grief, one in which it passes to a less. Spinosa,in the rest of this book, deduces all the passions from these two andfrom desire; but as the development of his theory is rather long, andwe have already seen that its basis is not quite intelligible, it willbe unnecessary to dwell longer upon the subject. His analysis of thepassions may be compared with that of Hobbes.

|Character of Spinosism.|

92. Such is the metaphysical theory of Spinosa, in as concise a formas I found myself able to derive it from his Ethics. It is aremarkable proof, and his moral system will furnish another, how anundeviating adherence to strict reasoning may lead a man of greatacuteness and sincerity from the paths of truth. Spinosa was truly,what Voltaire has with rather less justice called Clarke, a reasoningmachine. A few leading theorems, too hastily taken up as axiomatic,were sufficient to make him sacrifice, with no compromise orhesitation, not only every principle of religion and moral right, butthe clear intuitive notions of common sense. If there are two axiomsmore indisputable than any others, they are that ourselves exist, andthat our existence is exclusive of any other being. Yet both these arelost in the pantheism of Spinosa, as they had always been in thatdelusive reverie of the imagination. In asserting that the being ofthe human mind consists in the idea of an existing thing presented toit, this subtle metaphysician fell into the error of the school whichhe most disdained, as deriving all knowledge from perception, that ofthe Aristotelians. And, extending this confusion of consciousness withperception to the infinite substance, or substratum of particularideas, he was led to deny it the self, or conscious personality,without which the name of Deity can only be given in a sense deceptiveof the careless reader, and inconsistent with the use of language. Itwas an equally legitimate consequence of his original sophism to denyall moral agency, in the sense usually received, to the human mind,and even, as we have seen, to confound action and passion themselves,in all but name, as mere phenomena in the eternal sequence of things.

93. It was one great error of Spinosa to entertain too arrogant anotion of the human faculties, in which, by dint of his own subtledemonstrations, he pretended to show a capacity of adequatelycomprehending the nature of what he denominated God. And this wasaccompanied by a rigid dogmatism, no one proposition being stated withhesitation, by a disregard of experience, at least as the basis ofreasoning, and by an uniform preference of the synthetic method. Mostof those, he says, who have turned their minds to those subjects havefallen into error, because they have not begun with the contemplationof the divine nature, which both in itself and in order of knowledgeis first, but with sensible things, which ought to have beenlast. Hence, he seems to have reckoned Bacon, and even Descartes,mistaken in their methods.

94. All pantheism must have originated in overstraining the infinityof the divine attributes till the moral part of religion wasannihilated in its metaphysics. It was the corruption, or rather, ifwe may venture the phrase, the suicide of theism; nor could thisstrange theory have arisen, except where we know it did arise, amongthose who had elevated their conceptions above the vulgar polytheismthat surrounded them to a sense of the unity of the Divine nature.

95. Spinosa does not essentially differ from the pantheists of old. Heconceived, as they had done, that the infinity of God required theexclusion of all other substance; that he was infinite _ab omniparte_, and not only in certain senses. And probably the loose andhyperbolical tenets of the schoolmen, derived from ancient philosophy,ascribing, as a matter of course, a metaphysical infinity to all thedivine attributes, might appear to sanction those primary positions,from which Spinosa, unfettered by religion, even in outwardprofession, went on “sounding his dim and perilous track” to theparadoxes that have thrown discredit on his name. He had certainlybuilt much on the notion that the essence or definition of the Deityinvolved his actuality or existence, to which Descartes had givenvogue.

96. Notwithstanding the leading errors of this philosopher, his clearand acute understanding perceived many things which baffle ordinaryminds. Thus, he well saw and well stated the immateriality of thought.Oldenburg, in one of his letters, had demurred to this, and remindedSpinosa that it was still controverted whether thought might not be abodily motion. “Be it so,” replied the other, “though I am far fromadmitting it; but at least you must allow that extension, so far asextension, is not the same as thought.”[856] It is from inattention tothis simple truth that all materialism, as it has been called, hassprung. Its advocates confound the union between thinking andextension or matter (be it, if they will, an indissoluble one) withthe identity of the two, which is absurd and inconceivable. “Body,”says Spinosa in one of his definitions, “is not terminated bythinking, nor thinking by body.”[857] This also does not ill expressthe fundamental difference of matter and mind; there is anincommensurability about them, which prevents one from bounding theother, because they can never be placed in juxtaposition.

 [856] At ais, forte cogitatio est actus corporeus. Sit, quamvis nullus concedam; sed hoc unum non negabis, extensionem, quoad extensionem, non esse cogitationem. Epist. iv.

 [857] Corpus dicitur finitum, quia aliud semper majus concipimus. Sic cogitatio alia cogitatione terminatur. At corpus non terminatur cogitatione, nec cogitatio corpore.

|Glanvil’s Scepsis Scientifica.|

97. England, about the æra of the Restoration, began to make astruggle against the metaphysical creed of the Aristotelians, as wellas against their natural philosophy. A remarkable work, but one soscarce as to be hardly known at all, except by name, was published byGlanvil in 1661, with the title, the Vanity of Dogmatizing. A secondedition, in 1663, considerably altered, is entitled ScepsisScientifica.[858] This edition has a dedication to the Royal Society,which comes in place of a fanciful preface, wherein he had expatiatedon the bodily and mental perfections of his protoplast, the father ofmankind.[859] But in proportion to the extravagant language he employsto extol Adam before his lapse, is the depreciation of his unfortunateposterity, not, as common among theologians, with respect to theirmoral nature, but to their reasoning faculties. The scheme ofGlanvil’s book is to display the ignorance of man, and especially tocensure the Peripatetic philosophy of the schools. It is, he says,captious and verbal, and yet does not adhere itself to any constantsense of words, but huddles together insignificant terms, andunintelligible definitions; it deals with controversies, andseeks for no new discovery or physical truth. Nothing, he says, can bedemonstrated but when the contrary is impossible, and of this thereare not many instances. He launches into a strain of what may becalled scepticism, but answered his purpose in combating the dogmaticspirit still unconquered in our academical schools. Glanvil hadstudied the new philosophy, and speaks with ardent eulogy of “thatmiracle of men, the illustrious Descartes.” Many, if not most, of hisown speculations are tinged with a Cartesian colouring. He was howeverfar more sceptical than Descartes, or even than Malebranche. Somepassages from so rare and so acute a work may deserve to be chosen,both for their own sakes, and in order to display the revolution whichwas at work in speculative philosophy.

 [858] This Book, I believe, especially in the second edition, is exceedingly scarce. The editors, however, of the Biographia Britannica art. Glanvil, had seen it, and also Dugald Stewart. The first edition, or Vanity of Dogmatizing, is in the Bodleian Catalogue, and both are in the British Museum.

 [859] Thus, among other extravagances worthy of the Talmud, he says, “Adam needed no spectacles. The acuteness of his natural optics (if conjecture may have credit), showed him much of the celestial magnificence and bravery without a Galileo’s tube; and it is most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much of this upper world as we with all the advantages of art. It may be it was as absurd even in the judgment of his senses, that the sun and stars should be so very much less than this globe, as the contrary seems in ours; and it is not unlikely that he had as clear a perception of the earth’s motion as we have of its quiescence.” p. 5, edit. 1661. In the second edition, he still adheres to the hypothesis of intellectual degeneracy, but states it with less of rhapsody.

98. “In the unions which we understand the extremes are reconciled byinterceding participations of natures, which have somewhat of either.But body and spirit stand at such a distance in their essentialcompositions, that to suppose an uniter of a middle construction, thatshould partake of some of the qualities of both, is unwarranted by anyof our faculties, yea, most absonous to our reasons; since there isnot any the least affinity betwixt length, breadth, and thickness, andapprehension, judgment, and discourse; the former of which are themost immediate results, if not essentials of matter, the latter ofspirit.”[860]

 [860] Scepsis Scientifica, p. 16. We have just seen something similar in Spinosa.

99. “How is it, and by what art does it (the soul), read that such animage or stroke in matter (whether that of her vehicle or of thebrain, the case is the same), signifies such an object? Did we learnan alphabet in our embryo state? And how comes it to pass that we arenot aware of any such congenite apprehensions? We know what we know;but do we know any more? That by diversity of motions we should spellout figures, distances, magnitudes, colours, things not resembled bythem, we must attribute to some secret deduction. But what thisdeduction should be, or by what medium this knowledge is advanced, isas dark as ignorance. One that hath not the knowledge of letters maysee the figures, but comprehends not the meaning included in them; aninfant may hear the sounds and see the motion of the lips, but hath noconception conveyed by them, not knowing what they are intended tosignify. So our souls, though they might have perceived the motionsand images themselves by simple sense, yet, without some implicitinference, it seems inconceivable how by that means they shouldapprehend their anti-types. The striking of divers filaments of thebrain cannot well be supposed to represent distances, except some kindof inference be allotted us in our faculties; the concession of whichwill only stead us as a refuge for ignorance, when we shall meet whatwe would seem to shun.”[861] Glanvil, in this forcible statement ofthe heterogeneity of sensations, with the objects that suggest them,has but trod in the steps of the whole Cartesian school, but he didnot mix this up with those crude notions that halt half way betweenimmaterialism and its opposite; and afterwards well exposes thetheories of accounting for the memory by means of images in the brain,which, in various ways, Aristotle, Descartes, Digby, Gassendi, andHobbes had propounded, and which we have seen so favourite aspeculation of Malebranche.

 [861] P. 22, 23.

100. It would be easy to quote many paragraphs of uncommon vivacityand acuteness from this forgotten treatise. The style is eminentlyspirited and eloquent; a little too figurative, like that of Locke,but less blameably, because Glanvil is rather destroying than buildingup. Every bold and original thought of others finds a willingreception in Glanvil’s mind, and his confident, impetuous style givesthem an air of novelty which makes them pass for his own. He standsforward as a mutineer against authority, against educationalprejudice, against reverence for antiquity.[862] No one thinks moreintrepidly for himself; and it is probable that, even in whatseems mere superstition, he had been rather misled by some paradoxicalhypothesis of his own ardent genius, than by slavishly treading in thesteps of others.[863]

 [862] “Now, if we inquire the reason why the mathematics and mechanic arts have so much got the start in growth of other sciences, we shall find it probably resolved into this as one considerable cause, that their progress hath not been retarded by that reverential awe of former discoveries, which hath been so great a hindrance to theorical improvements. For, as the noble Lord Verulam hath noted, we have a mistaken apprehension of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world’s non-age. Antiquitas sæculi est juventus mundi. ‘Twas this vain idolising of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent citations, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor deserving it.--Methinks it is a pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learned from an index, and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another’s treasure. To boast a memory, the most that these pedants can aim at, is but a humble ostentation.” P. 104.

 [863] “That the fancy of one man should bind the thoughts of another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be thought impossible; which yet, if we look deeply into the matter, wants not its probability.” P. 146. He dwells more on this, but the passage is too long to extract. It is remarkable that he supposes a subtle æther (like that of the modern Mesmerists), to be the medium of communication in such cases; and had also a notion of explaining these sympathies by help of the anima mundi, or mundane spirit.

101. Glanvil sometimes quotes Lord Bacon, but he seems to have had theambition of contending with the Novum Organum in some of its brilliantpassages, and has really developed the doctrine of _idols_ withuncommon penetration, as well as force of language. “Our initial ageis like the melted wax to the prepared seal, capable of any impressionfrom the documents of our teachers. The half-moon or cross areindifferent to its reception; and we may with equal facility write onthis _rasa tabula_ Turk or Christian. To determine this indifferencyour first task is to learn the creed of our country, and our next tomaintain it. We seldom examine our receptions, more than children dotheir catechisms, but by a careless greediness swallow all at aventure. For implicit faith is a virtue, where orthodoxy is theobject. Some will not be at the trouble of a trial, others are scaredfrom attempting it. If we do, ’tis not by a sun-beam or ray of light,but by a flame that is kindled by our affections, and fed by the fuelof our anticipations. And thus, like the hermit, we think the sunshines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness butourselves. We judge truth to be circ*mscribed by the confines of ourbelief and the doctrines we were brought up in.”[864] Few books, Ithink, are more deserving of being reprinted than the ScepsisScientifica of Glanvil.

 [864] P. 95.

|His Plus Ultra.|

102. Another bold and able attack was made on the ancient philosophyby Glanvil in his “Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement ofKnowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668.” His tone is peremptoryand imposing, animated and intrepid, such as befits a warrior inliterature. Yet he was rather acute by nature, than deeply versed inlearning, and talks of Vieta and Descarte’s algebra so as to show hehad little knowledge of the science, or of what they had done forit.[865] His animosity against Aristotle is unreasonable, and he wasplainly an incompetent judge of that philosopher’s general deserts. OfBacon and Boyle he speaks with just eulogy. Nothing can be more freeand bold than Glanvil’s assertion of the privilege of judging, forhimself in religion;[866] and he had doubtless a perfect right tobelieve in witchcraft.

 [865] Plus Ultra, p. 24 and 33.

 [866] P. 142.

|Dalgarno.|

103. George Dalgarno, a native of Aberdeen, conceived, and, as itseemed to him, carried into effect the idea of an universal languageand character. His Ara Signorum, vulgo Character Universalis et LinguaPhilosophica, Lond., 1661, is dedicated to Charles II. in thisphilosophical character, which must have been as great a mystery tothe sovereign as to his subjects. This dedication is followed by aroyal proclamation in good English, inviting all to study this usefulart, which had been recommended by divers learned men, Wilkins,Wallis, Ward, and others, “judging it to be of singular use forfacilitating the matter of communication and intercourse betweenpeople of different languages.” The scheme of Dalgarno isfundamentally bad, in that he assumes himself, or the authors hefollows, to have given a complete distribution of all things andideas; after which his language is only an artificial scheme ofsymbols. It is evident that until objects are truly classified, arepresentative method of signs can only rivet and perpetuate error. Wehave but to look at his tabular synopsis to see that his ignorance ofphysics, in the largest sense of the word, renders his schemedeficient; and he has also committed the error of adopting thecombinations of the ordinary alphabet, with a little help from theGreek, which, even with his slender knowledge of species, soon leavehim incapable of expressing them. But Dalgarno has several acuteremarks; and it deserves especially to be observed, that heanticipated the famous discovery of the Dutch philologers, namely,that all other parts of speech may be reduced to the noun,dexterously, if not successfully, resolving the verb substantive intoan affirmative particle.[867]

 [867] Tandem mihi affulsit clarior lux; accuratius enim examinando omnium notionum analysin logicam, percepi nullam esse particulam quæ non derivetur a nomine aliquo prædicamentali, et omnes particulas esse vere casus seu modos notionum nominalium, p. 120. He does not seem to have arrived at this conclusion by etymological analysis, but by his own logical theories.

 The verb-substantive, he says, is equivalent to _ita_. Thus, Petrus est in domo, means, Petrus--ita--in domo. That is, it expresses an idea of apposition or conformity between a subject and predicate. This is a theory to which a man might be led by the habit of considering propositions logically, and thus reducing all verbs to the verb-substantive; and it is not deficient, at least, in plausibility.

|Wilkins.|

104. Wilkins, bishop of Chester, one of the most ingenious men of hisage, published in 1668 his Essay towards a Philosophical Language,which has this advantage over that of Dalgarno, that it abandons thealphabet, and consequently admits of a greater variety of characters.It is not a new language, but a more analytical scheme of charactersfor English. Dalgarno seems to have known something of it, though hewas the first to publish, and glances at “a more difficult way ofwriting English.” Wilkins also intimates that Dalgarno’s compendiousmethod would not succeed. His own has the same fault of a prematureclassification of things; and it is very fortunate that neither ofthese ingenious but presumptuous attempts to fasten down theprogressive powers of the human mind by the cramps of association hadthe least success.[868]

 [868] Dalgarno, many years afterwards, turned his attention to a subject of no slight interest, even in mere philosophy, the instruction of the deaf and dumb. His Didascalocophus is perhaps the first attempt to found this on the analysis of language. But it is not so philosophical as what has since been effected.

|Locke on human Understanding.|

|The merits.|

105. But from these partial and now very obscure endeavours of Englishwriters in metaphysical philosophy we come at length to the work thathas eclipsed every other, and given to such inquiries whateverpopularity they ever possessed, the Essay, of Locke on the humanUnderstanding. Neither the writings of Descartes, as I conceive, norperhaps those of Hobbes, so far as strictly metaphysical, had excitedmuch attention in England beyond the class of merely studious men. Butthe Essay on Human Understanding was frequently reprinted within a fewyears from its publication, and became the acknowledged code ofEnglish philosophy.[869] The assaults it had to endure in the author’slifetime, being deemed to fail, were of service to its reputation; andconsiderably more than half a century was afterwards to elapse beforeany writer in our language (nor was the case very different in France,after the patronage accorded to it by Voltaire) could with much chanceof success question any leading doctrine of its author. Severalcirc*mstances no doubt conspired with its intrinsic excellence toestablish so paramount a rule in an age that boasted of peculiarindependence of thinking, and full of intelligent and inquisitivespirits. The sympathy of an English public with Locke’s tenets as togovernment and religion was among the chief of these; and the reactionthat took place in a large portion of the reading classes towards theclose of the eighteenth century turned in some measure the tide evenin metaphysical disquisition. It then became fashionable sometimes toaccuse Locke of preparing the way for scepticism; a charge which, ifit had been truly applicable to some of his opinions, ought rather tohave been made against the long line of earlier writers with whom heheld them in common; sometimes, with more pretence, to alledge that hehad conceded too much to materialism; sometimes to point out andexaggerate other faults and errors of his Essay, till we have seemedin danger of forgetting that it is perhaps the first, and still themost complete chart of the human mind which has been laid down; themost ample repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being; andthe one book which we are compelled to name as the first inmetaphysical science. Locke had not, it may be said, the luminousperspicacity of language we find in Descartes, and, when he does notsoar too high, in Malebranche; but he had more judgment, more caution,more patience, more freedom from paradox, and from the sources ofparadox, vanity and love of system, than either. We have no denial ofsensation to brutes, no reference of mathematical truths to the willof God, no oscillation between the extremes of doubt and ofpositiveness, no bewildering mysticism, no unintelligiblechaos of words. Certainly neither Gassendi nor even Hobbes could becompared with him; and it might be asked of the admirers of laterphilosophers, those of Berkeley, or Hume, or Hartley, or Reid, orStewart, or Brown, without naming any on the continent of Europe,whether in the extent of their researches, or in the originality oftheir discoveries, any of these names ought to stand on a level withthat of Locke. One of the greatest I have mentioned, and one, whothough candid towards Locke, had no prejudice whatever, in his favour,has extolled the first two books of the Essay on Human Understanding,which yet he deems in many respects inferior to the third and fourth,as “a precious accession to the theory of the human mind; as therichest contribution of well-observed and well-described facts whichwas ever bequeathed by a single individual; and as the indisputable,though not always acknowledged, source of some of the most refinedconclusions with respect to the intellectual phenomena, which havebeen since brought to light by succeeding inquirers.”[870]

 [869] It was abridged at Oxford, and used by some tutors as early as 1695. But the heads of the university came afterwards to a resolution to discourage the reading of it. Stillingfleet, among many others, wrote against the Essay; and Locke, as is well known, answered the bishop. I do not know that the latter makes altogether so poor a figure as has been taken for granted; but the defence of Locke will seem in most instances satisfactory. Its success in public opinion contributed much to the renown of his work; for Stillingfleet, though not at all conspicuous as a philosopher, enjoyed a great deal of reputation, and the world can seldom understand why a man who excels in one province of literature should fail in another.

 [870] Stewart’s Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia, part ii.

|Its defects.|

106. It would be an unnecessary prolixity to offer in this place ananalysis of so well-known a book as the Essay on the HumanUnderstanding. Few have turned their attention to metaphysicalinquiries without reading it. It has however no inconsiderable faults,which, though much over-balanced, are not to be passed over in ageneral eulogy. The style of Locke is wanting in philosophicalprecision; it is a very fine model of English language; but tooidiomatic and colloquial, too indefinite and figurative, for theabstruse subjects with which he has to deal. We miss in every page thetranslucent simplicity of his great French predecessors. This seems tohave been owing, in a considerable degree, to an excessive desire ofpopularising the subject, and shunning the technical pedantry whichhad repelled the world from intellectual philosophy. Locke displays inall his writings a respect which can hardly be too great, for men ofsound understanding unprejudiced by authority, mingled with a scorn,perhaps a little exaggerated, of the gown-men or learned world; littlesuspecting that the same appeal to the people, the same policy ofsetting up equivocal words and loose notions, called the common senseof mankind, to discomfit subtle reasoning, would afterwards be turnedagainst himself, as it was, very unfairly and unsparingly, by Reid andBeattie. Hence he falls a little into a laxity of phrase, not unusual,and not always important, in popular and practical discourse, but aninevitable source of confusion in the very abstract speculations whichhis Essay contains. And it may perhaps be suspected, withoutdisparagement to his great powers, that he did not always preserve theutmost distinctness of conception, and was liable as almost everyother metaphysician has been, to be entangled in the ambiguities oflanguage.

|Origin of ideas, according to Locke.|

107. The leading doctrine of Locke, as is well known, is thederivation of all our ideas from sensation and from reflection. Theformer present no great difficulty; we know what is meant by theexpression; but he is not very clear or consistent about the latter.He seems in general to limit the word to the various operations of ourown minds in thinking, believing, willing, and so forth. This, as hasbeen shown formerly, is taken from, or at least coincident with, thetheory of Gassendi in his Syntagma Philosophicum. It is highlyprobable that Locke was acquainted with that work; if not immediately,yet through the account of the Philosophy of Gassendi, published inEnglish by Dr. Charleton, in 1663, which I have not seen, or throughthe excellent and copious abridgment of the Syntagma by Bernier. Buthe does not strictly confine his ideas of reflection to this class.Duration is certainly no mode of thinking; yet the idea of duration isreckoned by Locke among those with which we are furnished byreflection. The same may perhaps be said, though I do not know that heexpresses himself with equal clearness, as to his account of severalother ideas, which cannot be deduced from external sensation, nor yetcan be reckoned modifications or operations of the soul itself; suchas number, power, existence.

|Vague use of the word idea.|

108. Stewart has been so much struck by this indefiniteness, withwhich the phrase “ideas of reflection” has been used in the Essay onthe Human Understanding, that he “does not think, notwithstanding somecasual expressions which may seem to favour the contrary supposition,that Locke would have hesitated for a moment to admit, with Cudworthand Price, that the understanding is the source of new ideas.”[871]And though some might object that this is too much in opposition, notto casual expressions, but to the whole tenor of Locke’s Essay, hislanguage concerning substance almost bears it out. Most of theperplexity which has arisen on this subject, the combats of somemetaphysicians with Locke, the portentous errors into which othershave been led by want of attention to his language, may be referred tothe equivocal meaning of the word idea. The Cartesians understood bythis whatever is the object of thought, including an intellection aswell as an imagination. By an intellection they meant that which themind conceives to exist, and to be the subject of knowledge, though itmay be unimaginable and incomprehensible. Gassendi and Locke limit theword idea to something which the mind sees and grasps as immediatelypresent to it. “That,” as Locke not very well expresses it “which themind is applied about while thinking being the ideas that are there.”Hence, he speaks with some ridicule of “men who persuade themselvesthat they have clear comprehensive ideas of infinity.” Such men canhardly have existed; but it is by annexing the epithets clear andcomprehensive, that he shows the dispute to be merely verbal. For thatwe know the existence of infinities as objectively real, and canreason upon them, Locke would not have denied: and it is thisknowledge to which others gave the name of idea.

 [871] Prelim. Dissertation.

109. The different manner in which this all-important word wasunderstood by philosophers is strikingly shown when they make use ofthe same illustration. Arnauld, if he is author of L’Art de Penser,mentions the idea of a chiliagon, or figure of 1,000 sides, as aninstance of the distinction between that which we imagine, and thatwhich we conceive or understand. Locke has employed the same instanceto exemplify the difference between clear and obscure ideas. Accordingto the former, we do not imagine a figure with 1,000 sides at all;according to the latter, we form a confused image of it. We have anidea of such a figure, it is agreed by both; but in the sense ofArnauld, it is an idea of the understanding alone; in the sense ofLocke, it is an idea of sensation, framed, like other complex ideas,by putting together those we have formerly received, though we maynever have seen the precise figure. That the word suggests to the mindan image of a polygon with many sides is indubitable; but it is urgedby the Cartesians, that as we are wholly incapable of distinguishingthe exact number, we cannot be said to have, in Locke’s sense of theword, any idea, even an indistinct one of a figure with 1,000 sides;since all we do imagine is a polygon. And it is evident that ingeometry we do not reason from the properties of the image, but fromthose of a figure which the understanding apprehends. Locke, however,who generally preferred a popular meaning to one more metaphysicallyexact, thought it enough to call this a confused idea. He was not Ibelieve, conversant with any but elementary geometry. Had he reflectedupon that which in his age had made such a wonderful beginning, oreven upon the fundamental principles of it, which might be found inEuclid, the theory of infinitesimal quantities, he must, one wouldsuppose, have been more puzzled to apply his narrow definition of anidea. For what image can we form of a differential, which can pretendto represent it in any other sense than as _d x_ represents it,by suggestion, not by resemblance?

110. The case is, however, much worse when Locke deviates, as in thethird and fourth books he constantly does, from this sense that he hasput on the word idea, and takes it either in the Cartesian meaning orin one still more general and popular. Thus, in the excellent chapteron the abuse of words, he insists upon the advantage of using nonewithout clear and distinct ideas; he who does not this “only making anoise without any sense or signification.” If we combine this positionwith that in the second book, that we have no clear and distinct ideaof a figure with 1,000 sides, it follows, with all the force ofsyllogism, that we should not argue about a figure of 1,000 sides atall, nor, by parity of reason, about many other things of far higherimportance. It will be found, I incline to think, that the large useof the word idea for that about which we have some knowledge, withoutlimiting it to what can be imagined, pervades the third and fourthbooks. Stewart has ingeniously conjectured that they were writtenbefore the second, and probably before the mind of Locke had been muchturned to the psychological analysis which that contains. It ishowever certain that in the Treatise upon the Conduct of theUnderstanding, which was not published till after the Essay, he usesthe word idea with full as much latitude as in the third and fourthbooks of the latter. We cannot, upon the whole, help admitting thatthe story of a lady who, after the perusal of the Essay on the HumanUnderstanding, laid it down with a remark, that the book wouldbe perfectly charming were it not for the frequent recurrence of onevery hard word, idea, though told, possibly, in ridicule of the fairphilosopher, pretty well represents the state of mind in which many atfirst have found themselves.

|An error as to geometrical figure.|

111. Locke, as I have just intimated seems to have possessed but aslight knowledge of geometry; a science which, both from the clearnessof the illustrations it affords, and from its admitted efficacy inrendering the logical powers acute and cautious, may be reckoned,without excepting physiology, the most valuable of all to themetaphysician. But it did not require any geometrical knowledge,strictly so called, to avoid one material error into which he hasfallen; and which I mention the rather, because even Descartes, in oneplace, has said something of the same kind, and I have met with it notonly in Norris very distinctly and positively, but, more or less, inmany or most of those who have treated of the metaphysics or abstractprinciples of geometry. “I doubt not,” says Locke,[872] “but it willbe easily granted that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths isnot only certain but real knowledge, and not the bare empty vision ofvain insignificant chimeras of the brain; and yet if we well consider,we shall find, that it is only of our own ideas. The mathematicianconsiders the truth and properties belonging to a rectangle or circleonly as they are in idea in his own mind; for it is possible he neverfound either of them existing mathematically, that is, precisely true,in his life.... All the discourses of the mathematicians about thesquaring of a circle, conic sections, or any other part ofmathematics, concern not the existence of any of those figures; buttheir demonstrations, which depend on their ideas, are the same,whether there be any square or circle in the world or no.” And theinference he draws from this is, that moral as well as mathematicalideas being archetypes themselves, and so adequate and complete ideas,all the agreement or disagreement which he shall find in them willproduce real knowledge, as well as in mathematical figures.

 [872] B. iv., c. 8.

112. It is not perhaps necessary to inquire how far, upon thehypothesis of Berkeley, this notion of mathematical figures, as merecreations of the mind, could be sustained. But on the supposition ofthe objectivity of space, as truly existing without us, which Lockeundoubtedly believed, it is certain that the passage just quoted isentirely erroneous, and that it involves a confusion between thegeometrical figure itself and its delineation to the eye. Ageometrical figure is a portion of space contained in boundariesdetermined by given relations. It exists in the infinite round aboutus, as the statue exists in the block.[873] No one can doubt, if heturns his mind to the subject, that every point in space isequidistant, in all directions, from certain other points. Draw a linethrough all these, and you have the circumference of a circle; but thecircle itself and its circumference exist before the latter isdelineated. The orbit of a planet is not a regular geometrical figure,because certain forces disturb it. But this disturbance means only adeviation from a line which exists really in space, and which theplanet would actually describe, if there were nothing in the universebut itself and the centre of attraction. The expression therefore ofLocke, “whether there be any square or circle existing in the world orno,” is highly inaccurate, the latter alternative being an absurdity.All possible figures, and that “in number numberless,” existeverywhere; nor can we evade the perplexities into which the geometryof infinities throws our imagination, by considering them as merebeings of reason, the creatures of the geometer, which I believe someare half disposed to do, nor by substituting the vague andunphilosophical notion of indefinitude for a positive objectiveinfinity.

 [873] Michael Angelo has well conveyed this idea in four lines, which I quote from Corniani.

 Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto, Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva La mano che obbedisce all’intelletto.

 The geometer uses not the same obedient hand, but he equally feels and perceives the reality of that figure which the broad infinite around him comprehends _con suo soverchio_.

113. This distinction between ideas of mere sensation and those ofintellection, between what the mind comprehends, and what it conceiveswithout comprehending, is the point of divergence between the twosects of psychology which still exist in the world. Nothing is in theintellect which has not before been in the sense, said theAristotelian schoolmen. Every idea has its original in the senses,repeated the disciple of Epicurus, Gassendi. Locke indeed, as Gassendihad done before him, assigned another origin to one class ofideas; but these were few in number, and in the next century twowriters of considerable influence, Hartley and Condillac, attempted toresolve them all into sensation. The Cartesian school, a name ratherused for brevity, as a short denomination of all who, like Cudworth,held the same tenets as to the nature of ideas, lost ground both inFrance and England; nor had Leibnitz who was deemed an enemy to someof our great English names, sufficient weight to restore it. In thehands of some who followed in both countries, the worst phrases ofLocke were preferred to the best; whatever could be turned to theaccount of pyrrhonism, materialism, or atheism, made a figure in theEpicurean system of a popular philosophy. The names alluded to willsuggest themselves to the reader. The German metaphysicians from thetime of Kant deserve at least the credit of having successfullywithstood this coarse sensualism, though they may have borrowed muchthat their disciples take for original, and added much that is hardlybetter than what they have overthrown. The opposite philosophy to thatwhich never rises above sensible images is exposed to a danger of itsown; it is one which the infirmity of the human faculties rendersperpetually at hand; few there are who in reasoning on subjects wherewe cannot attain what Locke has called “positive comprehensive ideas”are secure from falling into mere nonsense and repugnancy. In thatpart of physics which is simply conversant with quantity, this dangeris probably not great, but in all such inquiries as are sometimescalled transcendental, it has perpetually shipwrecked the adventurousnavigator.

|His notions as to the soul.|

114. In the language and probably the notions of Locke as to thenature of the soul there is an indistinctness more worthy of theAristotelian schoolmen than of one conversant with the Cartesianphilosophy. “Bodies,” he says, “manifestly produce ideas in us byimpulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in. Ifthen external objects be not united to our minds, when they produceideas in it, and yet we perceive these original qualities in such ofthem as singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motionmust be thence continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by someparts of our bodies to the brain, or the seat of sensation, there toproduce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And sincethe extention, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observablebigness may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evidentsome singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, andthereby convey to the brain some motion which produces those ideas,which we have of them, in us.” He so far retracts his first positionafterwards, as to admit, “in consequence of what Mr. Newton has shownin the Principia on the gravitation of matter towards matter” that Godnot only can put into bodies powers and ways of operation above whatcan be explained from what we know of matter, but that he has actuallydone so. And he promises to correct the former passage, which howeverhe has never performed. In fact, he seems, by the use of phrases whichrecur too often to be thought merely figurative, to have supposed thatsomething in the brain comes into local contact with the mind. He washere unable to divest himself, any more than the schoolmen had done,of the notion that there is a proper action of the body on the soul inperception. The Cartesians had brought in the theory of occasionalcauses and other solutions of the phenomena, so as to avoid what seemsso irreconcilable with an immaterial principle. No one is so lavish ofa cerebral instrumentality in mental images as Malebranche; he seemsat every moment on the verge of materialism; he coquets, as it were,with an Epicurean physiology; but if I may be allowed to continue themetaphor, he perceives the moment where to stop, and retires, like adexterous fair one, with unsmirched honour to his immateriality.It cannot be said that Locke is equally successful.

|And its immateriality.|

115. In another and a well-known passage, he has thrown out a doubtwhether God might not superadd the faculty of thinking to matter; andthough he thinks it probable that this has not been the case, leavesit at last a debatable question, wherein nothing else thanpresumptions are to be had. Yet he has strongly argued against thepossibility of a material Deity upon reasons derived from the natureof matter. Locke almost appears to have taken the union of a thinkingbeing with matter for the thinking of matter itself. What is there,Stillingfleet well asks, like self-consciousness in matter? “Nothingat all,” Locke replies, “in matter as matter. But that God cannotbestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with itself-consciousness, will never be proved by asking how it is possibleto apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive.”But if that we call mind, and of which we are self-conscious, werethus superadded to matter, would it the less be something real? Inwhat sense can it be compared to an accident or quality? It has beenjustly observed that we are much more certain of the independentexistence of mind than of that of matter. But that, by theconstitution of our nature, a definite organization, or what will begenerally thought the preferable hypothesis, an organic molecule,should be a necessary concomitant of this immaterial principle, doesnot involve any absurdity at all, whatever want of evidence may beobjected to it.

116. It is remarkable that in the controversy with Stillingfleet onthis passage, Locke seems to take for granted that there is noimmaterial principle in brutes; and as he had too much plain sense toadopt the Cartesian theory of their insensibility, he draws the mostplausible argument for the possibility of thought in matter by theadmitted fact of sensation and voluntary motion in these animalorganizations. “It is not doubted but that the properties of a rose, apeach, or an elephant superadded to matter change not the propertiesof matter, but matter is in these things matter still.” Few perhaps atpresent who believe in the immateriality of the human soul, would denythe same to an elephant; but it must be owned that the discoveries ofzoology have pushed this to consequences which some might not readilyadopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a little ourprejudices; yet there is no resting-place, and we must admit this, orbe content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fibre. Bruteshave been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes ofmankind have been in civil polity; their souls we see, were almostuniversally disputed to them at the end of the seventeenth century,even by those who did not absolutely bring them down to machinery.Even within the recollection of many, it was common to deny them anykind of reasoning faculty, and to solve their most sagacious actionsby the vague word instinct. We have come of late years to think betterof our humble companions; and as usual in similar cases, thepredominant bias seems rather too much of a levelling character.

|His love of truth and originality.|

117. No quality more remarkably distinguishes Locke than his love oftruth. He is of no sect or party, has no oblique design, such as we sofrequently perceive, of sustaining some tenet which he suppresses, nosubmissiveness to the opinions of others, nor what very few lay aside,to his own. Without having adopted certain dominant ideas, likeDescartes and Malebranche, he follows with inflexible impartiality andunwearied patience the long process of analysis to which he hassubjected the human mind. No great writer has been more exempt fromvanity, in which he is very advantageously contrasted with Bacon andDescartes; but he is sometimes a little sharp and contemptuous of hispredecessors. The originality of Locke is real and unaffected; notthat he has derived nothing from others, which would be a greatreproach to himself or to them, but in whatever he has in common withother philosophers, there is always a tinge of his own thoughts, amodification of the particular tenet, or at least a peculiarity oflanguage which renders it not very easy of detection. “It was not tobe expected,” says Stewart, “that in a work so composed by snatches,to borrow a phrase of the author, he should be able accurately to drawthe line between his own ideas and the hints for which he was indebtedto others. To those who are well acquainted with his speculations itmust appear evident that he had studied diligently the metaphysicalwritings both of Hobbes and Gassendi, and that he was no stranger tothe Essays of Montaigne, to the philosophical works of Bacon, and toMalebranche’s Inquiry after Truth. That he was familiarly conversantwith the Cartesian system may be presumed from what we are told by hisbiographer, that it was this which first inspired him with a disgustat the jargon of the schools, and led him into that train of thinkingwhich he afterwards prosecuted so successfully. I do not howeverrecollect that he has anywhere in his Essay mentioned the name of anyone of those authors. It is probable that when he sat down to write,he found the result of his youthful reading so completely identifiedwith the fruits of his subsequent reflections, that it was impossiblefor him to attempt a separation of the one from the other, and that hewas thus occasionally led to mistake the treasures of memory for thoseof invention. That this was really the case may be further presumedfrom the peculiar and original cast of his phraseology, which thoughin general careless and unpolished, has always the merit of thatcharacteristical unity and raciness of style, which demonstrate thatwhile he was writing he conceived himself to be drawing onlyfrom his own resources.”[874]

 [874] Preliminary Dissertation.

|Defended in two cases.|

118. The writer however whom we have just quoted has not quite donejustice to the originality of Locke in more than one instance. Thus,on this very passage we find a note in these words: “Mr. Addison hasremarked that Malebranche had the start of Locke by several years inhis notions on the subject of duration. Some other coincidences notless remarkable might be easily pointed out in the opinions of theEnglish and of the French philosopher.” I am not prepared to dispute,nor do I doubt, the truth of the latter sentence. But with respect tothe notions of Malebranche and Locke on duration, it must be said,that they are neither the same nor has Addison asserted them to beso.[875] The one threw out an hypothesis with no attempt at proof; theother offered an explanation of the phenomena. What Locke has advancedas to our getting the idea of duration by reflecting on the successionof our ideas seems to be truly his own. Whether it be entirely theright explanation, is another question. It rather appears to me thatthe internal sense, as we may not improperly call it, of durationbelongs separately to each idea, and is rather lost than suggested bytheir succession. Duration is best perceived when we are able todetain an idea for some time without change, as in watching the motionof a pendulum. And though it is impossible for the mind to continue inthis state of immobility more perhaps than about a second or two, thisis sufficient to give us an idea of duration as the necessarycondition of existence. Whether this be an objective or merely asubjective necessity, is an abstruse question, which our sensations donot decide. But Locke appears to have looked rather at the measure ofduration, by which we divide it into portions, than at the meresimplicity of the idea itself. Such a measure, it is certain, can onlybe obtained through the medium of a succession in our ideas.

 [875] Spectator, No. 94.

119. It has been also remarked by Stewart, that Locke claims adiscovery rather due to Descartes--namely, the impossibility ofdefining simple ideas. Descartes, however, as well as the authors ofthe Port-Royal Logic, merely says that words already as clear as wecan make them do not require, or even admit, of definition. But I donot perceive that he has made the distinction we find in the Essay onthe Human Understanding, that the names of simple ideas are notcapable of any definition, while the names of all complex ideas areso. “It has not, that I know,” Locke says, “been observed by any bodywhat words are and what are not capable of being defined.” The passageI have quoted in another place (chap. xx., p. 500), from Descartes’posthumous dialogue, even if it went to this length, was unknown toLocke; yet he might have acknowledged that he had been in some measureanticipated in other observations by that philosopher.

|His view of innate ideas.|

120. The first book of the Essay on the Human Understanding isdirected, as is well known, against the doctrine of innate ideas, orinnate principles in the mind. This has been often censured, ascombating in some places a tenet which no one would support, and as,in other passages, breaking in upon moral distinctions themselves, bydisputing the universality of their acknowledgment. With respect tothe former charge, it is not perhaps easy for us to determine whatmight be the crude and confused notions, or at least language, of manywho held the theory of innate ideas. It is by no means evident thatLocke had Descartes chiefly, or even at all, in his view. LordHerbert, whom he distinctly answers, and many others, especially thePlatonists, had dwelt upon innate ideas in far stronger terms than thegreat French metaphysician, if indeed he can be said to havemaintained them at all. The latter and more important accusation restsupon no other pretext, than that Locke must be reckoned among thosewho have not admitted a moral faculty of discovering right from wrongto be a part of our constitution. But that there is a law of natureimposed by the Supreme Being, and consequently universal, has been sorepeatedly asserted in his writings, that it would imply greatinattention to question it. Stewart has justly vindicated Locke inthis respect from some hasty and indefinite charges of Beattie; but Imust venture to think that he goes much too far when he attempts toidentify the doctrines of the Essay with those of Shaftesbury. Thesetwo philosophers were in opposite schools as to the test of moralsentiments. Locke seems always to adopt what is called the selfishsystem in morals, resolving all morality into religion, and allreligion into a regard to our own interest. And he seems to have paidless attention to the emotions than to the intellectual powersof the soul.

|General praise.|

121. It would by no means be difficult to controvert other tenets ofthis great man. But the obligations we owe to him for the Essay on theHuman Understanding are never to be forgotten. It is truly the firstreal chart of the coasts; wherein some may be laid down incorrectly,but the general relations of all are perceived. And we who find somethings to censure in Locke have perhaps learned how to censure themfrom himself; we have thrown off so many false notions and films ofprejudice by his help that we are become capable of judging ourmaster. This is what has been the fate of all who have pushed onwardthe landmarks of science; they have made that easy for inferior menwhich was painfully laboured through by themselves. Among manyexcellent things in the Essay on Human Understanding none are moreadmirable than the whole third book on the nature of words, especiallythe three chapters on their imperfection and abuse. In earliertreatises of logic, at least in that of Port-Royal, some of this mightbe found; but nowhere are verbal fallacies, and, above all, thesources from which they spring so fully and conclusively exposed.

|Locke’s Conduct of Understanding.|

122. The same praiseworthy diligence in hunting error to itslurking-places distinguishes the short treatise on the Conduct of theUnderstanding; which, having been originally designed as an additionalchapter to the Essay,[876] is as it were the ethical application ofits theory, and ought always to be read with it, if, indeed, for thesake of its practical utility, it should not come sooner into thecourse of education. Aristotle himself, and the whole of hisdialectical school, had pointed out many of the sophisms against whichwe should guard our reasoning faculties; but these are chiefly such asothers attempt to put upon us in dispute. There are more dangerousfallacies by which we cheat ourselves; prejudice, partiality,self-interest, vanity, inattention and indifference to truth. Locke,who was as exempt from these as almost any man who has turned his mindto so many subjects where their influence is to be suspected, hasdwelled on the moral discipline of the intellect in this treatisebetter, as I conceive, than any of his predecessors, though we havealready seen, and it might appear far more at length to those whoshould have recourse to the books, that Arnauld and Malebranche,besides other French philosophers of the age, had not been remiss inthis indispensable part of logic.

 [876] See a letter to Molyneux, dated April, 1697. Locke’s Works (fol. 1759), vol. iii., p. 539.

123. Locke, throughout this treatise, labours to secure the honestinquirer from that previous persuasion of his own opinion, whichgenerally renders all his pretended investigations of its truth littlemore than illusive and nugatory. But the indifferency he recommends toeverything except truth itself, so that we should not even wishanything to be true before we have examined whether it be so, seems toinvolve the impossible hypothesis that man is but a purely reasoningbeing. It is vain to press the recommendation of freedom fromprejudice so far; since we cannot but conceive some propositions to bemore connected with our welfare than others, and consequently todesire their truth. These exaggerations lay a fundamental condition ofhonest inquiry open to the sneers of its adversaries; and it issufficient, because nothing more is really attainable, first todispossess ourselves of the notion that our interests are concernedwhere they are not, and next, even when we cannot but wish one resultof our inquiries rather than another, to be the more unremitting inour endeavours to exclude this bias from our reasoning.

124. I cannot think any parent or instructor justified in neglectingto put this little treatise in the hands of a boy about the time whenthe reasoning faculties become developed. It will give him a sober andserious, not flippant or self-conceited, independency of thinking; andwhile it teaches how to distrust ourselves, and to watch thoseprejudices which necessarily grow up from one cause or another, willinspire a reasonable confidence in what he has well considered, bytaking off a little of that deference to authority, which is the moreto be regretted in its excess, that, like its cousin-germanparty-spirit, it is frequently united to loyalty of heart, and thegenerous enthusiasm of youth.

CHAPTER XXX.

 HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

 ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Pascal’s Provincial Letters--Taylor--Cudworth--Spinosa--Cumberland’sLaw of Nature--Puffendorf’s Treatise on the same Subject--Rochefoucaultand La Bruyere--Locke on Education--Fenelon._

|Casuistry of the Jesuits.|

|Pascal’s Provincial Letters.|

1. The casuistical writers of the Roman church, and especially of theJesuit order, belong to earlier periods; for little room was left foranything but popular compilations from large works of vast labour andaccredited authority. But the false principles imputed to the latterschool now raised a louder cry than before. Implacable and unsparingenemies, as well as ambitious intriguers themselves, they wereencountered by a host of those who envied, feared, and hated them.Among those none were such willing or able accusers as the Jansenistswhom they persecuted. Pascal, by his Provincial Letters, did more toruin the name of Jesuit than all the controversies of Protestantism,or all the fulminations of the parliament of Paris. A letter of AntonyArnauld, published in 1655, wherein he declared that he could not findin Jansenius the propositions condemned by the pope, and laid himselfopen to censure by some of his own, provoked the Sorbonne, of which hewas a member, to exclude him from the faculty of theology. Before thisresolution was taken, Pascal came forward in defence of his friend,under a fictitious name, in the first of what have been always calledLettres Provinciales, but more accurately Lettres écrites par Louis deMontalte à un Provincial de ses Amis. In the first four of them hediscusses the thorny problems of Jansenism, aiming chiefly to showthat St. Thomas Aquinas had maintained the same doctrine onefficacious grace which his disciples the Dominicans now rejected fromanother quarter. But he passed from hence to a theme more generallyintelligible and interesting, the false morality of the Jesuitcasuists. He has accumulated so long a list of scandalous decisions,and dwelled upon them with so much wit and spirit, and yet with soserious a severity, that the order of Loyola became a bye-word withmankind. I do not agree with those who think the Provincial Letters agreater proof of the genius of Pascal than his Thoughts, in spite ofthe many weaknesses in reasoning which the latter display. They are atpresent, finely written as all confess them to be, too much filledwith obsolete controversy, they quote books too much forgotten, theyhave too little bearing on any permanent sympathies, to be read withmuch interest or pleasure.

|Their truth questioned by some.|

2. The Jesuits had, unfortunately for themselves, no writers at thattime of sufficient ability to defend them; and being disliked by manywho were not Jansenists, could make little stand against theiradversaries, till public opinion had already taken its line. They havesince not failed to charge Pascal with extreme misrepresentation oftheir eminent casuists, Escobar, Busenbaum, and many others, so thatsome have ventured to call the Provincial Letters the immortal liars(les immortelles menteuses). It has been insinuated, since Pascal’sveracity is hard to attack, that he was deceived by those from whom heborrowed his quotations. But he has declared himself, in a remarkablepassage, not only that far from repenting of these letters he wouldmake them yet stronger if it were to be done again, but that althoughhe had not read all the books he has quoted, else he must have spentgreat part of his life in reading bad books, yet that he had readEscobar twice through, and with respect to the rest, he had not quoteda single passage without having seen it in the book, and examined thecontext before and after, that he might not confound an objection withan answer, which would have been reprehensible and unjust[877]: it istherefore impossible to save the honour of Pascal, if his quotationsare not fair. Nor did he stand alone in his imputations on the Jesuitcasuistry. A book called Morale des Jesuites, by Nicolas Perrault,published at Mons in 1667, goes over the same ground with lesspleasantry but not less learning.

 [877] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 400.

|Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium.|

3. The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appearedin the English language is the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor,published in 1660. This, as its title shows, treats of subjectivemorality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be muchdiscussed without establishing some principles of objective right andwrong, some standard by which the conscience is to be ruled. “Thewhole measure and rule of conscience,” according to Taylor, “is thelaw of God, or God’s will signified to us by nature or revelation; andby the several manners and times and parts of its communication ithath obtained several names:--the law of nature--the consent ofnations--right reason--the Decalogue--the sermon of Christ--the canonsof the apostles--the laws ecclesiastical and civil of princes andgovernors--fame or the public reputation of things, expressed byproverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty.... Thesebeing the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful,will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present book.”

|Its character and defects.|

4. The heterogeneous combination of things so different in nature andauthority, as if they were all expressions of the law of God, does notaugur well for the distinctness of Taylor’s moral philosophy, andwould be disadvantageously compared with the Ecclesiastical Polity ofHooker. Nor are we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. Withmany of Taylor’s excellencies, his vast fertility and his frequentacuteness, the Ductor Dubitantium exhibits his characteristic defects;the waste of quotations is even greater than in his other writings,and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an intolerableprolixity. His solution of moral difficulties is often unsatisfactory;after an accumulation of arguments and authorities we have thedisappointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied nor cut;there seems a want of close investigation of principles, a frequentconfusion and obscurity, which Taylor’s two chief faults, excessivedisplay of erudition and redundancy of language, conspire to produce.Paley is no doubt often superficial, and sometimes mistaken; yet inclearness, in conciseness, in freedom from impertinent reference toauthority, he is far superior to Taylor.

5. Taylor seems too much inclined to side with those who resolve allright and wrong into the positive will of God. The law of nature hedefines to be “the universal law of the world, or of mankind, to whichwe are inclined by nature, invited by consent, prompted by reason, butwhich is bound upon us only by the command of God.” Though in thestrict meaning of the word, law, this may be truly said, it was surelyrequired, considering the large sense which that word has obtained ascoincident with moral right, that a fuller explanation should be giventhan Taylor has even intimated, lest the goodness of the Deity shouldseem something arbitrary and precarious. And, though in maintaining,against most of the scholastic metaphysicians, that God can dispensewith the precepts of the Decalogue, he may be substantially right, yethis reasons seem by no means the clearest and most satisfactory thatmight be assigned. It may be added, that in his prolix rulesconcerning what he calls a probable conscience, he comes very near tothe much decried theories of the Jesuits. There was indeed a vein ofsubtlety in Taylor’s understanding which was not always withoutinfluence on his candour.

|Cudworth’s immutable morality.|

6. A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, by Cudworth,was first published in 1731. This may be almost reckoned a portion ofhis Intellectual System, the object being what he has declared to beone of those which he had there in view. This was to prove that moraldifferences of right and wrong are antecedent to any divine law. Hewrote therefore not only against the Calvinistic school, but in somemeasure against Taylor, though he abstains from mentioning any recentauthor except Descartes, who had gone far in referring all moraldistinctions to the arbitrary will of God. Cudworth’s reasoning is byno means satisfactory, and rests too much on the dogmatic metaphysicswhich were going out of use. The nature or essence of nothing, hemaintains, can depend upon the will of God alone; which is theefficient, but not the formal, cause of all things; a distinction notvery intelligible, but on which he seems to build his theory.[878] Formoral relations, though he admits that they have no objectiveexistence out of the mind, have a positive essence, and therefore arenot nothing; whence, it follows that they must be independent of will.He pours out much ancient learning, though not so lavishly as in theIntellectual System.

 [878] P. 15.

|Nicole--La Placette.|

7. The urgent necessity of contracting my sails in this lastperiod, far the most abundant as it is in the variety and extent ofits literature, restrains me from more than a bare mention of severalworks not undeserving of regard. The Essais de Morale of Nicole areless read than esteemed, says a late biographer.[879] Voltaire howeverprophesied that they would not perish. “The chapter especially,” heproceeds, “on the means of preserving peace among men is a masterpieceto which nothing equal has been left to us by antiquity.”[880] TheseEssays are properly contained in six volumes; but so many other piecesare added in some editions that the collection under that title isvery long. La Placette, minister of a French church at Copenhagen, hasbeen called the Protestant Nicole. His Essais de Morale, in 1692 andother years, are full of a solid morality, rather strict in casuistry,and apparently not deficient in observation and analytical views ofhuman nature. They were much esteemed in their own age. Works of thiskind tread so very closely on the department of practical religionthat it is sometimes difficult to separate them on any fixedprinciple. A less homiletical form, a comparative absence ofscriptural quotation, a more reasoning and observing mode of dealingwith the subject, are the chief distinctions. But in the sermons ofBarrow and some others we find a great deal of what may be justlycalled moral philosophy.

 [879] Biog. Univ.

 [880] Siècle de Louis XIV.

|Other writers.|

8. A book by Sharrock, De Officiis secundum Rationis Humanæ Dictata,1660, is occasionally quoted, and seems to be of a philosophicalnature.[881] Velthuysen, a Dutch minister, was of more reputation. Hisname was rather obnoxious to the orthodox, since he was a strenuousadvocate of toleration, a Cartesian in philosophy, and inclined tojudge for himself. His chief works are De Principiis Justi et Decori,and De Naturali Pudore.[882] But we must now pass on to those who haveexercised a greater influence in moral philosophy, Cumberland andPuffendorf, after giving a short consideration to Spinosa.

 [881] Cumberland (in præfatione) De Legibus Naturæ.

 [882] Biog. Univ., Barbeyrac’s notes on Puffendorf, passim.

|Moral system of Spinosa.|

9. The moral system, if so it may be called, of Spinosa, has beendeveloped by him in the fourth and fifth parts of his Ethics. We arenot deceived in what might naturally be expected from the unhesitatingadherence of Spinosa to a rigorous line of reasoning, that his ethicalscheme would offer nothing inconsistent with the fundamental pantheismof his philosophy. In nature itself, he maintains as before, there isneither perfection nor imperfection, neither good nor evil; but theseare modes of speaking, adopted to express the relations of things asthey appear to our minds. Whatever contains more positive attributescapable of being apprehended by us than another contains, is moreperfect than it. Whatever we know to be useful to ourselves, that isgood; and whatever impedes our attainment of good is evil. By thisutility Spinosa does not understand happiness, if by that is meantpleasurable sensation, but the extension of our mental and bodilycapacities. The passions restrain and overpower these capacities; andcoming from without, that is, from the body, render the mind a lesspowerful agent than it seems to be. It is only, we may remember in apopular sense, and subject to his own definitions, that Spinosaacknowledges the mind to be an agent at all; it is merely so, in sofar as its causes of action cannot be referred by us to anythingexternal. No passion can be restrained except by a stronger passion.Hence, even a knowledge of what is really good or evil for us can ofitself restrain no passion; but only as it is associated with aperception of joy and sorrow, which is a mode of passion. Thisperception is necessarily accompanied by desire or aversion; but theymay often be so weak as to be controlled by other sentiments of thesame class, inspired by conflicting passions. This is the cause of theweakness and inconstancy of many, and he alone is wise and virtuouswho steadily pursues what is useful to himself; that is, what reasonpoints out as the best means of preserving his well-being, andextending his capacities. Nothing is absolutely good, nothingtherefore is principally sought by a virtuous man, but knowledge, notof things external, which gives us only inadequate ideas, but of God.Other things are good or evil to us, so far as they suit our nature orcontradict it; and so far as men act by reason, they must agree inseeking what is conformable to their nature. And those who agree withus in living by reason, are themselves of all things most suitable toour nature; so that the society of such men is most to be desired; andto enlarge that society by rendering men virtuous, and by promotingtheir advantage when they are so, is most useful to ourselves. For thegood of such as pursue virtue may be enjoyed by all, and does notobstruct our own. Whatever conduces to the common society of mankindand promotes concord among them is useful to all; and whatever has anopposite tendency is pernicious. The passions are sometimes incapableof excess, but of this the only instances are joy and cheerfulness;more frequently they become pernicious by being indulged, and in somecases, such as hatred, can never be useful. We should therefore, forour own sakes, meet the hatred and malevolence of others with love andliberality. Spinosa dwells much on the preference due to a socialabove a solitary life, to cheerfulness above austerity, and alludesfrequently to the current theological ethics with censure.

10. The fourth part of the Ethics is entitled, On Human Slavery,meaning the subjugation of the reason to the passions; the fifth, OnHuman Liberty, is designed to show, as had been partly done in theformer, how the mind or intellectual man is to preserve its supremacy.This is to be effected, not by the extinction, which is impossible,but the moderation of the passions; and the secret of doing this,according to Spinosa, is to contemplate such things as are naturallyassociated with affections of no great violence. We find that when welook at things simply in themselves, and not in their necessaryrelations, they affect us more powerfully; whence it may be inferredthat we shall weaken the passion by viewing them as parts of anecessary series. We promote the same end by considering the object ofthe passion in many different relations, and, in general, by enlargingthe sphere of our knowledge concerning it. Hence, the more adequateideas we attain of things that affect us, the less we shall beovercome by the passion they excite. But most of all it should be ourendeavour to refer all things to the idea of God. The more weunderstand ourselves and our passions, the more we shall love God; forthe more we understand anything, the more pleasure we have incontemplating it; and we shall associate the idea of God with thispleasurable contemplation, which is the essence of love. The love ofGod should be the chief employment of the mind. But God has nopassions; therefore he who desires that God should love him, desires,in fact, that he should cease to be God. And the more we believeothers to be united in the same love of God, the more we shall lovehim ourselves.

11. The great aim of the mind, and the greatest degree of virtue, isthe knowledge of things in their essence. This knowledge is theperfection of human nature; it is accompanied with the greatest joyand contentment; it leads to a love of God, intellectual, notimaginative, eternal, because not springing from passions that perishwith the body, being itself a portion of that infinite love with whichGod intellectually loves himself. In this love towards God our chieffelicity consists, which is not the reward of virtue, but virtueitself; nor is anyone happy because he has overcome the passions, butit is by being happy, that is, by enjoying the fulness of divine love,that he has become capable of overcoming them.

12. These extraordinary effusions confirm what has been hinted inanother place, that Spinosa, in the midst of his atheism, seemed oftento hover over the regions of mystical theology. This last book of theEthics speaks, as is evident, the very language of Quietism. InSpinosa himself it is not easy to understand the meaning; hissincerity ought not, I think, to be called in question; and thisenthusiasm may be set down to the rapture of the imaginationexpatiating in the enchanting wilderness of its creation. But thepossibility of combining such a tone of contemplative devotion withthe systematic denial of a Supreme Being, in any personal sense, mayput us on our guard against the tendency of mysticism, which mayagain, as it has frequently, degenerate into a similar chaos.

|Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ.|

13. The science of ethics, in the third quarter of the seventeenthcentury, seemed to be cultivated by three very divergent schools; bythat of the theologians who went no farther than revelation, or atleast than the positive law of God, for moral distinctions; by that ofthe Platonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsicrelations; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who reduced them all toselfish prudence. A fourth theory, which, in some of itsmodifications, has greatly prevailed in the last two centuries, may bereferred to Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough. Hisfamous work, De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philisophica, was publishedin 1672. It is contained in nine chapters, besides the preface orprolegomena.

|Analysis of prolegomena.|

14. Cumberland begins by mentioning Grotius, Selden, and one or twomore who have investigated the laws of nature _à posteriori_,that is, by the testimony of authors and the consent of nations. Butas some objections may be started against this mode of proof, which,though he does not hold them to be valid, are likely to have someeffect, he prefers another line of demonstration, deducing the laws ofnature, as effects, from their real causes in the constitution ofnature itself. The Platonic theory of innate moral ideas, sufficientto establish natural law, he does not admit. “For myself, at least, Imay say that I have not been so fortunate as to arrive at theknowledge of this law by so compendious a road.” He deems it thereforenecessary to begin with what we learn by daily use and experience,preserving nothing but the physical laws of motion shown bymathematicians, and the derivation of all their operations from thewill of a First Cause.

15. By diligent observation of all propositions which can be justlyreckoned general moral laws of nature, he finds that they may bereduced to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents,which tends to our own good as part of the whole; as its oppositetends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own.[883]This tendency, he takes care to tell us, though he uses the presenttense (conducit), has respect to the most remote consequences, and isso understood by him. The means which serve to this end, the generalgood, may be treated as theorems in a geometrical method.[884]Cumberland, as we have seen in Spinosa, was captivated by the apparentsecurity of this road to truth.

 [883] Prolegomena, sect. 9.

 [884] Sect. 12.

16. This scheme, he observes, may at first sight want the tworequisites of a law, a legislator, and a sanction. But whatever isnaturally assented to by our minds, must spring from the author ofnature. God is proved to be the author of every proposition which isproved to be true by the constitution of nature, which has him for itsauthor.[885] Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is thehappiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and inthe opposite effects of its neglect; and in a lax sense, though notthat of the jurists, reward as well as punishment may be included inthe word sanction.[886] But benevolence, that is love and desire ofgood towards all rational beings, includes piety towards God, thegreatest of them all, as well as humanity.[887] Cumberland altogetherabstains from arguments founded on revelation, and is perhaps thefirst writer on natural law who has done so, for they may even befound in Hobbes. And I think that he may be reckoned the founder ofwhat is awkwardly and invidiously called the utilitarian school; forthough similar expressions about the common good may sometimes befound in the ancients, it does not seem to have been the basis of anyethical system.

 [885] Sect. 13.

 [886] Sect. 14.

 [887] Sect. 15.

17. This common good, not any minute particle of it, as the benefit ofa single man, is the great end of the legislator and of him who obeyshis will. And such human actions as by their natural tendency promotethe common good may be called naturally good, more than those whichtend only to the good of any one man, by how much the whole is greaterthan this small part. And whatever is directed in the shortest way tothis end may be called right, as a right line is the shortest of all.And as the whole system of the universe, when all things are arrangedso as to produce happiness, is beautiful, being aptly disposed to itsend, which is the definition of beauty, so particular actionscontributing to this general harmony may be called beautiful andbecoming.[888]

 [888] Sect. 16.

18. Cumberland acutely remarks, in answer to the objection to thepractice of virtue from the evils which fall on good men, and thesuccess of the wicked, that no good or evil is to be considered, inthis point of view, which arises from mere necessity, or externalcauses and not from our virtue or vice itself. He then shows that aregard for piety and peace, for mutual intercourse, and civil anddomestic polity, tends to the happiness of every one; and in reckoningthe good consequences of virtuous behaviour we are not only toestimate the pleasure intimately connected with it, which the love ofGod and of good men produces, but the contingent benefits we obtain bycivil society which we promote by such conduct.[889] And we see thatin all nations there is some regard to good faith and the distributionof property, some respect to the obligation of oaths, some attachmentsto relations and friends. All men therefore acknowledge, and to acertain extent perform, those things which really tend to the commongood. And though crime and violence sometimes prevail, yet these arelike diseases in the body which it shakes off; or if, like them, theyprove sometimes mortal to a single community, yet human society isimmortal; and the conservative principles of common good have in theend far more efficacy than those which dissolve and destroy states.

 [889] Sect. 20.

19. We may reckon the happiness consequent on virtue as a truesanction of natural law annexed to it by its author, and thusfulfilling the necessary conditions of its definition. And though somehave laid less stress on these sanctions, and deemed virtue its ownreward, and gratitude to God and man its best motive, yet the consentof nations and common experience show us that the observance of thefirst end, which is the common good, will not be maintained withoutremuneration or penal consequences.

20. By this single principle of common good, we simplify the method ofnatural law, and arrange its secondary precepts in such subordinationas best conduces to the general end. Hence, moral rules give way inparticular cases, when they come in collision with others of moreextensive importance. For all ideas of right or virtue imply arelation to the system and nature of all rational beings. And theprinciples thus deduced as to moral conduct are generally applicableto political societies, which in their two leading institutions, thedivision of property and the coercive power of the magistrate, followthe steps of natural law, and adopt these rules of polity, becausethey perceive them to promote the common weal.

21. From all intermixture of scriptural authority Cumberland proposesto abstain, building only on reason and experience; since we believethe scriptures to proceed from God because they illustrate and promotethe law of nature. He seems to have been the first christian writerwho sought to establish systematically the principles of moral rightindependently of revelation. They are indeed taken for granted bymany, especially those who adopted the Platonic language; or theschoolmen may have demonstrated them by arguments derived from reason,but seldom, if ever, without some collateral reference to theologicalauthority. In this respect, therefore, Cumberland may be deemed tomake an epoch in the history of ethical philosophy, though Puffendorf,whose work was published the same year, may have nearly equal claimsto it. If we compare the Treatise on the Laws of Nature with theDuctor Dubitantium of Taylor, written a very few years before, weshall find ourselves in a new world of moral reasoning. The schoolmenand fathers, the canonists and casuists, have vanished like ghosts atthe first daylight; the continual appeal is to experience, and neverto authority; or if authority can be said to appear at all in thepages of Cumberland, it is that of the great apostles of experimentalphilosophy, Descartes or Huygens, or Harvey or Willis. His mind,liberal and comprehensive as well as acute, had been forciblyimpressed with the discoveries of his own age, both in mathematicalscience and in what is now more strictly called physiology. From thisarmoury he chose his weapons, and employed them, in some instances,with great sagacity and depth of thought. From the brilliant success,also, of the modern analysis, as well as from the natural prejudice infavour of a geometrical method, which arises from the acknowledgedsuperiority of that science in the determination of its proper truths,he was led to expect more from the use of similar processes in moralreasoning than we have found justified by experience. And this analogyhad probably some effect on one of the chief errors of his ethicalsystem, the reduction, at least in theory, of the morality of actionsto definite calculation.

|His theory expanded afterwards.|

22. The prolegomena or preface to Cumberland’s treatise contains thatstatement of his system with which we have been hitherto concerned,and which the whole volume does but expand. His manner of reasoning isdiffuse, abounding in repetitions, and often excursive; we cannotavoid perceiving that he labours long on propositions which noadversary would dispute, or on which the dispute could be little elsethan one of verbal definition. This however is almost the universalfailing of preceding philosophers, and was only put an end to, if itcan be said yet to have ceased, by the sharper logic of controversy,which a more general regard to metaphysical inquiries, and a justersense of the value of words, brought into use.

23. The question between Cumberland and his adversaries, that is, theschool of Hobbes, is stated to be, whether certain propositions ofimmutable truth, directing the voluntary actions of men in choosinggood and avoiding evil, and imposing an obligation upon them,independently of civil laws, are necessarily suggested to the mind bythe nature of things and by that of mankind. And the affirmative ofthis question he undertakes to prove from a consideration of thenature of both; from which many particular rules might be deduced, butabove all that which comprehends all the rest, and is the basis of histheory--namely, that the greatest possible benevolence (not a merelanguid desire but an energetic principle) of every rational agenttowards all the rest constitutes the happiest condition of each and ofall, so far as depends on their own power, and is necessarily requiredfor their greatest happiness; whence, the common good is the supremelaw. That God is the author of this law appears evident from his beingthe author of all nature and of all the physical laws according towhich impressions are made on our minds.

24. It is easy to observe by daily experience that we have the powerof doing good to others, and that no men are so happy or so secure asthey who most exert this. And this may be proved synthetically and inthat more rigorous method which he affects, though it now and thenleads the reader away from the simplest argument, by considering ourown faculties of speech and language, the capacities of the hand andcountenance, the skill we possess in sciences and in useful arts; allof which conduce to the social life of mankind and to their mutualco-operation and benefit. Whatever preserves and perfects the natureof anything, that is to be called good, and the opposite evil; so thatHobbes has crudely asserted good to respect only the agent desiringit, and consequently to be variable. In this it will be seen that thedispute is chiefly verbal.

25. Two corollaries of great importance in the theory of ethics springfrom a consideration of our physical powers. The first is, thatinasmuch as they are limited by their nature, we should never seek totransgress their bounds, but distinguish, as the Stoics did thingswithin our reach, τα εφ’ ἡμιν [ta eph' hêmin], from those beyond it, ταουκ εφ’ ἡμιν [ta ouk eph' hêmin], thus relieving our minds from anxiouspassions, and turning them to the prudent use of the means assigned tous. The other is one which applies more closely to his generalprinciples of morals; that as all we can do in respect of others, andall the enjoyment we or they can have of particular things, is limitedto certain persons, as well as in space and time, we perceive thenecessity of distribution, both as to things, from which spring therights of property, and as to persons, by which our benevolence,though a general rule in itself, is practically directed towardsindividuals. For the conservation of an aggregate whole is the same asthat of its divided parts, that is, of single persons, which requiresa distributive exercise of the powers of each. Hence, property anddominion, or meum and tuum, in the most general sense, areconsequences from the general law of nature. Without a support fromthat law, according to Cumberland, without a positive tendency to thegood of all rational agents, we should have no right even to thingsnecessary for our preservation; nor have we that right, if a greaterevil would be incurred by our preservation than by our destruction. Itmay be added as a more universal reflection, that as all we see innature is so framed as to persevere in its appointed state, and as thehuman body is endowed with the power of throwing off whatever isnoxious and threatens the integrity of its condition, we may judgefrom this that the conservation of mankind in its best state must bethe design of nature, and that their own voluntary actions conducingto that end must be such as the author of nature commands and approves.

26. Cumberland next endeavours, by an enlarged analysis of the mentaland bodily structure of mankind, to evince their aptitude for thesocial virtues, that is, for the general benevolence which is theprimary law of nature. We have the power of knowing these by ourrational faculty, which is the judge of right and wrong, that is, ofwhat is conformable to the great law; and by the other faculties ofthe mind, as well as by the use of language, we generalise and reduceto propositions the determinations of reason. We have also the powerof comparison, and of perceiving analogies, by means of which weestimate degrees of good. And if we are careful to guard againstdeciding without clear and adequate apprehensions of things, ourreason will not mislead us. The observance of something like thisgeneral law of nature by inferior animals, which rarely, as Cumberlandsupposes, attack those of the same species, and in certain instanceslive together, as if by a compact for mutual aid; the peculiarcontrivances in the human body which seem designed for the maintenanceof society; the possession of speech, the pathognomic countenance, theefficiency of the hand, a longevity beyond the lower animals, theduration of the sexual appetite throughout the year, with severalother arguments derived from anatomy, are urged throughout thischapter against the unsocial theory of Hobbes.

27. Natural good is defined by Cumberland, with more latitudethan has been used by Paley and by those of a later school, whoconfine it to happiness or pleasurable perception. Whatever conducesto the preservation of an intelligent being, or to the perfection ofhis powers, he accounts to be good, without regard to enjoyment. Andfor this he appeals to experience, since we desire existence, as wellas the extension of our powers of action, for their own sakes. It isof great importance to acquire a clear notion of what is truly good,that is, of what serves most to the happiness and perfection ofeveryone; since all the secondary laws of nature, that is, the rulesof particular virtues, derive their authority from this effect. Theserules may be compared one with another as to the probability, as wellas the value of their effects upon the general good; and heanticipates greater advantage from the employment of mathematicalreasoning and even analytical forms in moral philosophy than thedifferent nature of the subjects would justify, even if thefundamental principle of converting the theory of ethics intocalculation could be allowed.[890]

 [890] Ea quippe tota (disciplina morum) versatur in æstimandis rationibus virium humanarum ad commune bonum entium rationalium quicquam facientium, quæ quidem variant in omni casuum possibilium varietate. Cap. ii., sect. 9. The same is laid down in several other passages. By _rationibus_ we must understand _ratios_; which brings out the calculating theory in the strongest light.

28. A law of nature, meaning one subordinate to the great principle ofbenevolence, is defined by Cumberland to be a proposition manifestedby the nature of things to the mind according to the will of the FirstCause, and pointing out an action tending to the good of rationalbeings, from the performance of which an adequate reward, or from theneglect of which a punishment, will ensue by the nature of suchrational beings. Every part of this definition he proves withexceeding prolixity in the longest chapter--namely the fifth, of histreatise; but we have already seen the foundations of his theory uponwhich it rests. It will be evident to the reader of this chapter thatboth Butler and Paley have been largely indebted to Cumberland.[891]Natural obligation he defines thus:--No other necessity determines thewill to act than that of avoiding evil and of seeking good, so far asappears to be in our power.[892] Moral obligation is more limited, andis differently defined.[893] But the main point, as he justlyobserves, of the controversy, is the connection between the tendencyof each man’s actions, taking them collectively through his life, tothe good of the whole, and that to his own greatest happiness andperfection. This he undertakes to show, premising that it is twofold;consisting immediately in the pleasure attached to virtue, andultimately in the rewards it obtains from God and from man. God, as arational being, cannot be supposed to act without an end, or to have agreater end than the general good; that is, the happiness andperfection of his creatures.[894] And his will may not only be shown_à priori_, by the consideration of his essence and attributes,but by the effects of virtue and vice in the order of nature, which hehas established. The rewards and punishments which follow at the handsof men are equally obvious; and whether we regard men as God’sinstruments, or as voluntary agents, demonstrate that virtue is thehighest prudence. These arguments are urged rather tediously, and insuch a manner as to encounter none of the difficulties which it isdesirable to overcome.

 [891] A great part of the second and third chapters of Butler’s Analogy will be found in Cumberland. See cap. v., sect. 22.

 [892] Non alia necessitas voluntatem ad agendum determinat, quam malum in quantum tale esse nobis constat fugiendi bonumque quatenus nobis apparet prosequendi. Cap. v., sect. 7.

 [893] Sect. 27.

 [894] Sect. 19.

29. Two objections might be alledged against this kind of proof; thatthe rewards and punishments of moral actions are too uncertain to beaccounted clear proofs of the will of God, and consequently of theirnatural obligation, and that by laying so much stress upon them wemake private happiness the measure of good. These he endeavours torepel. The contingency of a future consequence has a determinatevalue, which, if it more than compensates, for good or evil, the evilor good of a present action, ought to be deemed a proof given by theauthor of nature that reward or punishment are annexed to the action,as much as if they were its necessary consequences.[895] Thisargument, perhaps sophistical, is an instance of the calculatingmethod affected by Cumberland, and which we may presume, from the thenrecent application of analysis to probability, he was the first toadopt on such an occasion. Paley is sometimes fond of a similarprocess. But after these mathematical reasonings, he dwells,as before, on the beneficial effects of virtue, and concludes thatmany of them are so uniform as to leave no doubt as to the intentionof the Creator. Against the charge of postponing the public good tothat of the agent, he protests that it is wholly contrary to hisprinciple, which permits no one to preserve his life, or what isnecessary for it, at the expense of a greater good to the whole.[896]But his explication of the question ends in repeating that no singleman’s greatest felicity can, by the nature of things, be inconsistentwith that of all; and that every such hypothesis is to be rejected asan impossible condition of the problem. It seems doubtful whetherCumberland uses always the same language on the question whetherprivate happiness is the final motive of action, which in this part ofthe chapter he wholly denies.

 [895] Sect. 37.

 [896] Sua cujusque felicitas est pars valde exigua finis illius, quem vir verè rationalis prosequitur, et ad totum finem, scilicet commune bonum cui a natura seu a Deo intertexitur, eam tantum habet rationem quam habet unus hom*o ad aggregatum ex omnibus rationalibus, quæ minor est quam habet unica arenula ad molem universi corporis. Sect. 23 and sect. 28.

30. From the establishment of this primary law of universalbenevolence, Cumberland next deduces the chief secondary principles,which are commonly called the moral virtues. And among these he givesthe first place to justice, which he seems to consider, by too lax anuse of terms, or too imperfect an analogy, as comprehending the socialduties of liberality, courtesy, and domestic affection. The right ofproperty, which is the foundation of justice, he rests entirely on itsnecessity for the common good; whatever is required for that prime endof moral action being itself obligatory on moral agents, they arebound to establish and to maintain separate rights. And all right sowholly depends on this instrumentality to good, that the rightfulsovereignty of God over his creatures is not founded on that relationhe bears to them, much less on his mere power, but on his wisdom andgoodness, through which his omnipotence works only for theirhappiness. But this happiness can only be attained by means of anabsolute right over them in their Maker, which is therefore to bereckoned a natural law.

31. The good of all rational beings is a complex whole, being nothingbut the aggregate of good enjoyed by each. We can only act in ourproper spheres, labouring to do good. But this labour will befruitless, or rather mischievous, if we do not keep in mind the highergradations which terminate in universal benevolence. No man must seekhis own advantage otherwise than that of his family permits; orprovide for his family to the detriment of his country; or promote thegood of his country at the expense of mankind; or serve mankind, if itwere possible, without regard to the majesty of God.[897] It is,indeed, sufficient that the mind should acknowledge and recollect thisprinciple of conduct, without having it present on every singleoccasion. But where moral difficulties arise, Cumberland contends thatthe general good is the only measure by which we are to determine thelawfulness of actions, or the preference due to one above another.

32. In conclusion, he passes to political authority, deriving it fromthe same principle, and comments with severity and success, though inthe verbose style usual to him, on the system of Hobbes. It is,however, worthy of remark, that he not only peremptorily declares theirresponsibility of the supreme magistrate in all cases, but seems togive him a more arbitrary latitude in the choice of measures, so longas he does not violate the chief negative precepts of the decalogue,than is consistent with his own fundamental rule of always seeking thegreatest good. He endeavours to throw upon Hobbes, as was not uncommonwith the latter’s theological opponents, the imputation of encouragingrebellion while he seemed to support absolute power; and observes withfull as much truth that if kings are bound by no natural law, thereason for their institution--namely, the security of mankind,assigned by the author of the Leviathan, falls to the ground.

 [897] Cap. viii., sect. 14, 15.

|Remarks on Cumberland’s theory.|

33. I have gone rather at length into a kind of analysis of thistreatise, because it is now very little read, and yet was of greatimportance in the annals of ethical philosophy. It was, if not atextbook in either of our universities, concerning which I am notconfident, the basis of the system therein taught, and of the bookswhich have had most influence in this country. Hutcheson, Law, Paley,Priestley, Bentham, belong, no doubt some of them unconsciously, tothe school founded by Cumberland. Hutcheson adopted the principle ofgeneral benevolence as the standard of virtue; but by limitingthe definition of good to happiness alone, he simplified the scheme ofCumberland, who had included conservation and enlargement of capacityin its definition. He rejected also what encumbers the whole system ofhis predecessor, the including the Supreme Being among those rationalagents whose good we are bound to promote. The schoolmen, as well asthose whom they followed, deeming it necessary to predicatemetaphysical infinity of all the divine attributes, reckonedunalterable beatitude in the number. Upon such a subject no wise manwould like to dogmatise. The difficulties on both sides are verygreat, and perhaps among the most intricate to which the momentousproblem concerning the cause of evil has given rise. Cumberland, whosemind does not seem to have been much framed to wrestle with mysteries,evades, in his lax verbosity, what must perplex his readers.

34. In establishing the will of a supreme lawgiver as essential to thelaw of nature, he is followed by the bishop of Carlisle and Paley, aswell as by the majority of English moralists in the eighteenthcentury. But while Paley deems the recognition of a future state soessential, that he even includes in the definition of virtue that itis performed “for the sake of everlasting happiness,” Cumberland notonly omits this erroneous and almost paradoxical condition, but veryslightly alludes to another life, though he thinks it probable fromthe stings of conscience and on other grounds; resting the wholeargument on the certain consequences of virtue and vice in thepresent, but guarding justly against the supposition that anydifference of happiness in moral agents can affect the immediatequestion except such as is the mere result of their own behaviour. Ifanyone had urged, like Paley, that without taking a future state intoconsideration, the result of calculating our own advantage will eithernot always be in favour of virtue, or, in consequence of the violenceof passion, will not always seem so, Cumberland would probably havedenied the former alternative, and replied to the other, that we canonly prove the truth of our theorems in moral philosophy, and cannotcompel men to adopt them.

35. Sir James Mackintosh, whose notice of Cumberland is rather toosuperficial, and hardly recognises his influence on philosophy,observes that “the forms of scholastic argument serve more to encumberhis style than to insure his exactness.”[898] There is not, however,much of scholastic form in the treatise on the Laws of Nature, andthis is expressly disclaimed in the Preface. But he has, as we haveintimated, a great deal too much of a mathematical line of argumentwhich never illustrates his meaning, and has sometimes misled hisjudgment. We owe, probably to his fondness for this specious illusion,I mean the application of reasonings upon quantity to moral subjects,the dangerous sophism that a direct calculation of the highest good,and that not relatively to particulars, but to all rational beings, isthe measure of virtuous actions, the test by which we are to try ourown conduct and that of others. And the intervention of general rules,by which Paley endeavoured to dilute and render palatable thiscalculating scheme of utility, seems no more to have occurred toCumberland than it was adopted by Bentham.

 [898] Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, p. 48.

36. Thus as Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium is nearly the last of adeclining school, Cumberland’s Law of Nature may be justly consideredas the herald, especially in England, of a new ethical philosophy, ofwhich the main characteristics were, first, that it stood complete initself without the aid of revelation; secondly, that it appealed to noauthority of earlier writers whatever, though it sometimes used themin illustration; thirdly, that it availed itself of observation andexperience, alledging them generally, but abstaining from particularinstances of either, and making, above all, no display of erudition;and fourthly; that it entered very little upon casuistry, leaving theapplication of principles to the reader.

|Puffendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations.|

37. In the same year, 1672, a work still more generally distinguishedthan that of Cumberland, was published at Lund, in Sweden, by SamuelPuffendorf, a Saxon by birth, who filled the chair of moral philosophyin that recently-founded university. This large treatise, On the Lawof Nature and Nations, in eight books, was abridged by the author, butnot without some variations, in one perhaps more useful, On the Dutiesof a Man and a Citizen. Both have been translated into French andEnglish; both were long studied in the foreign universities, and evenin our own. Puffendorf has been, perhaps, in moral philosophy, ofgreater authority than Grotius, with whom he is frequently named inconjunction; but this is not the case in international jurisprudence.

|Analysis of this work.|

38. Puffendorf, after a very diffuse and technical chapter on moralbeings, or modes, proceeds to assert a demonstrative certainty inmoral science, but seems not to maintain an inherent right and wrongin actions antecedent to all law, referring the rule of moralityaltogether to the divine appointment. He ends, however, by admittingthat man’s constitution being what it is, God could not, withoutinconsistency, have given him any other law than that under which helives.[899] We discern good from evil by the understanding, whichjudgment when exercised on our own actions is called conscience; buthe strongly protests against any such jurisdiction of conscience,independent of reason and knowledge, as some have asserted. Thisnotion “was first introduced by the schoolmen, and has been maintainedin these latter ages by the crafty casuists for the better securing,of men’s minds and fortunes to their own fortune and advantage.”[900]Puffendorf was a good deal imbued with the Lutheran bigotry which didno justice to any religion but its own.

 [899] C. 2.

 [900] C. 3.

39. Law alone creates obligation; no one can be obliged except towardsa superior. But to compel and to oblige being different things, it isrequired for this latter that we should have received some great goodat the hands of a superior, or have voluntarily submitted to his will.This seems to involve an antecedent moral right, which Puffendorf’sgeneral theory denies.[901] Barbeyrac, his able and watchfulcommentator, derives obligation from our natural dependence on thesupreme authority of God, who can punish the disobedient and rewardothers. In order to make laws obligatory, it is necessary, accordingto Puffendorf, that we should know both the law and the lawgiver’sauthority. Actions are good or evil, as they conform more or less tolaw. And, coming to consider the peculiar qualities of moral actions,he introduces the distinction of perfect and imperfect rights,objecting to that of Grotius and the Roman lawyers, expletive anddistributive justice.[902] This first book of Puffendorf is verydiffuse; and some chapters are wholly omitted in the abridgment.

 [901] C. 6.

 [902] C. 7.

40. The natural state of man, such as in theory we may suppose, is onein which he was never placed, “thrown into the world at a venture, andthen left entirely to himself, with no larger endowments of body ormind than such as we now discover in men.” This, however, he seems tothink physically possible to have been, which I should incline toquestion. Man, in a state of nature, is subject to no earthlysuperior; but we must not infer thence that he is incapable of law,and has a right to everything that is profitable to himself. But,after discussing the position of Hobbes that a state of nature is astate of war, he ends by admitting that the desire of peace is tooweak and uncertain a security for its preservation among mankind.[903]

 [903] L. ii. c. 2.

41. The law of nature he derives not from consent of nations, nor frompersonal utility, but from the condition of man. It is discoverable byreason; its obligation is from God. He denies that it is founded onthe intrinsic honesty or turpitude of actions. It was free to Godwhether he would create an animal to whom the present law of natureshould be applicable. But supposing all things human to remainconstant, the law of nature, though owing its institution to the freewill of God, remains unalterable. He therefore neither agrees whollywith those who deem this law as one arbitrary and mutable at God’spleasure, or those who look upon it as an image of his essentialholiness and justice. For he doubts whether the law of nature isaltogether conformed to the divine attributes as to a type; since wecannot acquire a right with respect to God; so that his justice mustbe of a different kind from ours. Common consent, again, is aninsufficient basis of natural law, few men having searched into thefoundations of their assent, even if we could find a more generalconsent than is the case. And here he expatiates, in the style ofMontaigne’s school, on the variety of moral opinions.[904] Puffendorfnext attacks those who resolve right into self-interest. But,unfortunately, he only proves that men often mistake their interest.“It is a great mistake to fancy it will be profitable to you to takeaway, either by fraud or violence, what another man has acquired byhis labour; since others have not only the power of resisting you, butof taking the same freedom with your goods and possessions.” This isevidently no answer to Hobbes or Spinosa.

 [904] C. 3.

42. The nature of man, his wants, his powers of doing mischief toothers, his means of mutual assistance, show that he cannot besupported in things necessary and convenient to him withoutsociety, so that others may promote his interests. Hence, sociablenessis a primary law of nature, and all actions tending towards it arecommanded, as the opposite are forbidden by that law. In this heagrees with Grotius; and, after he had become acquainted withCumberland’s work, observes that the fundamental law of that writer,to live for the common good, and show benevolence towards all men,does not differ from his own. He partly explains, and partly answers,the theory of Hobbes. From Grotius he dissents in denying that the lawof nature would be binding without religion, but does not think thesoul’s immortality essential to it.[905] The best division of naturallaw is into duties towards ourselves and towards others. But in theabridged work, the Duties of a Man and a Citizen, he adds thosetowards God.

 [905] C. 8.

43. The former class of duties he illustrates with much prolixity andneedless quotation,[906] and passes to the right of self-defence,which seems to be the debatable frontier between the two classes ofobligation. In this chapter Puffendorf is free from the extremescrupulousness of Grotius; yet he differs from him, as well as fromBarbeyrac and Locke, in denying the right of attacking the aggressor,where a stranger has been injured, unless where we are bound to him bypromise.[907]

 [906] C. 4.

 [907] C. 5.

44. All persons, as is evident, are bound to repair wilful injury, andeven that arising from their neglect; but not where they have not beenin fault.[908] Yet the civil action _ob pauperiem_, for casualdamage by a beast or slave, which Grotius held to be merely ofpositive law, and which our own (in the only applicable case) does notrecognise, Puffendorf thinks grounded on natural right. He considersseveral questions of reparation, chiefly such as we find in Grotius.From these, after some intermediate disquisitions on moral duties, hecomes to the more extensive province of casuistry, the obligation ofpromises.[909] These, for the most part, give perfect rights which maybe enforced, though this is not universal; hence, promises maythemselves be called imperfect or perfect. The former, or _nudapacta_, seem to be obligatory rather by the rules of veracity, andfor the sake of maintaining confidence among men, than in strictjustice; yet he endeavours to refute the opinion of a jurist who held_nuda pacta_ to involve no obligation beyond a compensation fordamage. Free consent and knowledge of the whole subject are requiredfor the validity of a promise; hence, drunkenness takes away itsobligation.[910] Whether a minor is bound in conscience, though not inlaw, has been disputed; the Romish casuists all denying it unless hehas received an advantage. La Placette, it seems, after the time ofPuffendorf, though a very rigid moralist, confines the obligation tocases where the other party sustains any real damage by thenon-performance. The world, in some instances, at least, would exactmore than the strictest casuists. Promises were invalidated, thoughnot always mutual contracts, by error; and fraud in the other partyannuls a contract. There can be no obligation, Puffendorf maintains,without a corresponding right; hence, fear arising from the fault ofthe other party invalidates a promise. But those made to pirates orrebels, not being extorted by fear, are binding. Vows to God he deemsnot binding, unless accepted by him; but he thinks that we may presumetheir acceptance when they serve to define or specify an indeterminateduty.[911] Unlawful promises must not be performed by the partypromising to commit an evil act, and as to performance of the otherparty’s promise, he differs from Grotius in thinking it not binding.Barbeyrac concurs with Puffendorf, but Paley holds the contrary; andthe common sentiments of mankind seem to be on that side.[912]

 [908] L. iii., c. 1.

 [909] C. 5.

 [910] C. 6.

 [911] C. 6.

 [912] C. 7.

45. The obligations of veracity Puffendorf, after much needlessprolixity on the nature of signs and words, deduces from a tacitcontract among mankind, that words, or signs of intention, shall beused in a definite sense which others may understand.[913] He israther fond of these imaginary compacts. The laxer casuists are innothing more distinguishable from the more rigid than in theexceptions they allow to the general rule of veracity. Many, likeAugustin and most of the fathers, have laid it down that all falsehoodis unlawful; even some of the jurists, when treating of morality, haddone the same. But Puffendorf gives considerable latitude todeviations from truth, by mental reserve, by ambiguous words, bydirect falsehood. Barbeyrac, in a long note, goes a good deal farther,and indeed beyond any safe limit.[914] An oath, according to thosewriters, adds no peculiar obligation; another remarkablediscrepancy between their system and that of the theological casuists.Oaths may be released by the party in favour of whom they are made;but it is necessary to observe whether the dispensing authority isreally the obligee.

 [913] L. iv., c. 1.

 [914] Barbeyrac admits that several writers of authority since Puffendorf had maintained the strict obligation of veracity for its own sake; Thomasius, Buddæus, Noodt, and above all, La Placette. His own notions are too much the other way, both according to the received standard of honourable and decorous character among men, and according to any sound theory of ethics. Lying, he says, condemned in Scripture, always means fraud or injury to others. His doctrine is, that we are to speak the truth, or to be silent, or to feign and dissemble, accordingly as our own lawful interest, or that of our neighbour, may demand it. This is surely as untenable one way as any paradox in Augustin or La Placette can be the other.

46. We now advance to a different part of moral philosophy, the rightsof property. Puffendorf first inquires into the natural right ofkilling animals for food; but does not defend it very well, restingthis right on the want of mutual obligation between man and brutes.The arguments from physiology and the manifest propensity in mankindto devour animals, are much stronger. He censures cruelty towardsanimals, but hardly on clear grounds; the disregard of moral emotion,which belongs to his philosophy, prevents his judging it rightly.[915]Property itself in things he grounds on an express or tacit contractof mankind, while all was yet in common, that each should possess aseparate portion. This covenant he supposes to have been graduallyextended, as men perceived the advantage of separate possession, landshaving been cultivated in common after severalty had been establishedin houses and moveable goods; and he refutes those who maintainproperty to be coeval with mankind, and immediately founded on the lawof nature.[916] Nothing can be the subject of property which isincapable of exclusive occupation; not therefore the ocean, thoughsome narrow seas may be appropriated.[917] In the remainder of thisfourth book he treats on a variety of subjects connected withproperty, which carry us over a wide field of natural and positivejurisprudence.

 [915] C. 3.

 [916] C. 4. Barbeyrac more wisely denies this assumed compact, and rests the right of property on individual occupancy.

 [917] C. 5.

47. The fifth book of Puffendorf relates to price, and to allcontracts onerous or lucrative, according to the distinction of thejurists, with the rules of their interpretation. It is a runningcriticism on the Roman Law, comparing it with right reason andjustice. Price he divides into proper and eminent; the first beingwhat we call real value, or capacity of procuring things desirable bymeans of exchange; the second the money value. What is said on thissubject would now seem common-place and prolix; but it is ratherinteresting to observe the beginnings of political economy. Money, hethinks, was introduced by an agreement of civilized nations, as ameasure of value. Puffendorf, of more enlarged views than Grotius,vindicates usury which the other had given up; and mentions theevasions usually practised such as the grant of an annuity for alimited term.

48. In the sixth book we have disquisitions on matrimony and therights incident to it, on paternal and on herile power. Amongother questions he raises one whether the husband has any naturaldominion over the wife. This he thinks hard to prove, except as hissex gives him an advantage; but fitness to govern does not create aright. He has recourse therefore to his usual solution, her tacit orexpress promise of obedience. Polygamy he deems contrary to the law ofnature, but not incest except in the direct line. This is consonant towhat had been the general determination of philosophers.[918] Theright of parents he derives from the general duty of sociableness,which makes preservation of children necessary, and on the affectionimplanted in them by nature; also on a presumed consent of thechildren in return for their maintenance.[919] In a state of naturethis command belongs to the mother, unless she has waived it by amatrimonial contract. In childhood, the fruits of the child’s labourbelong to the father, though the former seems to be capable ofreceiving gifts. Fathers, as heads of families, have a kind ofsovereignty, distinct from the paternal, to which adult childrenresiding with them are submitted. But after their emancipation byleaving their father’s house, which does not absolutely require hisconsent, they are bound only to duty and reverence. The power of amaster over his servant is not by nature, nor by the law of war, butoriginally by a contract founded on necessity. War increased thenumber of those in servitude. A slave, whatever Hobbes may say, iscapable of being injured by his master; but the laws of somenations give more power to the latter than is warranted by those ofnature. Servitude implies only an obligation to perpetual labour for arecompence (namely, at least maintenance); the evil necessary to thiscondition has been much exaggerated by opinion.[920]

 [918] L. vi., c. 1.

 [919] C. 2.

 [920] C. 3.

|Puffendorf and Paley compared.|

49. Puffendorf and Cumberland are the two great promoters, if notfounders of that school in ethics, which abandoning the higher groundof both philosophers and theologians, that of an intrinsic fitness andpropriety in actions, resolved them all into their conducivenesstowards good. Their _utile_ indeed is very different from whatCicero has so named, which is merely personal, but it is differentalso from his _honestum_. The sociableness of Puffendorf isperhaps much the same with the general good of Cumberland, but issomewhat less comprehensive and less clear. Paley, who had not read agreat deal, had certainly read Puffendorf; he has borrowed from himseveral minor illustrations, such as the equivocal promise of Timur(called by Paley Temures) to the garrison of Sebastia, and the rulesfor division of profits in partnership. Their minds were in somerespects alike; both phlegmatic, honest, and sincere, without warmthor fancy; yet there seems a more thorough good-nature and kindlinessof heart in our countryman. Though an ennobled German, Puffendorf hadas little respect for the law of honour as Paley himself. They do notindeed resemble each other in their modes of writing; one was verylaborious, the other very indolent; one sometimes misses his mark bycircuity, the other by precipitance. The quotations in Puffendorf areoften as thickly strewed as in Grotius, though he takes less from thepoets; but he seems not to build upon their authority, which givesthem still more the air of superfluity. His theory indeed, whichassigns no weight to anything but a close geometrical deduction fromaxioms, is incompatible with much deference to authority; and he setsaside the customs of mankind as unstable and arbitrary. He has nottaken much from Hobbes, whose principles are far from his; but a greatdeal from Grotius. The leading difference between the treatises ofthese celebrated men is that, while the former contemplated the lawthat ought to be observed among independent communities as his primaryobject, to render which more evident he lays down the fundamentalprinciples of private right or the law of nature, the latter, on theother hand, not only begins with natural law, but makes it the greattheme of his inquiries.

|Rochefoucault.|

50. Few books have been more highly extolled or more severely blamedthan the Thoughts or Maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucault. They have,indeed, the greatest advantages for popularity; the production of aman less distinguished by his high rank than by his activeparticipation in the factions of his country at a time when theyreached the limits of civil war, and by his brilliancy among theaccomplished courtiers of Louis XIV.; concise and energetic inexpression; reduced to those short aphorisms, which leave much to thereader’s acuteness, and yet save his labour; not often obscure andnever wearisome; an evident generalisation of long experience, withoutpedantry, without method, without deductive reasonings, yet wearing anappearance at least of profundity, they delight the intelligent thoughindolent man of the world, and must be read with some admiration bythe philosopher. Among the books in ancient and modern times whichrecord the conclusions of observing men on the moral qualities oftheir fellows, a high place should be reserved for the Maxims ofRochefoucault.

51. The censure that has so heavily fallen upon this writer is foundedon his proneness to assign a low and selfish motive to human actions,and even to those which are most usually denominated virtuous. It isimpossible to dispute the partial truth of this charge. Yet it may bepleaded, that many of his maxims are not universal even in theirenunciation; and that, in others, where, for the sake of a moreeffective expression, the position seems general, we ought tounderstand it with such limitations as our experience may suggest. Thesociety with which the Duke of la Rochefoucault was conversant couldnot elevate his notions of disinterested probity in man, or ofunblemished purity in woman. Those who call themselves the world, itis easy to perceive, set aside, in their remarks on human nature, allthe species but themselves, and sometimes generalise their maxims, toan amusing degree, from the manners and sentiments which have grown upin the atmosphere of a court or an aristocratic society. Rochefoucaultwas of far too reflecting a mind to be confounded with such mereworldlings; yet he bears witness to the contracted observation and theprecipitate inferences which an intercourse with a single class ofsociety scarcely fails to generate. The malignity of Rochefoucault isalways directed against the false virtues of mankind, but nevertouches the reality of moral truths, and leaves us less injured thanthe cold, heartless indifference to right which distils from the pagesof Hobbes. Nor does he deal in those sweeping denials of goodness tohuman nature which are so frequently hazarded under the mask ofreligion. His maxims are not exempt from defects of a different kind;they are sometimes refined to a degree of obscurity, and sometimes,under an epigrammatic turn, convey little more than a trivial meaning.Perhaps, however, it would be just to say that one third of the numberdeserve to be remembered, as at least partially true and useful; andthis is a large proportion, if we exclude all that are not in somemeasure original.

|La Bruyere.|

52. The Characters of La Bruyere, published in 1687, approach to theMaxims of La Rochefoucault by their refinement, their brevity, theirgeneral tendency to an unfavourable explanation of human conduct. Thisnevertheless is not so strongly marked, and the picture of selfishnesswants the darkest touches of his contemporary’s colouring. La Bruyerehad a model in antiquity, Theophrastus, whose short book of Charactershe had himself translated, and prefixed to his own; a step notimpolitic for his own glory, since the Greek writer, with nocontemptible degree of merit, has been incomparably surpassed by hisimitator. Many changes in the condition of society, the greaterdiversity of ranks and occupations in modern Europe, the influence ofwomen over the other sex, as well as their own varieties of characterand manners, the effects of religion, learning, chivalry, royalty,have given a range to this very pleasing department of moralliterature which no ancient could have compassed. Nor has Theophrastustaken much pains to search the springs of character; his delineationsare bold and clear, but merely in outline; we see more of manners thanof nature, and the former more in general classes than in portraiture.La Bruyere has often painted single persons; whether accurately or no,we cannot at this time determine, but with a felicity of descriptionwhich at once renders the likeness probable, and suggests itsapplication to those we ourselves have seen. His general reflections,like those of Rochefoucault, are brilliant with antithesis andepigrammatic conciseness; sometimes perhaps not quite just or quiteperspicuous. But he pleases more, on the whole, from his greatervariety, his greater liveliness, and his gentler spirit of raillery.Nor does he forget to mingle the praise of some with his satire. Buthe is rather a bold writer for his age and his position in the court,and what looks like flattery may well have been ironical. Few havebeen more imitated, as well as more admired, than La Bruyere, whofills up the list of those whom France has boasted as most conspicuousfor their knowledge of human nature. The others are Montaigne,Charron, Pascal, and Rochefoucault; but we might withdraw the secondname without injustice.

|Education. Milton’s Tractate.|

53. Moral philosophy comprehends in its literature whatever has beenwritten on the best theory and precepts of moral education,disregarding what is confined to erudition, though this may frequentlybe partially treated in works of the former class. Education,notwithstanding its recognised importance, was miserably neglected inEngland, and quite as much, perhaps, in every part of Europe. Schools,kept by low-born illiberal pedants, teaching little, and that littleill, without regard to any judicious discipline or moral culture, onthe one hand, or, on the other, a pretence of instruction at homeunder some ignorant and servile tutor, seem to have been thealternatives of our juvenile gentry. Milton raised his voice againstthese faulty methods in his short Tractate on Education. This aboundswith bursts of his elevated spirit; and sketches out a model of publiccolleges, wherein the teaching should be more comprehensive, moreliberal, more accommodated to what he deems the great aim of educationthan what was in use. “That,” he says, “I call a complete and generouseducation which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, andmagnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace andwar.” But when Milton descends to specify the course of studies hewould recommend, it appears singularly ill-chosen and impracticable,nearly confined to ancient writers, even in mathematics and othersubjects where they could not be sufficient, and likely to leave thestudent very far from that aptitude for offices of war and peace whichhe had held forth as the reward of his diligence.

|Locke on Education. Its merits.|

54. Locke, many years afterwards, turned his thoughts to educationwith all the advantages that a strong understanding and entiredisinterestedness could give him; but, as we should imagine, with somenecessary deficiencies of experience, though we hardly perceive muchof them in his writings. He looked on the methods usual in his agewith severity, or, some would say, with prejudice; yet I know not bywhat proof we can refute his testimony. In his Treatise on Education,which may be reckoned an introduction to that on the Conduct of theUnderstanding, since the latter is but a scheme of that education anadult person should give himself, he has uttered, to say the least,more good sense on the subject than will be found in any precedingwriter. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or other ages, whothink that to pour their wordy book-learning into the memory is thetrue discipline of childhood. The culture of the intellectual andmoral faculties in their most extensive sense, the health of the body,the accomplishments which common utility or social custom haverendered valuable, enter into his idea of the best model of education,conjointly at least with any knowledge that can be imparted by books.The ancients had written in the same spirit: in Xenophon, in Plato, inAristotle, the noble conception which Milton has expressed, of formingthe perfect man, is always predominant over mere literary instruction,if indeed the latter can be said to appear at all in their writings onthis subject; but we had become the dupes of schoolmasters in ourriper years, as we had been their slaves in our youth. Much has beenwritten, and often well, since the days of Locke; but he is the chiefsource from which it has been ultimately derived; and though the Emileis more attractive in manner, it may be doubtful whether it is asrational and practicable as the Treatise on Education. If they haveboth the same defect, that their authors wanted sufficient observationof children, it is certain that the caution and sound judgment ofLocke have rescued him better from error.

|And defects.|

55. There are, indeed, from this or from other causes, severalpassages in the Treatise on Education to which we cannot give anunhesitating assent. Locke appears to have somewhat exaggerated theefficacy of education. This is an error on the right side in a workthat aims at persuasion in a practical matter; but we are now lookingat theoretical truth alone. “I think I may say,” he begins, “that ofall the men we meet with nine parts of ten are what they are, good orevil, useful or not, by their education. It is this which makes thegreat difference in mankind. The little or almost insensibleimpressions on our tender infancies have very important and lastingconsequences; and there it is as in the fountains of some rivers,where a gentle application of the hand turns the flexible waters intochannels that make them take quite contrary courses; and by thislittle direction given them at first in the source, they receivedifferent tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distantplaces.” “I imagine,” he adds soon afterwards, “the minds of childrenas easily turned this or that way as water itself.”[921]

 [921] Treatise on Education, § 152. “The difference,” he afterwards says, “to be found in the manners and abilities of men is owing more to their education than to anything else.” § 32.

56. This passage is an instance of Locke’s unfortunate fondness foranalogical parallels, which, as far as I have observed, much morefrequently obscure a philosophical theorem, than shed any light uponit. Nothing would be easier than to confirm the contrary propositionby such fanciful analogies from external nature. In itself, theposition is hyperbolical to extravagance. It is no more disparagementto the uses of education that it will not produce the like effectsupon every individual, than it is to those of agriculture (I purposelyuse this sort of idle analogy) that we do not reap the same quantityof corn from every soil. Those who are conversant with children on alarge scale will, I believe, unanimously deny this levelling efficacyof tuition. The variety of characters even in children of the samefamily, where the domestic associations of infancy have run in thesame trains, and where many physical congenialities may produce, andordinarily do produce, a moral resemblance, is of sufficientlyfrequent occurrence to prove that in human beings there are intrinsicdissimilitudes, which no education can essentially overcome. Amongmere theorists, however, this hypothesis seems to be popular. And asmany of these extend their notion of the plasticity of human nature tothe effects of government and legislation, which is a sort ofcontinuance of the same controlling power, they are generally inducedto disregard past experience of human affairs, because they flatterthemselves that under a more scientific administration mankind willbecome something very different from what they have been.

57. In the age of Locke, if we may confide in what he tellsus, the domestic education of children must have been of the worstkind. “If we look,” he says, “into the common management of childrenwe shall have reason to wonder, in the great dissoluteness of mannerswhich the world complains of, that there are any footsteps at all leftof virtue. I desire to know what vice can be named which parents andthose about children do not season them with, and drop into them theseeds of, as often as they are capable to receive them.” The mode oftreatment seems to have been passionate and often barbarous severityalternating with foolish indulgence. Their spirits were often brokendown and their ingenuousness destroyed by the former; their habits ofself-will and sensuality confirmed by the latter. This was the courseused by parents; but the pedagogues of course confined themselves totheir favourite scheme of instruction and reformation by punishment.Dugald Stewart has animadverted on the austerity of Locke’s rules ofeducation.[922] And this is certainly the case in some respects. Herecommends that children should be taught to expect nothing because itwill give them pleasure, but only what will be useful to them; a rulefit, in its rigid meaning, to destroy the pleasure of the presentmoment in the only period of life that the present moment can bereally enjoyed. No father himself, Locke neither knew how ill a parentcan spare the love of his child, nor how ill a child can want theconstant and practical sense of a parent’s love. But if he was led toofar by deprecating the mischievous indulgence he had sometimeswitnessed, he made some amends by his censures on the prevalentdiscipline of stripes. Of this he speaks with the disapprobationnatural to a mind already schooled in the habits of reason andvirtue.[923] “I cannot think any correction useful to a child wherethe shame of suffering for having done amiss does not work more uponhim than the pain.” Esteem and disgrace are the rewards andpunishments to which he principally looks, and surely this is a noblefoundation for moral discipline. He also recommends that childrenshould be much with their parents, and allowed all reasonable liberty.I cannot think that Stewart’s phrase “hardness of character,” which heaccounts for by the early intercourse of Locke with the Puritans, isjustly applicable to anything that we know of him; and many morepassages in this very treatise might be adduced to prove hiskindliness of disposition, than will appear to any judicious personover austere. He found in fact everything wrong; a false system ofreward and punishment, a false view of the objects of education, afalse selection of studies, false methods of pursuing them. Where somuch was to be corrected, it was perhaps natural to be too sanguineabout the effects of the remedy.

 [922] Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclop. Britann.

 [923] If severity carried to the highest pitch does prevail, and works a cure upon the present unruly distemper, it is often bringing in the room of it a worse and more dangerous disease by breaking the mind; and then in the place of a disorderly young fellow, you have a low-spirited moped creature, who however with his unnatural sobriety he may please silly people, who commend tame inactive children, because they make no noise, nor give them any trouble; yet at least will probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends, as he will be all his life an useless thing to himself and others. § 51.

58. Of the old dispute as to public and private education he says,that both sides have their inconveniencies, but incline to prefer thelatter, influenced, as is evident, rather by disgust at the state ofour schools than by any general principle.[924] For he insists much onthe necessity of giving a boy a sufficient knowledge of what he is toexpect in the world. “The longer he is kept hood-winked, the less hewill see when he comes abroad into open daylight, and be the moreexposed to be a prey to himself and others.” And this experience will,as is daily seen, not be supplied by a tutor’s lectures, any more thanby books; nor can be given by any course save a public education.Locke urges the necessity of having a tutor well-bred, and withknowledge of the world, the ways, the humours, the follies, thecheats, the faults of the age he is fallen into, and particularly ofthe country he lives in, as of far more importance than hisscholarship. “The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledgeof it.... He that thinks not this of more moment to his son, and forwhich he more needs a governor, than the languages and learnedsciences, forgets of how much more use it is to judge right of men andmanage his affairs wisely with them, than to speak Greek and Latin,and argue in mood and figure, or to have his head filled with theabstruse speculations of natural philosophy and metaphysics; nay, thanto be well versed in Greek and Roman writers, though that be muchbetter for a gentleman, than to be a good Peripatetic or Cartesian;because these ancient authors observed and painted mankindwell, and give the best light into that kind of knowledge. He thatgoes into the eastern parts of Asia will find able and acceptable menwithout any of these; but without virtue, knowledge of the world, andcivility, an accomplished and valuable man can be found nowhere.”[925]

 [924] § 70.

 [925] § 94.

59. It is to be remembered, that the person whose education Lockeundertakes to fashion is an English gentleman. Virtue, wisdom,breeding, and learning, are desirable for such an one in their order,but the last not so much as the rest.[926] It must be had, he says,but only as subservient to greater qualities. No objections have beenmore frequently raised against the scheme of Locke than on account ofhis depreciation of classical literature, and of the study of thelearned languages. This is not wholly true: Latin he reckonsabsolutely necessary for a gentleman, though it is absurd that thoseshould learn Latin who are designed for trade, and never look again ata Latin book.[927] If he lays not so much stress on Greek as agentleman’s study, though he by no means would abandon it, it isbecause, in fact, most gentlemen, especially in his age, have donevery well without it; and nothing can be deemed indispensable in theeducation of a child, the want of which does not leave a manifestdeficiency in the man. “No man,” he observes, “can pass for a scholarwho is ignorant of the Greek language. But I am not here consideringof the education of a professed scholar, but of a gentleman.”[928]

 [926] § 138.

 [927] § 189.

 [928] § 195.

60. The peculiar methods recommended by Locke in learning languages,especially the Latin, appear to be of very doubtful utility, thoughsome of them do not want strenuous supporters in the present day. Suchare the method of interlinear translation, the learning of mere wordswithout grammar, and, above all, the practice of talking Latin with atutor who speaks it well--a phœnix whom he has not shown us where tofind.[929] In general, he seems to underrate the difficulty ofacquiring what even he would call a competent learning, and what is ofmore importance, and no rare mistake in those who write on thissubject, to confound the acquisition of a language with the knowledgeof its literature. The best ancient writers both in Greek and Latinfurnish so much of wise reflection, of noble sentiment, of all that isbeautiful and salutary, that no one who has had the happiness to knowand feel what they are, will desire to see their study excluded orstinted in its just extent, wherever the education of those who are tobe the first and best of the country is carried forward. And though byfar the greater portion of mankind must, by the very force of terms,remain in the ranks of intellectual mediocrity, it is an ominous signof any times when no thought is taken for those who may rise beyondit.

 [929] § 165.

61. In every other part of instruction, Locke has still an eye to whatis useful for a gentleman. French he justly thinks should be taughtbefore Latin; no geometry is required by him beyond Euclid, but herecommends geography, history and chronology, drawing, and what may bethought now as little necessary for a gentleman as Homer, thejurisprudence of Grotius and Puffendorf. He strongly urges the writingEnglish well, though a thing commonly neglected, and after speakingwith contempt of the artificial systems of logic and rhetoric, sendsthe pupil to Chillingworth for the best example of reasoning, and toTully for the best idea of eloquence. “And let him read those thingsthat are well writ in English to perfect his style in the purity ofour language.”[930]

 [930] § 188.

62. It would be to transcribe half this treatise, were we to mentionall the judicious and minute observations on the management ofchildren it contains. Whatever may have been Locke’s opportunities, hecertainly availed himself of them to the utmost. It is as far aspossible from a theoretical book; and in many respects the best ofmodern times, such as those of the Edgeworth name, might pass fordevelopments of his principles. The patient attention to everycirc*mstance, a peculiar characteristic of the genius of Locke, is innone of his works better displayed. His rules for the health ofchildren, though sometimes trivial, since the subject has been moreregarded, his excellent advice as to checking effeminacy andtimorousness, his observations on their curiosity, presumption,idleness, on their plays and recreations, bespeak an intense, thoughcalm, love of truth and goodness; a quality which few have possessedmore fully, or known so well how to exert, as this admirablephilosopher.

|Fenelon on female education.|

63. No one had condescended to spare any thoughts for femaleeducation, till Fenelon, in 1688, published his earliest work, Surl’Education des Filles. This was the occasion of his appointment aspreceptor to the grandchildren of Louis XIV.; for much of thistreatise, and perhaps the most valuable part, is equally applicable toboth sexes. It may be compared with that of Locke, written nearly atthe same time, and bearing a great resemblance in its spirit. Bothhave the education of a polished and high-bred youth, rather than ofscholars, before them; and Fenelon rarely loses sight of his peculiarobject, or gives any rule which is not capable of being practised infemale education. In many respects he coincides with our Englishphilosopher, and observes with him that a child learns much before hespeaks, so that the cultivation of his moral qualities can hardlybegin too soon. Both complain of the severity of parents, anddeprecate the mode of bringing up by punishment. Both advise theexhibition of virtue and religion in pleasing lights, and censure theaustere dogmatism with which they were inculcated, before the mind wassufficiently developed to apprehend them. But the characteristicsweetness of Fenelon’s disposition is often shown in contrast with thesomewhat stern inflexibility of Locke. His theory is uniformlyindulgent; his method of education is a labour of love; a desire torender children happy for the time, as well as afterwards, runsthrough his book, and he may perhaps be considered the founder of thatschool which has endeavoured to dissipate the terrors and dry thetears of childhood. “I have seen,” he says, “many children who havelearned to read in play; we have only to read entertaining stories tothem out of a book, and insensibly teach them the letters, they willsoon desire to go for themselves to the source of their amusem*nt.”“Books should be given them well bound and gilt, with good engravings,clear types; for all that captivates the imagination facilitatesstudy; the choice should be such as contain short and marvellousstories.” These details are now trivial, but in the days of Fenelonthey may have been otherwise.

64. In several passages he displays not only a judicious spirit, butan observation that must have been long exercised. “Of all thequalities we perceive in children,” he remarks, “there is only onethat can be trusted as likely to be durable, which is sound judgment;it always grows with their growth, if it is well cultivated; but thegrace of childhood is effaced; its vivacity is extinguished; even itssensibility is often lost, because their own passions and theintercourse of others insensibly harden the hearts of young personswho enter into the world.” It is therefore a solid and just way ofthinking which we should most value and most improve, and this not byany means less in girls than in the other sex, since their duties andthe occupations they are called upon to fill do not less require it.Hence he not only deprecates an excessive taste for dress, but, withmore originality, points out the danger of that extreme delicacy andrefinement which incapacitate women for the ordinary affairs of life,and give them a contempt for a country life and rural economy.

65. It will be justly thought at present, that he discourages too muchthe acquisition of knowledge by women. “Keep their minds,” he says inone place, “as much as you can within the usual limits, and let themunderstand that the modesty of their sex ought to shrink from sciencewith almost as much delicacy as from vice.” This seems, however, to beconfined to science or philosophy in a strict sense; for he permitsafterwards a larger compass of reading. Women should write a goodhand, understand orthography and the four rules of arithmetic, whichthey will want in domestic affairs. To these he requires a closeattention, and even recommends to women an acquaintance with some ofthe common forms and maxims of law. Greek, Roman, and French history,with the best travels, will be valuable, and keep them from seekingpernicious fictions. Books also of eloquence and poetry may be readwith selection, taking care to avoid any that relate to love; musicand painting may be taught with the same precaution. The Italian andSpanish languages are of no use but to enlarge their knowledge ofdangerous books; Latin is better as the language of the church; butthis he would recommend only for girls of good sense and discreetconduct, who will make no display of the acquisition.

 SECT. II.

 ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Puffendorf--Spinosa--Harrington’s Oceana--Locke on Government--Political Economy._

|Puffendorf’s theory of politics.|

66. In the seventh book of Puffendorf’s great work, he comes topolitical philosophy, towards which he had been gradually tending forsome time; primary societies, or those of families, leading the way tothe consideration of civil government. Grotius derives the origin ofthis from the natural sociableness of mankind. But this, as Puffendorfremarks, may be satisfied by the primary societies. The real cause wasexperience of the injuries which one man can inflict on another.[931]And, after a prolix disquisition, he concludes that civil society musthave been constituted, first, by a covenant of a number of men, eachwith each, to form a commonwealth, and to be bound by the majority, inwhich primary covenant they must be unanimous, that is, everydissentient would retain his natural liberty; next, by a resolution ordecree of the majority, that certain rulers shall govern the rest;and, lastly, by a second covenant between these rulers and the rest,one promising to take care of the public weal, and the other to obeylawful commands.[932] This covenant, as he attempts to show, existseven in a democracy, though it is less evident than in other forms.Hobbes had admitted the first of these covenants, but denied thesecond; Barbeyrac, the able commentator on Puffendorf, has doneexactly the reverse. A state once formed may be conceived to exist asone person, with a single will, represented by that of the sovereign,wherever the sovereignty may be placed. This sovereignty is founded onthe covenants, and is not conferred, except indirectly like everyother human power, by God. Puffendorf here combats the oppositeopinion, which churchmen were as prone to hold, it seems, in Germanyas in England.[933]

 [931] L. vii., c. 1.

 [932] C. 2.

 [933] C. 3.

67. The legislative, punitive, and judiciary powers, those of makingwar and peace, of appointing magistrates, and levying taxes, are soclosely connected that no one can be denied to the sovereign. As tohis right in ecclesiastical matters, Puffendorf leaves it for othersto determine.[934] He seems in this part of the work too favourable tounlimited monarchy, declaring himself against a mixed government. Thesovereign power must be irresponsible, and cannot be bound by the lawitself has given. He even denies that all government is intended forthe good of the governed--a position strangely inconsistent with histheory of a covenant--but if it were, this end, the public good, maybe more probably discerned by the prince than by the people.[935] Yethe admits that the exorbitancies of a prince should be restrained bycertain fundamental laws, and holds, that having accepted such, andratified them by oath, he is not at liberty to break them; arguing,with some apparent inconsistency, against those who maintain suchlimitations to be inconsistent with monarchy, and even recommendingthe institution of councils, without whose consent certain acts of thesovereign shall not be valid. This can only be reconciled with hisformer declaration against a mixed sovereignty, by the distinctionfamiliar to our own constitutional lawyers, between the joint acts ofA and B, and the acts of A with B’s consent. But this is a little tootechnical and unreal for philosophical politics.[936] Governments notreducible to one of the three simple forms he calls irregular; such asthe Roman republic or German empire. But there may be systems ofstates, or aggregate communities, either subject to one king bydifferent titles, or united by federation. He inclines to deny thatthe majority can bind the minority in the latter case, and seems totake it for granted that some of the confederates can quit the leagueat pleasure.[937]

 [934] C. 4.

 [935] C. 6.

 [936] C. 6.

 [937] C. 5.

68. Sovereignty over persons cannot be acquired, strictly speaking, byseizure or occupation, as in the case of lands, and requires, evenafter conquest, their consent to obey; which will be given, in orderto secure themselves from the other rights of war. It is a problemwhether, after an unjust conquest, the forced consent of the peoplecan give a lawful title to sovereignty. Puffendorf distinguishesbetween a monarchy and a republic thus unjustly subdued. In the formercase, so long as the lawful heirs exist or preserve their claim, theduty of restitution continues. But in the latter, as the people maylive as happily under a monarchy as under a republic, he thinks thatan usurper has only to treat them well, without scruple as to histitle. If he oppresses them, no course of years will make his titlelawful, or bind them in conscience to obey, length of possession beingonly length of injury. If a sovereign has been justly divested of hispower, the community becomes immediately free; but if by unjustrebellion, his right continues till by silence he has appeared toabandon it.[938]

 [938] C. 7.

69. Every one will agree that a lawful ruler must not be opposedwithin the limits of his authority. But let us put the case that heshould command what is unlawful, or maltreat his subjects. WhateverHobbes may say, a subject may be injured by his sovereign. Butwe should bear minor injuries patiently, and in the worst cases avoidpersonal resistance. Those are not to be listened to who assert that aking, degenerating into a tyrant, may be resisted and punished by hispeople. He admits only a right of self-defence, if he manifestlybecomes a public enemy: in all this he seems to go quite as far asGrotius himself. The next question is as to the right of invaders andusurpers to obedience. This, it will be observed, he had already insome measure discussed; but Puffendorf is neither strict in method,nor free from repetitions. He labours much about the rights of thelawful prince insisting upon them, where the subjects have promisedallegiance to the usurper. This, he thinks, must be deemed temporary,until the legitimate sovereign has recovered his dominions. But whatmay be done towards this end by such as have sworn fidelity to theactual ruler, he does not intimate. It is one of the nicest problemsin political casuistry.[939]

 [939] C. 8.

70. Civil laws are such as emanate from the supreme power, withrespect to things left indifferent by the laws of God and nature. Whatchiefly belongs to them is the form and method of acquiring rights orobtaining redress for wrongs. If we give the law of nature all thatbelongs to it, and take away from the civilians what they havehitherto engrossed and promiscuously treated of, we shall bring thecivil law to a much narrower compass; not to say that at presentwhenever the civil law is deficient we must have recourse to the lawof nature, and that therefore in all commonwealths the natural lawssupply the defects of the civil.[940] He argues against Hobbes’s tenetthat the civil law cannot be contrary to the law of nature; and thatwhat shall be deemed theft, murder, or adultery, depends on theformer. The subject is bound generally not to obey the unjust commandsof his sovereign; but in the case of war he thinks it, on the whole,safest, considering the usual difficulties of such questions, that thesubject should serve, and throw the responsibility before God or theprince.[941] In this problem of casuistry, common usage is whollyagainst theory.

 [940] L. viii., c. 1.

 [941] L. viii., c. 1.

71. Punishment may be defined an evil inflicted by authority upon viewof antecedent transgression.[942] Hence, exclusion, on politicalgrounds, from public office, or separation of the sick for the sake ofthe healthy, is not punishment. It does not belong to distributivejustice, nor is the magistrate bound to apportion it to the malignityof the offence, though this is usual. Superior authority is necessaryto punishment; and he differs from Grotius by denying that we have aright to avenge the injuries of those who have no claim upon us.Punishment ought never to be inflicted without the prospect of someadvantage from it; either the correction of the offender, or theprevention of his repeating the offence. But example he seems not tothink a direct end of punishment, though it should be regarded in itsinfliction. It is not necessary that all offences which the lawdenounces should be actually punished, though some jurists havequestioned the right of pardon. Punishments ought to be measuredaccording to the object of the crime, the injury to the commonwealth,and the malice of the delinquent. Hence, offences against God shouldbe deemed most criminal, and next, such as disturb the state; thenwhatever affect life, the peace or honour of families, privateproperty or reputation, following the scale of the Decalogue. Butthough all crimes do not require equal severity, an exact proportionof penalties is not required. Most of this chapter exhibits thevacillating, indistinct, and almost self-contradictory resolutions ofdifficulties so frequent in Puffendorf. He concludes by establishing agreat truth, that no man can be justly punished for the offence ofanother; nor even a community for the acts of their forefathers,notwithstanding their fictitious immortality.[943]

 [942] C. 3.

 [943] C. 3.

72. After some chapters on the law of nations, Puffendorf concludeswith discussing the cessation of subjection. This may ordinarily be byvoluntarily removing to another state with permission of thesovereign. And if no law or custom interferes, the subject has a rightto do this at his discretion. The state has not a right to expelcitizens without some offence. It loses all authority over a banishedman. He concludes by considering the rare case of so great adiminution of the people, as to raise a doubt of their politicalidentity.[944]

 [944] C. 11. 12.

|Politics of Spinosa.|

73. The political portion of this large work, is not, as will appear,very fertile in original or sagacious reflection. A greater degree ofboth, though by no means accompanied with a sound theory,distinguishes the Political Treatise of Spinosa, one which must not beconfounded with the Theologico-political Treatise, a very differentwork. In this he undertakes to show how a state under a regalor aristocratic government ought to be constituted so as to secure thetranquility and freedom of the citizens. Whether Spinosa borrowed histheory on the origin of government from Hobbes, is perhaps hard todetermine: he seems acquainted with the treatise, De Cive; but thephilosophical system of both was such as, in minds habituated liketheirs to close reasoning, could not lead to any other result.Political theory, as Spinosa justly observes, is to be founded on ourexperience of human kind as it is, and on no visionary notions of anUtopia or golden age; and hence politicians of practical knowledgehave written better on these subjects than philosophers. We must treatof men as liable to passions, prone more to revenge than to pity,eager to rule and to compel others to act like themselves, morepleased with having done harm to others than with procuring their owngood. Hence, no state wherein the public affairs are entrusted toanyone’s good faith can be secure of their due administration; butmeans should be devised that neither reason nor passion should inducethose who govern, to obstruct the public weal; it being indifferent bywhat motive men act if they can be brought to act for the common good.

74. Natural law is the same as natural power; it is that which thelaws of nature, that is the order of the world, give to eachindividual. Nothing is forbidden by this law, except what no onedesires, or what no one can perform. Thus, no one is bound to keep thefaith he has plighted any longer than he will, and than he judges ituseful to himself; for he has not lost the power of breaking it, andpower is right in natural law. But he may easily perceive that thepower of one man in a state of nature is limited by that of all therest, and in effect is reduced to nothing; all men being naturallyenemies to each other; while, on the other hand, by uniting theirforce, and establishing bounds by common consent to the natural powersof each, it becomes really more effective than while it was unlimited.This is the principle of civil government; and now the distinctions ofjust and unjust, right and wrong, begin to appear.

75. The right of the supreme magistrate is nothing but the collectiverights of the citizens; that is, their powers. Neither he nor they intheir natural state can do wrong; but after the institution ofgovernment, each citizen may do wrong by disobeying the magistrate;that, in fact, being the test of wrong. He has not to inquire whetherthe commands of the supreme power are just or unjust, pious orimpious; that is, as to action, for the state has no jurisdiction overhis judgment.

76. Two independent states are naturally enemies, and may make war oneach other whenever they please. If they make peace or alliance, it isno longer binding than the cause, that is, hope or fear in thecontracting parties, shall endure. All this is founded on theuniversal law of nature, the desire of preserving ourselves; which,whether men are conscious of it or no, animates all their actions.Spinosa in this, as in his other writings, is more fearless thanHobbes, and though he sometimes may throw a light veil over hisabjuration of moral and religious principle, it is frequently placedin a more prominent view than his English precursor in the same systemhad deemed it secure to advance. Yet so slight is often the connectionbetween theoretical tenets and human practice, that Spinosa bore thecharacter of a virtuous and benevolent man. We do not know, indeed,how far he was placed in circ*mstances to put his fidelity to thetest. In this treatise of politics, especially in the broad assertionthat good faith is only to be preserved so long as it is advantageous,he leaves Machiavel and Hobbes at some distance, and may be reckonedthe most phlegmatically impudent of the whole school.

77. The contract or fundamental laws, he proceeds, according to whichthe multitude transfers its right to a king or a senate, mayunquestionably be broken, when it is advantageous to the whole to doso. But Spinosa denies to private citizens the right of judgingconcerning the public good in such a point, reserving, apparently, tothe supreme magistrate an ultimate power of breaking the conditionsupon which he was chosen. Notwithstanding this dangerous admission, hestrongly protests against intrusting absolute power to any one man;and observes, in answer to the common argument of the stability ofdespotism, as in the instance of the Turkish monarchy, that ifbarbarism, slavery, and desolation are to be called peace, nothing canbe more wretched than peace itself. Nor is this sole power of one mana thing so possible as we imagine; the kings who seem most despotictrusting the public safety and their own to counsellors andfavourites, often the worst and weakest in the state.

|His theory of a monarchy.|

78. He next proceeds to his scheme of a well regulated monarchy, whichis in some measure original and ingenious. The people are to bedivided into families, by which he seems to mean something like theφρατριαι [phratriai] of Attica. From each of these, counsellors, fiftyyears of age, are to be chosen by the king, succeeding in a rotationquinquennial, or less, so as to form a numerous senate. This assemblyis to be consulted upon all public affairs, and the king is to beguided by its unanimous opinion. In case, however, of disagreement,the different propositions being laid before the king, he may choosethat of the minority, provided at least one hundred counsellors haverecommended it. The less remarkable provisions of this ideal polity itwould be waste of time to mention; except that he advises that all thecitizens should be armed as a militia, and that the principal townsshould be fortified, and, consequently, as it seems, in their power. Amonarchy thus constituted would probably not degenerate into thedespotic form. Spinosa appeals to the ancient government of Aragon, asa proof of the possibility of carrying his theory into execution.

79. From this imaginary monarchy he comes to an aristocraticalrepublic. In this he seems to have taken Venice, the idol oftheoretical politicians, as his primary model, but with suchdeviations as affect the whole scheme of government. He objects to thesupremacy of an elective doge, justly observing that the precautionsadopted in the election of that magistrate show the danger of theoffice itself, which was rather retained in the aristocratical polityas an ancient institution than from any persuasion of its usefulness.But the most remarkable discrepancy between the aristocracy of Spinosaand that of Venice is that his great council, which ought, as hestrongly urges, not to consist of less than 5,000, the greatness ofits number being the only safeguard against the close oligarchy of afew families, is not to be hereditary, but its vacancies to be filledup by self-election. In this election, indeed, he considers theessence of aristocracy to consist, being, as is implied in itsmeaning, a government by the best, who can only be pronounced such bythe choice of many. It is singular that he never adverts to popularrepresentation, of which he must have known examples. Democracy, onthe contrary, he defines to be a government where political powerfalls to men by chance of birth, or by some means which has renderedthem citizens, and who can claim it as their right without regard tothe choice of others. And a democracy, according to Spinosa, mayexist, if the law should limit this privilege of power to the seniorsin age, or to the elder branches of families, or to those who pay acertain amount in taxation; although the numbers enjoying it should bea smaller portion of the community than in an aristocracy of the formhe has recommended. His treatise breaks off near the beginning of thechapters intended to delineate the best model of democracy, which hedeclares to be one wherein all persons, in their own power, and notinfamous by crime, should have a share in the public government. I donot know that it can be inferred from the writings of Spinosa, nor ishis authority, perhaps, sufficient to render the question of anyinterest, to which of the three plans devised by him, as the best intheir respective forms, he would have ascribed the preference.

|Amelot de la Houssaye.|

80. The condition of France under Louis XIV. was not very tempting tospeculators on political theory. Whatever short remarks may be foundin those excellent writers on other subjects who distinguish thisperiod, we can select no one book that falls readily into this class.For Telemaque we must find another place. It is scarcely worth whileto mention the political discourses on Tacitus, by Amelot de laHoussaye. These are a tedious and pedantic running commentary onTacitus, affecting to deduce general principles, but much unlike theshort and poignant observations of Machiavel and Bacon. A whole volumeon the reign alone of Tiberius, and printed at Paris, is not likely torepay a reader’s trouble; at least, I have found nothing in it abovethe common level. I have no acquaintance with the other politicalwritings of Amelot de la Houssaye, one of those who thought they couldmake great discoveries by analysing the constitution of Venice andother states.

|Harrington’s Oceana.|

81. England, thrown at the commencement of this period upon theresources of her own invention to replace an ancient monarchy bysomething new, and rich at that time in reflecting as well as learnedmen, with an unshackled press, and a growing disdain of authority asopposed to argument, was the natural soil of political theory. Theearliest fruit was Sir James Harrington’s Oceana, published in 1656.This once famous book is a political allegory, partly suggested,perhaps, by the Dodona’s Grove of Howell, or by Barclay’s Argenis, anda few other fictions of the preceding age. His Oceana representsEngland, the history of which is shadowed out with fictitiousnames. But this is preliminary to the great object, the scheme of anew commonwealth, which, under the auspices of Olphaus Megaletor, thelord Archon, meaning, of course, Cromwell, not as he was, but as heought to have been, the author feigns to have been established. Thevarious laws and constitutions of this polity occupy the whole work.

82. The leading principle of Harrington is that power depends onproperty; denying the common saying, that knowledge or prudence ispower. But this property must be in land, “because, as to propertyproducing empire, it is required that it should have some certain rootor foot-hold, which, except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise,as it were, upon the wing. Nevertheless, in such cities as subsistmostly by trade, and have little or no land, as Holland and Genoa, thebalance of treasure may be equal to that of land.”[945] The law fixingthe balance of lands is called by him agrarian, and without anagrarian law, he holds that no government, whether monarchical,aristocratic, or popular, has any long duration; this is ratherparadoxical; but his distribution of lands varies according to theform of the commonwealth. In one best constituted the possession oflands is limited to £2,000 a year; which, of course, in his time, wasa much greater estate than at present.

 [945] P. 38, edit. 1771.

83. Harrington’s general scheme of a good government is one“established upon an equal agrarian arising into the superstructure,or three orders, the senate debating and proposing, the peopleresolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation throughthe suffrage of the people given by the ballot.” His more particularform of polity, devised for his Oceana, it would be tedious to give indetail: the result is a moderate aristocracy; property, though underthe control of his agrarian, which prevents its excess, having sogreat a share in the elections that it must predominate. But it is anaristocracy of what we should call the middle ranks, and might not beunfit for a small state. In general, it may be said of Harrington,that he is prolix, dull, pedantic, yet seldom profound; but sometimesredeems himself by just observations. Like most theoreticalpoliticians of that age he had an excessive admiration for therepublic of Venice.[946] His other political writings are in the samespirit as the Oceana, but still less interesting.

 [946] “If I be worthy to give advice to a man that would study politics, let him understand Venice; he that understands Venice right, shall go nearest to judge, notwithstanding the difference that is in every policy, right of any government in the world.” Harrington’s Works, p. 292.

|Patriarcha of Filmer.|

84. The manly republicanism of Harrington, though sometimes visionaryand, perhaps, impracticable, shines by comparison with a very oppositetheory, which, having been countenanced in the early part of thecentury by our clergy, revived with additional favour after theRestoration. This was maintained in the Patriarcha of Sir RobertFilmer, written, as it appears, in the reign of Charles I., but notpublished till 1680, at a time when very high notions of royalprerogative were as well received by one faction as they wereindignantly rejected by another. The object, as the author declares,was to prove that the first kings were fathers of families; that it isunnatural for the people to govern or to choose governors; thatpositive laws do not infringe the natural and fatherly power of kings.He refers the tenet of natural liberty and the popular origin ofgovernment to the schoolmen, allowing that all papists and thereformed divines have imbibed it, but denying that it is found in thefathers. He seems, indeed, to claim the credit of an originalhypothesis; those who have vindicated the rights of kings in mostpoints not having thought of this, but with one consent admitted thenatural liberty and equality of mankind. It is certain, nevertheless,that the patriarchal theory of government as the basis of actual rightwas laid down as explicitly as by himself in what is called BishopOverall’s Convocation Book, at the beginning of the reign of James I.But this book had not been published when Filmer wrote. His argumentsare singularly insufficient; he quotes nothing but a few irrelevanttexts from Genesis; he seems not to have known at all the strength,whatever it may be, of his own case, and it is hardly possible to finda more trifling and feeble work. It had, however, the advantage ofopportunity to be received by a party with approbation.

|Sydney’s Discourses on Government.|

85. Algernon Sydney was the first who devoted his time to a refutationof this patriarchal theory, propounded as it was, not as a plausiblehypothesis to explain the origin of civil communities, but as aparamount title, by virtue of which all actual sovereigns, who werenot manifest usurpers, were to reign with an unmitigated despotism.Sydney’s Discourses on Government, not published till 1698, are adiffuse reply to Filmer. They contain, indeed, many chapters full ofhistorical learning and judicious reflection; yet the constant anxietyto refute that which needs no refutation renders them a littletedious. Sydney does not condemn a limited monarchy like the English,but his partiality is for a form of republic which would be deemed tooaristocratical for our popular theories.

|Locke on Government.|

86. Locke, immediately after the revolution, attacked the Patriarchawith more brevity, and laid down his own celebrated theory ofgovernment. The fundamental principle of Filmer is, that paternalauthority is naturally absolute. Adam received it from God, exercisedit over his own children, and transmitted it to the eldest born forever. This assumption Locke combats rather too diffusely, according toour notions. Filmer had not only to show this absolute monarchy of alineal ancestor, but his power of transmitting it in course ofprimogeniture. Locke denies that there is any natural right of thiskind, maintaining the equality of children. The incapacity of Filmerrenders his discomfiture not difficult. Locke, as will be seen,acknowledges a certain _de facto_ authority in fathers of families,and, possibly, he might have found, as, indeed, he seems to admit,considerable traces of a regard to primogeniture in the early ages ofthe world. It is the question of natural right with which he is hereconcerned; and, as no proof of this had been offered, he had nothingto answer.

87. In the second part of Locke’s Treatise on Civil Government, heproceeds to lay down what he holds to be the true principles uponwhich society is founded. A state of nature is a state of perfectfreedom and equality; but within the bounds of the law of nature,which obliges every one, and renders a state of liberty no state oflicence. And the execution of this law, in such a state, is put intoeveryone’s hands, so that he may punish transgressors against it, notmerely by way of reparation for his own wrongs, but for those ofothers. “Every offence that can be committed in the state of naturemay, in the state of nature, be punished equally, and as far forth, asit may in a commonwealth.” And not only independent communities, butall men, as he thinks, till they voluntarily enter into some society,are in a state of nature.[947]

 [947] L. ii., c. 2.

88. Whoever declares by word or action a settled design againstanother’s life, puts himself in a state of war against him, andexposes his own life to be taken away, either by the other party, orby anyone who shall espouse his cause. And he who endeavours to obtainabsolute power over another, may be construed to have a design on hislife, or at least to take away his property. Where laws prevail, theymust determine the punishment of those who injure others; but if thelaw is silenced, it is hard to think but that the appeal to Heavenreturns, and the aggressor may be treated as one in a state ofwar.[948]

 [948] C. 3.

89. Natural liberty is freedom from any superior power except the lawof nature. Civil liberty is freedom from the dominion of any authorityexcept that which a legislature, established by consent of thecommonwealth, shall confirm. No man, according to Locke, can by hisown consent enslave himself, or give power to another to take away hislife. For slavery, in a strict sense, is but a continuance of thestate of war between a conqueror and his captive.[949]

 [949] C. 4.

90. The excellent chapter on property which follows would besufficient, if all Locke’s other writings had perished, to leave him ahigh name in philosophy. Nothing can be more luminous than hisdeduction of the natural right of property from labour, not merely ingathering the fruits of the earth, or catching wild animals, but inthe cultivation of land, for which occupancy is but the preliminary,and gives as it were an inchoate title. “As much land as a man tills,plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much ishis property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from thecommon.” Whatever is beyond the scanty limits of individual or familylabour, has been appropriated under the authority of civil society.But labour is the primary basis of natural right. Nor can it bethought unreasonable that labour should confer an exclusive right,when it is remembered how much of everything’s value depends uponlabour alone. “Whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine thanwater, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is whollyowing to labour and industry.” The superiority in good sense andsatisfactory elucidation of his principle, which Locke has manifestedin this important chapter over Grotius and Puffendorf, will strikethose who consult those writers, or look at the brief sketch of theirtheories in the foregoing pages. It is no less contrasted with thepuerile rant of Rousseau against all territorial property. Thatproperty owes its origin to occupancy accompanied with labour, is nowgenerally admitted; the care of cattle being of course to beconsidered as one species of labour, and requiring at least atemporary ownership of the soil.[950]

 [950] C. 5.

91. Locke, after acutely remarking that the common arguments for thepower of a father over his children would extend equally to themother, so that it should be called parental power, reverts to thetrain of reasoning in the first book of this treatise against theregal authority of fathers. What they possess is not derived fromgeneration, but from the care they necessarily take of the infantchild, and during his minority; the power then terminates, thoughreverence, support, and even compliance are still due. Children arealso held in subordination to their parents by the institutions ofproperty, which commonly make them dependent both as to maintenanceand succession. But Locke, which is worthy to be remarked, inclines toderive the origin of civil government from the patriarchal authority;one not strictly coercive, yet voluntarily conceded by habit andfamily consent. “Thus the natural fathers of families, by aninsensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too; and asthey chanced to live long, and leave worthy and able heirs for severalsuccessions or otherwise, so they laid the foundations of hereditaryor elective kingdoms.”[951]

 [951] C. 6.

92. The necessity that man should not live alone, produced the primarysociety of husband and wife, parent and children, to which that ofmaster and servant was early added; whether of freemen engaging theirservice for hire, or of slaves taken in just war, who are by the rightof nature subject to the absolute dominion of the captor. Such afamily may sometimes resemble a little commonwealth by its numbers,but is essentially distinct from one, because its chief has noimperial power of life and death except over his slaves, nature havinggiven him none over his children, though all men have a right topunish breaches of the law of nature in others according to theoffence. But this natural power they quit and resign into the hands ofthe community, when civil society is instituted; and it is in thisunion of the several rights of its members that the legislative rightof the commonwealth consists, whether this be done by general consentat the first formation of government, or by the adhesion which anyindividual may give to one already established. By either of theseways men pass from a state of nature to one of political society, themagistrate having now that power to redress injuries, which hadpreviously been each man’s right. Hence, absolute monarchy, in Locke’sopinion, is no form of civil government; for there being no commonauthority to appeal to, the sovereign is still in a state of naturewith regard to his subjects.[952]

93. A community is formed by the unanimous consent of any body of men;but when thus become one body, the determination of the majority mustbind the rest, else it would not be one. Unanimity, after a communityis once formed, can no longer be required; but this consent of men toform a civil society is that which alone did or could give beginningto any lawful government in the world. It is idle to object that wehave no records of such an event; for few commonwealths preserve thetradition of their own infancy; and whatever we do know of the originof particular states gives indications of this mode of union. Yet heagain inclines to deduce the usual origin of civil societies fromimitation of patriarchal authority, which having been recognised byeach family in the arbitration of disputes and even punishment ofoffences, was transferred with more readiness to some one person, asthe father and representative head of the infant community. He evenadmits that this authority might tacitly devolve upon the eldest son.Thus the first governments were monarchies, and those with no expresslimitations of power, till exposure of its abuse gave occasion tosocial laws, or to co-ordinate authority. In all this he followsHooker, from the first book of whose Ecclesiastical Polity he quoteslargely in his notes.[953]

 [952] C. 7.

 [953] C. 8.

94. A difficulty commonly raised against the theory of compact is,that all men being born under some government, they cannot be atliberty to erect a new one, or even to make choice whether they willobey or no. This objection Locke does not meet, like Hooker and thejurists, by supposing the agreement of a distant ancestor to obligeall his posterity. But explicitly acknowledging that nothing can bindfreemen to obey any government save their own consent, he rests theevidence of a tacit consent, on the enjoyment of land, or even on mereresidence within the dominions of the community; every manbeing at liberty to relinquish his possessions, or change hisresidence, and either incorporate himself with another commonwealth,or, if he can find an opportunity, set up for himself in someunoccupied part of the world. But nothing can make a man irrevocably amember of one society, except his own voluntary declaration; suchperhaps as the oath of allegiance, which Locke does not mention, oughtto be reckoned.[954]

 [954] C. 8.

95. The majority having, in the first constitution of a state, thewhole power, may retain it themselves, or delegate it to one or morepersons.[955] And the supreme power is, in other words, thelegislature sacred and unalterable in the hands where the communityhave once placed it, without which no law can exist, and in which allobedience terminates. Yet this legislative authority itself is notabsolute or arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of its subjects. Itis the joint power of individuals surrendered to the state; but no manhas power over his own life or his neighbour’s property. The lawsenacted by the legislature must be conformable to the will of God, ornatural justice. Nor can it take any part of the subject’s propertywithout his own consent, or that of the majority. “For if any oneshall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people by his ownauthority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invadesthe fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government.For what property have I in that which another may by right take, whenhe pleases, to himself?” Lastly, the legislative power is inalienable;being but delegated from the people, it cannot be transferred toothers.[956] This is the part of Locke’s treatise which has been opento most objection, and which in some measure seems to charge withusurpation all the established governments of Europe. It has been atheory fertile of great revolutions, and perhaps pregnant with more.In some part of this chapter also, though by no means in the mostpractical corollaries, the language of Hooker has led onward his morehardy disciple.

 [955] C. 10.

 [956] C. 11.

96. Though the legislative power is alone supreme in the constitution,it is yet subject to the people themselves, who may alter it wheneverthey find that it acts against the trust reposed in it; all powergiven in trust for a particular end being evidently forfeited whenthat end is manifestly disregarded or obstructed. But while thegovernment subsists the legislature is alone sovereign, though it maybe the usage to call a single executive magistrate sovereign, if hehas also a share in legislation. Where this is not the case, theappellation is plainly improper. Locke has in this chapter aremarkable passage, one perhaps of the first declarations in favour ofa change in the electoral system of England. “To what grossabsurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, maylead, we may be satisfied when we see the bare name of a town, ofwhich there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so muchhousing as a sheep-cot, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to befound, send as many representatives to the grand assembly oflaw-makers as a whole county, numerous in people and powerful inriches. This strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confessneeds a remedy, though most think it hard to find one, because theconstitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act ofthe society, antecedent to all positive laws in it, and dependingwholly on the people, no inferior power can alter it.” But Locke isless timid about a remedy, and suggests that the executive magistratemight regulate the number of representatives, not according to oldcustom but reason, which is not setting up a new legislature, butrestoring an old one. “Whatsoever, shall be done manifestly for thegood of the people and the establishing the government on its truefoundation, is, and always will be, just prerogative;”[957] a maxim oftoo dangerous latitude for a constitutional monarchy.

 [957] C. 13.

97. Prerogative he defines to be “a power of acting according todiscretion for the public good without the prescription of the law,and sometimes even against it.” This however is not by any means agood definition in the eyes of a lawyer; and the word, being merelytechnical, ought not to have been employed in so partial if not soincorrect a sense. Nor is it very precise to say, that in England theprerogative was always largest in the hands of our wisest and bestprinces, not only because the fact is otherwise, but because heconfounds the legal prerogative with its actual exercise. This chapteris the most loosely reasoned of any in the treatise.[958]

 [958] C. 14.

98. Conquest, in an unjust war, can give no right at all, unlessrobbers and pirates may acquire a right. Nor is anyone bound bypromises which unjust force extorts from him. If we are not strongenough to resist, we have no remedy save patience; but our childrenmay appeal to Heaven, and repeat their appeals till they recover theirancestral rights, which was to be governed by such a legislation asthemselves approve. He that appeals to Heaven must be sure that he hasright on his side, and right too that is worth the trouble and cost ofhis appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived.Even just conquest gives no further right than to reparation ofinjury; and the posterity of the vanquished, he seems to hold, canforfeit nothing by their parent’s offence, so that they have always aright to throw off the yoke. The title of prescription, which hascommonly been admitted to silence the complaints, if not to heal thewounds, of the injured, finds no favour with Locke.[959] And hence, itseems that no state composed, as most have been, out of the spoils ofconquest, can exercise a legitimate authority over the latestposterity of those it has incorporated. Wales, for instance, has aneternal right to shake off the yoke of England; for what Locke says ofconsent to laws by representatives, is of little weight when thesemust be out-numbered in the general legislature of both countries; andindeed the first question for the Cambro-Britons would be to determinewhether they would form part of such a common legislation.

 [959] C. 16.

99. Usurpation, which is a kind of domestic conquest, gives no moreright to obedience than unjust war; it is necessary that the peopleshould both be at liberty to consent, and have actually consented toallow and confirm a power which the constitution of their commonwealthdoes not recognise.[960] But tyranny may exist without usurpation,whenever the power reposed in anyone’s hands for the people’s benefitis abused to their impoverishment or slavery. Force may never beopposed but to unjust and unlawful force; in any other case, it iscondemned before God and man. The king’s person is in some countriessacred by law; but this, as Locke thinks, does not extend to the casewhere, by putting himself in a state of war with his people, hedissolves the government.[961] A prince dissolves the government byruling against law, by hindering the regular assembly of thelegislature, by changing the form of election, or by rendering thepeople subject to a foreign power. He dissolves it also by neglectingor abandoning it, so that the laws cannot be put into execution. Thegovernment is also dissolved by breach of trust in either thelegislature or the prince; by the former when it usurps an arbitrarypower over the lives, liberties, and fortunes of the subject; by thelatter, when he endeavours to corrupt the representatives or toinfluence the choice of the electors. If it be objected that nogovernment will be able long to subsist, if the people may set up anew legislature whenever they take offence at the old one, he repliesthat mankind are too slow and averse to quit their old institutionsfor this danger to be apprehended. Much will be endured from rulerswithout mutiny or murmur. Nor is anything more likely to restraingovernments than this doctrine of the right of resistance. It is asreasonable to tell men they should not defend themselves againstrobbers, because it may occasion disorder, as to use the same argumentfor passive obedience to illegal dominion. And he observes, afterquoting some other writers, that Hooker alone might be enough tosatisfy those who rely on him for their ecclesiastical polity.[962]

 [960] C. 17.

 [961] C. 18.

 [962] C. 19.

|Observations on this Treatise.|

100. Such is, in substance, the celebrated treatise of Locke on civilgovernment, which, with the favour of political circ*mstances, and theauthority of his name, became the creed of a numerous party at home;while silently spreading the fibres from its root over Europe andAmerica, it prepared the way for theories of political society, hardlybolder in their announcement, but expressed with more passionateardour, from which the great revolutions of the last and present agehave sprung. But as we do not launch our bark upon a stormy sea, weshall merely observe that neither the Revolution of 1688, nor theadministration of William III., could have borne the test by whichLocke has tried the legitimacy of government. There was certainly noappeal to the people in the former, nor would it have been convenientfor the latter to have had the maxim established, that an attempt tocorrupt the legislature entails a forfeiture of the entrusted power.Whether the opinion of Locke, that mankind are slow to politicalchange, be conformable to an enlarged experience, must be judged byeveryone according to his reading and observation; it is, at least,very different from that which Hooker, to whom he defers so greatly inmost of his doctrine, has uttered in the very first sentence of hisEcclesiastical Polity. For my own part, I must confess, that in theselatter chapters of Locke on Government I see, what sometimesappears in his other writings, that the influence of temporarycirc*mstances on a mind a little too susceptible of passion andresentment, had prevented that calm and patient examination of all thebearings of this extensive subject which true philosophy requires.

101. But whatever may be our judgment of this work, it is equally truethat it opened a new era of political opinion in Europe. The earlierwritings on the side of popular sovereignty, whether those of Buchananand Languet, of the Jesuits, or of the English republicans, had beeneither too closely dependent on temporary circ*mstances, or too muchbound up with odious and unsuccessful factions, to sink very deep intothe hearts of mankind. Their adversaries, with the countenance ofevery government on their side, kept possession of the field; andneither jurist, nor theologian, nor philosopher on the Continent,while they generally followed their predecessors in deriving theorigin of civil society from compact, ventured to meet the delicateproblem of resistance to tyranny, or of the right to reform aconstitution, except in the most cautious and indefinite language. Wehave seen this already in Grotius and Puffendorf. But the success ofthe English Revolution; the necessity which the powers allied againstFrance found of maintaining the title of William; the peculiarinterest of Holland and Hanover, states at that time very strong inthe literary world, in our new scheme of government, gave a weight andauthority to principles which, without some such application, it mightstill have been thought seditious to propound. Locke too, long anexile in Holland, was intimate with Le Clerc, who exerted aconsiderable influence over the protestant part of Europe. Barbeyrac,some time afterwards, trod nearly in the same steps, and without goingall the lengths of Locke, did not fail to take a very different tonefrom the two older writers, upon whom he has commented.

|Avis aux Refugiéz, perhaps by Bayle.

102. It was very natural that the French protestants, among whomtraditions of a turn of thinking not the most favourable to kings mayhave been preserved, should, in the hour of severe persecution, mutinyin words and writings against the despotism that oppressed them. Such,it appears, had been the language of those exiles, as it is of allexiles, when an anonymous tract, entitled Avis aux Refugiéz, waspublished with the date of Amsterdam in 1690. This, under pretext ofgiving advice, in the event of their being permitted to return home,that they should get rid of their spirit of satire, and of theirrepublican theories, is a bitter and able attack on those who hadtaken refuge in Holland. It asserts the principle of passiveobedience, extolling also the king of France and his government, andcensuring the English Revolution. Public rumour ascribed this toBayle; it has usually passed for his, and is even inserted in thecollection of his miscellaneous works. Some, however, have ascribed itto Pelisson, and others to Larroque; one already, and the other soonafter, proselytes to the church of Rome. Basnage thought it written bythe latter, and published by Bayle, to whom he ascribed the preface.This is, apparently, in a totally opposite strain, but not withoutstrong suspicion of irony or ill faith. The style and mannerthroughout appear to suggest Bayle; and though the supposition is verydiscreditable to his memory, the weight of presumption seems much toincline that way.

|Political economists.|

103. The separation of political economy from the general science,which regards the well-being of communities, was not so strictly madeby the earlier philosophers as in modern times. It does not followthat national wealth engaged none of their attention. Few, on thecontrary, of those who have taken comprehensive views, could havefailed to regard it. In Bodin, Botero, Bacon, Hobbes, Puffendorf,Locke, we have already seen proofs of this. These may be said to havediscussed the subject, not systematically, nor always with thoroughknowledge, but with acuteness and in a philosophical tone. Othersthere were of a more limited range, whose habits of life andexperience led them to particular departments of economical inquiry,especially as to commerce, the precious metals, and the laws affectingthem. The Italians led the way; Serra has been mentioned in our lastvolume, and a few more might find a place in this. De Witt’s Interestof Holland can hardly be reckoned among economical writings; and it issaid by Morhof, that the Dutch were not fond of promulgating theircommercial knowledge;[963] little, at least, was contributed from thatcountry, even at a later period, towards the theory of becoming rich.But England now took a large share in this new literature. Free,inquisitive, thriving rapidly in commerce, so that her progress evenin the nineteenth century has hardly been in a greater ratio thanbefore, and after the middle of the seventeenth, if we may trust thestatements of contemporaries, she produced some writers who, thoughfew of them merit the name of philosophers, may not yet here beoverlooked, on account of their influence, their reputation, or theirposition as links in the chain of science.

 [963] Polyhistor, part iii., lib. iii., § 3.

|Mun on Foreign Trade.|

|Child on Trade.|

104. The first of these was Thomas Mun, an intelligent merchant in theearlier part of the century, whose posthumous treatise, England’sTreasure by Foreign Trade, was published in 1664, but seems to havebeen written soon after the accession of Charles I.[964] Mun isgenerally reckoned the founder of what has been called the mercantilesystem. His main position is that “the ordinary means to increase ourwealth and treasure is by foreign trade, wherein we must ever observethis rule to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirsin value.”[965] We must therefore sell as cheap as possible; it was byunderselling the Venetians of late years, that we had exported a greatdeal of cloth to Turkey.[966] It is singular that Mun should not haveperceived the difficulty of selling very cheap the productions of acountry’s labour, whose gold and silver were in great abundance. Hewas, however, too good a merchant not to acknowledge the inefficacyand impolicy of restraining by law the exportation of coin, which isoften a means of increasing our treasure in the long run; advisinginstead a due regard to the balance of trade, or general surplus ofexported goods, by which we shall infallibly obtain a stock of goldand silver. These notions have long since been covered with ridicule;and it is plain that, in a merely economical view, they must always bedelusive. Mun, however, looked to the accumulation of a portion ofthis imported treasure by the state; a resource in criticalemergencies which we have now learned to despise, since others havebeen at hand, but which, in reality, had made a great difference inthe events of war, and changed the balance of power between manycommonwealths. Mun was followed, about 1670, by Sir Josiah Child, in adiscourse on Trade, written on the same principles of the mercantilesystem, but more copious and varied. The chief aim of Child is toeffect a reduction of the legal interest of money, from six to fourper cent., drawing an erroneous inference from the increase of wealthwhich had followed similar enactments.

 [964] Mr. Maculloch says (Introductory Discourse to Smith’s Wealth of Nations), it had most probably been written about 1635 or 1640. I remarked some things which serve to carry it up a little higher.

 [965] P. 11 (edit. 1664).

 [966] P. 18.

|Locke on the Coin.|

105. Among the many difficulties with which the government ofWilliam III. had to contend, one of the most embarrassing was thescarcity of the precious metals and depreciated condition of the coin.This opened the whole field of controversy in that province ofpolitical economy; and the bold spirit of inquiry, unshackled byprejudice in favour of ancient custom, which, in all respects, wascharacteristic of that age, began to work by reasonings on generaltheorems, instead of collecting insulated and inconclusive details.Locke stood forward on this, as on so many subjects, with hismasculine sense and habitual closeness of thinking. His“Considerations of the Consequences of lowering Interest, and raisingthe Value of Money” were published in 1691. Two further treatises arein answer to the pamphlets of Lowndes. These economical writings ofLocke are not in all points conformable to the modern principles ofthe science. He seems to incline rather too much towards themercantile theory, and to lay too much stress on the possession of theprecious metals. From his excellent sense, however, as well as fromsome expressions, I should conceive that he only considers them, asthey doubtless are, a portion of the exchangeable wealth of thenation, and by their inconsumable nature, as well as by the constancyof the demand for them, one of the most important. “Riches do notconsist,” he says, “in having more gold and silver, but in having morein proportion than the rest of the world or than our neighbours,whereby we are enabled to procure to ourselves a greater plenty of theconveniences of life.”

106. Locke had the sagacity to perceive the impossibility ofregulating the interest of money by law. It was an empiricalproposition at that time, as we have just seen in Sir Josiah Child, torender loans more easy to the borrower by reducing the legal rate tofour per cent. The whole drift of his reasoning is against anylimitation, though, from fear of appearing too paradoxical, he doesnot arrive at that inference. For the reasons he gives in favour of alegal limit of interest, namely, that courts of law may have some rulewhere nothing is stipulated in the contract, and that a fewmoney-lenders in the metropolis may not have the monopoly of all loansin England, are, especially the first, so trifling, that he could nothave relied upon them; and, indeed, he admits that, in othercirc*mstances, there would be no danger from the second. But hisprudence having restrained him from speaking out, a famous writer,almost a century afterwards, came forward to assert a paradox, whichhe loved the better for seeming such, and, finally, to convince thethinking part of mankind.

107. Laws fixing the value of silver Locke perceived to be nugatory,and is averse to prohibit its exportation. The value of money, hemaintains, does not depend on the rate of interest, but on its plentyrelatively to commodities. Hence, the rate of interest, he thinks,but, perhaps, erroneously, does not govern the price of land; arguingfrom the higher rate of land relatively to money, that is, the worseinterest it gave, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, than in hisown time. But one of Locke’s positions, if generally received, wouldalone have sufficed to lower the value of land. “It is in vain,” hesays, “in a country whose great fund is land, to hope to lay thepublic charges of the government on anything else; there, at last, itwill terminate.” The legislature soon proceeded to act on thismistaken theory in the annual land tax; an impost of tremendousseverity at that time, the gross unfairness, however, of which hasbeen compensated in later times by the taxes on personal succession.

108. In such a monetary crisis as that of his time, Locke wasnaturally obliged to consider the usual resource of raising thedenomination of the coin. This, he truly says, would be to rob allcreditors of such a proportion of their debts. It is probable that hisinfluence, which was very considerable, may have put a stop to thescheme. He contends in his Further Considerations, in answer to atract by Lowndes, that clipped money should go only by weight. Thisseems to have been agreed by both parties; but Lowndes thought theloss should be defrayed by a tax; Locke that it should fall on theholders. Honourably for the government, the former opinion prevailed.

|Statistical tracts.|

109. The Italians were the first who laid anything like a foundationfor statistics or political arithmetic; that which is to the politicaleconomist what general history is to the philosopher. But theirnumerical reckonings of population, houses, value of lands or stock,and the like, though very curious, and sometimes taken from publicdocuments, were not always more than conjectural, nor are they so fulland minute as the spirit of calculation demands. England here againtook the lead, in Graunt’s Observations on the Bills of Mortality,1661, in Petty’s Political Arithmetic (posthumous in 1691), and othertreatises of the same ingenious and philosophical person, and, we mayadd, in the Observations of Gregory King on the Natural and PoliticalState of England; for, though these were not published till near theend of the eighteenth century, the manuscripts had fallen into thehands of Dr. Charles Davenant, who has made extracts from them in hisown valuable contributions to political arithmetic. King seems to havepossessed a sagacity which has sometimes brought his conjecturesnearer to the mark than, from the imperfection of his data, it wasreasonable to expect. Yet he supposes that the population of England,which he estimated, perhaps rightly, at five millions and a half,would not reach the double of that number before A.D. 2300. SirWilliam Petty, with a mind capable of just and novel theories, wasstruck by the necessary consequences of an uniformly progressivepopulation. Though the rate of movement seemed to him, as in truth itwas, much slower than we have latterly found it, he clearly saw thatit* continuance would, in an ascertainable length of time, overloadthe world. “And then, according to the prediction of the Scriptures,there must be wars and great slaughter.” He conceived that, in theordinary course of things, the population of a country would bedoubled in two hundred years; but the whole conditions of the problemwere far less understood than at present. Davenant’s Essay on Ways andMeans, 1693, gained him a high reputation which he endeavoured toaugment by many subsequent works, some falling within the seventeenthcentury. He was a man of more enlarged reading than his predecessors,with the exception of Petty, and of close attention to the statisticaldocuments which were now more copiously published than before; but heseldom launches into any extensive theory, confining himself rather tothe accumulation of facts and to the immediate inferences, generallyfor temporary purposes, which they supplied.

 SECT. III.

 ON JURISPRUDENCE.

|Works of Leibnitz on Roman Law.|

110. In 1667, a short book was published at Frankfort, by a young manof twenty-two years, entitled Methodi Novæ discendæ docendæqueJurisprudentiæ. The science which of all had been deemed to requirethe most protracted labour, the ripest judgment, the most experienceddiscrimination, was, as it were, invaded by a boy, but by one who hadthe genius of an Alexander, and for whom the glories of an Alexanderwere reserved. This is the first production of Leibnitz; and it isprobably in many points of view the most remarkable work that hasprematurely united erudition and solidity. We admire in it the vastrange of learning (for though he could not have read all the books henames, there is evidence of his acquaintance with a great number, andat least with a well-filled chart of literature), the originality ofsome ideas, the commanding and comprehensive views he embraces, thephilosophical spirit, the compressed style in which it is written, theentire absence of juvenility, of ostentatious paradox,[967] ofimagination, ardour, and enthusiasm, which, though Leibnitz did notalways want them, would have been wholly misplaced on such a subject.Faults have been censured in this early performance, and the authordeclared himself afterwards dissatisfied with it.[968]

 [967] I use the epithet ostentatious, because some of his original theories are a little paradoxical; thus, he has a singular notion that the right of bequeathing property by testament is derived from the immortality of the soul; the living heirs being as it were the attorneys of those we suppose to be dead. Quia mortui revera adhuc vivunt, ideo manent domini rerum, quos vero hæredes reliquerunt, concipiendi sunt ut procuratores in rem suam. In our own discussions on the law of entail, I am not aware that this argument has ever been explicitly urged, though the advocates of perpetual control seem to have none better.

 [968] This tract, and all the other works of Leibnitz on jurisprudence, will be found in the fourth volume of his works by Dutens. An analysis by Bon, professor of law at Turin, is prefixed to the Methodi Novæ, and he has pointed out a few errors. Leibnitz says in a letter, about 1676, that his book was effusus potius quam scriptus, in itinere, sine libris, &c., and that it contained some things he no longer would have said, though there were others of which he did not repent. Lerminier, Hist. du Droit, p. 150.

111. Leibnitz was a passionate admirer of the Roman jurisprudence; heheld the great lawyers of antiquity second only to the best geometersfor strong and subtle and profound reasoning; not even acknowledging,to any considerable degree, the contradictions (antinomiæ juris),which had perplexed their disciples in later times, and on which manyvolumes had been written. But the arrangement of Justinian he entirelydisapproved; and in another work, Corporis Juris reconcinnandi Ratio,published in 1668, he pointed out the necessity and what he deemed thebest method of a new distribution. This appears to be not quite likewhat he had previously sketched, and which was rather a philosophicalthan a very convenient method;[969] in this new arrangement, heproposes to retain the texts of the Corpus Juris Civilis, but in aform rather like that of the Pandects than of the Institutes; to thelatter of which, followed as it has been among us by Hale andBlackstone, he was very averse.

 [969] In this Methodi Novæ he divides law, in the didactic part, according to the several sources of rights--namely, 1. Nature, which gives us right over res nullius, things where there is no prior property. 2. Succession. 3. Possession. 4. Contract. 5. Injury, which gives right to reparation.

112. There was only one man in the world who could have left so noblea science as philosophical jurisprudence for pursuits of a still moreexalted nature, and for which he was still more fitted; and that manwas Leibnitz himself. He passed onward to reap the golden harvests ofother fields. Yet the study of law has owed much to him; he did muchto unite it with moral philosophy on the one hand, and with history onthe other; a great master of both, he exacted perhaps a morecomprehensive course of legal studies than the capacity of ordinarylawyers could grasp. In England also, its conduciveness toprofessional excellence might be hard to prove. It is however certainthat, in Germany at least, philology, history, and philosophy havemore or less since the time of Leibnitz marched together under therobe of law. “He did but pass over that kingdom,” says Lerminier, andhe has reformed and enlarged it.”[970]

 [970] Biogr. Univ. Lerminier, Hist. du Droit, p. 142.

|Civil Jurists--Godefroy--Domat.|

|Noodt on Usury.|

113. James Godefroy was thirty years engaged on an edition of theTheodosian Code, published, several years after his death, in 1665. Itis by far the best edition of that body of laws, and retains astandard value in the historical department of jurisprudence. Domat, aFrench lawyer, and one of the Port-Royal connection, in hisLoix Civiles dans leur Ordre Naturel, the first of five volumes ofwhich appeared in 1689, carried into effect the project of Leibnitz,by re-arranging the laws of Justinian, which, especially the Pandects,are well known to be confusedly distributed, in a more regular method,prefixing a book of his own on the nature and spirit of law ingeneral. This appears to be an useful digest or abridgment, somethinglike those made by Viner and earlier writers of our own texts, butperhaps with more compression and choice; two editions of an Englishtranslation were published. Domat’s Public Law, which might, perhaps,in our language, have been called constitutional, since we generallyconfine the epithet public to the law of nations, forms a second partof the same work, and contains a more extensive system whereintheological morality, ecclesiastical ordinances, and the fundamentallaws of the French monarchy are reduced into method. Domat is muchextolled by his countryman; but in philosophical jurisprudence, heseems to display little force or originality. Gravina, who obtained ahigh name in this literature at the beginning of the next century, wasknown merely as a professor at the close of this; but a Dutch jurist,Gerard Noodt, may deserve mention for his treatise on usury, in 1698,wherein he both endeavours to prove its natural and religiouslawfulness, and traces its history through the Roman law. Severalother works of Noodt on subjects of historical jurisprudence seem tofall within this century, though I do not find their exact dates ofpublication.

|Law of Nations.--Puffendorf.|

114. Grotius was the acknowledged master of all who studied the theoryof international right. It was, perhaps, the design of Puffendorf, aswe may conjecture by the title of his great work on the Law of Natureand Nations, to range over the latter field with as assiduousdiligence as the former. But from the length of his prolix labour onnatural law and the rights of sovereigns, he has not more than onetwentieth of the whole volume to spare for international questions;and this is in great measure copied or abridged from Grotius. In someinstances he disagrees with his master. Puffendorf singularly deniesthat compacts made during war are binding by the law of nature, butfor weak and unintelligible reasons.[971] Treaties of peace extortedby unjust force, he denies with more reason to be binding; thoughGrotius had held the contrary.[972] The inferior writers on the law ofnations, or those who, like Wicquefort in his Ambassador, confinedthemselves to merely conventional usages, it is needless to mention.

 [971] B. viii., chap. 7.

 [972] Chap. 8.

CHAPTER XXXI.

 HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

 ON ITALIAN POETRY.

 _Filicaja--Guidi--Menzini--Arcadian Society._

|Improved tone of Italian poetry.|

1. The imitators of Marini, full of extravagant metaphors, and thefalse thoughts usually called _concetti_, were in their vigour atthe commencement of this period. But their names are now obscure, andhave been overwhelmed by the change of public taste which hascondemned and proscribed what it once most applauded. This change cameon long before the close of the century, though not so decidedly butthat some traces of the former manner are discoverable in the majorityof popular writers. The general characteristics, however, of Italianpoetry became a more masculine tone, a wider reach of topics, and aselection of the most noble, an abandonment, except in the lighterlyrics, of amatory strains, and especially of such as were languishingand querulous, an anticipation, in short, as far as the circ*mstancesof the age would permit, of that severe and elevated style which hasbeen most affected for the last fifty years. It would be futile toseek an explanation of this manlier spirit in any social or politicalcauses; never had Italy, in these respects, been so lifeless; but theworld of poets is often not the world around them, and their stream ofliving waters may flow, like that of Arethusa, without imbibing muchfrom the surrounding brine. Chiabrera had led the way by the Pindaricmajesty of his odes, and had disciples of at least equal name withhimself.

|Filicaja.|

2. Florence was the mother of one who did most to invigorate Italianpoetry, Vincenzo Filicaja; a man gifted with a serious, pure, andnoble spirit, from which congenial thoughts spontaneously arose, andwith an imagination rather vigorous than fertile. The siege of Viennain 1683, and its glorious deliverance by Sobieski, are the subjects ofsix odes. The third of these, addressed to the king of Poland himself,is generally most esteemed, though I do not perceive that the first orsecond are inferior. His ode to Rome, on Christina’s taking up herresidence there, is in many parts highly poetical; but the flattery ofrepresenting this event as sufficient to restore the eternal city fromdecay is too gross. It is not on the whole so successful as those onthe siege of Vienna. A better is that addressed to Florence on leavingher for a rural solitude, in consequence of his poverty and theneglect he had experienced. It breathes an injured spirit, somethinglike the complaint of Cowley, with which posterity are sure tosympathize. The sonnet of Filicaja, “Italia mia,” is known by everyone who cares for this poetry at all. This sonnet is conspicuous forits depth of feeling, for the spirit of its commencement, and aboveall, for the noble lines with which it ends; but there are surelyawkward and feeble expressions in the intermediate part. _Armenti_ forregiments of dragoons could only be excused by frequent usage inpoetry, which, I presume, is not the case, though we find the sameword in one of Filicaja’s odes. A foreigner may venture upon this kindof criticism.

3. Filicaja was formed in the school of Chiabrera; but, with his pompof sound and boldness of imagery, he is animated by a deeper senseboth of religion and patriotism. We perceive more the language of theheart; the man speaks in his genuine character, not with assumed andmercenary sensibility, like that of Pindar and Chiabrera. His geniusis greater than his skill; he abandons himself to an impetuosity whichhe cannot sustain, forgetful of the economy of strength and breath, asnecessary for a poet as a race-horse. He has rarely or never anyconceits or frivolous thoughts; but the expression is sometimes ratherfeeble. There is a general want of sunshine in Filicaja’s poetry;unprosperous himself, he views nothing with a worldly eye; his notesof triumph are without brilliancy, his predictions of success arewithout joy. He seems also deficient in the charms of grace andfelicity. But his poetry is always the effusion of a fine soul; wevenerate and love Filicaja as a man, but we also acknowledge that hewas a real poet.

|Guidi.|

4. Guidi, a native of Pavia, raised himself to the highest point thatany lyric poet of Italy has attained. His odes are written at Rome,from about the year 1685 to the end of the century. Compared withChiabrera or even Filicaja, he may be allowed the superiority; if henever rises to a higher pitch than the latter, if he has never chosensubjects so animating, if he has never displayed so much depth andtruth of feeling, his enthusiasm is more constant, his imaginationmore creative, his power of language more extensive and morefelicitous. “He falls sometimes,” says Corniani, “into extravagance,but never into affectation.... His peculiar excellence is poeticalexpression, always brilliant with a light of his own. The magic of hislanguage used to excite a lively movement among the hearers when herecited his verses in the Arcadian society.” Corniani adds, that he issometimes exuberant in words and hyperbolical in images.[973]

 [973] Vol. viii., p. 224.

5. The ode of Guidi on Fortune, appears to me, at least, equal to anyin the Italian language. If it has been suggested by that of CelioMagno, entitled Iddio, the resemblance does not deserve the name ofimitation; a nobleness of thought, imagery, and language, prevailsthroughout. But this is the character of all his odes. He chose bettersubjects than Chiabrera; for the ruins of Rome are more glorious thanthe living house of Medici. He resembles him, indeed, rather than anyother poet, so that it might not always be easy to discern one fromthe other in a single stanza; but Guidi is a bolder, a moreimaginative, a more enthusiastic poet. Both adorn and amplify a littleto excess; and it may be imputed to Guidi that he has abused anadvantage which his native language afforded. The Italian is rich inwords, where the sound so well answers to the meaning, that it ishardly possible to hear them without an associated sentiment; theireffect is closely analogous to musical expression. Such are theadjectives denoting mental elevation, as _superbo_, _altiero_,_audace_, _gagliardo_, _indomito_, _maestoso_. These recur in thepoems of Guidi with every noun that will admit of them; but sometimesthe artifice is a little too transparent, and though the meaning isnot sacrificed to sound, we feel that it is too much enveloped in it,and are not quite pleased that a great poet should rely so much on aresource which the most mechanical slave of music can employ.

|Menzini.|

6. The odes of Benedetto Menzini are elegant and in poetical language,but such as does not seem very original, nor do they strike us by muchvigour or animation of thought. The allusions to mythology which wenever find in Filicaja, and rarely in Guidi, are too frequent. Someare of considerable beauty, among which we may distinguish thataddressed to Magalotti, beginning, “Un verde ramuscello in piaggiaaprica.” Menzini was far from confining himself to this species ofpoetry; he was better known in others. As an Anacreontic poet, hestands, I believe, only below Chiabrera and Redi. His satires havebeen preferred by some to those of Ariosto; but neither Corniani norSalfi acquiesce in this praise. Their style is a mixture of obsoletephrases from Dante, with the idioms of the Florentine populace; andthough spirited in substance, they are rather full of common-placeinvective. Menzini strikes boldly at priests and governments, and,what was dangerous to Orpheus, at the whole sex of women. His Art ofPoetry, in five books, published in 1681, deserves some praise. As hisatrabilious humour prompted, he inveighs against the corruption ofcontemporary literature, especially on the stage, ridiculing also thePindaric pomp that some affected, not, perhaps, without allusion tohis enemy Guidi. His own style is pointed, animated, sometimespoetical, where didactic verse will admit of such ornament, but alittle too diffuse and minute in criticism.

|Salvator Rosa--Redi.|

7. These three are the great restorers of Italian poetry after theusurpation of false taste. And it is to be observed, that theyintroduced a new manner, very different from that of the sixteenthcentury. Several others deserve to be mentioned, though we can only doso briefly. The Satires of Salvator Rosa, full of force and vehemence,more vigorous than elegant, are such as his ardent genius and rathersavage temper would lead us to expect. A far superior poet was a mannot less eminent than Salvator, the philosophical and every wayaccomplished Redi. Few have done so much, in any part of science, whohave also shone so brightly in the walks of taste. The sonnets of Rediare esteemed; but his famous dithyrambic, Bacco in Toscana, isadmitted to be the first poem of that kind in modern language, and isas worthy of Monte Pulciano wine, as the wine is worthy of it.

|Other poets.|

8. Maggi and Lemene bore an honourable part in the restoration ofpoetry, though neither of them is reckoned altogether to have purifiedhimself from the infection of the preceding age. The sonnet ofPastorini on the imagined resistance of Genoa to the oppression ofLouis XIV., in 1684, though not borne out by historical truth, is oneof those breathings of Italian nationality which we always admire, andwhich had now become more common than for a century before. It must beconfessed, in general, that when the protestations of a people againsttyranny become loud enough to be heard, we may suspect that thetyranny has been relaxed.

|Christina’s patronage of letters.|

|Society of Arcadians.|

9. Rome was to poetry in this age what Florence had once been, thoughRome had hitherto done less for the Italian muses than any other greatcity. Nor was this so much due to her bishops and cardinals, as to astranger and a woman. Christina finally took up her abode there in1688. Her palace became the resort of all the learning and genius shecould assemble round her; a literary academy was established, and herrevenue was liberally dispensed in pensions. If Filicaja and Guidi,both sharers of her bounty, have exaggerated her praises, much may bepardoned to gratitude, and much also to the natural admiration whichthose who look up to power must feel for those who have renounced it.Christina died in 1690, and her own academy could last no longer; buta phœnix sprang at once from its ashes. Crescimbeni, then young, hasthe credit of having planned the Society of Arcadians, which began in1690, and has eclipsed in celebrity most of the earlier academies ofItaly. Fourteen, says Corniani, were the original founders of thissociety; among whom were Crescimbeni and Gravina and Zappi. In courseof time the Arcadians vastly increased, and established colonies inthe chief cities of Italy. They determined to assume every one apastoral name and a Greek birthplace, to hold their meetings in someverdant meadow, and to mingle with all their compositions, as far aspossible, images from pastoral life; images always agreeable, becausethey recall the times of primitive innocence. This poetical tribeadopted as their device the pipe of seven reeds bound with laurel, andtheir president or director was denominated general shepherd or keeper(custode generale).[974] The fantastical part of the Arcadian societywas common to them with all similar institutions; and mankind hasgenerally required some ceremonial follies to keep alive the wholesomespirit of association. Their solid aim was to purify the nationaltaste. Much had been already done, and in great measure by their ownmembers, Menzini and Guidi; but their influence, which was, of course,more felt in the next century, has always been reckoned both importantand auspicious to Italian literature.

 [974] Corniani, viii., 301. Tiraboschi, xi., 43. Crescimbeni, Storia d’Arcadia (reprinted by Mathias.)

 SECT. II.

 ON FRENCH POETRY.

 _Fontaine--Boileau--Minor French Poets._

|La Fontaine.|

10. We must pass over Spain and Portugal as absolutely destitute ofany name which requires commemoration. In France it was very differentif some earlier periods had been not less rich in the number ofversifiers, none had produced poets who have descended with so muchrenown to posterity. The most popular of these was La Fontaine. Fewwriters have left such a number of verses which, in the phrase of hiscountry, have made their fortune, and been like ready money, always athand for prompt quotation. His lines have at once a proverbial truthand a humour of expression which render them constantly applicable.This is chiefly true of his Fables; for his Tales, though no one willdeny that they are lively enough, are not reckoned so well written,nor do they supply so much for general use.

|Character of his Fables.|

11. The models of La Fontaine’s style were partly the ancientfabulists whom he copied, for he pretends to no originality; partlythe old French poets, especially Marot. From the one he took the realgold of his fables themselves, from the other he caught a peculiararchness and vivacity, which some of them had possessed, perhaps, inno less degree, but which becomes more captivating from hisintermixture of a solid and serious wisdom. For notwithstanding thecommon anecdotes, sometimes, as we may suspect, rather exaggerated, ofLa Fontaine’s simplicity, he was evidently a man who had thought andobserved much about human nature, and knew a little more of the worldthan he cared to let the world perceive. Many of his Fables areadmirable; the grace of the poetry, the happy inspiration that seemsto have dictated the turns of expression, place him in the first rankamong fabulists. Yet the praise of La Fontaine should not beindiscriminate. It is said that he gave the preference to Phædrus andÆsop above himself, and some have thought that in this he could nothave been sincere. It was at least a proof of his modesty. But, thoughwe cannot think of putting Phædrus on a level with La Fontaine, wereit only for this reason, that in a work designed for the generalreader, and surely fables are of this description, the qualities thatplease the many are to be valued above those that please the few, yetit is true that the French poet might envy some talents of the Roman.Phædrus, a writer scarcely prized enough, because he is an earlyschool-book, has a perfection of elegant beauty which very few haverivalled. No word is out of its place, none is redundant, or could bechanged for a better; his perspicuity and ease make everything appearunpremeditated, yet everything is wrought by consummate art. In manyfables of La Fontaine this is not the case; he beats round thesubject, and misses often before he hits. Much, whatever La Harpe mayassert to the contrary, could be retrenched; in much the exigencies ofrhyme and metre are too manifest.[975] He has, on the otherhand, far more humour than Phædrus; and, whether it be praise or not,thinks less of his fable and more of its moral. One pleases byenlivening, the other pleases, but does not enliven; one has morefelicity, the other more skill; but in such skill there is felicity.

 [975] Let us take, for example, the first lines of L’Homme et la Couleuvre.

 Un homme vit une couleuere. Ah méchante, dit-il, je m’en vais faire un œuvre Agréable à tout l’univers! A ces mots l’animal pervers (C’est le serpent que je veux dire, _Et non l’homme, on pourroit aisément s’y tromper_) A ces motes le serpent se laissant attrapper Est pris, mis en un sac; et, ce qui fut le pire, On resolut sa mort, _fût il coupable ou non_.

 None of these lines appear to me very happy; but there can be no doubt about that in Italics, which spoils the effect of the preceding, and is feebly redundant. The last words are almost equally bad; no question could arise about the serpent’s guilt, which had been assumed before. But these petty blemishes are abundantly redeemed by the rest of the fable, which is beautiful in choice of thoughts and language, and may be classed with the best in the collection.

|Boileau.--His epistles.|

12. The first seven satires of Boileau appeared in 1666; and these,though much inferior to his later productions, are characterised by LaHarpe as the earliest poetry in the French language where themechanism of its verse was fully understood, where the style wasalways pure and elegant, where the ear was uniformly gratified. TheArt of Poetry was published in 1673, the Lutrin in 1674; the Epistlesfollowed at various periods. Their elaborate though equable strain, ina kind of poetry which, never requiring high flights of fancy, escapesthe censure of mediocrity and monotony which might sometimes fall uponit, generally excites more admiration in those who have beenaccustomed to the numerous defects of less finished poets, than itretains in a later age, when others have learned to emulate andpreserve the same uniformity. The fame of Pope was transcendant forthis reason, and Boileau is the analogue of Pope in French literature.

|His Art of Poetry.|

13. The Art of Poetry has been the model of the Essay on Criticism;few poems more resemble each other. I will not weigh in oppositescales two compositions, of which one claims an advantage from itsoriginality, the other from the youth of its author. Both are uncommonefforts of critical good sense, and both are distinguished by theirshort and pointed language, which remains in the memory. Boileau hasvery well incorporated the thoughts of Horace with his own, and giventhem a skilful adaptation to his own times. He was a bolder critic ofhis contemporaries than Pope. He took up arms against those who sharedthe public favour, and were placed by half Paris among greatdramatists and poets, Pradon, Desmarests, Brebœuf. This was not trueof the heroes of the Dunciad. His scorn was always bitter and probablysometimes unjust; yet posterity has ratified almost all his judgments.False taste, it should be remembered, had long infected the poetry ofEurope; some steps had been lately taken to repress it, butextravagance, affectation, and excess of refinement, are weeds thatcan only be eradicated by a thorough cleansing of the soil, by aprocess of burning and paring which leaves not a seed of them in thepublic mind. And when we consider the gross blemishes of thisdescription that deform the earlier poetry of France, as of othernations, we cannot blame the severity of Boileau, though he mayoccasionally have condemned in the mass what contained someintermixture of real excellence. We have become of late years inEngland so enamoured of the beauties of our old writers, and certainlythey are of a superior kind, that we are sometimes more than a littleblind to their faults.

|Comparison with Horace.|

14. By writing satires, epistles, and an art of poetry, Boileau haschallenged an obvious comparison with Horace. Yet they are veryunlike; one easy, colloquial, abandoning himself to every change thatarises in his mind, the other uniform as a regiment under arms, alwaysequal, always laboured, incapable of a bold neglect. Poetry seems tohave been the delight of one, the task of the other. The pain thatBoileau must have felt in writing communicates itself in some measureto the reader; we are fearful of losing some point, of passing oversome epithet without sufficiently perceiving its selection; it is aswith those pictures which are to be viewed long and attentively, tillour admiration of detached proofs of skill becomes wearisome byrepetition.

|The Lutrin.|

15. The Lutrin is the most popular of the poems of Boileau. Itssubject is ill chosen; neither interest nor variety could be given toit. Tassoni and Pope have the advantage in this respect; if thereleading theme is trifling, we lose sight of it in the gay livelinessof description and episode. In Boileau, after we have once been toldthat the canons of a church spend their lives in sleep and eating, wehave no more to learn, and grow tired of keeping company with a raceso stupid and sensual. But the poignant wit and satire, the eleganceand correctness, of numberless couplets, as well as the ingeniousadaptation of classical passages, redeem this poem, and confirm itshigh place in the mock-heroic line.

|General character of his poetry.|

16. The great deficiency of Boileau is insensibility. Far below Popeor even Dryden in this essential quality, which the moral epistle orsatire not only admits but requires, he rarely quits two paths, thoseof reason and of raillery. His tone on moral subjects is firm andsevere, but not very noble; a trait of pathos, a single touch of pityor tenderness, will rarely be found. This of itself serves to gives adryness to his poetry, and it may be doubtful, though most have readBoileau, whether many have read him twice.

|Lyric poetry lighter than before.|

17. The pompous tone of Ronsard and Du Bartas had become ridiculous inthe reign of Louis XIV. Even that of Malherbe was too elevated for thepublic taste; none at least imitated that writer, though the criticshad set the example of admiring him. Boileau, who had done much toturn away the world from imagination to plain sense, once attempted toemulate the grandiloquent strains of Pindar in an ode on the taking ofNamur, but with no such success as could encourage himself or othersto repeat the experiment. Yet there was no want of gravity orelevation in the prose writers of France, nor in the tragedies ofRacine. But the French language is not very well adapted for thehigher kind of lyric poetry, while it suits admirably the lighterforms of song and epigram. And their poets, in this age, were almostentirely men living at Paris, either in the court, or at least in arefined society, the most adverse of all to the poetical character.The influence of wit and politeness is generally directed towardsrendering enthusiasm or warmth of fancy ridiculous; and without theseno great energy of genius can be displayed. But, in their properdepartment, several poets of considerable merit appeared.

|Benserade.|

|Chaulieu.|

18. Benserade was called peculiarly the poet of the court; for twentyyears it was his business to compose verses for the balletsrepresented before the king. His skill and tact were shown in delicatecontrivances to make those who supported the characters of gods andgoddesses in these fictions, being the nobles and ladies of the court,betray their real inclinations, and sometimes their gallantries. Heeven presumed to shadow in this manner the passion of Louis forMademoiselle La Vallière, before it was publicly acknowledged.Benserade must have had no small ingenuity and adroitness; but hisverses did not survive those who called them forth. In a differentschool, not essentially, perhaps, much more vicious than the court,but more careless of appearances, and rather proud of an immoralitywhich it had no interest to conceal, that of Ninon l’Enclos, severalof higher reputation grew up; Chapelle (whose real name wasL’Huillier), La Fare, Bachaumont, Lainez, and Chaulieu. The first,perhaps, and certainly the last of these, are worthy to be remembered.La Harpe has said, that Chaulieu alone retains a claim to be read in astyle where Voltaire has so much left all others behind, that nocomparison with him can ever be admitted. Chaulieu was an originalgenius, his poetry has a marked character, being a happy mixture of agentle and peaceable philosophy with a lively imagination. His versesflow from his soul, and though often negligent through indolence, arenever in bad taste or affected. Harmony of versification, grace andgaiety, with a voluptuous and Epicurean, but mild and benevolent turnof thought, belong to Chaulieu, and these are qualities which do notfail to attract the majority of readers.[976]

 [976] La Harpe. Bouterwek, vi. 127. Biogr. Univ.

|Pastoral poetry.|

|Segrais.|

|Deshoulières.|

|Fontenelle.|

19. It is rather singular that a style so uncongenial to the spirit ofthe age as pastoral poetry appears was quite as much cultivated asbefore. But it is still true that the spirit of the age gained thevictory, and drove the shepherds from their shady bowers, thoughwithout substituting anything more rational in the fairy tales whichsuperseded the pastoral romance. At the middle of the century, andpartially till near its close, the style of D’Urfé and Scuderyretained its popularity. Three poets of the age of Louis were known inpastoral; Segrais, Madame Deshoulières, and Fontenelle. The firstbelongs most to the genuine school of modern pastoral; he is elegant,romantic, full of complaining love; the Spanish and French romanceshad been his model in invention, as Virgil was in style. La Harpeallows him nature, sweetness, and sentiment, but he cannot emulate thevivid colouring of Virgil, and the language of his shepherds, thoughsimple, wants elegance and harmony. The tone of his pastorals seemsrather insipid, though La Harpe has quoted some pleasing lines. MadameDeshoulières, with a purer style than Segrais, according to the samecritic, has less genius. Others have thought her Idylls the best inthe language.[977] But these seem to be merely trivial moralitiesaddressed to flowers, brooks, and sheep, sometimes expressed in amanner both ingenious and natural, but on the whole, too feeble togive much pleasure. Bouterwek observes that her poetry is to beconsidered as that of a woman, and that its pastoral morality would besomewhat childish in the mouth of man; whether this says more for thelady, or against her sex, I must leave to the reader. She hasoccasionally some very pleasing and even poetical passages.[978] Thethird among these poets of the pipe is Fontenelle. But his pastorals,as Bouterwek says, are too artificial for the ancient school, and toocold for the romantic. La Harpe blames, besides this general fault,the negligence and prosaic phrases of his style. The best is thatentitled Ismene. It is in fact a poem for the world; yet as love andits artifices are found everywhere, we cannot censure anything asabsolutely unfit for pastoral, save a certain refinement whichbelonged to the author in everything, and which interferes with oursense of rural simplicity.

 [977] Biogr. Univ.

 [978] Bouterwek, vi. 152.

|Bad epic poems.|

20. In the superior walks of poetry France had nothing of which shehas been inclined to boast. Chapelain, a man of some credit as acritic, produced his long-laboured epic, La Pucelle, in 1656, which isonly remembered by the insulting ridicule of Boileau. A similar fatehas fallen on the Clovis of Desmarests, published in 1684, though theGerman historian of literature has extolled the richness ofimagination it shows, and observed that if those who saw nothing but afantastic writer in Desmarests had possessed as much fancy, thenational poetry would have been of a higher character.[979] Brebœuf’stranslation of the Pharsalia is spirited, but very extravagant.

 [979] Bouterwek, vi. 157.

|German Poetry.|

21. The literature of Germany was now more corrupted by bad taste thanever. A second Silesian school, but much inferior to that of Opitz,was founded by Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein. The first had greatfacility, and imitated Ovid and Marini with some success. The second,with worse taste, always tumid and striving at something elevated, sothat the Lohenstein swell became a by-word with later critics, issuperior to Hoffmanswaldau in richness of fancy, in poeticalinvention, and in warmth of feeling for all that is noble and great.About the end of the century arose a new style, known by the unhappyname spiritless (geistlos), which, avoiding the tone of Lohenstein,became wholly tame and flat.[980]

 [980] Id. vol. x., p. 288. Heinsius. iv. 287. Eichhorn, Geschichte der Cultur, iv. 776.

 SECT. III.

 ON ENGLISH POETRY.

 _Waller--Butler--Milton--Dryden--The Minor Poets._

|Waller.|

22. We might have placed Waller in the former division of theseventeenth century, with no more impropriety than we might havereserved Cowley for the latter; both belong by the date of theirwritings to the two periods. And perhaps the poetry of Waller bearsrather the stamp of the first Charles’s age than of that which ensued.His reputation was great, and somewhat more durable than that ofsimilar poets have generally been; he did not witness its decay in hisown protracted life, nor was it much diminished at the beginning ofthe next century. Nor was this wholly undeserved. Waller has a moreuniform elegance, a more sure facility and happiness of expression,and, above all, a greater exemption from glaring faults, such aspedantry, extravagance, conceit, quaintness, obscurity, ungrammaticaland unmeaning constructions, than any of the Caroline era with whom hewould naturally be compared. We have only to open Carew or Lovelace toperceive the difference; not that Waller is wholly without some ofthese faults, but that they are much less frequent. If others may havebrighter passages of fancy or sentiment, which is not difficult, hehusbands better his resources, and though left behind in the beginningof the race, comes sooner to the goal. His Panegyric on Cromwell wascelebrated. “Such a series of verses,” it is said by Johnson, “hadrarely appeared before in the English language. Of these lines someare grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now andthen a feeble verse, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is thechoice of its hero.” It may not be the opinion of all, that Cromwell’sactions were of that obscure and pitiful character which the majestyof song rejects, and Johnson has before observed, that Waller’s choiceof encomiastic topics in this poem is very judicious. Yet hisdeficiency in poetical vigour will surely be traced in thiscomposition; if he rarely sinks, he never rises very high, and we findmuch good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of languageand metre, without ardour and without imagination. In his amorouspoetry, he has little passion or sensibility; but he is never free andpetulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much innegations; but in a comparative estimate, perhaps negations ought tocount for a good deal.

|Butler’s Hudibras.|

23. Hudibras was incomparably more popular than Paradise Lost; no poemin our language rose at once to greater reputation. Nor can this becalled ephemeral, like that of most political poetry. For at leasthalf a century after its publication it was generally read, andperpetually quoted. The wit of Butler has still preserved many lines;but Hudibras now attracts comparatively few readers. The eulogies ofJohnson seem rather adapted to what he remembered to have been thefame of Butler, than to the feelings of the surrounding generation;and since his time, new sources of amusem*nt have sprung up, andwriters of a more intelligible pleasantry have superseded those of theseventeenth century. In the fiction of Hudibras there was never muchto divert the reader, and there is still less left at present. Butwhat has been censured as a fault, the length of dialogue, which putsthe fiction out of sight, is, in fact, the source of all the pleasurethat the work affords. The sense of Butler is masculine, his witinexhaustible, and it is supplied from every source of reading andobservation. But these sources are often so unknown to the reader thatthe wit loses its effect through the obscurity of its allusions, andhe yields to the bane of wit, a purblind mole-like pedantry. Hisversification is sometimes spirited, and his rhymes humorous; yet hewants that ease and flow which we require in light poetry.

|Paradise Lost--Choice of subject.|

24. The subject of Paradise Lost is the finest that has ever beenchosen for heroic poetry; it is also managed by Milton with remarkableskill. The Iliad wants completeness; it has an unity of its own, butit is the unity of a part where we miss the relation to a whole. TheOdyssey is perfect enough in this point of view; but the subject ishardly extensive enough for a legitimate epic. The Æneid is spreadover too long a space, and perhaps the latter books have not thatintimate connection with the former that an epic poem requires. ThePharsalia is open to the same criticism as the Iliad. The Thebaid isnot deficient in unity or greatness of action; but it is one thatpossesses no sort of interest in our eyes. Tasso is far superior bothin choice and management of his subject to most of these. Yet the Fallof Man has a more general interest than the Crusade.

|Open to some difficulties.|

25. It must be owned, nevertheless, that a religious epic laboursunder some disadvantages; in proportion as it attracts those who holdthe same tenets with the author, it is regarded by those who dissentfrom him with indifference or aversion. It is said that the discoveryof Milton’s Arianism, in this rigid generation, has already impairedthe sale of Paradise Lost. It is also difficult to enlarge or adornsuch a story by fiction. Milton has done much in this way; yet he waspartly restrained by the necessity of conforming to Scripture.

|Its arrangement.|

26. The ordonnance or composition of the Paradise Lost is admirable;and here we perceive the advantage which Milton’s great familiaritywith the Greek theatre, and his own original scheme of the poem hadgiven him. Every part succeeds in an order, noble, clear, and natural.It might have been wished, indeed, that the vision of the eleventhbook had not been changed into the colder narration of the twelfth.But what can be more majestic than the first two books, which openthis great drama? It is true that they rather serve to confirm thesneer of Dryden that Satan is Milton’s hero; since they develop a planof action in that potentate, which is ultimately successful; thetriumph that he and his host must experience in the fall of man beinghardly compensated by their temporary conversion into serpents; afiction rather too grotesque. But it is, perhaps, only pedantry totalk about the hero, as if a high personage were absolutely requiredin an epic poem to predominate over the rest. The conception of Satanis doubtless the first effort of Milton’s genius. Dante could not haveventured to spare so much lustre for a ruined archangel, in an agewhen nothing less than horns and a tail were the orthodox creed.[981]

 [981] Coleridge has a fine passage which I cannot resist my desire to transcribe. “The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in itself the motive of action. It is the character so often seen in little on the political stage. It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of man is that these great men, as they are called, must act from some great motive. Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. To place this lust of self in opposition to denial of self or duty, and to show what exertions it would make, and what pains endure, to accomplish its end, is Milton’s particular object in the character of Satan. But around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which constitute the very height of poetic sublimity.” Coleridge’s Remains, p. 176.

 In reading such a paragraph as this, we are struck by the vast improvement of the highest criticism, the philosophy of æsthetics, since the days of Addison. His papers in the Spectator on Paradise Lost were, perhaps, superior to any criticism that had been written in our language; and we must always acknowledge their good sense, their judiciousness, and the vast service they did to our literature, in settling the Paradise Lost on its proper level. But how little they satisfy us, even in treating of the _natura naturata_, the poem itself! and how little conception they show of the _natura naturans_, the individual genius of the author! Even in the periodical criticism of the present day, in the midst of much that is affected, much that is precipitate, much that is written for mere display, we find occasional reflections of a profundity and discrimination which we should seek in vain through Dryden or Addison, or the two Wartons, or even Johnson, though much superior to the rest. Hurd has perhaps the merit of being the first who in this country aimed at philosophical criticism; he had great ingenuity, a good deal of reading, and a facility in applying it; but he did not feel very deeply, was somewhat of a coxcomb, and having always before his eyes a model neither good in itself, nor made for him to emulate, he assumes a dogmatic arrogance, which, as it always offends the reader, so for the most part stands in the way of the author’s own search for truth.

|Characters of Adam and Eve.|

27. Milton has displayed great skill in the delineations of Adam andEve; he does not dress them up, after the fashion of orthodoxtheology, which had no spell to bind his free spirit, in the fanciedrobes of primitive righteousness. South, in one of his sermons, hasdrawn a picture of unfallen man, which is even poetical; but it mightbe asked by the reader, Why then did he fall? The first pair of Miltonare innocent of course, but not less frail than their posterity; norexcept one circ*mstance, which seems rather physical intoxication thananything else, do we find any sign of depravity super-induced upontheir transgression. It might even be made a question for profoundtheologians whether Eve, by taking amiss what Adam had said, and byself-conceit, did not sin before she tasted the fatal apple. Thenecessary paucity of actors in Paradise Lost is perhaps the apology ofSin and Death; they will not bear exact criticism, yet we do not wishthem away.

|He owes less to Homer than the tragedians.|

28. The comparison of Milton with Homer has been founded on theacknowledged pre-eminence of each in his own language, and on the laxapplication of the word epic to their great poems. But there was notmuch in common either between their genius or its products; and Miltonhas taken less in direct imitation from Homer than from several otherpoets. His favourites had rather been Sophocles and Euripides; to themhe owes the structure of his blank verse, his swell and dignity ofstyle, his grave enunciation of moral and abstract sentiment, his toneof description, neither condensed like that of Dante, nor spread outwith the diffuseness of the other Italians and of Homer himself. Nextto these Greek tragedians, Virgil seems to have been his model; withthe minor Latin poets, except Ovid, he does not, I think, show anygreat familiarity; and though abundantly conversant with Ariosto,Tasso, and Marini, we cannot say that they influenced his manner,which, unlike theirs, is severe and stately, never light, nor in thesense we should apply the words to them, rapid and animated.[982]

 [982] The solemnity of Milton is striking in those passages where some other poets would indulge a little in voluptuousness, and the more so, because this is not wholly uncongenial to him. A few lines in Paradise Lost are rather too plain, and their gravity makes them worse.

|Compared with Dante.|

29. To Dante, however, he bears a much greater likeness. He has, incommon with that poet, an uniform seriousness, for the brightercolouring of both is but the smile of a pensive mind, a fondness forargumentative speech, and for the same strain of argument. This,indeed, proceeds in part from the general similarity, the religiousand even theological cast of their subjects; I advert particularly tothe last part of Dante’s poem. We may almost say, when we look to theresemblance of their prose writings, in the proud sense of being bornfor some great achievement, which breathes through the Vita Nuova, asit does through Milton’s earlier treatises, that they were twinspirits, and that each might have animated the other’s body, that eachwould, as it were, have been the other, if he had lived in the other’sage. As it is, I incline to prefer Milton, that is, the Paradise Lost,both because the subject is more extensive, and because the resourcesof his genius are more multifarious. Dante sins more against goodtaste, but only, perhaps, because there was no good taste in his time;for Milton has also too much a disposition to make the grotesqueaccessory to the terrible. Could Milton have written the lines onUgolino? Perhaps he could. Those on Francesca? Not, I think, everyline. Could Dante have planned such a poem as Paradise Lost? Notcertainly, being Dante in 1300; but, living when Milton did, perhapshe could. It is, however, useless to go on with questions that no onecan fully answer. To compare the two poets, read two or three cantosof the Purgatory or Paradise, and then two or three hundred lines ofParadise Lost. Then take Homer, or even Virgil, the difference will bestriking. Yet, notwithstanding this analogy of their minds, I have notperceived that Milton imitates Dante very often, probably from havingcommitted less to memory while young (and Dante was not the favouritepoet of Italy when Milton was there), than of Ariosto and Tasso.

30. Each of these great men chose the subject that suited his naturaltemper and genius. What, it is curious to conjecture, would have beenMilton’s success in his original design, a British story? Far lesssurely than in Paradise Lost; he wanted the rapidity of the commonheroic poem, and would always have been sententious, perhaps arid andheavy. Yet, even as religious poets, there are several remarkabledistinctions between Milton and Dante. It has been justly observedthat, in the Paradise of Dante, he makes use of but three leadingideas, light, music, and motion, and that Milton has drawn Heaven inless pure and spiritual colours.[983] The philosophical imagination ofthe former, in this third part of his poem, almost defecated from allsublunary things by long and solitary musing, spiritualizes all ittouches. The genius of Milton, though itself subjective, was less sothan that of Dante; and he has to recount, to describe, to bring deedsand passions before the eye. And two peculiar causes may be assignedfor this difference in the treatment of celestial things between theDivine Comedy and the Paradise Lost; the dramatic form which Miltonhad originally designed to adopt, and his own theological bias towardsanthropomorphitism, which his posthumous treatise on religion hasbrought to light. This was, no doubt, in some measure inevitable insuch a subject as that of Paradise Lost; yet much that is ascribed toGod, sometimes with the sanction of Scripture, sometimes without it,is not wholly pleasing; such as “the oath that shook Heaven’s vastcircumference,” and several other images of the same kind, which bringdown the Deity in a manner not consonant to philosophical religion,however it may be borne out by the sensual analogies, or mythicsymbolism of Oriental writing.[984]

 [983] Quarterly Review, June, 1825. This article contains some good and some questionable remarks on Milton; among the latter I reckon the proposition, that his contempt for women is shown in the delineation of Eve; an opinion not that of Addison or of many others who have thought her exquisitely drawn. It is true that, if Milton had made her a wit or a _blue_, the fall would have been accounted for with as little difficulty as possible, and spared the serpent his trouble.

 [984] Johnson thinks that Milton should have secured the consistency of this poem by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But here the subject forbade him to preserve consistency, if, indeed, there be inconsistency in supposing a rapid assumption of form by spiritual beings. For, though the instance that Johnson alleges of inconsistency in Satan’s animating a toad was not necessary, yet his animation of the serpent was absolutely indispensable. And the same has been done by other poets, who do not scruple to suppose their gods, their fairies or devils, or their allegorical personages, inspiring thoughts, and even uniting themselves with the soul, as well as assuming all kinds of form, though their natural appearance is almost always anthropomorphic. And, after all, Satan does not animate a real toad, but takes the shape of one. “Squat like a toad close by the ear of Eve.” But he does enter a real serpent, so that the instance of Johnson is ill chosen. If he had mentioned the serpent, everyone would have seen that the identity of the animal serpent with Satan is part of the original account.

|Elevation of his style.|

31. We rarely meet with feeble lines in Paradise Lost,[985] thoughwith many that are hard, and, in a common use of the word, might becalled prosaic. Yet few are truly prosaic; few wherein the tone is notsome way distinguished from prose. The very artificial style ofMilton, sparing in English idiom, and his study of a rhythm, notalways the most grateful to our ears, but preserving his blank versefrom a trivial flow, is the cause of this elevation. It is, at least,more removed from a prosaic cadence than the slovenly rhymes of suchcontemporary poets as Chamberlayne. His versification is entirely hisown, framed on a Latin and chiefly a Virgilian model, the pause lessfrequently resting on the close of the line than in Homer, and muchless than in our own dramatic poets. But it is also possible that theItalian and Spanish blank verse may have had some effect upon his ear.

 [985] One of the few exceptions is in the sublime description of Death, where a wretched hemistich, “Fierce as ten furies,” stands as an unsightly blemish.

|His blindness.|

32. In the numerous imitations, and still more numerous traces ofolder poetry which we perceive in Paradise Lost, it is always to bekept in mind that he had only his recollection to rely upon.[986] Hisblindness seems to have been complete before 1654; and I scarcelythink that he had begun his poem, before the anxiety and trouble intowhich the public strife of the commonwealth and the restoration hadthrown him, gave leisure for immortal occupations. Then theremembrance of early reading came over his dark and lonely path likethe moon emerging from the clouds. Then it was that the muse was trulyhis; not only as she poured her creative inspiration into his mind,but as the daughter of Memory, coming with fragments of ancientmelodies, the voice of Euripides and Homer and Tasso; sounds that hehad loved in youth, and treasured up for the solace of his age. Theywho, though not enduring the calamity of Milton, have known what itis, when afar from books, in solitude, or in travelling, or in theintervals of worldly care, to feed on poetical recollections, tomurmur over the beautiful lines whose cadence has long delighted theirear, to recall the sentiments and images which retain by associationthe charm that early years once gave them--they will feel theinestimable value of committing to the memory, in the prime of itspower, what it will easily receive and indelibly retain. I know not,indeed, whether an education that deals much with poetry, such as isstill usual in England, has any more solid argument among many in itsfavour, than that it lays the foundation of intellectual pleasures atthe other extreme of life.

 [986] I take this opportunity of mentioning, on the authority of Mr. Todd’s Inquiry into the Origin of Paradise Lost (edit. of Milton, vol. ii., p. 229), that Lauder, whom I have taxed with ignorance, Vol. III., p. 522, really published the poem of Barlæus on the nuptials of Adam and Eve.

|His passion for music.|

|Faults in Paradise Lost.|

33. It is owing, in part, to his blindness, but more, perhaps, to hisgeneral residence in a city, that Milton, in the words of Coleridge,is “not a picturesque but a musical poet;” or, as I would prefer tosay, is the latter more of the two. He describes visible things, andoften with great powers of rendering them manifest, what the Greekscalled εναργεια [enargeia], though seldom with so much circ*mstantialexactness of observation, as Spenser or Dante; but he feels music. Thesense of vision delighted his imagination, but that of sound wrappedhis whole soul in ecstacy. One of his trifling faults may be connectedwith this, the excessive passion he displays for stringing togethersonorous names, sometimes so obscure that the reader associatesnothing with them, as the word Namancos in Lycidas, which long baffledthe commentators. Hence, his catalogues, unlike those of Homer andVirgil, are sometimes merely ornamental and misplaced. Thus, the namesof unbuilt cities come strangely forward in Adam’s vision,[987] thoughhe has afterwards gone over the same ground with better effect inParadise Regained. In this there was also a mixture of his pedantry.But, though he was rather too ostentatious of learning, the nature ofhis subject demanded a good deal of episodical ornament. And this,rather than the precedents he might have alledged from the Italiansand others, is, perhaps, the best apology for what some grave criticshave censured, his frequent allusions to fable and mythology. Thesegive much relief to the severity of the poem, and few readers woulddispense with them. Less excuse can be made for some affectation ofscience which has produced hard and unpleasing lines; but he had beenborn in an age when more credit was gained by reading much than bywriting well. The faults, however, of Paradise Lost are, in general,less to be called faults than necessary adjuncts of the qualities wemost admire, and idiosyncrasies of a mighty genius. The verse ofMilton is sometimes wanting in grace, and almost always in ease; butwhat better can be said of his prose? His foreign idioms are toofrequent in the one; but they predominate in the other.

 [987] Par. Lost, xi., 386.

|Its progress to fame.|

34. The slowness of Milton’s advance to glory is now generally ownedto have been much exaggerated; we might say that the reverse wasnearer the truth. “The sale of 1,300 copies in two years,” saysJohnson, “in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style ofversification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommonexample of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediatelyincrease; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nationdid not afford. Only 3,000 were sold in eleven years.” It would hardlyhowever be said, even in this age, of a poem 3,000 copies of which hadbeen sold in eleven years, that its success had been small; and I havesome few doubts, whether Paradise Lost, published eleven years since,would have met with a greater demand. There is sometimes a want ofcongeniality in public taste which no power of genius will overcome.For Milton it must be said by every one conversant with the literatureof the age that preceded Addison’s famous criticism, from which somehave dated the reputation of Paradise Lost, that he took his placeamong great poets from the beginning. The fancy of Johnston that fewdared to praise it, and that “the revolution put an end to the secrecyof love,” is without foundation; the government of Charles II. was notso absurdly tyrannical, nor did Dryden, the court’s own poet,hesitate, in his preface to the State of Innocence, published soonafter Milton’s death, to speak of its original, Paradise Lost, as“undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poemswhich either this age or nation has produced.”

|Paradise Regained.|

35. The neglect which Paradise Lost never experienced, seems to havebeen long the lot of Paradise Regained. It was not popular with theworld; it was long believed to manifest a decay of the poet’s genius,and, in spite of all the critics have written, it is still but thefavourite of some whose predilections for the Miltonic style are verystrong. The subject is so much less capable of calling forth the vastpowers of his mind, that we should be unfair in comparing itthroughout with the greater poem; it has been called a model of theshorter epic, an action comprehending few characters and a brief spaceof time.[988] The love of Milton for dramatic dialogue, imbibed fromGreece, is still more apparent than in Paradise Lost; the whole poem,in fact, may almost be accounted a drama of primal simplicity, thenarrative and descriptive part serving rather to diversify and relievethe speeches of the actors, than their speeches, as in the legitimateepic, to enliven the narration. Paradise Regained abounds withpassages equal to any of the same nature in Paradise Lost; but theargumentative tone is kept up till it produces some tediousness, andperhaps, on the whole, less pains have been exerted to adorn andelevate even that which appeals to the imagination.

 [988] Todd’s Milton, vol. v., p. 308.

|Samson Agonistes.|

36. Samson Agonistes is the latest of Milton’s poems; we see in it,perhaps, more distinctly than in Paradise Regained, the ebb of amighty tide. An air of uncommon grandeur prevails throughout; but thelanguage is less poetical than in Paradise Lost; the vigour of thoughtremains, but it wants much of its ancient eloquence. Nor is the lyrictone well kept up by the chorus; they are too sententious, too slow inmovement, and, except by the metre, are not easily distinguishablefrom the other personages. But this metre is itself infelicitous; thelines being frequently of a number of syllables, not recognised in theusage of English poetry, and, destitute of rhythmical language, fallinto prose. Milton seems to have forgotten that the ancient chorus hada musical accompaniment.

37. The style of Samson, being essentially that of Paradise Lost, mayshow us how much more the latter poem is founded on the Greektragedians than on Homer. In Samson we have sometimes the pompous toneof Æschylus, more frequently the sustained majesty of Sophocles; butthe religious solemnity of Milton’s own temperament, as well as thenature of the subject, have given a sort of breadth, an unbrokenseverity, to the whole drama. It is, perhaps, not very popular evenwith the lovers of poetry; yet, upon close comparison, we should findthat it deserves a higher place than many of its prototypes. We mightsearch the Greek tragedies long for a character so powerfullyconceived and maintained as that of Samson himself; and it is onlyconformable to the sculptural simplicity of that form of drama whichMilton adopted, that all the rest should be kept in subordination toit. “It is only,” Johnson says, “by a blind confidence in thereputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised in which theintermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hastennor retard the catastrophe.” Such a drama is certainly not to beranked with Othello and Macbeth, or even with the Œdipus or theHippolytus; but a similar criticism is applicable to several famoustragedies in the less artificial school of antiquity, to thePrometheus and the Persæ of Æschylus, and if we look strictly, to nota few of the two other masters.

|Dryden. His earlier poems.|

38. The poetical genius of Dryden came slowly to perfection. Born in1631, his first short poems, or, as we might rather say, copies ofverses, were not written till he approached thirty; and though some ofhis dramas, not indeed of the best, belong to the next period of hislife, he had reached the age of fifty, before his high rank asa poet had been confirmed by indubitable proof. Yet he had manifesteda superiority to his immediate contemporaries; his Astræa Redux, onthe Restoration, is well versified; the lines are seldom weak, thecouplets have that pointed manner which Cowley and Denham had taughtthe world to require; they are harmonious, but not so varied as thestyle he afterwards adopted. The Annus Mirabilis, in 1667, is of ahigher cast; it is not so animated as the later poetry of Dryden,because the alternate quatrain, in which he followed Davenant’sGondibert, is hostile to animation; but it is not less favourable toanother excellence, condensed and vigorous thought. Davenant, indeed,and Denham may be reckoned the models of Dryden, so far as this can besaid of a man of original genius, and one far superior to theirs. Thedistinguishing characteristic of Dryden, it has been said by Scott,was the power of reasoning and expressing the result in appropriatelanguage. This, indeed, was the characteristic of the two we havenamed, and so far as Dryden has displayed it, which he eminently hasdone, he bears a resemblance to them. But it is insufficient praisefor this great poet. His rapidity of conception and readiness ofexpression are higher qualities. He never loiters about a singlethought or image, never labours about the turn of a phrase. Theimpression upon our minds that he wrote with exceeding ease, isirresistible, and I do not know that we have any evidence to repel it.The admiration of Dryden gains upon us, if I may speak from my ownexperience, with advancing years, as we become more sensible of thedifficulty of his style, and of the comparative facility of that whichis merely imaginative.

|Absalom and Achitophel.|

39. Dryden may be considered as a satirical, a reasoning, adescriptive and narrative, a lyric poet, and as a translator. As adramatist, we must return to him again. The greatest of his satires isAbsalom and Achitophel, that work in which his powers became fullyknown to the world, and which, as many think, he never surpassed. Theadmirable fitness of the English couplet for satire had never beenshown before; in less skilful hands it had been ineffective. He doesnot frequently, in this poem, carry the sense beyond the second line,which, for the most part, enfeebles the emphasis; his triplets areless numerous than usual, but energetic. The spontaneous ease ofexpression, the rapid transitions, the general elasticity and movementhave never been excelled. It is superfluous to praise thediscrimination and vivacity of the chief characters, especiallyShaftesbury and Buckingham. Satire, however, is so much easier thanpanegyric, that with Ormond, Ossory, and Mulgrave, he has not beenquite so successful. In the second part of Absalom and Achitophel,written by Tate, one long passage alone is inserted by Dryden. It isexcellent in its line of satire, but the line is less elevated; thepersons delineated are less important, and he has indulged more hisnatural proneness to virulent ribaldry. This fault of Dryden’swritings, it is just to observe, belonged less to the man than to theage. No libellous invective, no coarseness of allusion, had ever beenspared towards a private or political enemy. We read with nothing butdisgust the satirical poetry of Cleveland, Butler, Oldham, andMarvell, or even of men whose high rank did not soften their style,Rochester, Dorset, Mulgrave. In Dryden there was, for the first time,a poignancy of wit which atones for his severity, and a discretioneven in his taunts which made them more cutting.

|Mac Flecknoe.|

40. The Medal, which is in some measure a continuation of Absalom andAchitophel, as it bears wholly on Shaftesbury, is of unequal merit,and on the whole falls much below the former. In Mac Flecknoe, hissatire on his rival Shadwell, we must allow for the inferiority of thesubject, which could not bring out so much of Dryden’s higher powersof mind; but scarcely one of his poems is more perfect. Johnson, whoadmired Dryden almost as much as he could anyone, has yet, from hisproneness to critical censure, very much exaggerated the poet’sdefects. “His faults of negligence are beyond recital. Such is theunevenness of his compositions, that ten lines are seldom foundtogether without something of which the reader is ashamed.” This mightbe true, or more nearly true, of other poets of the seventeenthcentury. Ten good consecutive lines will, perhaps, rarely be found,except in Denham, Davenant and Waller. But it seems a greatexaggeration as to Dryden. I would particularly instance Mac Flecknoeas a poem of about four hundred lines, in which no one will becondemned as weak or negligent, though three or four are rather tooribaldrous for our taste. There are also passages, much exceeding tenlines, in Absalom and Achitophel, as well as in the later works, theFables, which excite in the reader none of the shame for the poet’scarelessness, with which Johnson has furnished him.

|The Hind and Panther.|

41. The argumentative talents of Dryden appear, more or less, in thegreater part of his poetry; reason in rhyme was his peculiar delight,to which he seems to escape from the mere excursions of fancy. And itis remarkable that he reasons better and more closely in poetry thanin prose. His productions more exclusively reasoning are the ReligioLaici and the Hind and Panther. The latter is every way anextraordinary poem. It was written in the hey-day of exultation, by arecent proselyte to a winning side, as he dreamed it to be, by one whonever spared a weaker foe, nor repressed his triumph with a dignifiedmoderation. A year was hardly to elapse before he exchanged thisfulness of pride for an old age of disappointment and poverty. Yetthen too his genius was unquenched, and even his satire was not lesssevere.

|Its singular fable.|

42. The first lines in the Hind and Panther are justly reputed amongthe most musical in our language; and perhaps we observe their rhythmthe better because it does not gain much by the sense; for theallegory and the fable are seen, even in this commencement, to beawkwardly blended. Yet, notwithstanding their evident incoherence,which sometimes leads to the verge of absurdity, and the facility theygive to ridicule, I am not sure that Dryden was wrong in choosing thissingular fiction. It was his aim to bring forward an old argument inas novel a style as he could; a dialogue between a priest and a parsonwould have made but a dull poem, even if it had contained some of theexcellent paragraphs we read in the Hind and Panther. It is thegrotesqueness and originality of the fable that give this poem itspeculiar zest, of which no reader, I conceive, is insensible; and itis also by this means that Dryden has contrived to relieve hisreasoning by short but beautiful touches of description, such as thesudden stream of light from heaven which announces the conception ofJames’s unfortunate heir near the end of the second book.

|Its reasoning.|

43. The wit in the Hind and Panther is sharp, ready, and pleasant, thereasoning is sometimes admirably close and strong; it is the energy ofBossuet in verse. I do not know that the main argument of the Romanchurch could be better stated; all that has been well said fortradition and authority, all that serves to expose the inconsistenciesof a vacillating protestantism, is in the Hind’s mouth. It is such ananswer as a candid man should admit to any doubts of Dryden’ssincerity. He who could argue as powerfully as the Hind may well beallowed to have thought himself in the right. Yet he could not forgeta few bold thoughts of his more sceptical days, and such is his biasto sarcasm that he cannot restrain himself from reflections on kingsand priests when he is most contending for them.[989]

 [989] By education most have been misled; So they believe because they so were bred. The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man. Part. iii.

 “Call you this backing of your friends?” his new allies might have said.

|The Fables.|

44. The Fables of Dryden, or stories modernised from Boccaccio andChaucer, are at this day probably the most read and the most popularof Dryden’s poems. They contain passages of so much more impressivebeauty, and are altogether so far more adapted to general sympathythan those we have mentioned, that I should not hesitate to concur inthis judgment. Yet Johnson’s accusation of negligence is bettersupported by these than by the earlier poems. Whether it were that ageand misfortune, though they had not impaired the poet’s vigour, hadrendered its continual exertion more wearisome, or, as is perhaps thebetter supposition, he reckoned an easy style, sustained above prose,in some places, rather by metre than expression, more fitted tonarration, we find much which might appear slovenly to critics ofJohnson’s temper. He seems, in fact, to have conceived, like Milton, atheory that good writing, at least in verse, is never either to followthe change of fashion, or to sink into familiar phrase, and that anydeviation from this rigour should be branded as low and colloquial.But Dryden wrote on a different plan. He thought, like Ariosto, andlike Chaucer, whom he had to improve, that a story, especially whennot heroic, should be told in easy and flowing language, without toomuch difference from that of prose, relying on his harmony, hisoccasional inversions, and his concealed skill in the choice of words,for its effect on the reader. He found also a tone of popular idiom,not perhaps old English idiom, but such as had crept into society,current among his contemporaries; and though this has in many casesnow become insufferably vulgar, and in others looks like affectation,we should make some allowance for the times in condemning it. Thislast blemish, however, is not much imputable to the Fables. Theirbeauties are innumerable; yet few are very well chosen; some, asGuiscard and Sigismunda, he has injured through coarseness of mind,which neither years nor religion had purified; and we want in all thepower over emotion, the charm of sympathy, the skilful arrangement andselection of circ*mstance, which narrative poetry claims as itshighest graces.

|His Odes--Alexander’s Feast.|

45. Dryden’s fame as a lyric poet depends a very little on his Ode onMrs. Killigrew’s death, but almost entirely on that song for St.Cecilia’s Day, commonly called Alexander’s Feast. The former, which ismuch praised by Johnson, has a few fine lines, mingled with a fargreater number ill conceived and ill expressed; the whole compositionhas that spirit which Dryden hardly ever wanted, but it is too faultyfor high praise. The latter used to pass for the best work of Drydenand the best ode in the language. Many would now agree with me that itis neither one nor the other and that it was rather over-rated duringa period when criticism was not at a high point. Its excellence indeedis undeniable; it has the raciness, the rapidity, the mastery oflanguage which belong to Dryden; the transitions are animated, thecontrasts effective. But few lines are highly poetical, and some sinkto the level of a common drinking song. It has the defects, as well asthe merits of that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment.

|His translation of Virgil.|

46. Of Dryden as a translator it is needless to say much. In someinstances, as in an ode of Horace, he has done extremely well; but hisVirgil is, in my apprehension, the least successful of his chiefworks. Lines of consummate excellence are frequently shot, likethreads of gold, through the web; but the general texture is of anordinary material. Dryden was little fitted for a translator ofVirgil; his mind was more rapid and vehement than that of hisoriginal, but by far less elegant and judicious. This translationseems to have been made in haste; it is more negligent than any of hisown poetry, and the style is often almost studiously, and as it werespitefully, vulgar.

|Decline of poetry from the Restoration.|

|Some minor poets enumerated.|

47. The supremacy of Dryden from the death of Milton in 1674 to hisown in 1700 was not only unapproached by any English poet, but he heldalmost a complete monopoly of English poetry. This latter period ofthe seventeenth century, setting aside these two great names, is oneremarkably sterile in poetical genius. Under the first Stuarts, men ofwarm imagination and sensibility, though with deficient taste andlittle command of language, had done some honour to our literature;though once neglected, they have come forward again in public esteem,and if not very extensively read, have been valued by men of kindredminds full as much as they deserve. The versifiers of Charles II. andWilliam’s days have experienced the opposite fate; popular for a time,and long so far known at least by name as to have entered ratherlargely into collections of poetry, they are now held in no regard,nor do they claim much favour from just criticism. Their object ingeneral was to write like men of the world; with ease, wit, sense, andspirit, but dreading any soaring of fancy, any ardour of moralemotion, as the probable source of ridicule in their readers. Nothingquenches the flame of poetry more than this fear of the prosaicmultitude, unless it is the community of habits with this verymultitude; a life such as these poets generally led, of taverns andbrothels, or, what came much to the same, of the court. We cannot sayof Dryden, that “he bears no traces of those sable streams;” theysully too much the plumage of that stately swan, but his indomitablegenius carries him upwards to a purer empyrean. The rest are justdistinguishable from one another, not by any high gifts of the muse,but by degrees of spirit, of ease, of poignancy, of skill and harmonyin versification, of good sense and acuteness. They may easily bedisposed of. Cleveland is sometimes humorous, but succeeds only in thelightest kinds of poetry. Marvell wrote sometimes with more taste andfeeling than was usual, but his satires are gross and stupid. Oldham,far superior in this respect, ranks perhaps next to Dryden; he isspirited and pointed, but his versification is too negligent, and hissubjects temporary. Roscommon, one of the best for harmony andcorrectness of language, has little vigour, but he never offends, andPope has justly praised his “unspotted bays.” Mulgrave affects easeand spirit, but his Essay on Satire belies the supposition that Drydenhad any share in it. Rochester, with more considerable and variedgenius, might have raised himself to a higher place than he holds. OfOtway, Duke, and several more, it is not worth while to give anycharacter, The Revolution did nothing for poetry; William’s reign,always excepting Dryden, is our _nadir_ in works of imagination. Thencame Blackmore with his epic poems of Prince Arthur and King Arthur,and Pomfret with his Choice, both popular in their own age, and bothintolerable by their frigid and tame monotony in the next. The lighterpoetry, meantime, of song and epigram did not sink along with theserious; the state of society was much less adverse to it. Rochester,Dorset, and some more whose names are unknown, or not easily traced,do credit to the Caroline period.

48. In the year 1699, a poem was published, Garth’s Dispensary, whichdeserves attention, not so much for its own merit, though it comesnearest to Dryden, at whatever interval, as from its indicating atransitional state in our versification. The general structure of thecouplet through the seventeenth century may be called abnormous; thesense is not only often carried beyond the second line, which theFrench avoid, but the second line of one couplet and the first of thenext are not seldom united in a single sentence or a portion of one,so that the two, though not rhyming, must be read as a couplet. Theformer, when as dexterously managed as it was by Dryden, adds much tothe beauty of the general versification; but the latter, a sort ofadultery of the lines already wedded to other companions at rhyme’saltar, can scarcely ever be pleasing, unless it be in narrativepoetry, where it may bring the sound nearer to prose. A tendency,however, to the French rule of constantly terminating the sense withthe couplet, will be perceived to have increased from the Restoration.Roscommon seldom deviates from it, and in long passages of Drydenhimself there will hardly be found an exception. But, perhaps, it hadnot been so uniform in any former production as in the Dispensary. Theversification of this once famous mock-heroic poem is smooth andregular, but not forcible; the language clear and neat; the parodiesand allusions happy. Many lines are excellent in the way of pointedapplication, and some are remembered and quoted, where few call tomind the author. It has been remarked that Garth enlarged and alteredthe Dispensary in almost every edition, and what is more uncommon,that every alteration was for the better. This poem may be called animitation of the Lutrin, inasmuch as but for the Lutrin, it mightprobably not have been written, and there are even particularresemblances. The subject, which is a quarrel between the physiciansand apothecaries of London, may vie with that of Boileau in want ofgeneral interest; yet it seems to afford more diversity to thesatirical poet. Garth, as has been intimated, is a link of transitionbetween the style and turn of poetry under Charles and William, andthat we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Pope, in the reign ofAnne.

 SECT. IV.

 ON LATIN POETRY.

|Latin poets of Italy.|

|Ceva.|

|Sergardi.|

49. The Jesuits were not unmindful of the credit their Latin verseshad done them in periods more favourable to that exercise of tastethan the present. Even in Italy, which had ceased to be a very genialsoil, one of their number, Ceva, may deserve mention. His Jesus Pueris a long poem, not inelegantly written, but rather singular in someof its descriptions, where the poet has been more solicitous to adornhis subject than attentive to its proper character; and the sameobjection might be made to some of its episodes. Ceva wrote also aphilosophical poem, extolled by Corniani, but which has not falleninto my hands.[990] Averani, a Florentine of various erudition,Cappellari, Strozzi, author of a poem on chocolate, and severalothers, both within the order of Loyola and without it, cultivatedLatin poetry with some success.[991] But, though some might besuperior as poets, none were more remarkable or famous than Sergardi,best known by some biting satires under the name of Q. Sectanus, whichhe levelled at his personal enemy Gravina. The reputation, indeed, ofGravina with posterity has not been affected by such libels; but theyare not wanting either in poignancy and spirit, or in a command ofLatin phrase.[992]

 [990] Corniani, viii., 214. Salfi, xiv., 257.

 [991] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xxii. Salfi, xiv., 238, et post.

 [992] Salfi, xiv., 299. Corniani, viii., 280.

|Of France--Quillet.|

50. The superiority of France in Latin verse was no longer contestedby Holland or Germany. Several poets of real merit belong to thisperiod. The first in time was Claude Quillet, who, in his Callipædia,bears the Latinised name of Leti. This is written with much eleganceof style and a very harmonious versification. No writer has a moreVirgilian cadence. Though inferior to Sammarthanus, he may be reckonedhigh among the French poets. He has been reproached with too open anexposition of some parts of his subject; which applies only to thesecond book.

|Menage.|

51. The Latin poems of Menage are not unpleasing; he has, indeed, nogreat fire or originality, but the harmonious couplets glide over theear, and the mind is pleased to recognise the tesselated fragmentsof Ovid and Tibullus. His affected passion for Mademoiselle Lavergne,and lamentations about her cruelty are ludicrous enough, when weconsider the character of the man, as Vadius in the Femmes Savantes ofMolière. They are perfect models of want of truth; but it is a want oftruth to nature, not to the conventional forms of modern Latin verse.

|Rapin on gardens.|

52. A far superior performance is the poem on gardens, by the Jesuit,Réné Rapin. For skill in varying and adorning his subject, for a trulyVirgilian spirit in expression, for the exclusion of feeble, prosaic,or awkward lines, he may, perhaps, be equal to any poet, toSammarthanus, or to Sannazarius himself. His cadences are generallyvery gratifying to the ear, and in this respect he is much aboveVida.[993] But his subject, or his genius, has prevented him fromrising very high; he is the poet of gardens, and what gardens are tonature, that is he to mightier poets. There is also too monotonous arepetition of nearly the same images, as in his long enumeration offlowers in the first book; the descriptions are separately good, andgreat artifice is shown in varying them; but the variety could not besufficient to remove the general sameness that belongs to ahorticultural catalogue. Rapin was a great admirer of box and alltopiary works, or trees cut into artificial forms.

 [993] As the poem of Rapin is not in the hands of everyone who has taste for Latin poetry, I will give as a specimen the introduction to the second book:--

 Me nemora atque omnis nemorum pulcherrimus ordo, Et spatia umbrandum latè fundanda per hortum Invitant; hortis nam si florentibus umbra Abfuerit, reliquo deerit sua gratia ruri. Vos grandes luci et silvæ aspirate canenti; Is mihi contingat vestro de munere ramus, Unde sacri quando velant sua tempora vates, Ipse et amem meritam capiti imposuisse coronam. Jam se cantanti frondosa cacumina quercus Inclinant, plauduntque comis nemora alta coruscis. Ipsa mihi læto fremitu, assensuque secundo E totis plausum responsat Gallia silvis. Nec me deinde suo teneat clamore Cithæron, Mænalaque Arcadicis toties lustrata deabus. Non Dodonæi saltus, silvæque Molorchi, Aut nigris latè ilicibus nemorosa Calydne, Et quos carminibus celebravit fabula lucos: Una meos cantus tellus jam Franca moretur, Quæ tot nobilibus passim lætissima silvis, Conspicienda sui latè miracula ruris Ostendit, lucisque solum commendat amœnis.

 One or two words in these lines are not strictly correct; but they are highly Virgilian, both in manner and rhythm.

53. The first book of the Gardens of Rapin is on flowers, the secondon trees, the third on waters, and the fourth on fruits. The poem isof about 3,000 lines, sustained with equable dignity. All kinds ofgraceful associations are mingled with the description of his flowers,in the fanciful style of Ovid and Darwin; the violet is Ianthis, wholurked in valleys to shun the love of Apollo, and stained her facewith purple to preserve her chastity; the rose is Rhodanthe, proud ofher beauty, and worshipped by the people in the place of Diana, butchanged by the indignant Apollo to a tree, while the populace, who hadadored her, are converted into her thorns, and her chief lovers intosnails and butterflies. A tendency to conceit is perceived in Rapin,as in the two poets to whom we have just compared him. Thus, in somepretty lines, he supposes Nature to have “tried her ‘prentice hand” inmaking a convolvulus before she ventured upon a lily.[994]

 [994] Et tu rumpis humum et multo te flore profundis, Qui riguas inter serpis, convolvule, valles; Dulce rudimentum meditantis lilia quondam Naturæ, cum sese opera ad majora pararet.

54. In Rapin there will generally be remarked a certain redundancy,which fastidious critics might call tautology of expression. But thisis not uncommon in Virgil. The Georgics have rarely been more happilyimitated, especially in their didactic parts, than by Rapin in theGardens; but he has not the high flights of his prototype; hisdigressions are short and belong closely to the subject; we have noplague, no civil war, no Eurydice. If he praises Louis XIV., it ismore as the founder of the garden of Versailles, than as the conquerorof Flanders, though his concluding lines emulate, with no unworthyspirit, those of the last Georgic.[995] It may be added, thatsome French critics have thought the famous poem of Delille on thesame subject inferior to that of Rapin.

 [995] Hæc magni insistens vestigia sacra Maronis, Re super hortensi, Claro de monte canebam, Lutetia in magna; quo tempore Francica tellus Rege beata suo, rebusque superba secundis, Et sua per populos latè dare jura volentes Cæperat, et toti jam morem imponere mundo.

|Santeul.|

55. Santeul (or Santolius) has been reckoned one of the best Latinpoets whom France ever produced. He began by celebrating the victoriesof Louis and the virtues of contemporary heroes. A nobleness ofthought and a splendour of language distinguish the poetry of Santeul,who furnished many inscriptions for public monuments. The hymns whichhe afterwards wrote for the breviary of the church of Paris have beenstill more admired, and at the request of others he enlarged hiscollection of sacred verse. But I have not read the poetry of Santeul,and give only the testimony of French critics.[996]

 [996] Baillet. Biogr. Universelle.

|Latin Poetry in England.|

56. England might justly boast, in the earlier part of the century,her Milton; nay, I do not know that, with the exception of awell-known and very pleasing poem, though perhaps hardly of classicalsimplicity, by Cowley on himself, Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris, we canproduce anything equally good in this period. The Latin verse ofBarrow is forcible and full of mind, but not sufficiently redolent ofantiquity.[997] Yet versification became, about the time of theRestoration, if not the distinctive study, at least the favouriteexercise, of the university of Oxford. The collection entitled MusæAnglicanæ, published near the end of the century, contains little fromany other quarter. Many of these relate to the political themes of theday, and eulogise the reigning king, Charles, James, or William;others are on philosophical subjects, which they endeavour to decoratewith classical phrase. The character of this collection does not, onthe whole, pass mediocrity; they are often incorrect and somewhatturgid, but occasionally display a certain felicity in adaptingancient lines to their subject, and some liveliness of invention. Thegolden age of Latin verse in England was yet to come.

 [997] Walker’s Memoir on Italian Tragedy, p. 201. Salfi, xii. 57.

CHAPTER XXXII.

 HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

_Racine--Minor French Tragedians--Molière--Regnard, and other ComicWriters._

|Italian and Spanish drama.|

1. Few tragedies or dramatic works of any kind are now recorded byhistorians of Italian literature; those of Delfino, afterwardspatriarch of Aquileia, which are esteemed among the best, werepossibly written before the middle of the century, and were notpublished till after its termination. The Corradino of Caraccio, in1694, was also valued at the time.[998] Nor can Spain arrest uslonger; the school of Calderon in national comedy extended no doubtbeyond the death of Philip IV., in 1665, and many of his own religiouspieces are of as late a date; nor were names wholly wanting, which aresaid to merit remembrance, in the feeble reign of Charles II., butthey must be left for such as make a particular study of Spanishliterature.[999] We are called to a nobler stage.

 [998] The following stanzas on an erring conscience will sufficiently prove this:--

 Tyranne vitæ, fax temeraria, Infide dux, ignobile vinculum, Sidus dolosum, ænigma præsens, Ingenui labyrinthe voti, Assensus errans, invalidæ potens Mentis propago, quam vetuit Deus Nasci, sed ortæ principatum Attribuit, regimenque sanctum, &c.

 [999] Bouterwek.

|Racine’s first tragedies.|

2. Corneille belongs in his glory to the earlier period of thiscentury, though his inferior tragedies, more numerous than the better,would fall within the later. Fontenelle, indeed, as a devoted admirer,attributes considerable merit to those which the general voiceboth of critics and of the public had condemned.[1000] Meantime,another luminary arose on the opposite side of the horizon. The firsttragedy of Jean Racine, Les Frères Ennemis, was represented in 1664,when he was twenty-five years of age. It is so far below his greatworks, as to be scarcely mentioned, yet does not want indications ofthe genius they were to display. Alexandre, in 1665, raised the youngpoet to more distinction. It is said that he showed this tragedy toCorneille, who praised his versification, but advised him to avoid apath which he was not fitted to tread. It is acknowledged by theadvocates of Racine that the characters are feebly drawn, and that theconqueror of Asia sinks to the level of a hero in one of thoseromances of gallantry which had vitiated the taste of France.

 [1000] Hist. du Théâtre François, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, iii., 111. St. Evremond also despised the French public for not admiring the Sophonisbe of Corneille, which he had made too Roman for their taste.

|Andromaque.|

3. The glory of Racine commenced with the representation of hisAndromaque in 1667, which was not printed till the end of thefollowing year. He was now at once compared with Corneille, and thescales have been oscillating ever since. Criticism, satire, epigrams,were unsparingly launched against the rising poet. But his rivalpursued the worst policy by obstinately writing bad tragedies. Thepublic naturally compare the present with the present, and forget thepast. When he gave them Pertharite, they were dispensed from lookingback to Cinna. It is acknowledged even by Fontenelle that, during theheight of Racine’s fame, the world placed him at least on an equalitywith his predecessor; a decision from which that critic, the relationand friend of Corneille, appeals to what he takes to be the verdict ofa later age.

4. The Andromaque was sufficient to show that Racine had more skill inthe management of a plot, in the display of emotion, in power over thesympathy of the spectator, at least where the gentler feelings areconcerned, in beauty and grace of style, in all except nobleness ofcharacter, strength of thought, and impetuosity of language. He tookhis fable from Euripides, but changed it according to the requisitionsof the French theatre and of French manners. Some of these changes arefor the better, as the substitution of Astyanax for an unknownMolossus of the Greek tragedian, the supposed son of Andromache byPyrrhus. “Most of those,” says Racine himself very justly, “who haveheard of Andromache, know her only as the widow of Hector and themother of Astyanax. They cannot reconcile themselves to her lovinganother husband and another son.” And he has finely improved thishappy idea of preserving Astyanax, by making the Greeks, jealous ofhis name, send an embassy by Orestes to demand his life; at oncedeepening the interest and developing the plot.

5. The female characters, Andromache and Hermione are drawn with allRacine’s delicate perception of ideal beauty; the one, indeed,prepared for his hand by those great masters in whose school he haddisciplined his own gifts of nature, Homer, Euripides, Virgil; theother more original and more full of dramatic effect. It was, as weare told, the fine acting of Mademoiselle de Champmelé in this part,generally reckoned one of the most difficult on the French stage,which secured the success of the play. Racine, after the firstrepresentation, threw himself at her feet in a transport of gratitude,which was soon changed to love. It is more easy to censure some of theother characters. Pyrrhus is bold, haughty, passionate, the true sonof Achilles, except where he appears as the lover of Andromache. It isinconceivable and truly ridiculous that a Greek of the heroic age, andsuch a Greek as Pyrrhus is represented by those whose imagination hasgiven him existence, should feel the respectful passion towards hiscaptive which we might reasonably expect in the romances of chivalry,or should express it in the tone of conventional gallantry that suitedthe court of Versailles. But Orestes is far worse; love-mad, and yettalking in gallant conceits, cold and polite, he discredits the poet,the tragedy, and the son of Agamemnon himself. It is better to killone’s mother than to utter such trash. In hinting that the previousmadness of Orestes was for the sake of Hermione, Racine has presumedtoo much on the ignorance, and too much on the bad taste, of hisaudience. But far more injudicious is his fantastic remorse and thesupposed vision of the Furies in the last scene. It is astonishingthat Racine should have challenged comparison with one of the mostcelebrated scenes of Euripides in circ*mstances that deprived him ofthe possibility of rendering his own effective. For the style of theAndromaque, it abounds with grace and beauty; but there are, to myapprehension, more insipid and feeble lines, and a more effeminatetone, than in his later tragedies.

|Britannicus.|

6. Britannicus appeared in 1669; and in this admirable play Racinefirst showed that he did not depend on the tone of gallantry usualamong his courtly hearers, nor on the languid sympathies that itexcites. Terror and pity, the twin spirits of tragedy, to whomAristotle has assigned the great moral office of purifying thepassions, are called forth in their shadowy forms to sustain theconsummate beauties of his diction. His subject was original andhappy; with that historic truth which usage required, and thatpoetical probability which fills up the outline of historic truthwithout disguising it. What can be more entirely dramatic, what moreterrible in the sense that Aristotle means (that is, the spectator’ssympathy with the dangers of the innocent), than the absolute masterof the world, like the veiled prophet of Khorasan, throwing off theappearances of virtue, and standing out at once in the maturity ofenormous guilt! A presaging gloom, like that which other poets havesought by the hackneyed artifices of superstition, hangs over thescenes of this tragedy, and deepens at its close. We sympathise byturns with the guilty alarms of Agrippina, the virtuous consternationof Burrhus, the virgin modesty of Junia, the unsuspectingingenuousness of Britannicus. Few tragedies on the French stage, orindeed on any stage, save those of Shakspeare, display so great avariety of contrasted characters. None, indeed, are ineffective,except the confidante of Agrippina; for Narcissus is very far frombeing the mere confidant of Nero; he is, as in history, his preceptorin crime; and his cold villainy is well contrasted with the fiercepassion of the despot. The criticisms of Fontenelle and others onsmall incidents in the plot, such as the concealment of Nero behind acurtain, that he may hear the dialogue between Junia and Britannicus,which is certainly more fit for comedy, ought not to weigh againstsuch excellence as we find in all the more essential requisites of atragic drama. Racine had much improved his language since Andromaque;the conventional phraseology about flames and fine eyes, though notwholly relinquished, is less frequent; and if he has not here reached,as he never did, the peculiar impetuosity of Corneille, nor given tohis Romans the grandeur of his predecessor’s conception, he is full oflines wherein, as every word is effective, there can hardly be anydeficiency of vigour. It is the vigour indeed of Virgil, not of Lucan.

7. In one passage, Racine has, I think, excelled Shakspeare. They haveboth taken the same idea from Plutarch. The lines of Shakspeare are inAntony and Cleopatra:

 Thy demon, that’s the spirit that keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Cæsar’s is not; but near him, thy angel Becomes a fear, as being o’erpowered.

These are, to my apprehension, not very forcible, and obscure even tothose who know, what many do not, that by “a fear” he meant a commongoblin, a supernatural being of a more plebeian rank than a demon orangel. The single verse of Racine is magnificent:

 Mon génie étonné tremble devant le sien.

|Berenice.|

8. Berenice, the next tragedy of Racine, is a surprising proof of whatcan be done by a great master; but it must be admitted that it wantsmany of the essential qualities that are required in the drama. Itmight almost be compared with Timon of Athens, by the absence of fableand movement. For nobleness and delicacy of sentiment, for grace ofstyle, it deserves every praise; but is rather tedious in the closet,and must be far more so on the stage. This is the only tragedy ofRacine, unless, perhaps, we except Athalie, in which the storypresents an evident moral; but no poet is more uniformly moral in hissentiments. Corneille, to whom the want of dramatic fable was neverany great objection, attempted the subject of Berenice about the sametime with far inferior success. It required what he could not give,the picture of two hearts struggling against a noble and a blamelesslove.

|Bajazet.|

9. It was unfortunate for Racine that he did not more frequently breakthrough the prejudices of the French theatre in favour of classicalsubjects. A field was open of almost boundless extent, the mediævalhistory of Europe, and especially of France herself. His predecessorhad been too successful in the Cid to leave it doubtful whether anaudience would approve such an innovation at the hands of a favouredtragedian. Racine, however, did not venture on a step, which, in thenext century, Voltaire turned so much to account, and which made thefortune of some inferior tragedies. But, considering the distance ofplace equivalent, for the ends of the drama, to that of time, hefounded on an event in the Turkish history not more than thirty yearsbefore his next tragedy, that of Bajazet. Most part, indeed, of thefable is due to his own invention. Bajazet is reckoned to fall belowmost of his other tragedies in beauty of style; but the fable is wellconnected; there is a great deal of movement, and an unintermittinginterest is sustained by Bajazet and Atalide, two of the noblestcharacters that Racine has drawn. Atalide has not the ingenuoussimplicity of Junie, but displays a more dramatic flow of sentiment,and not less dignity or tenderness of soul. The character of Roxane isconceived with truth and spirit; nor is the resemblance some havefound in it to that of Hermione greater than belongs to forms of thesame type. Acomat, the vizir, is more a favourite with the Frenchcritics; but in such parts Racine does not rise to the level ofCorneille. No poet is less exposed to the imputation of bombasticexaggeration; yet, in the two lines with which Acomat concludes thefourth act, there seems almost an approach to burlesque; and one canhardly say that they would have been out of place in Tom Thumb:

 Mourons, moi, cher Osmin, comme un vizir, et toi, Comme le favori d’un homme tel que moi.

|Mithridate.|

10. The next tragedy was Mithridate; and in this Racine has beenthought to have wrestled against Corneille on his own ground, thedisplay of the unconquerable mind of a hero. We find in the part ofMithridate, a great depth of thought in compressed and energeticlanguage. But, unlike the masculine characters of Corneille, he is notmerely sententious. Racine introduces no one for the sake of thespeeches he has to utter. In Mithridates he took what history hasdelivered to us, blending with it no improbable fiction according tothe manners of the East. His love for Monime has nothing in itextraordinary, or unlike what we might expect from the king of Pontus;it is a fierce, a jealous, a vindictive love; the necessities of theFrench language alone, and the usages of the French theatre, couldmake it appear feeble. His two sons are naturally less effective; butthe loveliness of Monime yields to no female character of Racine.There is something not quite satisfactory in the stratagems whichMithridates employs to draw from her a confession of her love for hisson. They are not uncongenial to the historic character, but,according to our chivalrous standard of heroism, seem derogatory tothe poetical.

|Iphigénie.|

11. Iphigénie followed in 1674. In this Racine had again to contendwith Euripides in one of his most celebrated tragedies. He had even,in the character of Achilles, to contend, not with Homer himself, yetwith the Homeric associations familiar to every classical scholar. Thelove, in fact, of Achilles, and his politeness towards Clytemnestra,are not exempt from a tone of gallantry a little repugnant to ourconception of his manners. Yet the Achilles of Homer is neitherincapable of love nor of courtesy, so that there is no essentialrepugnance to his character. That of Iphigenia in Euripides has beencensured by Aristotle as inconsistent: her extreme distress at thefirst prospect of death being followed by an unusual display ofcourage. Hurd has taken upon him the defence of the Greek tragedian,and observes, after Brumoy, that the Iphigénie of Racine beingmodelled rather after the comment of Aristotle than the example ofEuripides, is so much the worse.[1001] But his apology is too subtle,and requires too long reflection, for the ordinary spectator; andthough Shakspeare might have managed the transition of feeling withsome of his wonderful knowledge of human nature, it is certainlypresented too crudely by Euripides, and much in the style which I haveelsewhere observed to be too usual with our old dramatists. TheIphigénie of Racine is not a character, like those of Shakspeare, andof him perhaps alone, which nothing less than intense meditation candevelop to the reader, but one which a good actress might compass anda common spectator understand. Racine, like most other tragedians,wrote for the stage; Shakspeare aimed at a point beyond it, andsometimes too much lost sight of what it required.

 [1001] Hurd’s Commentary on Horace, vol. i., p. 115.

12. Several critics have censured the part of Eriphile. YetFontenelle, prejudiced as he was against Racine, admits that it isnecessary for the catastrophe, though he cavils, I think, against herappearance in the earlier part of the play, laying down a rule, bywhich our own tragedians would not have chosen to be tried, and whichseems far too rigid, that the necessity of the secondary charactersshould be perceived from their first appearance.[1002] The questionfor Racine was in what manner he should manage the catastrophe. The_fabulous truth_, the actual sacrifice of Iphigénia, was so revoltingto the mind, that even Euripides thought himself obliged to departfrom it. But this he effected by a contrivance impossible on theFrench stage, and which would have changed Racine’s tragedy to acommon melodrame. It appears to me that he very happily substitutedthe character of Eriphile, who, as Fontenelle well says, is the hindof the fable; and whose impetuous and somewhat disorderly passionsboth furnish a contrast to the ideal nobleness of Iphigénia throughoutthe tragedy, and reconcile us to her own fate at the close.

 [1002] Réflexions sur la Poétique. Œuvres de Fontenelle, vol. iii., p. 149.

|Phèdre.|

13. Once more, in Phèdre, did the great disciple of Euripides attemptto surpass his master. In both tragedies the character of Phædraherself throws into shade all the others, but with this importantdifference, that in Euripides her death occurs about the middle of thepiece, while she continues in Racine till the conclusion. The Frenchpoet has borrowed much from the Greek, more perhaps than in any formerdrama, but has surely heightened the interest, and produced a moresplendid work of genius. I have never read the particular criticism inwhich Schlegel has endeavoured to elevate the Hippolytus above thePhèdre. Many, even among French critics, have objected to the love ofHippolytus for Aricia, by which Racine has deviated from themythological tradition. But we are hardly tied to all the circ*mstanceof fable; and the cold young huntsman loses nothing in the eyes of amodern reader by a virtuous attachment. This tragedy is said to bemore open to verbal criticism than the Iphigenie; but in poeticalbeauty I do not know that Racine has ever surpassed it. Thedescription of the death of Hippolytus is perhaps his masterpiece. Itis true that, according to the practice of our own stage, longdescriptions, especially in elaborate language, are out of use; but itis not, at least, for the advocates of Euripides to blame them.

|Esther.|

|Athalie.|

14. The Phèdre was represented in 1677; and after this its illustriousauthor seemed to renounce the stage. His increasing attachment to theJansenists made it almost impossible, with any consistency, to promotean amusem*nt they anathematised. But he was induced, after many years,in 1689, by Madame de Maintenon, to write Esther for the purpose ofrepresentation by the young ladies whose education she protected atSt. Cyr. Esther, though very much praised for beauty of language, isadmitted to possess little merit as a drama. Much indeed could not beexpected in the circ*mstances. It was acted at St. Cyr; Louisapplauded, and it is said that the Prince de Condé wept. The greatestpraise of Esther is that it encouraged its author to write Athalie.Once more restored to dramatic conceptions, his genius revived fromsleep with no loss of the vigour of yesterday. He was even more inAthalie than in Iphigénie and Britannicus. This great work, publishedin 1691, with a royal prohibition to represent it on any theatre,stands by general consent at the head of all the tragedies of Racine,for the grandeur, simplicity, and interest of the fable, for dramaticterror, for theatrical effect, for clear and judicious management, forbold and forcible, rather than subtle, delineation of character, forsublime sentiment and imagery. It equals, if it does not, as I shouldincline to think, surpass, all the rest in the perfection of style,and is far more free from every defect, especially from feeblepoliteness and gallantry, which of course the subject could not admit.It has been said that he gave himself the preference to Phèdre; but itis more extraordinary that not only his enemies, of whom there weremany, but the public itself was for some years incapable ofdiscovering the merit of Athalie. Boileau declared it to be amasterpiece, and one can only be astonished that any could havethought differently from Boileau. It doubtless gained much in generalesteem when it came to be represented by good actors; for no tragedyin the French language is more peculiarly fitted for the stage.

15. The chorus which he had previously introduced in Esther was a verybold innovation (for the revival of what is forgotten must always beclassed as innovation), and it required all the skill of Racine toprevent its appearing in our eyes an impertinent excrescence. Butthough we do not, perhaps, wholly reconcile ourselves to some, of thesongs, which too much suggest, by association, the Italian opera, thechorus of Athalie enhances the interest as well as the splendour ofthe tragedy. It was indeed more full of action and scenic pomp thanany he had written, and probably than any other which up to that timehad been represented in France. The part of Athalie predominates, butnot so as to eclipse the rest. The high-priest Joad is drawn with astern zeal admirably dramatic, and without which the idolatrous queenwould have trampled down all before her during the conduct of thefable, whatever justice might have ensued at the last. We feel thiswant of an adequate resistance to triumphant crime in the Rodogune ofCorneille. No character appears superfluous or feeble; while the plothas all the simplicity of the Greek stage, it has all the movement andcontinual excitation of the modern.

|Racine’s female characters.|

16. The female characters of Racine are of the greatest beauty; theyhave the ideal grace and harmony of ancient sculpture, and bearsomewhat of the same analogy to those of Shakspeare which that artdoes to painting. Andromache, Monimia, Iphigénie, we may add Junia,have a dignity and faultlessness neither unnatural nor insipid,because they are only the ennobling and purifying of human passions.They are the forms of possible excellence, not from individual models,nor likely perhaps to delight every reader, for the same reason thatmore eyes are pleased by Titian than by Raphael. But it is a verynarrow criticism which excludes either school from our admiration,which disparages Racine out of idolatry of Shakspeare. The latter, itis unnecessary for me to say, stands out of reach of all competition.But it is not on this account that we are to give up an author soadmirable as Racine.

|Racine compared with Corneille.|

17. The chief faults of Racine may partly be ascribed to the influenceof national taste, though we must confess that Corneille has avoidedthem. Though love with him is always tragic and connected with theheroic passions, never appearing singly, as in several of our owndramatists, yet it is sometimes unsuitable to the character, and stillmore frequently feeble and courtier-like in the expression. In this hecomplied too much with the times; but we must believe that he did notentirely feel that he was wrong. Corneille had, even while Racine wasin his glory, a strenuous band of supporters. Fontenelle, writing inthe next century, declares that time has established a decision inwhich most seem to concur, that the first place is due to the elderpoet, the second to the younger; every one making the interval betweenthem a little greater or less according to his taste.[1003] ButVoltaire, La Harpe, and in general, I apprehend, the later Frenchcritics, have given the preference to Racine. I presume to join mysuffrage to theirs. Racine appears to me the superior tragedian; and Imust add that I think him next to Shakspeare among all the moderns.The comparison with Euripides is so natural that it can hardly beavoided. Certainly no tragedy of the Greek poet is so skilful or soperfect as Athalie or Britannicus. The tedious scenes during which theaction is stagnant, the impertinencies of useless, often perversemorality, the extinction, by bad management, of the sympathy that hadbeen raised in the earlier part of a play, the foolish alternation ofrepartees in a series of single lines, will never be found in Racine.But, when we look only at the highest excellencies of Euripides, thereis, perhaps, a depth of pathos and an intensity of dramatic effectwhich Racine himself has not attained. The difference between theenergy and sweetness of the two languages is so important in thecomparison, that I shall give even this preference with somehesitation.

 [1003] P. 118.

|Beauty of his style.|

18. The style of Racine is exquisite. Perhaps he is second only toVirgil among all poets. But I will give the praise of this in thewords of a native critic. “His expression is always so happy and sonatural, that it seems as if no other could have been found; and everyword is placed in such a manner that we cannot fancy any other placeto have suited it as well. The structure of his style is such thatnothing could be displaced, nothing added, nothing retrenched; it isone unalterable whole. Even his incorrectnesses are often butsacrifices required by good taste, nor would anything be moredifficult than to write over again a line of Racine. No one hasenriched the language with a greater number of turns of phrase; no oneis bold with more felicity and discretion, or figurative with moregrace and propriety; no one has handled with more command an idiomoften rebellious, or with more skill an instrument always difficult;no one has better understood that delicacy of style which must not bemistaken for feebleness, and is, in fact, but that air of ease whichconceals from the reader the labour of the work and the artifices ofthe composition; or better managed the variety of cadences, theresources of rhythm, the association and deduction of ideas. In short,if we consider that his perfection in these respects may be opposed tothat of Virgil, and that he spoke a language less flexible, lesspoetical, and less harmonious, we shall readily believe thatRacine is, of all mankind, the one to whom nature has given thegreatest talent for versification.”[1004]

 [1004] La Harpe, Eloge de Racine, as quoted by himself in Cours de Littérature, vol. vi.

|Thomas Corneille--his Ariane.|

19. Thomas, the younger and far inferior brother of Pierre Corneille,was yet, by the fertility of his pen, by the success of some of histragedies, and by a certain reputation which two of them haveacquired, the next name, but at a vast interval, to Racine. Voltairesays he would have enjoyed a great reputation but for that of hisbrother--one of those pointed sayings which seem to mean something,but are devoid of meaning. Thomas Corneille is never compared with hisbrother; and probably his brother has been rather serviceable to hisname with posterity than otherwise. He wrote with more purity,according to the French critics, than his brother, and it must beowned that, in his Ariane, he has given to love a tone more passionateand natural than the manly scenes of the older tragedian ever present.This is esteemed his best work, but it depends wholly on the principalcharacter, whose tenderness and injuries excite our sympathy, and fromwhose lips many lines of great beauty flow. It may be compared withthe Berenice of Racine, represented but a short time before; there isenough of resemblance in the fables to provoke comparison. That ofThomas Corneille is more tragic, less destitute of theatricalmovement, and consequently better chosen; but such relative praise isof little value, where none can be given, in this respect, to theobject of comparison. We feel that the prose romance is the propersphere for the display of an affection, neither untrue to nature, norunworthy to move the heart, but wanting the majesty of the tragicmuse. An effeminacy uncongenial to tragedy belongs to this play; andthe termination, where the heroine faints away instead of dying, issomewhat insipid. The only other tragedy of the younger Corneille thatcan be mentioned is the Earl of Essex. In this he has taken greaterliberties with history than his critics approve; and though love doesnot so much predominate as in Ariane, it seems to engross, in a stylerather too romantic, both the hero and his sovereign.

|Manlius of La Fosse.|

20. Neither of these tragedies, perhaps, deserves to be put on a levelwith the Manlius of La Fosse, to which La Harpe accords the preferenceabove all of the seventeenth century after those of Corneille andRacine. It is just to observe what is not denied, that the author hasborrowed the greater part of his story from the Venice Preserved ofOtway. The French critics maintain that he has far excelled hisoriginal. It is possible that we might hesitate to own thissuperiority; but several blemishes have been removed, and the conductis perhaps more noble, or at least more fitted to the French stage.But when we take from La Fosse what belongs to another--charactersstrongly marked, sympathies powerfully contrasted, a development ofthe plot probable and interesting, what will remain that is purely hisown? There will remain a vigorous tone of language, a considerablepower of description, and a skill in adapting, we may add withjustice, in improving, what he found in a foreign language. We mustpass over some other tragedies which have obtained less honour intheir native land, those of Duché, Quinault, and Campistron.

|Molière.|

21. Molière is, perhaps, of all French writers, the one whom hiscountry has most uniformly admired, and in whom her critics are mostunwilling to acknowledge faults; though the observations of Schlegelon the defects of Molière, and especially on his large debts to oldercomedy, are not altogether without foundation. Molière began withL’Etourdi in 1653, and his pieces followed rapidly till his death in1673. About one half are in verse; I shall select a few without regardto order of time, and first one written in prose, L’Avare.

|L’Avare.|

22. Plautus first exposed upon the stage the wretchedness of avarice,the punishment of a selfish love of gold, not only in the life of painit has cost to acquire it, but in the terrors that it brings, in thedisordered state of mind, which is haunted, as by some mysteriousguilt, by the consciousness of secret wealth. The character of Euclioin the Aulularia is dramatic, and, as far as we know, original; themoral effect requires, perhaps, some touches beyond absoluteprobability, but it must be confessed that a few passages areover-charged. Molière borrowed L’Avare from this comedy; and I am notat present aware that the subject, though so well adapted for thestage, had been chosen by any intermediate dramatist. He is indebtednot merely for the scheme of his play, but for many strokes of humour,to Plautus. But this takes off little from the merit of thisexcellent comedy. The plot is expanded without incongruous orimprobable circ*mstances; new characters are well combined with thatof Harpagon, and his own is at once more diverting and lessextravagant than that of Euclio. The penuriousness of the latter,though by no means without example, leaves no room for any otherobject than the concealed treasure, in which his thoughts areconcentred. But Molière had conceived a more complicated action.Harpagon does not absolutely starve the rats; he possesses horses,though he feeds them ill; he has servants, though he grudges themclothes; he even contemplates a marriage supper at his own expense,though he intends to have a bad one. He has evidently been compelledto make some sacrifices to the usages of mankind, and is at once amore common and a more theatrical character than Euclio. In otherrespects, they are much alike; their avarice has reached that pointwhere it is without pride; the dread of losing their wealth hasoverpowered the desire of being thought to possess it; and though thisis a more natural incident in the manners of Greece than in those ofFrance, yet the concealment of treasure, even in the time of Molière,was sufficiently frequent for dramatic probability. A general tone ofselfishness, the usual source and necessary consequence of avarice,conspires with the latter quality to render Harpagon odious; and therewants but a little more poetical justice in the conclusion, whichleaves the casket in his possession.

23. Hurd has censured Molière without much justice. “For the pictureof the avaricious man, Plautus and Molière have presented us with afantastic, unpleasing draught of the passion of avarice.” It may beanswered to this, that Harpagon’s character is, as has been saidabove, not so mere a delineation of the passion as that of Euclio. Butas a more general vindication of Molière, it should be kept in mind,that every exhibition of a predominant passion within the compass ofthe five acts of a play must be coloured beyond the truth of nature,or it will not have time to produce its effect. This is one greatadvantage that romance possesses over the drama.

|L’Ecole des Femmes.|

24. L’Ecole des Femmes is among the most diverting comedies ofMolière. Yet it has, in a remarkable degree, what seems inartificialto our own taste, and contravenes a good general precept of Horace;the action passes almost wholly in recital. But this is so wellconnected with the development of the plot and characters, andproduces such amusing scenes, that no spectator, at least on theFrench theatre, would be sensible of any languor. Arnolphe is anexcellent modification of the type which Molière loved to reproduce;the selfish and morose cynic, whose pretended hatred of the vices ofthe world springs from an absorbing regard to his own gratification.He has made him as malignant as censorious; he delights in tales ofscandal; he is pleased that Horace should be successful in gallantry,because it degrades others. The half-witted and ill-bred child, ofwhom he becomes the dupe, as well as the two idiot servants, aredelineated with equal vivacity. In this comedy we find the spiritedversification, full of grace and humour, in which no one has rivalledMolière, and which has never been attempted on the English stage. Itwas probably its merit which raised a host of petty detractors, onwhom the author revenged himself in his admirable piece of satire, LaCritique de l’Ecole des Femmes. The affected pedantry of the HôtelRambouillet seems to be ridiculed in this retaliation; nothing, infact, could be more unlike than the style of Molière to their own.

|Le Misanthrope.|

25. He gave another proof of contempt for the false taste of someParisian circles in the Misanthrope; though the criticism of Alcesteon the wretched sonnet forms but a subordinate portion of that famouscomedy. It is generally placed next to Tartuffe among the works ofMolière. Alceste is again the cynic, but more honourable and lessopenly selfish, and with more of a real disdain of vice in hismisanthropy. Rousseau, upon this account, and many others after him,have treated the play as a vindication of insincerity against truth,and as making virtue itself ridiculous on the stage. This charge,however, seems uncandid; neither the rudeness of Alceste, nor themisanthropy from which it springs, are to be called virtues; and wemay observe that he displays no positively good quality beyondsincerity, unless his ungrounded and improbable love for a coquette isto pass for such. It is true that the politeness of Philinthe, withwhom the Misanthrope is contrasted, borders a little too closely uponflattery; but no oblique end is in his view; he flatters to givepleasure; and, if we do not much esteem his character, we are notsolicitous for his punishment. The dialogue of the Misanthropeis uniformly of the highest style; the female, and, indeed, all thecharacters, are excellently conceived and sustained; and if thiscomedy fails of anything at present, it is through the difference ofmanners, and, perhaps, in representation, through the want of animatedaction on the stage.

|Les Femmes Savantes.|

26. In Les Femmes Savantes, there is a more evident personality in thecharacters, and a more malicious exposure of absurdity than in theMisanthrope; but the ridicule falling on a less numerous class is notso well calculated to be appreciated by posterity. It is, however,both in reading and representation, a more amusing comedy: in no oneinstance has Molière delineated such variety of manners, or displayedso much of his inimitable gaiety and power of fascinating the audiencewith very little plot, by the mere exhibition of human follies. Thesatire falls deservedly on pretenders to taste and literature, forwhom Molière always testifies a bitterness of scorn in which weperceive some resentment of their criticisms. The shorter piece,entitled Les Précieuses Ridicules, is another shaft directed at theliterary ladies of Paris. They had provoked a dangerous enemy; but thegood taste of the next age might be ascribed in great measure to hisunmerciful exposure of affectation and pedantry.

|Tartuffe.|

27. It was not easy, so late as the age of Molière, for the dramatistto find any untrodden field in the follies and vices of mankind. Butone had been reserved for him in Tartuffe--religious hypocrisy. Weshould have expected the original draft of such a character on theEnglish stage; nor had our old writers been forgetful of theirinveterate enemies, the Puritans, who gave such full scope for theirsatire. But, choosing rather the easy path of ridicule, they fell uponthe starch dresses and quaint language of the fanatical party; andwhere they exhibited these in conjunction with hypocrisy, made thelatter more ludicrous than hateful. The Luke of Massinger is deeplyand villainously dissembling, but does not wear so conspicuous a garbof religious sanctity as Tartuffe. The comedy of Molière is not onlyoriginal in this character, but is a new creation in dramatic poetry.It has been doubted by some critics, whether the depth of guilt itexhibits, the serious hatred it inspires, are not beyond the strictprovince of comedy. But this seems rather a technical cavil. Ifsubjects such as the Tartuffe are not fit for comedy, they are, atleast, fit for dramatic representation, and some new phrase must beinvented to describe their class.

28. A different kind of objection is still sometimes made to thisplay, that it brings religion itself into suspicion. And this would,no doubt, have been the case, if the contemporaries of Molière inEngland had dealt with the subject. But the boundaries between thereality and its false appearances are so well guarded in this comedy,that no reasonable ground of exception can be thought to remain. Nobetter advice can be given to those who take umbrage at the Tartuffethan to read it again. For there may be good reason to suspect thatthey are themselves among those for whose benefit it was intended; theTartuffes, happily, may be comparatively few; but, while the Orgonsand Pernelles are numerous, they will not want their harvest. Molièredid not invent the prototypes of his hypocrite; they were abundant atParis in his time.

29. The interest of this play continually increases, and the fifth actis almost crowded by a rapidity of events, not so usual on the Frenchstage as our own. Tartuffe himself is a masterpiece of skill. Perhaps,in the cavils of La Bruyère, there may be some justice; but theessayist has forgotten that no character can be rendered entirelyeffective to an audience without a little exaggeration of itsattributes. Nothing can be more happily conceived than the credulityof the honest Orgon, and his more doting mother; it is that which wesometimes witness, incurable except by the evidence of the senses, andfighting every inch of ground against that. In such a subject therewas not much opportunity for the comic talent of Molière; yet, in somewell known passages, he has enlivened it as far as was possible. TheTartuffe will generally be esteemed the greatest effort of thisauthor’s genius; the Misanthrope, the Femmes Savantes, and the Ecoledes Femmes will follow in various order, according to our tastes.These are by far the best of his comedies in verse. Among those inprose we may give the first place to L’Avare, and the next either toLe Bourgeois Gentilhomme, or to George Dandin.

|Bourgeois Gentilhomme.--George Dandin.|

30. These two plays have the same objects of moral satire; on the onehand, the absurd vanity of plebeians in seeking the alliance oracquaintance of the nobility, on the other, the pride and meanness ofthe nobility themselves. They are both abundantly diverting; but thesallies of humour are, I think, more frequent in the first three actsof the former. The last two acts are improbable and less amusing. Theshorter pieces of Molière border very much upon farce; he permitshimself more vulgarity of character, more grossness in language andincident, but his farces are seldom absurd, and never dull.

|Character of Molière.|

31. The French have claimed for Molière, and few, perhaps, havedisputed the pretension, a superiority over all earlier and laterwriters of comedy. He certainly leaves Plautus, the original model ofthe school to which he belonged, at a vast distance. The grace andgentlemanly elegance of Terence he has not equalled; but in the moreappropriate merits of comedy, just and forcible delineation ofcharacter, skilful contrivance of circ*mstances, and humorousdialogue, we must award him the prize. The Italian and Spanishdramatists are quite unworthy to be named in comparison; and if theFrench theatre has, in later times, as is certainly the case, producedsome excellent comedies, we have, I believe, no reason to contradictthe suffrage of the nation itself, that they owe almost as much towhat they have caught from this great model, as to the natural geniusof their authors. But it is not for us to abandon the rights ofShakspeare. In all things most essential to comedy, we cannotacknowledge his inferiority to Molière. He had far more invention ofcharacters, and an equal vivacity and force in their delineation. Hishumour was, at least, as abundant and natural, his wit incomparablymore brilliant; in fact, Molière hardly exhibits this quality at all.The Merry Wives of Windsor, almost the only pure comedy of Shakspeare,is surely not disadvantageously compared with George Dandin or LeBourgeois Gentilhomme, or even with L’Ecole des Femmes. For theTartuffe or the Misanthrope it is vain to seek a proper counterpart inShakspeare; they belong to a different state of manners. But thepowers of Molière are directed with greater skill to their object;none of his energy is wasted; the spectator is not interrupted by theserious scenes of tragi-comedy, nor his attention drawn aside bypoetical episodes. Of Shakspeare, we may justly say that he had thegreater genius, but, perhaps, of Molière, that he has written the bestcomedies. We cannot, at least, put any later dramatist in competitionwith him. Fletcher and Jonson, Wycherley and Congreve, Farquhar andSheridan, with great excellencies of their own, fall short of hismerit as well as his fame. Yet in humorous conception, our admirableplay, the Provoked Husband, the best parts of which are due toVanbrugh, seems to be equal to anything he has left. His spirited andeasy versification stands, of course, untouched by any Englishrivalry; we may have been wise in rejecting verse from our stage, butwe have certainly given the French a right to claim all the honourthat belongs to it.

|Les Plaideurs of Racine.|

32. Racine once only attempted comedy. His wit was quick andsarcastic, and in epigram he did not spare his enemies. In hisPlaideurs there is more of humour and stage-effect than of wit. Theridicule falls, happily, on the pedantry of lawyers and the folly ofsuitors; but the technical language is lost, in great measure, uponthe audience. This comedy, if it be not rather a farce, is taken fromThe Wasps of Aristophanes; and that Rabelais of antiquity supplied anextravagance, very improbably introduced into the third act of LesPlaideurs, the trial of the dog. Far from improving the humour, whichhad been amusingly kept up during the first two acts, this degeneratesinto nonsense.

|Regnard--Le Joueur.|

33. Regnard is always placed next to Molière among the comic writersof France in this, and perhaps in any age. The plays, indeed, whichentitle him to such a rank, are but few. Of these the best isacknowledged to be Le Joueur. Regnard, taught by his own experience,has here admirably delineated the character of an inveterate gamester;without parade of morality, few comedies are more usefully moral. Wehave not the struggling virtues of a Charles Surface, which thedramatist may feign that he may reward at the fifth act; Regnard hasbetter painted the selfish ungrateful being, who, though not incapableof love, pawns his mistress’s picture, the instant after she has givenit to him, that he may return to the dice-box. Her just abandonment,and his own disgrace, terminate the comedy with a moral dignity whichthe stage does not always maintain, and which, in the first acts, thespectator does not expect. The other characters seem to me various,spirited, and humorous; the valet of Valére the gamester is one of thebest of that numerous class, to whom comedy has owed so much; but thepretended Marquis, though diverting, talks too much like a genuinecoxcomb of the world. Molière did this better in Les PrécieusesRidicules. Regnard is in this play full of those gay sallies whichcannot be read without laughter; the incidents follow rapidly; thereis more movement than in some of the best of Molière’s comedies, andthe speeches are not so prolix.

|His other plays.|

34. Next to Le Joueur, among Regnard’s comedies, it has been usual toplace Le Légataire, not by any means inferior to the first in humourand vivacity, but with less force of character, and more of the commontricks of the stage. The moral, instead of being excellent, is of theworst kind, being the success and dramatic reward of a gross fraud,the forgery of a will by the hero of the piece and his servant. Thisservant is, however, a very comical rogue, and we should not, perhaps,wish to see him sent to the galleys. A similar censure might be passedon the comedy of Regnard, which stands third in reputation: LesMenechmes. The subject, as explained by the title, is old--twin-brothers,whose undistinguishable features are the source of endless confusion;but what neither Plautus nor Shakspeare have thought of, one availshimself of the likeness to receive a large sum of money due to theother, and is thought very generous at the close of the play when herestores a moiety. Of the plays founded on this divertingexaggeration, Regnard’s is perhaps the best; he has more variety ofincident than Plautus; and, by leaving out the second pair of twins,the Dromio servants, which renders the Comedy of Errors almost tooinextricably confused for the spectator or reader, as well as bymaking one of the brothers aware of the mistake, and a party in thedeception, he has given an unity of plot instead of a series ofincoherent blunders.

|Quinault. Boursault.|

35. The Mère Coquette of Quinault appears a comedy of great merit.Without the fine traits of nature which we find in those of Molière,without the sallies of humour which enliven those of Regnard, with aversification, perhaps, not very forcible, it pleases us by a fable atonce novel, as far as I know, and natural, by the interestingcharacters of the lovers, by the decency and tone of good company,which are never lost in the manners, the incidents, or the language.Boursault, whose tragedies are little esteemed, displayed someoriginality in Le Mercure Galant. The idea is one which has notunfrequently been imitated on the English as well as French stage, butit is rather adapted to the shorter drama, than to a regular comedy offive acts. The Mercure Galant was a famous magazine of light,periodical amusem*nts such as was then new in France, which had agreat sale, and is described in a few lines by one of the charactersin this piece.[1005] Boursault places his hero, by the editor’sconsent, as a temporary substitute, in the office of this publication,and brings, in a series of detached scenes, a variety of applicantsfor his notice. A comedy of this kind is like a compound animal; a fewchief characters must give unity to the whole, but the effect isproduced by the successive personages who pass over the stage, displaytheir humour in a single scene, and disappear. Boursault has been insome instances successful; but such pieces generally owe too much totemporary sources of amusem*nt.

 [1005] Le Mercure est une bonne chose: On y trouve de tout, fable, histoire, vers, prose, Sieges, combats, procés, mort, mariage, amour, Nouvelles de province, et nouvelles de cour-- Jamais livre à mon gré ne fut plus nécessaire. Act I., scene 2.

 The Mercure Galant was established in 1672 by one Visé; it was intended to fill the same place as a critical record of polite literature, which the Journal des Sçavans did in learning and science.

|Dancourt.|

36. Dancourt, as Voltaire has said, holds the same rank relatively toMolière in farce, that Regnard does in the higher comedy. He came alittle after the former, and when the prejudice that had been createdagainst comedies in prose by the great success of the other kind hadbegun to subside. The Chevalier à la Mode is the only play of Dancourtthat I know; it is much above farce, and, if length be a distinctivecriterion, it exceeds most comedies. This would be very slight praise,if we could not add that the reader does not find it one page toolong, that the ridicule is poignant and happy, the incidents wellcontrived, the comic situations amusing, the characters clearlymarked. La Harpe, who treats Dancourt with a sort of contempt, doesnot so much as mention this play. It is a satire on the pretensions ofa class then rising, the rich financiers, which long suppliedmaterials, through dramatic caricature, to public malignity and theenvy of a less opulent aristocracy.

|Brueys.|

37. The life of Brueys is rather singular. Born of a noble Huguenotfamily, he was early devoted to protestant theology, and even presumedto enter the lists against Bossuet. But that champion of the faith waslike one of those knights in romance, who first unhorse their rashantagonists, and then make them work as slaves. Brueys was soonconverted, and betook himself to write against his former errors. Heafterwards became an ecclesiastic. Thus far there is nothing much outof the common course in his history. But, grown weary of living alone,and having some natural turn to comedy, he began, rather late, towrite for the stage, with the assistance, or perhaps only under thename, of a certain Palaprat. The plays of Brueys had some success; buthe was not in a position to delineate recent manners, and in the onlycomedy with which I am acquainted, Le Muet, he has borrowed theleading part of his story from Terence. The language seems deficientin vivacity, which, when there is no great naturalness or originalityof character, cannot be dispensed with.

|Operas of Quinault.|

38. The French opera, after some ineffectual attempts by Mazarin tonaturalise an Italian company, was successfully established by Lulliin 1672. It is the prerogative of music in the melo-drama, to renderpoetry its dependent ally; but the airs of Lulli have been forgotten,and the verses of his coadjutor Quinault remain. He is not only theearliest, but, by general consent, the unrivalled poet of Frenchmusic. Boileau, indeed, treated him with undeserved scorn, but,probably, through dislike of the tone he was obliged to preserve,which in the eyes of so stern a judge, and one so insensible to love,appeared languid and effeminate. Quinault, nevertheless, was notincapable of vigorous and impressive poetry; a lyric grandeurdistinguishes some of his songs; he seems to possess great felicity ofadorning every subject with appropriate imagery and sentiment; hisversification has a smoothness and charm of melody, which has madesome say that the lines were already music before they came to thecomposer’s hands; his fables, whether taken from mythology or modernromance, display invention and skill. Voltaire, La Harpe, Schlegel,and the author of the life of Quinault in the Biographie Universelle,but, most of all, the testimony of the public, have compensated forthe severity of Boileau. The Armide is Quinault’s latest, and also hisfinest opera.

 SECT. II.

 ON THE ENGLISH DRAMA.

_State of the Stage after the Restoration--Tragedies of Dryden,Otway, Southern--Comedies of Congreve and others._

|Revival of the English theatre.|

38. The troubles of twenty years, and much more the fanaticalantipathy to stage-plays which the predominant party affected,silenced the muse of the buskin, and broke the continuity of thoseworks of the elder dramatists, which had given a tone to publicsentiment as to the drama from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign.Davenant had, by a sort of connivance, opened a small house for therepresentation of plays, though not avowedly so called, near theCharter House in 1656. He obtained a patent after the Restoration. Bythis time another generation had arisen, and the scale of taste was tobe adjusted anew. The fondness for the theatre revived with increasedavidity; more splendid decoration, actors probably, especiallyBetterton, of greater powers, and above all, the attraction of femaleperformers, who had never been admitted on the older stage, conspiredwith the keen appetite that long restraint produced, and with thegeneral gaiety, or rather dissoluteness, of manners. Yet the multitudeof places for such amusem*nt was not as great as under the firstStuarts. Two houses only were opened by royal patents, granting theman exclusive privilege, one by what was called the King’s Company, inDrury Lane, another by the Duke of York’s Company, in Lincoln’s InnFields. Betterton, who was called the English Roscius, till Garrickclaimed that title, was sent to Paris by Charles II., that, taking aview of the French stage, he might better judge of what wouldcontribute to the improvement of our own. It has been said, andprobably with truth, that he introduced moveable scenes, instead ofthe fixed tapestry that had been hung across the stage; but thisimprovement he could not have borrowed from France. The king not onlycountenanced the theatre by his patronage, but by so much personalnotice of the chief actors, and so much interest in all the affairs ofthe theatre as elevated their condition.

|Change of public taste.|

39. An actor of great talents is the best friend of the greatdramatists; his own genius demands theirs for its support and display;and a fine performer would as soon waste the powers of his hand onfeeble music, as a man like Betterton or Garrick represent what isinsipid or in bad taste. We know that the former, and some of hiscontemporaries, were celebrated in the great parts of our early stage,in those of Shakspeare and Fletcher. But the change of public taste issometimes irresistible by those who, as, in Johnson’s antithesis, they“live to please, must please to live.” Neither tragedy nor comedy wasmaintained at its proper level; and as the world is apt to demandnovelty on the stage, the general tone of dramatic representation inthis period, whatever credit it may have done to the performers,reflects little, in comparison with our golden age, upon those whowrote for them.

|Its causes.|

40. It is observed by Scott, that the French theatre, which was nowthought to be in perfection, guided the criticism of Charles’s court,and afforded the pattern of those tragedies which continued in fashionfor twenty years after the Restoration, and which were called rhymingor heroic plays. Though there is a general justice in this remark, Iam not aware that the inflated tone of these plays is imitated fromany French tragedy; certainly, there was a nobler model in the bestworks of Corneille. But Scott is more right in deriving the unnaturaland pedantic dialogue which prevailed through these performances fromthe romances of Scudery and Calprenède. These were, about the eraof the Restoration, almost as popular among the indolent gentry as inFrance; and it was to be expected that a style would gain ground intragedy, which is not so widely removed from what tragedy requires,but that an ordinary audience would fail to perceive the difference.There is but a narrow line between the sublime and the tumid; the manof business or of pleasure who frequents the theatre must haveaccustomed himself to make such large allowances, to put himself intoa slate of mind so totally different from his every-day habits, that alittle extraordinary deviation from nature, far from shocking him,will rather show like a further advance towards excellence. Hotspurand Almanzor, Richard and Aurungzebe, seem cast in the same mould;beings who can never occur in the common walks of life, but whom thetragedian has, by a tacit convention with the audience, acquired aright of feigning like his ghosts and witches.

|Heroic tragedies of Dryden.|

41. The first tragedies of Dryden were what was called heroic, andwritten in rhyme; an innovation which, of course, must be ascribed tothe influence of the French theatre. They have occasionally muchvigour of sentiment and much beautiful poetry, with a versificationsweet even to lusciousness. The “Conquest of Grenada” is, on accountof its extravagance, the most celebrated of the plays; but it isinferior to the “Indian Emperor,” from which it would be easy toselect passages of perfect elegance. It is singular that although therhythm of dramatic verse is commonly permitted to be the most lax ofany, Dryden has in this play availed himself of none of his wontedprivileges. He regularly closes the sense with the couplet, and fallsinto a smoothness of cadence which, though exquisitely mellifluous, isperhaps too uniform. In the Conquest of Grenada the versification israther more broken.

|His later tragedies.|

|Don Sebastian.|

42. Dryden may probably have been fond of this species of tragedy onaccount of his own facility in rhyming, and his habit of condensinghis sense. Rhyme, indeed, can only be rejected in our language fromthe tragic scene, because blank verse affords wider scope for theemotions it ought to excite; but for the tumid rhapsodies which thepersonages of his heroic plays utter there can be no excuse. Headhered to this tone, however, till the change in public taste, andespecially the ridicule thrown on his own plays by the Rehearsal,drove him to adopt a very different, though not altogether faultlessstyle of tragedy. His principal works of this latter class are All forLove, in 1678, the Spanish Friar, commonly referred to 1682, and DonSebastian, in 1690. Upon these the dramatic fame of Dryden is built;while the rants of Almanzor and Maximin are never mentioned but inridicule. The chief excellence of the first appears to consist in thebeauty of the language, that of the second in the interest of thestory, and that of the third in the highly finished character ofDorax. Dorax is the best of Dryden’s tragic characters, and perhapsthe only one in which he has applied his great knowledge of the humanmind to actual delineation. It is highly dramatic, because formed ofthose complex passions which may readily lead either to virtue or tovice, and which the poet can manage so as to surprise the spectatorwithout transgressing consistency. The Zanga of Young, a part of sometheatrical effect, has been compounded of this character and of thatof Iago. But Don Sebastian is as imperfect as all plays must be inwhich a single personage is thrown forward in too strong relief forthe rest. The language is full of that rant which characterisedDryden’s earlier tragedies, and to which a natural predilection seems,after some interval, to have brought him back. Sebastian himself mayseem to have been intended as a contrast to Muley Moloch; but if theauthor had any rule to distinguish the blustering of the hero fromthat of the tyrant, he has not left the use of it in his reader’shands. The plot of this tragedy is ill conducted, especially in thefifth act. Perhaps the delicacy of the present age may have been toofastidious in excluding altogether from the drama this class ofstories; because they may often excite great interest, give scope toimpassioned poetry, and are admirably calculated for the αναγνωρισις[anagnôrisis], or discovery, which is so much dwelt upon by thecritics; nor can the story of Œdipus, which has furnished one of thefinest and most artful tragedies ever written, be well thought animproper subject even for representation. But they require, of allothers, to be dexterously managed; they may make the main distress ofa tragedy, but not an episode in it. Our feelings revolt at seeing, asin Don Sebastian, an incestuous passion brought forward as themake-weight of a plot, to eke out a fifth act, and to dispose of thosecharacters whose fortune the main story has not quite wound up.

|Spanish Friar.|

43. The Spanish Friar has been praised for what Johnson calls the“happy coincidence and coalition of the two plots.” It is difficult tounderstand what can be meant by a compliment which seems eitherironical or ignorant. Nothing can be more remote from the truth. Theartifice of combining two distinct stories on the stage is, we maysuppose, either to interweave the incidents of one into those of theother, or at least so to connect some characters with each intrigue,as to make the spectator fancy them less distinct than they are. Thus,in the Merchant of Venice, the courtship of Bassanio and Portia ishappily connected with the main plot of Antonio and Shylock by twocirc*mstances; it is to set Bassanio forward in his suit that thefatal bond is first given; and it is by Portia’s address that itsforfeiture is explained away. The same play affords an instance ofanother kind of underplot, that of Lorenzo and Jessica, which is moreepisodical, and might perhaps be removed without any material loss tothe fable; though even this serves to account for, we do not say topalliate, the vindictive exasperation of the Jew. But to which ofthese do the comic scenes in the Spanish Friar bear most resemblance?Certainly to the latter. They consist entirely of an intrigue whichLorenzo, a young officer, carries on with a rich usurer’s wife; butthere is not, even by accident, any relation between his adventuresand the love and murder which go forward in the palace. The SpanishFriar, so far as it is a comedy, is reckoned the best performance ofDryden in that line. Father Dominic is very amusing, and has beencopied very freely by succeeding dramatists, especially in the Duenna.But Dryden has no great abundance of wit in this or any of hiscomedies. His jests are practical, and he seems to have written morefor the eye than the ear. It may be noted as a proof of this, that hisstage directions are unusually full. In point of diction, the SpanishFriar in its tragic scenes, and All for Love, are certainly the bestplays of Dryden. They are the least infected with his great fault,bombast, and should indeed be read over and over by those who wouldlearn the true tone of English tragedy. In dignity, in animation, instriking images and figures, there are few or none that excel them;the power indeed of impressing sympathy, or commanding tears, wasseldom placed by nature within the reach of Dryden.

|Otway.|

44. The Orphan of Otway, and his Venice Preserved, will generally bereckoned the best tragedies of this period. They have both a deeppathos, springing from the intense and unmerited distress of women;both, especially the latter, have a dramatic eloquence, rapid andflowing, with less of turgid extravagance than we find in Otway’scontemporaries, and sometimes with very graceful poetry. The story ofthe Orphan is domestic, and evidently borrowed from some French novel,though I do not at present remember where I have read it; it was oncepopular on the stage, and gave scope for good acting, but isunpleasing to the delicacy of our own age. Venice Preserved is morefrequently represented than any tragedy after those of Shakspeare; theplot is highly dramatic in conception and conduct; even what seems,when we read it, a defect, the shifting of our wishes, or perhapsrather of our ill-wishes, between two parties, the senate and theconspirators, who are redeemed by no virtue, does not, as is shown byexperience, interfere with the spectator’s interest. Pierre indeed isone of those villains for whom it is easy to excite the sympathy ofthe half-principled and the inconsiderate. But the great attraction isin the character of Belvidera; and when that part is represented bysuch as we remember to have seen, no tragedy is honoured by such atribute, not of tears alone, but of more agony than many would seek toendure. The versification of Otway, like that of most in this period,runs almost to an excess into the line of eleven syllables, sometimesalso into the sdrucciolo form, or twelve syllables with a dactylicclose. These give a considerable animation to tragic verse.

|Southern.|

|Lee.|

|Congreve.|

45. Southern’s Fatal Discovery, latterly represented by the name ofIsabella, is almost as familiar to the lovers of our theatre as VenicePreserved itself; and, for the same reason, that whenever an actressof great tragic powers arises, the part of Isabella is as fitted toexhibit them as that of Belvidera. The choice and conduct of the storyare, however, Southern’s chief merits; for there is little vigour inthe language, though it is natural and free from the usual faults ofhis age. A similar character may be given to his other tragedy,Oroonoko, in which Southern deserves the praise of having, first ofany English writer, denounced the traffic in slaves, and the crueltiesof their West Indian bondage. The moral feeling is high in thistragedy; and it has sometimes been acted with a certain success; butthe execution is not that of a superior dramatist. Of Lee nothing needbe said, but that he is, in spite of his proverbial extravagance, aman of poetical mind and some dramatic skill. But he has violatedhistoric truth in Theodosius without gaining much by invention. TheMourning Bride of Congreve is written in prolix declamation, with nopower over the passions. Johnson is well known to have praised a fewlines in this tragedy as among the finest descriptions in thelanguage; while others, by a sort of contrariety, have spoken of themas worth nothing. Truth is in its usual middle path; many betterpassages may be found, but they are well written and impressive.[1006]

 [1006] Mourning Bride, act II., scene 3. Johnson’s Life of Congreve.

|Comedies of Chas. II.’s reign.|

46. In the early English comedy, we find a large intermixture ofobscenity in the lower characters, nor always confined to them, withno infrequent scenes of licentious incident and language. But theseare invariably so brought forward as to manifest the dramatist’s scornof vice, and to excite no other sentiment in a spectator of even anordinary degree of moral purity. In the plays that appeared after theRestoration, and that from the beginning, a different tone wasassumed. Vice was in her full career on the stage, unchecked byreproof, unshamed by contrast, and, for the most part, unpunished bymortification at the close. Nor are these less coarse in expression,or less impudent in their delineation of low debauchery, than those ofthe preceding period. It may be observed, on the contrary, that theyrarely exhibit the manners of truly polished life, according to anynotions we can frame of them, and are, in this respect, much belowthose of Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley. It might not be easy,perhaps, to find a scene in any comedy of Charles II.’s reign whereone character has the behaviour of a gentleman, in the sense we attachto the word. Yet the authors of these were themselves in the world,and sometimes men of family and considerable station. The cause mustbe found in the state of society itself, debased as well as corrupted,partly by the example of the court, partly by the practice of livingin taverns, which became much more inveterate after the Restorationthan before. The contrast with the manners of Paris, as far as thestage is their mirror, does not tell to our advantage. These plays, asit may be expected, do not aim at the higher glories of comic writing;they display no knowledge of nature, nor often rise to any otherconception of character than is gained by a caricature of some knownclass, or, perhaps, of some remarkable individual. Nor do they ingeneral deserve much credit as comedies of intrigue; the plot isseldom invented with much care for its development; and if scenesfollow one another in a series of diverting incidents, if theentanglements are such as produce laughter, above all, if thepersonages keep up a well-sustained battle of repartee, the purpose issufficiently answered. It is in this that they often excel; some ofthem have considerable humour in the representation of character,though this may not be very original, and a good deal of wit in theirdialogue.

|Wycherley.|

47. Wycherley is remembered for two comedies, the Plain Dealer, andthe Country Wife, the latter represented with some change, in moderntimes, under the name of the Country Girl. The former has beenfrequently said to be taken from the Misanthrope of Molière; but this,like many current assertions, seems to have little, if any,foundation. Manly, the Plain Dealer, is, like Alceste, a speaker oftruth; but the idea is, at least, one which it was easy to conceivewithout plagiarism, and there is not the slightest resemblance in anycirc*mstance or scene of the two comedies. We cannot say the same ofthe Country Wife; it was evidently suggested by L’Ecole des Femmes;the character of Arnolphe has been copied; but even here, the wholeconduct of the piece of Wycherley is his own. It is more artificialthan that of Molière, wherein too much passes in description; the partof Agnes is rendered still more poignant; and among the comedies ofCharles’s reign, I am not sure that it is surpassed by any.

|Improvement after the Revolution.|

48. Shadwell and Etherege, and the famous Afra Behn, have endeavouredto make the stage as grossly immoral as their talents permitted; butthe two former are not destitute of humour. At the death of Charles ithad reached the lowest point; after the Revolution it became not muchmore a school of virtue, but rather a better one of polished mannersthan before; and certainly drew to its service some men of comicgenius, whose names are now not only very familiar to our ears, as theboasts of our theatre, but whose works have not all ceased to enlivenits walls.

|Congreve.|

49. Congreve, by the Old Bachelor, written, as some have said, attwenty-one years of age, but, in fact, not quite so soon, andrepresented in 1693, placed himself at once in a rank which he hasalways retained. Though not, I think, the first, he is undeniablyamong the first names. The Old Bachelor was quickly followed by theDouble Dealer, and that by Love for Love, in which he reached thesummit of his reputation. The last of his four comedies, the Way ofthe World, is said to have been coldly received; for which it is hardto assign any substantial cause, unless it be some want of sequence inthe plot. The peculiar excellence of Congreve is his wit, incessantlysparkling from the lips of almost every character, but, on thisaccount, it is accompanied by want of nature and simplicity. Nature,indeed, and simplicity do not belong, as proper attributes, to thatcomedy which, itself the creature of an artificial society, has forits proper business to exaggerate the affectation and hollowness ofthe world. A critical code, which should require the comedy of politelife to be natural, would make it intolerable. But there are limits ofdeviation from likeness which even caricature must not transgress; andthe type of truth should always regulate the playful aberrations of aninventive pencil. The manners of Congreve’s comedies are not, to us,at least, like those of reality; I am not sure that we have any causeto suppose that they much better represent the times in which theyappeared. His characters, with an exception or two, are heartless andvicious; which, on being attacked by Collier, he justified, probablyby an afterthought, on the authority of Aristotle’s definition ofcomedy; that it is μιμησις φανλοτερων [mimêsis phauloterôn], animitation of what is the worst in human nature.[1007] But it must beacknowledged that, more than any preceding writer among us, he kept upthe tone of a gentleman; his men of the world are profligate, but notcoarse; he rarely, like Shadwell, or even Dryden, caters for thepopulace of the theatre by such indecencies as they must understand;he gave, in fact, a tone of refinement to the public taste, which itnever lost, and which, in its progression, has banished his owncomedies from the stage.

 [1007] Congreve’s Amendments of Mr. Collier’s false citations.

|Love for Love.|

50. Love for Love is generally reputed the best of these. Congreve hasnever any great success in the conception or management of his plot;but in this comedy there is least to censure; several of thecharacters are exceedingly humorous; the incidents are numerous andnot complex; the wit is often admirable. Angelica and Miss Prue, Benand Tattle, have been repeatedly imitated; but they have, I think, aconsiderable degree of dramatic originality in themselves. Johnson hasobserved that Ben the sailor is not reckoned over natural, but he isvery diverting. Possibly he may be quite as natural a portrait of amere sailor, as that to which we have become used in modern comedy.

|His other comedies.|

51. The Way of the World I should, perhaps, incline to place next tothis; the coquetry of Millamant, not without some touches ofdelicacy, and affection, the impertinent coxcombry of Petulant andWitwood, the mixture of wit and ridiculous vanity in Lady Wishfort,are amusing to the reader. Congreve has here made more use than, asfar as I remember, had been common in England, of the all-importantsoubrette, on whom so much depends in French comedy. The manners ofFrance happily enabled her dramatists to improve what they hadborrowed with signal success from the ancient stage, the witty andartful servant, faithful to his master while he deceives every onebesides, by adding this female attendant, not less versed in everyartifice, nor less quick in repartee. Mincing and Foible, in this playof Congreve, are good specimens of the class; but, speaking with somehesitation, I do not think they will be found, at least, not sonaturally drawn, in the comedies of Charles’s time. Many would,perhaps, not without cause, prefer the Old Bachelor; which aboundswith wit, but seems rather deficient in originality of character andcirc*mstance. The Double Dealer is entitled to the same praise of wit,and some of the characters, though rather exaggerated, are amusing;but the plot is so entangled towards the conclusion, that I have foundit difficult, even in reading, to comprehend it.

|Farquhar. Vanbrugh.|

52. Congreve is not superior to Farquhar and Vanbrugh, if we mightcompare the whole of their works. Never has he equalled in vivacity,in originality of contrivance, or in clear and rapid development ofintrigue, the Beau’s Stratagem of the one, and much less the admirabledelineation of the Wronghead family in the Provoked Husband of theother. But these were of the eighteenth century. Farquhar’s Trip tothe Jubilee, though once a popular comedy, is not distinguished bymore than an easy flow of wit, and perhaps a little novelty in some ofthe characters; it is indeed written in much superior language to theplays anterior to the Revolution. But the Relapse, and the ProvokedWife of Vanbrugh have attained a considerable reputation. In theformer, the character of Amanda is interesting; especially in themomentary wavering, and quick recovery of her virtue. This is thefirst homage that the theatre had paid, since the Restoration, tofemale chastity; and notwithstanding the vicious tone of the othercharacters, in which Vanbrugh has gone as great lengths as any of hiscontemporaries, we perceive the beginnings of a reaction in publicspirit, which gradually reformed and elevated the moral standard ofthe stage.[1008] The Provoked Wife, though it cannot be said to giveany proofs of this sort of improvement, has some merit as a comedy; itis witty and animated, as Vanbrugh usually was; the character of SirJohn Brute may not have been too great a caricature of real manners,such as survived from the debased reign of Charles; and the endeavourto expose the grossness of the older generation was itself an evidencethat a better polish had been given to social life.

 [1008] This purification of English comedy has sometimes been attributed to the effects of a famous essay by Collier on the immorality of the English stage. But if public opinion had not been prepared to go along, in a considerable degree, with Collier, his animadversions could have produced little change. In point of fact, the subsequent improvement was but slow, and, for some years, rather shown in avoiding coarse indecencies than in much elevation of sentiment. Steele’s Conscious Lovers is the first comedy which can be called moral; Cibber, in those parts of the Provoked Husband that he wrote, carried this farther, and the stage afterwards grew more and more refined, till it became languid and sentimental.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

 HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE, FROM 1650 to 1700.

 SECT. I.

_Italy--High Refinement of French Language--Fontenelle--St. Evremond--Sevigné--Bouhours and Rapin--Miscellaneous Writers--English Style--andCriticism--Dryden._

|Low state of literature in Italy.|

1. If Italy could furnish no long list of conspicuous names in thisdepartment of literature to our last period, she is far more deficientin the present. The Prose Florentine of Dati, a collection of whatseemed the best specimens of Italian eloquence in this century, servedchiefly to prove its mediocrity, nor has that editor, by hisown panegyric on Louis XIV. or any other of his writings, been able toredeem its name.[1009] The sermons of Segneri have already beenmentioned; the eulogies bestowed on them seem to be founded, in somemeasure, on the surrounding barrenness. The letters of Magalotti, andstill more of Redi, themselves philosophers, and generally writing onphilosophy, seem to do more credit than anything else to thisperiod.[1010]

 [1009] Salfi, xiv. 25. Tiraboschi, xi, 412.

 [1010] Salfi, xiv. 17. Corniani, viii. 71.

|Crescimbeni.|

2. Crescimbeni, the founder of the Arcadian Society, has made anhonourable name by his exertions to purify the national taste, as wellas by his diligence in preserving the memory of better ages than hisown. His History of National Poetry is a laborious and useful work, towhich I have sometimes been indebted. His treatise on the beauty ofthat poetry is only known to me through Salfi. It is written indialogue, the speakers being Arcadians. Anxious to extirpate theschool of the Marinists, without falling back altogether into that ofPetrarch, he set up Costanzo as a model of poetry. Most of hisprecepts, Salfi observes, are very trivial at present; but at theepoch of its appearance, it was of great service towards the reform ofItalian literature.[1011]

 [1011] Salfi, xiii. 450.

|Age of Louis XIV. in France.|

3. This period, the second part of the seventeenth century,comprehends the most considerable, and in every sense the mostimportant and distinguished portion of what was once called the greatage in France, the reign of Louis XIV. In this period the literatureof France was adorned by its most brilliant writers; since,notwithstanding the genius and popularity of some who followed, wegenerally find a still higher place awarded by men of fine taste toBossuet and Pascal than to Voltaire and Montesquieu. The language waswritten with a care that might have fettered the powers of ordinarymen, but rendered those of such as we have mentioned more resplendent.The laws of taste and grammar, like those of nature, were heldimmutable; it was the province of human genius to deal with them, asit does with nature, by a skilful employment, not by a preposterousand ineffectual rebellion against their control. Purity andperspicuity, simplicity and ease, were conditions of good writing; itwas never thought that an author, especially in prose, mighttransgress the recognised idiom of his mother tongue, or invent wordsunknown to it, for the sake of effect or novelty; or, if in some rareoccurrence so bold a course might be forgiven, these exceptions werebut as miracles in religion, which would cease to strike us, or be nomiracles at all, but for the regularity of the laws to which they bearwitness even while they violate them. We have not thought it necessaryto defer the praise which some great French writers have deserved onthe score of their language for this chapter. Bossuet, Malebranche,Arnauld, and Pascal, have already been commemorated; and it issufficient to point out two causes in perpetual operation during thisperiod which ennobled and preserved in purity the literature ofFrance; one, the salutary influence of the Academy, the other, thatemulation between the Jesuits and Jansenists for public esteem, whichwas better displayed in their politer writings, than in the abstruseand endless controversy of the five propositions. A few remain to bementioned, and as the subject of this chapter, in order to avoidfrequent subdivisions, is miscellaneous, the reader must expect tofind that we do not, in every instance, confine ourselves to what hemay consider as polite letters.

|Fontenelle--his character.|

4. Fontenelle, by the variety of his talents, by their application tothe pursuits most congenial to the intellectual character of hiscontemporaries, and by that extraordinary longevity which made thosecontemporaries not less than three generations of mankind, may bereckoned the best representative of French literature. Born in 1657,and dying within a few days of a complete century, in 1757, he enjoyedthe most protracted life of any among the modern learned; and that alife in the full sunshine of Parisian literature, without care andwithout disease. In nothing was Fontenelle a great writer; his mentaland moral disposition resembled each other; equable, without thecapacity of performing, and hardly of conceiving, anything trulyelevated, but not less exempt from the fruits of passion, fromparadox, unreasonableness, and prejudice. His best productions are,perhaps, the eulogies on the deceased members of the Academy ofSciences, which he pronounced during almost forty years, but thesenearly all belong to the eighteenth century; they are just and candid,with sufficient, though not very profound, knowledge of the exactsciences, and a style pure and flowing, which his good sense had freedfrom some early affectation, and his cold temper as well assound understanding restrained from extravagance. In his first workswe have symptoms of an infirmity belonging more frequently to age thanto youth; but Fontenelle was never young in passion. He affects thetone of somewhat pedantic and frigid gallantry which seems to havesurvived the society of the Hôtel Rambouillet who had countenanced it,and which borders too nearly on the language which Molière and hisdisciples had well exposed in their coxcombs on the stage.

|His Dialogues of the Dead.|

5. The Dialogues of the Dead, published, I think, in 1685, arecondemned by some critics for their false taste and perpetual strainat something unexpected, and paradoxical. The leading idea is, ofcourse, borrowed from Lucian; but Fontenelle has aimed at greaterpoignancy by contrast; the ghosts in his dialogues are exactly thosewho had least in common with each other in life, and the generalobject is to bring, by some happy analogy which had not occurred tothe reader, or by some ingenious defence of what he had beenaccustomed to despise, the prominences and depressions of historiccharacters to a level. This is what is always well received in thekind of society for which Fontenelle wrote; but if much is meresophistry in his dialogues, if the general tone is little above thatof the world, there is also, what we often find in the world, someacuteness and novelty, and some things put in a light which it may beworth while not to neglect.

|Those of Fenelon.|

6. Fenelon, not many years afterwards, copied the scheme, though notthe style, of Fontenelle in his own Dialogues of the Dead, written forthe use of his pupil the Duke of Burgundy. Some of these dialogues arenot truly of the dead; the characters speak as if on earth, and withearthly designs. They have certainly more solid sense and a moreelevated morality than those of Fontenelle, to which La Harpe haspreferred them. The noble zeal of Fenelon not to spare the vices ofkings, in writing for the heir of one so imperious and so open to thecensure of reflecting minds, shines throughout these dialogues; butdesigned as they were for a boy, they naturally appear in some placesrather superficial.

|Fontenelle’s Plurality of Worlds.|

7. Fontenelle succeeded better in his famous dialogues on thePlurality of Worlds, Les Mondes; in which, if the conception is notwholly original, he has at least developed it with so much spirit andvivacity, that it would show as bad taste to censure his work, as toreckon it a model for imitation. It is one of those happy ideas whichhave been privileged monopolies of the first inventor; and it will befound accordingly that all attempts to copy this whimsical union ofgallantry with science have been insipid almost to a ridiculousdegree. Fontenelle throws so much gaiety and wit into his complimentsto the lady whom he initiates in his theory, that we do not confoundthem with the nonsense of coxcombs; and she is herself so spirited,unaffected, and clever, that no philosopher could be ashamed ofgallantry towards so deserving an object. The fascinating paradox, asthen it seemed, though our children are now taught to lisp it, thatthe moon, the planets, the fixed stars, are full of inhabitants, ispresented with no more show of science than was indispensable, butwith a varying liveliness that, if we may judge by the consequences,has served to convince as well as amuse. The plurality of worlds hadbeen suggested by Wilkins, and probably by some Cartesians in France;but it was first rendered a popular tenet by this agreeable littlebook of Fontenelle, which had a great circulation in Europe. Theingenuity with which he obviates the difficulties he is compelled toacknowledge, is worthy of praise; and a good deal of the populartruths of physical astronomy is found in these dialogues.

|His History of Oracles.|

8. The History of Oracles, which Fontenelle published in 1687, isworthy of observation as a sign of the change that was working inliterature. In the provinces of erudition and of polite letters, longso independent, perhaps even so hostile, some tendency towards acoalition began to appear. The men of the world, especially after theyhad acquired a free temper of thinking in religion, and becomeaccustomed to talk about philosophy, desired to know something of thequestions which the learned disputed; but they demanded this knowledgeby a short and easy road, with no great sacrifice of their leisure orattention. Fontenelle, in the History of Oracles, as in the dialogueson the Plurality of Worlds, prepared a repast for their taste. A dullwork of a learned Dutch physician, Van Dale, had taken up the subjectof the ancient oracles, and explained them by human imposture insteadof that of the devil, which had been the more orthodox hypothesis. Acertain degree of paradox, or want of orthodoxy, already gave a zestto a book in France; and Fontenelle’s lively manner, with morelearning than good society at Paris possessed, and about as much as itcould endure, united to a clear and acute line of argument, created apopularity for his History of Oracles, which we cannot reckonaltogether unmerited.[1012]

 [1012] I have not compared, or indeed read, Van Dale’s work; but I rather suspect that some of the reasoning, not the learning, of Fontenelle is original.

|St. Evremond.|

9. The works of St. Evremond were collected after his death in 1705;but many had been printed before, and he evidently belongs to thelatter half of the seventeenth century. The fame of St. Evremond as abrilliant star, during a long life, in the polished aristocracy ofFrance and England, gave for a time a considerable lustre to hiswritings, the greater part of which are such effusions as the dailyintercourse of good company called forth. In verse or in prose, he isthe gallant friend, rather than lover, of ladies who, secure probablyof love in some other quarter, were proud of the friendship of a wit.He never, to do him justice, mistakes his character which as his agewas not a little advanced might have incurred ridicule. HortenseMancini, duch*ess of Mazarin, is his heroine; but we take littleinterest in compliments to a woman neither respected in her life, norremembered since. Nothing can be more trifling than the generalcharacter of the writings of St. Evremond; but sometimes he rises toliterary criticism, or even civil history; and on such topics he isclear, unaffected, cold, without imagination or sensibility; a type ofthe frigid being, whom an aristocratic and highly polished society isapt to produce. The chief merit of St. Evremond is in his style andmanner; he has less wit than Voiture who contributed to form him, orthan Voltaire whom he contributed to form; but he shows neither theeffort of the former, nor the restlessness of the latter. Voltaire,however, when he is most quiet, as in the earliest and best of hishistorical works, seems to bear a considerable resemblance to St.Evremond, and there can be no doubt that he was familiar with thelatter’s writings.

|Madame de Sevigné.|

10. A woman has the glory of being full as conspicuous in the gracesof style as any writer of this famous age. It is evident that this wasMadame de Sevigné. Her letters, indeed, were not published till theeighteenth century, but they were written in the mid-day of Louis’sreign. Their ease and freedom from affectation are more striking, bycontrast with the two epistolary styles which had been most admired inFrance, that of Balzac, which is laboriously tumid, and that ofVoiture, which becomes insipid by dint of affectation. Everyoneperceives that in the letters of a mother to her daughter, the public,in a strict sense, is not thought of; and yet the habit of speakingand writing what men of wit and taste would desire to hear and read,gives a certain mannerism, I will not say air of effort, even to theletters of Madame de Sevigné. The abandonment of the heart to itscasual impulses is not so genuine as in some that have since beenpublished. It is, at least, clear that it is possible to becomeaffected in copying her unaffected style; and some of Walpole’sletters bear witness to this. Her wit and talent of painting by singletouches are very eminent; scarcely any collection of letters, whichcontain so little that can interest a distant age, are read with suchpleasure; if they have any general fault, it is a little monotony andexcess of affection towards her daughter, which is reported to havewearied its object, and, in contrast with this, a little want ofsensibility towards all beyond her immediate friends, and a readinessto find something ludicrous in the dangers and sufferings ofothers.[1013]

 [1013] The proofs of this are numerous enough in her letters. In one of them she mentions that a lady of her acquaintance, having been bitten by a mad dog, had gone to be dipped in the sea, and amuses herself by taking off the provincial accent with which she will express herself on the first plunge. She makes a jest of La Voisin’s execution; and though that person was as little entitled to sympathy as anyone, yet, when a woman is burned alive, it is not usual for another woman to turn it into drollery.

 Madame de Sevigné’s taste has been arraigned for slighting Racine; and she has been charged with the unfortunate prediction; Il passera comme le café. But it is denied that these words can be found, though few like to give up so diverting a miscalculation of futurity. In her time, Corneille’s party was so well supported, and he deserved so much gratitude and reverence, that we cannot much wonder at her being carried a little too far against his rival. Who has ever seen a woman just towards the rivals of her friends, though many are just towards their own?

|The French Academy.|

11. The French Academy had been so judicious, both in the choice ofits members, and in the general tenor of its proceedings, that itstood very high in public esteem, and a voluntary deference wascommonly shown to its authority. The favour of Louis XIV., when hegrew to manhood, was accorded as amply as that of Richelieu.The Academy was received by the king, when they approached himpublicly, with the same ceremonies as the superior courts of justice.This body had, almost from its commencement, undertaken a nationaldictionary, which should carry the language to its utmost perfection,and trace a road to the highest eloquence that depended on purity andchoice of words; more than this could not be given by man. The workproceeded very slowly; and dictionaries were published in themeantime, one by Richelet in 1680, another by Furetiére. The formerseems to be little more than a glossary of technical, or otherwisedoubtful words;[1014] but the latter, though pretending to containonly terms of art and science, was found, by its definitions and bythe authorities it quoted, to interfere so much with the project ofthe academicians, who had armed themselves with an exclusiveprivilege, that they not only expelled Furetiére from their body, onthe allegation that he had availed himself of materials intrusted tohim by the Academy for its own dictionary, but instituted a longprocess at law to hinder his publication. This was in 1685, and thedictionary of Furetiére only appeared after his death, at Amsterdam,in 1690.[1015] Whatever may have been the delinquency, moral or legal,of this compiler, his dictionary is praised by Goujet as a richtreasure, in which almost everything is found that we can desire for asound knowledge of the language. It has been frequently reprinted, andcontinued long in esteem. But the dictionary of the Academy, which waspublished in 1694, claimed an authority to which that of a private mancould not pretend. Yet the first edition seems to have ratherdisappointed the public expectation. Many objected to the want ofquotations, and to the observance of an orthography that had becomeobsolete. The Academy undertook a revision of its work in 1700; and,finally, profiting by the public opinion on which it endeavoured toact, rendered this dictionary the most received standard of the Frenchlanguage.[1016]

 [1014] Goujet, Baillet, n. 762.

 [1015] Pelisson, Hist. de l’Académie (continuation par Olivet), p. 47. Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, i., 232, et post. Biogr. Univers., art. Furetiére.

 [1016] Pelisson, p. 69. Goujet, p. 261.

|French Grammars.|

12. The Grammaire Générale et Raisonnée of Lancelot, in which Arnauldtook a considerable share, is rather a treatise on the philosophy ofall language than one peculiar to the French. “The best critics,” saysBaillet, “acknowledge that there is nothing written by either theancient or the modern grammarians, with so much justness andsolidity.”[1017] Vigneul-Marville bestows upon it an almost equaleulogy.[1018] Lancelot was copied in a great degree by Lami, in hisRhetoric or Art of Speaking, with little of value that isoriginal.[1019] Vaugelas retained his place as the founder of sound,grammatical criticism, though his judgments have not been uniformlyconfirmed by the next generation. His remarks were edited with notesby Thomas Corneille, who had the reputation of an excellentgrammarian.[1020] The observations of Ménage on the French language,in 1675 and 1676, are said to have the fault of reposing too much onobsolete authorities, even those of the sixteenth century, which hadlong been proscribed by a politer age.[1021] Notwithstanding the zealof the Academy, no critical laws could arrest the revolutions ofspeech. Changes came in with the lapse of time, and were sanctioned bythe imperious rule of custom. In a book on grammar, published as earlyas 1688, Balzac and Voiture, even Patru and the Port-Royal writers,are called semi-moderns;[1022] so many new phrases had since madetheir way into composition, so many of theirs had acquired a certainair of antiquity.

 [1017] Jugemens des Sçavans, n. 606. Goujet copies Baillet’s words.

 [1018] Mélanges de Littérature, i., 124.

 [1019] Goujet, i., 56. Gibert, p. 351.

 [1020] Goujet, 146. Biogr. Univ.

 [1021] Id. 153.

 [1022] Bibliothèque Universelle, xv., 351. Perrault makes a similar remark on Patru.

|Bouhours’ Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène.|

13. The genius of the French language, as it was estimated in thisage, by those who aspired to the character of good critics, may belearned from one of the dialogues in a work of Bouhours, LesEntretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène. Bouhours was a Jesuit, who affected apolite and lively tone, according to the fashion of his time, so as towarrant some degree of ridicule; but a man of taste and judgment,whom, though La Harpe speaks of him with some disdain, hiscontemporaries quoted with respect. The first and the mostinteresting, at present, of these conversations, which are feigned totake place between two gentlemen of literary taste, turns on theFrench language.[1023] This he presumes to be the best of allmodern; deriding the Spanish for its pomp, the Italian for its finicaleffeminacy.[1024] The French has the secret of uniting brevity withclearness, and with purity, and politeness. The Greek and Latin areobscure where they are concise. The Spanish is always diffuse. TheSpanish is a turbid torrent, often over-spreading the country withgreat noise; the Italian a gentle rivulet, occasionally given toinundate its meadows; the French, a noble river, enriching theadjacent lands, but with an equal, majestic course of waters thatnever quits its level.[1025] Spanish, again, he compares to aninsolent beauty, that holds her head high, and takes pleasure insplendid dress; Italian, to a painted coquette, always attired toplease; French, to a modest and agreeable lady, who, if you may callher a prude, has nothing uncivil or repulsive in her prudery. Latin isthe common mother; but while Italian has the sort of likeness to Latinwhich an ape bears to a man, in French we have the dignity,politeness, purity, and good sense of the Augustan age. The Frenchhave rejected almost all the diminutives once in use, and do not, likethe Italians, admit the right of framing others. This language doesnot tolerate rhyming sounds in prose, nor even any kind of assonance,as amertume and fortune, near together. It rejects very boldmetaphors, as the zenith of virtue, the apogée of glory; and it isremarkable that its poetry is almost as hostile to metaphor as itsprose.[1026] “We have very few words merely poetical, and the languageof our poets is not very different from that of the world. Whatever bethe cause, it is certain that a figurative style is neither good amongus in verse nor in prose.” This is evidently much exaggerated, and, incontradiction to the known examples, at least, of dramatic poetry. Allaffectation and labour, he proceeds to say, are equally repugnant to agood French style. “If we would speak the language well, we should nottry to speak it too well. It detests excess of ornament; it wouldalmost desire that words should be as it were naked; their dress mustbe no more than necessity and decency require. Its simplicity isaverse to compound words; those adjectives which are formed by such ajuncture of two, have long been exiled both from prose and verse. Ourown pronunciation,” he affirms, “is the most natural and pleasing ofany. The Chinese and other Asiatics sing; the Germans rattle(rallent); the Spaniards spout; the Italians sigh; the Englishwhistle; the French alone can properly be said to speak; which arises,in fact, from our not accenting any syllable before the penultimate.The French language is best adapted to express the tenderestsentiments of the heart; for which reason our songs are so impassionedand pathetic, while those of Italy and Spain are full of nonsense.Other languages may address the imagination, but ours alone speaks tothe heart, which never understands what is said in them.”[1027] Thisis literally amusing; and with equal patriotism, Bouhours in anotherplace has proposed the question, whether a German can, by the natureof things, possess any wit.

 [1023] Bouhours points out several innovations which had lately come into use. He dislikes _avoir des ménagemens_, or _avoir de la considération_, and thinks these phrases would not last; in which he was mistaken. _Tour de visage_ and _tour d’esprit_ were new: the words _fonds_, _mésures_, _amitiés_, _compte_, and many more were used in new senses. Thus also _assez_ and _trop_; as the phrase, _je ne suis pas trop de votre avis_. It seems, on reflection, that some of the expressions he animadverts upon, must have been affected while they were new, being in opposition to the correct meaning of words; and it is always curious, in other languages as well as our own, to observe the comparatively recent _nobility_ of many things quite established by present usage. Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène p. 95.

 [1024] P. 52 (edit. 1671).

 [1025] P. 77.

 [1026] P. 60.

 [1027] P. 68.

|Attacked by Barbier d’Aucour.|

14. Bouhours, not deficient, as we may perceive, in self-confidenceand proneness to censure, presumed to turn into ridicule the writersof Port-Royal, at that time of such distinguished reputation asthreatened to eclipse the credit which the Jesuits had alwayspreserved in polite letters. He alludes to their long periods and theexaggerated phrases of invective which they poured forth incontroversy.[1028] But the Jansenist party was well able to defenditself. Barbier d’Aucour retaliated on the vain Jesuit by hisSentimens de Cleanthe sur les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène.It seems to be the general opinion of French critics that he has wellexposed the weak parts of his adversary, his affected air of theworld, the occasional frivolity and feebleness of his observations;yet there seems something morose in the censures of the supposedCleanthe, which renders this book less agreeable than that on which itanimadverts.

 [1028] P. 150. Vigneul-Marville observes that the Port-Royal writers formed their style originally on that of Balzac (vol. i., p. 107); and that M. d’Andilly, brother of Antony Arnauld, affected at one time a grand and copious manner like the Spaniards, as being more serious and imposing, especially in devotional writings; but afterwards finding the French were impatient of this style, that party abandoned it for one more concise, which it is by no means less difficult to write well, p. 139. Baillet seems to refer their love of long periods to the famous advocate Le Maistre, who had employed them in his pleadings, not only as giving more dignity, but also because the public taste at that time favoured them. Jugemens des Sçavans, n. 953.

|La Manière de Bien Penser.|

15. Another work of criticism by Bouhours La Manière de Bien Penser,which is also in dialogue, contains much that shows acuteness anddelicacy of discrimination; though his taste was deficient in warmthand sensibility, which renders him somewhat too strict and fastidiousin his judgments. He is an unsparing enemy of obscurity, exaggerationand nonsense, and laughs at the hyperbolical language of Balzac, whilehe has rather over-praised Voiture.[1029] The affected inflatedthoughts, of which the Italian and Spanish writers afford him manyexamples, Bouhours justly condemns, and by the correctness of hisjudgment may deserve, on the whole, a respectable place in the secondorder of critics.

 [1029] Voiture, he says, always takes a tone of raillery when he exaggerates. Le faux devient vrai à la faveur de l’ironie, p. 29. But we can hardly think that Balzac was not gravely ironical in some of the strange hyperboles which Bouhours quotes from him.

 In the fourth dialogue, Bouhours has many just observations on the necessity of clearness. An obscurity arising from allusion to things now unknown, such as we find in the ancients, is no fault but a misfortune; but this is no excuse for one which may be avoided, and arises from the writer’s indistinctness of conception or language. Cela n’est pas intelligible, dit Philinthe (after hearing a foolish rhapsody extracted from a funeral sermon on Louis XIII.). Non, répondit Eudoxe, ce n’est pas tout-à-fait de galimatias, ce n’est que du phébus. Vous mettez donc, dit Philinthe, de la différence entre le galimatias et le phébus? Oui, repartit Eudoxe, le galimatias renferme une obscurité profonde, et n’a de soi-même nul sens raisonnable. Le phébus n’est pas si obscur, et a un brillant qui signfie, ou semble signifier quelque chose; le soleil y entre d’ordinaire, et c’est peut-être ce qui a donné lieu en notre langue au nom de phébus. Ce n’est pas que quelquefois le phébus ne devienne obscur, jusqu’à n’être pas entendu; mais alors le galimatias s’en joint; ce ne sont que brillans et que ténèbres de tous côtes, p. 342.

|Rapin’s Reflections on Eloquence and Poetry.|

16. The Réflexions sur l’Eloquence et sur la Poësie of Rapin, anotherJesuit, whose Latin poem on Gardens has already been praised, arejudicious, though perhaps rather too diffuse; his criticism is whatwould appear severe in our times; but it was that of a man formed bythe ancients, and who lived also in the best and most critical age ofFrance. The reflections on poetry are avowedly founded on Aristotle,but with much that is new, and with examples from modern poets toconfirm and illustrate it. The practice at this time in France was todepreciate the Italians; and Tasso is often the subject of Rapin’scensure; for want, among other things, of that grave and majesticcharacter which epic poetry demands. Yet Rapin is not so rigorous, butthat he can blame the coldness of modern precepts in regard to Frenchpoetry. After condemning the pompous tone of Brebœuf in histranslation of the Pharsalia, he remarks that “we have gone since toan opposite extreme by too scrupulous a care for the purity of thelanguage; for we have begun to take from poetry its force and dignityby too much reserve and a false modesty, which we have established ascharacteristics of our language, so as to deprive it of that judiciousboldness which true poetry requires; we have cut off the metaphors andall those figures of speech which give force and spirit to words andreduced all the artifices of words to a pure regular style whichexposes itself to no risk by bold expression. The taste of the age,the influence of women who are naturally timid, that of the courtwhich had hardly anything in common with the ancients, on account ofits usual antipathy for learning, accredited this manner ofwriting.”[1030] In this Rapin seems to glance at the polite but coldcriticism of his brother Jesuit, Bouhours.

 [1030] P. 147.

|His Parallels of Great Men.|

17. Rapin, in another work of criticism, the Parallels of Great Men ofAntiquity, has weighed in the scales of his own judgment Demosthenesand Cicero, Homer and Virgil, Thucydides and Livy, Plato andAristotle. Thus eloquence, poetry, history and philosophy pass underreview. The taste of Rapin is for the Latins; Cicero he prefers toDemosthenes, Livy on the whole to Thucydides, though this he leavesmore to the reader; but is confident that none except mere grammarianshave ranked Homer above Virgil.[1031] The loquacity of the older poet,the frequency of his moral reflections, which Rapin thinks misplacedin an epic poem, his similes, the sameness of his traditions, aretreated very freely; yet he gives him the preference over Virgil forgrandeur and nobleness of narration, for his epithets, and thesplendour of his language. But he is of opinion that Æneas is a muchfiner character than Achilles. These two epic poets he holds, however,to be the greatest in the world; as for all the rest, ancient andmodern, he enumerates them one after another, and can find little butfaults in them all.[1032] Nor does he esteem dramatic and lyric poets,at least modern, much better.

 [1031] P. 158.

 [1032] P. 175.

|Bossu on Epic Poetry.|

18. The Treatise on Epic Poetry by Bossu was once of some reputation.An English poet has thought fit to say that we should have stared,like Indians, at Homer, if Bossu had not taught us to understandhim.[1033] The book is, however, long since forgotten; and we fancythat we understand Homer not the worse. It is in six books, whichtreat of the fable, the action, the narration, the manners, themachinery, the sentiments and expressions of an epic poem. Homer isthe favourite poet of Bossu, and Virgil next to him; this preferenceof the superior model does him some honour in a generation which wasbecoming insensible to its excellence. Bossu is judicious and correctin taste, but without much depth, and he seems to want the acutenessof Bouhours.

 [1033] Had Bossu never writ, the world had still, Like Indians, viewed this mighty piece of wit. MULGRAVE’S _Essay on Poetry_.

|Fontenelle’s critical writings.|

19. Fontenelle is a critic of whom it may be said, that he did moreinjury to fine taste and sensibility in works of imagination andsentiment, than any man without his good sense and natural acutenesscould have done. He is systematically cold; if he seems to tolerateany flight of the poet, it is rather by caprice than by a genuinediscernment of beauty; but he clings, with the unyielding claw of acold-blooded animal, to the faults of great writers, which he exposeswith reason and sarcasm. His Reflections on Poetry relate mostly todramatic composition, and to that of the French stage. Theocritus ishis victim in the Dissertation on Pastoral Poetry; but Fontenelle gavethe Sicilian his revenge; he wrote pastorals himself; and we havealtogether forgotten, or, when we again look at, can very partiallyapprove, the idylls of the Boulevards, while those Doric dactyls ofTheocritus linger still, like what Schiller has called soft music ofyesterday, from our school-boy reminiscences on our aged ears.

|Preference of French language to Latin.|

20. The reign of mere scholars was now at an end; no worse name thanthat of pedant could be imposed on those who sought for glory; theadmiration of all that was national in arts, in arms, in manners, aswell as in speech, carried away like a torrent those prescriptivetitles to reverence which only lingered in colleges. The superiorityof the Latin language to French had long been contested; even HenryStephens has a dissertation in favour of the latter; and in thisperiod, though a few resolute scholars did not retire from the field,it was generally held either that French was every way the bettermeans of expressing our thoughts, or, at least, so much moreconvenient as to put nearly an end to the use of the other. Latin hadbeen the privileged language of stone; but Louis XIV., in consequenceof an essay by Charpentier, in 1676, replaced the inscriptions on histriumphal arches by others in French.[1034] This, of course, does notmuch affect the general question between the two languages.

 [1034] Goujet, i., 13.

|General superiority of ancients disputed.|

|Charles Perrault.|

21. But it was not in language alone that the ancients were to endurethe aggression of a disobedient posterity. It had long been a problemin Europe whether they had not been surpassed; one, perhaps, whichbegan before the younger generations could make good their claim. Buttime, the nominal ally of the old possessors, gave his more powerfulaid to their opponents; every age saw the proportions change, and newmen rise up to strengthen the ranks of the assailants. In philosophy,in science, in natural knowledge, the ancients had none but a few merepedants, or half-read lovers of paradox, to maintain theirsuperiority; but in the beauties of language, in eloquence and poetry,the suffrage of criticism had long been theirs. It seemed time todispute even this. Charles Perrault, a man of some learning, somevariety of acquirement, and a good deal of ingenuity and quickness,published, in 1687, his famous “Parallel of the Ancients and Modernsin all that regards Arts and Sciences.” This is a series of dialogues,the parties being first, a president, deeply learned and prejudiced inall respects for antiquity; secondly, an abbé, not ignorant, buthaving reflected more than read, cool and impartial, always made toappear in the right, or, in other words, the author’s representative;thirdly, a man of the world, seizing the gay side of every subject,and apparently brought in to prevent the book from becoming dull. Theybegin with architecture and painting, and soon make it clear thatAthens was a mere heap of pig-sties in comparison with Versailles; theancient painters fare equally ill. They next advance to eloquence andpoetry, and here, where the strife of war is sharpest, the defeat ofantiquity is chanted with triumph. Homer, Virgil, Horace aresuccessively brought forward for severe and often unjust censure; but,of course, it is not to be imagined that Perrault is always in thewrong; he had to fight against a pedantic admiration which surrenderssound taste; and having found the bow bent too much in one way, heforced it himself too violently into another direction. It is thefault of such books to be one-sided; they are not unfrequently rightin censuring blemishes, but very uncandid in suppressing beauties.Homer has been worst used by Perrault, who had not the least power offeeling his excellence; but the advocate of the newer age in hisdialogue admits that the Æneid is superior to any modern epic. In hiscomparison of eloquence, Perrault has given some specimens of bothsides to contrast; comparing, by means, however, of his own versions,the funeral orations of Pericles and Plato with those of Bourdaloue,Bossuet, and Fléchier, the description by Pliny of his country seatwith one by Balzac, an epistle of Cicero with another of Balzac. Thesecomparisons were fitted to produce a great effect among those whocould neither read the original text, nor place themselves in themidst of ancient feelings and habits. It is easy to perceive that avast majority of the French in that age would agree with Perrault; thebook was written for the times.

|Fontenelle.|

22. Fontenelle, in a very short digression on the ancients andmoderns, subjoined to his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, followed thesteps of Perrault. “The whole question as to pre-eminence between theancients and moderns,” he begins, “reduces itself into another,whether the trees that used to grow in our woods were larger thanthose which grow now. If they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannotbe equalled in these ages; but if our trees are as large as trees wereof old, then there is no reason why we may not equal Homer, Plato, andDemosthenes.” The sophistry of this is glaring enough; but it waslogic for Paris. In the rest of this short essay, there are the usualcharacteristics of Fontenelle, cool, good sense, and an incapacity, bynatural privation, of feeling the highest excellence in works oftaste.

|Boileau’s defence of antiquity.|

23. Boileau, in observations annexed to his translation of Longinus,as well as in a few sallies of his poetry, defended the great poets,especially Homer and Pindar, with dignity and moderation; freelyabandoning the cause of antiquity where he felt it to be untenable.Perrault replied with courage, a quality meriting some praise wherethe adversary was so powerful in sarcasm and so little accustomed tospare it; but the controversy ceased in tolerable friendship.

|First Reviews--Journal des Sçavans.|

24. The knowledge of new accessions to literature which its loversdemanded, had hitherto been communicated only through the annualcatalogues published at Frankfort or other places. But these lists oftitle-pages were unsatisfactory to the distant scholar, who sought tobecome acquainted with the real progress of learning, and to know whathe might find it worth while to purchase. Denis de Sallo, a member ofthe parliament of Paris, and not wholly undistinguished in literature,though his other works are not much remembered, by carrying intoeffect a happy project of his own, gave birth, as it were, to a mightyspirit which has grown up in strength and enterprise, till it hasbecome the ruling power of the literary world. Monday, the 5th ofJanuary, 1665, is the date of the first number of the first review,the Journal des Sçavans, published by Sallo, under the name of theSieur de Hedouville, which some have said to be that of hisservant.[1035] It was printed weekly, in a duodecimo or sexto-decimoform, each number containing from twelve to sixteen pages. The firstbook ever reviewed (let us observe the difference of subject betweenthat and the last, whatever the last may be) was an edition of theworks of Victor Vitensis and Vigilius Tapsensis, African bishops ofthe fifth century, by Father Chiflet, a Jesuit.[1036] The second isSpelman’s Glossary. According to the prospectus prefixed to theJournal des Sçavans, it was not designed for a mere review, but aliterary miscellany; composed, in the first place, of an exactcatalogue of the chief books which should be printed in Europe; notcontent with the mere titles, as the majority of bibliographers hadhitherto been, but giving an account of their contents, and theirvalue to the public; it was also to contain a necrology ofdistinguished authors, an account of experiments in physics andchemistry, and of new discoveries in arts and sciences, with theprincipal decisions of civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, the decreesof the Sorbonne and other French or foreign universities; in short,whatever might be interesting to men of letters. We find, therefore,some piece of news, more or less of a literary or scientific nature,subjoined to each number. Thus, in the first number, we have adouble-headed child born near Salisbury; in the second, a question oflegitimacy decided in the parliament of Paris; in the third, anexperiment on a new ship or boat constructed by Sir William Petty; inthe fourth, an account of a discussion in the College of Jesuits onthe nature of comets. The scientific articles, which bear a largeproportion to the rest, are illustrated by engravings. It wascomplained that the Journal des Sçavans did not pay much regard topolite or amusing literature; and this led to the publication of theMercure Galant, by Visé, which gave reviews of poetry and of the drama.

 [1035] Camusat, in his Histoire Critique des Journaux, in two volumes, 1734, which, notwithstanding its general title, is chiefly confined to the history of the Journal des Sçavans, and wholly to such as appeared in France, has not been able to clear up this interesting point; for there are not wanting those who assert, that Hedouville was the name of an estate belonging to Sallo; and he is called in some public description, without reference to the journal, Dominus de Sallo d’Hedouville in Parisiensi curia senator. Camusat, i., 13. Notwithstanding this, there is evidence that leads us to the valet; so that “ampliùs deliberandum censeo; Res magna est.”

 [1036] Victoria Vitensis et Vigilii Tapsensis, Provinciæ Bisacenæ Episcoporum Opera, edente R. P. Chifletio, Soc. Jesu. Presb., in 4to. Divione. The critique, if such it be, occupies but two pages in small duodecimo. That on Spelman’s Glossary, which follows, is but in half a page.

25. Though the notices in the Journal des Sçavans are very short, andwhen they give any character, for the most part of a laudatory tone,Sallo did not fail to raise up enemies by the mere assumption of powerwhich a reviewer is prone to affect. Menage, on a work of whose he hadmade some criticism, and by no means, as it appears, without justice,replied in wrath; Patin and others rose up as injured authors againstthe self-erected censor; but he made more formidable enemies by somerather blunt declarations of a Gallican feeling, as became acounsellor of the parliament of Paris, against the court of Rome; andthe privilege of publication was soon withdrawn from Sallo.[1037] Itis said that he had the spirit to refuse the offer of continuing thejournal under a previous censorship; and it passed into other hands,those of Gallois, who continued it with great success.[1038] It isremarkable that the first review, within a few months of its origin,was silenced for assuming too imperious an authority over literature,and for speaking evil of dignities. “In cunis jam Jove dignus erat.”The Journal des Sçavans, incomparably the most ancient of livingreviews, is still conspicuous for its learning, its candour, and itsfreedom from those stains of personal and party malice which deformmore popular works.

 [1037] Camusat, p. 28. Sallo had also attacked the Jesuits.

 [1038] Eloge de Gallois, par Fontenelle, in the latter’s works, vol. v., p. 168. Biographie Universelle, arts. Sallo and Gallois. Gallois is said to have been a coadjutor of Sallo from the beginning, and some others are named by Camusat as its contributors, among whom were Gomberville and Chapelain.

|Reviews established by Bayle.|

|And Le Clerc|

26. The path thus opened to all that could tempt a man who madewriting his profession--profit, celebrity, a perpetual appearance inthe public eye, the facility of pouring forth every scattered thoughtof his own, the power of revenge upon every enemy, could not fail totempt more conspicuous men than Sallo or his successor Gallois. Two ofvery high reputation, at least of reputation that hence became veryhigh, entered it, Bayle and Le Clerc. The former, in 1684, commenced anew review, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. He saw and waswell able to improve the opportunities which periodical criticismfurnished to a mind eminently qualified for it; extensively, and insome points, deeply learned; full of wit, acuteness, and a happytalent of writing in a lively tone without the insipidity of affectedpoliteness. The scholar and philosopher of Rotterdam had a rival, insome respects, and ultimately an adversary, in a neighbouring city. LeClerc, settled at Amsterdam as professor of belles lettres and ofHebrew in the Arminister seminary, undertook in 1686, at the age oftwenty-nine, the first of those three celebrated series of reviews, towhich he owes so much of his fame. This was the BibliothèqueUniverselle, in all the early volumes of which La Croze, a muchinferior person, was his coadjutor, published monthly in a very smallform. Le Clerc had afterwards a disagreement with La Croze, and thelatter part of the Bibliothèque Universelle (that after the tenthvolume) is chiefly his own. It ceased to be published in 1693, and theBibliothèque Choisie, which is perhaps even a more known work of LeClerc, did not commence till 1708. But the fulness, the variety, thejudicious analysis and selection, as well as the value of the originalremarks, which we find in the Bibliothéque Universelle, renders it ofsignal utility to those who would embrace the literature of thatshort, but not unimportant period which it illustrates.

|Leipsic Acts.|

27. Meantime a less brilliant, but by no means less erudite, review,the Leipsic Acts, had commenced in Germany. The first volume of thisseries was published in 1682. But being written in Latin, with moreregard to the past than to the growing state of opinions, andconsequently almost excluding the most attractive, and indeed the mostimportant, subject, with a Lutheran spirit of unchangeable orthodoxyin religion, and with an absence of anything like philosophy or evenconnected system in erudition, it is one of the most unreadable books,relatively to its utility in learning, which has ever fallen into myhands. Italy had entered earlier on this critical career; the Giornalede’ Litterati was begun at Rome in 1668; the Giornale Veneto de’Litterati, at Venice in 1671. They continued for some time; but withless conspicuous reputation than those above mentioned. The MercureSavant, published at Amsterdam in 1684, was an indifferent production,which induced Bayle to set up his own Nouvelles de la Republique desLettres in opposition to it. Two reviews were commenced in the Germanlanguage within the seventeenth century, and three in English. Thefirst of these latter was the “Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious,”London, 1682. This, I believe, lasted but a short time. It wasfollowed by one, entitled “The Works of the Learned,” in 1691; and byanother “History of the Works of the Learned,” in 1699. I have metwith none of these, nor will any satisfactory account of them, Ibelieve, be readily found.[1039]

 [1039] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, cap. 9. Bibliothèque Universelle, xiii. 41.

|Bayle’s Thoughts on the Comet.|

28. Bayle had first become known in 1682, by the Pensées Diverses surla Comète de 1680; a work which I am not sure that he everdecidedly surpassed. Its purpose is one hardly worthy, we shouldimagine, to employ him; since those who could read and reason were notlikely to be afraid of comets, and those who could do neither would belittle the better for his book. But with this ostensible aim Bayle hadothers in view; it gave scope to his keen observation of mankind, ifwe may use the word observation for that which he chiefly derived frommodern books, and to the calm philosophy which he professed. There isless of the love of paradox, less of a cavilling pyrrhonism, andthough much diffuseness, less of pedantry and irrelevant instances inthe Pensées Diverses than in his greater work. It exposed him,however, to controversy; Jurieu, a French minister in Holland, thechampion of Calvinistic orthodoxy, waged a war that was onlyterminated with their lives; and Bayle’s defence of the Thoughts onthe Comet is fully as long as the original performance, but far lessentertaining.

|His Dictionary.|

29. He now projected an immortal undertaking, the Historical andCritical Dictionary. Moreri, a laborious scribe, had published in 1673a kind of encyclopedic dictionary, biographical, historical, andgeographical; Bayle professed to fill up the numerous deficiencies,and to rectify the errors of this compiler. It is hard to place hisdictionary, which appeared in 1694, under any distinct head in aliterary classification which does not make a separate chapter forlexicography. It is almost equally difficult to give a generalcharacter of this many-coloured web, that great erudition and stillgreater acuteness and strength of mind wove for the last years of theseventeenth century. The learning of Bayle was copious, especially inwhat most required it, the controversies, the anecdotes, themiscellaneous facts and sentences, scattered over the vast surface ofliterature for two preceding centuries. In that of antiquity he wasless profoundly versed, yet so quick in application of his classicalstores, that he passes for even a better scholar than he was. Hisoriginal design may have been only to fill up the deficiencies ofMoreri; but a mind so fertile and excursive could not be restrained insuch limits. We may find however in this an apology for the numerousomissions of Bayle, which would, in a writer absolutely original, seemboth capricious and unaccountable. We never can anticipate withconfidence that we shall find any name in his dictionary. The notesare most frequently unconnected with the life to which they areappended; so that, under a name uninteresting to us, or inapposite toour purpose, we may be led into the richest vein of the author’s finereasoning or lively wit. Bayle is admirable in exposing the fallaciesof dogmatism, the perplexities of philosophy, the weaknesses of thosewho affect to guide the opinions of mankind. But, wanting thenecessary condition of good reasoning, an earnest desire to reasonwell, a moral rectitude from which the love of truth must spring, heoften avails himself of petty cavils, and becomes dogmatical in hisvery doubts. A more sincere spirit of inquiry could not have suffereda man of his penetrating genius to acquiesce, even contingently; in sosuperficial a scheme as the Manichean. The sophistry of Bayle,however, bears no proportion to his just and acute observations. Lessexcuse can be admitted for his indecency, which almost assumes thecharacter of monomania, so invariably does it recur, even where thereis least pretext for it.

|Baillet.--Morhof.|

30. The Jugemens des Sçavans by Baillet, published in 1685 and 1686,the Polyhistor of Morhof in 1689, are certainly works of criticism aswell as of bibliography. But neither of these writers, especially thelatter, are of much authority in matters of taste; their erudition wasvery extensive, their abilities respectable, since they were able toproduce such useful and comprehensive works; but they do not greatlyserve to enlighten or correct our judgments; nor is the originalmatter in any considerable proportion to that which they have derivedfrom others. I have taken notice of both these in my preface.

|The Ana.|

31. France was very fruitful of that miscellaneous literature which,desultory and amusing, has the advantage of remaining better in thememory than more systematic books, and in fact is generally found tosupply the man of extensive knowledge with the materials of hisconversation, as well as to fill the vacancies of his deeper studies.The memoirs, the letters, the travels, the dialogues and essays, whichmight be ranged in so large a class as that we now pass in review, aretoo numerous to be mentioned, and it must be understood that most ofthem are less in request even among the studious than they were in thelast century. One group has acquired the distinctive name of Ana; thereported conversation, the table-talk of the learned. Several belongto the last part of the sixteenth century, or the first of the next;the Scaligerana, the Perroniana, the Pithæana, the Naudæana, theCasauboniana; the last of which are not conversational, but fragmentscollected from the common-place books and loose papers of IsaacCasaubon. Two collections of the present period are very well known;the Menagiana, and the Mélanges de Littérature par Vigneul-Marville;which differs indeed from the rest in not being reported by others,but published by the author himself; yet comes so near in spirit andmanner, that we may place it in the same class. The Menagiana has thecommon fault of these Ana, that it rather disappoints expectation, anddoes not give us as much new learning as the name of its author seemsto promise; but it is amusing, full of light anecdote of a literarykind, and interesting to all who love the recollections of thatgeneration. Vigneul-Marville is an imaginary person; the author of theMélanges de Littérature is D’Argonne, a Benedictine of Rouen. Thisbook has been much esteemed; the mask gives courage to the author, whowrites, not unlike a Benedictine, but with a general tone ofindependent thinking, united to good judgment and a tolerablyextensive knowledge of the state of literature. He had entered intothe religious profession rather late in life. The Chevræana andSegraisiana, especially the latter, are of little value. TheParrhasiana of Le Clerc are less amusing and less miscellaneous thansome of the Ana; but in all his writings there is a love of truth anda zeal against those who obstruct inquiry, which to congenial spiritsis as pleasing as it is sure to render him obnoxious to oppositetempers.

|English style in this Period.|

32. The characteristics of English writers in the first division ofthe century were not maintained in the second, though the change, aswas natural, did not come on by very rapid steps. The pedantry ofunauthorized Latinisms, the affectation of singular and not generallyintelligible words from other sources, the love of quaint phrases,strange analogies, and ambitious efforts at antithesis, gave way bydegrees; a greater ease of writing was what the public demanded, andwhat the writers after the Restoration sought to attain; they weremore strictly idiomatic and English than their predecessors. But thisease sometimes became negligence and feebleness, and often turned tocoarseness and vulgarity. The language of Sevigné and Hamilton iseminently colloquial; scarce a turn occurs in their writings whichthey would not have used in familiar society; but theirs was thecolloquy of the gods, ours of men; their idiom, though still simpleand French, had been refined in the saloons of Paris, by thatinstinctive rejection of all that is low which the fine tact ofaccomplished women dictates; while in our own contemporary writers,with little exception, theirs is what defaces the dialogue of ourcomedy, a tone not so much of provincialism, or even of what is calledthe language of the common people, as of one much worse, the dregs ofvulgar ribaldry, which a gentleman must clear from his conversationbefore he can assert that name. Nor was this confined to those who ledirregular lives; the general manners being unpolished, we find in thewritings of the clergy, wherever they are polemic or satirical, thesame tendency to what is called _slang_; a word which, as itselfbelongs to the vocabulary it denotes, I use with some unwillingness.The pattern of bad writing in this respect was Sir Roger L’Estrange;his Æsop’s Fables will present everything that is hostile to goodtaste; yet by a certain wit and readiness in raillery L’Estrange was apopular writer and may even now be read, perhaps, with some amusem*nt.The translation of Don Quixote, published in 1682, may also bespecified as incredibly vulgar, and without the least perception ofthe tone which the original author has preserved.

|Hobbes.|

33. We can produce nevertheless several names of those who laid thefoundations at least, and indeed furnished examples, of good style;some of them among the greatest, for other merits, in our literature.Hobbes is perhaps the first of whom we can say that he is a goodEnglish writer; for the excellent passages of Hooker, Sydney, Raleigh,Bacon, Taylor, Chillingworth, and others of the Elizabethan or thefirst Stuart period are not sufficient to establish their claim; agood writer being one whose composition is nearly uniform, and whonever sinks to such inferiority or negligence as we must confess inmost of these. To make such a writer, the absence of gross fault isfull as necessary as actual beauties; we are not judging as of poets,by the highest flight of their genius, and forgiving all the rest, butas of a sum of positive and negative quantities, where the lattercounterbalance and efface an equal portion of the former. Hobbes isclear, precise, spirited, and, above all, free, in general, from thefaults of his predecessors; his language is sensibly less obsolete; heis never vulgar, rarely, if ever, quaint or pedantic.

|Cowley.|

34. Cowley’s prose, very unlike his verse, as Johnson has observed, isperspicuous and unaffected. His few essays may even be reckoned amongthe earliest models of good writing. In that, especially, on the deathof Cromwell, till, losing his composure, he falls a little into thevulgar style towards the close, we find an absence of pedantry, anease and graceful choice of idiom, an unstudied harmony of periods,which had been perceived in very few writers of the two precedingreigns. “His thoughts,” says Johnson, “are natural, and his style hasa smooth and placid equability which has never yet obtained its duecommendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured; but all is easywithout feebleness, and familiar without grossness.”

|Evelyn.|

35. Evelyn wrote in 1651 a little piece, purporting to be an accountof England by a Frenchman. It is very severe on our manners,especially in London; his abhorrence of the late revolutions in churchand state conspiring with his natural politeness which he had latelyimproved by foreign travel. It is worth reading as illustrative ofsocial history; but I chiefly mention it here on account of the polishand gentlemanly elegance of the style, which very few had hithertoregarded in such light compositions. An answer by some indignantpatriot has been reprinted together with this pamphlet of Evelyn, andis a good specimen of the bestial ribaldry which our ancestors seem tohave taken for wit.[1040] The later writings of Evelyn are such as hischaracter and habits would lead us to expect, but I am not aware thatthey often rise above that respectable level, nor are their subjectssuch as to require an elevated style.

 [1040] Both these will be found in the late edition of Evelyn’s Miscellaneous Works.

|Dryden.|

36. Every poem and play of Dryden, as they successively appeared, wasushered into the world by those prefaces and dedications whichhave made him celebrated as a critic of poetry and a master of theEnglish language. The Essay on Dramatic Poesy, and its subsequentDefence, the Origin and Progress of Satire, the Parallel of Poetry andPainting, the Life of Plutarch, and other things of minor importance,all prefixed to some more extensive work, complete the catalogue ofhis prose. The style of Dryden was very superior to any that Englandhad seen. Not conversant with our old writers, so little, in fact, asto find the common phrases of the Elizabethan age unintelligible,[1041]he followed the taste of Charles’s reign, in emulating the politestand most popular writers in the French language. He seems to haveformed himself on Montaigne, Balzac, and Voiture; but so ready was hisinvention, so vigorous his judgment, so complete his mastery over hisnative tongue, that, in point of style, he must be reckoned above allthe three. He had the ease of Montaigne without his negligence andembarrassed structure of periods; he had the dignity of Balzac withmore varied cadences, and without his hyperbolical tumour, theunexpected turns of Voiture without his affectation and air of effort.In the dedications especially, we find paragraphs of extraordinarygracefulness, such as possibly have never been surpassed in ourlanguage. The prefaces are evidently written in a more negligentstyle; he seems, like Montaigne, to converse with the reader from hisarm-chair, and passes onward with little connection from one subjectto another.[1042] In addressing a patron, a different line isobservable; he comes with the respectful air which the occasion seemsto demand; but, though I do not think that Dryden ever, in language,forgets his own position, we must confess that the flattery issometimes palpably untrue, and always offensively indelicate. Thededication of the Mock Astrologer to the Duke of Newcastle is amasterpiece of fine writing; and the subject better deserved theselavish commendations than most who received them. That of the State ofInnocence to the duch*ess of York is also very well written; but theadulation is excessive. It appears to me that, after the Revolution,Dryden took less pains with his style; the colloquial vulgarisms, andthese are not wanting even in his earlier prefaces, become morefrequent; his periods are often of more slovenly construction; heforgets even in his dedications that he is standing before a lord.Thus, remarking on the account Andromache gives to Hector of her ownhistory, he observes, in a style rather unworthy of him, “The devilwas in Hector if he knew not all this matter as well as she who toldit him, for she had been his bed-fellow for many years together; andif he knew it then, it must be confessed that Homer in this longdigression has rather given us his own character, than that of thefair lady whom he paints.”[1043]

 [1041] Malone has given several proofs of this. Dryden’s Prose Works, vol. i., part 2, p. 136, et alibi. Dryden thought expressions wrong and incorrect in Shakspeare and Johnson which were the current language of their age.

 [1042] This is his own account. “The nature of a preface is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it.... This I have learned from the practice of honest Montaigne.” Vol. iii., p. 605.

 [1043] Vol. iii., p. 286. This is in the dedication of his third Miscellany to Lord Ratcliffe.

|His Essay on Dramatic Poesy.|

37. His Essay on Dramatic Poesy, published in 1668, was reprintedsixteen years afterwards, and it is curious to observe the changeswhich Dryden made in the expression. Malone has carefully noted allthese; they show both the care the author took with his own style, andthe change which was gradually working in the English language.[1044]The Anglicism of terminating the sentence with a preposition isrejected.[1045] Thus “I cannot think so contemptibly of the age I livein,” is exchanged for “the age in which I live.” “A deeper expressionof belief than all the actor can persuade us to,” is altered, “caninsinuate into us.” And, though the old form continued in use longafter the time of Dryden, it has of late years been reckoned inelegantand proscribed in all cases, perhaps with an unnecessary fastidiousness,to which I have not uniformly deferred, since our language is of aTeutonic structure, and the rules of Latin or French grammar are notalways to bind us.

 [1044] Vol. i., p. 136-142.

 [1045] “The preposition in the end of the sentence, a common fault with him (Ben Johnson), and which I have but lately observed in my own writings,” p. 237. The form is, in my opinion, sometimes emphatic and spirited, though its frequent use appears slovenly. I remember my late friend, Mr. Richard Sharp, whose good taste is well known, used to quote an interrogatory of Hooker: “Shall there be a God to swear by, and none to pray to?” as an instance of the force which this arrangement, so eminently idiomatic, sometimes gives. It is unnecessary to say that it is derived from the German; and nothing but Latin prejudice can make us think it essentially wrong. In the passive voice, I think it better than in the active; nor can it always be dispensed with, unless we choose rather the feeble encumbering pronoun _which_.

|Improvements in his style.|

38. This Essay on Dramatic Poesy is written in dialogue; Drydenhimself, under the name of Neander, being probably one of thespeakers. It turns on the use of rhyme in tragedy, on the observationof the unities, and on some other theatrical questions. Dryden, atthis time, was favourable to rhymed tragedies, which his practicesupported. Sir Robert Howard having written some observations on thatessay and taken a different view as to rhyme, Dryden published adefence of his essay in a masterly style of cutting scorn, but onehardly justified by the tone of the criticism, which had been verycivil towards him; and, as he was apparently in the wrong, the air ofsuperiority seems the more misplaced.

|His critical character.|

39. Dryden, as a critic, is not to be numbered with those who havesounded the depths of the human mind, hardly with those who analysethe language and sentiments of poets, and teach others to judge byshowing why they have judged themselves. He scatters remarks,sometimes too indefinite, sometimes too arbitrary; yet hispredominating good sense colours the whole; we find in them noperplexing subtlety, no cloudy nonsense, no paradoxes and heresies intaste to revolt us. Those he has made on translation in the preface tothat of Ovid’s Epistles are valuable. “No man,” he says, “is capableof translating poetry, who besides a genius to that art, is not amaster both of his author’s language and of his own. Nor must weunderstand the language only of the poet, but his particular turn ofthoughts and expression, which are the characters that distinguish,and, as it were, individuate him from all other writers.”[1046] Wecannot pay Dryden the compliment of saying that he gave the example aswell as precept, especially in his Virgil. He did not scruple to copySegrais in his discourse on Epic Poetry. “Him I follow, and what Iborrow from him am ready to acknowledge to him; for, impartiallyspeaking, the French are as much better critics than the English asthey are worse poets.”[1047]

 [1046] Vol. iii., p. 19.

 [1047] P. 460. The quotations in this paragraph present two instances of the word _to_ in an unauthorised usage; the second is a Gallicism; but the first has not even that excuse.

40. The greater part of his critical writings relates to the drama; asubject with which he was very conversant; but he had someconsiderable prejudices; he seems never to have felt the transcendentexcellence of Shakspeare; and sometimes, perhaps, his own opinions, ifnot feigned, are biased by that sort of self-defence to which hethought himself driven in the prefaces to his several plays. He hadmany enemies on the watch; the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal, asatire of great wit, had exposed to ridicule the heroic tragedies,[1048]and many were afterwards ready to forget the merits of the poet in thedelinquencies of the politician. “What Virgil wrote,” he says, “in thevigour of his age, in plenty and in ease, I have undertaken totranslate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed bysickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all Iwrite; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, alreadyprejudiced against me by the lying character which has been given themof my morals.”[1049]

 [1048] This comedy was published in 1672; the parodies are amusing; and though parody is the most unfair weapon that ridicule can use, they are in most instances warranted by the original. Bayes, whether he resembles Dryden or not, is a very comic personage: the character is said by Johnson to have been sketched for Davenant; but I much doubt this report; Davenant had been dead some years before the Rehearsal was published, and could have been in no way obnoxious to its satire.

 [1049] Vol. iii., p. 557.

|Rymer on Tragedy.|

41. Dryden will hardly be charged with abandoning too hastily ournational credit, when he said the French were better critics than theEnglish. We had scarcely anything worthy of notice to alledge beyondhis own writings. The Theatrum Poetarum by Philips, nephew of Milton,is superficial in every respect. Thomas Rymer, best known to mankindas the editor of the Fœdera, but a strenuous advocate for theAristotelian principles in the drama, published, in 1678, “TheTragedies of the last Age considered and examined by the Practice ofthe Ancients, and by the common Sense of all Ages.” This contains acensure of some plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakspeare and Jonson.“I have chiefly considered the fable or plot which all conclude to bethe soul of a tragedy, which with the ancients is always found to be areasonable soul, but with us for the most part a brutish, and oftenworse than brutish.”[1050] I have read only his criticisms on theMaid’s Tragedy, King and no King, and Rollo; and as the conduct andcharacters of all three are far enough from being invulnerable, it isnot surprising that Rymer has often well exposed them.

 [1050] P. 4.

|Sir William Temple’s Essays.|

42. Next to Dryden, the second place among the polite writers of theperiod, from the Restoration to the end of the century, has commonlybeen given to Sir William Temple. His Miscellanies, to which,principally, this praise belongs, are not recommended by moreerudition than a retired statesman might acquire, with no greatexpense of time, nor by much originality of reflection. But if Templehas not profound knowledge, he turns all he possesses well to account;if his thoughts are not very striking, they are commonly just. He hasless eloquence than Bolingbroke, but is also free from hisrestlessness and ostentation. Much, also, which now appearssuperficial in Temple’s historical surveys, was far less familiar inhis age; he has the merit of a comprehensive and a candid mind. Hisstyle, to which we should particularly refer, will be found incomparison with his contemporaries highly polished, and sustained withmore equability than they preserve, remote from anything eitherpedantic or humble. The periods are studiously rhythmical; yet theywant the variety and peculiar charm that we admire in those of Dryden.

|Style of Locke.|

43. Locke is certainly a good writer, relatively to the greater partof his contemporaries; his plain and manly sentences often give uspleasure by the wording alone. But he has some defects; in his Essayon the Human Understanding he is often too figurative for the subject.In all his writings, and especially in the Treatise on Education, heis occasionally negligent, and though not vulgar, at least accordingto the idiom of his age, slovenly in the structure of his sentences aswell as the choice of his words; he is not, in mere style, veryforcible, and certainly not very elegant.

|Sir George Mackenzie’s Essays.|

|Andrew Fletcher.|

44. The Essays of Sir George Mackenzie are empty and diffuse; thestyle is full of pedantic words to a degree of barbarism; and thoughthey were chiefly written after the Revolution, he seems to havewholly formed himself on the older writers, such as Sir Thomas Browne,or even Feltham. He affects the obsolete and unpleasing termination ofthe third person of the verb in _eth_, which was going out of useeven in the pulpit, besides other rust of archaism. Nothing can bemore unlike the manner of Dryden, Locke, or Temple. In his matter heseems a mere declaimer, as if the world would any longer endure thetrivial morality which the sixteenth century had borrowed from Seneca,or the dull ethics of sermons. It is probable that, as Mackenzie was aman who had seen and read much, he must have some better passages thanI have found in glancing shortly at his works. His countryman, AndrewFletcher, is a better master of English style; he writes with purity,clearness, and spirit; but the substance is so much before his eyes,that he is little solicitous about language. And a similar charactermay be given to many of the political tracts in the reign of William.They are well expressed for their purpose; their English isperspicuous, unaffected, often forcible, and, upon the whole, muchsuperior to that of similar writings in the reign of Charles; but theydo not challenge a place of which their authors never dreamed; theyare not to be counted in the polite literature of England.

|Walton’s Complete Angler.|

45. I may have overlooked, or even never known, some books ofsufficient value to deserve mention; and I regret that the list ofmiscellaneous literature should be so short. But it must be confessedthat our golden age did not begin before the eighteenth century, andthen with him who has never since been rivalled in grace, humour, andinvention. Walton’s Complete Angler, published in 1653, seems by thetitle a strange choice out of all the books of half a century; yet itssimplicity, its sweetness, its natural grace, and happy intermixtureof graver strains with the precepts of angling, have rendered thisbook deservedly popular, and a model which one of the most famousamong our late philosophers, and a successful disciple of Isaac Waltonin his favourite art, has condescended to imitate.

|Wilkin’s New World.|

46. A book, not indeed remarkable for its style, but one which I couldhardly mention in any less miscellaneous chapter than the present,though, since it was published in 1638, it ought to have beenmentioned before, is Wilkin’s “Discovery of a New World, or aDiscourse tending to prove that it is probable there may be anotherhabitable World in the Moon, with a Discourse concerning thePossibility of a Passage thither.” This is one of the births of thatinquiring spirit, that disdain of ancient prejudice, which theseventeenth century produced. Bacon was undoubtedly the father of itin England; but Kepler, and above all Galileo, by the new truths theydemonstrated, made men fearless in investigation and conjecture. Thegeographical discoveries indeed of Columbus and Magellan had preparedthe way for conjectures, hardly more astonishing in the eyes of thevulgar than those had been. Wilkins accordingly begins by bringing ahost of sage writers who had denied the existence of antipodes. Heexpressly maintains the Copernican theory, but admits that it wasgenerally reputed a novel paradox. The arguments on the other side hemeets at some length, and knew how to answer, by the principles ofcompound motion, the plausible objection that stones falling from atower were not left behind by the motion of the earth. The spots inthe moon he took for sea, and the brighter parts for land. A lunaratmosphere he was forced to hold, and gives reasons for thinking itprobable. As to inhabitants, he does not dwell long on the subject.Campanella, and long before him Cardinal Cusanus, had believed the sunand moon to be inhabited,[1051] and Wilkins ends by saying: “Beingcontent for my own part to have spoken so much of it, as may conduceto show the opinion of others concerning the inhabitants of the moon,I dare not myself affirm anything of these Selenites, because I knownot any ground whereon to build any probable opinion. But I think thatfuture ages will discover more, and our posterity perhaps may inventsome means for our better acquaintance with those inhabitants.” Tothis he comes as his final proposition, that it may be possible forsome of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world;and if there be inhabitants there, to have communication with them.But this chapter is the worst in the book, and shows that Wilkins,notwithstanding his ingenuity, had but crude notions on the principlesof physics. He followed this up by what I have not seen, a “Discourseconcerning a new planet; tending to prove that it is possible ourearth is one of the planets.” This appears to be a regular vindicationof the Copernican theory, and was published in 1640.

 [1051] Suspicamur in regione solis magis esse solares, claros et illuminatos intellectuales habitatores, spiritualiores etiam quam in luna, ubi magis lunatici, et in terra magis materiales et crassi, ut illi intellectualis naturæ solares sint multum in actu et parum in potentiâ, terreni vero magis in potentia et parum in actu, lunares in medio fluctuantes, &c. Cusanus apud Wilkins, p. 103 (edit. 1802).

|Antiquity defended by Temple.|

|Wotton’s Reflections.|

47. The cause of antiquity, so rudely found support in Sir WilliamTemple, assailed abroad by Perrault and Fontenelle, who has defendedit in one of his essays with more zeal than prudence or knowledge ofthe various subjects on which he contends for the rights of the past.It was in fact such a credulous and superficial view as might havebeen taken by a pedant of the sixteenth century. For it is in science,taking the word largely, full as much as in works of genius, that hedenies the ancients to have been surpassed. Temple’s Essay, however,was translated into French, and he was supposed by many to have made abrilliant vindication of injured antiquity. But it was soon refuted inthe most solid book that was written in any country upon this famousdispute. William Wotton published in 1694 his Reflections on ancientand modern Learning.[1052] He draws very well in this the line betweenTemple and Perrault, avoiding the tasteless judgment of the latter inpoetry and eloquence, but pointing out the superiority of the modernsin the whole range of physical science.

 [1052] Wotton had been a boy of astonishing precocity; at six years old he could readily translate Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; at seven he added some knowledge of Arabic and Syriac. He entered Catherine Hall, Cambridge, in his tenth year; at thirteen, when he took the degree of bachelor of arts, he was acquainted with twelve languages. There being no precedent of granting a degree to one so young, a special record of his extraordinary proficiency was made in the registers of the university. Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 7.

 SECT. II.

 ON FICTION.

_French Romances--La Fayette and others--Pilgrim’s Progress--TurkishSpy._

|Quevedo’s Visions.|

48. Spain had about the middle of this century a writer of variousliterature, who is only known in Europe by his fictions, Quevedo. Hisvisions and his life of the great Tacaño, were early translated, andbecame very popular.[1053] They may be reckoned superior to anythingin comic romance, except Don Quixote, that the seventeenth centuryproduced; and yet this commendation is not a high one. In thepicaresque style, the life of Tacaño is tolerably amusing; butQuevedo, like others, has long since been surpassed. The Sueños, orVisions, are better; they show spirit and sharpness with someoriginality of invention. But Las Zahurdas de Pluton, which, like theother sueños, bears a general resemblance to the Pilgrim’s Progress,being an allegorical dream, is less powerfully and graphicallywritten; the satire is also rather too obvious. “Lucian,” saysBouterwek, “furnished him with the original idea of satirical visions;but Quevedo’s were the first of their kind in modern literature. Owingto frequent imitations, their faults are no longer disguised by thecharm of novelty, and even their merits have ceased to interest.”[1054]

 [1053] The translation of this, “made English by a person of honour” takes great liberties with the original, and endeavours to excel it in wit by means of frequent interpolation.

 [1054] Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 471.

|French heroic romances.|

49. No species of composition seems less adapted to the genius of theFrench nation in the reign of Louis XIV. than the heroic romances somuch admired in its first years. It must be confessed that this wasbut the continuance, and in some respect possibly, an improvement of along established style of fiction. But it was not fitted to endurereason or ridicule, and the societies of Paris knew the use of bothweapons. Molière sometimes tried his wit upon the romances; andBoileau, rather later in the day, when the victory had been won,attacked Mademoiselle Scudery with his sarcastic irony in a dialogueon the heroes of her invention.

|Novels of Madame La Fayette.|

50. The first step in descending from the heroic romance was to groundnot altogether dissimilar. The feats of chivalry were replaced by lesswonderful adventures; the love became less hyperbolical in expression,though not less intensely engrossing the personages; the general toneof manners was lowered down better to that of nature, or at least ofan ideality which the imagination did not reject; a style alreadytried in the minor fictions of Spain. The earliest novels that demandattention in this line are those of the Countess de la Fayette,celebrated while Mademoiselle de la Vergne under the name of Lavernain the Latin poetry of Menage.[1055] Zayde, the first of these, isentirely in the Spanish style; the adventures are improbable, butvarious and rather interesting to those who carry no scepticism intofiction; the language is polished and agreeable, though not veryanimated; and it is easy to perceive that while that kind of novel waspopular, Zayde would obtain a high place. It has, however, the usualfaults; the story is broken by intervening narratives, which occupytoo large a space; the sorrows of the principal characters excite, atleast as I should judge, little sympathy; and their sentiments andemotions are sometimes too much refined in the alembic of the HôtelRambouillet. In a later novel, the Princess of Cleves, Madame LaFayette threw off the affectation of that circle to which she had oncebelonged, and though perhaps Zayde is, or was in its own age, the morecelebrated novel, it seems to me that in this she has excelledherself. The story, being nothing else than the insuperable andinsidious, but not guilty, attachment of a married lady to a lover,required a delicacy and correctness of taste which the authoress haswell displayed in it. The probability of the incidents, the naturalcourse they take, the absence of all complication and perplexity, givesuch an inartificial air to this novel, that we can scarcely helpbelieving it to shadow forth some real event. A modern novelist wouldprobably have made more of the story; the style is always calm,sometimes almost languid; a tone of decorous politeness, like that ofthe French stage, is never relaxed; but it is precisely by this meansthat the writer has kept up a moral dignity, of which it would havebeen so easy to lose sight. The Princess of Cleves is perhaps thefirst work of mere invention (for though the characters arehistorical, there is no known foundation for the story) which broughtforward the manners of the aristocracy; it may be said, thecontemporary manners; for Madame La Fayette must have copied her owntimes. As this has become a popular theme of fiction, it is just tocommemorate the novel which introduced it.

 [1055] The name Laverna, though well-sounding, was in one respect unlucky, being that given by antiquity to the goddess of thieves. An epigram on Menage, almost, perhaps, too trite to be quoted, is _piquant_ enough:

 Lesbia nulla tibi, nulla est tibi dicta Corinna; Carmine laudatur Cynthia nulla tuo. Sed cum doctorum compilas scrinia vatum, Nil mirum, si sit culta Laverna tibi.

|Scarron’s Roman Comique.|

51. The French have few novels of this class in the seventeenthcentury which they praise; those of Madame Villedieu, or Des Jardins,may deserve to be excepted; but I have not seen them. Scarron,a man deformed and diseased, but endowed with vast gaiety, whichgenerally exuberated in buffoon jests, has the credit of having struckout into a new path by his Roman Comique. The Spaniards, however, hadso much like this that we cannot perceive any great originality inScarron. The Roman Comique is still well known, and if we come to itin vacant moments, will serve its end in amusing us; the story andcharacters have no great interest, but they are natural; yet, withoutthe least disparagement to the vivacity of Scarron, it is still truethat he has been left at an immense distance in observation ofmankind, in humorous character, and in ludicrous effect by thenovelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is said thatScarron’s romance is written in a pure style; and some have evenpretended that he has not been without effect in refining thelanguage. The Roman Bourgeois of Furetière appears to be a novel ofmiddle life; it had some reputation, but I cannot speak of it with anyknowledge.

|Cyrano de Bergerac.|

|Segrais.|

52. Cyrano de Bergerac had some share in directing the public tastetowards those extravagances of fancy which were afterwards highlypopular. He has been imitated himself, as some have observed, by Swiftand Voltaire, and I should add, to a certain degree, by Hamilton; butall the three have gone far beyond him. He is not himself a veryoriginal writer. His Voyage to the Moon and History of the Empire ofthe Sun are manifestly suggested by the True History of Lucian; and hehad modern fictions, especially the Voyage to the Moon by Godwin,mentioned in our last volume, which he had evidently read, to imp thewings of an invention not perhaps eminently fertile. Yet Bergerac hasthe merit of being never wearisome; his fictions are well conceived,and show little effort, which seems also the character of his languagein this short piece; though his letters had been written in the worststyle of affectation, so as to make us suspect that he was turning themanner of some contemporaries into ridicule. The novels of Segraissuch at least as I have seen, are mere pieces of light satire,designed to amuse by transient allusions the lady by whom he waspatronized, Mademoiselle de Montpensier. If they deserve any regard atall, it is as links in the history of fiction between the mock-heroicromance, of which Voiture had given an instance, and the style offantastic invention, which was perfected by Hamilton.

|Perrault.|

53. Charles Perrault may, so far as I know, be said to have invented akind of fiction which became extremely popular, and has had, evenafter it ceased to find direct imitators, a perceptible influence overthe lighter literature of Europe. The idea was original, and happilyexecuted. Perhaps he sometimes took the tales of children, such as thetradition of many generations had delivered them; but much of hisfairy machinery seems to have been his own, and I should give himcredit for several of the stories, though it is hard to form a guess.He gave to them all a real interest, as far as could be, with anaturalness of expression, an arch naïveté, a morality neither tooobvious nor too refined, and a slight poignancy of satire on theworld, which render the Tales of Mother Goose almost a counterpart inprose to the Fables of La Fontaine.

|Hamilton.|

54. These amusing fictions caught the fancy of an indolent but notstupid nobility. The court of Versailles and all Paris resounded withfairy tales; it became the popular style for more than half a century.But few of these fall within our limits. Perrault’s immediatefollowers, Madame Murat and the Countess D’Aunoy, especially thelatter, have some merit; but they come very short of the happysimplicity and brevity we find in Mother Goose’s Tales. It is possiblethat Count Antony Hamilton may have written those tales which havemade him famous before the end of the century, though they werepublished later. But these with many admirable strokes of wit andinvention, have too forced a tone in both these qualities; the labouris too evident, and, thrown away on such trifling, excites somethinglike contempt; they are written for an exclusive coterie, not for theworld; and the world in all such cases will sooner or later take itsrevenge. Yet Hamilton’s tales are incomparably superior to whatfollowed; inventions alternately dull and extravagant, a stylenegligent or mannered, an immorality passing onward from thelicentiousness of the Regency to the debased philosophy of the ensuingage, became the general characteristics of these fictions, whichfinally expired in the neglect and scorn of the world.

|Télémaque of Fenelon.|

55. The Télémaque of Fenelon, after being suppressed in France,appeared in Holland clandestinely without the author’s consentin 1699. It is needless to say that it soon obtained the admiration ofEurope, and perhaps there is no book in the French language that hasbeen more read. Fenelon seems to have conceived that, metre not beingessential, as he assumed, to poetry, he had, by imitating the Odysseyin Télémaque, produced an epic of as legitimate a character as hismodel. But the boundaries between epic poetry, especially such epicsas the Odyssey, and romance were only perceptible by the employment ofverse in the former; no elevation of character, no ideality ofconception, no charm of imagery or emotion had been denied to romance.The language of poetry had for two centuries been seized for its use.Télémaque must therefore take its place among romances; but still itis true that no romance had breathed so classical a spirit, none hadabounded so much with the richness of poetical language, much in factof Homer, Virgil, and Sophocles having been woven in with no otherchange than verbal translation, nor had any preserved such dignity inits circ*mstances, such beauty, harmony, and nobleness in its diction.It would be as idle to say that Fenelon was indebted to D’Urfé andCalprenede, as to deny that some degree of resemblance may be found intheir poetical prose. The one belonged to the morals of chivalry,generous but exaggerated; the other to those of wisdom and religion.The one has been forgotten because its tone is false; the other isever admired, and is only less regarded because it is true in excess;because it contains too much of what we know. Télémaque, like someother of Fenelon’s writings, is to be considered in reference to itsobject; an object of all the noblest, being to form the character ofone to whom many must look up for their welfare, but still verydifferent from the inculcation of profound truth. The beauties ofTélémaque are very numerous; the descriptions, and indeed the wholetone of the book, have a charm of grace, something like the picturesof Guido; but there is also a certain languor which steals over us inreading, and though there is no real want of variety in the narration,it reminds us so continually of its source, the Homeric legends, as tobecome rather monotonous. The abandonment of verse has produced toomuch diffuseness; it will be observed, if we look attentively, thatwhere Homer is circ*mstantial, Fenelon is more so; in this hesometimes approaches the minuteness of the romancers. But thesedefects are more than compensated by the moral, and even æstheticexcellence of this romance.

|Deficiency of English romances.|

56. If this most fertile province of all literature, as we have nowdiscovered it to be, had yielded so little even in France, a nationthat might appear eminently fitted to explore it, down to the close ofthe seventeenth century, we may be less surprised at the greaterdeficiency of our own country. Yet the scarcity of original fiction inEngland was so great as to be inexplicable by any reasoning. Thepublic taste was not incapable of being pleased; for all the novelsand romances of the continent were readily translated. The manners ofall classes were as open to humorous description, the imagination wasas vigorous, the heart as susceptible as in other countries. But notonly we find nothing good; it can hardly be said that we find anythingat all that has ever attracted notice in English romance. TheParthenissa of Lord Orrery, in the heroic style, and the short novelsof Afra Behn, are nearly as many, perhaps, as could be detected in oldlibraries. We must leave the beaten track before we can place a singlework in this class.

|Pilgrim’s Progress.|

57. The Pilgrim’s Progress essentially belongs to it, and John Bunyanmay pass for the father of our novelists. His success in a line ofcomposition like the spiritual romance or allegory, which seems tohave been frigid and unreadable in the few instances where it had beenattempted, is doubtless enhanced by his want of all learning and hislow station in life. He was therefore rarely, if ever, an imitator; hewas never enchained by rules. Bunyan possessed in a remarkable degreethe power of representation; his inventive faculty was considerable,but the other is his distinguishing excellence. He saw, and makes ussee, what he describes; he is circ*mstantial without prolixity, and inthe variety and frequent change of his incidents, never loses sight ofthe unity of his allegorical fable. His invention was enriched, andrather his choice determined, by one rule he had laid down to himself,the adaptation of all the incidental language of scripture to his ownuse. There is scarce a circ*mstance or metaphor in the Old Testamentwhich does not find a place, bodily and literally, in the story of thePilgrim’s Progress; and this peculiar artifice has made his ownimagination appear more creative than it really is. In theconduct of the romance no rigorous attention to the propriety of theallegory seems to have been uniformly preserved. Vanity Fair, or thecave of the two giants, might, for anything we see, have been placedelsewhere; but it is by this neglect of exact parallelism that hebetter keeps up the reality of the pilgrimage, and takes off thecoldness of mere allegory. It is also to be remembered that we readthis book at an age when the spiritual meaning is either littleperceived or little regarded. In his language, nevertheless, Bunyansometimes mingles the signification too much with the fable; we mightbe perplexed between the imaginary and the real Christian; but theliveliness of narration soon brings us back, or did at least when wewere young, to the fields of fancy. Yet, the Pilgrim’s Progress, likesome other books, has of late been a little over-rated; its excellenceis great, but it is not of the highest rank, and we should be carefulnot to break down the landmarks of fame by placing the John Bunyansand the Daniel De Foes among the Dii Majores of our worship.

|Turkish spy.|

58. I am inclined to claim for England not the invention, but, for themost part, the composition of another book which, being grounded onfiction, may be classed here, The Turkish Spy. A secret emissary ofthe Porte is supposed to remain at Paris in disguise for above fortyyears, from 1635 to 1682. His correspondence with a number of persons,various in situation, and with whom therefore his letters assumevarious characters, is protracted through eight volumes. Much, indeedmost, relates to the history of those times and to the anecdotesconnected with it; but in these we do not find a large proportion ofnovelty. The more remarkable letters are those which run intometaphysical and theological speculation. These are written with anearnest seriousness, yet with an extraordinary freedom, such as thefeigned garb of a Mohammedan could hardly have exempted from censurein catholic countries. Mahmud, the mysterious writer, stands on a sortof eminence above all human prejudice; he was privileged to judge as astranger of the religion and philosophy of Europe; but his bold spiritranges over the field of Oriental speculation. The Turkish Spy is noordinary production, but contains as many proofs of a thoughtful, ifnot very profound mind, as any we can find. It suggested the PersianLetters to Montesquieu and the Jewish to Argens; the former deviatingfrom his model with the originality of talent, the latter following itwith a more servile closeness. Probability, that is, a resemblance tothe personated character of an Oriental, was not to be attained, norwas it desirable, in any of these fictions; but Mahmud has somethingnot European, something of a solitary insulated wanderer, gazing on aworld that knows him not, which throws, to my feelings, a strikingcharm over the Turkish Spy; while the Usbek of Montesquieu has becomemore than half Parisian; his ideas are neither those of hisbirthplace, nor such as have sprung up unbidden from his soul, butthose of a polite, witty, and acute society; and the correspondencewith his harem in Persia, which Montesquieu has thought attractive tothe reader, is not much more interesting than it is probable, and endsin the style of a common romance. As to the Jewish Letters of Argens,it is far inferior to the Turkish Spy, and, in fact, rather an insipidbook.

|Chiefly of English origin.|

59. It may be asked why I dispute the claim made by all the foreignbiographers in favour of John Paul Marana, a native of Genoa, who isasserted to have published the first volume of the Turkish Spy atParis in 1684, and the rest in subsequent years.[1056] But I am notdisputing that Marana is the author of the thirty letters, publishedin 1684, and of twenty more in 1686, which have been literallytranslated into English, and form about half the first volume inEnglish of our Turkish spy.[1057] Nor do I doubt in the least that theremainder of that volume had a French original; though it happens thatI have not seen it. But the later volumes of the Espion Turc, in theedition of 1696, with the date of Cologne, which, according toBarbier, is put for Rouen,[1058] are avowedly translated from theEnglish. And to the second volume of our Turkish Spy, published in1691, is prefixed an account, not very credible, of the manner inwhich the volumes subsequent to the first had been procured by atraveller in the original Italian; no French edition, it is declared,being known to the booksellers. That no Italian edition ever existed,is, I apprehend, now generally admitted; and it is to be shown bythose who contend for the claims of Marana, to seven out of the eightvolumes, that they were published in France before 1691 and thesubsequent years, when they appeared in English. The Cologne or Rouenedition of 1696 follows the English so closely that it has not giventhe original letters of the first volume, published with the name ofMarana, but rendered them back from the translation.

 [1056] This first portion was published at Paris and also at Amsterdam. Bayle gives the following account. Cet ouvrage a été contrefait à Amsterdam du consentement du libraire de Paris, qui l’a le premier imprimé. Il sera composé de plusieurs petit* volumes qui contiendront les événemens les plus considérables de la chrétienté en général, et de la France en particulier, depuis l’année 1637 jusqu’en 1682. Un Italien natif de Gênes, Marana, donne ces rélations pour des lettres écrites aux ministres de la Porte par un espion Turc qui se tenoit caché à Paris. Il prétend les avoir traduites de l’Arabe en Italien: et il raconte fort en long comment il les a trouvées. On soupçonne avec beaucoup d’apparence, que c’est un tour d’esprit Italien, et une fiction ingénieuse semblable à celle dont Virgile s’est servi pour louer Auguste, &c. Nouvelles de la République des Lettres; Mars, 1684; in Œuvres diverses de Bayle, vol. i., p. 20. The Espion Turc is not to be traced in the index to the Journal des Sçavans; nor is it noticed in the Bibliothèque Universelle.

 [1057] Salfi, xiv., 61. Biograph. Univers.

 [1058] Dictionnaire des Anonymes, vol. i., p. 406. Barbier’s notice of L’Espion dans les cours des princes Chrétiens ascribes four volumes out of six, which appear to contain as much as our eight volumes, to Marana, and conjectures that the last two are by another hand; but does not intimate the least suspicion of an English original. And as his authority is considerable, I must fortify my own opinion by what evidence I can find.

 The preface to the second volume (English) of the Turkish Spy begins thus: “Three years are now elapsed since the first volume of letters written by a Spy at Paris was published in English. And it was expected that a second should have come out long before this. The favourable reception which that found amongst all sorts of readers would have encouraged a speedy translation of the rest, had there been extant any French edition of more than the first part. _But after the strictest inquiry none could be heard of_; and, as for the Italian, our booksellers have not that correspondence in those parts as they have in the more neighbouring countries of France and Holland. So that it was a work despaired of to recover any more of this Arabian’s memoirs. We little dreamed that the Florentines had been so busy in printing, and so successful in selling the continued translation of these Arabian epistles, till it was the fortune of an English gentleman to travel in those parts last summer, and discover the happy news. I will not forestall his letter which is annexed to this preface.” A pretended letter with the signature of Daniel Saltmarsh follows, in which the imaginary author tells a strange tale of the manner in which a certain learned physician of Ferrara, Julio de Medici, descended from the Medicean family, put these volumes, in the Italian language, into his hands. This letter is dated Amsterdam, Sept. 9, 1690, and as the preface refers it to the last summer, I hence conclude that the first edition of the second volume of the Turkish Spy was in 1691; for I have not seen that, nor any other edition earlier than the fifth, printed in 1702.

 Marana is said by Salfi and others to have left France in 1689, having fallen into a depression of spirits. Now the first thirty letters, about one thirty-second part of the entire work, were published in 1684, and about an equal length in 1686. I admit that he had time to double these portions, and thus to publish one-eighth of the whole; but is it likely that between 1686 and 1689 he could have given the rest to the world? If we are not struck by this, is it likely that the English translator should have fabricated the story above mentioned, when the public might know that there was actually a French original which he had rendered? The invention seems without motive. Again, how came the French edition of 1696 to be an avowed translation from the English, when, according to the hypothesis of M. Barbier, the volumes of Marana had all been published in France? Surely, till these appear, we have reason to suspect their existence; and the _onus probandi_ lies _now_ on the advocates of Marana’s claim.

60. In these early letters, I am ready to admit, the scheme of theTurkish Spy may be entirely traced. Marana appears not only to haveplanned the historical part of the letters, but to have struck out themore original and striking idea of a Mohammedan wavering withreligious scruples, which the English continuator has followed up withmore philosophy and erudition. The internal evidence for their Englishorigin, in all the latter volumes, is to my apprehension exceedinglystrong; but I know the difficulty of arguing from this to convince areader. The proof we demand is the production of these volumes inFrench, that is, the specification of some public or private librarywhere they may be seen, in any edition anterior to 1691, and nothingshort of this can be satisfactory evidence.[1059]

 [1059] I shall now produce some direct evidence for the English authorship of seven out of eight parts of the Turkish Spy.

 “In the Life of Mrs. Manley, published under the title of ‘The Adventures of Rivella,’ printed in 1714, in pages 14 and 15, it is said, That her father, Sir Roger Manley, was the genuine author of the first volume of the Turkish Spy. Dr. Midgley, an ingenious physician, related to the family by marriage, had the charge of looking over his papers, among which he found that manuscript, which he easily reserved to his proper use: and both by his own pen and the assistance of some others, continued the work until the eighth volume, without ever having the justice to name the author of the first.” MS. note in the copy of the Turkish Spy (edit. 1732), in the British Museum.

 Another MS. note in the same volume gives the following extract from Dunton’s Life and Errors. “Mr. Bradshaw is the best accomplished hackney writer I have met with; his genius was quite above the common size, and his style was incomparably fine.... So soon as I saw the first volume of the Turkish Spy, the very style and manner of writing convinced me that Bradshaw was the author.... Bradshaw’s wife owned that Dr. Midgley had engaged him in a work which would take him some years to finish, for which the Doctor was to pay him 40s. per sheet.... So that ’tis very probable (for I cannot swear I saw him write it), that Mr. William Bradshaw was the author of the Turkish Spy; were it not for this discovery, Dr. Midgley had gone off with the honour of that performance.” It thus appears that in England it was looked upon as an original work; though the authority of Dunton is not very good for the facts he tells, and that of Mrs. Manley much worse. But I do not quote them as evidence of such facts, but of common report. Mrs. Manley, who claims for her father the first volume, certainly written by Marana, must be set aside; as to Dr. Midgley and Mr. Bradshaw, I know nothing to confirm or refute what is here said.

|Swift’s Tale of a Tub.|

61. It would not, perhaps, be unfair bring within the pale of theseventeenth century an effusion of genius, sufficient to redeem ourname in its annals of fiction. The Tale of a Tub, though not publishedtill 1704, was chiefly written, as the author declares, eight yearsbefore; and the Battle of the Books subjoined to it, has everyappearance of recent animosity against the opponents of Temple andBoyle, is the question of Phalaris. The Tale of a Tub is, in myapprehension, the masterpiece of Swift; certainly Rabelais has nothingsuperior, even in invention, nor anything so condensed, so pointed, sofull of real meaning, of biting satire, of felicitous analogy. TheBattle of the Books is such an improvement of the similar combat inthe Lutrin, that we can hardly own it is an imitation.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND OTHER LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

 SECT. I.

 ON EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Institutions for Science at Florence--London--Paris--Chemistry--Boyleand others._

|Reasons for omitting mathematics.|

1. We have now arrived, according to the method pursued incorresponding periods, at the history of mathematical and physicalscience in the latter part of the seventeenth century. But I must hereentreat my readers to excuse the omission of that which ought tooccupy a prominent situation in any work that pretends to trace thegeneral progress of human knowledge. The length to which I have foundmyself already compelled to extend these volumes, might be an adequateapology; but I have one more insuperable in the slightness of my ownacquaintance with subjects so momentous and difficult, and upon whichI could not write without presumptuousness and much peril of betrayingignorance. The names, therefore, of Wallis and Huygens, Newton andLeibnitz, must be passed with distant reverence.

|Academy del Cimento.|

2. This was the age, when the experimental philosophy, to which Baconhad held the torch, and which had already made considerable progress,especially in Italy, was finally established on the ruins of arbitraryfigments and partial inductions. This philosophy was signally indebtedto three associations, the eldest of which did not endure long; butthe others have remained to this day, the perennial fountains ofscience; the Academy del Cimento at Florence, the Royal Society ofLondon, the Academy of Sciences at Paris. The first of these wasestablished in 1657, with the patronage of the Grand Duke FerdinandII., but under the peculiar care of his brother Leopold. Both were, ina manner at that time remarkable, attached to natural philosophy; andLeopold, less engaged in public affairs, had long carried on acorrespondence with the learned of Europe. It is said that the adviceof Viviani, one of the greatest geometers that Europe has produced,led to this institution. The name this Academy assumed, gave promiseof their fundamental rule, the investigation of truth by experimentalone. The number of Academicians was unlimited, and all that wasrequired as an article of faith was the abjuration of all faith, aresolution to inquire into truth without regard to any previous sectof philosophy. This Academy lasted, unfortunately, but ten years invigour; it is a great misfortune for any literary institution todepend on one man, and especially on a prince, who, shedding afactitious, as well as sometimes a genuine lustre round it, is noteasily replaced without a diminution of the world’s regard. Leopold,in 1667, became a cardinal, and was thus withdrawn from Florence;others of the Academy del Cimento died or went away, and it rapidlysunk into insignificance. But a volume containing reports of theyearly experiments it made, among others, the celebrated one showingthe incompressibility of water, is generally esteemed.[1060]

 [1060] Galluzzi, Storia del Gran Ducato, vol. vii., p. 240. Tiraboschi, xi., 204. Corniani, viii., 29.

|Royal Society.|

3. The germ of our Royal Society may be traced to the year 1645, whenWallis, Wilkins, Glisson, and others less known, agreed to meet weeklyat a private house in London, in order to converse on subjectsconnected with natural, and especially experimental philosophy. Partof these soon afterwards settled in Oxford; and thus arose two littlesocieties in connection with each other, those at Oxford beingrecruited by Ward, Petty, Willis, and Bathurst. They met at Petty’slodgings till he removed to Ireland in 1652; afterwards at those ofWilkins, in Wadham College, till he became Master of Trinity College,Cambridge, in 1659; about which time most of the Oxford philosopherscame to London, and held their meetings in Gresham College. Theybecame more numerous after the Restoration, which gave better hope ofa tranquillity indispensable for science; and, on the 28th ofNovember, 1660, agreed to form a regular society which should meetweekly for the promotion of natural philosophy; their registers arekept, from this time.[1061] The king, rather fond himself of theirsubjects, from the beginning afforded them his patronage; their firstcharter is dated 15th July, 1662, incorporating them by the style ofthe Royal Society, and appointing Lord Brouncker the first president,assisted by a council of twenty, the conspicuous names among which areBoyle, Kenelm Digby, Wilkins, Wren, Evelyn, and Oldenburg.[1062] Thelast of these was secretary, and editor of the PhilosophicalTransactions, the first number of which appeared March 1, 1665,containing sixteen pages in quarto. These were continued monthly, orless frequently, according to the materials he possessed. Oldenburgceased to be the editor in 1677, and was succeeded by Grew, as he wasby Hooke. These early transactions are chiefly notes of conversationsand remarks made at the meetings, as well as of experiments eitherthen made or reported to the Society.[1063]

 [1061] Birch’s Hist. of Royal Society, vol. i., p. 1.

 [1062] Birch’s Hist. of Royal Society, vol. i., p. 88.

 [1063] Id. vol. ii., p. 18. Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 7.

|Academy of Sciences at Paris.|

4. The Academy of Sciences at Paris was established in 1666, under theauspices of Colbert. The king assigned to them a room in the royallibrary for their meetings. Those first selected were allmathematicians; but other departments of science, especially chemistryand anatomy, afterwards furnished associates of considerable name. Itseems, nevertheless, that this Academy did not cultivate experimentalphilosophy with such unremitting zeal as the Royal Society, and thatabstract mathematics have always borne a larger proportion to the restof their inquiries. They published in this century ten volumes, knownas Anciens Mémoires de l’Academie. But near its close, in 1697, theyreceived a regular institution from the king, organising them in amanner analogous to the two other great literary foundations, theFrench Academy, and that of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres.[1064]

 [1064] Fontenelle, vol. v., p. 23. Montucla, Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. ii., p. 557.

|State of Chemistry.|

5. In several branches of physics, the experimental philosopher isboth guided and corrected by the eternal laws of geometry. In othershe wants this aid, and, in the words of his master, knows andunderstands no more concerning the order of nature, than, as herservant and interpreter, he has been taught by observation andtentative processes. All that concerns the peculiar actions of bodieson each other was of this description; though, in our own times, eventhis has been, in some degree, brought under the omnipotent control ofthe modern analysis. Chemistry, or the science of the molecularconstituents of bodies, manifested in such peculiar and reciprocaloperations, had never been rescued from empirical hands till thisperiod. The transmutation of metals, the universal medicine, and otherinquiries utterly unphilosophical in themselves, because they assumedthe existence of that which they sought to discover, had occupied thechemists so much that none of them had made any further progress thanoccasionally by some happy combination or analysis, to contribute anuseful preparation to pharmacy, or to detect an unknown substance.Glauber and Van Helmont were the most active and ingenious of theseelder chemists; but the former has only been remembered by having longgiven his name to sulphate of soda, while the latter wasted his timeon experiments from which he knew not how to draw right inferences,and his powers on hypotheses which a sounder spirit of the inductivephilosophy would have taught him to reject.[1065]

 [1065] Thomson’s Hist. of Chemistry, i., 183.

|Becker.|

6. Chemistry, as a science of principles, hypothetical, no doubt, andin a great measure unfounded, but cohering in a plausible system, andbetter than the reveries of the Paracelsists and Behmenists, wasfounded by Becker, in Germany, by Boyle and his contemporaries of theRoyal Society in England. Becker, a native of Spire, who, afterwandering from one city of Germany to another, died in London in 1685,by his Physica Subterranea, published in 1669, laid the foundation ofa theory, which having in the next century been perfected by Stahl,became the creed of philosophy till nearly the end of the lastcentury. “Becker’s theory,” says an English writer, “stripped ofeverything but the naked statement, may be expressed in the followingsentence: besides water and air there are three other substances,called earths, which enter into the composition of bodies; namely thefusible or vitrifiable earth, the inflammable or sulphureous, and themercurial. By the intimate combination of earths with water is formedan universal acid, from which proceed all other acid bodies; stonesare produced by the combination of certain earths, metals by thecombination of all the three earths in proportions which varyaccording to the metal.”[1066]

 [1066] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 468.

|Boyle.|

7. No one Englishman of the seventeenth century, after Lord Bacon,raised to himself so high a reputation in experimental philosophy asRobert Boyle; it has even been remarked, that he was born in the yearof Bacon’s death, as the person destined by nature to succeed him. Aneulogy which would be extravagant, if it implied any parallel betweenthe genius of the two; but hardly so, if we look on Boyle as the mostfaithful, the most patient, the most successful disciple who carriedforward the experimental philosophy of Bacon. His works occupy sixlarge volumes in quarto. They may be divided into theological ormetaphysical, and physical or experimental. Of the former, we maymention, as the most philosophical, his Disquisition into the FinalCauses of Natural Things, his Free Inquiry into the Received Notion ofNature, his Discourse of Things above Reason, his Considerations aboutthe Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion, his Excellency ofTheology, and his Considerations on the Style of the Scriptures; butthe latter, his chemical and experimental writings, form more than twothirds of his prolix works.

|His metaphysical works.|

8. The metaphysical treatises, to use that word in a large sense, ofBoyle, or rather those concerning Natural Theology, are veryperspicuous, very free from system, and such as bespeak an independentlover of truth. His Disquisition on Final Causes, was a well-timedvindication of that palmary argument against the paradox of theCartesians, who had denied the validity of an inference from themanifest adaptation of means to ends in the universe to an intelligentProvidence. Boyle takes a more philosophical view of the principle offinal causes than had been found in many theologians, who weakened theargument itself by the presumptuous hypothesis, that man was the soleobject of Providence in the Creation.[1067] His greater knowledge ofphysiology led him to perceive that there are both animal, and what hecalls cosmical ends, in which man has no concern.

 [1067] Boyle’s Works, vol. v., p. 394.

|Extract from one of them.|

9. The following passage is so favourable a specimen of thephilosophical spirit of Boyle, and so good an illustration of thetheory of _idols_ in the Novum Organum, that, although it mightbetter, perhaps, have deserved a place in a former chapter, I will notrefrain from inserting it. “I know not,” he says, in his Free Inquiryinto the received Notion of Nature, “whether it be a prerogative inthe human mind, that, as it is itself a true and positive being, so isit apt to conceive all other things as true and positive beings also;but whether or no this propensity to frame such kind of ideas supposesan excellency, I fear it occasions mistakes, and makes us think andspeak after the manner of true and positive beings, of such things asare but chimerical, and some of them negations or privationsthemselves; as death, ignorance, blindness, and the like. It concernsus, therefore, to stand very carefully upon our guard, that we be notinsensibly misled by such an innate and unheeded temptation to error,as we bring into the world with us.”[1068]

 [1068] Vol. v., p. 161.

|His merits in physics and chemistry.|

10. Boyle improved the air-pump and the thermometer, though the latterwas first made an accurate instrument of investigation by Newton. Healso discovered the law of the air’s elasticity, namely, that its bulkis inversely as the pressure. For some of the principles ofhydrostatics we are indebted to him, though he did not possess muchmathematical knowledge. The Philosophical Transactions contain severalvaluable papers by him on this science.[1069] By his “ScepticalChemist,” published in 1661, he did much to overturn the theories ofVan Helmont’s school, that commonly called of the iatro-chemists,which was in its highest reputation; raising doubts as to theexistence, not only of the four elements of the peripatetics, but ofthose which these chemists had substituted. Boyle holds the elementsof bodies to be atoms of different shapes and sizes, the union ofwhich gives origin to what are vulgarly called elements.[1070] It isunnecessary to remark that this is the prevailing theory of thepresent age.

 [1069] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 400, 411.

 [1070] Thomson’s Hist. of Chemistry, i. 205.

|General character of Boyle.|

11. I shall borrow the general character of Boyle and of hiscontemporaries in English chemistry from a modern author of credit.“Perhaps Mr. Boyle may be considered as the first person neitherconnected with pharmacy nor mining, who devoted a considerable degreeof attention to chemical pursuits. Mr. Boyle, though in common withthe literary men of his age he may be accused of credulity, was bothvery laborious and intelligent; and his chemical pursuits, which werevarious and extensive, and intended solely to develop the truthwithout any regard to previously conceived opinions, contributedessentially to set chemistry free from the trammels of absurdity andsuperstition, in which it had been hitherto enveloped, and torecommend it to philosophers as a science deserving to be studied onaccount of the important information which it was qualified to convey.His refutation of the alchemistical opinions respecting theconstituents of bodies, his observations on cold, on the air, onphosphorus, and on ether, deserve particularly to be mentioned asdoing him much honour. We have no regular account of any one substanceor of any class of bodies in Mr. Boyle, similar to those which atpresent are considered as belonging exclusively to the science ofchemistry. Neither did he attempt to systematize the phenomena, or tosubject them to any hypothetical explanation.

|Of Hooke and others.|

12. But his contemporary, Dr. Hooke, who had a particular predilectionfor hypothesis, sketched in his Micrographia a very beautifultheoretical explanation of combustion, and promised to develop hisdoctrine more fully in a subsequent book; a promise which he neverfulfilled; though in his Lampas, published about twenty yearsafterwards, he has given a very beautiful explanation of the way inwhich a candle burns. Mayow, in his Essays, published at Oxford aboutten years after the Micrographia, embraced the hypothesis of Dr. Hookewithout acknowledgment; but clogged it with so many absurd additionsof his own as greatly to obscure its lustre and diminish its beauty.Mayow’s first and principal Essay contains some happy experiments onrespiration and air, and some fortunate conjectures respecting thecombustion of the metals; but the most valuable part of the whole isthe chapter on affinities; in which he appears to have gone muchfarther than any other chemist of his day, and to have anticipatedsome of the best established doctrines of his successors. Sir IsaacNewton, to whom all the sciences lie under such great obligations,made two most important contributions to chemistry, which constitute,as it were, the foundation stones of its two great divisions. Thefirst was pointing out a method of graduating thermometers, so as tobe comparable with each other in whatever part of the worldobservations with them are made. The second was by pointing out thenature of chemical affinity, and showing that it consisted in anattraction by which the constituents of bodies were drawn towards eachother and united; thus destroying the previous hypothesis of thehooks, and points, and rings, and wedges, by means of which thedifferent constituents of bodies were conceived to be kepttogether.”[1071]

 [1071] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 466.

|Lemery.|

13. Lemery, a druggist at Paris, by his Cours de Chymie in 1675, issaid to have changed the face of the science; the change,nevertheless, seems to have gone no deeper. “Lemery,” says Fontenelle,“was the first who dispersed the real or pretended obscurities ofchemistry, who brought it to clearer and more simple notions, whoabolished the gross barbarisms of its language, who promised nothingbut what he knew the art could perform; and to this he owed thesuccess of his book. It shows not only a sound understanding, but somegreatness of soul, to strip one’s own science of a false pomp.”[1072]But we do not find that Lemery had any novel views in chemistry, orthat he claims with any irresistible pretension the title of aphilosopher. In fact, his chemistry seems to have been little morethan pharmacy.

 [1072] Eloge de Lemery, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, v. 361. Biog. Universelle.

 SECT. II.

 ON NATURAL HISTORY.

_Zoology--Ray--Botanical Classifications--Grew--Geological Theories._

|Slow Progress of Zoology.|

14. The accumulation of particular knowledge in Natural History mustalways be progressive, where any regard is paid to the subject; everytraveller in remote countries, every mariner may contribute someobservation, correct some error, or bring home some new species. Thuszoology had made a regular advance from the days of Conrad Gesner;yet, with so tardy a step, that, reflecting on the extensiveintercourse of Europe with the Eastern and Western world, we may besurprised to find how little Jonston in the middle of the seventeenthcentury, had added, even in the most obvious class, that ofquadrupeds, to the knowledge collected one hundred years before. Buthitherto zoology, confined to mere description, and that oftencareless or indefinite, unenlightened by anatomy, unregulated bymethod, had not merited the name of a science. That name it owes toJohn Ray.

|Before Ray.|

15. Ray first appeared in Natural History as the editor of theOrnithology of his highly accomplished friend Francis Willoughby, withwhom he had travelled over the continent. This was published in 1676;and the History of Fishes followed in 1686. The descriptions areascribed to Willoughby, the arrangement to Ray, who might haveconsidered the two works as in great part his own, though he has notinterfered with the glory of his deceased friend. Cuvier observes,that the History of Fishes is the more perfect work of the two, thatmany species are described which will not be found in earlierichthyologists, and that those of the Mediterranean especially aregiven with great precision.[1073]

 [1073] Biographie Universelle, art. Ray.

|His Synopsis of Quadrupeds.|

16. Among the original works of Ray we may select the SynopsisMethodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis, published in1693. This book makes an epoch in zoology, not for the additions ofnew species it contains, since there are few wholly such, but as thefirst classification of animals that can be reckoned both general andgrounded in nature. He divides them into those with blood and withoutblood. The former are such as breathe through lungs, and such asbreathe through gills. Of the former of these again some have a heartwith two ventricles, some with one only. And among the former class ofthese some are viviparous, some oviparous. We thus come to the properdistinction of Mammalia. But in compliance with vulgar prejudice, Raydid not include the cetacea in the same class with quadrupeds, thoughwell aware that they properly belonged to it, and left them as anorder of fishes.[1074] Quadrupeds he was the first to divide into_ungulate_ and _unguiculate_, hoofed and clawed, having himselfinvented the Latin words.[1075] The former are _solidipeda_,_bisulca_, or _quadrisulca_; the latter are _bifida_ or _multifida_;and these latter with undivided, or with partially divided toes; whichlatter again may have broad claws, as monkeys, or narrow claws; andthese with narrow claws he arranges according to their teeth, aseither carnivora, or leporina, now generally called rodentia. Besidesall these quadrupeds which he calls analoga, he has a general divisioncalled anomala, for those without teeth, or with such peculiararrangements of teeth as we find in the insectivorous genera, thehedgehog and mole.[1076]

 [1074] Nos ne a communi hominum opinione nimis recedamus, et ut affectatæ novitatis notam evitemus, cetaceum aquatilium genus, quamvis cum quadrupedibus viviparis in omnibus fere præter, quam in pilis et pedibus et elemento in quo degunt convenire videantur, piscibus annumerabimus, p. 55.

 [1075] P. 50.

 [1076] P. 56.

|Merits of this work.|

17. Ray was the first zoologist who made use of comparative anatomy;he inserts at length every account of dissections that he could find;several had been made at Paris. He does not appear to be very anxiousabout describing every species; thus in the simian family he omitsseveral well known.[1077] I cannot exactly determine what quadrupedshe has inserted that do not appear in the earlier zoologists;according to Linnæus, in the twelfth-edition of the Systema Naturæ, ifI have counted rightly, they amount to thirty-two; but I have foundhim very careless in specifying the synonyms of his predecessors, andmany for which he only quotes Ray, are in Gesner or Jonston. Ray hashowever much the advantage over these in the brevity and closeness ofhis specific characters. The particular distinction of his labours,says Cuvier, consists in an arrangement more clear, more determinatethan those of any of his predecessors, and applied with moreconsistency and precision. His distribution of the classes ofquadrupeds and birds have been followed by the English naturalistsalmost to our own days; and we find manifest traces of that he hasadopted as to the latter class in Linnæus, in Brisson, in Buffon, andin all other ornithologists.[1078]

 [1077] Hoc genus animalium tum caudatorum tum cauda carentium species valde numerosæ sunt; non tamen multos apud autores fide dignos descriptæ occurrunt. He only describes those species he has found in Clusius or Marcgrave, and what he calls Parisienses, such, I presume, as he had found in the Memoirs of the Académie des Sciences. But he does not mention the Simia Inuus, or the S. Hamadryas, and several others of the most known species.

 [1078] Biogr. Univ.

|Redi.|

|Swammerdam.|

18. The bloodless animals, and even those of cold blood, with theexception of fishes, had occupied but little attention of any goodzoologists till after the middle of the century. They were now studiedwith considerable success. Redi, established as a physician atFlorence, had yet time for that various literature which hasimmortalized his name. He opposed, and in a great degree disproved byexperiment, the prevailing doctrine of the equivocal generation ofinsects, or that from corruption; though where he was unable to showthe means of reproduction, he had recourse to a paradoxical hypothesisof his own. Redi also enlarged our knowledge of intestinal animals,and made some good experiments on the poison of vipers.[1079]Malpighi, who combated like Redi, the theory of the reproduction oforganised bodies from mere corruption, has given one of the mostcomplete treatises on the silkworm that we possess.[1080] Swammerdam,a Dutch naturalist, abandoned his pursuits in human anatomy to followup that of insects, and by his skill and patience in dissection madenumerous discoveries in their structure. His General History ofInsects 1669, contains a distribution into four classes, founded ontheir bodily forms and the metamorphoses they undergo. A posthumouswork, Biblia Naturæ, not published till 1738, contains, says theBiographie Universelle, “a multitude of facts wholly unknown beforeSwammerdam; it is impossible to carry farther the anatomy of theselittle animals, or to be more exact in the description of the organs.”

 [1079] Biogr. Univ. Tiraboschi, ix. 252.

 [1080] Idem.

|Lister.|

19. Lister, an English physician, may be reckoned one of those whohave done most to found the science of conchology by his Historia siveSynopsis Conchyliorum, in 1685; a work very copious and full ofaccurate delineations: and also by his three treatises on Englishanimals, two of which relate to fluviatile and marine shells. Thethird, which is on spiders, is not less esteemed in entomology. Listerwas also perhaps the first to distinguish the specific characters,such at least as are now reckoned specific, though probably not in histime, of the Asiatic and African elephant. “His works in naturalhistory and comparative anatomy are justly esteemed, because he hasshown himself an exact and sagacious observer, and has pointed outwith correctness the natural relations of the animals that hedescribes.”[1081]

 [1081] Biogr. Univ. Chalmers.

|Comparative anatomy.|

20. The beautiful science which bears the nonsensical name ofcomparative anatomy had but casually occupied the attention of themedical profession.[1082] It was to them, rather than to merezoologists, that it owed, and indeed strictly must always owe, itsdiscoveries, which had hitherto been very few. It was now morecultivated; and the relations of structure to the capacities of animallife became more striking, as their varieties were more fullyunderstood; the grand theories of final causes found their mostconvincing arguments. In this period, I believe, comparative anatomymade an important progress, which in the earlier part of theeighteenth century was by no means equally rapid. France took the leadin these researches. “The number of papers on comparative anatomy,”says Dr. Thomson, “is greater in the memoirs of the French Academythan in our national publication. This was owing to the pains takenduring the reign of Louis XIV. to furnish the Academy with properanimals, and the number of anatomists who received a salary, and ofcourse devoted themselves to anatomical subjects.” There are howeverabout twenty papers in the Philosophical Transactions before 1700 onthis subject.[1083]

 [1082] It is most probable that this term was originally designed to express a comparison between the human structure and that of brutes, though it might also mean one between different species of the latter. In the first sense it is never now used, and the second is but a small though important part of the science. _Zootomy_ has been suggested as a better name, but it is not quite analogical to anatomy; and on the whole it seems as if we must remain with the old word, protesting against its propriety.

 [1083] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 114.

|Botany.|

|Jungius.|

21. Botany, notwithstanding the gleams of philosophical light whichoccasionally illustrate the writings of Cæsalpin and Columna, hadseldom gone farther than to name, to describe, and to delineate plantswith a greater or less accuracy and copiousness. Yet it long had theadvantage over zoology, and now when the latter made a considerablestep in advance, it still continued to keep a-head. This is a periodof great importance in botanical science. Jungius of Hamburgh, whoseposthumous Isagoge Phytoscopica was published in 1679, is said to havebeen the first in the seventeenth century who led the way to a betterclassification than that of Lobel; and Sprengel thinks that theEnglish botanists were not unacquainted with his writings; Ray indeedowns his obligations to them.[1084]

 [1084] Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herbariæ, vol. ii., p. 32.

|Morison.|

22. But the founder of classification, in the eyes of the world, wasRobert Morison, of Aberdeen, professor of botany at Oxford; who, byhis Hortus Blesensis, in 1669; by his Plantarum UmbelliferarumDistributio Nova, in 1672; and chiefly by his great work HistoriaPlantarum Universalis, in 1678, laid the bases of a systematicclassification, which he partly founded, not on trivial distinctionsof appearance, as the older botanists, but, as Cæsalpin had firstdone, on the fructifying organs. He has been frequently charged withplagiarism from that great Italian, who seems to have suffered, asothers have done, by failing to carry forward his own luminousconceptions into such details of proof as the world justly demands;another instance of which has been seen in his very striking passageson the circulation of the blood. Sprengel, however, who praisesMorison highly, does not impute to him this injustice towardsCæsalpin, whose writings might possibly be unknown in Britain.[1085]And it might be observed also, that Morison did not as has sometimesbeen alledged, establish the fruit as the sole basis of hisarrangement. Out of fifteen classes, into which he distributes allherbaceous plants, but seven are characterised by this distinction.[1086]“The examination of Morison’s works,” says a late biographer, “willenable us to judge of the service he rendered in the reformation ofbotany. The great botanists, from Gesner to the Bauhins, had publishedworks, more or less useful by their discoveries, their observations,their descriptions, or their figures. Gesner had made a great step inconsidering the fruit as the principal distinction of genera. FabiusColumna adopted this view; Cæsalpin applied it to a classificationwhich should be regarded as better than any that preceded the epoch ofwhich we speak. Morison had made a particular study of fruits, havingcollected 1,500 different species of them, though he did not neglectthe importance of the natural affinities of other parts. He dwells onthis leading idea, insists on the necessity of establishing genericcharacters, and has founded his chief works on this basis. He hastherefore done real service to the science; nor should the vanitywhich has made him conceal his obligations to Cæsalpin induce us torefuse him justice.”[1087] Morison speaks of his own theory withexcessive vanity, and deprecates all earlier botanists as full ofconfusion. Several English writers have been unfavourable to Morison,out of partiality to Ray, with whom he was on bad terms; butTournefort declares that if he had not enlightened botany it wouldstill have been in darkness.

 [1085] Sprengel, p. 34.

 [1086] Pulteney, Historical Progress of Botany in England, vol. i., p. 307.

 [1087] Biogr. Universelle.

|Ray.|

23. Ray, in his Methodus Plantarum Nova, 1682, and in his HistoriaPlantarum Universalis, in three volumes, the first published in 1686,the second in 1688, and the third, which is supplemental, in 1704,trod in the steps of Morison, but with more acknowledgment of what wasdue to others, and with some improvements of his own. He described6,900 plants, many of which are now considered as varieties.[1088] Inthe botanical works of Ray we find the natural families of plantsbetter defined, the difference of complete and incomplete flowers moreprecise, and the grand division of monocotyledons and bicotyledonsfully established. He gave much precision to the characteristics ofmany classes, and introduced several technical terms, very useful forthe perspicuity of botanical language; finally, he established manygeneral principles of arrangement which have since been adopted.[1089]Ray’s method of classification was principally by the fruit, though headmits its imperfections. “In fact, his method,” says Pulteney,“though he assumes the fruit as the foundation, is an elaborateattempt, for that time, to fix natural classes.”[1090]

 [1088] Pulteney. The account of Ray’s life and botanical writings in this work occupies nearly 100 pages.

 [1089] Biogr. Universelle.

 [1090] P. 259.

|Rivinus.|

24. Rivinus, in his Introductio in Rem Herbariam, Leipsic, 1690, avery short performance, struck into a new path, which has modified toa great degree the systems of later botanists. Cæsalpin and Morisonhad looked mainly to the fruit as the basis of classification; Rivinusadded the flower, and laid down as a fundamental rule that all plantswhich resemble each other both in the flower and in the fruit ought tobear the same generic name.[1091] In some pages of this Introduction,we certainly find the basis of the Critica Botanica of Linnæus.[1092]Rivinus thinks the arrangement of Cæsalpin the best, and that Morisonhas only spoiled what he took; of Ray he speaks in terms of eulogy,but blames some part of his method. His own is primarily founded onthe flower, and thus he forms eighteen classes, which, by consideringthe differences of the fruits, he subdivides into ninety-one genera.The specific distinctions he founded on the general habit andappearance of the plant. His method is more thoroughly artificial, asopposed to natural; that is, more established on a single principle,which often brings heterogeneous plants and families together, thanthat of any of his predecessors; for even Ray had kept the distinctionof trees from shrubs and herbs, conceiving it to be founded in theirnatural fructification. Rivinus set aside wholly this leadingdivision. Yet he had not been able to reduce all plants to his method,and admitted several anomalous divisions.[1093]

 [1091] Biogr. Univ.

 [1092] Id.

 [1093] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, p. 56.

|Tournefort.|

25. The merit of establishing an uniform and consistent system wasreserved for Tournefort. His Elémens de la Botanique appeared in1694; the Latin translation, Institutiones Rei Herbariæ, in 1700.Tournefort, like Rivinus, took the flower, or corolla, as the basis ofhis system; and the varieties in the structure, rather than number, ofthe petals furnish him with his classes. The genera--for, like otherbotanists before Linnæus, he has no intermediate division--areestablished by the flower and fruit conjointly, or now and then byless essential differences, for he held it better to constitute newgenera than, as others had done, to have anomalous species. Theaccessory parts of a plant are allowed to supply specificdistinctions. But Tournefort divides vegetables, according to oldprejudice--which it is surprising that, after the precedent of Rivinusto the contrary, he should have regarded--into herbs and trees; andthus he has twenty-two classes. Simple flowers, monopetalous orpolypetalous, form eleven of these; composite flowers, three; theapetalous, one; the cryptogamous, or those without flower or fruit,make another class; shrubs or _suffrutices_ are placed in theseventeenth; and trees, in five more, are similarly distributed,according to their floral characters.[1094] Sprengel extols much ofthe system of Tournefort, though he disapproves of the selection of apart so often wanting as the corolla for the sole basis; nor can itsvarious forms be comprised in Tournefort’s classes. His orders arewell marked, according to the same author; but he multiplied both hisgenera and species too much, and paid too little attention to thestamina. His method was less repugnant to natural affinities, and moreconvenient in practice than any which had come since Lobel. Most ofTournefort’s generic distinctions were preserved by Linnæus, and somewhich had been abrogated without sufficient reason, have since beenrestored.[1095] Ray opposed the system of Tournefort, but some havethought that in his later works he came nearer to it, so as to becalled magis corollista quam fructista.[1096] This, however, is notacknowledged by Pulteney, who has paid great attention to Ray’swritings.

 [1094] Biogr. Univ. Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 34. Sprengel, p. 64.

 [1095] Biogr. Universelle.

 [1096] Id.

|Vegetable physiology.|

|Grew.|

26. The classification and description of plants constitute whatgenerally is called botany. But these began now to be studied inconnection with the anatomy and physiology of the vegetable world; aphrase, not merely analogical, because as strictly applicable as toanimals, but which had never been employed before the middle of theseventeenth century. This interesting science is almost wholly due totwo men, Grew and Malpighi. Grew first directed his thoughts towardsthe anatomy of plants in 1664, in consequence of reading several booksof animal anatomy, which suggested to him that plants, being the worksof the same Author, would probably show similar contrivances. Some hadintroduced observations of this nature, as Highmore, Sharrock, andHooke, but only collaterally; so that the systematic treatment of thesubject, following the plant from the seed, was left quite open forhimself. In 1670, he presented the first book of his work to the RoyalSociety, who next year ordered it to be printed. It was laid beforethe society in print, December, 1671; and on the same day a manuscriptby Malpighi on the same subject was read. They went on from this timewith equal steps; Malpighi, however, having caused Grew’s book to betranslated for his own use. Grew speaks very honourably of Malpighi,and without claiming more than the statement of facts permitshim.[1097]

 [1097] Pulteney. Chalmers. Biogr. Univ. Sprengel calls Grew’s book opus absolutum et immortale.

|His Anatomy of Plants.|

27. The first book of his Anatomy of Plants, which is the title givento three separate works, when published collectively in 1682, containsthe whole of his physiological theory, which is developed at length inthose that follow. The nature of vegetation and its processes seem tohave been unknown when he began; save that common observation, and themore accurate experience of gardeners and others, must have collectedthe obvious truths of vegetable anatomy. He does not quote Cæsalpin,and may have been unacquainted with his writings. No man, perhaps, whocreated a science, has carried it farther than Grew; he is so closeand diligent in his observations, making use of the microscope, thatcomparatively few discoveries of great importance have been made inthe mere anatomy of plants since his time;[1098] though some of hisopinions are latterly disputed by Mirbel and others of a new botanicalschool.

 [1098] Biogr. Univ.

|He discovers the sexual system.|

28. The great discovery ascribed to Grew is of the sexual system inplants. He speaks thus of what he calls the attire, though rather, Ithink, in obscure terms:--“The primary and chief use of the attire issuch as hath respect to the plant itself, and so appears to be verygreat and necessary. Because even those plants which have no flower orfoliature, are yet some way or other attired, either with theseminiform or the floral attire. So that it seems to perform itsservice to the seeds as the foliature to the fruit. In discourse,hereof, with our learned Savilian professor, Sir Thomas Millington, hetold me he conceived that the attire doth serve, as the male, for thegeneration of the seed. I immediately replied that I was of the sameopinion, and gave him some reasons for it, and answered someobjections which might oppose them. But withal, in regard every plantis αρρενοθηλυς [arrenothêlus], or male and female, that I was also ofopinion that it serveth for the separation of some parts as well asthe affusion of others.”[1099] He proceeds to explain his notion ofvegetable impregnation. It is singular that he should suppose allplants to be hermaphrodite, and this shows he could not haverecollected what had long been known, as to the palm, or the passagesin Cæsalpin relative to the subject.

 [1099] Book iv., ch. 1. He had hinted at some “primary and private use of the attire,” in book i., ch. 5.

|Camerarius confirms this.|

29. Ray admitted Grew’s opinion cautiously at first: Nos utverisimilem tantum admittimus. But in his Sylloge Stirpium, 1694, hefully accedes to it. The real establishment of the sexual theory,however, is due to Camerarius, professor of botany at Tubingen, whoseletter on that subject, published 1694, in the work of another, didmuch to spread the theory over Europe. His experiments, indeed, werenecessary to confirm what Grew had rather hazarded as a conjecturethan brought to a test; and he showed that flowers deprived of theirstamina do not produce seeds capable of continuing the species.[1100]Woodward, in the Philosophical Transactions, illustrated the nutritionof plants, by putting sprigs of vegetables in phials filled withwater, and after some time determining the weight they had gained andthe quantity they had imbibed.[1101] These experiments had been madeby Van Helmont, who had inferred from them that water is convertibleinto solid matter.[1102]

 [1100] Sprengel. Biogr. Univ. Pulteney, p. 338.

 [1101] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 58.

 [1102] Thomson’s Hist. of Chemistry.

|Predecessors of Grew.|

|Malpighi.|

30. It is just to observe that some had preceded Grew in vegetablephysiology. Aromatari, in a letter of only four pages, published atVenice in 1625, on the generation of plants from seeds, which wasreprinted in the Philosophical Transactions, showed the analogybetween grains and eggs, each containing a minute organised embryo,which employs the substances inclosing it for its own development.Aromatari has also understood the use of the cotyledons.[1103] Brown,in his Inquiry into Vulgar Errors, has remarks on the budding ofplants, and on the quinary number they affect in their flower. KenelmDigby, according to Sprengel, first explained the necessity invegetation for oxygen, or vital air, which had lately been discoveredby Bathurst. Hooke carried the discoveries hitherto made in vegetableanatomy much farther in his Micrographia. Sharrock and Listercontributed some knowledge, but they were rather later than Grew. Noneof these deserve such a place as Malpighi, who, says Sprengel, was notinferior to Grew in acuteness, though, probably, through someillusions of prejudice, he has not so well understood and explainedmany things. But the structure and growth of seeds he has explainedbetter, and Grew seems to have followed him. His book is also betterarranged and more concise.[1104] The Dutch did much to enlargebotanical science. The Hortus Indicus Malabaricus of Rheede, who hadbeen a governor in India, was published at his own expense in twelvevolumes, the first appearing in 1686; it contains an immense number ofnew plants.[1105] The Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius was collectedin the seventeenth century, though not published till 1741.[1106]Several botanical gardens were formed in different countries; amongothers that of Chelsea was opened in 1686.[1107]

 [1103] Sprengel. Biogr. Univ.

 [1104] Sprengel, p. 15.

 [1105] Biogr. Univ. The date of the first volume is given erroneously in the B. U.

 [1106] Id.

 [1107] Sprengel. Pulteney.

|Early notions of geology.|

31. It was impossible that men of inquiring tempers should not havebeen led to reflect on those remarkable phenomena of the earth’svisible structure, which being in course of time accurately registeredand arranged, have become the basis of that noble science, the boastof our age, geology. The first thing which must strike the eyes of themerest clown, and set the philosopher thinking, is the irregularity ofthe surface of our globe; the more this is observed, the more signs ofviolent disruption, and of a prior state of comparative uniformityappear. Some, indeed, of whom Ray seems to have been one,[1108] wereso much impressed by the theory of final causes that, perceiving thefitness of the present earth for its inhabitants, they thought itmight have been created in such a state of physical ruin. But thecontrary inference is almost irresistible. A still more forcibleargument for great revolutions in the history of the earth is drawnfrom a second phenomenon of very general occurrence, the marine andother fossil relics of organised beings, which are dug up in stratafar remote from the places where these bodies could now exist. It wascommon to account for them by the Mosaic deluge. But the depth atwhich they are found was incompatible with this hypothesis. Othersfancied them to be not really organised, but sports of nature, as theywere called, the casual resemblances of shells and fishes in stone.The Italians took the lead in speculating on these problems; but theycould only arrive now and then at a happier conjecture than usual, anddo not seem to have planned any scheme of explaining the generalstructure of the earth.[1109] The Mundus Subterraneus of AthanasiusKircher, famous for the variety and originality of his erudition,contains probably the geology of his age, or at least his own. It waspublished in 1662. Ten out of twelve books relate to the surface orthe interior of the earth, and to various terrene productions; theremaining two to alchemy and other arts connected with mineralogy.Kircher seems to have collected a great deal of geographicaland geological knowledge. In England, the spirit of observation was sostrong after the establishment of the Royal Society, that thePhilosophical Transactions, in this period, contain a considerablenumber of geognostic papers, and the genius of theory was aroused,though not at first in his happiest mood.[1110]

 [1108] See Ray’s Three Physico-Theological Discourses on the Creation, Deluge, and final Conflagration. 1692.

 [1109] Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i., p. 25.

 [1110] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society.

|Burnet’s Theory of Earth.|

|Other geologists.|

32. Thomas Burnet, master of the Charterhouse, a man fearless andsomewhat rash, with more imagination than philosophy, but ingeniousand eloquent, published in 1694 his Theoria Telluris Sacra, which heafterwards translated into English. The primary question for the earlygeologists had always been how to reconcile the phenomena with whichthey were acquainted to the Mosaic narratives of the creation anddeluge. Every one was satisfied that his own theory was the best; butin every case it has hitherto proved, whatever may take place infuture, that the proposed scheme has neither kept to the letter ofScripture, nor to the legitimate deductions of philosophy. Burnetgives the reins to his imagination more than any other writer on thatwhich, if not argued upon by inductive reasoning, must be the dream ofone man, little better in reality, though it may be more amusing, thanthe dream of another. He seems to be eminently ignorant of geologicalfacts, and has hardly ever recourse to them as evidence. Andaccordingly, though his book drew some attention as an ingeniousromance, it does not appear that he made a single disciple. Whistonopposed Burnet’s theory, but with one not less unfounded, nor withless ignorance of all that required to be known. Hooke, Lister, Ray,and Woodward came to the subject with more philosophical minds, andwith a better insight into the real phenomena. Hooke seems to havedisplayed his usual sagacity in conjecture; he saw that the commontheory of explaining marine fossils by the Mosaic deluge would notsuffice, and perceived that, at some time or other, a part of theearth’s crust must have been elevated and another part depressed bysome subterraneous power. Lister was aware of the continuity ofcertain strata over large districts, and proposed the construction ofgeological maps. Woodward had a still more extensive knowledge ofstratified rocks; he was in a manner the founder of scientificmineralogy in England, but his geological theory was not lesschimerical than those of his contemporaries.[1111] It was firstpublished in the Philosophical Transactions for 1695.[1112]

 [1111] Lyell, p. 31.

 [1112] Thomson, p. 207.

|Protogæa of Leibnitz.|

33. The Protogæa of Leibnitz appears, in felicity of conjecture andminute attention to facts, far above any of these. But this shorttract was only published in 1749, and on reading it, I have found anintimation that it was not written within the seventeenth century. YetI cannot refrain from mentioning that his hypothesis supposes thegradual cooling of the earth from igneous fusion; the formation of avast body of water to cover the surface, a part of his theory but illestablished, and apparently the weakest of the whole; the subsidenceof the lower parts of the earth, which he takes to have been once onthe level of the highest mountains, by the breaking in of vaultedcaverns within its bosom;[1113] the deposition of sedimentary stratafrom inundations, their induration, and the subsequent covering ofthese by other strata through fresh inundations; with many othernotions which have been gradually matured and rectified in the processof the science.[1114] No one can read the Protogæa without perceivingthat of all the early geologists, or indeed of all down to a time notvery remote, Leibnitz came nearest to the theories which are mostreceived in the English school at this day. It is evident that if theliteral interpretation of Genesis, by a period of six natural days,had not restrained him, he would have gone much farther in his viewsof the progressive revolutions of the earth.[1115] Leibnitz had madevery minute inquiries, for his age, into fossil species, and was awareof the main facts which form the basis of modern geology.[1116]

 [1113] Sect. 21. He admits also a partial elevation by intumescence, but says, ut vastissimæ Alpes ex solida jam terra eruptione surrexerint, minus consentaneum puto. Scimus tamen et in illis deprehendi reliquias maris. Cum ergo alterutrum factum oporteat, credibilius multo arbitror defluxisse aquas spontaneo nisu, quam ingentem terrarum partem incredibili violentia tam alte ascendisse. Sect. 22.

 [1114] Facies teneri adhuc orbis sæpius novata est; donec quiescentibus causis atque æquilibratis, consistentior emergeret status rerum. Unde jam duplex origo intelligitur firmorum corporum; una cum ignis fusione refrigescerent, altera cum reconcrescerent ex solutione aquarum. Neque igitur putandum est _lapides ex sola esse fusione_. Id enim potissimum de prima tantum massa ex terræ basi accipio; Nec dubito, postea materiam liquidam in superficie telluris procurrentem, quiete mox reddita, ex ramentis subactis ingentem materiæ vim deposuisse, quorum alia varias terræ species formarunt, alia in saxa induruere, e quibus strata diversa sibi super imposita diversas præcipitationum vices atque intervalla testantur. Sect. 4.

 This he calls the incunabula of the world, and the basis of a new science, which might be denominated “naturalis geographia.” But wisely adds, licet conspirent vestigia veteris mundi in præsenti facie rerum, tamen rectius omnia definient posteri, ubi curiositas eo processerit, ut per rejar regiones procurrentia soli genera et strata describant. Sect. 5.

 [1115] See sect. 21, et alibi.

 [1116] Sect. 24, et usque ad finem libri.

 SECT. III.

 ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.

34. Portal begins the history of this period, which occupies more than800 pages of his voluminous work, by announcing it as the epoch mostfavourable to anatomy: in less than fifty years the science put on anew countenance; nature is interrogated, every part of the body isexamined with an observing spirit; the mutual intercourse of nationsdiffuses the light on every side; a number of great men appear, whosegenius and industry excite our admiration.[1117] But for this veryreason I must, in these concluding pages, glide over a subject ratherforeign to my own studies and to those of the generality of my readerswith a very brief enumeration of names.

 [1117] Hist. de l’Anatomie, vol. iii, p. 1.

|Circulation of blood established.|

35. The Harveian theory gained ground, though obstinate prejudicegave way but slowly. It was confirmed by the experiment of transfusingblood, tried on dogs, at the instance of Sir Christopher Wren, in1657, and repeated by Lower in 1661.[1118] Malpighi in 1661, andLeeuwenhoek in 1690, by means of their microscopes, demonstrated thecirculation of the blood in the smaller vessels, and rendered visiblethe anastomoses of the arteries and veins, upon which the theorydepended.[1119] From this time it seems to have been out of doubt.Pecquet’s discovery of the thoracic duct, or rather of its uses, as areservoir of the chyle from which the blood is elaborated, for thecanal itself had been known to Eustachius, stands next to that ofHarvey, which would have thrown less light on physiology without it,and like his, was perseveringly opposed.[1120]

 [1118] Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv., p. 120.

 [1119] Id. p. 126, 142.

 [1120] Portal. Sprengel.

|Willis-Vieussens.|

36. Willis, a physician at Oxford, is called by Portal, who thinks allmankind inferior to anatomists, one of the greatest geniuses that everlived; his bold systems have given him a distinguished place amongphysiologers.[1121] His Anatomy of the Brain, in which, however, as inhis other works, he was much assisted by an intimate friend, andanatomist of the first character, Lower, is, according to the samewriter, a masterpiece of imagination and labour. He made manydiscoveries in the structure of the brain, and has traced the nervesfrom it far better than his predecessors, who had in general veryobscure ideas of their course. Sprengel says that Willis is the firstwho has assigned a peculiar mental function to each of the differentparts of the brain; forgetting, as it seems, that this hypothesis, thebasis of modern phrenology, had been generally received, as Iunderstand his own account, in the sixteenth century.[1122] Vieussensof Montpelier carried on the discoveries in the anatomy of the nerves,in his Neurographia Universalis, 1684; tracing those arising from thespinal marrow which Willis had not done, and following the minuteramifications of those that are spread over the skin.[1123]

 [1121] P. 88. Biogr. Univ.

 [1122] Sprengel, p. 250. See vol. iii., p. 204.

 [1123] Portal, vol. iv., p. 5. Sprengel, p. 256, Biogr. Univ.

|Malpighi.|

|Other anatomists.|

37. Malpighi was the first who employed good microscopes in anatomy,and thus revealed the secrets, we may say, of an invisible world,which Leeuwenhoek afterwards, probably using still better instruments,explored with surprising success. To Malpighi anatomists owe theirknowledge of the structure of the lungs.[1124] Graaf has overthrownmany errors, and suggested many truths in the economy ofgeneration.[1125] Malpighi prosecuted this inquiry with hismicroscope, and first traced the progress of the egg duringincubation. But the theory of evolution, as it is called, proposed byHarvey, and supported by Malpighi, received a shock by Leeuwenhoek’sor Hartsoeker’s discovery of spermatic animalcules, which apparentlyopened a new view of reproduction. The hypothesis they suggestedbecame very prevalent for the rest of the seventeenth century, thoughit is said to have been shaken early in the next.[1126] Borelliapplied mathematical principles to muscular movements in his treatiseDe Motu Animalium. Though he is a better mathematician than anatomist,he produces many interesting facts, the mechanical laws are rightlyapplied, and his method is clear and consequent.[1127] Duverney, inhis Treatise on Hearing, in 1683, his only work, obtained aconsiderable reputation; it threw light on many parts of a delicateorgan, which, by their minuteness, had long baffled theanatomist.[1128] In Mayow’s Treatise on Respiration, published inLondon, 1668, we find the necessity of oxygen to that function laiddown; but this portion of the atmosphere had been discovered byBathurst and Henshaw in 1654, and Hooke had shown by experiment thatanimals die when the air is deprived of it.[1129] Ruysch, a Dutchphysician, perfected the art of injecting anatomical preparations,hardly known before, and thus conferred an inestimable benefit on thescience. He possessed a celebrated cabinet of natural history.[1130]

 [1124] Portal, iii., 120. Sprengel, p. 578.

 [1125] Portal, iii., 219. Sprengel, p. 303.

 [1126] Sprengel, p. 309.

 [1127] Portal, iii., 246. Biogr. Univ.

 [1128] Portal, p. 464. Sprengel, p. 288.

 [1129] Portal, p. 176, 181.

 [1130] Id. p. 259. Biogr. Univ.

|Medical theories.|

38. The chemical theory of medicine which had descended fromParacelsus through Van Helmont, was propagated chiefly by Sylvius, aphysician of Holland, who is reckoned the founder of what was calledthe chemiatric school. His works were printed at Amsterdam, in 1679,but he had promulgated his theory from the middle of the century. Hisleading principle was that a perpetual fermentation goes on in thehuman body, from the deranged action of which diseases proceed; mostof them from excess of acidity, though a few are of alkaline origin.“He degraded the physician,” says Sprengel, “to the level of adistiller or a brewer.”[1131] This writer is very severe on thechemiatric school, one of their offences in his eyes being theirrecommendation of tea; “the cupidity of Dutch merchants conspiringwith their medical theories.” It must be owned that when we find themprescribing also a copious use of tobacco, it looks as if the trade ofthe doctor went hand-in-hand with those of his patients. Willis, inEngland, was a partisan of the chemiatrics,[1132] and they had a greatinfluence in Germany; though in France the attachment of mostphysicians to the Hippocratic and Galenic methods, which brought uponthem so many imputations of pedantry, was little abated. A secondschool of medicine, which superseded this, is called theiatro-mathematical. This seems to have arisen in Italy. Borelli’sapplication of mechanical principles to the muscles has been mentionedabove. These physicians sought to explain everything by statical andhydraulic laws; they were, therefore, led to study anatomy, since itwas only by an accurate knowledge of all the parts that they couldapply their mathematics. John Bernouilli even taught them to employthe differential calculus in explaining the bodily functions.[1133]But this school seems to have had the same leading defect as thechemiatric; it forgot the peculiarity of the laws of organisation andlife which often render those of inert matter inapplicable. Pitcairnand Boerhaave were leaders of the iatro-mathematicians; and Mead wasreckoned the last of its distinguished patrons.[1134] Meantime, athird school of medicine grew up, denominated the empirical; a name tobe used in a good sense, as denoting their regard to observation andexperience, or the Baconian principles of philosophy. Sydenham was thefirst of these in England; but they gradually prevailed to theexclusion of all systematic theory. The discovery of severalmedicines, especially the Peruvian bark, which was first used in Spainabout 1640, and in England about 1654, contributed to the success ofthe empirical physicians, since the efficacy of some of these couldnot be explained on the hypotheses hitherto prevalent.[1135]

 [1131] Vol. v., p. 59. Biogr. Univ.

 [1132] Sprengel, p. 73.

 [1133] Sprengel, p. 159.

 [1134] Id. p. 182. See Biographie Universelle, art. Boerhaave, for a general criticism of the iatro-mathematicians.

 [1135] Sprengel, p. 413.

 SECT. IV.

 ON ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

|Polyglott of Walton.|

39. The famous Polyglott of Brian Walton was published in 1657; butfew copies appear to have been sold before the restoration ofCharles II., in 1660, since those are very scarce which contain in thepreface the praise of Cromwell for having facilitated and patronisedthe undertaking; praise replaced in the change of times by a loyaleulogy on the king. This Polyglott is in nine languages; though no onebook of the Bible is printed in so many. Walton’s Prolegomena are insixteen chapters or dissertations. His learning, perhaps, was greaterthan his critical acuteness or good sense; such, at least, is theopinion of Simon and Le Long. The former, in a long examination ofWalton’s Prolegomena, treats him with all the superiority of a man whopossessed both. Walton was assailed by some bigots at home foracknowledging various readings in the Scriptures, and for denying theauthority of the vowel punctuation. His Polyglott is not reckoned somagnificent as the Parisian edition of Le Long; but it is fuller andmore convenient.[1136] Edmund Castell, the coadjutor of Walton in thiswork, published his Lexicon Heptaglotton in 1669, upon which he hadconsumed eighteen years and the whole of his substance. This isfrequently sold together with the Polyglott.

 [1136] Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 541. Chalmers. Biogr. Britan. Biogr. Univ. Brunet. Man. du Libraire.

|Hottinger.|

|Spencer.|

|Bochart.|

40. Hottinger of Zurich, by a number of works on the Easternlanguages, and especially by the Bibliotheca Orientalis, in 1658,established a reputation which these books no longer retain since thewhole field of Oriental literature has been more fully explored.Spencer, in a treatise of great erudition, De Legibus Hebræorum, 1685,gave some offence by the suggestion that several of the Mosaicinstitutions were borrowed from the Egyptian, though the general scopeof the Jewish law was in opposition to the idolatrous practices of theneighbouring nations. The vast learning of Bochart expanded itselfover Oriental antiquity, especially that of which the Hebrew nationand language is the central point; but his etymological conjectureshave long since been set aside, and he has not, in other respects,escaped the fate of the older Orientalists.

|Poco*cke.|

|D’Herbelot.|

41. The great services of Poco*cke to Arabic literature, which hadcommenced in the earlier part of the century, were extended to thepresent. His edition and translation of the Annals of Eutychius in1658, that of the History of Abulfaragius in 1663, with many otherworks of a similar nature, bear witness to his industry; noEnglishman, probably, has ever contributed so much to that province oflearning.[1137] A fine edition of the Koran, and still esteemed thebest, was due to Marracci, professor of Arabic in the Sapienza oruniversity of Rome, and published at the expense of CardinalBarbadigo, in 1698.[1138] But France had an Orientalist of the mostextensive learning, in D’Herbelot, whose Bibliothèque Orientale mustbe considered as making an epoch in this literature. It was publishedin 1697, after his death, by Galland, who had also some share inarranging the materials. This work, it has been said, is for theseventeenth century what the History of the Huns, by De Guignes, isfor the eighteenth; with this difference, that D’Herbelot opened theroad, and has often been copied by his successor.[1139]

 [1137] Chalmers. Biogr. Univ.

 [1138] Tiraboschi, xi., 398.

 [1139] Biographie Universelle.

|Hyde.|

42. Hyde, in his Religionis Persarum Historia, published in 1700, wasthe first who illustrated in a systematic manner the religion ofZoroaster, which he always represents in a favourable manner. Thevariety and novelty of its contents gave this book a credit which, insome degree, it preserves; but Hyde was ignorant of the ancientlanguage of Persia, and is said to have been often misled byMohammedan authorities.[1140] The vast increase of Orientalinformation in modern times, as has been intimated above, renders itdifficult for any work of the seventeenth century to keep its ground.In their own times, the writings of Kircher on China, and still morethose of Ludolph on Abyssinia, which were founded on his own knowledgeof the country, claimed a respectable place in Oriental learning. Itis remarkable that very little was yet known of the Indian languages,though grammars existed of the Tamul, and perhaps some others, beforethe close of the seventeenth century.[1141]

 [1140] Id.

 [1141] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Cultur, v., 269.

 SECT. V.

 ON GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

|Maps of the Sansons.|

43. The progress of geographical science long continued to be slow. Ifwe compare the map of the world in 1651, by Nicholas Sanson, esteemedon all sides the best geographer of his age, with one by his son in1692, the variances will not appear, perhaps, so considerable as wemight have expected. Yet some improvement may be detected bythe eye. Thus, the Caspian sea has assumed its longer diameter fromnorth to south, contrary to the old map. But the sea of Aral is stillwanting. The coasts of New Holland, except to the east, are tolerablylaid down, and Corea is a peninsula, instead of an island. Cambalu,the imaginary capital of Tartary, has disappeared;[1142] but a vastlake is placed in the centre of that region; the Altai range iscarried far too much to the north, and the name of Siberia seemsunknown. Africa and America have nearly the same outline as before; inthe former, the empire of Monomotopa stretches to join that ofAbyssinia in about the 12th degree of south latitude; and the Nilestill issues, as in all the old maps, from a lake Zayre, in nearly thesame parallel. The coasts of Europe, and especially of Scandinavia,are a little more accurate. The Sanson family, of whom several werepublishers of maps, did not take pains enough to improve what theirfather had executed, though they might have had material helps fromthe astronomical observations which were now continually made indifferent parts of the world.

 [1142] The Cambalu of Marco Polo is probably Pekin; but the geographers frequently placed this capital of Cathay north of the wall of China.

|De Lisle’s map of the world.|

44. Such was the state of geography when, in 1699, De Lisle, the realfounder of the science, at the age of twenty-four, published his mapof the world. He had been guided by the observations, and worked underthe directions of Cassini, whose tables of the emersion of Jupiter’ssatellites, calculated for the meridian of Bologna in 1668, and, withmuch improvement, for that of Paris in 1693, had prepared the way forthe perfection of geography. The latitudes of different regions hadbeen tolerably ascertained by observation; but no good method ofdetermining the longitude had been known before this application ofGalileo’s great discovery. It is evident that the appearance of one ofthose satellites at Paris being determined by the tables to a preciseinstant, the means were given to find the longitudinal distance ofother places by observing the difference of time; and thus a greatnumber of observations having gradually been made, a basis was laidfor an accurate delineation of the surface of the globe. The previousstate of geography and the imperfect knowledge which the mereexperience of navigators could furnish, may be judged by the fact thatthe Mediterranean sea was set with an excess of 300 leagues in length,being more than one third of the whole. De Lisle reduced it within itsbounds, and cut off at the same time 500 leagues from the longitude ofEastern Asia. This was the commencement of the geographical labours ofDe Lisle, which reformed, in the first part of the eighteenth century,not only the general outline of the world, but the minuter relationsof various countries. His maps amount to more than one hundredsheets.[1143]

 [1143] Eloge de De Lisle, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi., p. 253. Eloge de Cassini, in vol. v., p. 328. Biogr. Universelle.

|Voyages and travels.|

45. The books of travels, in the last fifty years of the seventeenthcentury, were far more numerous and more valuable than in any earlierperiod, but we have no space for more than a few names. GemelliCarreri, a Neapolitan, is the first who claims to have written anaccount of his own travels round the world, describing Asia andAmerica with much detail. His Giro del Mondo was published in 1699.Carreri has been strongly suspected of fabrication, and even of havingnever seen the countries which he describes; but his character, I knownot with what justice, has been latterly vindicated.[1144] The Frenchjustly boast the excellent travels of Chardin, Bernier, Thevenot, andTavernier in the East; the account of the Indian archipelago and ofChina by Nieuhoff, employed in a Dutch embassy to the latter empire,is said to have been interpolated by the editors, though he was anaccurate and faithful observer.[1145] Several other relations ofvoyages were published in Holland, some of which can only be had inthe native language. In English there were not many of highreputation: Dampier’s Voyage round the World, the first edition ofwhich was in 1697, is better known than any which I can call to mind.

 [1144] Tiraboschi, xi., 86. Selfi, ix., 442.

 [1145] Biogr. Univ.

|Historians.|

|De Solis.|

46. The general characteristics of historians in this period areneither a luminous philosophy, nor a rigorous examination of evidence.But, as before, we mention only a few names in this extensive provinceof literature. The History of the Conquest of Mexico by Antonio DeSolis, is “the last good work,” says Sismondi, perhaps too severely,“that Spain has produced; the last where purity of taste, simplicity,and truth are preserved; the imagination, of which the author hadgiven so many proofs, does not appear.”[1146] Bouterwek is not lessfavourable; but Robertson, who holds De Solis rather cheap as anhistorian, does not fail to censure even his style.

 [1146] Littérature du Midi, iv., 101.

|Memoirs of De Retz.|

47. The French have some authors of history who, by their elegance andperspicuity, might deserve notice; such as St. Real, Father D’Orleans,and even Varillas, proverbially discredited as he is for want ofveracity. The Memoirs of Cardinal De Retz rise above these; theiranimated style, their excellent portraitures of character, their acuteand brilliant remarks, distinguish their pages, as much as the similarqualities did their author. “They are written,” says Voltaire, “withan air of greatness, an impetuosity and an inequality which are theimage of his life; his expression, sometimes incorrect, oftennegligent, but almost always original, recalls continually to hisreaders what has been so frequently said of Cæsar’s Commentaries, thathe wrote with the same spirit that he carried on his wars.”[1147] TheMemoirs of Grammont, by Antony Hamilton, scarcely challenge a place ashistorical, but we are now looking more at the style than theintrinsic importance of books. Every one is aware of the peculiarfelicity and fascinating gaiety which they display.

 [1147] Biogr. Univ., whence I take the quotation.

|Bossuet on universal history.|

48. The Discourse of Bossuet on Universal History is perhaps thegreatest effort of his wonderful genius. Every preceding abridgment ofso immense a subject had been superficial and dry. He first irradiatedthe entire annals of antiquity down to the age of Charlemagne withflashes of light that reveal an unity and coherence which had beenlost in their magnitude and obscurity. It is not perhaps an unfairobjection that, in a history calling itself that of all mankind, theJewish people have obtained a disproportionate regard; and it might bealmost as reasonable, on religious grounds, to give Palestine a largerspace in the map of the world, as, on a like pretext, to make thescale of the Jewish history so much larger than that of the rest ofthe human race. The plan of Bossuet has at least divided his book intotwo rather heterogeneous portions. But his conceptions of Greek, andstill more of Roman history, are generally magnificent; profound inphilosophy, with an outline firm and sufficiently exact, nevercondescending to trivial remarks or petty details; above all, writtenin that close and nervous style which no one certainly in the Frenchlanguage has ever surpassed. It is evident that Montesquieu in all hiswritings, but especially in the Grandeur and Decadence des Romains,had the Discourse of Bossuet before his eyes; he is more acute,sometimes, and ingenious, and has reflected longer on particulartopics of inquiry, but he wants the simple majesty, the comprehensiveeagle-like glance of the illustrious prelate.

|English historical works.|

|Burnet.|

49. Though we fell short in England of the historical reputation whichthe first part of the century might entitle us to claim, this periodmay be reckoned that in which a critical attention to truth, sometimesrather too minute, but always praiseworthy, began to be characteristicof our researches into fact. The only book that I shall mention isBurnet’s History of the Reformation, written in a better style thanthose who know Burnet by his later and more negligent work are apt toconceive, and which has the signal merit of having been the first, asfar as I remember, which is fortified by a large appendix ofdocuments. This, though frequent in Latin, had not been usual in themodern languages. It became gradually very frequent and almostindispensable in historical writings, where the materials had anypeculiar originality.

 * * * * *

|General character of 17th century.|

50. The change in the spirit of literature and of the public mind ingeneral, which had with gradual and never receding steps been comingforward in the seventeenth century, but especially in the latter partof it, has been so frequently pointed out to the readers of this andthe last volume, that I shall only quote an observation of Bayle. “Ibelieve,” he says, “that the sixteenth century produced a greaternumber of learned men than the seventeenth; and yet the former ofthese ages was far from being as enlightened as the latter. During thereign of criticism and philology, we saw in all Europe many prodigiesof erudition. Since the study of the new philosophy and that of livinglanguages has introduced a different taste, we have ceased to beholdthis vast and deep learning. But in return there is diffused throughthe republic of letters a more subtle understanding and a moreexquisite discernment; men are now less learned but more able.”[1148]The volumes which are now submitted to the public contain sufficientevidence of this intellectual progress both in philosophy and inpolite literature.

 [1148] Dictionnaire de Bayle, art. Aconce, note D.

|Conclusion.|

51. I here terminate a work, which, it is hardly necessary to say, hasfurnished the occupation of not very few years, and which, for severalreasons, it is not my intention to prosecute any farther. The lengthof these volumes is already greater than I had anticipated; yet I donot perceive much that could have been retrenched without loss to apart, at least, of the literary world. For the approbation which thefirst of them has received I am grateful; for the few corrections thathave been communicated to me I am not less so; the errors anddeficiencies of which I am not specially aware may be numerous; yet Icannot affect to doubt that I have contributed something to thegeneral literature of my country, something to the honourableestimation of my own name, and to the inheritance of those, if it isfor me still to cherish that hope, to whom I have to bequeath it.

 THE END.

 _S. Cowan & Co., Strathmore Printing Works, Perth._

 INDEX.

 Page

 Aberlard, Poetry of, 17 Academies, Italian Literary, 229 Academy del Cimento, The, 831 ---- French, Established, 630 ---- Neapolitan, 112 Afra Behn, Plays of, 808 Agricola, The first Mineralogist, 227 ---- Works of, 103 Agrippa, Cornelius, 192 Augustine, Antonio, 201 Alamanni, 202 Alciati, Andrew, 201 Aldine Editions, The, 109 Aldus, Press of, 125 Algebra, Descartes on, 650 ---- Earliest Work on, 118 Alchemy, Study of, 58 Amadis de Gaul, The, 66, 152 Aminto, Passo’s, 351 Amyot, His Translations, 371 Ana, The, 820 Anatomy, Fallopius on, 397 ---- Leaders in studying, 842 Andreæ, John Valentine, 532, _and note_ Anglo-Saxon, Change of, to English, 22 Antiquaries, Society of, founded, 405 Apianus, Cosmography of, 228 Apology, Jewell’s, 272 Arabic, Rise of Study of, 399 Arcadia, Sir Philip Sydney’s, 383 ---- Character of, 383 ---- Walpole on, 383 Aretin, Leonard, 44 ---- Plays of, 211 Argensola, The Brothers, 570 Arianism in Italy, 181 Ariosto, Satires of, 203 Aristotle countenanced by Melancthon, 189 ---- Veneration shown for, 189 Arithmetic of Sacro Bosco, 56 Arnauld on true and false ideas, 725 Art of Rhetoric, Cox’s, 219 Ascham, His Character of Cambridge, 168 ---- Writings of, 372 Astronomy in Middle Ages, 58 Augsburg, Confession of, 173 ---- Diet of, 259 Averroes on the Soul, 93 Avis aux Refugiéz, 772 Ayala, Balthazar, on War, 315

 Bacon, Lord, 468 ---- Conception of his Philosophy, 469 ---- Essays of, 293, 529 ---- his fame on the Continent, 489 ---- his Instauratio Magna, 469 ---- ---- ---- ---- Analysis of, 469 ---- ignorant of Mathematics, 488 ---- Nature of his Philosophy, 472 ---- Novum Organum, 478 ---- Plan of Philosophy, 469 Bacon, Roger, 57 Balbi, Catholicon of, 40 Baldi, Sonnets of, 319 Ballads, Early Spanish, 59 Balzac, Letters of, 628 Bandello, Novels of, 380 Barbarism, A relapse into, 38 Barbarus, Hermolaus, 111 Barclay, his works, 642 Barlæus, Gaspar, 589 Barrow, Sermons of, 703 Basson, Sebastian, 463 Bath, Adelard of, 56 Bayle on the Comet, 819 ---- his Dictionary, 819 ---- Philosophical Commentary of, 700 Beaumont, Fletcher and, 611 Bellarmin, Works of, 273 Bellenden, de Statu, 534 Bello Francesco, 113 Belon, Zoology of, 394 Belphegor, Machiavel’s, 215 Bembo, Care of, 159 ---- Life of, 217 ---- Works of, 159, 201 Berigard, Claude, 463 Benserade, Poems of, 781 Bentley, Richard, the Critic, 682 Berchonius, 59 Beza, Works of, 27 Bible, Cranmer’s, 187 ---- First printed, 76 ---- Latin Versions of the, 137 ---- Mazarin, 77 ---- The Authorised Version, 457 Bibles, Early English, 187 Block-books, 75 Blood, Circulation of the, discovered, 665 Boccalini, Trajan, 624 Bodin, compared with Aristotle and Machiavel, 310 Bodleian, Foundation of the, 674 Boehm, Jacob, 464 Boethius, his Consolation of Philosophy, 1 ---- Poem on, 13 Boiardo, Works of, 112 Boileau, Works of, 780 Bookselling, Rise of, 121 ---- The Universities and, 123 Books, Early, price and form of, 122 ---- Number of, printed at close of the Fourteenth Century, 120 ---- Price of in Middle Ages, 52 ---- Sold by printers, 121 Bossu on Epic Poems, 816 Bossuet, Exposition of Faith, 688 ---- other Works, 689 ---- Sermons of, 702 Botany, Turner’s, 395 Botero, Giovanni, 301 Boucher, Treatise of, 299 Bouhours, Works by, 813 Bourdalone, Style of, 701 Boyle, Works of, 833 Brahé, Tycho, 387 ---- System of, 387 Brandt, Sebastian, 117 Browne, Thomas, 531 ---- his Religio Medici, 531 ---- William, 581 Bruno, characteristics of his system, 285 Buchanan, de Jure Regni, 296 ---- Poetry of, 349 Buda, Royal Library at, 81 Budæus, Budé on, 115 ---- his Commentaries, 161 ---- Style of, 162 Bunyan, John, 828 Burnet, his Theory of Earth, 841 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 637 Bury, Richard of, 39 Butler, Hudibras of, 783 Byzantine Literature, 48

 Cabbala, The Jewishp, 100 Calderon, his Comedies, 593 ----- his Tragedies, 595 Calendar, Gregorian, 390 Calisto and Melibœa, Drama of, 128 Calvin, John, 177 ---- Institutes of, 177 Camoenss, The Lusiad of, 330 Cancionero General, The, 61 Cardan, Jerome, 193 ---- Discoveries of, 221 Carew, Poetry of, 584 Cartesian Theory, The, 655 Casa, Poems of, 318 Casaubon, Isaac, 248, 410 ---- Wavering of, 428, 430, _note_ Cassander, Consultation of, 265 Castalio, Sebastian, 270 Castelvetro, Ludovico, 377 Castile, Rhymes in Language of, 60 ---- The Language of, 21 Castillejo, 329 Casuistry, Schemes of, 523 Casuists, English, 527 ---- Literature of the, 521 Cathani, Labours of, 276 Catholicon, Balbi’s, 40 Cats, Father, 577 Caxton, First Works of, 79 Celio Magno, Odes of, 319 Celso Minop, 271 Cena de li Ceneri, The, 282 Century, Twelfth, Progress during, 6 Cervantes, his Don Quixote, 638 ---- Minor Novels, 640 Cesalpin, System of, 280 Ceva, Poems of, 791 Chapman, his Translation of Homer, 341 Charlemagne, Few schools before, 4 ---- Greeks under, 45 ---- Work effected by, 4 Charron, Pierre, 529 ---- on Wisdom, 529 Chaucer, Gower and, 24 Chaulieu, Poems of, 781 Cheke, Teaching of, 168 Chiabrera, Poems of, 569 ---- Style of, 569 Chillingworth, his Religion of Protestants, 436 China, Jesuits in, 401 Chivalry, Effects of, on Poetry, 64 ---- Romances of, 215 Christianismi Restitutio, The, 268, _note_ Christianity, Vindicators of, 699 Chronicle, The Saxon, 23 Chronology, Lydiat’s, 420 ---- Scaliger’s, 258 Chrysoloras, Disciples of, 49 Chrysostom, Saville’s, 412 Church, Early Learning in the, 2 ---- High, Rise of in England, 427, 435 Cicero, Editions of, 160 Ciceronianus, The, 159 ---- Scaliger on the, 160 Cid, The, 597 Citizens, Privileges of, 303 Clarendon, History of, 636 Classics, First Editions of, 231 Clergy, Discipline of the, 261 ---- Prejudices of, against profane learning, 2 ---- Use of their prejudices, 3 Codex, Chartaceus, 30 Colleges at Alcala and Louvain, 134 ---- not derived from Saracens, 9 Colonna, Vittoriap, 202 Columbus, the Anatomist, 398 Columns, Double, use of, 241 Comedies of the Restoration, 807 Comedy, First English, 214 Comenius, Popularity of, 409 Commès, Philip de, 118 Commentators, English, about 1600, 453 Commonwealths, Origin of, 303 Concord, Form of, 267 Congreve, Plays of, 807, 808 Conti, Account of the East by, 72 Controversy raised by Baius, 267 Copernican Theory, The, 386 Copernicus, Labours of, 222 Corneille, Pierre, Plays of, 597 ---- Style of, 598 Corneille, Thomas, 799 Cortesius, Paulus, 89 Costanzo, Poems of, 319 Cowley, Johnson’s Character of, 580 Crashaw and Donne, 580 Crellius, Ruanus and, 440 Cremonini, 281 Criticism in the Sixteenth Century, 375 Critics about 1600, 414 Cruquius of Ypres, 236 Cudworth, Ralph, 707 Cumberland, Richard, 747

 Daillé on the Fathers, 435 Dalgarno, George, 735 Daniel, his History of England, 635 Dante, Petrarch and, 22 De Bergerac, Novels of, 827 De Gongora, Luis, 572 ---- Style of, 572 ---- Works of, 572 De Leon, Luis, 328 De Lisle, Map of the World by, 845 De Retz, Memoirs of, 846 De Sevigné, Madame, 812 De Vega, Lope, 353 ---- Fertility of, 353 ---- Popularity of, 354 ---- Style of, 354 ---- Versification of, 354 De Villegas, Manuel Estevan, 571 Dead, Dialogues of the, 811 Decline of German Poetry, 20 Defensio Fidei Nicenæ, The, 695 Deistical Writers, 277 Delineation, Arts of, 93 Della Causa, The, 282 Delphin Editions, 680 Denham, Sir John, 579 Descartes, René, 491 ---- Attacked by Gassendi, 497 ---- Charged with Plagiarism, 505 ---- Early Life, 491 ---- his Meditations, 495 ---- his Mental Labours, 492 ---- his Paradoxes, 499 ---- his Publications, 492 ---- his Superiority, 497 ---- Merits of his Writings, 503 ---- on Free will, 503 ---- on Intuitive Truth, 501 Desportes, Poems of, 335 Deventes, College at, 54 Devotional Works in 1600, 454 Dictionary, Della Crusca, 625 Dodorus, Clusius and, 396 D’Oliva, Perez, 195 Don Quixote, 638 Don Sancho Ortiz, Analysis of, 355 Donne, Crashaw and Cowley, 580 Dramatic Mysteries, Origin of, 105 Drayton, Michael, 581 ---- His Polyolbion, 591 Dryden, Early Poems, 787 ---- Fables, 789 ---- Odes, 790 ---- Style of, 821 ---- Tragedies, 805 ---- Translations, 790 Ductor Dubitantium, Taylor’s, 745 Dunbar, Poems of, 130 Dupin on Ancient Discipline, 686 Du Vair, Works of, 371

 Earle, John, Works of, 637 Eastern Languages, Early Study of, 128 Ecclesiastical Polity, The, 289 Elizabeth, Learning under, 249 Encomium Moræ, The, 143 Encyclopædias of Middle Ages, 58 England, Reformed Tenets in, 178 England, Revival of Learning in, 3 English, Use of, 22 Equations, Cubic, Invention of, 220 Episcopius, Works of, 440 Erasmus, Adages of, 139 ---- Character of, 139 ---- Epistles of, 175 ---- First Visit to England, 116 ---- His Controversy with Luther, 174 ---- Jealousy of, 139 ---- Quotations from, 140 ---- Testament of, 142 ---- Zeal of, 114 Erastianism, Disputes on, 444 Ercilla, The Araucana of, 329 Erpenius, Works of, 671 Essays, Bacon’s, 293 ---- Montaigne’s, 290 ---- Sir W. Temple’s, 824 Essex, Earl of, 633 Etherege, Plays of, 808 Euclid, Early Translations of, 56 Europe, Language in, in 1400, 25 Eustachius on Anatomy, 397 Evelyn, Works of, 821

 Faber of Savoy, 313 Fabricius on the Language of Brutes, 663 Faery Queen, The, 343 ---- Style of, 344 ---- Superiority of First Volume, 343 Fallopius on Anatomy, 397 Fanaticism, Growth of, 172 Farces, First Real, 107 Farquhar, Plays of, 809 Fenelon on Female Education, 761 ---- Works of, 696 Fermat, the Geometer, 651 Fernel, Works of, 220 Ferreira, 331 Ficinus, Works of, 98 Fiction, Popular Moral, 66 Figures in MSS. of Boethius, 55 Filacaja, Vincenzo, 777 Filli di Sciro, The, 592 Fléchier, Style of, 703 Fletcher, Beaumont and, 611 ---- Phineas and Giles, 577 Fleury, Ecclesiastical History, 687 Florence, Academy of, 229 ---- History of, 199 Fontenelle, Character of, 810, 817 ---- Poems of, 782 Ford, John, 621 France, Troubadours of, 21 Francesca of Rimini, 26 Franco-Gallia, The, 295 Free will, Molina on, 268 France, Classical Study in, 53 French, Diffusion of, 19 ---- During Eleventh Century, 14 ---- Early, 13 ---- in England, Disuse of, 24 ---- Whence it came, 13 Friars, Mendicant, The, 9 Fuchs, Leonard, 226 Fur Prædestinatus, Sancroft’s, 693

 Galileo, compared with, Bacon, 486 ---- Discoveries of, 653 Gallantry, Effects of on Poetry, 64 ---- Probable Origin of, 64 Garnier, 357 Gascoyne, George, 337 Gasparin, Style of, 43 ---- Works of, 42, 43 Gassendi, Syntagma Philosophicum of, 710 ---- Bernier on, 713 ---- Works of, 467, 468 Gemalis Dies, The, 160 Genius, Want of, in Dark Ages, 5 Gentilis, Albenius, 316 ---- De Jure Belli, 377 Geology, Rise of the Science, 840 Gerard, Herbal of, 397 German Poetry, Decline of, 20 ---- ---- of Swabian Period, 19 Germany, Schools in, 89 Gesner, Conrad, 241, 392 ---- His Zoology, 392 ---- Quadrupeds discovered by, 393 Gilbert, his Treatise on the Magnet, 392 Glanvil, his Scepsis Scientifica, 733 ---- the Plus Ultra, 735 Glosa, Nature of the, 61 Glosses, Meaning of, 31 ---- Use of, 31 Gloucester, Library of Duke of, 54 Godefroy, James, 775 Gomberville, 641 Gorboduc, Sackville’s, 359 Governor, Sir T. Elyot’s, 195 Gower, Chaucer and, 24 Grammars of the Sixteenth Century, 239 _note_. ---- Provençal, 14 Greek, better known after 1580, 251 ---- Corruption of Language, 47 ---- Dawn of in England, 115 ---- Early Grammars and Lexicons, 112 ---- Latin Translations of, 50 ---- Learned by Petrarch, 48 ---- Learning in Middle Ages, 45 ---- Printing, Early, 84 ---- Revival of Study of, 44 ---- Study of at Paris, 91 ---- Taught by Chrysoloras, 49 ---- Taught to Boys, 167 Greeks, Emigration of, to Italy, 52 Grew, Discoveries of, 839 Grocyn, Linaire and, 135 Groot, Gerard, College of, 54 Grotius, De Imperio Circa Sacra, 444 ---- De Jure Belli, 544 _et seq._ ---- his Arrangement, 565 ---- his Defects, 565 ---- Objections to, 561 ---- Religious Doubts of, 428 ---- Vindicated against Rousseau, 565 ---- Works of, 414 Gruchius, Works of, 255 Gruter, his Collection of Inscriptions, 419 ---- his Suspicions, 413 Grymæus, Geography of, 228 Guevara, Treatise of, 194 Guiciardini, History of, 402 Guidi, Poems of, 777 Gymnasium, Roman, 131

 Habington, 585 Hales on Schism, 438 Hardy, Plays of, 596 Harmonia Apostolica, Bull’s, 694 Harriott, Works of, 649 Harvey, his Anatomical Discoveries, 665 Havelok the Dane, 18 Hawes, Stephen, 153 Hebraists of the Fifteenth Century, 227 Hebrew, First Printed, 95 ---- in the Sixteenth Century, 670 Heinsius, Daniel, 413 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 456, 465 Herrera, Works of, 329 Herrick, Robert, 586 Heterodoxy, Italian, 179 Heywood, Plays of, 622 ---- Thomas, 363 Hippocrates, Study of, 224 History, Natural, from 1600-1650, 662 Hobbes, Political Works of, 538 ---- The Leviathan of, 506 ---- Analysis of, 506 _et seq._ Hooft, Peter, 577 Hooke, Works of, 834 Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, 289 ---- his Theory of Natural Law, 290 Horace, Lambinus’s, 235 Hottoman, Francis, 295 Hudibras, Butler’s, 783 Huet, The Censura of, 715 Hymns, German, 206

 Icon Basilice, The, 636 Immutable Morality, Cudworth’s, 745 Index Expurgatorius, The, 407 Ingulfus, History of, 15 Instauratio Magna, The, 469 Irnerius, Works of, 31 Italian, Early, 22 ---- Language, Origin of, 10 Italy, Printing in, 83

 Jansenism, Rise of, 441 Jansenius, Tenets of, 691 Jesuits, Colleges of the, 262 ---- Patronized by Popes, 263 ---- Rise of the, 181 ---- Rising Influence of the, 261 ---- their Popularity, 181 Jewell, Apology of, 272 Joachim, Rhæticus, 388 Jodelle, Father of the French Theatre, 357 John II., Poetry under, 62 ---- of Ravenna, 41 ---- of Salisbury, 36 Jonson, Ben, 585 ---- his Every Man in his Humour, 369 ---- Plays of, 609 Journal des Sçavans, The, 817 Julian Period, Invention of the, 258 Jurisprudence, Golden Ages of, 311 ---- in 1500, 200 Jurists, Decline of, after Accursius, 32 ---- Early, 32 ---- Scholastic, 33

 Kempis, Thomas à, Works of, 68 Kepler, Discoveries of, 652 King’s Quair, The, 63 Knolles, his History of the Turks, 634 Knowledge, Limited by Sense, 481

 La Bruyere, Characters of, 758 La Fayette, Madame, 826 La Fontaine, Fables of, 779 La Forge, Regis and, 714 La Motte le Vayer, 632 La Noue, Works of, 301 Labbe, Philip, 411 Lacteals, Discoveries of the, 668 Land, Views of, 427 Lanfrance and his Schools, 35 Language, A New, formed from Latin, 12 Language, Early Imperfections of, 6 ---- Modern, Metres of, 15 Languet, Vindicæ of, 295 Latin becomes a New Language, 12 ---- Colloquial Corruption of, 11 ---- in the Lower Empire, 11 ---- in the Seventh Century, 12 ---- Origin of Rhyme in, 16 ---- Poems, Mediæval, 210 Latinists, Apology for the, 217 ---- in 1600, 415 Laws, Abridgments of, 31 Layamon, Works of, 23 Leaguers, Tenets of the, 298 Learned, Persecution of the, 81 Learning, Decline of in Sixth Century, 2 ---- Encouraged by a Pope, 51 ---- General, Rise of, 26 ---- in England, Revival of, 3 ---- in England under Edward VI., 249 Lebrixa, Character of, 86 Legal Study, Importance of, 30 Leibnitz on Roman Law, 775 ---- The Protogæa of, 841 Leipsic Acts, The, 819 Leo X., a Patron of Letters, 131 Letters, The Paston, 82 Lexicon, Constantin’s, 237 ---- Feirari’s, 672 ---- Scapula’s, 238, _note_. Libraries, New Public, 230 ---- Public, Want of, 169 Library, Bodleian, Founded, 674 ---- of Charles V., 39 ---- Vatican, Founded, 230 Lilly, his Euphues, 373 ---- Popularity of, 373 Lipsius, and other antiquaries, 256 Lister, Studies of, 836 Literature, Checks upon, 407 ---- Theological, of Sixteenth Century, 183 Loci Communes, The, 275 Locke on Education, 759 ---- on Government, 768 ---- on Human Understanding, 736 ---- on the Coin, 773 ---- on Toleration, 700 Logarithms, Invention of, 645 Logic, Aconcio’s, 286 ---- Campanella on, 460 ---- Inductive, 481 _et seq._ ---- Ramus’s, Success of, 288 Lombard, Peter, 7 London, First Theatre in, 360 Lotichius, 347 Love songs, Abelard’s, 17 ---- Spanish, 61 Lucan, May’s supplement to, 591 Lully, Raymond, 155 ---- his method, 155 Lusiad, The, 330 ---- Defects of, 330 ---- Excellencies of, 330 Luther, Character of, 182 ---- Dangerous tenets of, 148 ---- Differences from Zwingle, 172 ---- Theses of, 146 Lutrin, The, 780 Lydgate, Works of, 63 Lyndsay, Poems of, 207 Lyrics, Portuguese, early, 117

 Machiavel, Nicolas, 196, 211 ---- Motives of, 197 ---- some of his rules not immoral, 197 ---- The Prince, of, 197 ---- Works of, 198 Malebranche, Theory of, 717 Malherbe, Poems of, 573 ---- Style of, 573 Malpighi, Discoveries of, 840 Manana, de Rege, 299 Mantuan, Works of, 111 Manuscripts, Copying of, 36 Manutius, de Civitate, 253 ---- Epistles of, 245 Maps, Early, 94 Maranta on gardening, 395 Margarita, Antoniana, The, 287 Marlowe, Plays of, 360 Marot, Poems of, 206 Marsham, Sir John, 685 Massinger, Philip, 618 Matthiola, System of, 226 Medici, Lorenzo de, 80 Medicine, Early Study of, 58 ---- Revival of Greek methods of, 223 Meigret, Orthography of, 219 Melancthon, Early Studies of, 127 ---- Tenets of, 266 Melville, Andrew, 253 Memoirs, Political, 301 Mendicant Friars, The, 9 Mendoza, Works of, 208, 673 Mercator, Gerard, 402 Metre, Romances in, 18 Metres of Modern Languages, 15 ---- Spanish, 60 Microscope, first used in Anatomy, 842 Milton, John, 586 ---- Allegro, 587 ---- Compared with Dante, 784 ---- Comus, 586 ---- Il Penseroso, 587 ---- Lycidas, 587 ---- Paradise Lost, 783 ---- Paradise Regained, 787 ---- Samson Agonistes, 787 ---- Sonnets, 588 Minot, Lawrence, 24 Mirandola, Picus of, 101 ---- Credulity of, 101 ---- Literary Works of, 102 Miscellanies of Politian, 95 Moliére, Plays of, 799 Montaigne, Essays of, 290 ---- Characteristics of, 291 Montesquieu, Bodin compared with, 310 Moralities, Early, 107 Morals, Italian writers on, 292 More, Henry, 709 More, Utopia of, 137 Morgante Maggiore, The, 97 Morison, Robert, 837 Motion, Laws of, 658 Mun, Thomas, on Foreign Trade, 773 Muretus, Marc Antony, 233 Mysteries, Desire to explore, 99 ---- Early English, 105

 Naudé, Gabriel, 534 Napier, Works of, 645 Nizolius, Marius, 286 Norris, Essay of, 725 Northern Seas, Discoveries in, 401 Nosce Teipsum, The, 340 Novum Organum, The, 478 Numencia, The, of Cervantes, 356 Numerals, Arabic, 55 Numismatics, Works on, 257

 Oceana, Harrington’s, 766 Opinion, Religious, in Fifteenth Century, 67 Opitz, Martin, 575 ---- Followers of, 576 Optics, Discoveries in, 660 Opus Magnus, Bacon’s, 57 Oracles, The History of, 811 Orientalists, Celebrated, 844 Orlando Furioso, The, 150 ---- a continuation of Boiardo, 150 ---- its popularity, 150 ---- its want of seriousness, 150 ---- Style of, 151 Orlando Innamorata, The, 112 Ortelius, Works of, 401 Otway, Plays of, 806 Oxford, University of, founded, 8

 Paley, Compared with Puffendorf, 707 Pallavicino, Ferrante, 625 Pantheism, Bruno and, 283 Papal Power, Decline of, 425 Papal Power, Discussion of, 274 Paper, Cotton, First use of, 28 ---- Invention of, 28 ---- Linen, as old as 1100, 29 ---- ---- First use of, 28 ---- ---- Known to Peter of Clugni, 29 ---- of mixed materials, 29 Papias, Vocabulary of, 36 Papyrus, Use of the, 28 Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 191, 463 ---- his extravagances, 192 ---- his impostures, 192 Paradise Lost, Milton’s, 783 Parchment, Use of, 28 Paris, University of, founded, 6 ---- ---- increase of, 8 Paruta, Paolo, 302 Pascal, Malebranche and, 724 ---- Provincial letters of, 744 ---- Thoughts of, 697, 725 Pastor Fido, Guarini’s, 351 Pastourelles, Early, 18 Patrizzi, 281 Pearson on the Creed, 704 Peele, Greene and, 362 Pelletier, Algebra of, 385 Pellican, 227 Perkins, his Cases of Conscience, 527 Perrault, Charles, 816 Petavius, the Jesuit, 421 Peter Martyr, Epistles of, 156 Petrarch, Dante and, 22 ---- Latin Poems of, 41 ---- Restoration of Letters by, 40 ---- Style of, 41 Philology, Stephens’s Works on, 243 Philosophy, Consolation of, 1 ---- Scholastic, Defeat of, 188 ---- Scholastic, Origin of, 7 ---- Speculative, 188 ---- Stanley’s History of, 707 Pibrac, 335 Pilgrim’s Progress, The, 828 Pinelli, Occupations of, 404 Platonists, Aristotelians and, 74 Poem, Early, on Boethius, 13 Poetry, Early English, 62 ---- German, Decline of, 20 ---- German, of Swabian Period, 19 ---- Provençal, 16 Poets, Early Spanish, 203 ---- Elizabethan, 342 ---- Minor, from 1650-1700, 790 Poggio, Bracciolini, 42 ---- on the Views of Rome, 72 Politian, Works of, 95, 105 Political Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century, 294 Polyglott, Walton’s, 843 Pontanus, Works of, 111 Popery, Taylor’s Dissuasive from, 690 Port-Royal Writers, 679 Poynet on Politique Power, 296 Prerogative Argument, 485, _note_. Press, The, of Aldus, 125 Printing, Effects of, on Reformation, 124 ---- Invention of, 75 ---- Progress of, 79 ---- Restraint of, 124 Progress in the Tenth Century, 4 Prophesying, Taylor’s Liberty of, 449 Prose-writers under Elizabeth, 373 Protestantism Extinguished in Italy, 260 ---- ---- ---- ---- And Spain, 261 Protestants, use of the Term, 173 ---- The Religion of, 426 Provençal Grammar, 14 Psalter, Early Printed, 77 Publications, Early European, 85 Puffendorf, his Theory of Politics, 762 ---- The Law of Nature, 753 Pulci, Works of, 97 Purbach, Discoveries of, 78

 Quevedo, Satires of, 571 ---- Visions of, 825

 Rabelais, 216 Racine, Plays of, 793, 802 ---- Style of, 798 Raleigh, his History of the World, 635 Ramus, Peter, mentioned by Bacon, 191 ---- Peter, New Logic of, 190 Ramusio, Voyages of, 400 Rapin, René, on Gardens, 792 ---- Critical Works of, 815 Ray, Works of, 835, 838 Reading and Writing, Ignorance of, 25 Réflexions sur l’Eloquence, Les, 815 Reformation, Burnet’s History of the, 846 ---- Origin of the, 146 Regiomontanus, 93 Regnard, Plays of, 802 Regnier, Statues of, 574 Religion, Differences of, Effects of, on Poetry, 66 Republic, Analysis of the, 302 Reuchlin,, 104 ---- The Monks and, 145 Reviews, Early, 817 Rhetoric, Cox’s Art of, 219 Rhetorique, Wilson’s Art of, 379 Rhyme, Origin of in Latin, 16 Ribeyro, Works of, 205 Richard of Bury, 39 Richelieu, his Care for Liberty, 426 Rienzi, The Story of, 52 Rivinus, System of, 838 Rochefoucault, 757 Roger Bacon, Works of, 57 Roman Laws, never wholly unknown, 31 Romances, Metrical, 18 ---- of Chivalry, The, 65 Rome, Loss of Learning on Fall of, 1 ---- Conversions to, 263 ---- Supremacy of, 422 Ronsard, Poems of, 333 Roscelin, Story of, 7 Rose, Bishop of Senlis, 298 Rosmunda, The, 132 Rota, Bernardino, 320 Rowley, Thomas, 83 Royal Society, Origin of the, 832 Ruanus, Crellius and, 440 Rueda, Lope de, 212 Ruel, Studies of, 226 Rymer on Tragedy, 823

 Sachs, Hans, Dramas of, 213 Sackville, Works of, 336 St. Evremond, 812 Salmasius, Works of, 412, 415 Salvator, Rosa, Satires of, 778 Sanchez, Minerva of, 244 ---- Sceptical Theory of, 285 Sansons, Maps of the, 844 Santeul, Latin Poems, 793 Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 423 Saville on Roman Militia, 257 Saxon Chronicle, The, 23 Scaliger, Joseph, 247 ---- as a Critic, 375 Scaliger assists Gruter, 419 Scarron, Roman Comique of, 826 Schools, Early teaching in, 136 ---- Greek Taught in, 251 Science in Sixteenth Century, 645 Sciences, Academy of, at Paris, 832 ---- of Middle Ages, 55 Scioppius, Work of, 416 Scot, Reginald, 278 Scotland, Learning in about 1550, 253 Scotus, 91 ---- Reasonings of, 92 Scripture, Early Translation of, 85 Sebonde, Raymond de, 69 ---- Real Objects of, 70 Secchia Rapita, The, 568 Secular Variation, Law of, 176 Segrais, Novels of, 827 Seicentisti, Opinions on the, 566 Selden, De Jure Naturali, 528 Semi-Pelagian School, The, 439 Sermons, Donne’s and Taylor’s, 454 ---- Latimer’s, 184 Serra, Antonio, 537 Servetus, Labours of, 180 ---- Life of, 269 Servitude, Domestic, 303 Shadwell, Plays of, 808 Shakspeare, William, 364, 602 ---- As You Like it, 369 ---- Comedy of Errors, 365 ---- First Writings, 364 ---- Historical Plays, 368 ---- Love’s Labours Lost, 365 ---- Lear, 604 ---- Lucrece, 340 ---- Measure for Measure, 603 ---- Merry Wives of Windsor, 603 ---- Midsummer Night’s Dream, 365 ---- Pericles, 605 ---- Poems, 340 ---- Roman Tragedies, 606 ---- Romeo and Juliet, 366 ---- Sonnets, 582 ---- Twelfth Night, 602 ---- Two Gentlemen of Verona, 365 ---- Venus and Adonis, 340 Shirley, Plays of, 621 Skelton, Works of, 154 Smith, Teaching of, 167 Societies, German Literary, 575 Socinianism, Rise of, 181 Sonnets, Shakspeare’s, 583 Soto, Dominic, 289 South, Sermons of, 704 Southern, Plays of, 807 Spain, Pastoral Romances of, 117 Spanish Language, Origin of, 10 Spenser, his Sense of Beauty, 344 ---- Resembles Ariosto, 344 ---- Shepherd’s Kalendar of, 337 ---- Style of, 345 Spregel, the Dutch Ennius, 576 Spinosa, Ethics of, 726, 746 ---- Politics of, 764 Stampa, Gaspara, 321 ---- her Love for Collalto, 321 ---- her Second Love, 322 ---- her Style, 322 Statics, Galileo’s, 657 Stephens, Thesaurus of, 163, 237 ---- Works of, 236 Stevinus, Statics of, 391 Strada, his Prolusiones, 627 Sturm on German Schools, 165 Suarez, of Granada, 524 ---- on Laws, 544 ---- Works of, 525 Surrey, Wyatt and, 207 Surville, Clotilde de, 83 Swift, his Tale of a Tub, 831 Sydney, Algernon, on Government, 767 ---- Sir Philip, his Defence of Poesie, 338 ---- his Poetry, 339 Syriac, New Testament in, 399

 Table Talk, Selden’s, 532 Tacitus of Lipsius, The, 235 Tale of a Tub, The, 831 Talent, Deficiency of Poetical, in Tenth Century, 5 Tasso, Bernardo, The Amadigi of, 323 ---- Torquato, 324 ---- compared with others, 326 ---- his Jerusalem, 324 ---- ---- ---- Characters of, 325 ---- ---- ---- Faults in, 325 ---- his Styles, 324 ---- Virgil and, 326 Tassoni, Alessandro, 568 Taste, Prevalence of Bad, 5 Tauler, John, 25 Taylor, Bishop Jeromy, 447 Telemaque, Fenelon’s, 828 Telesio, System of, 281 Theatre, English, Revival of, 804 ---- First French, 107 Theosophists, Paracelsists, and, 463 Thesauri of Grævius and Gronovius, 683 Thesaurus Criticus, Gruter’s, 234 Thomas À Kempis, School of, 55 Tillotson, Sermons of, 704 Toleration, Arguments for, 446 Tournebœuf, or Turnebus, 233 Tournefort, System of, 838 Tractate, Milton’s, 758 Tracts, Statistical, 775 Treatise de Imitatione Christi, 68 Trent, Council of, 182 ---- ---- Efforts of, 264 Trinitarian Controversy, The, 268 Turkish Spy, The, 829 Tyndale, Bible of, 187 Tyrannicide, Poynet and, 297

 Universities, Rise of, 8 Usher, Chronology of, 684 Usury, Noodt on, 776 Utopia, More’s, 137

 Valla, Laurentius, 72 ---- Defects of his Work, 73 ---- Heeren’s Praise of it, 73 ---- Testament, Annotations on New, 73 Valors, Henry, 681 Van Helmont, 669 Vanbrugh, Plays of, 809 Vanini, Writings of, 455 Vatican Library, The, 230 Vesalius, Works of, 224 Victa, Francis, 385 Victoria, Learning of, 44 Vincent of Beauvais, 59 Vinci, Leonardo de, 108 Vocabulary of Papias, 36 Voiture, Poems of, 574 Vondel, 577 Vossius, Gerard, 417 Vulgar Errors, Browne’s, 677 Vulgate, The, 187 ---- Authenticity of, 278

 Waller, Poetry of, 782 Walton, the Complete Angler, 824 Webster, Plays of, 622 White, Thomas, 706 Wilkins, Bishop, 736 Wit, Whetstone of, The, 385 Witchcraft, Scot on, 278 Writers, Romish, 183 Writing, Rise of Knowledge of, 27 Wyatt, Surrey and, 207 Wycherley, Plays of, 803

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 Transcriber’s Notes:

Volume 1 contains the Table of Contents for both Volumes 1 and 2; ithas been duplicated and added to this volume for the convenience ofusers.

Sidenotes were moved to precede the paragraph to which they pertainand are surrounded by pipes (|).

Transliterations of words and phrases in Greek were added in brackets.

Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of thenumbered paragraph in which the related anchors occur.

Superscript text is noted with a caret and brackets, thus: ^{mo}.

The author/editor usually omitted quotation marks around cited text;this was not changed. All other punctuation and accents marks werestandardized.

Words with missing or partially printed letters were completed. Thisedition contains many spelling/typographical errors; obvious errorswere corrected. Capitalization of words was corrected, whereappropriate. Obsolete, archaic, and consistently misspelled words wereretained. Other corrections:

 Ch. 18, §8, ‘waved’ to ‘waived’ ... which had imprudently waived. Footnote 67, ὁημεραι [hoêmerai] to ὁσημεραι [hosêmerai] and τελευτνᾶν [teleutnan] to τελευτᾶν [teleutan] Ch. 20, §35, ‘give’ to ‘gave’ ... since he gave to the world ... Footnote 194, ’words’ to ‘word’ The word ... is perhaps unhappy ... Footnote 212, added anchor missing in the original. Footnote 290, In the original, where ‘A - Y’ is part of a formula, it is annotated with a bar that extends above all three characters. In this e-book, brackets were used instead: [A - Y]. Footnote 290, duplicate ‘in’ removed ... in the conclusion ... Ch. 21, §29, ‘their’ to ‘there’ ... there will frequently be ... Ch. 21, §111, ‘treatises’ to ‘treaties’ ... relates to treaties ... Ch. 21, §137, ‘notions’ to ‘nations’ ... law of nations permit ... Ch. 23, §52, ‘then’ to ‘than’ ... in his time than they are at ... Ch. 24, §33, duplicate ‘and’ removed ... and his facility ... Ch. 24, §60, ‘lyes’ to ‘lays’ ... veracious tone of his lays.... Ch. 29, §25 and Footnote 777, ‘Degerando’ and ‘Degenerando‘ to ‘de Gérando‘ Ch. 29, §45 duplicate ‘the’ removed ... the depth, and the clearness ... Ch. 30, §1 duplicate ‘the’ removed ... the propositions condemned ... Ch. 33, §32, ‘their’ to ‘theirs’ ... theirs is what defaces the ... Ch. 33, §58, ‘1862’ to ‘1682 ... above forty years, from 1635 to 1682. Footnote 1079, reference is to ‘xi.’ in other editions. In the index, ‘Bengard’ was changed to ‘Berigard’; for the entry ‘Calendar, Gregorian,’ the page number was changed from 388 to 390; and for the entry under Rome, ‘Perversions’ was changed to ‘Conversions.’

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