ALLAM5 m !SI!8ISI5!ff ^*^'^«^?^^)|l^^^^^^| pte'v ■ '^~V^^ ■ ^^K ^' ' /•' m ■ ,,'//' :.. ^ ^Hw ' ' '^ ' ■'' - HE t r - -^iiLi^i»)^ ^ci^^M^^HI R'/ji^luVi^^^^B I^^^^B|« » ♦#.•,♦ ♦ • ♦ «. # #^^^^^^ ^^^KmaawAwsw'"' ""■'" " "v;;!;:;';;:,;,.,„^r"?i V-'l^.^ WCkVONS\tMCCtfeMV'Vi.NVA!< 'Xw-WVAW 7" • »•:■>» 9 i«. ■.x.vv.sxxvn^'A; ') » 3 a^i > -. i *^\\>\\V0IHN>K0M4C««lm^N9lB^^^^^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. J.O-UKL rt-D^ gEC'D LD-UM! 7 1!168 Form L9-39,050-8,'65(F6234s8) 4939 HALLAM'S WORKS. VOLUME VI. INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE. VOLUMES III., IV. ^7^ INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. By henry HALLAM, LL.D., F.R.A.S., FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITOTE OF FRANCE. De mode antem hujnsmodi historije conscribcnda;, illud imprimis monemus, nt materia ct copia ejus, non tantura ab historiis et criticis pctatiir, venim etiam per singulas annorum centurias, aut etiam minora intervalla, seriatim libri prrecipui, qui eo temporis spatio conscripti sunt, in consilium adbibeantur; lit ex corum non perlec- tiono (id cnim infinitum quiddam esset), sed degustatione. et observatione argument!, styli. mcthodi, genius illius temporis literarius, veluti incantationc quadam, a mortuis cvocetur. — Bacon, de Augm. Sclent. FOUR VOLUMES IN TWO. VOLUMES TIL, IV. NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON, 714 Broadway. 1884. 336 University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. CONTENTS His V- 3-4- OF THE THIRD VOLUME. Part HI. (continued). ON THE LITERATURE OF TILE FIRST HALF OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHT FROM 1600 TO 1650. Pago Subjects of this Chapter ... 11 Aristotelians and Ramists ... 12 No Improvement till near the End of the Century .... 13 Methods of the Universities . . 13 Scholastic Writers 14 Treatises on Logic 15 Campanella . 16 His Theorv taken from Telesio . 16 Notion of iJniversal Sensibility . 17 His Imagination and Eloquence . 18 His Works published by Adami 20 Basson 21 Berigard 21 Magnen 21 Paracelsists 22 And Theosophists 22 Fiudd 22 Jacob Behmen 23 Lord Herbert, De Veritate . . 24 His Axioms .... Conditions of Truth . . Instinctive Truths . . Internal Perceptions . . Five Notions of Natural Religion Remarks of Gassendi on Herbert Gassendi's Defence of Epicurus . His chief Works after 1650 . . Preparation for the Philosophy of Lord Bacon •His Plan of Philosophy'. ... 26 27 28 28 30 SI 31 32 Page Time of its Conception .... 32 Instauratio Magna 31 First Part: Partitiones Scien- tiarum 34 Second Part: No\Tim Organum. 34 Third Part: Natural History. . 35 Fourth Part: Scala Intellectus . 36 Fifth Part: Anticipationes Phi- losophia3 37 Sixth Part: Philosophia Secunda 37 Course of studying Lord Bacon . 38 Nature of the Baconian Induc- tion 39 His Dislike of Aristotle. ... 42 His iNIethod much required . . 42 Its Objects 43 Sketch of the Treatise De Aug- mentis 43 History 43 Poetry 44 Fine Passage on Poetry ... 44 Natural Theology and Meta- physics 44 Form of Bodies 4^ Might sometimes be inquired into 45 Final Causes too much slighted . 46 Man not included by him in Physics 47 Man, in Body and Mind ... 47 Logic 41 IV CONTENTS OF VOL. III. Extent giren it by Bacon ... 48 .iramiuar and Rhetoric .... 48 Ethics 48 Politics 49 Tlieology 50 Desiderata enumerated by him . 50 Novum Orgamim: First Boolv . 50 Fallacies: Idola 51 Confounded with Idols . . . . 51 Second Book of Novum Orga- num 53 Confidence of Bacon 54 Almost Justified of late .... 55 But should be kept within bounds 56 Limits to our Knowledge by Sense 56 Inductive Logic; whether con- fined to Physics 57 Baconian Philosophj' built on Observation and I'^xperiment . 58 Advantages of the Latter ■. . . 59 Sometimes applicable to Philo- sophy of Human !Mind ... GO Less so to Politics and Morals . 60 Induction less conclusive in these Subjects Gl Reasons for this Difference . . 61 Considerations on the other Side 63 Result of the Whole 64 Bacon's Aptitude for Moral Subjects 65 Comparison of Bacon and Ga- lileo 66 His Prejudice against Mathe- matics 69 Bacon's Excess of Wit .... 70 Fame of Bacon on the Continent 71 Early Life of Descartes .... 74 His iJeginning to philosophize . 75 He retires to Holland .... 75 His Publications 76 He begins by doubting all. . . 77 His first Step in Knowledge . . 77 His Mind not Sceptical .... 78 He arrives at more Certainty. . 79 His Proof of a Deitv 79 Another Proof of it" 79 His Deductions from this ... 81 Primary and Secondary Qualities 81 Objections made to bis Medita- tions 82 Theory of Memory and Imagi- nation 84 Seat of Soul in Pineal Gland . . 85 Gassendi's Attacks on the Me- ditations . . S6 Page Superiority of Descartes ... SO Stewart's Remarks on Des- cartes 87 Paradoxes of Descartes .... 89 His just Notion of Definitions . 90 His Notion of Substances ... 92 Not quite correct 93 His Notions of Intuitive Truth . 93 Treatise on Art of Logic ... 95 j\Ierits of his Writings .... 95 His Notions of Free-will ... 96 Fame of his System, and At- tacks upon it 97 Controvei'sy with Voet .... 98 Charges of Plagiarism .... 99 Recent Increase of his Fame . . 101 Metaphvsical Treatises of Hobbes 101 His Theory of Sensation . . . 102 Coincident with Descartes . . . 102 Imagination and iMemory . . . 103 Discourse or Train of Imagina- tion 104 Experience ... ... 105 Unconceivableness of Infinity . 105 Origin of Language 106 His Political Theory interferes . 107 Necessitv of Speech exaggerated 107 Use of Names 108 Names universal, not Realities . 108 How imposed 109 The Subject continued .... 110 Names differently imposed . . Ill Knowledge 112 Reasoning 113 False Reasoning 114 Rs Frequency 116 Knowledge of Fact not derived from Reasoning 117 Belief 117 Chart of Science 118 Analysis of Passions 119 Good and Evil, relative Terms . 119 His Paradoxes 120 His Notion of Love 120 Curiosity 121 Dirterence of Intellectual Capa- cities 121 Wit and Fancy 122 Differences in the Passions • . 123 Madness 123 Unmeaning Language .... 123 Manners 124 Ignorances and Prejudice . . . 124 His Theory of Religion . . . . 125 Its supposed Sources .... 128 CONTENTS OF VOL. III. CHAPTER IV. HISTOKY OF MOI!\L AND rOI.ITICAI. PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURIS- PltUDENCE FKOM IGOO TO 1650. Page Casuistical Writers 131 Importance of ConroRsion . . . 131 Necessity of lUiles lor the Con- fessor 132 Increase of Casuistical Literature 1?2 Distinction of Subjective and Ob- jective Morality 133 Directory Oflice of the Confessor 133 Difficulties of Casuistry . . . . 134 Strict and lax Schemes of it . . 134 Convenience of the Latter . . . 135 Favored bv the Jesuits .... 135 The CausJs of this . . _ . . .136 Extravagance of the strict Ca- suists 136 Opposite Faults of Jesuits . . . 137 Suarez, De Legibus 138 Titles of his Ten Books . . .138 Heads of the Second Book . . 138 Character of such Scholastic Treatises 139 Quotations of Suavez .... 140 His Definition of Eternal Law . 140 Whether God is a Legislator . . 142 Whether God could permit or commend Wrong Actions . . 142 English Casuists: Perkins, Hall 143 Seiden, De Jure Natm-ali juxta Hebra'os 144 Jewish Theory of Natural Law . 144 Seven Precepts of the Sons of Noah 145 Character of Selden's Work . . 145 Grotius and Hobbes 146 Charron on Wisdom 146 La JMotlie le Vaver: his Dia- logues . . . ". 147 Bacon's Essavs 148 Their Excellence 149 Feltham's Resolves 150 Browne's lleligio Jledici . . . 151 Selden's Table Talk ..... 152 Osborn's Advice to his Son . . 152 John Valentine Andreie . . . 153 Abandonment of Anti-monarchi- cal Theories 155 I'olitical Literature becomes his- torical 156 Page Bellenden De Statu 150 Campanella's Politics .... 157 La jMothe le Vayer 157 Naude's Coups d'Etat .... 157 Patriarchal Theory of Govern- ment 158 Refuted by Suarez 158 His Opinion of Law 159 Bacon 161 Political Economy 101 Serra on the j\Ieans of obtaining Money without ]Mines . . . 162 His Causes of Wealth .... 162 His Praise of Venice .... 163 Low Rate of Exchange not es- sential to Wealth 164 Hobbes : his Political Works . 164 Analysis of his Three Treatises . 165 Civil Jurists of this Period . . 176 Suarez on Laws 177 Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis . 177 Success of this Work .... 178 Its Originality 179 Its jMotive and Object .... 179 His Authorities 179 Foundation of Natural Law . . 180 Positive Law 181 Perfect and imperfect Rights . . 182 Lawful Cases of War .... 182 Resistance by Subjects unlawful 182 All Men naturally have Right of War 184 Right of Self-defence .... 184 Its Origin and Limitations . . 185 Right of Occupancy 180 Relinquishment of it 187 Right over Persons. — By Gene- ration 187 By Consent 188 In Marriage 188 In Commonwealths 188 Right of alienating Subjects . . 188 Alienation by Testament . . • 188 Rights of Property bv Po."itive , Law " .... 189 Extinction of Rights 189 Some Casuistical Questions . . 190 Promises 190 vx CONTENTS OF VOL. III. Page Contracts 191 Considered ethically 191 Promissory Oaths 192 Engagements of Kings towards Subjects 193 Public Treaties 193 Their Interpretation 194 Obligation to repair Injury . . 196 Eights by Law of Nations . . . 196 Those of Ambassadors .... 197 Eight of Sepulture 197 Punishments 197 Their Responsibility 199 Insufficient Causes of War . . 200 Duty of avoiding it 200 And" Expediency 201 War for the Sake of other Sub- jects 201 Allies 201 Strangers 201 None to serve in an unjust War 202 Eights in War 202 Use of Deceit 203 Rules and Customs of Nations .203 Reprisals 203 Declarations of War 203 Pagt Rights by Law of Nations over Enemies 204 Prisoners become Slaves . . . 205 Right of Postliminium .... 205 Moral Limitation of Rights in War 206 Moderation required as to Spoil . 206 And as to Prisoners 207 Also in Conquest 207 And in Restitution to Right Owners 207 Promises to Enemies and Pirates 208 Treaties concluded by competent Authority 209 IMatters relating to them . . . 209 Truces and Conventions . . . 210 Those of Private Persons . . . 211 Objections to Grotius, made by Paley, unreasonable . . . .211 Reply of Mackintosh .... 213 Censures of Stewart 213 Answer to them 213 Grotius vindicated against Rous- seau 218 His Arrangement 219 His Defects 220 CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1600 TO 1650. Low Estimation of the Seicen- tisti 221 Not quite so great as formerly . 221 Praise of them by Rubbi . . . 222 Also by Saiti 222 Adone of Marini 223 Its Character 223 And Popularity 224 Scccliia liapita of Tassoni . . . 225 Ciiiabrera 226 His Followers 228 The Styles of Spanish Poetry . 229 The Romances 229 Tlie Brothers Argensola . . . 230 Villegas 230 (iuevedo 231 Defects of Taste in Spanish Verse 232 r«>.dantry and far-fetched Allu- sions 233 Gongc.ra 233 The Schools formed ; y him . . 234 Malherbe 235 Criticisms upon his Poetry . . 236 Satires of Regnier 237 Racan; Maynard 237 Voiture 238 Sarrazin 238 Low State of German Literature 239 Literary Societies 239 Opitz ■ 240 His Followers 241 Dutch Poetry 242 Spiegel 242 Ilooft; Cats; Vondel .... 242 Danish Poetry .243 English Poets numerous in tlxis Age 243 Phineas Fletcher 244 \ Giles Fletcher 245-^ Philosopliical Poetry .... 245 Lord Brooke 246 Denham's Cooper's Hill . . . 246 Poets called Metaphysical . . 247 CONTENTS OF VOL. III. vu Page Donne 248 Crashaw 249 Cowley 249 Johuson's Character of him . .200 Narrative Poets: Daniel . . . 250 Drayton's Polyolbiou .... 200 Browne's Uritimnia's Pastorals . 201 Sir John Beaumont 202 Davenant's (iundihert .... 252 Sonnets of Shakspeare .... 253 Tlie Person whom they address . 205 Sonnets of Drummond and others 256 Carew 257 i5en Jonsou . 258 "Wither 259 Habington 259 Earl of Pembroke 259 Suckling 259 Lovelace 260 Herrick 260 Milton His Comus .... l^ycidas Allegro and Penseroso Ode on the Nativity . liis Sonnets . . . Anonymous Poetry . Latin Poets of France In Germany and Italy In Holland: Heinsius Casimir Sarbievius . Barheus Balde : Greek Poem of Ilein Latin Poets of Scotland: ston's Psalms .... Owen's Epigrams. . . . Alabaster's Koxana . . . May's Supplement to Lucaii Milton's Latin Poems . . sms Jon- Paga 261 261 2G1 263 263 263 264 264 265 265 266 267 268 268 268 268 269 270 CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERiVTURE FROM 1600 TO 1650. Decline of the Italian Theatre . 271 Filli di Sciro 272 Translations of Spanish Dramas 273 Extemporaneous Comedy . . . 273 Spanish Staj^e 274 Calderon: Number of his Pieces 274 His Comedies 270 La Vida es Sueno 276 A Secreto Agravio Secreta Ven- gan(;a 278 Style of Calderon 278 His Merits sometimes overrated .*279 Plavsofllardv 281 TheCid . . ' 282 Style of Corneille 283 Les Horaces 284 Cinna 285 Polyeucte 285 Rodogune 286 Pompey 286 Heraclius 287 Nicom6de 287 Faults and Beauties of Corneille 287 Le Menteur 288 Other French Tragedies . . • 288 Wenceslas of Uotrou 289 Popularity of the Stage under Elizabe'tU 290 Number of Theatres . ... 290 Encouraged bv James .... 290 General Taste" for the Stage . .291 Theatres closed bv the Parlia- ment . . . .' 292 Shakspeare's Twelfth Night . . 293 Merry Wives of Windsor . . . 293 Pleasure for Measure .... 295 Lear 296 Timon of Athens 297 Pericles 299 His Roman Tragedies : Julius Cffisar 300 Antony and Cleopatra .... 300» Coriolanus 300 His Retirement and Death . . 301 Greatness of his Genius . . . 302 His Judgment 303 His Obscurity 304 His Popularity 305 Critics on Shakspeare .... 305 Ben Jonson 306 The Alchemist 307 Volpone; or, The Fox .... 307 The Silent Woman 308 Sad Shepherd 309 Beaumont and Fletcher . . . 309 Corrupt Sta'e of their Text . .310 Tlie Maid'o Tragedy . . . .311 Philaster 313 VIU CONTENTS OF VOL. III. Page King and No King 312 The KUler Brother 313 The Spanish Curate 314 Tiie Custom of the Country . .315 The Loval Subject 315 Begi^-ar's Bush' 316 ThTSLornt'ul Lady 310 ValLMitinian 317 The Two Xobic Kinsmen . . . 318 The Laithliil Shepherdess . . . 319 Kule a Wife and ILive a Wife . 320 Some other Llavs 320 Origin of Fletcher's Plays . . .321 Defects of their Plots . . . . 321 Their Sentiments and Style dramatic 322 Their Characters 323 Their Tragedies 323 Inferior to their Comedies . . . Their Female Characters . ; . Massinger: General Nature of his Dramas His Delineations of Character . His Subjects Beauty of his Style Inferiority of his Comic Powers . Some of his Tragedies particu- larized And of his other Plays . . . . Ford Shirley Hevwood W^ebster His Duchess of Malfy . . . . Yittoria Corombona Pagje 324 324 326 326 326 327 328 328 328 329 329- 331 331 332 332 833 CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF POLITE LITEUATUllE IN PKOSE FROM 1600 TO 1650. Decline of Taste in Italy . . . 335 Style of Galileo 330 Bentivoglio 337 Boccalini's News from Parnassus 337 His Pietra del Paragone . . . 338 F'errante Pallavicino 339 Dictionary Delia Crusca . . . 339 Grammatical Works: Buonmat- tei Bartoli 340 Tassoni's Remarks on Petrarch . 340 Galileo's Remarks on Tasso . . 341 Sibrza Pallavicino 341 And other Critical Writers . . 341 Prolusiones of Strada .... 342 Spanish Prose: Gracian . . . 342 Krench Prose : Du Vair . . .343 Balzac . . . . . . . . .344 Character of his Writings . . . 344 His Letters 345 Voiture: Hotel Rambouillet . . 346 Establishment of French Acade- my 348 Its (jbjects and Constitution . . 349 It publishes a Critique on the Cid 349 Vaugelas' Remarks on the F'rench Language 351 La Mothe le Vayer 351 Legal S])eeches of Patru . . . 352 And of l,e Alaistro 353 Improvement in linglish Style . 354 F2arl of l'"-ssex 355 Knolles's History of the Turks . 335 Raleigh's History of the World . 357 Daniel's History of England . . 358 Bacon 358 Milton 359 Clarendon 859 The Icon Basilice 359 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy 300 ICarle's Characters 361 Overbury's Characters .... 362 Jonsou's Discoveries .... 362 Publication of Don Quixote . . 363 Its Reputation 363 New Views of its Design . . . 363 Probably erroneous 365 Difference between the two Parts 365 F'xcellence of this Romance . . 368 Minor Novels of Cervantes . . 368 Other Novels: Spanish. . . . 368 And Italian 368 French Romances: AstrCe . . 369 Heroic Romances: Gomberville . 369 Calprenede 870 Scuderi 371 Argenis of Barclay . . . . . 372 Ills luiphormio 373 Campanella's City of the Sun . 373 l""ew Books of Fiction in England 374 Mundus Alter et Idem of Hall . 375 (ioilwiu's -louruey to the Moon . 375 Howell's Dodona's Grove . . . 378 Adventures of Baron de Fscneste 374 CONTENTS OF VOL. III. IX CHAPTER VIII. HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE FBOM 1600 TO 1650. Page State of Science in 16th Century 377 Tediousness of Calculations . . 378 Napier's Invention of Logarithms 378 Their Nature 378 Property of Numbers discovered by St'ifelius 378 Extended to Magnitudes . . . 379 Bv Napier 380 Tables of Napier and Briggs . . 380 Kepler's New (ieometry . . . 381 Its Difference from the Ancient . 383 Adopted by Galileo 383 Extended by Cavalieri .... 383 Applied to the Ratios of Solids . 384 Problem of the Cycloid . . . 384 Progress of Algebra 385 Briggs; Girard 385 Harriott 386 Descartes 387 His Application of Algebra to Curves 388 Suspected Plagiarism from Har- riott 388 Fermat 389 Algebraic Geometry not success- ful at first 390 Astronomy: Kepler 390 Conjectures as to Comets . . . 392 Galileo's Discovery of Jupiter's Satellites 392 Page . 393 . 394 Other Discoveries by him . Spots of the Sun discovered . Copernican System held by Ga- lileo 894 His Dialogues, and Persecution . 395 Descartes alarmed by this . . . 396 Progress of Copernican System . 396 Descartes denies general Gravita- tion 397 Cartesian Theory of the World . 398 Transits of Mercury and Venus . 399 Laws of Mechanics 399 Statics of Galileo 400 His Dynamics 401 Mechanics of Descartes . . . 402 Laws of Motion laid down by Descartes 403 Also those of Compound Forces . 404 Other Discoveries in Mechanics . 404 In Hydrostatics and I'neumatics 404 Optics : Discoveries of Kepler . 405 Iiivention of the Telescope . . 406 Of the Microscope 407 Antonio de Dominis 407 Dioptrics of Descartes; Law of Refraction 408 Disputed by Ferniat 408 Curves of Descartes 409 Theory of the Kainbow . . . 409 CHAPTER IX. HISTORY OF SOME OTHER PROVINCES OF LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650. Aldrovandus 411 Clusius 411 Piso and Marcgraf 412 Jonston 412 Fabricius on the Language of Brutes 413 Botany: Columna 415 John and Caspar Bauhin . . . 415 Parkinson 416 Valves of the Veins discovered . 416 Theorj- of the Blood's Circula- tion 417 Sometimes ascribed to Servetus . 417 To Cohunbus 418 CONTENTS OF VOL. HI. Pago And to Caesalpin 419 Generally unkno^\Ti before Har- vey 420 His Discovery 420 Unjustly doubted to be original . 421 Harvey's Treatise on Generation 422 Lacteals discovered by Asellius . 422 Optical Discoveries of Scheiner . 423 Medicine: Van Helmont . . .423 Diffusion of Hebrew 424 Language not studied in the best Method 424 The Buxtorfs 425 Vowel-points rejected by Cappel 426 Hebrew Scholars 427 Chaldee and Syriac 427 Arabic 428 Erpenius 428 Golius 428 Other Eastern Languages . . . 429 Pag» Purchas's Pilgrim 429 Olearius and Pietro della Valle . 430 Lexicon of Ferrari 430 Maps of Blaew 431 Davila and Bentivoglio. . . .431 Mendoza's Wars of Granada . . 432 Mezeray 432 English Historians 432 English Histories 432 Universities 433 Bodleian Library founded . . . 433 Casaubon's Account of Oxford . 434 Catalogue of Bodleian Library . 435 Continental Libraries .... 435 Italian Academies 436 The Lincei 437 Prejudice for Antiquity dimi nished 438 Browne's Vulgar Errors . . . 439 Life and Character of Peiresc . 440 INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. PAET ni. (CONTimrED). ON THE LITERATURE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPIIY, FROM 1600 TO 1650. Section I. Aristotelian Logic — Campanella — Theosophists — Lord Herbert of Cherbury - Gassendi's Uemarks upon him. 1. In the two preceding periods, we have had occasion to excuse the heterogeneous character of the chapters ^^^^^^ that bear this title. The present is fully as much of this ojien to verbal criticism ; and perhaps it is rather by *='^'*p'*^''- t'xcluding both moral and mathematical philosophy that w", give it some sort of unity, than from a close connection in all the books that will come under our notice in the ensuing pages. But any tabular arrangement of literature, such as has often been attempted with no very satisfactory result, would be ab- solutely inappropriate to such a work as the present, which has already to labor with the inconvenience of more subdivi- sions than can be pleasing to the reader, and would interfere too continually with that general regard to chronology, without 12 ARISTOTELIANS AND RAMISTS. Takt 111 which the name of history seems incongruous. Hence the metaphysical inquiries that are conversant with the human mind or with natural theology, the general principles of in- vestigating truth, the comprehensive speculations of theoreti- cal physics, — subjects very distinct, and not easily confounded by the most thoughtless, — must fall, with no more special dis- tribution, within the contents of this chapter. But since, during the period which it embraces, men arose who have laid the foundations of a new philosophy, and thus have rendered it a great epoch in the intellectual history of mankind, we shall not very strictly, though without much deviation, follow a chronological order, and, after reviewing some of the less important laborers in speculative philosophy, come to the names of lhree who have most influenced posterity, — Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes. 2. We have seen in a former chapter how little progress Aristote- ^^^^ been made in this kind of philosophy during the lians and sixteenth ccntury. At its close, the schools of logic "'" "■ were divided, though by no means in equal propor- tion, between the Aristotelians and the Ramists : the one sus- tained by ancient renown, by civil or at least academical power, and by the common prejudice against innovation ; the other deriving some strength from the love of novelty, and the prejudice against established authority, which the first age of the Reformation had generated, and which continued, perhaps, to preserve a certain influence in the second. But neither from one nor the other had philosophy, whether in material or intellectual physics, much to hope : the disputations of the schools might be technically correct ; but so little regard was paid to objective truth, or at least so little pains taken to as- certain it, that no advance in real knowledge signalized either of these parties of dialecticians. According, indeed, to a writer of this age, strongly attached to the Ai-istotelian party, Ramus had turned all physical science into the domain of logic, and argued from words to things still more than hia opponents.' Lord Bacon, in the bitterest language, casts on him a similar reproach.- It seems that he caused this branch of philosophy to retrograde rather than advance. 1 Keckermann, Prjpcognita Logica, p. to Tives. He praises the former, howerci, 129. Tliis writer charges llamus with for having attacked the =icholiistio [larty, plagiarism from Iiudovicus Vives, placing being himself a genuine Aristotelian, the passages in apposition, so as to prove ^ '• jje vero, fili, cum hanc contra Aria- his caso. Ramus, he says, never alludes totelem sentcntiam foro, me cum rebelli Chap. III. METHODS OF THE UXRT.RSITIES. 13 3. It was obvious, at all events, that from the universities, or from the church, in any country, no improvement j^-ojn,. in pliilosopliy was to be expected ; yet tliose who liad pi-ovemcnt strayed from tiie beaten tra -k, a Paracelsu>, a Jor- th^ end of dano Briuio, even a Telesio, had but lost themselves "'« <^eatu- in irregular mvsticism, or laid down theories of their own, as arbitrary and destitute of proof as those they endea- voi'ed to supersede. The ancient philosopliers, and especially Aristotle, were, with all their errors and defects, far more genuine high-priests of nature than any moderns of the six- teenth century. But there was a better prospect at its close, in separate though very important branches of physical sci- ence. Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, were laying the basis of a true philosophy; and they who do not properly belong to this chapter labored very eftectually to put an end to all anti- quated errors, and to check the reception of novel paradoxes. 4. We may cast a glance, meantime, on those universities which still wei'e so wise in their own conceit, and Methods maintained a kind of reputation by the multitude of yy^erj^i. tlieir disciples. Whatever has been said of the tits, scliolastic metaphysicians of the sixteenth centurj^ may be understood as being applicable to their successors during the present period. Their method wa5 by no means extinct, thoiijfh the books which contain it are forsotten. In all that part of Europe which acknowledged the authority of Ivome, and in all the universities which Avere swayed by the orders of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, the metaphysics of the thirteenth century, the dialectics of tlie Peripatetic school, were still taught. If new books were written, as was frequent- ly the case, tiiey were written upon old systems. Brucker, who sometimes transcribes 3Iorhof word for word, but fre- quently expands with so mucli more copiousness that he may be presumed to have had a direct acquaintance with many of the books he mentions, has gone most elaborately into this unpropitious subject.^ The chairs of philosophy in Protestant ejus quodam neoterico Petro Ranio con- rebus rerum varietatem effiniit. liic vero spirasse augurare. Xulluni uiihi com- etiaiii in rebus nou rerum solitudinem mercium cum hoc ignorantiiE latibulo, jequavit. Atque hoc hominis cum sit, pemiciosisfima literarum tinea, compen- huuianos tamen usus in ore habet impu- diorum patre, qui cum niethodi sua; et dens, ut niihi etiam pro [prae f] sophistia compendii vinclis res torqueat et pi-emat, prjevaricari viJeatur." — Bacon, De later- res Brucker, iv. 243. = Id., pp. 248-253. » Morhof, vol ii. lib. i. cap. 14, sect. 15 ; Brucker, iv. 129. Chap. III. SCHOLASTIC WRITEItS — LOGIC. \o tauglit in that famous city till his death in 1G30. Fortimio Liccto, his successor, was as stanch a disciple of the Peripa- tetic sect. Wc have a more full account of these men from Galjriel Naude, both in his recorded copversation, the Naud«- ana, and in a volume of letters, than froi.i any other quarter. His twelfth letter, especially, enters into some detail as to the state of the University of Padua, to which, for the purpose of hearing Cremonini, he had repaired in lG2a. He does not much extol its condition : only Cremonini and one more were deemed by him safe teachers ; the rest were mostly of a com- mon class ; the lectures were too ^e\v, and the vacations too long. He observes, as one might at this da3% the scanty popu- lation of the city compared with its size ; the grass growing and the birds singing in tiie streets ; and, what we should not find now to be the case, the " general custom of Italy, which keeps women perpetually locked up in their chambers, like birds in cages." ^ Naude, in many of these letters, speaks in the most panegyrical terms of Cremonini,-' and particularly for his standing up almost alone in defence of the Aristotelian philosophy, when Telesio, Patrizi, Bruno, and others had been propounding theories of their own. Liceto, the successor of Cremonini, maintained, he afterwards informs us, with little support, the Peripatetic verity. It is probable, that, by this time, Galileo, a more powerful adversary than Patrizi or Te- lesio, had drawn away the students of physical philosophy from Aristotle ; nor did Naude himself long continue in the faith lie had imbibed from Cremonini-. He became the inti- mate friend of Gassendi, and embraced a better system with- out repugnance, though he still kept up his correspondence with Liceto. 7. Logic had never been more studied, according to a writer who has given a sort of history of the science Treatises about the beginning of this period, than in the pre- °° '°°''^- ceding age ; and in fact he enumerates above fifty treatises on the subject between the time of Ramus and his owt,\:' The Ramists, though of little importance in Italy, in Spain, and even in France, had much influence in Germany, England, and Scotland.* None, however, of the logical works of the sixteenth centuiy obtained such reputation as those by Smig- 1 Naudaei Epistolre. p. 52 (e(Ut. 1667) ' Keckermann, Praecognifa TiOgica, p » P. 27, et a'ibi stepius. 110 {edit. 1606). ' * Id., p 147. 16 CAMPANELLA. " Part III lecius, Burgersdiclus, and our countrjTnan Crakanthorp, all of whom flourished, if we may use such a word for those who bore no flowers, in the earlier part of the next age. As these men were famous in their generation, we may presume that they at least wrote better than their predecessors. But it is time to leave so jejune a subject, though we may not yet Ijc able to produce what is much more valuable. 8. The first name, in an opposite class, that we find in de- Canipa- sccnding from the sixteenth century, is that of neUa. Thomas Campanella, whose earliest writings belong to it. His philosophy, being wholly dogmatical, must be classed with that of the paradoxical innovators whom he fol- lowed and eclipsed. Campanella, a Dominican friar, and, like his master Telesio, a native of Cosenza, having been accused, it is uncertain how far with truth, of a conspiracy against the Spanish government of his country, underwent an imprison ment of tvventy-seven yeai'S ; during which, almost all his phi losophical ti-eatises were composed and given to the world Ardent and rai)id in his mind, and, as has just been seen, not destitute of leisure, he wrote on logic, physics, metaphysics, morals, politics, and grammar. Upon all these subjects, his aim seems to have been to recede as far as possible from Aris- totle. He had early begun to distrust this guide, and had formed a noble resolution to study all schemes of philosopliy, comparing them with their archetype, the world itself, that he miglit distinguish how much exactness was to be found in those several copies, as they ought to be, from one autograph of nature.^ 9. Campanella borrowed his primary theorems from Telesio, itistheonr but enlarged that Parmenidean philosophy by the t.iken from inventions of his own fertile and imaginative genius. Telesio. jj^ ^^^^^ down tlie fundamental principle, that the .perfectly wise and good Being has created certain signs and types {statuas atfpie imaylnes) of himself, all of Avhich, seve- rally as well as collectively, represent power, wisdom, and love, and the objects of these attributes, namely, existence, truth, and excellence, with more or less evidence. God first created space, the basis of existence, the primal substance, an immovtible and incorporeal capacity of receiving body. Next he created matter without form or figure. In this cor- > fJyprianl Vita Campanellje, p. 7. Chap. III. NOTION OF UNIVERSAL SENSIBILITY. 17 poreal mass, God called to being two workmen, incovpoi-eal themselves, but incapable of subsisting apart from body, the organs of no physical forms, but of their jSIakcr alone. These are heat and cold, the active principles ditlused through all things. They were enemies from the beginning, each striving to occupy all material substances itself; each therefore always contending with the other, while God foresaw the great good that their discord would produce.^ The heavens, he says in another passage, were formed by heat out of . atteimated matter, the eai-th by cold out of condensed matter : the sun, being a body of heat, as he rolls round the earth, attacks the colder substance, and converts })art of it into air and vajior.'^ This last part of his theory Campanella must have after- wards changed in words, when he embraced the Copernicaa system. 10. He united to this physical theory another, not wholly original, but enforced in all his writings with singular jjoti^^ ^f confidence and pertinacity, the sensibility of all ere- «niy«sai , , . . 1, . • 1 /• 1 1 11 sensibility. ated bemgs. All thmgs, he says, feel ; else would the world be a chaos. For neither would fire tend upAvards, nor stones downwards, nor waters to the sea ; but every thing would remain where it was, were it not conscious that destruc- tion awaits it by remaining amidst that which is contrary to itself, and that it can only be preserved by seeking that which is of a similar nature. Contrariety is necessary for the decay and reproduction of nature ; but all things strive against their contraries, which they could not do if they did not perceive what is their contrary.^ Godj who is primal power, wisdom, and love, has bestowed on all tilings the power of existence, and so much wisdom and love as is necessary for their conser- » " In hac corporea mole tantae matoria Galileo, in 1622, Campanella defends the statufv, dixit I)eu.«, ut nascerentur fabri C'opernican system, and says that the mo- duo incorporei. fed non potentes nisi a dern astronomers think they cannot con- corpore subsistere, nuUarum physicarum struct good ephemerides without it. forniarum organa. sed lomiatoris tantum- ' » " Omnia ergo sentiunt: alias mnndus iiodo. Idcirco nati calor et I'rigus, prin- essct chaos. Ignis enim non sursum cipia activa principalia. ideoque susp vir- tcnderet, noc aquse in mare, nee lapides tutia diffu.'iva. Statim inimici fuerunt deorsum ; sed res ouiuis ubi primo repe- mutuo, duni uter((ue cupit totam sub- riretur, pernianeret, cum non sentiret sul stantiam nuiterialeui occupare. Hiuc con- destructionem inter contraria nee sui con- tra se invicem pugnare ca-perunt, provi- servationeni inter similia. Non esset in dente Deo ex hv\jusniodi discordia ingens niundo generatio ct corruptio nisi esset bonum.'" — Philosopliia Kealis Epilogisti- contrariet^is, sicut onines physiologi affir- oa (Frankfort. lt)23), sect. 4. niant. At si altcrum contrariuni non = This is in the Compendium de 'Rerum sentiret altenim sibi esse contrarium, con- NatJirK pro Philosopliia hunuina, published tra ipsum non pugnaret. Sentiunt ergc by Adami in 1617. In his Apology for singula."— De Sensu Itervun, 1. i. c. 4. VOL. III. 2 18 CAiMPANELLA'S IMAGINATION. Pvrt in. vation during that time only for which his providence has determined that they shall be. Heat, tlierefore, has p.>wer and sense, and desire of its own being ; so have all other things seelving to be eternal like God : and .in God they ai-c eternal ; for nothing dies before liim, but is only changed.' Even to the world as a sentient being, the death of its parts is no evil, since the deatli of one is tlie birth of many. Bread that is swallowed dies to revive as blood, and blood dies that it may live again in our flesh and bones ; and thus, as the life of man is compounded out of the deaths and lives of all his parts, so is it with the whole universe.^ God said, Let all things feel, some more, some less, as they have more or less necessity to imitate my being; and let them desire to live in that which tliey understand to be good for them, lest my creation should come to nought." 11. The strength of Cam])anella's genius lay in his imagi- . . nation, which raises him sometimes to flights of nation'and impressive eloquence on this fiivorite theme, " Tlie eioqueace. gj.^ ^^^^j ^^.,^^.^ ,^.g endowed with the keenest sensibili- ty ; nor is it unreasonal)le to suppose that tliey signify their mutual thoughts to each other by the transference of hght, and that their sensibility is full of pleasure. The blessed spirits that inform such living and bright mansions behold ail things in nature and in the divine ideas : they have also a more glorious light than their own, through which they are elevated to -a supernatural beatiflc vision."^ We »-an hardly 1 " Igitur ipse Deus, qui est prima po- ceatqiie. Ita iitilis est mumlo tninsniiita- tentia, prima sapientia. primus amor, tio eorum pitrticularium noxia (li.ro"ri not tlic sm.ilk'st orb, wliich tliou behold'st, But iu his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim. Sueh harmony is in immortal souls ; But, while this muddy vesture of decay Uotli grossly close us iu, we cannot hear it." * 1 2. " The world is full of living spirits," he proceeds ; " and, A\h(Mi the soul shall l)e delivered from this dark cavern, we sluVll behold their subtle essences. But now we cannot dis- cern tlie forms of the air, and the winds as they rush by us ; miicli less the angels and demons who peo]>le them. Misera- ble as we are, we recognize no other sensation than that which we observe in animals and plants, slow and half extinguished, and buried under a weight that oppresses it. We Avill not understand tliat all our actions and api)etites and motions and powers flow from heaven. Look at the manner in which light is diffused over the earth, penetrating every part of it with endless variety of operation, which we must believe that it does not perfbi-ra without exquisite pleasure."' - And hence there is no vacuum in nature, except by violent means ; since all bodies deliglit in mutual contact, and the world no more desires to be rent in its parts than an animal. 1-3. It is almost a descent in Campanella from these visions of the separate sensibility of nature in each particle, when he seizes hold of some physical fact or analogy to establish a subordinate and less paradoxical part of his theory. lie was much pleased with Gilbert's treatise on the magnet, and thought it, of course, a proof of tliig animation of the earth. The world is an animal, he says, sentient as a Avhole, and enjoying life in all its parts.^ It is not surprising that he 1 Merchant of Venice, art v. que non sine magna pfTicere voluptate exl" 2 " I'rirtervolant in rouspectu nostro timanda est." — 1. iii. c. 5. venti et aer, at nihil eos videmus, multo Campani'Ua used to hear, as he tells ns, minus videmus Angelos Dimionasque, whenever any evil was impending, a voice quorum plenus est niundus. calling him by his name, sometimes with ''Infelices qui sensum alium nullum other words: lie doubted whether this agnoscimus. nisi obtusum animalimn were his j]rn])cr demon, or the air itself plantarunique. tardum. demortuum, ag- speaking. It is not wonderful that his gravatum. scpultum : nee quidem intelli- imagination was affected by length of con- gere volumusomneai actionem nostram et tinenieiit. appetitum et sensum et motum et vim a '■> " .Mundura es.seanimal, totuni sentiens. rtt'lo mauare. Kcce lux quanto acutis- omneS((ue portiones ejus commuui gait Bimo expanditur sensu super terrain, quo dere vita." — 1. i. c. 9. uiultiplicatur, guueaatur, amplilicatur, id- 20 HIS WORKS PUBLISHED BY ADAMI. Pakt IH. ascribes intelligence to plants ; but he here remarks, that we find the male and female sexes in them, and that the latter cannot t'nictify without the former. This is manifest in sili- quose plants and in palms (which on this account he calls in another place the wiser plants, plantce sapientiores), in which the two kinds incline towards each other for the purpose of fructification.^ 14. Campanella, when he uttered from his Neapolitan „. , prison these dulcet sounds of fantasy, had the advan- His works i „^T. . ,.., 1 11 published tage of hndnig a ])ious disciple who spread them over byAdami. ^^j^^^. ^^^^,^^ ^^ Europc. Tliis was Tobias Adami, initiated, as he tells us, in the same mysteries as liimself {nostrce pJiilosojMce symmysta), who dedicated to the pliiloso- phers of Germany his own Prodromus Philosophise Instauran- d£e, prefixed to his edition of Canipanella's Compendium de Rerum Natura, published at Frankfort in 1G17. Most of the other writings of the master seem to have preceded this edition ; for Adami enumerates them in his Prodromus.' Campanella did not fully obtain his liberty till 1G29, and died some years afterwards in France, where he had experienced the kindness of Peiresc and the patronage of Kichelieu. His philosophy made no very deep impression : it was too fanciful, too arbitrary, too much tinctured with marks of an imagina- tion rendered morbid by solitude, to gain many proselytes in an ajie that was advancing in severe science. Gassendi, whose good nature led him to receive Campanella, oppressed by jioverty and ill usage, with every courteous attention, was, of all men, the last to be seduced by his theories. No one, probably, since Campanella, aspiring to be reckoned among philosophers, has ventured to assert so much on matters of high speculative importance, and to prove so little. Yet he seems worthy of the notice we have taken of him, if it were only as the last of the mere dogmatists in philoso])hy. lie is doubtless much superior to Jordano Bruno, and 1 should {)re sume, except in mathematics, to Cardan." 1 " InTeniemus in plantia sexum mas- - [Protlronms Philosoi)hias TnstjiurnTidsB cillirmni ct lUniinimiin, lit in aiiiniiililms, is only a titlrpa^e. Adami idutpl^nti'd a ct Hjfniinani non iViiititicari; sine masciili jn-elace to this edition of Canipanella's coniriv.-144) lias given lida mortuaque, et pulvere illius et odore a laborious analysi.s of the pliilosopliy of tevivLicit." Caiupauulia. CHA1-. III. BASSON — BERIGARD-MAGNEX. 21 15. A less important adversary of the established theory in physics was Sebastian Basson, in his " Philosophioe g^g^^ Natiiralis adversus Aristotelem Libri XII., in qui- bus abstriisa veteruin physiologia restauratur, et Aristotelis errores solidis rationibus refelluntur. Geneva?, 1G21." This book shows great animosity against Aristotle, to whom, wliat Lord Bacon has himself insinuated, he allows only the credit of having preserved fragments of the older philosophers, like pearls in mud. It is difficult to give an account of this long work. In some places we perceive signs of a just philo- t^opliy ; but in general his explanations of physical pheno- mena seem as bad as those of his opponents ; and he displays no acquaintance with the writings and the discoveries of his great contemporaries. We lind also some geometrical paradoxes ; and, in treating of astronomy, he writes as if he had never heard of the Copernican system. 16. Claude Berigard, born at Moulins, became professor of natural philosophy at Pisa and Padua. In his Cir- .^ culi Pisani, published in 164.'3, he attempted to ^"^^' ' revive, as it is commonly said, the Ionic or corpuscular philo- sophy of Anaxagoras, in opposition to the Aristotelian. The book is rare ; but Brucker, who had seen it, seems to have satisfactorily i-epelled the charge of atheism, brought, by some against Berigard,^ Another Frenchman domiciled in Italy, Magnen, trod nearly the same path as Beri- ^^^ ^^^ gard ; professing, however, to follow the modification of the corpuscular theory introduced by Democritus.^ It seems to be observable as to these writers, Basson and the others, that coming with no sufficient knowledge of what had recently been discovered in mathematical and experimental science, and following the bad methods of the universities, even when they deviated from their usual doctrines, dog- matizing and asserting when they should have proved, ar- guing synthetically from axioms and never ascending from particular facts, they could do little good to philosophy, ex- cept by contributing, so far as they might be said to have had any influence, to shake the authority of Aristotle. 17. This autlio]-ity, which at least required but the defer- i Brucker, iv. 400 ; Niceron, xxxi., misunderstood the atomic theory of De. where he is inserted by the name of Beau- niocritus, and substituted one quite dif- regard, wliich is probably more correct, ferent in his DemocrituS'ReviTiscens, pub- but a<;ainst usage. lished in 1646. 2 Brucker (p. 50i) thinks that Magneu 22 PAEACELSISTS — THEOSOPHISTS— FLUDD. Part III ence of modest reason to one of the gi'eatest of mankind, was ill exchantjed, in any part of science, for the unintelliirible dreams of the school of Paracelsus, which had many disciples in Germany, and a very few in England. Germany, indeed, has been the native soil of mys- ticism in Europe. The tendency to reflex observation of the mind, characteristic of that jjeople, has exempted them from much gi'oss error, and given them insight into many depths of truth, but at the expense of some confusion, some liability to self-deceit, and to some want of strictness in metaphysical reasoning. It was accompanied by a profound sense of the presence of Deity ; yet one which, acting on their thoughtful S})irits, became ratlier an impression than an intellectual judgment, and settled into a mysterious indefinite theopathy, when it did not even evaporate in Pantheism. 18. Tlie founder, perhaps, of this sect, was Tauler of An.i Theo- Strasburg, in the fourteenth century, whose sermons Bophists. ii^ the native language — which, however, are sup- posed to have been translated from Latin — are full of what many have called by the vague word mysticism, — an intense aspiration for the imion of the soul with God. An anony- mous work generally entitled the German Theology, written in the fifteenth century, pui-sues the same track of devotional thought. It was a favorite book with Luther, and was trans- lated into Latin by Castalio.^ These, indeed, are to be con- sidered chietly as theological ; but the study of them led readily to a state of mental emotion, wherein a dogmatic pseudo-philosophy, like that of Paracelsus, abounding with assertions that imposed on the imagination, and appealing fre- quently both to scriptural authority and the evidence r^' inward light, was sure to be favorably received. The mystics, therefore, and the theosophists, belonged to the same class ; and it is not uncommon to use the names indif- fercntly. 19. It may appear not here required to dwell on a subject scarcely falling under any province of literary his- tory ; but two writers within this periofl have been sulficiently distinguished to deserve mention. One of tl>ese was Robert Fludd, an English physician, Avho died in 1G37 ; a man of indefatigable diligence in collecting the dreams and 1 Kplscopius places the author of tlie and David George, among mere entbusl Theolo^ia Uermuuica, with Ueury Nicolud asta. CnAF. III. JACOB BEUMEN. 23 follies of past ages, blending tliem in a portentous combination with new fancies of his own. The Rabbinical and Cabalistic ar.tliors, as well as the Paracelsists, the writers on magic, and whatever was most worthy to be rejected and forgotten, formed the basis of his creed. Among his numerous works, tlie most known was his Mosaic Philosophy, in which, like many before his time as well as since, he endeavored to build a scheme of physical philosophy on the first chapters in Genesis. I do not know whether he found there his two grand principles or forces of nature ; a northern force of con- densation, and a southei-n force of dilatation. These seem to be the Parmenidean cold and heat, expressed in a jargon affected in order to make dupes. In peopling the universe with demons, and in ascribing all plienomena to their invisi- ble agency, he pursued the steps of Agrip])a and Paracelsus, or rather of the whole school of fanatics and impostors called magical. He took also from older writers the doctrine of a constant analogy between universal nature, or the macro- cosm, and that of man, or the microcosm ; so that what was known in one might lead us to what was unknown in tlie other.' Fludd possessed, however, some acquaintance with ficience, especially in chemistry and mechanics ; and his rhapsodies were so tar from jjeing universally contemned in his own age, that Gassendi thought it not unworthy of him to enter into a prolix confutation of the Fluddian ])hi- losophy.- 20. Jacob Behmen. or rather Boehm, a shoemaker of Gor- litz, is far more generally familiar to our ears than jaoob Beh- his contempoi-ary Fludd. He was, however, much u'cn- inferior to him in reading, and in fact seems to have read little but the Bible and the writings of Paracelsus. He re- counts the visions and ecstasies during which a supernatural illumination had been conveyed to him. It came, indeed, without the gift of transferring the light to others ; for scarce any have been aljle to pierce the clouds in Avhich his meaning has been charitably presumed to lie hid. The chief work of Behmen is his Aurora, written about 1G12, and containing a record of the visions wlicrein the mysteries of nature were 1 This was a favorite doctrine of Para- qui est mare. Homo isitur conipendiunj relsus- Cajiipaiielta was nnich too lauci- tpilogusque nniudi est.'" — De Sensu Ke- ful not to embrace it. " Mundus." he rum, 1. ii. c. 32. w\?, "habet .si.iritum qui est ca-lum, 2 Brueker, iv. C91 ; BuMe, iii. 157 . erassum corpus quod est terra, sanguinem 24 LORD HERBERT. Paut Hi revealed to him. It was not published till 1641. He is said to have been a man of great goodness of heart, which his writ ings display ; but, in literature, this cannot give a sanc- tion to the incoherencies of madness. His language, as far as I have seen any extracts from his works, is colored with the i^hraseologj of the alchemists and astrologers : as for his philosophy, so to style it, we find, according to Brucker, who has taken some pains with the subject, manifest traces of the system of emanation, so ancient and so attractive ; and, from this and several other reasons, he is inclined to think the unlearned shoemaker of Gorlitz must have had assistance from men of more education in developing his visions.^ But tlie emanative theory is one into which a mind, absorbed in contemplation may very naturally fall. Behmen had his discijjles, which such enthusiasts rarely want ; and his name is sufficiently knowu to justify the mention of it even in phi- losophical history. 21. We come now to an English writer of a diiFei*ent class, Lord Her- kittle knowu as such at present, but who, without doing bert, De mucli for the advancement of metaphysical philoso- entate. ^^^^^ |^j^j^ ^j. jgj^gj^^ ^j^g merit of devoting to it, with a sincere and independent spirit, the leisure of high rank, and of a life not obscure in the world, — Lord Herbert of Cher- bury. The principal work of this remarkable man is his Latin treatise, published in 1624, On Truth as it is distin- guished from Revelation, from Probability, from Possibility, and from Falsehood. Its object is to inquire what are the sure means of discerning and discovering truth. This, as, like other authors, he sets out by proclaiming, had been hitherto done by no one ; and he treats both ancient and modern philosophers rather haughtily, as being men tied to particular opinions, from which they dare not depart. " It is not from an hypocritical or mercenary writer that we are to look for perfect truth. Their interest is not to lay aside their mask, or think for themselves. A liberal and independ- ent author alone will do this."^ So general an invective, after Lord Bacon, and indeed after others like Campanella, who could not be charged Avith following any conceits rather 1 Urucker, iv. 69S. terest ne personam deponant, vel aliter ' " Nori est igitur a larvato aliquo vel quijem sentiant. Ingenuus et sui iirbi- itipetiiji jso scriptore ut verum consum- trii ista solummoJo praDStubit auctor." — auitum oppcriai-iB: Illorum apprime ia- Kpist. ad Lectorcm. CiiAP. m. CONDITIOXS OF TRUTH. 2o tlian their own, bespeaks cither ignorance of philosophical literature, or a sujiercilious neglect of it. 22. Lord Herbert lays down seven primary axioms: — ]. Truth exists ; 2. It is' coeval with the things to jjjg^^oms. which it relates ; 3. It exists everywhere ; 4. It is self-evident ; ^ 5, There are as many truths as there are ditferences in things ; 6. These differences are made known 10 us by our natural faculties ; 7. There is a truth belonging to these truths, — "Est veritas qua?dam harum veritatum." This axiom he explains as obscurely as it is strangely ex- pressed. .Vll truth he then distinguishes into the truth of the thing or object, the truth of the appearance, the truth of the perception, and the truth of the understanding. The truth of the object is the inherent conformity of the object with itself, or that which makes every thing what it is.- The ti-uth of appearance is the conditional conformity of the fxppearance witli the object. The truth of perception is the conditional conformitv of our senses {facilitates nostras prodromas) with the appearances of things. The truth of understanding is tlie due conformity between the aforesaid conformities. All truth therefore is conformity; all conformity, relation. Three things are to be observed in every inquiry after truth, — the thing or object, the sense or faculty, and the laws or conditions by which its conformity or relation is determined. Lord Herbert is so obscure, partly by not thoroughly grasping his subject, partly by writing in Latin, partly perhaps by the sphalmata et errata in typograjjho, qucedam fortasse in seipso, of which he complains at tlie end, that it has been necessary to omit several sentences as unintelligible ; though what I have just given is far enough from being too clear. 23. Truth, he goes on to say, exists as to the object, or outward thing itself, when our faculties are capable conditicns of determining every thing concerning it ; but, though of truth. this definition is exact, it is doubtful, he observes, whether any such truth exists in nature. The first condition of dis- cerning truth in things is that they should have a relation to ourselves {ut intra nostram stet anaJagiam) ; since multitudes of things may exist which the senses cannot discover. The ' '"HiBc Veritas est in se manifesta." vere enim ita apparebit, vera tamen ex lie ohwrres that what are called false Teritate rei non erit."' appei^rances are true as such, though uot - '• Inharens ilia eonformitas rei cunj true aconrding to the reality of the ob- peipsa, sive ilia ratio, ex qua res unaquw ject : " Sua Veritas apparentiae falsaj inest, que sibi constat '' 26 INSTINCTIVE TRUTHS. Vmiv III. throe chief constituents of this condition seem to bo, 1. That it sliould be of a proper size, neither immense nor too small; 2. That it should have its determining ditference, or priiu'ij)le of individuation, to distinguish it fi-om other things ; 3. That it should be accommodated to some sense or perceptive faculty. These are the universally necessary conditions of truth (that is, of knowledge) as it regards the object. The truth of ap- pearance depends on others, which are more particular ; as that the object should be perceived for a suflTicient time, through a juoper medium, at a due distance, in a priui\, peu fomia vie.aria rei, quso qiia5 disputaie iiefas." — p. 44. I bavo gill) roiiilitioiiibiis isfis cuni imitntypn suo translated tliis in tlie best sense I could coirt'iiiiiKita, euni eoneeptn denno sub eon- Rive it: but In use /i/.s- or )iffrts, before we diti(inib\is etinm suis, eonf'onnari et niodn liave deliiu'd their nieaniii!;. or proved f|Uodani spirituali, tanquani ab objei to their existence, is but iudillereut logic. deiisa, etiani iu objecti absentia conser- rari jiotest." CiiAr. TIL IXTER^'AL rERCEPTTONS. 27 whnlo, are formed Avitliout anv process of reasoning. These common notions, tliongh excited in us by the objects of sense, are not conveyed to us by tliem : tlujy are implanted in us by nature; so that God seems to have imparted to us not only a part of his image, but of his wisdom.^ And whatever is imderstood and perceived by all men alike deserves to be accounted one of these notions. Some of them are instinctive, others are deduced from such as are. The former are distin- guishable by six marks, — priority, independence, universality, certainty, so that no man can doubt them without putting off, as it were, his nature ; necessity, that is, usefulness for the preservation of man ; lastly, intuitive apprehension, for these common notions do not require to be inferred.- 2.1. Internal perceptions denote the conformity of objects with those faculties exi-ting in every man of sane internal mind, which, being developed by his natural in- Perceptions, stinct, are conversant with the internal relations of things in a secondary and particular manner, and by means of natural instinct.^ By this ill-worded definition he probably intends to distinguish the general power, or instinctive knowledge, from its exercise and application in any instance. But I have found it very ditlicult to follow Lord Herljert. It is by means, he says, of these internal senses that we discern the- nature of things in their intrinsic relations, or hidden types of being ; ^ and it is ne.'essary well to distinguisli the conforming faculty in the mind, or internal perception, from the bodily sense. The cloudiness of his expression increases as we proceed, and in many pages I cannot venture to translate or abridge it. The injudicious use of a language in which he did not write with facility, ;iiid which is not very well adapted, at the best, to metaphysical disquisition, has doubtless increased the per- plexity into which he has thrown his readers. 26. In the conclusion of this treatise, Herbert lays down the five common notions of natural religion, implanted, as he conceives, in the breasts of all mankind. 1. That there is a God; 2. That he ought to be worshipped; 3. That vir- tue and piety are the chief parts of worship; 4. That we ' p. 48. circa analogiam rernm intemam, particu- - P. 00. l:inrt;r, secondario, et ratione instiact'is 3 ''Sensus intern! sunt actus confomii- naturalis versantur." — p. 66. tatuui objettonim cum facultatibus iUis ■■ " Circa analogiani rerum iutemain, 'n omni homine sano tt integro exi.-;ten- Bive signatura.'? et characteras rerum ponj- tibus, qua) au iustinctu naturali expositae, tiores versantur."' — p. 68. 28 FIVE NOTIOXS OF NATURAL RELIGION. I-Anx IIL are to lepent, and turn from our sins; 5. That there are re- wards and punishments in another life.^ Nothing can Five no- tions of natural relisioa. be admitted in religion which contradicts tliese pri- mary notions ; but if any one has a revelation from heaven in addition to these, which may happen to him sleeping or waking, he should keep it to himself, since nothing can be of importance to the human race which is not established by the evidence of their common faculties. Nor can any thing be known to be revealed which is not revealed to ourselves ; all else being tradition and historic testimony, which does not amount to knowledge. The specific ditFerence of man from other animals, he makes, not reason, but the capa- city of religion. It is a curious coincidence, that John Wesley has said something; of the same kind.- It is also remarkable that we find in another work of Lord Herbert, De Religione Gentilium, which dwells again on his five articles of natural religion, essential, as he expressly lays it down, to salvation, the same illustration of the being of a Deity from the analogy of a watch or clock, which Paley has since employed. I believe that it occurs in an intermediate writer.^ 27. Lord Herbert sent a copy of his treatise De Veritate, Remarks of Several years after its publication, to Gassendi. We Gassendion havc a letter to the noble author in the third volume of the works of that philosopher, showing, in the candid and sincere spirit natural to him, the objections that struck his mind in reading the book.* Gassendi observes that the distinctions of four kinds of truth are not new ; the Veritas rei of Lord Herbert being what is usually called 1 p. 222. 2 I have somewhere read a profound remark of AVeslej-, that, considering tlie sagacity which many animals display, we cannot fix upon reason as the distinction between them and man : tlie true differ- ence is that we are formed to know God, and they are not. 2 '' £t quidem si horologium per diem et noctem integram horas .■'ignanter indi- cans, viderit quispiam non mente captus, id ronsilio arteque summa factum judica- verit. Ecquis non plane demons, qui hanc mundi machinam non per vigiuti quatuor horas t-intvim, sed per tot srecula circuitus suos olieiinttmi animadvertorit, non id omne sa|iientissimo utique poten- tissimo(iue alicui autori tribuat?" — De Kelig. Gentil., cap. xiii. [The original idea, as has been rightly pointed out to me by M. Alphouse Bor- ghers. the translator of this work, as well a.s of my History of the Middle Ages, is in Cicero de Nat. Dooruni. ii. Zi. '' Quod .si in .Scytiiiam aut in Britanuiam, splia'ram aliquis tulerit hanc. quam nuper faniilia- risnoster effecit I'o.'^iJcmius, cujus siugulsa conver.siones idem efficiunt in sole, et in luna, et in quinque ptclli.'* errantibus, quod efficitur in ca-lo singulis diebus et noctibus: quis in ilia barbaric dubitet, quin ea spliaera sit perfecta ratione?" And, with respect to intermediate writer.^ between Lord Herbert and I'aley, I have been referred, by two other correspond- ents, to liale's Primitive Origination of Mankind, where 1 had myself suspectel it to be ; and to Nieuwentyt's Ileligioui Philosopher (Knglish translation. 1730), p. xlvi. of preface. — 1842.) * Gassendi Opera, iii. 411. CH.VP. III. REMARKS OF GASSENDI ON HERBERT. 29 substance, his Veritas apparently no more than accident, and the other two being only sense and reason. Gassendi seems not wholly to a])prove, but gives as the best, a definition of truth little differing from Herbert's, the agreement of the cognizant intellect with the thing known: " Intellectus cog- noscentis cum re cognita congruentia." The obscurity of the treatise De Veritate could ill suit an undei-standing like that of Gassendi, always tending to acquire clear conceptions ; and, though he writes with great civility, it is not without smartly opposing what he does not approve. The aim of Lord Her- bert's work, he says, is that the intellect may pierce into the nature of things, knowing them as they are in themselves, without the fallacies of appearance and sense. But, for him- self, he confesses that such knowledge he has always found above him, and that he is in darkness when he attemjits to investigate the real nature of the least thing; making many of the observations on this which we read also in Locke. And he well says, that we have enough for our use in the accidents or appearances of things, without knowing their substances, in rei)ly to Herbert, who had declai-ed that we should be miserably deficient, if, while nature has given us senses to discern sounds and colors and such fieeting qualities of things, we had no sure road to internal, eternal, and neces- sary truths.' Tlie universality of those innate princi|!les, especially moral and religious, on which his correspondent had built so much, is doubted by Gassendi on the usual grounds, that many have denied or been ignorant of them. The letter is imperfect, some sheets of the autograph having been lost. 28. Too much space may seem to have been bestowed on a writer who cannot be ranked high among metaphysicians. But Lord Herbert was not only a distinguished name, but may claim the priority among those philosophers in England. If his treatise De Veritate is not, as an entire work, very successful, or founded always upon principles which have stood the test of severe reflection, it is still a mouument of an oi-igi- nal, independent thinker, Avithont rhapsodies of imagination, without pedantic technicalities, and, above all, bearing witness to a sincere love of the truth he sought to apprehend. The ' " Misere nobiscura nctum esset, si ad essent media, nulla autem ad reritiitei percipieudos colores, sonos et qualitates illas internjis, a-tevnas, necessarias Bin* wefAiras caducas atque uiouientaneas sub- errore superessct via." 30 GASSENDI'S DEFEXCE OF EPICURUS. Part IH ambitious expectation that the real essences of things might be discovered, if it were truly his, as Gassendi seems to sup- pose, could not be warranted by any thing, at least, within the knowledge of that age. But, from some cxi)ressions of Herbert, I should infer that he did not think our faculties competent to solve the whole problem o^ quiddity, as the logicians called it, or the real nature of any thing, at least, objectively without us.^ He is, indeed, so obscure, that I will not vouch for his entire consistency. It lias been an additional motive to say as mu(di as I have done concerning Lord Herbert, that I know not where any account of his treatise De Veritate will be found. Brucker is strangely silent about this writer, and Buhle has merely adverted to tlie hotter of (iassendi. Descartes has spoken of Lord Herbert's book with much respect, though several of their leading principles were far from the same. It was translated into French in 1G.'?9, and this translation ho found less difficult than tlie original."' 29. Gassendi himself ouglit, perhaps, to be counted wholly Gassendi's ^"^o"? tl^^ philosophers of tliis period ; since many of defeuce of his Writings were published, and all may have been picurui. completed, within it. They are contained in six large folio volumes, rather closely printed. The Exercita- tiones Paradoxicie, [)ublished in 1624, are the earliest. These contain an attack on tlie loiric of Aristotle, the fortress that so many bold spirits were eager to assail. But, in more ad- vanced life, Gassendi withdrew in great measure from tliis warfare ; and his Logic, in tlie Syntagma Piiilosophicuin, the record of his latest opinions, is chiefly modelled on the Aristo- telian, with suthcient commendation of its author. In tlie study of ancient philosophy, however, Gassendi was impressed with an admiration of Epicurus. His physical theory, founded on corpuscles and a vacuum ; his ethics, in their principle and precepts; his rules of logic, and guidance of the intellect, — ■ ' " Cum facultatcs nostni^ ml aniilngiam - Descartes, rnl. viii. pp. 13S and 168. pnipriam terminatjc (luidditates rermii " .I'v troiive pi usieiir.s choses fort bonnes, iritiuias non penetrcnt : ideo i|uid res na- seil non publiri sii/ioris ; car il y ii pea do tiirali.s in scipsasit, tali ux analofjia ad uos personnes qui .soieiit capablea d'entendre ut sit eoh.stitiita, iicrfeetcsciri non potest." la nictaphysiqiie. Et, pour le general dii — p. K)'). In another place, he says it i.s livre, il tient un chemiu fort dilferent de doubtful whether .any thing exist in na- celui que j'ai suivi. . . . Enfin, par cou- ture, concerning w'aicii we have a complete du.^iou, encore que je ne pulssc nraccorder knowledge. The ef'.'rnal .and necessary en tout aux .soitiniens de cet auteur, j« truths which Uerlici't coiit<"nds for our ne lais.se pas de I'estinier beaucoup au-de' knowing, .seem to Irive been his cnininitiii'S sus des csprits ordinaires. " nolitirr. .subjectively understood, rather •han such a8 rehitf to external objects. Chap. HI. HIS CHIEF WORKS AFTER 1650 — BACON. 31 seemed to the cool and independent mind of the French phi- losopher more worthy of regard than the opposite schemes prevailinnj in the schools, and not to be rejected on account of any discredit attached to the name. Combining witli the Epi- curean physics and ethics the religious element which had been unnecessarily discarded from the philosophy of the Gar- den, Gassendi displayed both in a form no longer obnoxious. The Syntagma Philosophia? Epicuri, published in 1649, is an elaboi-ate vindication of this system, which he had previously expounded in a commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius. He liad already effaced the prejudices against Epi- curus himself, whom he seems to have regarded with the affection of a disciple, in a biographical treatise on his life and moral character. 30. Gassendi died in 1656: the Syntagma Philosophicum, his greatest as well as last work, in which it is natu- uigcjjjgf ral to seek the whole scheme of his philosophy, was works after published by his friend Sorbiere in 1658. We may ^^'^' ^ therefore properly defer the consideration of his metaphysical writings to the next period ; but the controversy in which he was involved with Descartes will render it necessary to bring his name forward again before the close of this chapter. Section II. On the Philosophy of Lord Bacon. 31. It may be judged from what has been said in a former chapter, as well as in our last pages, that, at the preimraiion beginning of the seventeenth century, the higher for tue iihi- pliih)sophy, which is concerned with general truth ^"^"^ ^ and the means of knowing it, had been little benefited by the abors of any modern inquirer. It was become, indeed, no strange thing, at least out of the air of a college, to question the authority of Aristotle ; but his disciples pointed with scorn at the endeavors which had as yet been made to supplant it, and asked whether the wisdom so long reverenced was to be set aside for the fanatical reveries of Paracelsus, the unin- 32 LOED BACON. Part IIL telHgible chimeras of Bruno, or the more plausible but arbi- trary hypotheses of Telesio. 32. Francis Bacon was bom in 1501.' He came to years , of manhood at the time when England was rapidly emersfing from ifniorance and obsolete methods of study, in an age of powerful minds, full himself of ambition, confidence, and energy. If we think on the pubUc history of Bacon, even during the least public portion of it, philosophy must appear to have been but his amusement : it was by hlr^ hours of leisure, by time hardly missed from the laborious study and practice of the law and from the assiduities of a courtier's life, that he became the father of modern science. This union of an active with a reflecting life had been the boast of some ancients, — of Cicero and Antonine ; but what comparison, in depth and originality, between their philosophy and that of Bacon ? 33. This wonderful man, in sweeping round the champaign His plan of of Universal science with his powerful genius, found philosophy. JJ3 little to praise in the recent as in the ancient methods of investigating truth. He liked as little the em- pirical presumption of drawing conclusions from a partial experience as the sophistical dogmatism which relied on un- warranted axioms and verbal chicane. All, he thought, was to be constructed anew ; the investigation of facts, their arrangement for the purposes of inquiry, the process of eliciting from them the required truth. And for tliis he saw, that, above all, a thorough purgation of the mind itself would be necessary, by pointing out its familiar errors, their sources and their remedies. 34. It is not exactly known at what age Bacon first con- Time of its ceived the scheme of a comprehensive philosophy ; conception, j^^j. jj ^y^^g^ j^y jjj^ ^^.j^ account, very early in life.'- Such noble ideas are most congenial to the sanguine spirit of 1 Those who place Lord Bacon's birth Greatest Birth of Time. Bacon says : in 1560. as Mr. Mont.igu has done, must "EquiilenimemiuimequadraGrictaahliinc Ijp imdcrstood to follow the old style, annis juvenile opiisculum circa has res which creates finnc confusion, lie was confccisse, (juod magna prorsus fiducia born the 2'2d of January, and died the et inagnifico titulo, • — ' Teuiporis I'artuiu 9th of April, lt)2ossiblo endowed with speech, or not endowed with that some animals may not move the fpeech. But those endowed and those not nnder-jaw in eating, as it Ls reported ol endowed are both sentient; therefore all the crocodile." — p. 127. — 18i7-] aninaJa are sentient This is an example 42 BACON. Pakt 111. than the sophistical methods of the current philosoj)hy ; and in a remarkable passage, after censuring this precipitancy of empirical conclusions in the chemists, and in Gilbert's Trea- tise on the Magnet, utters a prediction, tliat if ever mankind, excited by his counsels, should seriously betake themselves to seek the guidance of experience, instead of relying on the dogmatic schools of the sophists, the proneness of tlie human mind to snatch at general axioms woukl expose them to much risk of error from the theories of this superficial class of philosophers.^ 44. The indignation, however, of Lord Bacon is more His dislike frequently directed against the predominant philoso- of Aristotle. p|^y q^' j^jg r^^„Q^ ^]^j^^ of Aristotlc and the schoolmen. Though he does justice to the great abilities of the foi-mer, and acknowledges the exact attention to facts displayed in his History of Animals, he deems him one of the most eminent adversaries to the only method that can guide us to the real laws of nature. The old Greek philosophers, Empedocles, Leucippus, Anaxagoras, and others of their age, who had been in the right track of investigation, stood much higher in the esteem of Bacon than their successors, Plato, Zeno, Aris- totle, by whose lustre they had been so much supereeded, that botli their works have perished, and their tenets are with difficulty collected. These more distinguished leaders of the Grecian schools were in his eyes little else than dioputatious professors (it must be remembered that he had in general only physical science in his view), who seemed to have it in common with children, " ut ad garriendum prompti sint, gene- rare non possint;" so wordy and barren was their miscalled wisdom. 45. Those who object to the importance of Lord Bacon's precepts in philosophy, that mankind liave practised luucii rc- many of them immemorially, are rather confirming quired. their utility than taking off" much from their origin- ality, in any fair sense oT that term. Every logical method is built on the common faculties of human nature, Avhich have been exercised since the creation in discerning, better or Mor.^e, truth from falsehood, and inferring the unknown from the known. That men might have done this more correctly is manifest from the quantity of error into which, from want » Nov. Organ., lib. i. 64. It may be doubted whether Bacon did ful' justice to Gilbert. Chap. III. HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WHITINGS. 43 of reasoning well on what came before them, thej have habi- tually fallen. In experimental philosophy, to which the more special rules of Lord Bacon are generally referred, there was a notorious Avant of that very process of reasoning which he has supplied. It is more than probable, indeed, that the great physical philosophers of the seventeenth century Avould have been led to employ some of his rules, had he never promul- gated them ; but I believe they had been little regarded in the earlier period of science.^ It is also a very defective view of the Baconian method to look only at the experimental rules given in tlie Novum Organum. The preparatory steps of completely exhausting the natural history of the subject of inquiry by a patient and sagacious consideration of it in every light are at least of equal importance, and equally prominent in the inductive philosophy. 46. The first object of Lord Bacon's philosophical writ'ngs is to prove their own necessity, by giving an unfa- vorable impression as to the actual state of most sciences, in consequence of the prejudices of the human min 1, and of the mistaken methods pursued in tlieir cultivation. The second was to point out a better prospect for the future. One of these occupies the treatise De Augmentis, and the first book of the Novum Organum. The other, besides many anticipations in these, is partially detailed in the second book, and would have been more thoroughly developed in those remaining portions which the author did not complete. We shall now give a very short sketch of these two famous Avorks, nhich comprise the greater jiart of the Baconian philosophy. 47. The Advancement of Learning is divided into two books only ; the treatise De Augmentis, into nine. „, , , • • Skctcii 01 The first of these, in the latter, is introductory, and the treatis* designed to remove prejudices against the search ^^^^' after truth, by indicating the causes which had hith- erto obstructed it. In the second book, he lays down his cele- brated partition of human learning into history, poetry, and philosophy, according to the faculties of the mind respectively concerned in them, — the memory, ima- gination, and reason. History is natural or civil, under the latter of which eci-lesiastical and literaiy histories are com- • It has been remarked, that the fa- eleTation, was '^ a, crucial in ■stance, one of mens experiment of Pascal on the baro- the first, if not the very first, on record in cieter, by carrjing it to a considerable physics." — Uerschel, p. 229. 44 BACON. PARf III. prised. Tliese again fall into regular subdivisions ; all of which he treats in a summary manner, and points out tlie deficiencies which ought to be supplied in many departments p of history. Poetry succeeds in tjie last chaptet- of the same book ; but by confining the name to ficti- tious narrative, except as to ornaments of style, which he refers to a different part of his subject, he much limited his views of that literature ; even if it were true, as it certainly is not, that the imagination alone, in any ordinary use of the word, is the medium of poetical emotion. The word " emo- tion," indeed, is sufficient to show that Bacon should either have excluded jioetry altogether from his enumeration of sciences and learning, or taken into consideration other facul- ties of the soul than those which are merely intellectual. 48. Stewart has praised with justice a short but beautiful Fine pas- paragraph concerning poetry (under which title may Bagp ou be comprehended all the various creations of the poe ry. faculty of the imagination, at least as they are mani- fested by words), wherein Bacon "has exhausted every thing that philosophy and good sense have yet had to ofiTer on the subject of what has since been called the beau ideaV The same eminent writer and ardent admirer of Bacon observes, that D'Alembert improved on the Baconian arrangement by classing the fine arts together with poetry. Injustice had been done to painting and music, especially the former, when, in the fourth book De Augmentis, they were counted as mere artes voluptarice, subordinate to a sort of Epicurean grati- fication of the senses, and only somewhat more liberal than cookery or cosmetics. 49. In the third book, science having been divided into Natural thcological and philosophical, and the former, or theology vphat regards revealed religion, being postponed for physks^^ the present, he lays it down that all philosophy relates to God, to nature, or to man. Under natural theology, as a sort of appendix, he reckons the science or theory of angels and superhuman spirits ; a more favorite theme, especially as treated independently of.revelation, in the ages that preceded Lord Bacon, than it has been since. Natu- ral philosophy is speculative or practical; the former divided into physics, in a particular sense, and metaphysics: "one of which inquircth and handleth the material and eflScient causes; the other handleth the formal and final causes." Chap. HI. firETAPIIYSICS. 45 Hence physics, dealing with particular instances, and regai-d- ing only the effects producgd, is precarious in its conclusions, and does not reach the stable principles of causation. " Limus lit hie duroscit, et haec ut cera liquescit Uno eodem(iue igni." Metaphysics, to which word he gave a sense as remote from that which it bore in the Aristotelian schools as from that in wiiich it is commonly employed at present, had for its pro])er object the investigation of forms. It was "a generally received and inveterate opinion, that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out essential forms or true differences." " Format inventio," he says in another place, " habetur pro desperata." The word form itself, being borrowed from the old philosophy, is not immediately intelligible to every reader. " In the Baconian sense," says Playfair, " form differs Form of only from cause in being permanent, whereas Ave ^'^^'''^ apply cause to that which exists in order of time." Form (iiatura natnrans, as it was barbarously called) is the general law, or condition of existence, in any substance or quality {natiira natarata), which is wherever its form is.^ The con- ditions of a mathematical figure, prescribed in its definitiun, might in this sense be called its form, if it did not seem to be Loi'd Bacon's intention to confine the word to the laws of particular sensible existences. In modern philosophy, it might be defined to be that particular combination of forces which impresses a certain modification upon matter subjected to their influence. 50. To a knowledge of such forms, or lav/s of essence and existence, at least in a certain degree, it might be jj;„j^j g^j^g, possible, in Bacon's sanguine estimation of his own times bo ia- logic, for man to attain. Not that we could hope to "^"""""^ "''*^' understand tlie forms of complex beings, which are almos' infinite in variety, but the simple and primary natures, which are combined in them. " To inquire the form of a lion, of an oak, of gold, nay, of water, of air, is a vain pursuit ; but to inquire the forms of sense, of voluntary motion, of vegetation, of colors, of gravity and levity, of density and tenuity, of neat, of cold, and all other natures and qualities, which, like • " Licet, enim in natura nihil vere cxis- est tam ad sciendum qiiam operandum. tat proeter corpoiii iudividua, edentia ac- Earn autem legem ejusiiue paraijraphos tas puros individuos ex lege, in doctrinis Formarum nomine intelligimua : pneser- tainen ilia ipsa lex. ejusque inquisitio, et tim cum hoc vocabulum inraluerit e» Inventit atque expUcatio pro fundainento familiariter occurrat."- Not. Org., ii. 2. 16 BACON. Pakt IIL an alphabet, are not many, and of which the essences, upheld by matter, of all creatures do consist, — to inquire, I say, the true forms of these is that part of metaphysics which we now define of."^ Thus, in the words he soon afterwards uses, "of natural philosopliy, the basis is natural history ; the stage next the basis is pliysic ; the stage next the vertical point is nietaph^sic. As for the vertical point, ' Opus quod operatur Deus a ])riucipi() usque ad finem,' the summary law of nature, we know not whether man's inquiry can attain unto it."- 51. The second object of metaphysics, according to Lord Final cairses Bacou's notion of the world, was the investigation of too much final causes. It is well known that he has spoken " ^ ' of tliis in physics, with unguarded disparagement.' "Like a virghi consecrated to God, it bears nothing;" one of those witty conceits that spai'kle over his writings, but will not bear a severe examination. It has been well remarked, that, almost at the moment he published this, one of the most important discoveries of his age, the circulation of the blood, ' In the Novum Organum he seems to have gon<; a little beyond this, and to h:ive hoped that the lormitself of concrete things might be known. " Datie autem naturae forniam, sive differentiara veram, sive naturani natiu-anteui, sive fontem emanationis (ista eniin vocabula habemus, quae ad indicationem rei proxime acce- dunt), invenire opus et intentio est Uu- nianse Scientine." — Lib. ii. I. - Advancement of Learning, book ii. This sentence he has scarcely altered in the Latin. ^ " Cau.«afinalis tantum abe.'^t ut pro.sit, ut etiam scientiascorrumpat, nisi in homi- nis iictionibus." — Nov. Org., ii. 2. It must be remembered that Bacon had good re;ison to deprecate the admi.xture of theological dogm;is with philosophy, which had been, and h.is often since been, tlie absolute per- version of all legitimate reasoning in science. See what Stewart has said upon Iiord Uacon"s objection to reasoning from final cau.ses in physics. Philosophy of the Activ(5 and Moral I'owers, book iii. chap, ii sect. 4. [It ought to be more remembered than sometimes it has been, that Bacon solely obje<',ts to the confusion of final with e/firit:nt causes, or, as .some would say, with antecedent conditions. These alone he lonsjdered to liill within the province of physics. I?ut, as a part of nietaphysi- oal theology, he giv(!s the former lu^re a place. Stewart has (|uoted at length the pas.sago, which entirely vindicates Bacon r-r>ni the charge of depreciating the argu- ment in favor of theism from the structure of the world ; a charge not uncommonly insinuated against him in the seventeenth century, but repeated lately with the most dogmatic violence by a powerful writer. Count de Maistre, Exsmien de la Philos. de Bacon, c. 13, et alibi. Brux- elles, 1S38. This work, little known per- haps in England, is, from beginning to end, a violent attack upon the Baconian philo- sophy and its author, by a man of ex traordinary vigor as a polemical writer, quick to discover any weak point, and powerful to throw upon it the light of a remarkably ma.sculine and perspicuous style ; second ouly perhaps in these re- spects to Bossuet, or rather only filling short of him in elegance of language ; but, like him, a mere sworn soldier of one party, utterly destitute of an eclectic spirit in his own philosophy, or even of tile power of appreciating with ordinary candor the diversities of opinion in others ; repulsive, therefore, not only to all who have look(?(l with reverence upon those whom he labors to degrade, but to all who abhor party-si)irit in the research of truth ; yet not unworthy to be read even by them, since he has many just criticisms, and many acute observations ; such, how- ever, as ought always to be tried by com- parison with the text of Bacon, whom he may not designedly have misrepresented, but, h.aving set out with the conviction that he was a charlatan and an atheist, he naturullv is lei to exhibit in do otlier Ught. — '1847.J Chap. lU. METAPHYSICS — LOGIC. • 47 had rewarded the acutcness of Harvey in reasoning on the final cause of the valves in the veins. 52. Nature, or j)liysical philosophy, according to Lord Bacon's partition, did not comprehend the human species. Wliether this be not more consonant to included jiopnlar language, adopted by preceding systems of byinmin ])hil().s()pliy, than to a strict and pei-spicuous ar- rangement, may by some be doubted ; though a very re- spectable authority, that of Dugald Stewart, is opposed to including man in the province of physics. For it is sui-ely strange to separate the physiology of the human body, as quite a science of another class, from that of inferior animals ; and, if we place this part of our being under the department of ])hysi('al philosophy, we shall soon be embarrassed by what Bacon has called the doctrina de fcedere, the science of the connection between the soul of man and his bodily frame, — a vast and interesting field, even yet very imperfectly ex- plored. 53. It has pleased, however, the author to follow his own arrangement. The fourth book relates to the consti- ^^^ .^^ tution, bodily and mental, of mankind. In this book body and he has introduced several subdivisions, which, con- *"'" sidered merely as such, do not always appear the most philo- sophical ; but the ]n-egnancy and acuteness of his observations under each liead silence all criticism of this kind. This book has nearly doubled the extent of the corresponding pages in the Advancement of Learning. The doctrine as to the sub- stance of the thinking principle having been very slightly touched, or rather passed over, with two curious disquisitions on divination and fascination, he advances, in four ensuing books, to tlie intellectual and moral faculties, and those sciences which immediately depend upon them. Logic and ^ .^. ethics are the grand divisions, correlative to the reason and the will of man. Logic, according to Lord Bacon, comprises the sciences of inventing, judging, retaining, and delivering the conceptions of the mind. We invent, that is, discover, new arts, or new arguments ; we judge by induc- tion or by syllogism ; the memory is capable of being aided by artificial metliods. All these processes of the mind are the subjects of several sciences, which it was the peculiar aim ot Bacon, by his own logic, to place on solid foun- dations. 48 BACON. Part III. 54. It is here to be remarked, that the sciences of logic and Extent ethics, according to the partitions of Lord Bacon, are given it by far more extensive than we are accustomed to con- Bacoa. si^jer them. Whatever concerned the human intel- lect came under the first; whatever related to the will, and affections of the mind, fell under the head of ethics. " Logica de intellectu et ratione, ethica de voluntate appetitu et affecti- bus disserit ; altera decreta, altera actiones progignit." But it has been usual to confine logic to the methods of guiding the understanding in the search for truth ; and some, though, as it seems to me, in a manner not warranted by the best usage of philosophers,^ have 'endeavored to exclude every thing but the syllogistic mode of reasoning from the logical province. Whether, again, the nature and oi:)erations of the human mind, in general, ought to -be reckoned a part of physics, has already been mentioned as a disputable question. 55. The science of delivering our own thoughts to others, Gr-immir branching into grammar and i-hetoric, and including and rhe- poetry, SO far as its proper vehicles — metre and dic- '"™" tion — are concerned, occupies the sixth book. In all this he finds more desiderata, than, from the great attention paid to these subjects by the ancients, could have been expected. Thus his mgenious collection of antitheta, or com- moiijjlaces in rhetoric, though mentioned by Cicero as to the judicial species of eloquence, is first extended by Bacon him- self, as he supposes, to deliberative or political orations. I do not. however, think it probable that this branch of topics could have been neglected by antiquity, though the writings relating to it may not have descended to us ; nor can we by any means say there is nothing of the kind in Aristotle's Riietoric. Whether the utility of these commonplaces, when collected in books, be very great, is another question. And a similar doubt might be suggested with respect to the elenchs, or refutations, of rhetorical sopliisras, colores honl et mali, which he reports as equally deficient, though a commencement had been made by Aristotle. 56. In the seventh book, we come to ethical science. This „ he deems to have been insufiiciently treated. He would have the different tempers and characters of mankind first considered ; tlien their passions and affections > "Tn altera pUilosophiso paite, quae est gwierendi ac disserendi, quae Xoyotiy iicitur." — Cic. de Fin., i. 14 CnAp.m. ETmCS — POLITICS. 49 (neither of which, as he justly observes, find a place in the Etliics of Aristotle, thoujrh they are sometimes treated, not so appositely, in his Rhetoric) ; lastly, the methods of altering and artecting the will and ajipetite, such as custom, education, imitation, or society. " The main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the exemplar or plat- form of good, and the regiment or culture of the mind : the . one describing tlie nature of good ; the other presenting rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of man tliereunto." This latter he also calls " the Georgics of the nvind." He seems to place " tlie platform or essence of good" in seeking the good of the whole, rather than that of the individual, applying this to refute the ancient theo- ries as to the siimmum hoiium. But pei'haps Bacon had not thoroughly disentangled this question, and confounds, as is not unusual, the summum bonum, or personal feli- city, with the object of moral action, or commune bonum. He is right, however, in preferring, morally speaking, the active to the contemplative life against Aristotle and other pliilosophers. This part is translated in De Augmentis, with little variation, from the Advancement of Learning ; as is also what follows on the Georgics, or culture, of the mind. Tlie philosophy of civil life, as it relates both to the conduct of men in their mutual intercourse, which is peculiar- ly termed prudence, and to tliat higher prudence which is concerned with the administration of communities, fills up the chart of the Baconian ethics. In the eighth book, admirable reflections on the former of these subjects occur at almost every sentence. Many, perhaps most, of tliese will be found in the Advancement of Learning. But, in this, he had been, for a reason sufficiently obvious and almost avowed, cautious- ly silent upon the art of government, — the craft of his king. The motives for silence were still so powerful, that pQu^j^g lie treats, in the De Augmentis, only of two heads in political science : the methods of enlarging the boundaries of a state, wliich James I. could hardly resent as an inter- ference with his own monopoly ; and one of far more impor- tance to tlie well-being of mankind, the principles of universal jurisprudence, or rather of universal legislation, accoi-ding to which standard all laws ought to be framed. These he has sketched in ninety-seven aphorisms, or short rules, wliich, from the great experience of Bacon in the laws, as well as his VOL. III. 4 60 BACON PAPT Ili peculiar vocation towards that part of pliilosopliy, deserve to be studied at this day. Upon such topics, the progressive and innovating spirit of his genius was less likely to be jjor- ceived ; but he is here, as on all occasions, equally free Iroiii what he has happily called, in one of his essays, the " frowai'd retention of custom," the prejudice of mankind, like that of perverse children, against what is advised to them for tlieir real good, and what they cannot deny to be conducive to it. This whole eighth book is pregnant with profound and orignial thmkmg. The nnith and last, winch is sliort, glances only at some desiderata in theological science, and is chiefly remarkable as it displays a more liberal and catholic spirit than Avas often to be met with in a period sig- nalized by bigotry and ecclesiastical pride. But as the abjuration of human authority is the first principle of Lord Bacon's ])hilosophy, and the preparation for his logic, it was not ex])edient to say too much of its usefulness in theological pursuits. 57. At the conclusion of tlie whole, we may find a summary Desiderat.i t-at'^il^gue of the deficiencies, which, in the course of enumerated this ample rcview. Lord Bacon had found worthy ty bim. ^^ being supplied by patient and pliilosophical in- quiry. Of these desiderata, few, I fear, have since been filled up, at least in a collective and systematic manner, according to his suggestions. Great materials, useful intima- tions, and even partial delineations, are certainly to be found, as to many of the rest, in the writings of those who have done honor to the last two centuries. But, with all our pride in modern science, very much even of Avhat, in Bacon's time, was perceived to be wanting, remains for the diligence and sagacity of those who are yet to come. 58. The first book of the Novum Organum, if it is not Novum better known than any other part of Bacon's philoso- Orgiiiium: phical writings, has at least furnished more of those first book. gjj.j}^j,^g passages Avhich shine in quotation. It is written -in detached aphorisms; the sentences, even where these aphorisms are longest, not flowing much into one another, so as to create a suspicion, that he had formed adver- saria, to which he committed his thoughts as they arose. It is full of repetitions ; and indeed this is so usual with liOrd Bacon, that, whenever we find an acute reflection or brilliant analogy, it is more than an even chance that it will recur in CiiAP. m. NOVUM ORGAXDJI. 51 «ome other place. I have already observed that he ha3 hinted the Novum Organum to be a digested summary of his method but not the entire system as he designed to develop it, ever in that small portion Aviiich he has handled at all. 59. Ot" the splendid passages in the Novum Organum none are i^erhaps so remarkable as his celebrated F,,iiacies. division of fallacies ; not such as the dialecticians had i^i^i^ been accustomed to refute, depending upon equivocal Avords. or faulty disposition of premises, but lying far deeper in iho natural or incidental prejudices of the mind itself. Tliese aro four in number : idola tribus, to which, from certain common weaknesses of human nature, we are univei'sally liable ; i'Jolu specus, which, from peculiar dispositions and circumstunces of individuals, mislead them in different manners ; idola fori, arising from the current usage of words, which I'epreseut things much otherwise than as they really are ; and idola theatri, which false systems of philosophy and erroneous me- thods of reasoning have introduced. Hence, as the refracted ray gives us a false notion as to the place of the object Avhose image it transmits, so our own minds are a refracting medium to the objects of their own contemplation, and require all the aid of a well-directed philosophy either to rectify the percep- tion, or to make allowances for its errors. 60. These idola, e«(5u/ua, images, illusions, fallacies, or, as Lord Bacon calls them in the Advancement of Learn- confounded ing, false appearances, have been often named in '"'iiidois. English idols of the tribe, of the den, of the market-place. But it seems better, unless we retain the Latin name, to em- ploy one of the synonymous terms given above. For the use of idol in this sense is little warranted by tlie pi-actice of the language, nor is it found in Bacon himself ; but it has misled a host of writers, whoever might be the first that applied it, even among such as are conversant with the Novum Or^ranum " Bacon proceeds," says Pla^-fair, " to enumerate the causes of error ; the idols, as he calls them, or false divinities, to which the mind had so long been accustomed to bow." Apd with a similar misapprehension of the meaning of the word, in speak- ing of the idula spcciis, he says, " Besides the causes of error which are common to all mankind, each individual, according to B?vcon, ha.s his own dark cavern or den, into which the light '8 imperfectly admitted, and in the obscurity of which a Uutjlj^y idol lurks, at whose shi'ine the truth is often sacri- 52 BACON. Pakt IIL ficed."^ Thus also Dr. Thomas Brown : " In the inmost sanctu- aries of the mind were all the idols which he overtlirew ; " and a later author on the Novum Organum fancies that Bacon " strikingly, though in his usual quaint style, calls the preju- dices that check tlie progress of the mind by the name of idols, because mankind ai-e apt to pay homage to these, instead of resrardino: trutli." " Thus, too, in the translation of the Novum Organum, published in Mr. Basil Montagu's edition, we find ■idola rendered by idols, Avithout explanation. We may, in fact, say that this meaning has been almost universally given by later writers. By whom it was introduced I cannot deter- mine. Cudworth, in a passage where he glances at Bacon, has said, " It is no idol of the den, to use that affected lan- guage." But, in the pedantic style of the seventeenth century, it is not impossible that idol may here have been put as a mere translation of the Greek il6u7iov, and in the same general sense of an idea or intellectual image." Although the popular sense Avould not be inapposite to the general purpose of Bacon in tlie first part of the Novum Organum, it cannot be reck- oned so exact and j>hilosophical an illustration of the sources of human error as the unfaithful image, the shadow of reality, seen through a refracting surface, or reflected from an unequal mirror, as in the Platonic hypothesis of the cave, wherein we are placed with our backs to the light, to which he seems to allude in his idola sjnciis} And as this is also plainly the true meaning, as a comparison with the parallel passages in the Advancement of Learning demonstrates, there can be no pretence for continuing to employ a word which has served to mislead such men as Brown and Playfair. 1 Prelim. Dissertation to Encyclopaedia, speaks of idols or false appearances." 2 Introduction to the Novum Organum, The quotation is from the translation of published by the Society for the Dilfusioa one of liis short Latin tracts, which was of Useful Knowledge. Even Stewart seems not made by himself. It is, however, a to have fallen into the same error, proof that the word i lol was once used in " While these idols of the den maintain this .sense. cheir authority, the cultivation of the phi- •* " Quisque ex phantasia; sure cellulis josophical spirit is impossible ; or rather it tanquam ex specu Platonis, philosopha- is in a renunciation of this idolatry that tur." — Ilistoria Naturalis, in proefatione. the philosophical spirit essentially con- Coleridge has some tine lines iu allusion sists." — Dissertation, &c. The observa- to this hypothesis iu that magnificent lion is equ.Uly true, whatever sense we elTusion of his genius, the introduction to may give to idol. the second book of Joan of ."Vrc, but with- s In Todd's edition of Johnson's Die- drawn, after the first edition, from that nonary this sense is not mentioned. Bnt poem ; where he describes us as " placed in that of the Encyclopicdia Metropoli- with our backs to bright reality." I am tana we have these words : "An idol or not, however, certain that Bacon meant linage is also opposed to a reality ; thus this precise analogy by his idola fpeciif- l/>rd Bacon (see the (quotation from him) See De Augmentis, lib. t. c. 4. Chap. HL SECOND BOOK OF NOVUM ORGANUM. 53 Gl. In the second book of the Novum Organum, we come at length to the new logic, the interpretation of nature, Second as he calls it, or the rules for conducting inquiries ^To^um in natural philosophy according to his inductive me- Organum. thod. It is, as we have said, a fragment of his entire system, and is chiefly confined to the " prerogative instances," ^ or phenomena which are to be selected, for various reasons, as most likely to aid our investigations of natui-e. Fifteen of these are used to guide the intellect, five to assist the senses, seven to correct the practice. This second book is written with more tlian usual want of perspicuity ; and, though it is intrinsically the Baconian philosophy in a pre-eminent sense. I much doubt whether it is very extensively read, though far more so tlian it was fifty years since. Playfair, however, has given an excellent abstract of it in his Preliminary Disserta- tion to the Encyclopredia Britannica, with abundant and judi- cious illustrations from modern science. Sir John Herschel, in his admirable Discourse' on Natural Philosophy, has added a greater number from still more recent discoveries, and has also furnished such a luminous development of the difficulties of the Novum Organum, as had been vainly hoped in former times. The commentator of Bacon should be himself of an original genius in philosophy. These novel illustrations are the more useful, because Bacon himself, from defective know- ledge of natural phenomena, and from what, though contrary to his precepts, his ardent fancy could not avoid, — a premature hastening to explain the essences of things instead of their proximate causes, — has frequently given erroneous exami)les. It is to be observed, on the other hand, that he often anticipates with marvellous sagacity the discoveries of postei-ity, and that his patient and acute analysis of the phenomena of heat has been deemed a model of his own inductive reasoning. " Nc one," observes Playfair, " has done so much in such circura stances." He was even ignorant of some things that he might ha\e known ; he wanted every branch of mathematics ; and placed in this remote corner of Europe, without many kindred minds to animate his zeal for physical science, seems hardly Ij have believed the discovei'ies of Galileo. » The allusion in prirrogalivie instan- called, though by lot, was generally found, tiariim is not to the Knglish word pre- by some prejudice or superstition, to in- rogative, as Sir John Herschel seems to fluence the rest which seldom voted other- suppose ( Discourse on Natural Philosophy, wise. It is rather a forced analogy, which L182), but to the ■pro'.ros^ativa centuria is not uncommon with Bacon the Roman comi ia, which being first 54 BACON. Part III. 62. It has bappenetl to Lord Bacon, as it has to many Confidence Other writers, that he has been extolled for qualities of Bacon. ]^j qq means characteristic of his mind. The first aphorism of the Novum Organum, so frequently quoted, '• Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, performs and under- stands so much as he has collected concerning the order of nature by observation or reason, nor do his power or his knowledge extend farther," has seemed to bespeak an extreme sobriety of imagination, a willingness to acquiesce in register- ing the phenomena of nature without seeking a revelation of her secrets. And nothing is more true than that such was the cautious and patient course of inquiry prescribed by him to tdl the genuine disciples of his inductive method. But he was far from being one of those humble philosophers who would hmit human science to the enumeration of particular facts. He had, on the contrary, vast hopes of the human intellect under the guidance of his new logic. The lalens schematis- mus, or intrinsic configuration of bodies, the latens processus ad formam, or transitional operation through which they pass from one form, or condition of nature, to another, would one day, as he hoped, be brought to light ; and this not, of course, by simple observation of the senses, nor even by assistance of instruments, concerning the utility of which he was rather sceptical, but by a rigorous application of exclusive and affirm- ative propositions to the actual phenomena by the inductive method. " It appears," says Playiair, '' that Bacon placed the ultimate object of philosophy too high, and too much out of the reach of man, even when his exertions are most skilfully conducted. He seems to have thought, that by giving a proper direction to our researches, and carrying them on according to the inductive method, we should arrive at the knowledge of the essences of the powers and qualities resid- ing in bodies ; that we should, for instance, become acquainted with the essence of heat, of cold, of color, of transparency. The fiict however is, that, in as far as science has yet ad- vanced, no one essence has been discovered, either a-; to mat- ter in general, or as to any of its more extensive modifications. We are yet in doubt whether heat is a peculiar motion of the minute parts of bodies, as Bacon himself conceived it to be, or something emitted or radiated from their surfaces, or, lastly, the vibrations of an elastic medium by which they are penetrated and surrounded." •HAi. in. NOVUM ORGANUM. 55 63. It requires a very extensive survey of the actual dominion of science, and a great sagacity, to judge, Almost even in the loosest manner, what is beyond the pos- justified of sible limits of human knowledge. Certainly, since "''' the time when this passage was written by Playfair, more steps Iiave been made towards realizing the sanguine antici- j)ations of Bacon than in the two centuries that had elapsed «incc the publication of the Novum Organum. We do not yet know the real nature of heat; but few would pi-onounce it impossible or even unlikely that we may know it, in the same degree that we know other physical realities not immediately perceptible, before many years shall have expired. The atomic theory of Dalton, the laws of crystalline substances discovered by Hauy, the development of others still subtler by Mitscher- lich, instead of exhibiting, as the older philosophy had done, the idola reriwi, the sensible appearances of concrete sub stance, radiations from the internal glory, admit us, as it were, to stand within the vestibule of nature's temple, and to gaze on the very curtain of the shrine. If, indeed, we could know the internal structure of one primary atom, and could tell, not of course by immediate testimony of sense, but by legiti- mate inference from it, through what constant laws its com- ponent though indiscerpible molecules, the atoms of atoms, attract, retain, and repel each other, we should have before our mental vision not only the latens schematismus, the real configuration of the substance, but its form, or efficient nature, and could give as perfect a definition of any such substance, of gold, for example, as we can of a cone or a parallelogram. The recent discoveries of animal and vegetable development, and especially the happy application of the microscope to ob- serving chemical and organic changes in their actual course, are equally remarkable'*advances towards a knowledge of the latens processus ad formam, the corpuscular motions by wliich all change must be accomplished, and are in fact a great deal more than Bacon himself would have deemed possible.^ 64. These astonishing revelations of natural mysteries, fresh tidings of which crowd in upon us every day, may be ' By the latens processus, he meant has taken place, a /atfn^ progress from one only what is thu natural operation by form to another. Tliis, in nunib Discourse on Nat. Philos., p. 191 CHiF III. INDUCTIVE LOGIC. 57 even this has been sceptically accepted by our cautious school of philosophy. If we are ever to go farther into the molecu- lar analysis of substances, it must be througli tlie means and upon the authority of new discoveries exhibited to our senses in experiment. Ikit the existing powers of exhibiting or compelling nature by instruments, vast as they ai)pcar to us, and wonderful as has been their efficacy in many respects, have done little for many years past in diminishing the num- ber of substances reputed to be simple ; and with strong reasons to suspect that some of these, at least, yield to the crucible of nature, our electric batteries have, up to this hour, phiyed innoculously round theii' heads. G6. Bacoa has thrown out, once or twice, a hint at a single principle, a summary law of nature, as if all subordinate causes resolved themselves into one great process, according to which God works his will in the universe : " Opus quod operatur Deus a principle usque ad fiaem." The natural tendency towai-ds simplification, and what we consider as harmony, in our philosophical systems, which Lord Baccn himself reckons among the idola trihus, the fallacies incident to the species, has led some to favor this unity of physical law. Impact and gravity have each had their supporters. But we are as yet at a great distance from establishing such a gene- ralization, nor does it appear by any means probable that it will ever assume any simple form. 67. Tlie close connection of the inductive process recom- mended by Bacon with natural philosophy in the inductive common sense of that word, and the general selec- logic : tion of his examples for illustration from that science, confined to have given rise to a question, whether he compre- P^iysics. bended metaphysical and moral philosophy within the scope of his inquir3^^ That they formed a part of the Instaura- tion of Sciences, and therefore of the Baconian philosophy in the fullest sense of the word, is obvious from the fact that a large proportion of the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum is dedicated to those subjects ; and it is not less so that the i^lola of the Novum Organum are at least as apt to deceive us in moral as in physical argument. The question, there- • • This question was discussed some Review, vol. iii. p. 273; and the Preliml- vears since by the late editor of the Edin- nary Dissertation to Stewart's Philosophi burgh Review, on one side, and by DugalJ cal Essays. Stewart on tJ:ie other. See Edinburgh 58 BACON. PAitT in. fore, can only be raised as to the peculiar method of conduct- ms inv(;stigations, which is considered as his own. This would, however, appear to have been decided by himself in very positive language : " It may be doubted, rather than objected, by some, whether we look to the perfection, by means of our method, of natural philosophy alone, or of tlie other sciences also, of logic, of ethics, of politics. But we certainly mean what has here been said to be understood as to them all ; and as the ordinary logic, which proceeds by syllogism, does not relate to physical only, but to every other science, so ours, which proceeds by induction, comprises them all. For we as much collect a history and form tables con- cerning anger, fear, shame, and the like, and also concerning examples from civil life, and as much concerning the intellec- tual operations of memory, combination, and partition, judg- ment and the others, as concerning heat and cold, or light, or vegetation, or such things." ^ But he proceeds to intimate, as far as I understand the next sentence, that although his method or logic, strictly speaking, is applicable to other subjects, it is his immediate object to inquire into the properties of natural things, or Avhat is generally meant by physics. To this, in- deed, the second book of the Novum Organum and the portions that he completed of the remaining parts of the Instauratio Magna bear witness. 68. It by no means follows, because the leading princi[)les g^ ^ . of the inductive philosophy are applicable to other philosophy topics of inquiry than what is usually comprehended Be"vadon°''' Under the name of physics, that we can employ all antiexperi- the prceroffativie instanttarum, and still less the peculiar rules for conducting experiments which Bacon has given us, in moral or even psychological disquisi- 1 " Etiam dubitabit quispiam potius sitionis et divlsionis, judiciiet reliquorum, quam objiciet, utrum nos de natural! tan- quani de calido et frigido, aut luce, ant turn philosophia, an etiam de scientiia veG;etatione aut similibus. Scd tamen reliquis, lofjicis, ethicis, politicia, secun- cum nostra ratio interpretandi, post histo- dum viani uostram perficiendisloquamur. riam prfeparatam et ordinatani. non nien- At no< certi de universia hrec, quae dicta tis tantum raotus et discursus, ut lo;>;ica eunt, intelligimus ; atque quemadmodum vulgaris, sed etrerum naturam iutuoatur, vulgaris logica, quas regit res per syllogis- ita mentem regimus ut ad rerum naturam mum, non tantum ad naturalea, sed ad se aptis per omnia modis applicare possit. amnes scientias pertiiiet, ita et nostra, Atque propterea miilta et diversa in doc- quas procodit per inductioncm, omni;i trina interpretatiouis prajcipimus, <(ua compleetitur. Tarn enini Ilistoriam et ad subject!, de quo inquirimus, qualita- Tabulas Inveniendi conficimus de ira, tem et comlitionem modum invenienJl nietu et verecundia et similibus, ac etiara nonnuUaex parteapplicent." — Nov. Org., de exemplis rerum civilium ; nee minis i. J27. le motibus meutulibus memoriijc, compo- Cbjv m. REMARKS ON THE IXDUCTI\T3 METHOD. i)9 ticns. IMany of them are plainly referable to particular in an ipu hit ions, or at most to limited subjerts of chemical t! oory. And the frequent occurrence of passages which fchow Lord Bacon's fondness for experimental processes, seems to have led some to consider his peculiar methods as more exclusively related to such modes of inquiry than they really are. But when the Baconian philosophy is said to be expe- rimental, we are to remember that experiment is only better than what we may call passive observation, because it en- larges our capacity of observing with exactness and expedition. The reasoning is grounded on observation in both cases. In astronomy, where nature remarkably presents the objects of our observation without liability to error or uncertain delay, we may reason on the inductive principle as well as in sciences that require tentative operations. The inferences drawn from the difference of time in the occupation of the satellites of Jupi- ter at different seasons, in favor of the Copernican theory and against the instantaneous motion of light, are inductions of the same kind with any that could be derived from an expe- rimentinn crucis. They are exclusions of those hypotheses •which might solve many phenomena, but fail to explain ihose immediately observed. 69. But astronomy, from the comparative solitariness, if we may so say, of all its phenomena, and the simplicity Adranta^es of their laws, has an advantage that is rarely found in of the sciences of mere observation. Bacon justly gave to ' "^ ' experiment, or the interrogation of nature, compelling her to give up her secrets, a decided preference whenever it can be employed ; and it is unquestionably true that the inductive method is tedious, if not uncertain, when it cannot resort to so compendious a process. One of the subjects selected by Bacon in the third part of the Instauration as specimens of the method by which an inquiry into nature should be con- ducted — the History of "Winds — does not greatly admit of experiments ; and the very slow progress of meteorology, which has yet hardly deserved the name of a science, when compared wath that of chemistiy or optics, will illustrate the difficulties of employing the inductive method without their aid. It is not, therefore, that Lord Bacon's method of philo- sophizing is properly experimental, but that by experiment it is most successfully displayed. 70. It will follow from hence, that in proportion as, in any 60 BACON. Part III matter of inquiiy, we can separate, in what Ave examine, the determining conditions, or law of form, from every tiling Sometimes cxtraneous, wc shall be more able to use tlie Baco- appiicabie j^ijij-, method with advantage. In metaphysics, or to nliiloso- \ J > phy of hu- what Stewart would have called the ])hilosophy of uiaa mind, ^j-^g human mind, there seems much in its own nature capable of being subjected to the inductive reasoning. Such are those facts which, by their intimate connection with phy- siology, or the laws of the bodily frame, fall properly within the province of the physician. In these, though exact obser- Aation is chiefly required, it is often practicable to shorten its process by experiment. And another important illustra- tion may be given from the education of children, considered as a science of rules deduced from observation ; wherein also we are frequently more able to substitute experiment L-sssoto for mere experience, than with mankind in general, politics and whom we may observe at a distance, but cannot con- niorais. xx(A. lu politics, as Well as in moral prudence, we can seldom do more than this. It seems, however, practicable to apply the close attention enforced by Bacon, and the care- ful arrangement and comparison of phenomena, which are the basis of his induction, to these subjects. Thus, if the circum- stances of all popular seditions recorded in history were to be carefully collected with great regard to the probability of evidence, and to any peculiarity that may have aifected the results, it might be easy to perceive such a connection of antecedent and subsequent events in the great plurality of instances, as would reasonably lead us to form probable inferences as to similar tumults when they should occur. This has sometimes been done, with less universality, and with much less accuracy than the Baconian method requires, by such theoretical writers on politics as Machiavel and Bodin. But it has been apt to degenerate into pedantry, and to dis- appoint the practical statesman, who commonly rejects it with scorn , partly because civil history is itself defective, seldom giving a just view of events, and still less frequently of the motives of those concerned in them; partly because tho history of mankind is far less copious than that of nature, and, in much that relates to politics, has not yet had time to fur- nish the ground-work of a sufficient induction ; but partly also from some distinctive circumstances which affect our re;isoning3 in moral far more than in physical science, and Chap. IH. REMARKS ON THE INDUCTIVE JIETHOD. 61 which deserve to be considered, so far at least as to sketch the arguments that might be employed. 71. The Baconian logic, as has been already said, deduces universal principles from select observation ; that is, i„ju,ptjon from particular, and, in some cases of experiment, less couciu- from smgular mstances. It may easily appear to one these sub- conversant with the syllogistic method less legitimate J^<='^^- than the old induction, which proceeded by an exhaustive enumeration of particulars,^ and at most warranting but a pro- bable conclusion. The answer to this objection can only be found in the acknowledged uniformity of the laws of nature, so that whatever has once. occurred will, under absolutely similar circumstances, always occur again. This may be called the suppressed premise of every Baconian enthymeme, every inference from observation of phenomena, Avhich extends beyond the particular case. When it is once ascertained that water is composed of one proportion of oxygen to one of hydrogen, we never doubt but that such are its invariable constituents. AVe may repeat the experiment to secure our- selves against the risk of error in the operation, or of some unperceived condition that may have affected the result ; but, when a sufficient number of trials has secured us against this, an invai'iable law of natuj-e is inferred from the particular instance : nobody conceives that one pint of pure water can be of a different composition from another. All men, even the most rude, reason upon this primary maxim ; but they reason inconclusively, from misapprehending the true relations of cause and effect in the phenomena to which they direct their attention. It is by the sagacity and ingenuity with which Bacon has excluded the various sources of error, and discn- eaf^ed the true cause, that his method is distinguished frc/ui that which the vulgar practise. 72. It is required, however, for the validity of this method, first, that there should be a strict uniformity in the p^gnsonsior general laws of nature, from which we can infer that this diifer- what has been will, in the same conditions, be again; *°'^'^' and, secondly, that we shall be able to perceive and estimate all the conditions with an entire and exclusive knowledge. The first is granted in all physictd phenomena ; but in those * [This is not quite an accurate account aMM?7jt'hicll I mean a good foundation in geometry and the philosophical principles of grammar, the first book of the Novum Organura might be very advantageously combined with the instruction of an enlightened lecturer.^ ' It by no means is to be inferred, that bccauiie the actual text of Bacon is not always such as can be well understood by very young men, I object to their being led to the real principles of induc- tive philosophy, which alone will teach them to thinlv, firmly but not presump- tuously, for themselves. Few defects, ou the contrary, in our system of education, are more visible than the want of an ade- quate course of logic ; and this is not likely to be rectified so long as the Aris- totelian methods challenge that denomi- nation exclusively of all other aids to the reasoning feculties. The position that nothing else is to be called logic, were it even agreeable to the derivation of the word, which it is not, or to the usage of the ancients, which is by no means uni- formly the case, or to that of modern philosophy and correct language, which is certainly not at all the case, is no an- Ewer to the question, whether what we call logic does not deserve to be taught at all. A living writer of high reputation, who has at least fully understood his own sub- ject, and illustrated it better than his predecessors, from a more enlarged reading and thinking, wherein his own acuteness has been improved by the writers of the Baconian school, has been unfortunately instrumental, by the very merits of liis treatise on Logic, in keeping up the preju- dices on this subject, which have gener- ally been deemed characteristic of the uni- versity to which he belonged. All the reflection I have been able to give to the subject has convinced me of the incfiic.acy of the syllogistic art in enabling us to think rightly for ourselves, or, which is part of thinking rightly, to detect those fal- lacies of others which might impose on our undei'standing befoi-e we have ac([nired that art. ]t has been often .alleged, and, as far .as 1 can judge, with perfect truth, that no man, who can be worth answering, ever commits, except througli mere inad- vertence, any paralogisms which the com- mon logic serves to point out. It is easy enough to construct syllogisms which sin against its rules; but the question is, by whom they were employed. For though It is not uncommon, aa 1 am aware, to represent an adversary as reasoning illogi- cally, this is generally effected by putting his argument iuto our own words. The great fault of all, over induction, or the assertion of a general premise upon an insufficient examination of particulars, cannot be discovered or cured by any logi- cal skill ; and this is the error into which men really fall, not that of omitting to distribute the middle term, though it comes in elTect, and often in appeiirauce, to the same thing I do not contend that the rules of syllogism, which arc very short and simple, ought not to be learned ; or that there may not be some advantage in occasionally stating our own argument, or calling on another to state his, in a regu- lar form (an advantage, however, rather dialectical, which is, in other words, rhe- torical, than one which affects the reason- ing l;iculties themselves); nor do I deny that it is philosophically worth while to know that all general reasoning by u-ords may be reduced into syllogism, as it is to know that most of plane geometry may be resolved into the superposition of equal triangles ; but to represent this portion of logical science as the whole, appears to me almost like teaching the scholar Euclid's axioms, aud the axiomatic theorem to which I have alluded, and calling this the science of geometry. The following pas- sage from the Tort-Koyal logic is very judicious and candid, giving as much tb the Aristotelian system as it deserves: " Cette partie, que nous avous maintenant i traiter, qui comprend les regies du rai- sonnement. est estimee la plus import.inte de la logique, et c'est presque I'unique qu'on y traite avec quelque soin ; mais il y a sujet de douter si die est aussi utile qu'on se Timagine. La plupart des cr- reurs des honimes, connne nous .avons deji dit ailleurs, viennent bien plus de ce qu'ils raisonnent sur de faux principes, que non pas de ce qu'ils raisonnent mal suivaiit leurs princi]ies. II arrive rarement qu'on se laisse tronijicr par des raisonnemens (jui no soient faux que parceque la conse- quence en est mal tiree; et ceux qui ne seroient pas capables d'en reconnoitre la faussetc par la seule lumierc de la raison, ne le seroient pas ordinaireuient d'entcndre les regies que Ton en donne, et encore Chap. III. UIS PREJUDICE AGAINST MATHEMATICS. 61) 78. The ignorance of Bacon in mathematics, and, what was much worse, liis inadequate notions of their ^igp^^ju. utility, must be reckoned among the chief defects in dice against liis philosophical Avritings. In a remarkable passage Zf^^a. of the Advancement of Leariiingj he held mathe- matics to be a part of metajthysics ; but the place of this is altered in the Latin, and they are treated as merely auxiliary or instrumental to physical inquiry. He had some prejudice against pure mathematics, and thought they had been unduly ekivated in comparison with the realities of nature. " I knotW not," he says, " how it has arisen that mathematics and logic, which ought to be the serving-maids of physical philosophy, n.ciins de les appliquer. Neamnoins, quand ou ne considoreroit ce3 regies que coinme des verites speculatives, elles serviroiout toujours i exercer I'esprit ; et de plus, on ne peut nier quelles n'aient quelque usage en quelques rencontres, et i I'egard de quelques personnes, qui, etant d'uu natu- rel vif et penetrant, ne so laissent quelque- fois tromper par des f,iussc< consequences, que faute d'attention, i (luoi la retiexion qu'ils feroient sur ces r jgles seroit capable de remiidier." — Art de Peuser, part iii. How different is this sensible passage from one quoted from some anonymous writer in Whately's Logic, p. 34 '. — '■ A fallacy con- sists of an ingenious mixture of trutli and falsehood so entangled, so intimately blended, that the falhicy is, iu the chemi- cal plirase, held in solution : one drop of sound logic is that test which immediately disunites them, makes the^ foreign sub- tance \isible, and precipitates it to the Dottom." One fiiilacy, it might be an- swered, as common as any, is the false analogy, the misleading the mind by a tomparison where there is no real propor- tion or resemblance. The chemist's test is the necessary means of detecting the foreign substance; if the "drop of sound logic " be such, it is strange that lawyers, mathematicians, and mankind in general, should so sparingly employ it ; the fact being notorious, that those most eminent for strong reasoning powers are rarely conversant with t'ne syllogistic method. It is also well known, that these " iuti- mately blended mixtures of truth and falsehood "' perplex no man of plain sense, except when they are what is called extra- logical ; cases wherein the art of syllogism is of no use. [The syllogistic logic appears to have been more received into favor of late among philosophers, both here and on the Continent, than it was in th" two pre- ceding centuries. The main question, it is to be kept in mind, does not relate to its principles as a science, but to the practical usefulness of its rules .as an art. An able writer lias lately observed, that " he must be fortunate iu the clearness of his mind, who, knowing the logical mode, is never obliged to have recourse to it to destroy ambiguity or heighten evidence, and par- ticularly so in his opponents, who, in verbal or written controversy, never finds it necessary to employ it in trying their ar- guments." Penny Cyclopaedia, art. " Syl logism." Every one must judge of this by his own experience : the profound thinker whose hand T^eems discernible in this arti- cle, has a strong claim to authority in favor of the utility of the syllogistic meth- od ; yet we cannot help remembering that it is very rarely employed even iu contro- versy, where 1 really believe it to be a valuable weapon against an antagonist, and capable of producing no small effect on the indifferent reader or hearer, espe- cially if he is not of a very sharp appre- hension ; and moreover that, as I at least believe, the proportion of mathematical, political, or theological reasoners, who have acquired or retained any tolerable expertness in the technical part of logic, is far from high, nor am I aware that they fall into fallacies for want of know- ledge of it ; but I mean strictly such fallacies as the syllogistic method alone seems to correct. What comes nearest to syllogistic reasoning in practice is that of geometry : as thus, A =: B ; but (J =: .\ ; ergo, C;=iB, is essentially a syllogism, but not acccrding to form. If, however, equality of magnitude may be considered as identity, according to the dictum of Aristotle, iv TovToic f/ iabrric: horrig, the foregoing is regular in logical form; and if we take A, B, and C for ratios, which are properly identical, not equal, this may justly be called a syllogism But those who contend most for the formal logic seldom much regard its use in geo- metrical science. — 1847.] 70 BACON. Part IE. yet affecting to vaunt iLe certainty that belongs to them, pre- sume to exercise a dominion over her." It is, in my opinion, erroneous to speak of geometry, which relates to the realities of space, and to natural objects so far as extended, as a mere handmaid of physical philosophy, and not rather a part of it. Pla-vfair has made some "ood remarks on the advantages derived to experimental philosophy itself from the mere application of geometry and algebra. And one of the leHec- tions which this ought to excite is, that we are not to conceive, as some hastily do, that there can be no real utility to man- kind, even of that kind of utility which consists in multiplying the conveniences and luxuries of life, springing from theo- retical and speculative inquiry. Tlie history of algebra, so barren in the days of Tartaglia and Vieta, so productive of wealth, when applied to dynamical calculations in our own, may be a sufficient answer. 79. One of the petty blemishes, which, though lost in the Bacon's ex- splcndor of Lord Bacon's excellences, it is not cess of wit. unfair to mention, is connected Avith the peculiar characteristics of his mind : he is sometimes too metaphorical and wittv. His remarkable talent for discoverini; analojries seems to have inspired him with too much regard to them as arguments, even when they must appear to any common reader fanciful and far-fetched. His terminology, chietly for the same i-tjason, is often a little affected, and, in Latin, rather barbarous. The divisions of his prerogative instances in the Novum Organum are not always founded upon intelligible distinctions. And the general obscurity of tlie style, neither himself nor his assistants being good masters of tlie Latin language, which at the best is never flexible or copious enough for our pliilosophy, renders the perusal of both his great Avorks too laborious for the impatient reader. Brucker has well observed, tliat the Novum Organum has been neglected by the generality, and proved of far less service tlian it would otherwise have been in philosophy, in consequence of these very d(?fects, as well as the real depth of the author's mind.^ 80. AVhat has been the fame of Bacon, " tlie wisest, great est of mankind," it is needless to say. What has been lii; 1 " Legendii ipsa nobilissiraa tmctatio num artifieio leetorcm Don rcmorarttur, ah illis (!St, qui in rerum naturalium inqui- longe plura. quam factum est, contuUsscI pitioue feliciter proj^redi cupiiint. Qu:c si ad philosophiie eniendationem. llis eaim paulo plus lumiiiis et perspicuitatis liabc- obstantibus a plerisqiie hoc organiuu ne» let, et uoTorum termiuorum et partitio- glectum est." — lUst. i'Mos., T. i^. Chap m HIS FAME ON THE CONTINENT. 71 real influence over mankind, how much of our enlarged and exact knowledge may be attribute-d to his inductive Fame of method, wliat of this again has been due to a thorough fi^e conti- study of his writings, and what to an indirect and t^tnt. secondary acquaintance with them, are questions of another kind, and less easily solved. Stewart, the jdiilosopher Avho has dwelt most on tlie praises of Bacon, while he conceives him to have exercised a considerable influence over the Eng- lish men of science in the seventeenth century, supposes, on the authority of Montucla, that he did not " command the general admiration of Europe," till the publication of the preliminary discourse to the French Encyclopaedia by Diderot and D'Alembert. This, however, is by much too precipitate a conclusion. He became almost immediately known on the Continent. Gassendi was one of his most ardent admirers. Descartes mentions him, I believe, once only, in a letter tc Mersenne in 1G3"2;^ but he was of all men the most unwill- ing to praise a contemporary. It may be said that these were philosophers, and that their testimony does not imply the admiration of mankind. But writers of a very different cha- racter mention him in a familiar manner. Richelieu is said to have highly esteemed Lord Bacon.- And it may in some measure be due to tliis, that in the Sentimens de I'Academie Franoaise sur le Cid, he is alluded to simply by the name Bacon, as one well known."' Voiture, in a letter to Costar, about the same time, bestow^s high eulogy on some passages of Bacon which his correspondent had sent to him, and observes that Horace would have been astonished to hear a barbarian Briton discourse in such a style.* The tieatise De Augmentis was republished in France in 1G24, the year aiter its appearance in England. It was translated into French as early as 1G32; no great proofs of neglect. Editions came 1 Vol. Ti. p. 210. edit. Cousin. qui n'ait ete deguise de la sorte par les - The only authoiity that I can now sages du tilmix temps pour la rendre plus quote for this is not very good, that of utile aux peuplcs.'' Aubrey's iManuscript's, which I find in ^ P. 44(10.33). Seward's Anecdotes, iv. 328. But it seems * "J"ai trouve parfaitement beau tout not improbable. The same book quotes ce que vous me mandez do Baron. Mais Balzac as .saving, " Croyons done, pour ne vous .'^emble til pas qu"Horace, qui Tamour du Chanrelicr Bacon, que toutes di.-cit, Visam Britanuos hotpitibus fcros, les folies des ancicns sont sages ; et tous feroit bicn c tonne d'entendre un barbara leurs songes nnsti.res.etde celles-li qui discourir couime cela? " Costar is said by sont cstiniees pures fables, il n"y en a Bay le to have borrowed much from Bacon, pas une, quelque bizarre et extravagante La Mothe le A'aycr mentions him in hit qu'elle snit, qui n'ait son fondement dans Dialogues: in fact, instances are nuiuo- i'liisnire, ai Ion en veut croire Bacon, et reus. 72 BAC01«. paet in. out in Holland, 1645, 1652, and 1662. Even the Novum Organum, which, as has been said, never became so popular as his other writings, was thrice printed in Holland, in 1645, 1650, and 1660.^ Leibnitz and Puffendorf are loud in their expressions of admiration, the former ascribing to him the revival of true philosophy as fully as we can at present.- I should be more inclined to doubt whether he were adequately valued by his countrymen in his own time, or in the immedi- ately subsequent period. Under the first Stuarts, tliere was little taste among studious men but for theology, and chiefly for a theology which, proceeding with an extreme deference to authority, could not but generate a disposition of mind, even upon other subjects, alien to the progressive and inquisi- tive spirit of the inductive philosophy.^ The institution of the Royal Society, or rather the love of physical science out of which that institution arose, in the second part of the seventeenth century, made England resound with the name of her illustrious chancellor. Few now spoke of him without 1 Montagu's Life of B;icon. p. 407. He has not mentioned an edition at Stras- burg, 1635, which is in the British Mu- Feum. There is also an edition, without time or place, in the catalogue of the British Museum. 2 Brucker, v. 95. Stewart says that "Bayle does not give above twelve lines to Bacon;" but he calls him one of the greatest men of his age, and the length of an article in Bayle was never designed to be a measure oi" the merit of its subject. — [The reception of Bacon's philosophical writings on tlie Oontinent has been elabo- rately proved against Stewart, in a dis- sertation by Mr. Macvey Napier, published in the eighth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. — 1842.] 3 It is not uncommon to meet with persons, especially who are or have been engaged in teaching others dogmatically what they have themselves received in the like manner, to whom the inductive philosophy appears a mere school of scep- ticism, or at best wholly inapplicable to any subjects which require entire convic- tion. A certain deduction from certain premises is the only reasoning they ac- knowledge. Lord Bacon litis a remarkable passage on this in the 9th book De .\ug- mentis. " Postquam articuli et principia religionis jam in .-iedibus suis fuerint lo- cata, ita ut a rationis examine penitus eximantur. turn demum conceditur ab illis Ulationes derivaro ac deducere secundum aaaJogiam ipsorum. Ih. rebus quidem naturalibus hoc non tenet. Nam ct ipsa principia examini subjiciuntur ; per iu- ductioQcm, inquam, licet minime per syllo- gismum. Atque eadem ilia nullamhabent cum ratione repugnantiam, ut ab eodem fonte cum primae propositiones, turn nie- difB, deducaatur. Aliter tit in religione: ubi et primse propositiones authopystatse sunt atque per se subsistentes; et rursus non reguutur ab ilia ratione quas propo- sitiones consequentes deducit. Neque ta- men hoc fit in religione .sola, sed etiam in aliis scientiis, tam gravioribus, quam levioribus, ubi scilicet propositiones hu manoB placita sunt, non posita ; siquidem et in illis rationis usus absolutus esse uon potest. Videmus enim in ludis, puta schaccorum, aut similibus, priores ludi normas et leges mere positivas esse, et ad placitum ; quas recipi, non in disputa- tionem vocari, prorsus oporteat ; ut vero vincas, et peritfe lusum instituas. ad artifi- ciosum est et rationale. Eodem modo fit et in legibus humanis ; in quibus baud paucae sunt maxima^, ut loquuntur, hoc est, placita mera juris, quae auctoritate magis quam ratione nituntur, neque in discoptationem vcuiunt. Quid verc sit justissimum. non absolute, sed re'ativi, hoc e.st ex analogii illarum maximarum, id demum rationale est, et latum disputa- tioni campum pnthet." This p.assage, well weighed, may show us where, why, and by whom, the synthetic and syllogistic methods have been preferred to the induo- tire and analytical :;hap. m. ms fasie on the continext. 73 a kind of lioraage that only the greatest men recei's e. Yet Btill it was by natural philosophers alone that the writings of Bacon were much studied. The editions of his works, except the Essays, were few : the Novum Organum never came separately from the English press.^ They were not even frequently quoted ; for I believe it will be found that the fashion of referring to the brilliant passages of the De Aug- mentis and the Novum Organum, at least in books designed for the general reader, is not much older than the close of the last century. Scotland has the merit of having led the way: Reid, Stewart, Robison, and Playfair turned that which had been a blind veneration into a rational worship ; and I should suspect that more have read Lord Bacon witliin these thirty years than in the two pi-eceding centuries. It may be an usual consequence of the enthusiastic panegyrics lately poured upon his name, that a more positive efficacy has sometimes been attributed to his philosophical writings than they really possessed ; and it might be iisked whether Italy, where he was probably not much known, were not the true school of expe rimental philoso[)hy in Europe, whether his methods of inves- tigation were not chiefly such as men of sagacity and lovers of truth might simultaneously have devised. But, whatever may have been the case with respect to actual discoveries in science, we must give to wi'itten wisdom its proper meed : no books prior to those of Lord Bacon carried mankind so far on the road to truth ; none have obtained so thorough a triumph over arrogant usurpation without seeking to substitute an- other ; and he may be compared to those liberators of nations who have given them laws by which they might govern themselves, and retained no homage but their gratitude.- 1 The De Augmentis was only once pub- sophv, led some to an exaggerated notion, lishcd after the first edition, in 1638. An " The influence of Bacon's genius on the Inditferent translation, by Gilbert Watts, subsequent progress of physical discovery came out in IWO. No edition of Bacon's has been seldom duly appreciated ; by AVorks was published in England before some writers almost entirely overlooked, 1730 ; another appeared in 1740, and there and by others considered as the sole cause have been several since. But they had of the reformation in .science which ha3 been printed at Frankfort in 1665. It is since taken place. Of these two extremes, xinnecessary to observe, that many copies the latter certainly is the least wide of the of the foreign editions were brought to truth ; for, in the whole history of letters, this country. This is mostly taken from no other individual can be mentioned Mr. JlontagU'S account whose exertions have had so indisputable - I have met, since this passage was an elTect in forwarding the intellectual written, with one in Stewart's Life of Reid, progress of mankind. On the other hand, whirh seems to state the eff'erts of Bicon's it must be acknowledged, that, before the philosophy in a just and temperate spirit, era when Bacon appeared, various philo- md which I rather quote because this sophers in different parts of Europe had ffil'ir has, by his eulogies on that philo- struck into the right path ; and it toaj T4 DESCAETES. Paut rC. Section III. On the Metaphysical rhilosophy of Descartes. 81'. Rene Descartes Avas bom in 1596, of an ancient Early life of family in Touraine. An inquisitive curiosity into Descartes, ^j^g natux'e and causes of all he saw is said to have distinguished his childhood, and this was certainly accompa- nied by an uncommon facility and clearness of apprehension. At a very early age, he entered the college of the Jesuits at La Fleche, and passed through their entire course of litera- ture and philosophy. It' was now, at the age of sixteen, as he tells us, that he began to reflect, with little satisfaction, on his studies ; finding his mind beset with error, and obliged to confess that he had learned nothing but the conviction of his ignorance. Yet he knew tliat he liad been educated in a fiamous school, and that he was not deemed beliind his con- temporaries. The ethics, the logic, even the geometry, of the ancients, did not fill his mind with that clear stream of truth ibr which he Avas ever thiisting. On leavhig La Fleche, the young Descartes mingled for some years in the world, and served as a volunteer both under Prince Mau- rice, and in the Imperial Army. Yet diiring this period there '.vere intervals when he Avithdrew himself Avholly fi-om soci- ety, and devoted his leisure to mathematical science. Some germs also of his peculiar pliilosophy Avere already ripening in his mind. perhaps be doubted, whether any one im- conceived design ; and it was rcscrvi^d for portiint rule with respect to the true me- him to reduce to rule and method wli;i» thod of investigation be contained in his others had effected, either fortuitously, works, of which no hint can be traced in or from some momentary glimpse of the those of liis predecessors. His great merit truth. These remarks are not intended to lay in concentrating their feeble and scat- detract from the just glory of IJacon ; for lercd lights : fixing the attention of philo- they apply to all those, without exception, sophers on the distinguishing character- who have systenuitized the princi)iles of istics of true and of false .science, by a any of the arts. Indeed they apply less fi^licity of illustration peculiar to himself, forcibly to liim than to any other philoso- Feconded liy the conjiiianding powers of .a pher whose studies have been directed to bold and figurative eUxiuence. The me- objects anakigous to liis ; inasmuch as we thod of investigation wliich lie ncom- know of no art of which tlie rules have mended had been jircviously followed in been reduced successfully into a did.aciio every instance in which any solid disco- form, when tlie art itself was as much in Tcry had been made with respect to the infancy !is experimental philosophy waa .aws of nature: but it had been followed when liacon wrote " — Account of lajfe an j tccidentaily and without any regular pre- ^t'l'itiug3 of Ileid, sect. 2- Chap. m. RETIRES TO HOEEAND. 75 82. Descartes was twentj'-three years old, when, passing a fiolitarj' winter in his quarters at Neuburg, on the ins he- Danube, he began to revolve in his mind the futility tophi"-" of all existing systems of philosophy, and the dis- losophize. crepancy of opinions among the generality of mankind, which rendered it probable that no one had yet found out the road to real science. He determined, therefore, to set about Ihc investigation of truth for himself, erasing from his mind jdl preconceived judgments, as having been hastily and precari- ously taken up. He laid down for his guidance a few funda- mental rules of logic, such as to admit nothing as true which he did not clearly perceive, and to proceed from the simpler notions to the more complex; taking the method of geometers, by which they had gone so much farther than others, for the true art of reasoning. Commencing, therefore, with the mathematical sciences, and observing, that, however different in their subjects, they treat properly of nothing but the rela- tions of quantity, he fell, almost accidentally, as his words seem to import, on the great discovery that geometrical curves may be expressed algebraically.^ This gave him more hopo of success in applying his method to other parts of philoso- phy- 83. Nine years more elapsed, during which Descartes, thoBgh he quitted military service, continued to iie retires observe mankind in various parts of Europe, still toiio^ind. keeping his heart fixed on the great aim he had proposed to himself, but, as he confesses, without having framed the scheme of any philosophy beyond .those of his contemporaries. He deemed his time of life immature for so stupendous a task. But at the age of thirty-three, with little notice to his friends, he quitted Paris, convinced that absolute retirement was indispensable for that rigorous investigation of first prin- ciples which he now determined to institute, and retired into Holland. In this country he remained eight years so com- pletely aloof from the distractions of the world, that he concealed his very place of residence, though preserving an intercourse of letters with many friends in France. 84. In 1637, he broke upon tlie world with a volume con- taining the Discourse upon Method, the Dioptrics, the Meteors, and the Geometry. It is only with the first that we are for t OBuTTes de Descartes, par Cousin, Paris, 1824, vol. i. p. 14S. 76 DESCARTES. Part IIL the presont concerned.' In this discourse, the most interesting, His pubii- perhaps, of Descartes' writings, on account of the catiMis. picture of his life and of the progress of his studies that it furnishes, we find the Cartesian metaphysics, which do not consist of many articles, almost as fully detailed as in any of his later works. In the Meditationes de Prima Pliilosopliia, puhlished in 1641, these fundamental principles are laid down again more at length. He invited the criticism of philoso- phers on these famous Meditations. They did not refuse the challenge ; and seven sets of objections from as many different quarters, with seven replies from Descartes himself, are sub- joined to the later editions of the Meditations. The Princi- ples of Philosophy, published in Latin in 1644, contains what may be reckoned the final statement, which occupies most of the first book, written with uncommon conciseness and pre- cision. The beauty of philosophical style which distinguishes Descartes is never more seen than in this first book of the Principia, the translation of which was revised by Clerselier, an eminent friend of the author. It is a contrast at once to the elliptical brevity of Aristotle, who hints, or has been sup- posed to hint, the most important positions in a short clause, and to the verbose, figurative declamation of many modem metaphysicians. In this admirable perspicuity, Descartes was imitated by his disciples Arnauld and Malebranche, especially the former. His unfinished posthumous treatise, the Inquiry after Truth by Natural Reason, is not carried farther than a partial development of the same leading principles of Carte- sianism. There is, consequently, a great deal of apparent repetition in the works of Descartes, but such as on attentive consideration will show, not perhaps much real variance, but some new lights that had occurred to the author in the course of his reflections.- 85. In pursuing the examination of the first principles of knowledge, Descartes perceived not only that he had cause to doubt of the various opinions which he had found current among men, from that very circumstance of their variety, but 1 (EuvTCS de Descartes, par Cousin, tings of Descartes, including his corre- Paris 1824, vol. i. pp. 121-212. spondcnce, arrangt'd mctUodically in his 2 A work has lately been published, Es- own word.s, but with the omi.ssion of a eais Philo.sophiquos, suivis de la Mcta- largo part of the objections to the Medita- physirpie de Descartes, assemblee et uiise tions and of bin replies. I did not, how- eri ordre par L. A. Ciruyer, 4 vols., Bru- ever, see this work in tune to make ua« xelles, 1832. In the fo"urth volume, we of it. find the metaphysical passages in tlu) wri- Chap. HI. HIS FIKST STEP IN KNOWLEDGE. 77 that the sources of all which he had received for truth thera- nelves, namely, the senses, had afforded him no indis- jj^ ^^^^^^^ putable certainty. He began to recollect how often by Jcubt- he had been misled by appearances, which had at '"^ first sight given no intimation of their fallacy, and asked him- self in vain by what infallible test he could discern the reality of external objects, or at least their conformity to his idea of them. The strong impressions made in sleep led him to inquire whether all he saw and felt might not he in a dream. It was true that there seemed to be some notions more ele- mentary than the rest, such as extension, figure, duration, which could not be i-eckoned fallacious ; nor could he avoid owning, that, if there were not an existing triangle in the world, the angles of one conceived by the mind, though it were in sleep, must appear equal to two right angles. But, even in this certitude of demonstration, he soon found some- thing deficient : to err in geometrical reasoning is not impossi- ble ; why might he not err in this ? especially in a train of consequences, tlie particular terms of which are not at the same instant pix'sent to the mind. But, above all, there might be a sui)erior being, powerful enough and wiUing to deceive him. It was no kind of answer to treat this as im- probable, or as an arbitrary hypothesis. He had laid down as a maxim that nothing could be received as truth which was not demonstrable ; and in one place, rather hyperbolically, and indeed extravagantly in appearance, saj'S that he made little difference between merely probable and false supposi- tions; meaning this, however, as we may presume, in the sense of geometers, who would say the same thing. 86. But, divesting himself thus of all belief in what the world deemed most unquestionable, i:)Iunged in an Hjgfirst abyss, as it seemed for a time, he soon found his feet step in I? now I*vlfl'fl on a rock, from which he sprang upwards to an unclouded sun. Doubting all things, abandoning all things, he came to the question, What is it that doubts and denies ? Something it must be : he might be deceived by a superior power; but it was he that was deceived. He felt his own existence: the proof of it was that he did feel it; that he had affirmed, that he now doubted, in a word, that he was a thinking substance. Cogito ; Ergo sum — this flimous enthy- meme of the Cartesian philosophy veiled in rather formal language that which was to him, and must be to us all, the 78 DESCARTES. Part IH. eternal basis of conviction, which no argument can strengthen, •which no sophistry can impair, — the consciousness of a self within, a percipient indivisible Ego.^ The only proof of this is, tliat it admits of no proof, that no man can pretend to doubt of his own existence with sincerity, or to express a doubt without absurd and inconsistent language. 87. The scepticism of Descartes, it appears, which is merely „. . , provisional, is not at all similar to that of the Pyr- rlionists, though some ot his arguments may have be(;n shafts from their quiver. Nor did he make use, which Not scop- is somewhat remarkable, of the reasonings afterwards ticai. employed by Berkeley against the material woi-ld ; tliough no one more frequently distinguished than Descartes between the objective reality, as it was then supposed to be, of ideas in the mind, and the external or sensible reality of things. Scepticism, in fact, was so far from being character- istic of his disposition, that his errors sprang chiefly from the opposite source, little as he was aware of it, from an undue positiveness in theories which he could not demonstrate, or even render highly probable.^ 88. The certainty of an existing Ego easily led him to that of the operations of the mind, called afterwards by Locke ideas of reflection, the believing, doubting, willing, loving, fearing, which he knew by consciousness, and indeed by means ' This worJ, introduced by the Ger- quirics which must by necessity end in mans, or originally perhips by tlie old nothing more than probability. Accord- Cartesians, is rather awkward, but far less iugly we find in the nc^xt pages, that he so than the English jironoun /, which is made little account of any sciences but also equivocal in sound. Stewart has arithmetic and geometry, or such others adopted it a.s the les.ser evil ; and it seems as equal them in certainty. " From all reasonable not to scruple the use of a this." he concludes, ■' we may infer, not word so convenient, if not necessary, to that arithmetic and geometry are the only express the unity of the conscious princi- .sciences which we must learn, but that pie. If it had been employeif earlier, I he who seeks the road to truth should not am apt to think that some great meta- trouble himself with any oliject of which physical extravagances would have been he cannot have as certain a knowledge as avoided, and some fundamental truths of arithmetical and geometrical Uemon- moi-e clearly apprehended. Fichte is well strations." It is unnecessary to ob.serve known to have made the grand division what havoc this would make with investi- of Ich and Nicht Ic/i, E'^o and Nan Es;o, gations, even in physics, of the highest the basis of his philosophy ; in other importance to mankind, words, the difference of subjective and ob- Beattie, in the Essay on Truth, part ii. jective reality. chap. 2, has made some unfounded criti- - One of the rules Descartes lays down cisms on the sceptiiisin of Descartes, anJ in his posthumous art of logic, is that we endeavors to turn into ridicule his " Co ouglit never to busy our.selves except gito ; Ergo sum."' Yet if any one should abiHit oiijects concerning which our im- deny his own, or our existence, I do not derstanding appears capable of acquiring see how we could refute him, were he nn vinquestionable and certain knowledge, worthy of refutation, but by some .such vol. xi. p. 21)4. This is at U-.'ust too un- language; and, in fict, it is what Heattle limited a propo.«ition. and would exclude, himself says, more paraplirastically, in not indeed all probability, but all in- answering Hume. Chap. ni. HIS PROOFS OF A DEITY. 79 of which alone he knew tliat the Ego existed. He now pro* ceeded a step farther; and, reflecting on the simplest ueaniTes truths of arithmetic aneal to couui.OQ which, indeed, stand on the same ground, sen.se, that is, the crude notions of men though we feel less of the prejudice in favor who had never reflected, even enough to of their reality than of that of colors. No- u.se language with precision, would have thing can be more obvious than tlie reply : been fatal to p.sychology. lleid afterwards the color remains only on the tacit hypo- laid aside the popular tone in writing on thesis that some one is looking at the philosophy, though perhaps he w.as always object; at midnight we can hardly say too much inclined to cut knots vrbea hfl that l'"e rose is red, except by an addi- could not untie them. — 1847.] tional hypothesis, that the day should ' Vol. i. p. 147; vol. iii. p. 64 hreak " We never," he proceeds, " as lax Chap. III. OBJE^ITIONS AGAINST THE MEDITATIONS. hS more briefly, and, I think, with less skill, by Hobbes. It was the first trum])et in the new philosophy of an ancient war be- tween the sensual and ideal schools of psychology. Descartes had revived, and i)laced in a clearer light, the doctrine of mind, as not absolutely dependent upon the senses, nor of the some nature as their objects. Stewart does not acknowledge him as the first teacher of the soul's immateriality. " That many of the schoolmen, and that the wisest of the ancient philosophers, when they described the mind as a spirit, or as u spark of celestial fire, employed these expressions, not with any intention to materialize its essence, but merely from Avant of more unexceptionable language, might be shown with de- monstrative evidence, if this were the proper place for entcn-ing into the discussion." ^ But, though it cannot be said that Des- cartes was absolutely the first who maintained the strict immateriality of the soul, it is manifest to any one Avho has read his correspondence, that the tenet, instead of being gene- ral, as we are apt to presume, was by no means in accordance with the common opinion of his age. The fathers, with the excejition, perhaps the single one, of Augustin, had taught the corporeity of the thinking substance. Arnauld seems to con- sider the doctrine of Descartes as almost a novelty in modern times. " What you have written concerning the distinction between the soul and body appears to me very clear, very evident, and quite divine ; and, as nothing is older than truth, I have had singular pleasure to see that almost the same things have formerly been very perspicuously and agreeably handled by St. Augustin in all his tenth book on the Trinity, but chiefly in the tenth chapter." ^ But Arnauld himself, in his objections to the Meditations, had put it as at least ques- tionable, whether that which thinks is not something extended, which, besides the usual properties of extended substances, such as mobility and figure, has also this particular virtue and power of thinking." The reply of Descartes removed the dif- ficulties of the illustrious Jansenist, who became an ardent and almost complete disciple of the new philosophy. In a placard against the Cartesian philosophy, printed in 1 G47, which seems to have come from Revius, professor of theology at Leyden, it is said, " As far as regards the nature of things, nothing seems to hinder but that the soul may be either a substance, I Dissertation, ul i suprd. ^ Descartes, x. 138. s Descartes, ii. H- 84 DESCARTES. Part IH. or a mode of corporeal substance."^ And More, who had carried on a metaphysical correspondence with Descartes, whom he professed to admire, at least at that time, above all philosopliers tliat had ever existed, without exception of his favorite Plato, extols him after his death in a letter to Clerse- lier, as having best estabHshed the foundations of religion. " For the peripatetics," he says, " pretend that there are cer- tain substantial ibrms emanating from matter, and so united to it that they cannot subsist without it, to which class these philosophers refer the souls of almost all living beings, even those to which they allow sensation and thought ; while the Epicureans, on the other hand, who laugh at substantial forms, ascribe thouglit to matter itself, so that it is M. Descartes alone, of all philosophers, who has at once banished from phi- losophy all these substantial forms or souls derived from matter, and absolutely divested matter itself of the faculty of feeling and thinking." - 95. It must be owned, that the firm belief of Descartes in the immateriality of the Ego, or tliinking principle, memory"'^ was accompauicd with what in later times would and imagi- have been deemed ratiier too great concessions to the materialists. He held the imagination and the memory to be portions of the brain, wherein the images of our sensations are bodily preserved ; and even assigned such a motive force to the imagination, as to produce those involun- tary actions which we often perform, and all the movements of brutes. " This explains how all the motions of all animals arise, though we grant them no knowledge of things, but only an imagination entirely corporeal, and how all those opera- tions which do not require the concurrence of reason are produced in us." But the whole of his notions as to the con- • Descartes, x. 73. only that the soul, when separated from 2 Descartes, x. 386. Even More seems tlie gross body, is inve.sted with a substan- to have been perplexed at one time by the tial clothing, or that there is what we may difficulty of accounting for the knowledge call an intericjr body, a supposed monad, and sentiment of disembodied souls, and to which the thinking principle is intlis- almost inclined to aduii*; their corporeity, solubly united. This is what all material- "J'aimeroia mieu.x dire uvec les I'latoni- istsmcan, who have any clear notions what- ciens, les ancieus peres, et presque tous ever : it is a possible, perh.ps a pkausiblo, les philosophes, que les Smes humaines, perhaps even a highly probable, hypothe- tousles gonicstant bonsquemauvais. sont sis, but one which will not prove their corporels. et que par consequent ils ont un theory. The former seems almost an in- Ecutiineut riSel, c'est i dire, qui leur vient dispensable supposition, if we admit sen- du corps dont ils sont revetus." This is sibility to phenomena at all in the soul In a letter to Descartes in 1019, which I after death ; but it is rather, perhaps, a have not read in r.,atin (vol. x. p. 249). I theological than a metaphysical specula- do not quite understand whether he meant tion. ^Ai'. III. SEAT OF THE SOUL. 85 nection of the soul and body, and indeed all his physiclogical theories of which he was most enamoured, do little credit to the Cartesian jihilosophy. Tliey are among those portions of his creed whicli have lain most open to ridicule, and which it would be useless for us to detail. He seems to have ex- pected more advantage to psychology from anatomical re- eearches than in that state of the science, or even probably in any future state of it, anatomy could afford. When asked once where was his library, he replied, sho\\ang a calf he was dissecting, " Tliis is my library." ^ His treatise on the passions, a subject so important in the philosophy of the human mind, is made up of crude hypotheses, or, at best, irrelevant observations, on their physical causes and con- comitants. 96. It may be considered as a part of this syncretism, as we may call it, of the material and immaterial hypo- ggatofsoui theses, that Descartes fixed the seat of the soul in pineal in the conarion, or pineal gland, which he selected ^ '^°'^' as the only part of the brain which is not double. By some means of communication which he did not profess to ex- plain, though later metaphysicians have attempted to do so, the unextended intelligence, thus confined to a certain spot, receives the sensations which are immediately produced through impressions on the substance of the brain. If he did not solve the problem, be it remembered that the problem has never since been solved. It was objected by a nameless correspondent, who signs himself Hypei-aspistes, that the soul, being incorporeal, could not leave by its operations a trace on the brain, which his theory seemed to imply. Descartes answered, in rather a remarkable passage, that, as to things purely intellectual, we do not, properly speaking, remember them at all, as they are equally original thoughts every time they present themselves to the mind, except that they are habitually joined as it were, and associated with certain aames, which, being bodily, make us remember them.* I Descartes was very fond of dissection : purement intellectuelles A proprement par* ' C'est un exercice oa je nie suis souvent ler on u'en a aucun ressouvenir ; et la pre- Tccupedepuisonzeans, et je crois qu"il n"y niiere fois qu"elles se presentent i Tesprit, a guere de medecius qui y ait regarde de si on les pense aussi-l)ien que la seconde, si ce pros que nioi."' — Vol. viii. p. 1(X), also pp. n'est peut-etre qu'elles ont co Jtume d'etre 174 and 180. joiutes et comme attachees i certains noma - This passage I must give in French, qui, etant corporels, font que nous nous findin? it obscure, and having translated ressouyenons aussi d'elles." — Vol. viii. p more according to what I guess than lite- 271- Silly- ''Mais pour ce qui est des choses 86 DESCARTES, Part III. 97. If the orthodox of the age were not yet prepared for a doctrine which seemed so favorahle at least to »«ad^ "^jcct feared. " For what else is the selier under the eve of Descartes, so that ^'^'^'^ of =* """■" '»« ^^y^^ " "^^n 'tie "''♦'■'■ "^ It mav be quoted as an original. this lion, and the effect which it produces 1 '-"Que dirons-nous maintenant si pent- »" t'le heart, which leads us to run away ? fetre Ic raisonncment n'est rien autre chose ■•'"t ""'* running is not a thought : so that qu'un assemblage et un enchainement de nothing of thought exists in fear but the noms par CO mot fx< ? D'oa il sensuivroit idea of the object." Descartes only replied, que par la raison nous neconcluons rien de ">' is self-evident that it is not the same tout touchant la nature des choses, mais thing to see a lion and fear him, that it is geulement touchant leuis appellations, to see him only." — p. 483. c'est a dire que par elle nous voyons sim- " I suspect, from what I have since read, plement si nous assemblons bien on mal that Hobbes had a different, and what seems les uoms des choses, selon les conventions to me a very erroneous, view of infinite or que nous avons fiites i notre fantaisie tou- infinitesimal quantities in geometry. Foi chantleurssigiiifications." — p. 476. Des- '^e answers the old sophism of Zeno, cartesmerelvaiiswered: "L'assemblagequi " Qmcquid dividi potest in partes iiifini- ee fait dans le raisonncment n'est pas celui *»"* «'' infinitum," in a manner which does des noins, mais bien celui des choses, signi- ""' ni''«* the real truth ot the case: fiees par les noms ; et je m'etonne que le " ^'^'J' POss«^ '" P-'*'''^-^ intinitas nihil alnid tontiaire puisse venir en I'esprit de per- «»' *!"''"» '1"'"^' P"'*-'"^ '" P'""'*'^ (luoUunqut eonne." Descartes treated Ilobbes, whom e^'iyf''';" — Ifgica sive Computatio,c.6 he did not esteem, with less attention than P- 38 (edit. 1667) 88 DESCARTES. Pahi IH. BCnses, are as distinguishable from them as the workman from his work. He has given, indeed, to Descartes a very proud title. Father of the experimental philosophy of the humau mind, as if he were to man what Bacon was to nature.' By patient observation of what passed within him, by holding liis soul, as it were, like an object in a microscope, which is the only process of a good metaphysician, he became habituated to throw away those integuments of sense which hide us from ourselves. Stewart has censured him for the paradox, as he calls it, that the essence of mind consists in thinking, and ttiat of matter in extension. That the act of thinking is as inse- parable from the mind as extension is from matter, cannot indeed, be proved ; since, as our thoughts are successive, it is not inconceivable that there may be intervals of duration be- tween them ; but it can hardly be reckoned a paradox. But whoever should be led by the word " essence " to suppose that Descartes confounded the percipient thinking substance, the Ego, upon whose bosom, like that of the ocean, the waves of perce^Jtion are raised by every breeze of sense, with the perception itself, or even, what is scarcely more tenable, with the reflective action, or thought ; that he anticipated this strange paradox of Hume in his earliest work, from which he silently withdrew in his Essays, — would not only do great injustice to one of the acutest understandings that ever came to the subject, but overlook several clear assertions of the dis- tinction, especially in his answer to Hobbes. " The thought," * Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy, truth had been previously perceived more The word " experiment " must be tiiken or less distinctly by Bacon and others, ap- in the sense of observation. Stewart very pears probable from the general complex- early took up his admiration for Descartes, ion of their speculations ; but which of '■ lie was the first philosopher who stated them has expressed it with equal precision, in a clear and satisfactory manner the dis- or laid it down as a fundamental maxim in tinction between mind and matter, and their logic?" The words whicli I have who pointed out the proper plan for study- put in Italics seem too vaguely and not very ing the intellectual philosophy. It is clearly expressed, nor am I aware that they chiefly in consequence of his precipe ideas are borne out in their literal sense by any with respect to this distinction, that we position of Descartes ; nor do I ajiprehend may remark in all his metaphysical writ- the allusion to Bacon. But it is certain Ings a perspicuity which is not observable that Descartes, and still more his disciples In those of any of his predecessors." — Arnauld and Malebrauchc, take better Kleni. of I'hilos, of Human Mind, vol. i. care to distinguish what can be imagined (publishe 1 in 1702), note .\. " When Des- from what can be conceived or understood, cartes,' he says in the di.ssertatiou before than any of the school of Ciassendi in this quoted, '' established it as a general prin- or other countries. One of the great meriti ciple that votking conceivable by t/ie power of Descartes as a metaphy.sical writer, not of hnagihation could throw ani/ light on unconnected with this, is that he is gener- the operutiorts of thought, a principle which ally careful to avoid figurative language ia I consider as exclusively his own, he laid speaking of mental operations ; wherein Iw the foundations of the experimental philo- has much the advantage over Locke, sophy of the human mind. That the same ClIAP. III. HIS PARADOXES. 8£ he says, "differs from that which thinks, as the mode from the Bubstanoe." ' And Stewart has in his earliest work justly cor- rected R(;id in this point as to the Cartesian doctrine.- 100. Several singular positions, which have led to an undue depreciation of Descartes in general as a philosopher, j,^^^^^ occur in his metaphysical writings. Such was his of hcs- denial of thouglit, and, as is commonly said, sensa- *^'''"''^^- tion, to brutes, which he seems to have founded on the mechanism of the bodily organs, — a cause sufficient, in hi? opinion, to explain all the phenomena of the motions of ani- mals, and to obviate the ditliculty of assigning to them innna- terial souls ; '' his rejection of final causes in the explanation ' Vol. i. p. 470. Aruauld objected, in a letter to Ue.'cartes, " Coiiinient se peut-il faire que la pep.«ee eonstitue I'essence de I'e.sprit. pui.socke : " This is tion. as Locke has done, when they liave Incorrect. Descartes has little, and Locke not made that classification of ideas into no praise for this observation. It liad simple and complex, which forms so re been made by Aristotle, and after him by markable a part of his philosophy — many others ; while, subsequently to Des- 1847 J 92 DESCARTEb. Part III wliicli thej can only conceive, and distinguish what is clear in it from Avhat is obscure, while they do not see the difference between that which must be defined before it is understood, and that which can be fully known by itself. Now, among things wliich can thus be clearly known by themselves, we must put doubting, thinking, being. For I do not believe any one ever existed so stupid as to need to know w hat being is before he could affirm that he is ; and it is the same of thought and doubt. Nor can he learn these things except by liimself, nor be convinced of them but by his own expe- rience, and by that consciousness and inward witness which every man finds in himself when he examines the subject. And as we should define whiteness in vain to a man who can see nothing, while one who can open his eyes and see a white object requires no more, so to know what doubting is, and what thinking is, it is only necessary to doubt and to think." ^ Nothing could more tend to cut short the verbal cavils of the schoolmen, than this limitation of their favorite exercise, — definition. It is due, therefore, to Descartes, so often accused of appropriating the discoveries of others, that we should establish his right to one of the most important that the new logic has to boast. 102. He seems, at one moment, to have been on the point Hisnotionof of taking another step very far in advance of his substances ggg_ u j^gj yg jji^jg^" j^e says, " a piece of wax from the honeycomb ; it retains some taste and smell ; it is hard ; it is cold ; it has a very marked color, form, and size. Approach it to the fire; it becomes liquid, warm, inodorous, tasteless ; its form and color are changed, its size is increased. Does the same wax remain after these changes ? It must be allowed that it does : no one doubts it, no one thinks other- wise. What was it, then, that we so distinctly knew to exist in this piece of wax? Nothing certainly that we observed by the senses, since all tliat the taste, the smell, the sight, the touch, reported to us has disappeared, and still the same wax remains." This something which endures under every change of sensible qualities cannot be imagined ; for the imagination must represent some of these qualities, and none of them are essential to the thing : it can only be conceived by the under- Btanding.^ 103. It may seem almost surprising to us, after the wiitinga 1 Vol. xi. p. 369. » Meditation Seconde, i. 256. Chat. III. HIS NOTIONS OF INTUITIVE TRUTH. 95 of Locke and his followers on the one hand, and the chemist with his crucible on the other, have chased these ab- Not quite stract substances of material objects from their sane- "^o""^'- tuaries, tliat a man of such pi-odigious acuteness and intense reflection as Descartes should not have remarked that the identity of wax after its liquefaction is merely nominal, and dependinjij on arbitrary language, which in many cases gives new appellations to the same aggregation of particles after a change of their sensible qualities ; and that all we call sub- stances are but aggregates of resisting movable corpuscles, which, by the laws of nature, are capable of affecting our senses differently, according to the combinations they may enter into, and the changes they may successively undergo. But if he had distinctly seen this, which I do not apprehend that he did, it is not likely that he would have divulged the discovery. He had ali-eady given alarm to tlie jealous spirit of orthodoxy by what now appears to many so self-evident^ that they have treated the supposed paradox as a trifling with words, — the doctrine that color, heat, smell, and other secondary qualities, or accidents of bodies, do not exist in them, but in our own minds, and are the effects of their intrinsic or primary qualities. It was the tenet of the schools, that these were sensible realities, inherent in bodies ; and the church held as an article of faith, that, the substance of bread being withdrawn from the consecrated wafer, tlie accidents of that substance remained as before, but independent, and not inherent in any other, Arnauld raised this objection, which Descartes endeavored to repel by a new theory of transub- stantiation ; but it always left a shade of suspicion, in the Catholic Church of Rome, on the orthodoxy of Cartesianism. 104. "The paramount and indisputable authority, which, m all our reasonings concerning the human mind, 1 • 1 /. • » • II"' no- he ascribes to the evidence ot consciousness, is tions of reckoned by Stewart among the great merits of 'j^y'j'j,'^^® Descartes. It is certain that there are truths which we know, as it is called, intuitively ; that is, by the mind'3 immediate inward glance. And reasoning would be inter- minable, if it did not find its ultimate limit in truths which it cannot prove. Gassentli imf)uted to Descartes, that, in hia fundamental enthymeme, " Cogito, ergo sum," he supposed a knowledge of the major premise, '' Quod cogitat, est." Bu* Descartes replied that it was a great error to believe that our 94 DESCARTEb. Part III knowledge of particular propositions must always be deduced from universals, according to the rules of logic ; Avheveas, on the contrary, it is by means of our knowledge of particulars that we ascend to generals, thougli it is true that we descend again from them to infer otlier particular propositions.^ It is probable that Gassendi did not make this objection very seriously. lOf). Thus the logic of Descai-tes, using that word for prin- ciples that guide our reasoning, was an instrument of defence both against the captiousness of ordinary scepticism, that of the Pyrrlionic school, and against the disputatious dogmatism of those wlio professed to serve under the banner of Aris- totle, lie who reposes on his own consciousness, or who recurs to first princi])les of intuitive knowledge, though he cannot be said to silence his adversary, should have the good sense to be silent himself; which puts equally an end to debate. But, so far as we are concerned witii the inves- tigation of truth, the Cartesian appeal to our own conscious- ness, of which Stewart was very Ibnd, just as it is in principle, marj end in an assumption of our own prejudices as the standard of belief. Nothing can be truly self-evident but that which a clear, an honest, and an experienced under- standing in another man acknowledges to be so. lOG. Descartes has left a treatise highly valuable, but not very much known, on tlie art of logic, or rules for the con- duct of the understanding." Once only, in a letter, he has 1 Vol. ii. p. 305. See, too, the passage, he sustains the metaphysical principles of quoted above, in his postliunious dialogue, his jihilosopliy. Of tliese two little traots [I'erliaps the best answer might have their editor has said, •' that the.v equal in been, tliat " Cogito, ergo sum," though vigor and perhaps surpass in arrangejuent thrown into the form of an enthymenie, the Meditations, and Discourse on Method, was not meant so niueli for a logical infer- 'We see in these more uneciuivoeally the cnce. as an assertion of consciousness. It main object of Descartes, and tlie spirit of hiis been observed, tliat co^'/Zn is equivu- the revolution which has created modern lent to sum roi'itnns. and involves tlie philosophy, and i)laced in the understand- conclusion. It is inipn^silile to emi)loy ing itself the princii)le of all ci'rt^iinty, tlie rules of logii' upon operations of the mind point of departure for all legitimate iu- which are anterior to all reasoning. — ([uiry. Tliey might seem written but 1847.] yesterday, and for the i)resent age."' — - M. ("ousin has tran.slateJ and repub- Vol. .xi., jireface, p. i. I may aild to this, lislud two works of Descartes, ■wliich had that I consi(k'r tlie Itules for the Diiection only appeared iiiO|icr.i Postliuma Cartesii, of the Understanding as one of the best Amstenlaiu, 1701. Their antbimticity, works on logic (in the enlarged .sense) from external and intrinsic proofs, is ont which I have ever read ; more practically of r,iiestion. One of these is tliat men- useful, piThaps, to young students, than Honed in the text, entitled liules for the the Novum Organum ; and though, as I Direction of the Understanding; which, liave said, his illustrations are chiefly though logical in its subjci't. takes most of mathematical, most of his rules are appli- its illustrations from mathematics. The cable to the general discipline of the rea. • ther is a Jiaiogue, left iui|)erfeet, in which souiug powers. It occupies little mon Chap. IIL MERITS OF HIS WRITINGS. ' 95 alluded (o the name of Baoon.^ There are, perhaps, a few passages in this short tract that remind us of the Treati'jeon Novum OrjinTium. But I do not know that tlie coined- ^^^ of logic, dence is such as to warrant a suspicion that he was indebted to it : we may reckon it rather a parallel than a derivative logic ; written in the same spirit of cautious, inductive proce- dure, less ])rilliant and original in its inventions, but of more general application, than the Novum Organum, which is with some difficulty extended beyond the province of natural philo sophv. Descartes is as averse as Bacon to syllogistic fonns. " Truth," he says, " often escapes from these fetters, in which those who employ them remain entangled. This is less fre- quentlv tlie case with those who make no use of logic ; experi- ence showing that the most sul)tle of sophisms cheat none but sophists themsehes. not tliose who trust to their natural rea- son. And, to convince ourselves how little this syllogistic art serves towards the discovery of truth, we may remark that the logicians can form no syllogism with a true conclusion, unless they are already acquainted with the truth that the syllogism develo]>s. Hence it follows that the vulgar logic is wholly useless to him who would discover truth for himself, though it may assist in explaining to others the truth he already knows, and that it would be better to transfer it as a science from philosophy to rhetoric." * 107. It would occupy too much space to point out the many pi-ofonnd and striking thoughts which this Merits of treatise on tlie conduct of the understanding, and hiswntings. indeed most of tlie writings of Descartes, contain. " The greater part of the questions on which the learned dispute are but questions of words. These occur so frequently, that, if philosophers would agree on the signification of their words, scarce any of their controversies would remain." This has been continually said since ; but it is a proof of some pro- gress in wisdom, when the original thought of one age be- comes the truism of the next. No one had been so much on his guard against the equivocation of words, or knew so well their relation to the operations of the mind. And it may be than one hundred pages ; and I think that * ' Si quelqu'un de cette humeur TOU I am doing a service in recommending it. loit entreprendre d'ecrire Thistoire dei Many of the rules will, of course, be found apparences celestes selon la methode lit in later books; .some, possiblj-, in earlier. Verulamius." — Vol. vi. p. 210 This tract, as well as the dialogue which * Vol. xi. p. 253. follows it, is incomplete ; a portion being prcbably lc«t 96 DESCARTES. Part III. said generally, though not without exception, of the metaphy- sical writings of Descartes, that we find in them a perspicuity which springs from his unremitting attention to tlie logical process of inquiry, admitting no doubtful or ambiguous posi- tion, and never requiring from his reader a deference to any authority but that of demonstration. It is a great advan- tage, in reading such writers, that Ave are able to discern wlien they are manifestly in the wrong. The sophisms of Plato, of Aristotle, of the schoolmen, and of a great many recent metaphysicians, are disguised by their obscurity ; and, wliile they creep insidiously into the mind of the reader, are always denied and explained away by partial disciples. 108. Stewart has praised Descartes for having recourse Hi3 notions ^o the evidence of consciousness in order to prove of free-will, the liberty of the will. But he omits to tell us, that the notions entertained by this jjhilosopher were not such as have been generally thought compatible with free agen- cy in the only sense that admits of controversy. It was an essential part of the theory of Descartes, that God is the cause of all human actions. " Before God sent us into the world," he says in a letter, " he knew exactly what all the inclinations of our Avill would be ; it is he that has im- planted them in us ; it is he also that has disposed all other things, so that such or such objects should present themselves to us at such or such times, by means of which he has known that our free-will would determine us to such or such actions, and he has willed that it should be so ; but he has not willed to compel us thereto." ^ " We could not demonstrate," he says at another time, " that God exists, except by considering him as a being absolutely perfect ; and he could not be absolutely pertect, if there could happen any thing in the world which did not spring entirely from him. . . . Mere philosophy is enough to make us know that there cannot enter the least thought into the mind of man, but God must will and have willed from all eternity that it should enter there." - This is in a letter to his highly intelligent friend, the Princess Palatine Elizal)eth, grand-daughter of James I. ; and he proceeds lo declare himself strongly in favor of j)redestination, denying wholly any particular providence, to which she had alluded, as changing the decrees of God, and all efficacy of prayer, except as one link in the chain of liis determinations » Vol. ix. p. 374. » Id., p. 246. Chap. IH. FA5IE OF HIS SYSTEM. ^7 Descartes, tlierefore, whatever some of his disciples may have become, was far enough from an Arminian theology. " As to free-will," he says elsewliere. " I own tliat, thinking only of ourselves, we cannot but reckon it independent ; but, when we think of the infinite power of God, we cannot but believe that all tilings depend on him. and that consequently our free-will must do so too. . . . But, since our knowledge of the existence of God should not hinder us from being assui*ed of our free- will, because we feel, and are conscious of it in ourselves, so that of our Iree-will should not make us doubt of the existence of God. For the independence which we experience and feel in ourselves, and which is sufficient to make our actions praiseworthy or blamable, is not incompatible with a depend- ence of another nature, according to wliich all things are subject to God."^ 109. A system so novel, so attractive to the imagination by its bold and brilliant iiaradoxes, as that of Des- 1 T . 1 , -^ ii >^i i- i- Fame of his cartes, could not but excite the attention ot an age gystem, and already roused to the desire of a new philosophy, attacks • • 1* T T * r> upon III* and to the scorn ot ancient autliority. llis nrst treatises apj^eared in French ; and, though he aftenvards em- ployed Latin, his works were very soon translated by his disciples, and under his own care. He wrote in Latin Avith great perspicuity ; in French with liveliness and elegance. His mathematical and optical writings gave him a reputation wliich envy could not take away, and secured his philosophy from that general ridicule which sometimes overwhelms an obscure author. His very enemies, numerous and vehement as they were, served to enhance the celebrity of the Cartesian system, which he seems to have anticipated by publishing their objections to his Meditations with his own rephes. In the universities, bigoted for the most part to Aristotelian authority, he had no chance of public reception ; but tiie influence of the universities was much diminished in France, and a new theory had perhaps better chances in its favor on account of their opposition. But the Jesuits, a more power- ful bodv, were, in general, adverse to the Cartesian system, and esjiecially some time afterwards, when it was supposed to have the countenance of several leading Jansenists. The, • Vol. ix. p. 36S. This had originally determination of God being both assserted been stated in the Principia witli less as true, but their fo-existence iucompn». confidence ; the f^t!e-^viU of man and pre- henfiibli. Vol. ill. p. 86 VOL. ni. 7 98 DESCARTES. Part m, Ei»icurean school, led by Gassendi and Hobbes, presented a formidable ])halanx ; since it in fact comprehended the wits of the world, the men of indolence and sensuality, quick to discern the many weaknesses of Cartesianism, with no capa- city for its excellences. It is unnecessary to say how predo- minant this class was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in P^rance and England. 110. Descartes was evidently in considerable alarm lest the Controversy church should bear with its weight upon his philoso- ftithvoet. pj^yi pjg ]^.^j ^]jg censui-e on Galileo before his eyes, and certainly used some chicane of words as to the earth's movement upon this account. It was, however, in the Protestant country which he had chosen as his harbor of refuge that he was doomed to encounter the roughest storm. Gisbert Voet, an eminent theologian in the University of Utrecht, and the head of the party in the Church of Holland, which had been victorious in the Synod of Dort, attacked Descartes with all the virulence and bigotry characteristic of his school of divinity. The famous demonstration of the being of God he asserted to be a cover for atheism, and thus excited a flame of controversy ; Descartes being not without supporters in the university, especially Regius, pro- fessor of medicine. The philosopher was induced by these assaults to change his residence from a toA\Ti in the province of Utrecht to Leyden. Voet did not cease to ])ursue him with outrageous calumny, and succeeded in olitaining decrees of the senate and University of Utrecht, which interdicted Regius from teaching that " new and un])rovcd (prcpswupta) philoso})hy" to his pupils. The war of libels on the Voetian side did not cease for some years, and Descartes replied with no small acrimony against Voet himself. Tlie latter had recourse to the civil power, and instituted a prosecution against Descartes, which was quashed by the interference of the Prince of Orange. But many in th(! University of Ley- den, under the influence of a notable theologian of that age, named Triglandius, one of the stoutest champions of Dutch orthodoxy, raised a cry against the Cartesian philosophy as 1 " On a tcllcniont nssujctti la tlieologiu touchant rftendiie du nionde: savoir s'il i Aiistott, (lu'il est iinpo.s.sihled'exiilimuT est fini on ])liit6t iufini, ft si tout ceqii'on line autre ])liiloso)iliii! qiril ne Sfiiililo apiielle csiiaces iniatrinaires soient dt'» d'lilinrd (juVlle soit contre la foi. Et corps cretis et vcritublts." — Vol. yi. p. 4pr»ipos dv roci, jn vous jiric do nie man- 73. det s'il u'^ a ricu du detenninS en la foi Crap. III. CHAKGES OF PLAGIARISM. 99 being favorable to Pelagianism and Popery, the worst names that coukl be given in Holland; and it was again through the protection of tlie Prince of Orange that he escaped a public censure. Regius, the most zealous of his original advocates, began to swerve from the fidelity of a sworn discii)le, and published a book containing some theories of his own, which Descartes thought liimself obliged to disavow. Ultimately lie found, like many benefactors of mankind, that he had pur- chased reputation at the cost of peace ; and, after some visits lo Fran(!e, where, probably from the same cause, he never designed to settle, found an honorable asylum and a prema- ture death at the court of Christina. He died in 1G">1, having worked a more important change in speculative philo- sophy than any who had preceded him since the revival of learning ; for there could be no comparison in that age be- tween the celebrity and effect of his writings and those of Lord Bacon.' 111. The prejudice against Descartes, especially in his own country, was aggravated by his indiscreet and not charges of very warrantable assumption of perfect originality.^ plagiarism. No one, I think, can fairly refuse to own, that the Cartesian metaphysics, taken in their consecutive arrangement, form truly an original system ; and it would be equally unjust to deny the s})lendid discoveries he develo])ed in algebra and optics. But, upon every one subject which Descartes treated, he has not escaped the charge of plagiarism : professing always to be ignorant of what had been done by others, he falls perpetually into their track ; more, as his adversaries maintained, than the chances of coincidence could fairly ex- 1 The life of Descartes was written, inventing mj' own. This disposition alone very fully antl with the warmth of a dis- impelled me in youth to the study of ciple, by Baillet, in two volumes quarto, science: hence, whenever a new book ltj91, of wiiich lie afterwards published promised by its title some new discovery, an abridgment. In this, we find at length before sitting down to read it, I used to the attacks made on him by the Voetian try whether my own natural sagacity theologians. lirucker has given a long could lead me to any thing of the kind; and valuable account of the Cartesian and I took care not to lose this innocent philosophy, but not favorable, and per- pleasure by too hasty a perusal. This haps not quite fair. Vol. v. pp. 20(l-o;3-l:. answered so often, that I at length pej'- Buiile is, as usual, much iiifcrior to ceived that 1 arrived at truth, not as Brucker. But those who omit the ma- other men do, after lilind and precarious thematical portion will not find the orl- guesses, by good luck rather than skill ; ginal works of Descartes very long; and but that long experience had taught me they are well worthy of being read. certain fi.\ed rules, which were of sur- 2 " I confess," ho .says in his Logic, " that prising utility, and of which I afterwards I wiis born with such a temper, that the mai'e use to discover more truths." — Vol. chief pleasure I find ir study is, not from xi. p. 252. Jearuing the arguments of others, but by 100 DESCARTES. Part III. plain. Leibnitz has summed up the claims of earlier writers to the pretended discoveries of Descartes ; and certainly it is a pretty long bill to be presented to any author. I shall insert tliis passage in a note, though much of it has no refer- ence to this portion of the Cartesian philosophy.' It may perhaps be thouglit by candid minds, that we cannot apply the doctrine of chances to coincidence of reasoning in men of acute and inquisitive spirits, as fairly as we may to that :)f style or imagery; but, if we liold strictly that the old writer may claim the exclusive praise of a pliilosophical discovery, we must regret to see such a multitude of feathers plucked from tlie wing of an eagle. ^ "Dogmata eju« m<^taphysica, velut circa ideas a sensibu'i rcuiot.is, ct anima> distinctionein a corporc. ot tiuxaui per se rerum materialiuin liilem, prorsus Pla- tonica sunt. Argumt'utum pro existcntia Dei, ex eo, quoj ens perl'ectissiuiuui. vel quo majus iutelligi non potest, existeu- tiam incluJit, fuit Auseluii, et in libro ' Contra in.-^ipientem ' inscripto extat inter ejus opera, passininue a scholasticis exa- minatur. In doctrina de continuo, pleno ot loco Aristotelem noster seoutus est, Stoicosque in re niorali penitus expressit, floriferis ut apes in s;iltibus omnia libant. In explicatione rerum mechanica I>eucip- pum et Democritum priceuntes habuit qui et vortices ipsos jam docuerant. .7or- danus lirunus easdem ferede magnitudiue universi ideas habuisse dicitur, quem- admodum et notavit V. 00. St«>phanus Spleissius, ut de Gilberto nil dicani, cujus niagneticfe con.siderationes turn per se, turn ad systema universi applicatse, Oartesio plurimum profucrunt. Explicationem gra- vitatis per materise solidioris rejectionem iu tangente, quod in phvsica Oartesiana pi"ope iiulcherrimuui est, didicit exKeple- f^, (jui siniilitudine palearuni motu aqu.'e in v;isc gyrantis ad centrum contrusarum rem explicuit primus. Actionem lucis iu distans, siniilitudine baculi press! jam Teteres adumbravere. Circa iridem a W. Antonio de Dominis uou parum lucis acccpit. Keplerum fuisse primum suum in diiiptricis niagistrum, et in eoargumen- to onuies ante .se niortales longo intervallo antegri'ssuni, fatc^tur Cartesius in cpistolis lamirianbus ; nam in .scriptis, qu:e ipso edidit, longo abest a tali confessione aut laude : tametsi ilia ratio, qu.e rationum directionem explicat, ex compositione niniiruin dui)licis conatus perpendicularis ud superfk'iem et ad eaudem par.illeli, di- Berte apud Keplerum extet, qui codem, ut Cartesius. modo a^qualitatem angulo rum iiicideutiu; et ruUexiuuis liiuc ieducit Tdque gratam mentionem ideo merebatur, quod omnis prope Cartesii ratiocinatio huic innititur principio. Legem refrac- tionis primum invenisse Willebroodum Snellium, I.s:uicus Vossius patefecit, quan- quam uon ideo negare ausim, Cartesium in eadem incidere potuisse de suo. Nega- vit in epistolis Vietaui sibi lectum, sed Thoma? Ilarrioti Angli libros analyticos postliumos anno l(j31 editos vidisse multi vix dubitant ; usque adeo niagnus est eorum consensus cum calculo geometriaa Oartesiansp. Sane jam Harriotus a.>qua- tionem nihilo iiequalem posuit, et hino derivavit, quomodo oriatur aequatio ex multiplicatione nidicum in se invicem, et quomodo radicum auctione, diminutione, multiplicatione aut divisione variari aequa- tio possit, et quomodo proiude natiira, et constitutio iequationum et nidicum cog- no.sci possit ex teruiinorum liabitudine. Itaque narrat celeberrimus Wallisius, Robervalium, qui niiratus erat, unde Oartesio in meutem venisset palmarium illud, a?quationem ponere Eequalem nihilo ad instar unius quantitatis, ostenso .sibi a Domino de Cavendish libro Ilarrioti ex- clamasse, ' II I'a vu I il I'a vu 1 ' vidit, vidit. Redxictiouem (|uadrato-quadrat;e ie(iua- tiouis ad cubi<-ani superiori jam saccule invenit Ludovicus Ferrarius, cujus vitam reliquit Oardanus ejus familiaris. Deni- que fuit Cartesius, uta virisdoctisdudum notatum est, et ex epistolis iiimium ap- paret, immodicus contemptor alioinim, et fama; cupiditate ab artiticiis non abstinens, qu;e paruni generosa videri possunt. Afque haH' prolccto non dico aniino ob- trectanili viro, ciucm miritici' a^stimo. sed eo consilio, ut cuique suum tribuatur, nee unus omnium laudes absorbeat : jus- tissimum enim est, ut inventoribus suus lionos constet, nee subl.atis virtutuia rrtrmiis pra-clara faciendi studium rct'ri- gesca t " — Leibnitz, apud Brucker, y. 255. Chap. HI. METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPin UF HOBBES. 101 112. The name of Descartes as a great metaphysical writer lias revived, in some measure, of late years : ^^^^^^ ,„. and this has been chiefly owing, among ourselves, to crease of Dugald Stewart ; in France, to the growing disposi- *^*™*' tion of their philosophers to cast away their idols of the eighteenth century. " I am disposed," says our Scottish phi- losopher, " to date the origin of the true philosophy of mind from the Principia (why not the earlier works ?) of Descartes, rather than from the Organum of Bacon, or the Essays of Locke ; without, however, meaning to compare the French autlior with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our stock of facts relating to the intellectual phenomena, or as the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to which they may be referred." The excellent edition by M. Cousin, in which alone the entire works of Descartes can be found, is a homage that France has recently offered to his memory, and an important contribution to the studious both of metaphysical and mathematical philosophy. I have made use of no other, though it might be desirable for the inquirer to have the Latin original at his side, especially in those works which had not been seen in French by their author. Section IV. On the Metaphysical Philosophy of Hobbes. 113. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes was pi-o- nuilgated in his treatise on Human Nature, which Metapjjysi. appeared in 1650. This, with his other works, De eai treatises Cive and De Corpore Politico, were fused into that ° "' '^' great and general system, which he published in 1651, with the title of Leviathan. The first part of the Leviathan, " Of Man," follows the several chaptei-s of the treatise on Human Nature with much regularity ; but so numerous are the en- largements or omissions, so many are the variations with ■which the author has expressed the same positions, that they should much rather be considei-ed as two works, than as two editions of the same. They differ more than Lord Bacon's 102 HOBBES. Part IIL treatise, De Augmentls Scientiarum, does from his Advance- ment of Learning. I sliall, however, blend the two in a single analysis ; and this I shall generally give, as far as is possible, consistently with my own limits, in the very words of Hobbes. His language is so lucid and concise, that it would be almost as improper to put an algebraical process in different terms as some of his metaphysical })aragraphs. But, as a certain degree of abridgment cannot be dispensed with, the reader must not take it for granted, even where invei-ted commas denote a closer attention to the text, that nothing is omitted, although, in such cases, I never hold it permissible to make any change. 114. All single thoughts, it is the primary tenet of Hobbes, His theory are representations or appearances of some quality of sensation ^f g^ body without US, which is commonly called an object. " There is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at fi'*st totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are dei'ived from that original." ^ In the treatise on Human Nature, he dwells long on the immediate causes of sensation ; and if no alteration had been made in his manuscript since he wrote his dedication to the Iilarl of Newcastle, in 1G40, he must be owned to have anticipated Coincident Dcscartes in one of his most celebrated d(x;trines. •with Des- " Becausc the image in vision, consisting in color ^'^ ''^' and shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that sense, it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that the same color and shape are the very qualities themselves ; and for the same cause, that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell, or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received, that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox ; and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion), passing to and fro from the object, is Avorse than any paradox, as being a plain impossi- bility. I shall, therefore, endeavor to make plain these points: 1. That the subject wherein color and image are inhe- rent is not the object or thing seen. 2. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an image or color, o. That the said image or color is but an ap])Osition unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain or spirits, or some external substance of the head. > l«Tiathan, c. 1. CnAi'. m. IMAGIXATION AND 1HE5I0RY. 103 4. That, as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object, but the sentient."^ And this he goes on to prove Notliing of this will be found in the Discours sur la Methode, the only work of Descartes then published ; and, even if we believe Ilobbes to have interpolated this chapter after he had read the Meditations, he has stated the })rinciple so clearly, and illustrated it so copiously, that, so far especially as Locke and the English metajjhysicians took it up, we may almost reckon him another original source. 1\'). Tlie second chapter of the Leviathan, "On Imaghia- tion," begins with one of those acute and original t™,,^^. obsei'vations we often find in Ilobbes : " That when tion ana a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will ™^™'"T''- lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves ; and, because they find themselves sub- ject after motion to pain and lassitude, think every thing else grows weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord." The physical principle had lately been established ; but the reason here given for the contrary prejudice, though not the sole one, is ingenious, and even true. Imagination he defines to be " conception remaining, and by little and little decaying after the act of sense."- This he afterwards expressed less happily, " the gradual decline of the motion in which sense consists;" his phraseology becoming more and more tinctured with the materijdism which he affected in all his philosoj)hy. Neither definition seems at all applicable to the imagination which calls up long past perceptions. " This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination ; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So that imagination and memory are but one thing, whicli for divers considerations hath divere names.^ It is, however, evident that imagination and memory are distin- guished by something more than their names." The second fundamental error of Ilobbes in his metajjhysics, his extrava- gant nominalism, if so it should be called, appears in this Uum. Nat., c. 2. » Id., c. 3. » Ley., c. 2. 104 HOBBES. Part III Bentence, as the first, his materialism, does in that previously quoted. IIG. The phenomena of dreaming and the phantasms of waking men are considered in this chapter Mith the keen observation and cool reason of Hobbes.^ I am not sure that he has gone more profoundly into psychological speculations in the Leviathan than in the earlier treatise ; but it bears vitness more frequently to what had probably been the growth of the intervening period, — a proneness to political and religious allusion, to magnify civil and to depreciate ecclesiastical power. " If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and, with it, prognostics from dreams, false jirophecies and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty and ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedi- ence. And this ought to be the work of the schools ; but they rather nourish such doctrine."^ 117. The fourth chapter on Human Nature, and the corres] lending third chapter of the Leviathan, enti orTrairof ^^^^ " ^u Discourse, or the Consequence and Train imagiua- of Imagination," are among the most remarkable in tion . Hobbes, as they contain the elements of that theory of association, which was slightly touched atterwards by Locke, but developed and pushed to a far greater extent by Hartley. " The cause," he says, " of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another is their first cohe- rence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense : as for instance, fi-om St. Andrew the mind ruimeth to St. Peter, because their names are read together ; from St. Peter to a stone, from the same cause ; from stone to founda- tion, because we see them together ; and, for the same cause, from foundation to church, and from church to people, and from people to tumult ; and, according to this exarr pie, the mind may run almost from any thing to any thing." ^ This he illustrates in the Leviathan by the well-known anecdote of a question suddenly put by one, in conversation about the death of Charles I., " What was the value of a Roman penny ? " Of this discovise, as he calls it, in a larger sense of the Avord than is usual with the logicians, he mentions several kinds ; and after observing that one remembi-ance of succession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what 1 Uum Nat., c. 8. ^ Id. » Id., c. 4, § 2. Chap. in. LEVIATHAN. 105 consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment, adds, that " to have had many experiments is what we call experience, which is nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by what cons(;quents." ^ 118. "No man can have a conception of the future, for the futui'e is not yet", but of our conceptions of the past we make a future, or rather call past future ^-''P^"^'»*=" relatively." - And again : " Tlie present only has a being in nature : things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all ; the future being but a fiction of tlie mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present, which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience, but not with certainty enough. And though it be called prudence, when the event answeretli our expectation, yet in its own nature it is but presumption." ' " AVhen we have observed antecedejits and consequents fre- quently associated, we take one for a sign of the other ; as clouds foretell rain, and rain is a sign there have been clouds. But signs are but conjectural, and their assurance is never full or evident. For though a man have always seen the day and night to follow one another hitherto, yet can he not thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so eternally. Experience concludeth nothing universally. But those who have most experience conjecture best, because they have most signs to conjecture by : hence old men, ccBteris paribus, and men of quick parts, conjecture better than the young or dull." ■* " But experience is not to be equalled by any ad- vantage of natural and extemporary wit, though perhaps many young men think the contrary." There is a presump- tion of the past as well as tlie future founded on experience, as Avhen, from having often seen ashes after tire, we infer from seeing them again that there has been fire. But this is as conjectural as our expectations of the future.^ 119. In the last paragraph of the chapter in the Levia- than, he adds, what is a very leadinj; principle in ,, Oil Uiiconccivi* the philosophy of Hobbes, but seems to have no bieness of particular relation to what has preceded : " What- '"""'^-y- soever we imagine is finite ; tlierefore there is no idea or conception of any thing we call infim'te. No man can havo ' Hum. Nat., c. 4, § 2. * Uam. Nat., c. 4. " " " ^ ' " • Lev., 0.3. ■ num. i>ai;., c. « Id., c. 4, § 7. s Lev., c. 3. 106 nOBBES. Part Ul. in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say any thing is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named ; having no conception of the tiling, but of our own inability. And therefore tlie name of God is used, not to make us conceive him, — for he is incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are inconceivable, — but that we may honor him. Also because whatsoever, as I said before, we conceive, has been perceived first by sense, either all at once, or by parts ; a man can have no thought, representing any thing, not subject to sense. No man, therefore, can con- ceive any thing, but he must conceive it in some place, and indeed with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts, nor that any thing is all in this jdace and all in another place at the same time, nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once. For none of these things ever have, or can be incident to sense, but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit Avithout any signification at all, from deceived philosophers, and deceived or deceiving schoolmen." This, we liave seen in the last section, had been already discussed with Descartes. The paralogism of I lobbes consists in his imposing a limited sense on the word " idea " or " conception," and assuming that what cannot be conceived according to that sense has no signification at all. 120. The next chapter, being the fifth in one treatise, Ori"-in of '^^id the fourtli in the other, may be reckoned, per- language. haps, the most valuable as well as original in the writings of Hobbes. It relates to speech and language. " The invention of printing," he begins by observing, " though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters, is no great inatter. . . . But the most noble and profitable invention of all others was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connection, whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare tliein one to another for mutual utility and conversation ; without wliich thei'e had been amongst men neither commonwealth nor society, nor content nor ])eace, no more than among lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God him- self, tliat instructed Adam how to name such creatures a3 he presented to his sight ; for the Scrij)ture goeth no further in this matter. But this was sulficieut to direct liim to Chap. in. LANGUAGE. 107 add more names, as the experience and use of the creatures should give him occasion, and to join them in such manner by degrees as to make himself understood ; and so, by suc- cession of time, so much language miglit l)e gotten as he had found use for, though not so copious as an orator or philoso- pher lias need of." ' 121. This account of the original (f language apjiears it general as probable as it is succinct and clear. But jjj^ mj the assum]>tion that there could have been no society oai theory or mutual peace among mankind without language, '" *'' *''^*^^' llie ordinary instrument of contract, is too much founded upon his own political speculations : nor is it proved by the com- parison to lions, bears, and wolves, even if the analogy could be admitted ; since the state of warfare which he here inti- mates to be natural to man, does not Commonly subsist in these wild animals of the same sjjecies. Scevis infer se con- veiiit icrsis, is an old remark. But, taking mankind with as much propensity to violence towards each other as Hobbes could suggest, is it speech, or reason and the sense of self- interest, which has restrained this within the boundaries imposed on it by civil society ? The position ajipears to be, that man, with every other faculty and attribute of his nature except language, could never have lived in community with his fellows. It is manifest, that the mechanism of such a community would have been very imperfect. But, possessing his rational powers, it is hard to see why he might not have devised signs to make known his special wants, or why he might not have attained the peculiar prerogative of his species and foundation of society, — the exchange of what he liked less for what he liked better. 122. This will api)ear more evident, and the exaggerated no- tions of the school of Hobbes as to the absolute neces- sity of language to the mutual relations of mankind o/speech will be checked, bv coiisiderinfi wiiat was not so well ^xagge- . ** '^ . rated. understood in his age as at present, — the intellectual capacities of those who are born deaf, and the resources which they are able to employ. It can hardly be questioned, but that a number of families thrown together in this unfor- tunate situation, without other intercourse, could by the exercise of their natural reason, as well as the domestic and Bocial affections, constitute themselves into a sort of common- > Leviathan, c. 4. 103 HOBBES. Part III. wealth, at least as regular as that of ants and bees. But those whom we have known to want the use of speech have also wanted the sense of hearing, and have thus been shut out from many assistances to the reasoning faculties, which our hypothesis need not exclude. The fair supposition is that of a number of persons merely dumb ; and, although they would not have laws or learning, it does not seem impossible that they might maintain at least a patriarchal, if not a j)olitical, society for many generations. tJpon the lowest supposition, they could not be inferior to the Chimpanzees, who are said to live in communities in the forests of Angola. 123. The succession of conceptions in the mind depending Use of wholly on that which they had one to another when names. produced by the senses, they cannot be recalled at our choice and the n6ed we have of them, " but as it chance th us to hear and see such things as shall bring them to our mind. 'Hence brutes are unable to call what they want to mind, and often, though they hide food, do not know where to find it. But man has the power to set up marks or sensi- ble objects, and remember thereby somewhat past. The most eminent of these are names or articulate sounds, by which we recall some conception of things to which we give those names ; as the appellation ' white ' bringeth to remembrance the quality of such objects as produce that color or conception in us. It is by names that we are capable of science, as for instance that of number ; for beasts cannot number for want of Avords, and do not miss one or two out of their young ; nor could a man, without repeating orally or mentally the words of number, know how many pieces of money may be before him." ^ We have here another assumption, that the num- bering faculty is not stronger in man than in brutes, and also that the former could not have found out how to divide a heap of coins into parcels without the use of words of number. The experiment might be tried with a deaf and dumb child. 124. Of names, some are proper, and some common to Names uni- ^^"7 01" nuivcrsal, there being nothing in the world versa], not universal but names ; for the things named are every reditios. ^^^ of them individual and singular. '' One univer- Bal name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality or other accidents ; and whereas a proper name 1 Hum. Nat., c. 6. Ch/ip. m. NAMES. 109 brinseth to mind one thinnc onlv, universals recall any one of those many."^ "The universality of one name to many things hath been the cause that men tliink the thinj^ are themselves universal, and so seriously contend, tiiat besides Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or shall be in the world, there is yet something else that we call man, viz. man in general ; deceiving themselves by taking tlie universal or general appellation for the thing it signilietli.- For if one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a man, which is as much as to say, of a man in general, he meaneth no more but that the painter should choose what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs be some of them that are, or have been, or may be, none of Avhich are universal. But when he would have him to draw the picture of the king, or any particular person, he limiteth the painter to that one person he chooseth. It is plain, therefore, that there is nothing universal but "names, which are therefore called indefinite."^ 12o. " By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of now im- the consequences of things imagined in the mind into vo^^'^^- a reckoning of the consequences of appellations."* Hence he thinks, that, though a man born deaf and dumb might by meditation know that the angles of one triangle are equid 1 liev., c. 4. other." — Cap. 2, s. 9. "Imagination"' 2 " An UniTersal," he says in his liOgic, and •' memory " are used by ilobbes al- "is not a name of many things collective- most as .synonymes. ly, but of each taken separately (!iis.'tllalim ^ Hum. Nat., c. 5. mmptorum). Man is not the name of the * It may deserve to be remarked, that human species in general, but of each sin- Ilobbes himself, nominalist jus he w;is, gle man, Peter, John, and the rest, sepa- did uot limit rejisoniug to comparison of rately. Tlierefore this universal name is propositions, as some later writei-s havi not the name of any thing existing in ua- been inclined to do, and as, in his objec- ture, nor of any idea or phantasm fonncd tions to Descartes, he might seem to do in the mind, but always of some word or himself. This may be inferred from tho name. Thus when an animal, or a stone, sentence quoted in the text, and more ex- or a ghost (xpFctrum), or any thing else, pressly, though not quite perspicuously, is called universal, we are not to under- from a p!iss;ige in the Computatin. sivo stand that any man or stone or any thing Logica, his Latin treatise published after else was, or is, or can be, an universal, but the Leviathan. "Quoniodo autem aniino only that these words 'animal,' 'stone,' sine verbis tacila co^itatione Tatiocinnmlo and the like, are universal names, that is, adders et suhtrnhere sulemiis unoautaltero names '■ommon to many things, and the exempio ostendeudum est. Si quis ergo » conceptions corresponding to them in the longinquo aliquid obscure videat, etsi nulla mind are the images and phiintasms of sint imposita vocabula, habet tjuuen ejus single animals or other things. And there- rei ideam eandem propter qu.am impositis fore we do not need, in order to understand nunc vocabulis dicit e;im rem esse corpus, what is meant by an universal, any other Postquam autem propius accesserit, Tide- faculty than that of imagination, by which ritque eandem n?m certo quodam modo we remember that such words have excited nunc uno, nunc alio in loco e.^se, habebil the conception in oui minds sometimes ejusdem ideam novam, propter quaui uun» ef sue particular tiling, sometimes of an- talem rem animatam vocat." &c. — p 2 1 10 HOBBES. Part III. to two right ones, I'.e could not, on seeing another triangle of different shape, infer the same without a similar process. But by the help of words, after having observed the equality- is not consequent on any thing peculiar to one triangle, but on the number of sides and angles which is common to all, he registers his discovery in a proposition. This is surely lo confijund tiie antecedent process of reasoning with what he calls tlie registr}', which follows it. The instance, however, is not happily chosen ; and Hobbes has conceded the whole point in question, by admitting that the truth of the. propo- sition could be obseri'ed, which cannot require the use of words.' He expresses the next sentence with more felicity. " And thus the consequence found in one particular comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule, and dis- charges our mental reckoning of time and place ; and delivers us from all labor of the mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true here and now to be true in aU times and places."^ 12G. The equivocal use of names makes it often difficult The subject to recover those conceptions for which they were continued, designed " not only in the language of others, wherein we are to consider the drift and occasion and con- texture of the speech, as well as the words themselves, but in our own discourse, which, being derived from the custom and common use of speech, representeth unto us not our own conceptions. It is, therefore, a great ability in a man, out of the words, contexture, and other circumstances of language, to dehver himself from equivocation, and to find out the true meaning of what is said ; and this is it we call understanding."^ "If speech be peculiar to man, as for aught I know it is, then is understanding peculiar to him also; understanding being nothing else but conception caused by ' The demonstration of the thirty -second angles admitted of any elementary demon- proposition of Euclid roved in a single instance. It is said, the twelfth axiom of EucUd, the diflicul- however, to be nrorded by an ancient ties consequent on that [assumption would writer, that tiiis discovery was first made rejulily be evaded. See the Note on as to equilateral, afterwards as to iso.seeles, Euclid, i. 29, by I'l.iyfair, who has given a Hnd liifftly as toother triangles. Stewart's demonstration of his own, but one which Philosophy of Human Mind, vol. ii. chap, involves the idea of motion rather Diore iv. sect. 2. The mode of i)roof must have than wius usual witli the Greeks in their been ililTcrcnt from that of Kuclld. And elementiiry propositions, this might po.ssilily lead us to suspect the " I-ev. *ruth of the tradition. Kor if the equality » lluai. Nat. ^f tlie angles of a trianglu to two right Chap. in. NAMKS. Ill speech."^ This definition is ' arbitrary, and not conformable to thb nsual sense. " True and fiilse," he observes afterwards, " are attriluites of speech, not of things : where speech is not, thei'e is neitlier truth nor falseliood, though there may be error. Hence, as truth consists in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeks precise truth liath need to remember Avhat every word he' uses stands for, and phice it accordingly. In geometry, the only science hitlierto known, men begin by definitions. And every man who aspires to true knowledge should examine the definitions of former authors, and either correct them or make them anew. For tlie errors of definitions muhii)Iy themselves, accoi'ding as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absur- dities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning, in wliich lies the foun- dation of their errors. ... In the rigiit definition of names lies the first use of speech, wliich is the acquisition of science. And in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse from which proceed all false and senseless tenets, which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For, between true science and erroneous doc- trine, ignorance is in the middle. Words are wise men's counters, — tiiey do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools." ^ 127. "The names of such things as affect us, that is, whicli please and displease us, because all men be j^rj^jj^gg ^, not alike afiected with the same thing, nor the same ferentiy man at all times, are, in the common discourse of '"'P'^ • men, of inconstant signification. For seeing all names are imposed to signify our conceptions, and all our affections are but conceptions, when we conceive the same thoughts differently, we can hardly avoid different naming of them. For though the nature of that we conceive be the same, yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body and prejudices of opinion, gives every thing a tincture of our different jiassions. And therefore, in reasoning, a man must take heed of words, which, besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature, have a signification also of the nature, disposition, and interest of the 1 Lev * Id. 112 HOBBES. Part m. speaker ; such as are the names of virtues and vices : for one man calleth wisdom what another calleth fear, and one cruelty wliat another justice; one prodigality what another magna- nimity, and one gravity what another stupidity, «&:c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratio- cination. No more can metaphors and tropes of speech ; but tliese are less dangerous because they profess their incon- stancy, which the other do not." ' Thus ends this chapter of the Leviathan, which, with the corresponding one in the treatise on Human Nature, are, notwithstanding Avhat appear to me some erroneous principles, as full, perhaps, of deep and original thoughts as any other pages of equal length on the art of reasoning, and philosophy of language. Many have borrowed from Hobbes without naming him; and, in fact, he is the founder of the Nominalist school in England. He may probably have conversed with Bacon on these subjects : we see much of that master's style of illustration. But as Bacon was sometimes too excursive to sift particulai'S, so Hobbes has sometimes wanted a comprehensive view. 128. "There are," to proceed with Hobbes, "two kinds of ^ , , knowledge : the one, sense, or knowledoje oi'iginal, Knowledge. ° ,^ i i i P ' and remembrance ot the same ; the other, science, or knowledge of the truth of propositions, derived from under- standing. Both are but experience, — one of things from without, the other from the proper use of words in language ; and, experience being but remembrance, all knowledge is remembrance. Knowledge implies two things, truth and evidence : the latter is the concomitance of a man's concep- tion with the words that signify such conception in the act of ratiocination." If a man does not annex a meaning to his words, his conclusions are not evident to him. " Evidence is 10 truth as the sap to the tree, which, so far as it creepeth Along with the body and branches, keepeth them alive : when it forsaketh them, they die ; for this evidence, whicli is meaning with our words, is tlie life of truth." " Science is evidence of truth, fiom some beginning or principle of sense. The first j)rinciple of knowledge is, that we have such and such conceptions ; the second, that we have thus and tluis named the tilings whereof they are conceptions ; the third is, that we have joined those names in such manner as to make true propositions ; the fourth and last is, that we have > Lb?. Chap. III. REASONING. lib joined these propositions in such manner as they be con- cluding, and the truth of the conclusion said to be known," ^ 129. Keasonina; is the addition or sul)traction of parcels. " In whatever matter there is room for addition and subtraction, there is room for reason ; and where these have no place, then reason has nothing at all to do."^ This is iKiither as perspicuously expressed, nor as satisfacto- rily illustrated, as is usual Avith Hobbes ; but it is true that all syllogistic reasoning is dependent upon quantity alone, and consequently uj)on that which is capable of addition and sub- traction. This seems not to have been clearly perceived by some writers of the old Aristotelian school, or perhaps by some others, who, as far as I can judge, havQ a notion that the relation of a genus to a species, or a predicate to its sub- ject, considered merely as to syllogism or deductive reasoning, is something different from that of a whole to its parts ; which would deprive that logic of its chief boast, its axiomatic evi- dence. But, as this would appear too dry to some readers, I shall pursue it farther in a note.^ 1 Hum. Nat., c. 6. 2 Lev., c. 5. ' •■' Dug;ild Stewart (Elements of Philoso- phy, &c., vol. ii. ch. it. sect. 2) has treated this theory of Hobl>es on rea.«oniug, as well as tliat of C'ondillao, which seems much the .';ame, with great scorn, as " too puerile to admit of {i.e., require) refuta- tion." I do not my.sclf think the lan- guage of Hobbes, either here, or as quoted by Stewart from his Livtin treatise on Logic, SO perspicuous as usual. But I cannot help being of opinion, that he is substan- tially right. For surely, when we as.sert that A is 15, we assert that all things which fall under the class B, t;iken collectively, comprehend A ; or that B = A -|- X ; B being here put, it is to be observed, not for the res prirdicata itself, but for the concrete ile (jidhiis prirdicandinn est. I mention this, because this elliptical use of the word " predicate •' seems to have occa- sioned some confusion in writers on logic. Tlie predicate, strictly taken, being an attribute or quality, cannot be said to include or contain the subject. But to re- turn, when we say j;=:.V-|-.\. or B — X=:.\, since we do not n nipare, in such a propo- eitiou as is here sii|iposed, A with X, we only mean that ,\^.\, or that a certain part of B is tlie same as itself. Again, in a particular affirmative. Some A is 1!, we a.ssert that part of A, or A — Y, is contiined in B, or that B may be expressed by A — Y-j-X. So also when we say, Some A is not B, we equally divide the class or genus B into A — Y and X, or assert that B r= A — Y-f-X ; but, in this case, the sub- ject is no longer A — Y, but the remainder, or other jiart of A, namely, Y ; and this is not found in either term of the predicate. Finally, in the universal negative. No A (neither A — Y nor Y) is B, the A — Y of the predicate vanishes or has no value, and B becomes equal to X, which is incapable of measurement with A, and consequently with either A — Y or Y. which make up A. Now, if we combine this w ith another pro- position, in order to form a syllogism, and say that is A, we tind, as before, that A = C + Z; and, substituting this value of A in the former proposition, it appears that B = O-t-Z-}- X. Then, in the con- clusion, we have, U is B : that is, is a part of -(- Z -f- X And the same in the three other cases or moods of the figure. This seems to be, in plainer terms, what Hobbes means by addition or subtrac- tion of parcels, and what C'ondillac means by rather a lax expression, that equa tions and propositions are at bottom the same : or, as he phrases it better, '" I'evi- dence de raison consiste uiiiqucniont dans ridentite." If wo add to this, as he pi'obalily intended, non-identity, as the condition of all negative conclusions, it seems to be no more than is necessarily involved in the fundamental principle of syllogism, the dictmn de nynni et vullo: which may be thus reduced to its shortest VOL. UI. 8 114 HOBBES. Part IIT. 130. A man may reckon without the use of words in parti- Faise rea- cular things, as in conjectiii-ing from the sight of any soning. thing what is hkely to follow ; and, if he reckons terms : " \rhatever can be divided into parts, includes all those parts, and nothing else." This is not limited to mathematical quantity, but includes every thing which admits of more and less. Ilobbes has a good passage in his IjOgic on this : " Non putaiidum est computationi, id est, ratio- cinationi in numeris tiintum locum esse, tanquam iiomo a ca;teris auimantibus, quod censuisse narratur Pythagoras, sola uumerandi facultate distinctus esset ; nam et niaguitudo magtiitudini, corpus corpori, motus motui, tempus tempori, gradus qualitatis gradui, actio actioni, conceptus conceptui, proportio proportion!, oratio orationi, nomen nomini, in quibus omne philosophicB genus contiuetur, adjiei adi- miqiie potest." • Hut it does not follow by any means, that wo should ;ussent to the strange pas- Sages quoted by Stewart from Condillac and Diderot, which reduce all kiimvleit^e to identical propositions. Kven in geo- metry, where the objects are strictly mag- nitudes, the countless variety in which tiieir relations may be exhibited consti- tutes the riches of that inexhaustible science ; and, in moral or physical projio- sitions, the relation of quantity between the subject and predicate, ius concretes, which enables them to be compared, though it is the sole foundation of all general iJeilurAive reasnniii^^ or syllogism, has nothing to do with the other pro- perties or relations, of which we obtain a knowledge by means of that comparison. In mathematical reasoning, we infer as to quantity through the medium of quan- tity ; in other reasoning, we use tlie same medium, but our inference is as to truths which do not lie within that category. Thus in the hackneyed instance. All men are mortal, — that is, mortal creatures in- clude men and something more, — it is al)surd to assert, that we only know that men are men. It is true that our know- ledge of tlie truth of the proposition comes by the lielp of this comparison of men in the subject with men as imi)lied in the predicate ; but the very nature of the jiroposilion discovers a constant relation between the individuals of the human species and that mortality which is ]n-e- dicatcd of them along with others ; and it is in this, not in jin identical equation, iis Diderot seems to have thought, that our kiiiiwleilf;e consists. The remarks of Stewart's friend, M. I'revost of (jeneva, on the principle of Identity as the basis of mathematical ■cience, and wliich the former has can- didly subjoined to his own volume, appear to me very satisfictory. Stewart comes to admit that the dispute is nearly verbal : but we cannot say that he originally treated it a.s such ; and the principU- itself, both as applied to geometry and to logic, is, in my opinion, of some iniportauio to the clearness of our conceptions as to tho.se sciences. It may be added, that Stewart's objection to the principle of identity as the basis of geometrical rea- soning is less forcible in its application to syllogism. He is willing to admit that magnitudes capable of coincidence by im- mediate superposition may be reckoned identical, but scruples to apply such :i word to those which are dissimilar in figure, as the rectangles of the means and extremes of four proportional lines. Neither one nor the other are, in fact identical as real quantities, the forme being necessarily conceived to differ froi each other by position in space, ,as much as the latter; so that the expression he quotes from Aristotle, £1' TOVToic i) iaoTTjq ev6t//c, or any similar one of modern mathematicians, can only refer to the ab- stract magnitude of their areas, which being divisible into the same number of equal parts, they are called the same. And there seems no real difference in this respect between two circles of equal radii ami two such rectangles ;is are supposed above ; the identity of tlieir magnitudes being a distinct truth, independent of any consideration either of their figure or their position. But, however this may be, the identity of the subject with part of the predicate in an affirmative proposition is never fictitious, but real. It means that the persons or things in the one are strictly the same beings with the persons or things to which they are compared in the other, though, througli some differ ence of relations, or other circumstame, they are expressed in different language. It is needless to give examples, ius all thc^ie who can read this note at all will know how to find them. I will here take the liberty to remark, tho\igh not closely connected with the present subje<'t, that Archbishop Wliately is not quite right in saying ( Klements of Logic, p. 4(5), that, in affirmative propo sitions, the predicate is never distributed, liesides the numerous instances where this is, in point of fiu-.t, the case, all which he justly excludes, there arc many in which it is involved in the very form of the proposition. Such ore those whicb Chap. III. FALSE REASONING. 115 wrong, it is error. But in reasoning on general words, to fall on a false inference is not error, though often so called, but assert identity or pfjualitv, and such are all dofiiiitions. Of tlio firet sort arc all the theorems in geometry, asserting an equality of magnitudes or ratios, in whieh the subject aud predietite lua}" always change places. It is true, that, in the in- stance given in the work quoted, — that equilateral triangles are ecjuiangular, — the converse requires a separate proof, and so ju many similar cases. ljut,in these, the predicate is not distributed by the form of the proposition : they assert no equality of magnitude. The position, that, where such equality is affirmed, the predicate is not logically distributed, would lead to the consequence, that it can only be converted into a par- ticular afflrmation. Thus, after proving that the square of the hypothenuse iu all right-angled triangles is equal to those of the sides, we could only infer that the squares of the sides are sometimes equal to that of the hypothenuse; whicli could not be maintained without rendering the rules of logic ridiculous. The most gene- ral mode of considering the question, is to say, as we have done above, that, in an universal affinnative. the predicate B (that is, the class of which 15 is predicated) is composed of A, the subject, and X, an un- known remainder. Hut if, by tiie vc^ry nature of the proposition, we perceive that X is nothing, or has no value, it is plain that the subject measures the entire pre- dicate ; and, vice versa, the predicate mea- sures the subject: in other words, each is taken univei-s.ally, or distributed. [.\ critic upon the first edition has ob- served, that " nothing is clearer than that in the.se propositions the predicate is not necessarily distributed ; " and even hints a doubt whether I understood the terms rightly. Edinburgh Review, vol. Ix.xxii. p. 219. This suspicion rofitablo than ever. The comparison which somo have made of this literal logic with algebra is surely not to the purpose ; for we cannot move a step in algebra without known as well as unknown quantities. As soon as we substitute real examples, we must perceive tiiat the predicate is sometimes distributed in affirmative propositions by the sense of the propositions themselves, and without any extrinsic proof; which i4 all that I meant. — 1347.1 116 HOBBES. Part ID absurdity.^ " If a man should talk to me of a round quad- rangle, or accidents of bread in clieese, or immaterial sub- stances, or of a free subject, a free will, or any free, but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in eiTor, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd." Some of these propositions, it will occur, are intelligible in a reasonable sense, and not contradictory, except by means of an arbitrary definition which he Avho emjiloys them does not admit. It may be observed here, as we have done before, that Hobbes does not confine reckoning, or rea- soning, to universals, or even to words. 131. Man has the exclusive privilege of forming general itsfre- theorems. But this privilege is allayed by another, quency. j|jjjj. jg^ j^y ^j^g privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is subject, but man only. And of men those are of all most subject to it, that profess philosoi)hy. . . . For there is not one that begins his ratiocination from the definitions or explications of the names they are to use, which is a method used only in geometry, whose conclusions have thereby been made indisputable. He then enumerates seven causes of absurd conclusions ; the first of which is the want of definitions, the others are erroneous imposition of names. If we can avoid these errors, it is not easy to fall into absurdity (by which he of course only means any wrong conclusion), except perhaps by the length of a reasoning. " For all men," he says, " by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles. Hence it appears that reason is not as sense and memory born with us, nor gotten by experience only, as prudence is, but attained by industry, in apt imposing of names, and in getting a good and orderly method of pro^ ceeding from the elements to assertions, and so to syllogisms. Children are not endued with reason at all till they have attained the use of speech, but are called reasonable creatures, for the possibility of having the use of reason hereafter. ' And reasoning serves the generality of mankind very little, though with their natural prudence without science they are in better condition than those who reason ill themselves, or trust those who have done so."" It has been observed by Buhle, tliat Hobbes had more respect for the Aristotelian forms of logic thar his master Bacon. He has in fact written a short trea- tifiCj in his Elementa Philosophiaj, on the subject ; observing, » Ujv , c. 6, » Id. Chat. III. BELIEF. 117 however, therein, that a true logic will be sooner learned by attending to geometrical demonstrations than by drudging over the rules of syllogism, as children learn to walk not by pre- cept but by habit.' 132. " No discourse whatever," he says truly in the seventh chapter of the Leviathan, " can end in absolute Knowledge knowledge of fact, past or to come. For, as to the derived""' knowledge of fact, it is originally sense ; and, ever from rea- after, memory. And for the knowledge of conse- ^°°'°s- quence, which I have said before is called science, it is not absolute, but conditional. No man can know by discourse that this or that is, has been, or will be, which is to know absolutely ; but only that if this is, that is ; if this has been, that has been ; if this shall be, that shall be ; which is to know conditionally, and that not the consequence of one thing to another, but of one name of a thing to another name of the same thing. And therefore when the discourse is put into speech, and begins with the definitions of woi'ds, and proceeds by connection of the same into general affirmations,, and of those again into syllogisms, the end or last sum is called the conclusion, and the thought of the mind by it signified is that conditional knowledge of the consequence of words which is commonly called science. But if the first ground of such discourse be not definitions, or, if definitions, be not rightly joined together in syllogisms, then the end or conclusion is again opinion, namely, of the truth of somewhat said, though sometimes in absurd and senseless words, without possibility of being understood." ^ 133. " Belief, which is the admitting of propositions upon trust, in many cases is no less free from doubt than g^j.^^ perfect and manifest knowledge ; for as there is no- thing whereof there is not some cause, so, when there is doubt there must be some cause thereof conceived. Now, there be many things which we receive from the report of others, of which it is impossible to imagine any cause of doubt ; for I " Citiiis imilto veram logicam discunt unde vim suam habeat omnis arsumen- qui niatheniaticorum denionstrationibus, tatio lc'};itima, tantuiu diximus; et omnia quam qui liinicorum gyllogizandi pras- iiccuuiulare qu;e dici possunt, a?quo super- eeptis legendis tempus conterunt, haud fluum csset ac si qiiis ut dixi puerulo ad aliter quam pamili pueri gressum formaro gradiemium pra^cepta dare velit ; acqui- discuntnou priEceptissedsa?pegradiendo." rifur enim ratiocinandi ars non pHecuptifl ^C. iv. p. 30. '■ Atqiie ha>c sufficiunt" sed usu et lectione eorum librorum in (he says afterwards) " de syllogismo, qui quibus omnia severis demonstratiouiblU est tanquam gressus plulosopliia! ; nam et transiguntur." — C. v. p. 35. quantum necesse est ad cognosceudum ^ Lev., c. 7. 118 HOBBES. Fart III. what can be opposed against the consent of all men, in things they can know and have no cause to report otherwise tlian they are, such as is great part of our histories, unless a man would say that all the world had conspired to deceive him ? " ' Whatever we believe on the authority of the speaker, lie is the object of our faith. Consequently, Avhen we believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate revelation from God himself, our belief, foith, and trust is in the church, whose word we take and acquiesce therein. Hence all we believe on the authority of men, whetlier they be sent from God or not, is faith in men only.- We have no certain knowledge of the truth of Scripture, but trust the holy men of God's church succeeding one another from the time of those who saw the wondrous works of God Almighty in the Hesh. And, as we believe the Scriptures to be the word of God on the authority of the church, the intei'pretation of the Scripture in case of controversy ought to be trusted to the church rather than ])rivate opinion.'^ 134. The ninth chapter of the Leviathan contains a synop- Chart of tical chart of human science, or " knowledge of conse- Bcience. quenccs," also called philosophy. He divides it into natural and civil, the former into consequences from accidents common to all bodies, quantity and motion, and those from qualities othenvise called physics. The first includes astrono- my, mechanics, architecture, as well as mathematics. The second he distinguishes into consequences from qualities of bodies transient, or meteorology, and from those of bodies permanent, such as the stars, the atmosphere, or terrestrial bodies. The last are divided again into those without sense, and those with sense ; and these, into animals and men. In the consequences from the qualities of animals generally, he reckons optics and music ; in those from men, we find ethics, poetry, rhetoric, and logic. These altogetlier constitute the first great head of natural philosophy. In the second, or civil philosophy, he includes nothing but the rights and duties of sovereigns and their subjects. This chart of human know- ledge is one of the worst that has been propounded, and falls much below that of Bacon.* 135. This is tlie substance of the philosophy of Ilobbes, BO far as it relates to the intellectual faculties, and especi> lly » Hum. Nat., c. 6. ' Hum. Nat., c. 11. » Lev., c. 7. * ley., c. 9. Chap. m. GOOD AND EVIL, RELATIVE TERMS. 119 to that of reasoning. In tlie seventh and two following chapters of the treatise on Human Nature, in the Analysis ninth and tenth of the Leviathan, he proceeds to the "i" P'^i^'^'ons. analysis of the passions. Tiie motion in some internal sub- stance of the head, if it docs not stop there, ])rodncing mere conceptions, proceeds to the heart, helping or hindering the vital motions, which he distinguishes from the voluntary, exciting in us pleasant or painful affections, called passions. "We are solicited by these to draw near to that which pleases us, and the contrary. Hence pleasure, love, appetite, desire, are divers names for divers considerations of the same thing. As all conceptions we have immediately by the sense are delight or pain or appetite or fear, so are all the imaginations after sense. But as they are weaker imaginations, so are they also weaker pleasures or weaker pains.^ All delight is appe- tite, and i)resui)poses a further end. There is no utmost end in this world ; for, while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposes a further end. "We are not, therefore, to wonder that men desire more, the moi-e they possess ; for felicity, by which we mean continual delight, consists, not in having prospered, but in prospering.- Elach passion, being, as he fancies, a continuation of the motion which gives rise to a peculiar conception, is associated with it. They all, except such as are immediately connected with sense, consist in the conception of a power to ])roduce some effect. To honor a man is to conceive that he has an excess of power over some one with whom he is compared : hence qualities indicative of power, and actions significant of it, are honorable ; riches are honored as signs of power, and nobility is honorable as a sign of power in ancestors.^ 136. "The constitution of man's body is in perpetual mu- tation, and hence it is impossible that all the same Good and things should always cause in him the same appe- ^.^^'^■j^^^^;^ tites and aversions ; much less can all men consent in tlie desire of any one object. But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calls good ; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil ; or of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person using them ; there being nothing simply and abso- lutely so ; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken 1 Hum. Kat., c. 7. « Hum. Nat., c. 7 i Lev. c. 11. » Uum. Nat , c. 8. 120 HOBBES. Part IH. from the nature of the objects themselves, but from the person of the man, where there is no commonwealth, or, in a commonwealth, from the person that represents us. or from an arbitrator or judge, wliom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the rule thereof." ^ 137. In prosecuting this analysis, all the passions are re- iiis para- solved iuto sclf-love, tlie pleasure that we take in doxes. Qyj, Q^y,^ power, the pain that we suffer in wanting it. Some of his explications are very forced. Thus weeping is said to be from a sense of our want of power. And liere comes one of his strange paradoxes. " Men are apt to weep that prosecute revenge, when the revenge is suddenly stopped or frustrated by the repentance of their adversary ; and such are the tears of reconciliation^ ^ So resolute was he to resort to any thing the most preposterous, rather than admit a moral feelinf; in human nature. His account of laughter is better known, and perhaps more probable, though not explaining the whole of the case. After justly observing, that, wdiatsoever it be that moves laughter, it must be new and unexpected, he defines it to be " a sudden glory arising from a sudden con- ception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly ; for men laugh at the follies of themselves past." It might be objected, that those are most prone to laughter who have least of this glorying in tliemselves, or undervaluing of their neighbors. 138. "Thei'e is a great difference between the desire of a His notion man whcn indefinite, and the same desire limited to of love. Qj^g person; and this is that love which is the great theme of poets. But, notwithstanding their praises, it must be defined by the word 'need;' for it is a conception a man hath of his need of that one person desired."'' There is yet another passion sometimes called love, but more proi)erly good-will or charity. There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power than to find himself able, not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs ; and this is that conception wherein consists charity. In which first is contained that natural affection of parents towards their children, which the Greeks call oropyri, as also that affection wherewith men seek to assist those that adhere unto them. But the affection wherewith men many times bestow their benefits on strangers is not to be called charity, « LeT., c. 6. » Uum. Nat., c. 9 ; Lev.,c. Gand 10. » Hum. Nat., c. 9. Chap. HI. CURIOSITY — INTELLECTUAL CAPACITIES. 12J but either contract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship, or fear, which makes them to purchase peace." ^ This is equally contrary to notorious truth, there being neither fear nor contract in generosity towards strangers. It is, however, Tiot so extravagant as a subsequent position, that in beliohling the danger of a ship in a tempest, thougli there is pity, which is grief, yet "tlie delight in our own security is so far predomi- nant, that men usually are content in such a case to be specta- tors of the misery of their friends."^ 131), As knowledge begins from experience, new experi- ence is the bcgiiming of new knowledge. Whatever, therefore, happens new to a man, gives him the hope ""^' ^' of knowing somewhat he knew not before. This appetite of knowledge is curiosity. It is peculiar to man ; for beasts never regard new things, except to discern how far they may be useful, while man looks for the cause and beginning of all he sees.'' This attribute of curiosity seems rather hastily denied to beasts. And as men, he says, are always seeking new knowledge, so are they always deriving some new gratifi- cation. There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here, because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire nor without fear, no more than without sense. " What kind of felicity God hath ordained to them that devoutly honor him, a man shall no sooner know than enjoy, being joys that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of schoolmen, 'beatifical vision,' is unintelligible."* 140, From the consideration of the passions, Hobbes ad- vances to inquire what are the causes of the differ- ence in the intellectual capacities and dispositions of ofinteUec- men.^ Their bodily senses are nearly alike, whence *"'^' ''•'^p^- t J ' Cities he precijiitately infers there can be no great differ- ence in the brain. Yet men differ much in their bodily con- stitution, whence he derives the principal differences in their minds : some, being addicted to sensual pleasures, are less curious as to knowledge, or ambitious as to power. This is called dulness, and proceeds from the appetite of bodily delight. The contrary to this is a quick ranging of mind accompanied with cariosity in comparing things that come into it, either as to luiexpccted similitude, in which fancy consists, or dissimili- » Hum. Nat., c. 9. s Hum. Nat., c. 9. ' Id., ibid. This is an exaggeration of ♦ Lev., c. 6 and c. 11, Bome well-known lines of Lucretius, which ^ Uuia. Nat., c. 10, aru themselves exaggerated. 122 HOBBES. Part IIL tude in things appearing the same, which is properly called judgment ; " for to judge is nothing else but to distinguish and discern. And both fancy and judgment are commonly comprehended under the name of wit, which seems to be a tenuity and agility of spirits, contrary to that restiness of the spirits supposed in tliose who are dull." ^ 141. We call it levity, when the mind is easily diverted, and the discourse is parenthetical ; and this proceeds fi oni cui-iosity with too much equality and indifference ; for, when all things make equal impression and delight, they ecpially tln-ong to be expressed. A different fault is indocibility, or difficulty of being taught ; which must arise from a false opinion that men know already the truth of what is called in question : for certainly they are not otherwise so unequal in capacity as not to discern the difference of what is proved and what is not ; and therefore, if the minds of men were all of white paper, they would all most equally be disposed to acknowledge whatever should be in right metliod, and by right ratiocination delivered to them. But Avhen men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions, and registered them as authen- tical records in their minds, it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such men than to write legibly on a paper al- ready scribbled over. The immediate cause, therefore, of indocibility is prejudice, and of prejudice false opinion of our own knowledfre.^ 142. Intellectual virtues are such abilities as go by the Wit and name of a good wit, which may be natural or ac- fency. quired. "By natural wit," says Hobbcs, "I mean not that which a man hath from his birth ; for that is nothing else but sense, wherein men differ so little from one another, and from brute beasts, as it is not to be reckoned among vir- tues. But I mean that wit which is gotten by use only and experience, without method, culture, or instruction, and con- sists chiefly in celerity of imagining and steady direction. And the difference in this quickness is caused by that of men's passions that love and dislike some one thing, some another ; and therefore some men's thoughts run one way, some another ; and are held to, and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination." Fancy is not praised without judgment and discretion, which is properly a discerning of times, places, and persons ; but judgment and > Hum. Nat. » Id. Chap. HI. MADNESS— UN^MEANING LANGUAGE. 123 discretion is commended for itself without fancy: witliout steadiness and direction to some end, a great fancy is one kind of madness, such as they have who lose themselves in long digressions and parentheses. If the defect of discretion be apparent, how extravagant soever the fancy be, the whole dis- course will be taken for a want of wit.^ 143. The causes of the difference of wits are in the pas. sions ; and the difference of passions proceeds part- Differences ly from the different constitution of the body and in the paa- ]iartly from different education. Those passions are "°'^' chiefiy the desire of power, riches, knowledge, or honor ; all which may be reduced to the first : for riches, knowledge, and honor are but several sorts of power. He who has no great passion for any of these, though he may be so far a good man as to be free from giving offence, yet cannot possibly have either a great fancy or much judgment. To have weak pas- sions is dulness ; to have passions indifferently for every thing, giddiness and distraction ; to liave stronger passions for any thing than others have is madness. Madness may be the excess of many passions ; and the passions them- jj^dness. selves, when they lead to evil, are degrees of it. He seems to have had some notion of what Butler is reported to have thrown out as to the madness of a whole people. " What argument for madness can there be greater, than to clamor, strike, and throw stones at our best friends ? Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. For they will clamor, fight against, and destroy those by whom all their lifetime before they have been protected, and secured from injury. And, if this be madness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man."^ 144. There is a fault in some men's habit of discoursing, which may be reckoned a sort of madness, which is unmeaning when they speak words with no signification at all. language. " And this is incident to none but those tliat converse in (pies- tions of matters incomprehensible as the schoolmen, or in questions of abstruse philosophy. The common sort of men seldom speak insignificantly, and are therefore by those other egregious persons counted idiots. But, to be assured their words are without any thing correspondent to them in tho mind, there would need some examples ; which if any man require, let him take a schoolman into his hands, and see if ha » Ley., c. 8. « Ti 124 HOBBES. Part III can translate any one chapter concerning any clifRcult point, as tlie Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ, transubstantia- tion, free-will, &c., into any of the modern tongues, so as to make the same intelligible, or into any tolerable Latin, such as they were acquainted with that lived when the Latin tongue was vulgar," And, after quoting some words from Suarez, he adds, " When men write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make others so ? " ^ 145. The eleventh chapter of the Leviathan, "On manners," by which he means those qualities of mankind which Manuers. •' , . ,. . '. . , . . concern tlieir livmg together in peace and unity, is full of Hobbes's caustic remai-ks on human nature. Often acute, but always severe, he ascribes overmuch to a dehberate and calculating selfishness. Thus the reverence of antiquity is referred to " the contention men have with the living, not with the dead ; to these ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the glory of the otlier," Thus, also, " to have received, from one to whom we think ourselves equal, greater benefits than we can hope to requite, disposes to counterfeit love, but really to secret hatred, and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor, that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him where he might never see him more. For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom ; and unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which is to one's equal hateful." He owns, however, that to have received benefits from a supe- rior, disposes us to love him ; and so it does where we can hope to requite even an equal. If these maxims have a certain basis of truth, they have at least the fault of those of Rochefoucault : they are made too generally characteristic of mankind. 14G. Ignorance of the signification of words disposes men , to take on trust not only the truth they know not, Ignorances •' t-. • i i and preju- but also errors and nonsense, r or neither can be •^"'^ detected without a perfect understanding of words. " But ignorance of the causes and original constitution of riglit, equity, law, and justice, disposes a man to make custom and exani})le the rule of his actions, in such manner as to think tliat unjust which it has been the custom to punish ; and that just, of the impunity and approbation of which they can produce an example, or, as the lawyers which only use this false measure of justice barbarously call it, a precedent." « Lev. CJhap. m, HIS THEORY OF RELIGION. 125 " Men appeal from custom to reason, and from reason to cus- tom, as it serves their turn ; receding from custom when their interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason as oft as reason is against them ; which is the cause that tlie doctrine of right and wi-ong is perpetually disputed both by the pen and the sword : whereas the doctrine of lines and figures h not so, because men care not in that subject what is truth, as it is a thing that crosses no man's ambition., profit, or hist. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle sliould be equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet, by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed as far as he whom it concerned was able." ^ This excellent piece of satire has been often quoted, and sometimes copied, and does not exaggerate the pertinacity of mankind in resisting the evidence of truth, when it thwarts the interests and passions of any particular sect or community. In the earlier part of the paragraph, it seems not so easy to reconcile what Hobbes has said witli his general notions of right and justice ; since if tliese resolve themselves, as is his theory, into mere force, thci'e can be little appeal to reason, or to any thing else than custom and precedent, whicli are commonly tlie exponents of power. 147. In the conclusion of this chapter of the Leviathan, as well as in the next, he dwells more on the nature iiis theory of religion than he had done in the former treatise, "^ reiijpon. and so as to subject himself to the imputation of absolute atheism, or at least of a denial of most attributes which we . assign to the Deity. " Curiosity about causes," he says, " led men to search out, one after the other, till they came to this necessary conclusion, that there is some eternal cause which men call God. But they have no more idea of his nature than a blind man has of fire, though he knows that there is something that warms him. So, by the visible things of this world and their admirable order, a man may conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, and yet not have an id(?a or image of him in his mind. And they that make little inquiry into the natural causes of things are inclined to feign Bcveral kinds of powers invisible, and to stand in awe of their own imagiuatious. And this fear of things invisible is the 1 Lev., c U. 126 HOBBES. ' Part HI. natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth reli- gion, and in them that worship or fear that power otherwise than tlioy do, superstition." 148. "As God is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no conception or image of the Deity ; and, consequently, all his attributes signify our inability or defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature, and not any con- ception of the same, excepting only this, that there is a God. Men that by their own meditation arrive at the acknowledg- ment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal God, choose rather to confess this is incompreliensible and above their understanding, tlian to define his nature by spirit incorporeal, and then confess their definition to be unintelligible."^ For, concerning such spirits, he holds that it is not possible by natural means only to come to the knowledge of so much as that there are such things.^ 149. Religion he derives from three' sources, — the desire Its supposed of n^cn to scarch for causes, the reference of every sources. thing tliat has a beginning to some cause, and the observation of the order and consequence of things. But the two former lead to anxiety; for the knowledge that there have been causes of the effects we see, leads us to antici[)ate that they will in time be the causes of effects to come ; so that every man, especially such as are over-provident, is " like Prometheus, the prudent man, as his name implies, who was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where an eagle feeding on his liver devoured as mucli by day as was repaired by night ; and so he who looks too far before him has his heart all day long gnawed by the fear of death, poverty, or other calamity, and has no repose nor pause but in sleep." This is an allusion made in the style of Lord Bacon. The ignorance of causes makes men fear some invisible agent, like the gods of the Gentiles ; but the inves- tigation of them leads us to a God eternal, infinite, and omnipotent. This ignorance, however, of serond causes, con- spiring with three other ])rejudices of mankind, — the belief in ghosts, or spirits of subtile bodies, the devotion and reverence generally shown towards what we fear as having power to hurt us, and the taking of things casual for prognostics, — are altogether tlie natural seed of religion; which, by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several raeii > Lev., c. 12. » Uum. Nat., c. 11. Ch,vp. m. SYLLOGISTIC JIETHOD. 127 hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used hy one man are for the most part ridiculous to another. lie ilkistratcs tliis by a variety of instances from ancient superstitions. But the forms of religion ai-e changed when men suspect the wisdom, sincerity, or love of those who teach it, or its priests.^ The remaining portion of the Levia- than, relat'nig to moral and pohtical 2>hilosophy, must bb deferred to our next chapter. 150. The Elementa Pliilosophias were published by Hobbes in lG5o, and dedicated to his constant patron, the P^arl of Devonshire. These are divided into three parts ; entitled De Corpore, De Homine, and De Give. And the first part has itself three divisions ; Logic, the First Philosophy, and Phy- sics. Ti)e second part, De Homine, is neither the treatise of Human Nature, nor the corresponding part of the Leviathan, though it contains many things substantially found there. A long disquisition on optics and the nature of vision, chiefly geometrical, is entirely new. The third part, De Give, is the treatise by tha/ 'xame, reprinted, as far as I am aware, with- out alteration. 151. The first part o" the first treatise, entitled Computatio sive Logica, is by no means the least valuable among the philosophical writings of Hobbes. In forty pages the subject is very well and cleai-ly explained ; nor do I know that the principles are better laid down, or the rules more sufficiently given, in more prolix treatises. Many of his observations, especially as to words, are such as we find in his p]nglish works ; and perhaps his nominalism is more clearly expressed than it is in them. Of the syllogistic method, at least for the purpose of demonstration, or teaching others, he seems to have entertained a favorable opinion, or even to have held it necessary for real demonstration, as his definition shows. Hobbes appears to be aware of what I do not remember to have seen put by others, that, in the natural process of reasoning, the minor premise commonly precedes the major.^ 1 Lev., c. 12. or in proving; to others. In the rhetorical 2 In Whately's Loj^ic, p. 90, it i? ob- \isc of syllogism, it ean admit of no doubt served, that " the proper order is to place that the opposite order is the most striking tlie major premise first, and tlie minor and persuasive; sueh a.s in Cato, "If Bcconil; but this does not constitute the tlxere be a God, he must delight in virtue ; Biajor and minor premises," &c. It may and that which he delights in must b» be tlie proper order in one sense, as ex- happy." In Kuelid's demonstrations, this hibiting better the fonndatiou of syllo- will be found the form usually employed ; gistic reasoning ; hut it is not that which and though the rules of grammar ar« v« comiucnly follow, cither in thinkiu^, goneraily illustrated by examples, wliicb 128 HOBBES. Paet in. It is for want of attending to this, that syllogisms, as usually stated, are apt to have so formal and unnatural a construction. The process of the mind in this kind of reasoning is explained, in general, with correctness, and, I believe, with originality, in the following passage, which I shall transcribe from the Latin, rather than give a version of my own ; few probably being likely to read the present section, who are unacquainted with that language. Tlie style of Hobbes, though persi)icuous, is concise, and the original words will be more satisfactory thaa any translation. 152. " Syllogisrao directo cogitatio in animo respondens est hujusmodi. Frimo concipitur phantasma rei nominatas cum accidente sive afFectu ejus propter quem appellatur eo nomine quod est in minore propositione subjectum : deinde animo occurrit phantasma ejusdem rei cum accidente sive atfectu propter quem appellatur, quod est in eadem propositione pra^dicatum. Tertio redit cogitatio rursus ad rem nominatam cum aftectu propter quem eo nomine appellatur, quod est iu pmsdicato propositionis majoris. Postremo cum meminerit eos aflfectus esse omnes unius et ejusdem rei, concludit tria ilia nomina ejusdem quoque rei esse nomina ; hoc est, conclu- sionem esse veram. Exempli causa, quando lit syllogismus hie, Homo est Animal, Animal est Corpus, ergo Homo est Corpus, occurrit aiiimo imago hominis loquentis vel ditierentis [sic, sed lege disserentis], meminitque id quod sic apparet vocari hominem. Deinde occurrit eadem imago ejusdem hominis sese moventis, meminitque id quod sic apparet vocari animal. Tertio recurrit eadem imago hominis locum aliquem sive spatium occupantis, meminitque id quod sic ajjparet vocari corpus.^ Postremo cum meminerit rem illam quie et is beginning •with the major premise, j-et fail to direct the student's attention to tlie )iroce.ss of reasoning which a boy em- this, really do not justice to their own ploys in construing a Latin sentence is ftivorite science. the reverse. lie observes a nouiiaative i This is the questionable part of case, a verb in the third person, and then Ilobbes's theory of syllogism. According applies his general rule, or m:ijor, to the to the common and obvious understaud- p.irticukir instance, or minor, so as to ing, the mind, in the major premise, " Ani- infcr their agreement. In criminal juris- mal est Corpus," does not reflect on the prudence, the Scots begin with the major subject of tlie niiiior, Uniiio, asoccupyinj; premise, or relevancy of tlie iudictment, space, but on the subject of the major, when there is room for doubt; the Kng- Animal, which includes, indeed, tlie for- lish, with the minor, or evidence of Mie mer, but is mentally substituted for it. It fact, reserving the other for what wo call may sometimi^s happiMi, that, where tliis motion in arrest ofjudgnu'nt. Instances predicate of the minor term in maiiifeuly of both orders are connnon ; but by far a collective word that comprehends the the most frequent are of that which the subject, the latter is not, !ls it were, ab- Arclibishop of Dublin reckons the less sorbod in it, and may be eonteuiplatod by proper of tho two. Those logiciaus who the miud distinctly iu the major ; as if we Chap. HI. HIS INFLUENCE. 129 extendebatur secundum locum, et loco movebatur, et oratione utebatur, unam et eandem f'uisse, concludit etiam nomiua ilia tria, Homo, Animal, Corpus, cju.sdem rei esse noraina, et proinde, Homo est Corpus, esse propositioiiein vcram. jMaui- festum hinc est conceptum sive cogitationem quoj respondens syllt»gisino ex propositionibns universalibus in anirao existit, nulhun esse in iis animalibus quibus deest usus nominum, cum inter syllogizandum oporteat non modo de re sed etiara alternis vicibus de diversis rei nominibus, qune propter diversas de re cogitationes adhibitaB sunt, cogitare." la.'). The metaphysical pbilosopliy of Ilobbes, always bold and original, often acute and profound, without producing an immediate school of disciples like that of Descartes, struck, perhaps, a deeper root in the minds of rejecting men, and baa influenced more extensively the general tone of speculation. Locke, who had not read much, had certainly read Hobbes, though be does not boi-row from him so much as has sometimes beenimagined. The French metaphysicians of the next cen- tury found him nearer to their own theories than his more celebrated rival in f^nglish philosophy. But the writer who has built most upon Hobbes, and may be reckoned, in a certain sense, his commentator, if he who fully explains and develops a system may deserve that name, was Hartley. The theory of association is implied and intimated in many passages of the elder philosopher, though it was first expanded and applied with a diligent, ingenious, and comprehensive research, if sometimes in too forced a manner, by liis disciple. I use this word without particular inquiry into the direct acquaint- ance of Hartley with the writings of Hobbes : the subject had been frequently touched in intermediate publications ; and in matters of reasoning, as I have intimated above, little or no presumption of borrowing can be founded on coincidence. Hartley also resembles Hobbes in the extreme to which he has |)ushcd the nominalist theory, in the proneness to mate- rialize all intellectual processes, and either to force all things mysterious to our faculties into something imaginable, or to gav, John is a man ; a man feels ; we may space besides men. It does not seem that pviiiiips have no iiiKi^'e in the mind of any otherwise there could be any iiscenJing man but Jolin. But this is not the case scale from particulars to generals, as far where the predicated quality appertains as tlie reasoniii;.; faculties, independent of to uiany tilings visiblv different from tlio words, are concerned ; and. if we begin subject; asiuHobbeslsinst.ance," Animal with the major premise of the syllogism, est Corpus," we may surely consider other this will be still more apparent, animals as being extended and occupying VOL. III. 9 130 HOBBES. PAET 111. reject tliem as unmeaning, in the -want, much connected with this, of a steady perception of the difference between tlie Ego and its objects, in an excessive love of simplifying and gene- ralizing, and in a readiness to adopt explanations neither con- formable to reason nor experience, when they fall in with some single principle, the key that was to unlock every w.ird of the human soul. 154. In nothing does Hobbes deserve more credit than in having set an example of close observation in the philosophy of the human mind. If he eiTS, he errs like a man who goes a little out of the right track, not like one who has set out in a wrong one. The eulogy of Stewart on Descartes, that he was the father of this experimental psychology, cannot be strictly wrested from him by Hobbes, inasmuch as the publications of the former are of an earlier date ; but we may fairly say, that the latter began as soon, and prosecuted his inquiries farther. It seems natural to presume, that Hobbes, who is said to have been employed by Bacon in translating some of his works into Latin, had at least been led by him to the inductive process which he has more than any other employed. But he has seldom mentioned his predecessor's name ; and indeed his mind was of a diiferent stamp, — less excursive, less quick in disco- vering analogies, and less fond of reasoning from them, but more close, perhaps more patient, and more apt to follow up a predominant idea, which sometimes becomes one of the idola specus that deceive him. Chap. IV CASUISTICAL WRITERS. 131 CHAPTER IV. mSTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PIIILOSOPHr AND 0? JURISPRUDENCE, FROM IGOO TO 1G50. Sect. I. — Ox Moral Philosophy. Casuists of the Roman Church — Suarez on Moral Law — Selden — Charron — La Mothe le Vaycr — Biicon's Essays — Feltham — Browne's Religio Medici — Othe* Writers. 1. In traversing so wide a field as moral and political philo- sophy, we must still endeavor to distribute the subject accord- in"- to some order of subdivision, so far at least as the contents of the books themselves which come before us will peimit. And we give the first place to those which, relating to the moral law both of nature and revelation, connect the proper subject of the present chapter with that of the second and third. 2. "We meet here a concourse of volumes occupying no small space in old libraries, — the writings of the casuistical casuists, chiefly within the Romish Church. None writers. perhaps in the whole compass of literature are more neglected by those who do not read with what we may call a professional view ; but to the ecclesiastics of that communion they have still a certain value, though far less than when they were first written. The most vital discipline of that church, the secret of the power of its priesthood, the source of most of importance the jiood and evil it can work, is found in the confes- "/ conies- 1 -r • 1 1 11 1 • • 1 SIOU. sional. It IS tliere tliat the keys are kept ; it is there that the lamp burns, whose rays diverge to every portion of human life. No church that has relinquished this prerogative can ever establish a permanent dominion over mankind ; none that retains it in effective use can lose the hope or the prospect of being theii* ruler. 132 CASUISTIC.VL LITERATURE. Pakf III. 3. It is manifest, tlmt, in tlie common course of this rite, no Necessity particular difficulty will arise ; nor is the confessor cT'ruTes"'^ likely to weif^h in golden scales the scru[)les or ex for the cuses of Ordinary penitents. But peculiar circum- coufessor. • , i ■ i i ^ i • ^ ■ , Stances miglit be brought betore lum, whereni there would he a necessity for possessing some rule, lest, by sanc- tioning the guilt of the self-revealing party, he should incur as much of his own. Treatises, therefore, of casuistry were Avritten as guides to the confessor, and became the text-books in every course of ecclesiastical education. These were com- monly digested in a systematic order, and, what is the unfailing consequence of system, or rather almost part of its definition, spread into minute ramifications, and aimed at comprehending every possible emergency. Casuistry is itself allied to juris- prudence, especially to that of the canon law ; and it was natural to transfer the subtilty of distinction and copiousness of partition usual with the jurists, to a science which its pro- fessors were apt to treat upon veiy similar principles. 4. The older theologians seem, like the Greek and Roman Increase of Moraiists, wlicn "vvritiug systematically, to have made casuistical general morality their subject, and casuistry but era uie. ^.j^gj^, illustration. Among the monuments of their ethical philosophy, the Secunda Secundaj of Aquinas is the most celebrated. Treatises, however, of casuistry, which is the expansion and application of ethics, may be found both before and during the sixteenth century ; and, while the con- fessional was actively converted to so powerful an engine, they could not conveniently be wanting. Casuistry, indeed, is not much required by the church in an ignorant age ; but the six- teenth century was not an age of ignorance. Yet it is not till about the end of that period that we find casuistical literature burst out, so to speak, with a profusion of fruit. " Uninter- rui)tedly afterwards," says Eichhorn, " tln-ough the wliole seventeenth century, the moral and casuistical literature of the Church of Rome was immensely rich ; and it caused a lively and extensive movement in a province which had long been at peace. The first impulse came from the Jesuits, to whom the Jansenists opposed themselves. We must distin- guish from both the theological moralists, who remained faith- ful to their ancient teaching." ^ 5. We may be blamed, perhaps, for obtruding a pedantic » Gescliiclite der Cultur, toI. yi. part i. p. 390. Chap. IV. DIEECTORY OFFICE OF THE CONITESSOR. 133 f erminology, if we make the most essential distinction in moral- ity, and one for want of which, more than any other, Di'tinrtion its dcbatahle controversies have arisen, that between ?.^ subjec- the subjective and objective rectitude or actions ; objective in clearer language, between the provinces of con- "'or'^^'ty- Ecience and of i-eason, between what is AveU meant and wliat is well done. The chief business of the priest is naturally with the former. The walls of the confessional are privy to the whispers of self-accusing guilt. No doubt can ever arise tis to the subjective character of actions which the conscience has condemned, and ibr which the penitent seeks absolution. Were they even obj'ectively la^^'ful, they are sins in him, ac- cording to the uuanimous determination of casuists. But though what the conscience reclaims against is necessarily wrong, relatively to the agent, it does not follow that what it may fail to disapprove is innocent. Choose whatever the- ory we may please as to the moral standard of actions, they must have an objective rectitude of their own, independently of their agent, without which there could be no distinction of right and wrong, nor any scope for the dictates of conscience. The science of ethics, as a science, can only be conversant with objective morality. Casuistry is the instrument of apply- ing this science, which, like every other, is built on reasoning, to the moral nature and volition of man. It rests for its vali- dity on the great principle, that it is our duty to know, as far as lies in us, what is right, as well as to do what we know to be such. But its application was beset with obstacles ; the extenuations of ignorance and error were so various, the diffi- culty of representing the moral position of the penitent to the judgment of the confessor by any pi-ocess of language so in- superable, that the most acute understanding miglit be foiled in the task of bringing home a conviction of guilt to the self- deceivini'oftissed to do so, on what was just and ecpiitablo among men ; and though a dis- tinction, frequently very right, was taken between the forum Chap. 1Y. OrrOSITE FAULTS OF JESUITS. 137 exterim and mterms, the provinces of jurisprudence and ca- suistry, yet the latter could not, in these questions of mutual obh'gation, rest upon wliolly different ground from the former. 13. Tlie Jesuits, however, fell rapidly into the opposite extreme. Their subtihy in logic, and great ingcnui- ^^^^^^^^^^ ty in devising arguments, were employed in sophisms fauit-s of that undermined the foundations of moral integrity •''-■*^''''- in the heart. Tliey warred witli these arms against the con- science which they were bound to protect. Tlie offences of their casuistry, as charged by their adversaries, are very multifarious. One of the most celebrated is the doctrine of equivocation ; tlie innocence of saying that which is true in a sense meant by the speaker, tliough he is aware that it Avill be otherwise understood. Anotlier is that of what was called ]>robabiHty ; according to which it is lawful, in doubtful jirob- lems of morality, to take the course Avhich appears to ourselves least likely to be right, provided any one casuistical writer of good repute has approved it. The multiplicity of books, and •want of imiformity in their decisions, made tliis a broad path for the conscience. In the latter instance, as in many others, the subjective nature of moral obligation was lost sight of; and to this the scientific treatment of casuistry inevitably contri- buted. 14. Productions so little regarded as those of the Jesuitical casuists cannot be dwelt upon. Thomas Sanchez of Cordova is author of a large treatise on matrimony, published in 1592 ; the best, as far as the canon law is concerned, which has yet been published. But in the casuistical portion of this work the most extraordinary indecencies occur, such as have con- signed it to general censure.^ Some of these, it must be owned, belong to the rite of auricular confession itself, as managed in the Church of Rome, thougli they give scandal by their publication and apparent excess beyond the necessity of the case. The Summa Casuum Conscientia? of Toletus, a Spanish Jesuit and cardinal, which, though published in 1 G02, belongs to the sixteenth century, and the casuistical writings of Less, Busenbauin, and Escobar, may just be here men- tioned. The Medulla Casuum Conscientiaj of the second (Muuster, 1G45) went through fifty-two editions; the Theolo- 1 JUvle, firt. "Sanchez." expatiates ou Cethegum. The later editions of Saucbet thi«, aiid conciemns tlie Jesuit ; Catilina De Matrimonio are caslisaU. 138 SUAREZ. Paet m. gia Moralis of the last (Lyon, 1G46), through forty .^ Of the opposition excited by the laxity in moral rules ascribed to the Jesuits, though it began in some manner during this period, we shall have more to say in the next. 15. Suarez of Granada, by far the greatest man in the Suiirez. department of moral philosophy whom the order of De Legibus. Loyola produccd in tliis age, or perhaps in any other, may not improbably have treated of casuistry in some jiart of his numerous volumes. We shall, however, gladly leave this subject to bring before the reader a large treatise of Suarez on the principles of natural law, as well as of all positive jurisprudence. Tliis is entitled Tractatus de Legibus ac Deo Legislatore in decem Libros distributus, utriusque Fori Plomi- bus non minus utilis, quam necessarius. It might with no great impropriety, perhaps, be placed in any of the three sec- tions of this chapter, relating not only to moral philosophy, but to politics in some degree, and to jurisprudence. IG. Suarez begins by laying down the position, that all Titles of his legislative as well as all paternal power is dei-ived ten books. fj.Q,^ God, and that the authority of every law resolves itself into his. F'or either the law proceeds immedi- ately from God, or, if it be human, it proceeds from man as his vicar and minister. The titles of the ten books of this large treatise are as follows: 1. On the nature of law in gene- ral, and on its causes and consequences ; 2. On etei-nal, natu- ral law, and that of nations ; 3. On positive human law in itself considered relatively to human nature, which is also called civil law ; 4. On positive ecclesiastical law ; 5. On the difler- ences of human laws, and especially of those that are penal, or in the nature of penal ; 6. On the interpretation, the altera- tion, and the abolition of human laws ; 7. On unwritten law, which is called custom ; 8. On those human laws which are called favorable, or privileges ; 9. On the positive divine law of the old dispensations ; 10. On the positive divine law of tlie new dispensation. 17. This is a very comprehensive chart of general law, and u ails of entitles Suarez to be accounted such a precursor of the sticond Grotius aud Fufl'endorf as occupied most of their book. ground, especially that of the lattei', though he culti- vated it in a different manner. His volume is a closely printed folio of 700 pages in double columns. The following 1 Kauke, die Papste, vol. iU. CiiAr. IT. SCHOLASTIC TREATISES. 1 39 heads of chapters in the second book will show the questions in which Suarez dealt, and, in some degree, his method of stating and conducting them: 1. Whether there be any eternal law, and what is its necessity ; 2. On the subject of eternal law, and on the acts it commands ; 3. In what act the eternal law exists (exist it), and whether it be one or many ; 4. Whether the eternal law be the cause of other laws, and obligatory through their means; 5. In what natural law con- sists ; G. Whether natural law be a preceptive divine law ; 7. On the subject of natural law, and on its precepts ; 8. Whether natural law be one ; 9. Whether natural law bind the conscience ; 10. Whether natural law obliges not only to the act (actus) but to the mode (mochim) of virtue, — this obscure question seems to refer to the subjective nature, or motive, of virtuous actions, as appears by the next; 11. Whether natural law obliges us to act from love or charity (ad modum operandi ex caritate); 12. AVhether natural law not only prohibits certain actions, but invalidates them when done ; 13. W^hether the precepts of the law of natui-e are intrinsically immutable; 14. Whether any human authority can alter or dispense with the natural law; 15. AVhether God by his absolute power can dispense with the law of nature ; 16. TNHiether an equitable interpretation can ever be admitted in the law of nature; 17. Whether the law of nature is dis- tinguishable from that of nations ; 18. Whether the law of nations enjoins or forbids any thing; 19. By what means we are to distinguish the law of nature from that of nations ; 20. Certain corollaries ; and that the law of nations is both just, and also mutable. 18. These heads may give some slight notion to the reader of the character of the book ; as the book itself mav ^, serve as a typical instance of that form of theology, of ?uch of metaphysics, of ethics, of jurisprudence, which tr^t^^'*^ occupies the unread and unreadable folios of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially those issuing from the Church of Rome, and may be styled generally the scholastic method. Two remarkable characteristics strike us in these books, which are sutiiciently to be judged by reading their table of contents, and- by taking occasional samples of different parts. Tiie extremely systematic Ibrm tliey assume, and the multipbcity of divisions, render thia practice more satisfactory than it can be in works of less regular .140 QUOTATIONS OF SUAKEZ. Part III, arrangement. One of these characteristics is that spirit of system itself; and another is their sincere desire to exhaust the suhject by presenting it to the mind in every hglit, and by tracing all its relations and consequences. The fertility of those men who, like Suarez, superior to most of the rest, were ti-ained in the scholastic discipline, to wliich I refer the methods of the canonists and casuists, is sometimes surjnising: their views are not one-sided ; they may not solve objections to our satisfaction, but they seldom sujjpress them ; they embrace a vast compass of thought and learning ; they Avrite less for the moment, and are less under the influence of local and temporary pi-ejudices, than many who have lived in better ages of philosophy. But, again, they have great defects ; their distinctions confuse instead of giving light ; their systems, being not founded on clear principles, become embarrassed and incoherent ; their method is not always sufficiently con- secutive ; tlie difficulties which they encounter are too arduous for them ; they labor under the multitude, and are entangled by the discordance of their authorities. 19. Suarez, who discusses all these important problems of „ . his second book with acuteness, and, for his circum- Quota- ... tions of stances, with an mdependent mind, is weighed down Suarez. ]^y ^j^g extent and nature of his learning. If Grotius quotes philosophers and poets too frequently, what can Ave say of the perpetual reference to Aquinas, Cajetan, Soto, Turre- cremata, Vasquius, Isidore, Vincent of Beauvais or Alensis, not to mention the canonists and fathers, wliich Suarez employs to prove or disprove every proposition? The syllo- gistic forms are unsjiaringly introduced. Such writers as Soto or Suarez held all kinds of ornament not less unfit for pliilosopliical argument than tliey would be for geometry. Nor do tliey ever appeal to experience or history for the rules of determination. Their materials are nevertheless abundant, consisting of texts of Scripture, sayings of the fathers and schoolmen, established theorems in natural tlieology and melapliysics, fi-om wliich they did not find it liard to select premises, which, duly arranged, gave them conclusions. 20. Suarez, after a prolix discussion, comes to the con- „. , . elusion, tliat " eternal law is the free determination Ills den- p 1 • 1 1 /. /", 1 1 • • nitionof of tlic Will ot (jod, ordaining a rule to be observed, hiff™'^ either, first, generally by all parts of the universe as a means of a common good, whether immechately CuAT. IV. SUAREZ. 141 belonging to it in respect of the entire nnivenjc, or at least in respect of the singular parts thereof; or, secondly, to be specially observed by intellectual creatures in respect of their free operations."^ This is not instantly perspicuous; but detinitions of a complex nature cannot be rendered such. It is true, however, what the reader may think curious, tliat this crabbed piece of scholasticism is nothing else, in substance, tlian the celebi-ated sentence on law, which concludes the first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. Whoever takes the pains to understand Suarez, will perceive that he asserts exactly that which is unrcjlled in the majestic eloquence of our countryman. 21. By this eternal law, God is not necessarily bound. But this seems to be said ratlier for the sake of avoiding phrases which were conventionally rejected by the scholastic theo* logians, since, in effect, his tlieory recpiires the affirmative, as we shall soon perceive ; and he here says that the law is God himself (Deus ipse), and is immutable. This eternal law is not immediately known to man in this life, but either " in other laws, or through tliem," which he thus explains : " ]Men, while pilgrims here (viatores homines), cannot learn the divine will in itself, but only as much as by certain signs or effects is proposed to them ; and hence it is peculiar to the blessed in heaven, that, contemplating the divine will, they are ruled by it as by a direct law. The former know the eternal law, because they partake of it by other laws, temporal and positive ; for, as second causes display the first, and creatures the Creatoi', so temporal laws (by which he means laws respective of man on earth), being streams from that eternal law, manifest the fountain whence they spring. Yet all do not arrive even at tliis degree of knowledge ; for all are not able to infer the cause from the effect. And thus, though all men necessarily perceive some participation of the eternal laws in themselves, since there is no one endowed witli reason who does not in some manner acknowledo;e, tiiat what is morally good ought to be chosen, and what is evil rejected, so that in this sense men have all some notion of 1 " Legem fetemam esse decretnm li- singularum specicrum ejus, aut specia- benim voluntatis Dei statuentis orjiuem litor servanduni a croaturis inttiUectuali Bervaiidum, aut generalitcr ab omnibus bus quoad liberas operationes earum." — partibus universi in online ad commune 0.3, §6. Compare with Hooker : OfI*aw, bonum, vel iumiediate illi conveniens no less can be said, than that her throne raticue totixis univcriii, vel saltern rations is the bosom of God, &.o 142 SUAREZ. Part in. the eternal law, as St. Thomas and Hales and Augiistin saj ; yet, nevertheless, they do not all knoAV it formally, nor are aware of their participation of it, so that it may be said the eternal law is not universally known in a direct manner. But some attain that knowledge, either by natural reasoning, or, more properly, by revelation of faith ; and hence we have said that it is known by some only in the inferior laws, but by others through the means of those laws."^ 22. In every chapter, Suarez propounds the arguments of Whether doctors on either side of the problem, ending with God is a his own determination, Avhich is frequently a middle legislator, (.^^^rse. On the question. Whether natural law is of itself preceptive, or merely indicative of what is intrinsically right or wrong, or, in other words, whether God, as to this law, is a legislator, he holds this middle line with Aquinas and most theologians (as he says) ; contending that natural law does not merely indicate right and wrong, but commands the one and prohibits the other on divine authority ; though this will of God is not the whole ground of the moral good and evil which belongs to the observance or transgression of natural law, inasmuch as it presupposes a certain intrinsic right and wrong in the actions themselves, to which it super- adds the special obligation of a divine law. God, therefore, may be truly called a legislator in respect of natural law."- 23. He next comes to a profound but important inquiry, Wheth»r t'loscly connected with the last. Whether God could God could have permitted, by his own law, actions against coumleud natural reason. Ockham and Gerson had resolved vyroDgac- fhig in the atfimiative ; Aquinas, the contrary way. Suarez assents to the latter, and thus determines that the law is strictly immutable. It must follow, of course, tliat the pope cannot alter or dispense Avith the law of nature ; and he might have spared the fourteenth chapter, wherein he controverts the doctrine of Sanchez and some casuists who had maintained so exti'aordinary a prerogative.'^ Tliis, how- ever, is rather episodical. In the fifteenth chapter, he treats more at length the question, Whether God can disjjcnso ' Lib. ii., c. 4, § 9. illi.ticul paradoxes bccouie merely commonplace by repetition. One of them is more grossly indecent than any part of Montaigne. La IMothe le Vayer is not, on the v/hole, much to be admired as a philosopher : little appears to be his own, and still less is really good. He contributed, no ques- tion, as much as any one, to the irreligion, and contempt for morality, prevailing in that court where he was in hig?i repu- tation. Some other works of this author may be classed under tlie same description. 33. We can hardly refer Lord Bacon's Essays to the school Bacon'3 of Montaigne, thougli their title may lead us to sus- Essays. pg^^j. ^j^^^^ they were in some measure suggested by that most popular Avriter. The first edition, containing ten essays only, and those much shorter than as we now possess them, appeared, as has been already mentioned, in 1597. They were reprinted with very little variation in 1006. But the enlarged work was published in 1G12, and dedicated to Prince Heniy. He calls them, in this dedication, " certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles." The resemblance, at all events, to Montaigne, is not greater than might be expected in two men equally original in genius, and entirely opposite in their characters and circumstances. One, by an instinctive felicity, catches some of the characteristics of human nature ; the other, by profound reflection, scrutinizes and dissects it. One is too negligent for the inquiring reader, the other too formal and sententious for one who seeks to be amused. We delight in one, we admire the other ; but this admiration h;is also its own delight. In one we find more of the sweet tem- per anfl tranquil contemplation of Plutarch ; in the other, more of the pi-actical wisdom and somewhat ambitious prospects of Seneca. It is characteristic of Bacon's philosophical wi-it- ings, that they have in them a spirit of movement, a per- petual reference to what man is to do in order to an end, rather than to his mere speculation upon what is. In his Essays, this is naturally still more prominent. They are, aa Chap. IV. BACON'S ESSAYS. 149 quaintly described in the titlcpage of the first edition, " places (loci) of persuasion and dissuasion ; " counsels for those who would he great as Avell as wise. They are such as sprang from a mind ardent in two kinds of ambition, and hesitating whether to found a new philosophy, or to direct the vessel of the state. "We perceive, however, that the immediate reward attending greatness, as is almost always the case, gave it a prepondei-ance in his mind ; and hence his Essays are more often political than moral : they deal with mankind, not in their general faculties or habits, but in their mutual strife ; their endeavors to rule others, or to avoid their rule. He is more cautious and more comprehensive, though not more acute, than INIachiavel, who often becomes too dogmatic through tlie liabit of i-eferring every thing to a particular aspect of political societies. Nothing in the Prince or the discourses on Livy is superior to the Essays on Seditions, on Empire, on Innovations, or generally those which beai- on the dexterous management of a people by their rulers. Both these writers have what to our more liberal age appears a coun- selling of governors for their own rat lier than their subjects' advantage ; but as this is generally represented to be the best means, though not, as it truly is, the real end, their advice tends, on the whole, to promote the substantial benefits of government. 34. The transcendent strength of Bacon's mind is visible in the whole tenor of these Essays, unequal as they Tiieir ex- must be from the very nature of sucli compositions, '"^'i^*^'^'''^- They are dee])er and more discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later, work in tlie English language, full of recondite observation, long matured and carefully sifted. It is true, that we might wish for more vivacity and ease. Bacon, who had much wit, had little gayety ; his Essays are conse quently stiff and grave, where the subject might have beei touched with a lively hand : thus it is in those on Garden and on Building. The sentences have sometimes too apoph- thegmatic a form, and want of coherence ; the historical in- stances, though far less frequent than with Montaigne, have a little the look of pedantry to our eyes. But it is fi-om this condensation, from this gravity, that the work derives its peculiar impressiveness. Few books are more quoted ; and, what is not always the case with such books, we may add, that few aie more generally read. In this respect, they lead the 150 FELTHAM. Part HL van of our prose literature : for no gentleman is ashamed of owning that he has not read the EUzabethan writers ; but it would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted with the Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to read this or any other book for reputation's sake ; but very few in our language so well repay the pains, or afford more nourishment to the thoughts. They might be judiciously introduced, with a small number more, into a sound method of education, — one that should make wisdom, rather than mere knowledge, its object ; and might become a text-book of examination in our schools. 35. It is rather difficult to fix upon the fittest place for Feitham's bringing forward some books, which, though moral Kesoives. jjj ^^^[j. gubject, belong to the general literature of the age ; and we might strip the province of polite letters of what have been reckoned its cliief ornaments. I shall therefore select here such only as are more worthy of conside- ration for their matter than for the style in wlxich it is delivered. Several that might range, more or less, under the denomination of moral essays, were published both in E^nglish and in other languages. But few of them are now read, or even much known by name. One, which has made a better for- tune than the rest, demands mention, — the Resolves of Owen Feltham. Of this book, the first part of which was published in 1627, the second not till after the middle of the century, it is not uncommon to meet with high praises in those modern writers who profess a iixithful allegiance to our older litera- ture. For myself, I can only say that Feltham appears not only a labored and artificial, but a shallow writer. Among his many faults, none strikes me more than a want of depth, which his pointed and sententious manner renders more ridi- culous. There are certainly exceptions to this vacuity of original meaning in Feltham : it would be possible to fill a few pages with extracts not undeserving of being read, with thoughts just and judicious, though never deriving much lustre from his diction. He is one of our worst writers in point of style ; with little vigor, he has less elegance ; his English is impure to an excessive degree, and full of words unauthorized by any usage. Pedantry, and the novel phrases which Greek and I^atin etymology was supposed to warrant, appear in most productions of this period; but Feltham attempted tt) bend the English idiom to his own aifectations Chap. IV. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 151 The moral reflections of a serious and thoughtful mlntl are generally pleasing ; and to this, perhaps, is partly owing the kind of popularity which the Resolves of Feltham have obtained ; but they may be had more agreeably and profitably in other books.^ o(j. A superior genius to that of Feltham is exh.ibited in the Religio JMedici of Sir Thomas Browne. This „ „ little book made a remarkable impression : it was Reiisio soon translated into several languages, and is highly ' ^ ^"' extolled by Conringius and others, who could only judge through these versions. Patin, though he rather slights it liimself, tells us in one of liis letters that it was very popular at Paris. The character which Johnson has given of the Religio JMedici is well known ; and, though perhaps rather too favorable, appears, in general, just.^ The mind of Browne was fertile, and, according to the current use of the word, ingenious ; his analogies are original, and sometimes brilliant ; and, as his learning is also in things out of the beaten path, this gives a peculiar and uncommon air to all his writings, and especially to the Religio Medici. He was, however, far removed fj-om real philosophy, both by his turn of mind and by the nature of his erudition : he seldom reasons ; his thoughts are desultory ; sometimes he appears sceptical or paradoxical ; but credulity, and defei-ence to authority, prevail. He belonged to the class, numerous at that time in our church, who halted between Popery and Protestantism ; and this gives him, on all such topics, an appearance of vacilla- 1 This is a random sample of Feltham '8 nevertheless, T seemed to perceive some style: "Of all objects of sorrow, a dis- resemblance to the tone and way of think- tressed king is the most pitiful, because it ing of the Turkish Spy, which is a great presents us most the frailty of humanity, compliment to the former; for the Turk- anJ cannot but most viidniglit the soul ish Spy is neither disagreeable nor super- of him that is fivllen. The sorrows of a ficial. The resemblance must lie in a deposed king are lilce the distorquements certain contemplative melancholy, rather of a darteil conscience, which none can serious than severe, in respect to the know but he that hath lost a crown." — world and its ways ; and as Feltham's Cent. i. 61. We find, not long after, the Resolves seem to have a charm, by the following precious phrase : '• The nature editions they have gone through and the that is arted with the subtleties of time good name tliey have gained, I can only and practice." — i. 03. In one page we look for it in this. have obnubilate, nested, parallel (as a * " The Religio Medici was no sooner yevh), fails (i-MWnr^s), uncurtain, depraving published than it excited the attention (calumniating), i. 50. And we are to be of the public by the novelty of paradoxes, disgusted with such vile English, or pro- the dignity of sentiment, the nuick suc- perly no English, for the sake of the cession of" images, the multitude of ab- Bleepy saws of a trivial morality. Such ^struse allusions, the subtlety of disquisi- defects are not compensated by the better "tion, and the strength of language." — »nd more striking thoughts we may occa- Life of Browne (in Johnson's Works, xii lionally light upou. In reading Feltham, 275). 152 SELDEX — OSBORN. Part III. tion and irresoluteness, Avhicli probably represents the real state of his mind. His paradoxes do not seem very original ; nor does lie arrive at them by any process of argument : they are more like traces of his reading casually suggesting them- selves, and supported by his own ingenuity. His style is not flowing, but vigorous ; his choice of words not elegant, and even approaching to barbai'ism as English phrase : yet there is an impressiveness, an air of refiection and sincerity, in Browne's writings, which redeem many of their faults. His egotism is equal to that of Montaigne ; but with this difference, that it is the egotism of a melancholy mind, which generally becomes unpleasing. This melancholy temperament is cha- racteristit of Browne. " Let's talk of graves and worms and epitaphs " seems his motto. His best-written work, the Hy- driotaphia, is expressly an essay on sepulchral urns ; but the same taste for the circumstances of mortality leavens also the Religio Medici. 37. The thoughts of Sir Walter Kaleigh on moral prudence Seiden's are few, but precious. And some of the bright sal- Tabie Talk, jigg of gelden recorded in his Table TAlk are of the same description, though the book is too mi.scellancous to hdl under any single head of classification. The editor of this very short and small volume, which gives, perhaps, a more exalted notion of Seiden's natural talents than any of his learned writings, requests the reader to distinguish times, and, " in liis fancy, to carry along with him the when and the why many of these things were spoken." This intimation accounts for the different spirit in which he may seem to combat the follies of the prelates at one time, and of the Presbyterians or fanatics at another. These sayings are not always, appa- rently, well reported : some seem to have been misunderstood, and, in others, the limiting clauses to have been forgotten. But, on the whole, they are fuU of vigor, raciness, and a kind of scorn of the half-learned, far less rude, but more cutting, than that of Scaliger. It has been said that the Table Talk of Selden is worth all the Ana of the Continent. In this I should be disposed to concur ; but they are not exactly works of the same class. 38. We must now descend much lower, and could find little worth remembering. Osborn's Advice to his Son may Aav*?™ to be reckoned among the moral and political writings his Son Q^ ^i^jg p^ji-iod. It' is not very far above mediocrity, !3oAP. IV. ANDEEiE. 153 aiid contains a good deal that is commonplace, ytt Avitli a con- siderable sprinkling of sound sense and observation. Tlie style is rather apo})hthegmatic, though by no means more so than was then usual. 39. A few books^ English as well as foreign, are purposely deferred for the ])resent. I am rather apprehensive jq;,„ tliat I shall be tbund to have overlooked some, not Taientine unworthy of notice. One, written in Latin by a German writer, has struck me as displaymg a spirit which may claim for it a place among the livelier and lighter class, though with serious intent, of moral essays. John Valentine Andreje was a man above his age, and a singular contrast to the narrow and pedantic herd of German scholars and theo- logians, lie regarded all things around him with a sarcastic but benevolent philosophy, keen in exposing the errors of mankind, yet only for the sake of amending them. It has been supposed by many that he invented the existence of the famous Ivosicrucian society, not so much probably for the sake of mystification, as to suggest an institution so praiseworthy and philanthropic as he delineated for t]\e .imitation of man- kind. This, however, is still a debated problem in Germany.^ But, among his numerous writings, that alone of which I know any thing is entitled, in the original Latin, Mythologiaj Chris- tians, sive Virtutum et Vitiorura Vittc llumanoe Imaginum, Libri Tres (Strasburg, 1618). Herder has translated a part of this book in the fifth volume of his Zerstreute Blatter; and it is here that I have met with it. Andreas wrote, I believe, solely in Latin ; and his works a2:»pear to be scarce, at least in England. These short apologues, which Herder has called Parables, are written with uncommon terseness of lan- guage, a happy and original vein of invention, and a philoso- phy looking down on common life without ostentation and without passion. He came, too, before Bacon ; but he had learned to scorn the disputes of the schools, and had sought for truth with an entire love, even at the hands of Cardan and Campanella. I will give a specimen, in a note, of the peculiar manner of Andreaj ; but my translation does not per- haps justice to tliat of Herder. The idea, it may be observed, is now become more trite.^ 1 Brucker, iv. 735; Biogr. Univ., art. each other for superiority, and the voicei • Andrese," et alibi. of tlie judges were divided. The men of a " The Pen and the Sword strove witli learning tallied much, aod persua,de4 154 CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER Part Dl. Sect. II. — On Political Philosophy. Ohange in the Character of Poh'tioal Writings — Bellenden and others — Patriarchal Tlieory refuted by Suarez — Althusius — Political Economy of Serra — llobbcs, and Analysis of his Political Treatises. 40. The recluse philosopher, who, like Descartes in his country-house near Utrecht, investigates the properties of quantity, or the operations of the human mind, wliile na- tions are striving for conquest, and factions for ascendency, heai'S that tumultuous uproar but as the dash of the ocean waves at a distance ; and it may even serve, like music that falls upon the poet's ear, to wake in him some new train of high thought, or, at the least, to confirm his love of the absolute and the eternal, by comparison Avith the imperfec- tion and en-or that beset the Avorld. Such is the serene temple of philosophy, which the Roman poet has contrasted with the storm and tlie battle, with the passions of the great and the many, the perpetual struggle of man against his fellows. But if he who might dwell on this vantage- ground descends into the plain, and takes so near a view of the world's strife that he sees it as a whole very imper- fectly, while the parts to which he approaches are magni- fied beyond their proportion ; if especially he mingles with the combat, and shares its hopes and its perils, though in many respects he may know more than those who keep aloof, — he will lose something of that faculty of equal and compre- manj' ; the men of arms were fierce, and Sword was stem, implacable, hut less compelled many to join their side. Thus compact and subtle ; so that on both sides nothing could be determined : it followed the victory i-emained uncertain. At that both were left to fight it out, and length, for the security of both, the settle their dispute in single combat. common weal pronounced that both in "On one side, books rustled in the turn should stand by her side and bear libraries ; on the other, arms rattled in with each otlier. For that only is a the arsenals : men looked on in hope and happy country where the Pen and the fear, and waited the end. Sword are faithful servants, not where " The Pen, consecrated to truth, was either governs by its arbitrary will and notorious for much falsehood ; the Sword, passion." a servant of Ood, was st^iined with inno- If the touches in this little piece are cent blood : both hoped for the aid of not always clearly laid on, it m.ay be Heaven; both found its wratli. ascribed as much, perhaps, to their having "The State, which had need of both, passed through two translations, as to and disliked the manners of both, would the fiult of tlie excellent writer. But, put on the appearance of caring fur the in this early age, we seldom find the weal and woe of neither. The Pun was entire neatness and felicity which later Weak, but ([uick, glib, well oxcrcised, and times attained. Tery bold, when one provoked it. Tb» Chap. IV. OF POLITICAL WRITINGS. 155 hensive vision in which the philosophical temper consists. Such has very frequently, or more or less perhaps in almost every instance, been the fotc of the writer on g^eneral politics : if his pen has not been solely emjiloyed witli a view to the questions that enrrage attention in his own age, it has gene- rally been guided in a certain degree by regard to them. 41. In the sixteenth century, we have seen that notions of popular rights, and of the admissibility of sov- Abanaon- ereign power for misconduct, were alternately mentof broached by the two great religious parties of narchieai Europe, according to the necessity in which they *i^«°"<^s. stood for such weapons against their adversaries. Passive obedience Avas preached as a duty by the victorious : rebel- lion was claimed as a right by the vanquished. The history of France and England, and partly of other countries, was the clew to these politics. But, in the following period, a more tranquil state of public opinion, and a firmer hand upon the reins of power, put an end to such books as those of Lan- guet, Buchanan, Rose, and Mariana. The last of these, by the vindication of tyrannicide, in his treatise De Rege, contri- buted to bring about a re-action in political literature. The Jesuits in France, whom Henry IV. was inclined to favor, publicly condemned the doctrine of Mariana in 1 606. A Book by Becanus, and another by Suarez, justifying regicide, were condemned by the Parliament of Paris in 1612.^ The jissas- sination, indeed, of Henry IV., committed by one, not perhaps, metaphysically speaking, sane, but whose aberration of intel- lect had evidently been either brought on or nourished by the pernicious theories of that school, created such an abhorrence of the doctrine, that neither the Jesuits nor others ventured afterwards to teach it. Those also who .magnified, as far as circumstances would permit, the alleged supremacy of the see of Rome over temporal princes, were little inclined to set up, like Mariana, a popular sovereignty, a right of the multitude rot emanating from the church, and to which the chiu'ch itself might one day be under the necessity of submitting. This became, therefore, a period favorable to the theories of absolute power ; not so much shown by means of their posi- tive assertion through the press, as by the silence of the press, comparatively speaking, on all political theories what- ever 1 Mezeray, Ilist. de la Mere et du Fils. 156 BELLENDEN. Part III. 42. The political writings of this part of the seventeenth century assumed, in consequence, more of an his- literature torical, or, as wc miglit say, a statistical oliaracter. historical. Learning Avas employed in systematical analyses of ancient or modern forms of government, in disserta- tions explanatory of institutions, in copious and exact state- ments of the true, rather than arguments upon the right or the expedient. Some of the very numerous works of Her- man Conringius, a professor at Hehnstadt, seem to fall within this description. But none are better known than a collec- tion, made by the Elzevirs, at different times near the middle of this century, containing accounts, chiefly published before, of the political constitutions of European commonwealths. This collection, which is in volumes of the smallest size, may be called for distinction the Elzevir Republics. It is very useful in respect of the knowledge of facts it imparts, but rarely contains any thing of a philosophical nature. Statistical descriptions of countries are much allied to these last : some, indeed, are included in the Elzevir series. They were as yet not frequent ; but I might have mentioned, while upon the sixteenth century, one of the earliest, — the Description of the Low Countries by Ludovico Guicciardini, brother of the historian. 43. Those, however, were not entirely wanting Avho took a Beiiendcn more philosophical view of the social relations of De statu, mankind. Among these, a very respectable place should be assigned to a Scotsman, by name Bellenden, Avhose treatise De Statu, in three books, is dedicated to Prince Charles in 1615. The first of these books is entitled De Statu Prisci Orbis in Religione, Re Politica et Literis ; the second, Ciceronis Princeps, sive de Statu Principis et Imperii ; the third, Ciceronis Consul, Senator, Senatusque Romanus, sive de Statu ReipubliciB et Urbis Imperantis Orbi. The first two books are, in a general sense, political ; the last relates en- tirely to the Roman polity, but builds much political precept on this. Bellenden seems to have taken a more comprehen- .sive view of history in his first book, and to have reflected more philosophically on it, than perhaps any one had done before; at least, I do not remember any work of so early an age which reminds me so much of Vico and the Grandeur et De- cadence of Montesquieu. AVe can hardly make an exception for Bodin, because the Scot is so much more regularly histori Chap. IV. CAMPANELLA — NAUDE'. 157 cal, and so much more concise. The first book contains littlo more than forty pages. Bellenden's learning is considerable, and wilhout that pedantry of quotation wliich makes most books of the ago intolerable. The latter ])arts have less ori- ginality and reach of thought. This book was reprinted, as is well known, in 1787 ; but the celebrated preface of the editor has had the effect of eclipsing the original author. Parr was constantly read and talked of ; Bellenden, never. 44. The Politics of Campanella are warped by a desire to please the court of Rome, which he reconnnends as cumpnnei- fit to enjoy an universal monarchy, at least by su- ^'^'^ I'oiitics. preme control ; and observes, with some acuteness, that no prince had been able to obtain an universal ascendant over Christendom, because the presiding vigilance of the holy see has regulated their mutual contentions, exalting one and de- pressing another, as seemed expedient for the good of religion.^ This book is pregnant with deep reflection on history : it is enriched, ])erhaps, by the study of IJodin, but is much more concise. In one of the Dialogues of La ]Mothe le Vayer, we find the fallacy of some general maxims in politics La Moth© drawn from a partial induction Avell exjiosed, by i«^''J«r. showing the instances where they have Avholly failed. Though he pays high compliments to Louis XIIL and to llichelieu, he speaks freely enough, in his sceptical way, of the general advantages of monarchy. 45. Gabriel Naude, a man of extensive learning, acute understanding, and many good qualities, but rather jf^y^^,g lax in religious and moral principle, excited some Cnups attention by a very small volume, entitled Considera- ' ^'^'^' tions sur les Coups d'Etat, which he wrote while young, at Pome, in tlie service of the Cardinal de Pagne. In tliis, he maintains the bold contempt of justice and humanity in politi- cal emergencies which had brought disgrace on the " Prince " of Machiavel ; blaming those who, in his own country, had abandoned the defence of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. The book is in general heavy, and not well written ; but, coming from a man of cool head, clear judgment, and con- siderable historical knowledge, it contains some remarks not unworthy of notice. 1 " NuUus hactenus Christianus princer» papa prrcest iUis, et tlissipat erigitque illo» monarchiani super cunctoa Christiaiios rum conatus prout religion! expedit "-• popul « sit} coDserTare potuit. Quouiam c. 8 158 PATRIARCHAL THEORY. Part HI, 46. The ancient philosophers, the civil lawyers, and by far Patriarchal *^^® majority of later writers, had derived the origin theory of of government from some agreement of the commu- go>ernm.'n j^jjy_ Bodin, explicitly rejecting this hypothesis, referred it to violent usurpation. But in p]ngland, about the beginning of the reign of James, a different theory gained ground with the church : it was assumed, for it did not admit of proof, that a patriarchal authority had been transferred by primogeniture to the heir-general of the human race ; so that kingdoms were but enlai'ged families ; and an indefeasible right of monarchy was attached to their natural chief, which, in consequence of the impossibility of discovering him, devolved upon the representative of the first sovereign who could be historically proved to have reigned over any nation. This had not, perhaps, hitherto been maintained at length in any published book, but will be found to have been taken for granted in more than one. It was, of course, in favor "with James I., who had a very strong hereditary title ; and it miglit seem to be countenanced by the fact of Highland and Irish clanship, which does really affect to rest on a patriarchal 47. This theory as to the origin of political society, or one Refuted by akin to it, appears to have been espoused by some Buarez. qj^ ^|-,j. Continent. Suarez, in the second book of his great work on law, observes, in a remarkable passage, that certain canonists hold civil magistracy to have been con- ferred by God on some prince, and to remain always in his heirs by succession ; but " that such an oi)inion has neither authority nor foundation. For this power, by its very nature, belon lib. i. c. 7 i and Ub. lU. c. 22. • lib. t. c. 17. 160 ALTHUSIUS — PAE^US. PAnx III. denies it as to infidels.^ In this last point, as has been seen, he follows the most respectable authorities of his na- tion. 49. Bayle has taken notice of a systematic treatise on Politics by John Altlnisins, a native of Germany. Of this, I Iiave only seen an edition publislied at Groningen in 1G15, and dedicated to the States of West Friesland. It seems, however, from the article in Bayle, that there was one printed at Herborn in 1003. Several German writers inveigh against this work as full of seditious principles, inimical to every government. It is a political system, taken chiefly from pre- ceding authors, and very freely from Bodin ; with great learning, but not very profitable to read. The ejihori, as he calls them, by which he means the estates of a kingdom, have the right to resist a tyrant. But this right he denies tc the private citizen. H-s chapter on this subject is wa-itten more in the tone of the sixteenth than of the seventeenth century, which indeed had scarcely commenced.' He an- swers in it Albericus Gentilis, Barclay, and others Avho had contended for passive obedience ; not failing to draw support from the canonists and civilians whom he quotes. But the strongest passage is in his dedication to the States of Fries- land. Here he declares his principle, that the supreme power or sovereignty (/?« majestatis) does not reside in the chief magistrate, but in the people themselves, and that no otlier is proprietor or usufructuary of it ; the magistrate being the administrator of this supreme power, but not its owner, nor entitled to use it for his benefit. And these rights of sove- reignty are so much confined to the whole community, that they can no more alienate them to another, whetlier they will or not, than a man can transfer his own life;^ 50. Few, even among the Calvinists, whose form of gov- ernment was in some cases republican, would, in the seven- teenth century, have approved this strona: language of Althusius. But one of their noted tlieologians, Par;eus, incurred the censure of the University of Oxford, in 1 623, for some passages in his Commentary on the Ei)istle to the Ro- mans, which seemed to impugn their orthodox tenet of un- 1 Lib. iii. c. 10. asnnsco. Propriet.-iriiim vero ot iisufruc- 2 Cai). 38. " De tyrannide et ejus re- tuuriinn niHJosfatis milium aliuni qu;mi meJiis." populuiii iinivfrsum iu corpus uuum " " A'Jinimstratori'in, procuratorom, gu- .«yinliioticuMi ex ])l«i-il)Ut) iniiKn-ibua con- be naCoreio juriuui uiujestatiii, princii>uui 8ucia,tiouibiiii cuus(.>ciatum," &c. Chai.IV. bacon. 161 limited submission. He merely holds, that subjects, when not private men, l)ut inferior magistrates, may defend themselves, and the state, and the true religion, even by arms against the - sovereign, under certain conditions ; because these superior magistrates are themselves responsible to the laws of God and of the state.^ It Avas, in truth, impossible to deny tlic right of resistance in such cases without " branding the uiismirclied brow" of Protestantism itself; for by what otiier means had the reformed religion been made to flour- isli in IIoHand and Geneva, or in Scotland ? But in Eng- land, where it had been planted under a more auspicious star, there was little occasion to seek this vindication of the Px-o- testant Church, which had not, in the legal phrase, come in by disseizin of the state, but had united witli the state to turn out of doors its predecessor. That some of the Anglican refu- gees under Mary were ripe enough for resistance, or even regicide, has been seen in another i)lace by an extract from one of their most distinguished prelates. 51. Bacon ought to appear as a prominent name in political philosophy, if we had never met with it in any other. But we have anticipated much of his praise on this score; and it is sufficient to repeat generally, that, on such subjects, he is the most sagacious of mankind. It Avould be almost ridiculous to descend from Bacon, even Avhen his giant shadow does but pass over our scene, to the feebler class of pohtical moralists, such as Saavedra, author of Idea di un Principe Politico, a wretched effort of Spain in her degenera- cy ; but an Italian writer must not be neglected, from the remarkable circumstance, that he is esteemed one of the first Avho have treated the science of political economy. Political It must, however, be understood, that, besides what economy. may be found on the subject in the ancients, many valuable observations which must be referred to political economy occur in Bodin ; that the Italians had, in the sixteenth cen- tury, a few tracts on coinage ; that Botero touches some points of the science ; and that in Enghuid there were, during the ' " Subditi lion privati, Fed in ningis- pliemias ipsos rel subditos alios vult tratu iuferiori cuiistituti, adversus supe- coi^cre ; 3. Cum ipsis atrox infcrtiir iii- rioivni iiiagistnitiini se et renipubliram jiina; 4. Si alitor iiicoluiims fortuni.s Vila et ccclcsiani sou veniin ieli;;ion('m etiam et conscientia esse uou possint; It. Ne aruiis del'cndere jure iiossuut, his positis prretextu religiouis aut justitiit suaquaj- conditionibus: 1. (^um superior ina;;is- rant; 6. Seivata semper fT(f(Kf/a < t mo. tratus degenerat in tyraunum ; 2. Aut .jeraniinp inculpatcX' tuteUe juxta logert." • ad mauilestam idololatnaaii atque bias- rarteus in Epist. ad Roman., col 1350. VOL. III. 11 ^ 162 SERRA. PAKr ril. same age, pamplilets on public wealth, especially one entitled A Brief Conceit of English Policy.^ 52. The author to Avliom we allude is Antonio Serra, a native of Cosenza, whose short treatise on the turTneans causes wluch may rentier gold and silver abundant of obhiia- j,^ countries that have no mines is dedicated to the ill!; money , ._ „ . ,,-,,..,. without Count de L(emo>, " rrom tlie prison or Vicana, this '"'°'^'- tenth day of July, 1G13." It has hence been inferred, but without a sJiadow of proof, that Serra had been engaged in the conspiracy of his fellow-citizen Campanella, fourteen years before. The dedication is in a tone of great flattery, but has no allusion to the cause of his imprisonment, which might have been any other. He proposes, in his preface, not to discuss political government in general, of which he thinks that the ancients have treated sufficiently, if we well understood their works ; and still less to speak of justice and injustice, the civil law being enough for this ; but merely what are the causes that render a country destitute of mines abun- dant in gold and silver, which no one has ever considered, though some have taken narrow views, and fancied that a low I'ate of exchange is the sole means of enriching a country. 53. In the first part of this treatise, Serra divides the His causes causcs of Wealth, that is. of abundance of money, of wealth. i„to general and particular accidents (accident i com- muni e proprj) : meaning, by the former, circumstances which may exist in any countxy ; by the latter, such as are peculiar to some. The common accidents are four, — abundance of manufactures, character of the inhabitants, extent of com- merce, and wisdom of government. The peculiar are, chiefly, the fertility of the soil, and convenience of geographical posi- tion. Serra prefers manufactures to agriculture : oue of his reasons is their indefinite capacity of multiplication ; for no man, whose land is fully cultivated by sowing a hundred bush- els of wheat, can sow Avith profit a hundred and fifty ; but, in manufactures, he may not only double the produce, but do this a hundred times over, and that with less proportion of ex- pense. Though this is now evident, it is perhaps what had not been much remarked before, ' This bears tlie initials of W. S., whieli cumstances unnecessary to mention, can» sonic have idiutically taken for William not produce tlie manuscript authority on Shaksp<'are. I have f(mie reason to be- which tiiis opinion is founded. It baa lieve that there was an editim considerably been reprinted more tlian ouce, if I mis- earliisr thau tUat of HjSi, but, from cir- taJie not, in modem times. Ou.vp. IV. HIS PRAISE OF VENinF. 1G3 54. Venice, according to Serra, held the first place as a commercial city, not only in Italy, hut in Eui'ope ; nis praise "for cxpei'ience demonstrates that all the merchan- «* ^'«i"c«. discs which come from Asia to Europe pass through Venice, and thence are distributed to other parts." But, as this must evidently exclude all the traffic by the Cape of Good Hope, wc can only understand Serra to mean the trade with the Levant. It is, however, worthy of observation, that we are apt to fall into a vulgar error in supposing that Venice was crushed, or even materially atfccted, as a commercial city, by the discoveries of the Portuguese.^ She was, in fact, more opulent, as her buildings of themselves may prove, in the sixteenth century, than in any preceding age. The French trade from Marseilles to the Levant, which began later to flourish, was what impoverished Venice, rather than that of Portugal with the East Indies. This republic was the per- petual theme of admiration with the Italians. Sen-a com- pares Naples with Venice : one, he says, exports grain to a vast amount, the other imports its whole subsistence : money is valued higher at Naples, so that there is a profit in bringing it in, — its export is forbidden ; at Venice it is free : at Naples the public revenues are expended in the kingdom ; at Venice they are principally hoarded. Yet Naples is poor, and Venice rich. Such is the elfect of her commerce and of the wisdom of her government, which is always uniform ; while in king- doms, and far more in viceroyalties, the system changes with the persons. In Venice the method of choosing magistrates is in such perfection, that no one can come in by corruption or favor, nor can any one rise to high offices who has not been tried in the lower. 55. All causes of wealth, except those he has enumerated, Serra holds to be subaltern or temporary : thus the low rate of exchange is subject to the common accidents of commerce. 1 [Perhaps it is too much to say, that years after the Toyagc of A'aseo di Gama. Venice was not materially affected by the One of the senators recommended his eol- I'ortui^ueso commerce withludia; wlien, leagues to employ their money in indu- thougli she becami! positively richer in cing the Saltan of K;^ypt to obstruct the the sixteenth century tlian before, lier voyaj^es of the Portuguese t-o Calicut, so progress would have been more rapid had that t'le state miglit possess again tho the Uionopoly of tlie spice-trade remaiued whole commerce in spices : "Ucheestato In her hamls. A remarkable proof of sin ijua gran parte dclla riechezza nostra, the appreliensions which the discovery e "1 non poter pi'i farlo, fra breve dovri of the passage by the Cape excited at esser cagioue della nostra poverti e della Venice, appears by a, letter of Luigi da nostra roviua." — Lettere di L. da Porto, Porto, autlior of the novel on Komeo and 1832, vol. ii. p. 47U. — 1847.] Juliet, written eo earl/ as 1509, just ten 164 aERRA — HOBBES. PAnr HI It seems, however, to have been a theory of supei-fieiid Low rate of i"easoners on public wealth, that it depended on the exchange exchan"es far more than is really the case ; and, Dot CSSt'U- • . . tiai to in the second part of this treatise, Serra opposes a ■wealth. particular writer, named De Santis, who had ac- coimted in this way alone for abundance of money in a state. Seri'a thinks, that to reduce the weight of coin may sometimes be an allowable expedient, and better tlian to raise its denomi- nation. The difference seems not very important. The coin of Naples was exhausted by the revenues of absentee proprie- tors, which some had proposed to withhold, — a measure to which Serra justly objects. This book has been reprinted at Milan in the collection of Italian economists, and, as it antici- pates the principles of what has been called the mercantile theory, deserves some attention in following the progress of ojjinion. The once celebrated treatise of Mun — England's Treasure by Foreign Trade — was written before 1 G40 ; but, not being published till after the Eestoration, we may post- pone it to the next period. 56. Last in time among political philosophers before the Hobbes- middle of the century, we find the greatest and most, his poiiti- famous, Tliomas Hobbes. His treatise De Give was ca woi 3. pj.jj^j^gj j,^ 1G42 for his private friends. It obtained, however, a considerable circulation, and excited some ani- madversion. In 1647, he published it at Amsterdam, with notes to vindicate and explain what had been censured. In 1650, an English treatise, with the Latin title, De Corpore Politico, appeared; and, in 1651, the complete system of his philosophy was given to the world in the Leviathan. These three works bear somewhat the same relation to one another that the Advancement of Learning does to the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum : they are in efl^ect the same ; tlie same order of subjects, the same arguments, and, in most places, either the same words, or such variations as occurred to the second thoughts of the writer ; but much is more copi- ously illustrated and more clearly put in the latter than in the former; while much also, from Avhatever cause, is withdrawn, or considerably modified. "Whether the Leviathan is to bo reckoned so exclusively his last thoughts that we should pre- sume him to have retracted the passages that do not apj)ear in it, is what every one must determine for himself. 1 shall endeavor to present a comparative analysis of the three trea- tises, with some preference to the last. Chap, IV. IIOBBES. 165 57. Those, he heguis by observing, who have hitherto writ- ten ujion civil policy, have assumed that man is an Anaiysisof animal framed for society ; as if nothing else were bis three required for the institution of commonwealths than that men should agree upon some terms of compact which they call laws. But this is entirely false. That men do naturally seek each oilier s society, he admits, by a note in the published edition of De Give ; but political societies are not mere meetings of men, but unions founded on the faith of covenants, kor does the desire of men for society imply that they are fit for it: many may desire it who will not readily submit to its necessary conditions.^ This he left out in the two other treatises ; thinking it, perhaps, too great a concession to admit any desire of society in man. 58. Nature has made little odds among men of mature age as to strength or knowledge. No reason, therefore, can be given why one should, by any intrinsic superiority, command others, or ])ossess more tlian they. But there is a great diiference in their passions : some through vainglory seeking pre-eminence over their fellows ; some willing to allow equality, but not to lose what they know to be good for themselves. And this contest can only be decided by battle showing which is the stronger. 59. All men desire to obtain good and to avoid evil, espe- cially death. Hence they have a natural right to preserve their own lives and limbs, and to use all means necessary for this end. Every man is judge for himself of the necessity of the means, and the greatness of the danger. And hence he has a right by nature to all things, to do what he wills to others, to possess and enjoy all he can; for he is the only judge whether they tend or not to his preservation. But every other man has the same right. Hence there can be no injury towards another in a state of nature. Not that in sucl a state a man may not sin against God, or transgress the laws of nature ; - but injury, wliich is doing any thing without right, implies human laws that limit right. 1 " Societates autem civiles non sunt Dc-um, aut leges natunles riolare impos- Diori congressus, seil fnHlera. quibus fa- sibile sit. Nam iiijustiti.i ei-ffi homines ciendis fides et pacta necessaria sunt. . . . BUpponit leges humanas, quale.s in statu Alia res est appettre alia esse capacem. naturali nuUw sunt." — De Cive, c. 1. Appetunt enim illi ((Ui tauien oonditiones This he left out in the later treatises. He esquas, sine quibus societas esse non potest, says afterward {sect. 28), '• Omne damnum accipere per superbiam non dignantur." homini illatuiu legis naturalis violatit * "Non ^uod in tali statu peccare in atque in Deuai iiyuria est." 166 HOBBES. Paet IH 60. Thus the state of man in natural liberty is a state of war, — a war of every man against every man, wherein the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, liave no phice. Irresistible might gives of itself right, which is no- thing but the physical liberty of using our power as we will /or our own preservation and what we deem conducive to it. But as, througli the equality of natural powers, no man pos- sesses this irresistible superiority, this state of universal war is contrary to his own good, which he necessarily must desire. Hence his reason dictates that he sliould seek peace as far as he can, and strengthen himself by all the helps of war against those with whom he cannot have peace. This, then, is the first fundamental law of nature ; for a law of nature is notliing else than a rule or prece))t found out by reason for the avoid- ing what may be destructive to our life. Gl. From this primary rule another follows, — that a man should be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to all things, and to be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow to other men against himself. This may be done hj renouncing his right to any thing, which leaves it open to all, or by transfer- ring it specially to another. Some rights, indeed, as those to his life and limbs, are inalienable ; and no man lays down the right of resisting those Avho attack them. But, in general, he is bound not to hinder those to whom he has granted or aban- doned his own riofht from availing; themselves of it : and such hinderance is injustice or injury ; that is, it is sine jure, his Jus being already gone. Such injury may be compared to absurdity in argument, being in contradiction to what he has already done, as an absurd pro])osition is in contradiction to what tlie speaker has already allowed. 62. The next laAv of nature, according to Ilobbcs, is that men should fulfil their covenants. What contracts and cove- nants are, he explains in the usual manner, None can covenant with God, unless by special revelation : therefore vows are not liinding, nor do oaths add any thing to the swearer's obligation. But covenants entered into by fear, lie holds to be binding in a state of nature, though they may be annulled by the law. That the observance of justice, that is, of our covenants, is never against reason, Hobbes labors to prove ; for, if ever its violation may have turned out sue- Chap, IV. HOBBES. 1G7 cessful, this, being contrary to probable expectation, ought not to influence us. '' That which gives to human actions tiie rchsli of" justice is a certain nobleness or galhuitness of cou- rage rarely found ; by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fi-aud, or Itreach of promise."^ A short gleam of something above the creeping selfishness of his ordinary morality ! 63. He then enumerates many other laws of nature, such as gratitude, complaisance, equity, all subordinate to tlie main one of j)reserving peace by the limitation of tlie naturat right, as he supposes, to usurp all. These laAvs are immutable and eternal : the science of them is the only true science of moi-al philosophy ; for that is nothing but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. In a state of nature, private appetite is the measure of good and evil. But all men agree that ]ieace is good ; and therefore the means of peace, which arci tlie moral virtues or hxAvs of nature, are good also, and their contraries evil. These laws of nature are not propeidy called such, but conclusions of reason as to what should be done or abstained from ; they are but theorems concerning what conduces to conservation and defence ; whereas law is strictly the word of him that by right has command over others. But, so far as these ai'e enacted by God in Scripture, they are truly laws. 64. These laws of nature, being contrary to our natural passions, are but words of no strength to secure any one without a controlling power. For, till such a power is erected, every man will rely on his own force and skill. Nor will the conjunction of a few men or families be sufficient for security ; nor that of a great multitude, guided hj their own particular judgments and appetites. For if we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent in the observation of justice and other laws of nature, without a common power to keep them all in awe, we miglit as well suppose all mankind to do the same ; and then tliere neither would be, nor need to be, any civil government or commonwealtli at all, l^ecause there would be peace witliont subjection.^' Hence it becomes necessary to confer all their power on one man, or assembly of men, to bear tlieir person or represent them ; so tliat every one sliall own himself autlior of what sliall be done by such representa- tive. It is a covenant of each with each, that he will be 1 Leviathan, c. 15 * Id., o. 17. 168 HOBBES. Part HI governed in such a manner, if the other will agree to the same. This is the generation of the great Leviathan, or mortal Gofl, to whom, under the immortal God, we owe our peace and defence. In him consists the essence of llie com- monwealth, which is one person ; of Avhose acts a grelit multitude, by mutual covenant, have made themselves the autliors. Go. This person (including, of course, an assembly as well as an individual) is the sovereign, and possesses sovereign power ; and such power may spring from agreement or from force. A commonwealth, by agreement or institution, is when a multitude do agree and covenant, one with another, that whatever tlie major part shall agree to represent them shall be the representative of them all. After this has been done, the subjects cannot change their government without its con- sent ; being bound by mutual covenant to own its actions. If any one man should dissent, the rest would break their cove- nant with him. But there is no covenant with the sovereign. He cannot have covenanted with the whole multitude as one party, because it has no collective existence till the common- wealth is formed ; nor \vith each man separately, because the acts of the sovereign are no longer his sole acts, but those of the society, including him who Avould comjdain of the breach. Nor can the sovereign act unjustly towards a subject; for he who acts by another's authority cannot be guilty of injustice towards him : he may, it is true, commit iniquity, that is, violate the laws of God and nature, but not injury. 6(5. The sovereign is necessai'ily judge of all proper means of defence, of what doctrines shall be taught, of all disputes and complaints, of rewards and punishments, of war and peace Avith neiofhborin"; commonwealths, and even of what shall be held by each subject in property. Property, he admits in one place, existed in families before the institution of civil society ,• but between different families there %vas no vieum and tiium. These are by the law and command of the sovereign ; and hence, though every subject may have a right of property against his fellow, he can have none a2;ainst the sovereiijrn. These rights are incommunicable, and inseparable from the sovereign power : there are others of minor importance, which he may alienate ; but, if any one of the former is taken away from him, he ceases to be truly sovereign. 67. The sovereign power cannot be limited nor divided CiiAP. IV. HOBBES. 1 69 Hence tlere can be but three simple foiins of commonwealth, ■ — monarchy, anstocracv, and democracy. The first he great- ly prefers. The king has no private interest apart from tlie j)eople, -whose wealth, honor, security from enemies, internal tran(juillit}', are evidently for his own good. But, in the other forms, each man may have a private advantage to seek. In po])ular assemblies, there is always an aristocracy of orators, interrupted sometimes by the temporary monarchy of one orator. And tliough a king may deprive a man of all he possesses to enrich a flatterer or fiivorite, so may also a demo- cratic assembly, where there may be as many Neroes as orators, each with the whole power of the people he gov- erns. And these orators are usually more powerful to hurt others than to save them. A king may receive counsel of •whom he will ; an assembly, from those only who have a right to belong to it ; nor can their • counsel be secret. They are also more inconstant both from passion and from their num- bers ; the absence of a few often undoing all that had been done before. A king cannot disagree with himself; but an assembly may do so, even to producing civil war. G8. An elective or limited king is not the sovereign, but the sovereign's minister ; nor can there be a perfect form of govei'nment where the present ruler has not power to dispose of the succession. His power, therefore, is wholly without bounds ; and correlative must be the people's obligation to obey. Unquestionably there are risks of mischiefs and inconveniences attending a monarchy : but these are less than in the other forms ; and the worst of them is not comparable to those of civil war, or the anarchy of a state of nature, to which the dissolution of the commonwealth would reduce us. 69. In the exercise of government, the sovereign is to be guided by one maxim, which contains all his duty : Sahfs popuU suprema lex. And in this is to be reckoned not only the conservation of life, but all that renders it happy. For tins is the end for which men entered into civil society, that they might enjoy as much happiness as human nature can attain. It Avould be therefore a violation of the law of na- ture, and of the trust reposed in them, if sovereigns did not study, as far as by their poAver it may be, that their subjects Bhould be furnished with every thing necessary, not for life alone, but for the delights of life. And even those who Lave 170 HOBBES. Part 111. acquired empire by conquest must desiie to have men fit to serve them, and should, in consistency with their own aims, endeavor to provide what will increase their strength and courage. Taxes, in the opinion of Hobbes, should be laid equallj^, and rather on expenditure than on revenue : the prince should promote agriculture, tlsheries, and commerce, and, in general, whatever makes men happy and prosperous. ]\Iany just reflections on the art of goverimient are uttered by IIobl)es, especially as to the inexpediency of interfering too much with personal liberty. No man, he obsei-ves in another place, is so far free as to be exempted from the sovereign power ; but, if liberty consists in the paucity of restraining laws, he sees not why this may not be had in monarchy as well as in a popular government. The dream of so many political writers, a wise and just despotism, is pictured by Hobbes as the perfection of political society. 70. But most of all is the sovereign to be free from any limitation by the poAver of tlie priesthood. This is chiefly to be dreaded, that he should command any thing under the penalty of death, and the clergy forbid it under the penalty of dam- nation. The i)retensions of-the see of Rome, of some bishops at home, and those of even the lowest citizens, to judge for themselves and determine upon public religion, are dangerous to the state, and the frequent cause of wars. The sovereign, therefore, is alone to judge whether religions are safely to be admitted or not. And it may be urged, that princes are bound to cause such doctrine as they think conducive to their subjects' salvation to be taught, forbidding every other, and that they cannot do otherwise in conscience. This, however, he does not absolutely determine. But he is clearly of opinion, that, though it is not the case where the prince is infidel,^ the head of the state, in a Christian commonwealth, is head also of tlie chuix'h ; that he, ratlier than any ecclesiastics, is the judge of doctrines ; that a church is the same as a common- wealth luider the same sovereign, the com|)onent members of each being precisely the same. This is not very far removed from the doctrine of Hooker, and still less from the practice of Henry VIH. ' " Impornntilius aiitein non Christianis Tnis voro, lioc ost, in iis qiiiR pertinent ad ju teniponilibus quitleni omnibus wmhIimu nuHlum lolcniU Dei sequemla est ecclesia deberi obedientiam etium a ublication Success of of this treatise made an epoch in the pliilosophical, this work, and almost, we might say, in the political, liistory of Europe. Those who soiiglit a guide to their own conscience or that of otliers, those who dispensed justice, those wlio ap- pealed to the public sense of right in the intercourse of nations, had recourse to its copious pages for what might direct or justify their actions. Within tliirty or forty years from its publication, we find the work of Grotius generally received as authority by professors of the Continental univer- sities, and deemed necessary for the student of civil law, at least in the Protestant countries of Europe. In England, from the difference of laws and from some other causes which might be assigned, the influence of Grotius was far slower, and even, ultimately, inuch less genei'al. He was, however, tl-eated with great respect as the founder of the modern law of nations, which is distinguished from what formerly bore that name by its more continual reference to that of nature. But, when a book is little read, it is easily misrepresented ; and as a new school of philosophers rose up, averse to much of the principles of their predecessors, but, above all tilings, to their tediousness, it became the fashion not so much to dispute the tenets of Grotius, as to set aside his whole work, among the barbarous and obsolete schemes of ignorant ages. For this purpose, various charges have been alleged against it by men of deserved eminence, not, in my opinion, very candidly, or with much real knowledge of its contents. Thev have had, however, the natural effect of creating a prejudice, which, from the sort of oblivion fallen upon the book, is not likely to die away. I shall, therefore, not think myself performing an useless task in giving an analysis of the treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis ; so that the reader, having seen for himself what it is, may not stand in need of any argu- juris, non illius privati, ex quo legulcii et parte secuml.ie partis lihri, quern Sum- rabulic victitant, sed K'-'ntiuin ac publiei ; main Theoln^iie inscripsit: pnesortim ubi quam pra^stabileiu scii'iitiam Cicero vo- do jusfitia agit ac de Icgibiis. llsuni pro- cans consistcre ait in fficderilius, pactio- pins nionstrabunt I'andectje, lil)ro prime nibus, eonditioiiibus pupuloruin, return, utquo ultimo; et codex Justinianeus, li- nationum, in onini denique jure belli et bro jirinio et tribiis postremis. Nostri paiis. Hujus juris inincipia quoraodo ex teinporis juris consulti pauci juris gentium niorali philnsoplii;!, petenda sunt, mou- ac publiei controvcrsias attijscre, eoquo ptrare jMit^ruut I'latonis ac Ciieronis de ina^is eminent, qui id fecere, A'iusquius, le;;ibus liber. Sed I'latonis suunuas ali- Jlottomannus. (ieutilis." — Kpist. xvi. T his qu:i.s le^isse .sulTecerit. Neque puenitcat passaf^e is useful in showini; the views ex schol.asticls Tliomara Aquinat«m, pi (1 roti us liimsclf entertained as tn tlie sub« non pcrlegere, saltern inspicere secunda ject aud groundwork of bis treatise. Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 179 menta or testimony to refute those who have represented it as it is not. 84. The book may be considered as nearly original, in its genei'al ])lattbrm, as any work ot "man, in an ad- itsori'^i- vanced stage of ci\ilization and learning, can be. It ""lity- is more so, ])ei-liaps, than those of IMontesquieu and Smith. Ko one had before gone to tlie ibimdations of international law so as to raise a complete and consistent superstructure ; few had handled even separate parts, or laid down any satis- factory rules concerning it. Grotius enumerates a few pre- ceding writers, especially Ayala and Albericus Gentilis ; but does not mention Soto in this place. Gentilis, he says, is wont, in determining controverted questions, to follow either a i'aw precedents not always of the best description, or even the authority of modern lawyers, in their answers to cases, many of v/hich are written with more regard to what the consulting parties desire, than to what real justice and equity demand. 85. The motive assigned for this undertaking is the noblest. " I saw," he says, " in the whole Christian world, a jts motive license of lighting, at which even barbarians might ^^"^ object, blush ; wars begun on trifling pretexts, or none at all, and car- ried on without reverence for any divine or human law, as if that one declaration of war let loose every crime." The sight of such a monstrous state of things had induced some, like Erasmus, to deny the lawfulness of any war to a Christian. But tliis extreme, as he justly observes, is rather pernicious than otherwise ; for, when a tenet so paradoxical and imprac- ticable is maintained, it begets a prejudice against the more temperate course which he ])repares to indicate. " Let, there- fore," he says afterwards, " the laws be silent in the midst of arms ; but those laws only which belong to peace, the laws of civil life and public tribunals, not such as are eternal, and litted for all seasons, unwritten laws of nature, which subsist in what the ancient form of the Romans denominated ' a pure and holy war.' " ^ 8G. "• I iiave employed, in confirmation of this natural and ■national law, the testimonies of philosophers, of his- m^ autho torians, of poets, lastly even of orators : not that we "ties should indiscriminately rely upon them ; for they ai"e apt to 1 " Eas res puro pioque duello rcpetundas censeo." It was a case prodigiously frequent in the opinion of the Romans. 180 GEOTIUS. Papc III. Bay what may serve their party, their subject, or their cause ; but because, when many at different times and places affu-m the same thing for certain, we may refer this imaiiimity to some general cause, which, in such questions as these, can bo no other than either a right deduction from some natural prin ciple or some conniion agreement. The former of these de- notes the law of nature ; the latter, that of nations : the difference whereof must be understood, not by the language of these testimonies, for writers are very prone to confound the two words, but from the nature of the subject. For what- ever cannot be clearly deduced from true premises, and yet appears to have been generally admitted, must have had its origin in free consent. . . . The sentences of poets and orators have less weiglit than those of history ; and we often make use of them, not so much to corroborate what we say, as to throw a kind of ornament over it." " I have abstained," he adds afterwards, " from all that belongs to a different sub- ject, as what is expedient to be done ; since this has its own science, that of politics, which Aristotle has rightly treated by not intermingling any thing extraneous to it ; Avhile Bodin has confounded Uiat science with this which we are about to treat. If we sometimes allude to utility, it is but in passing, and distinguishing it from the question of justice." ^ 87. Grotius derives the origin of natural law fr6m the Foundation sociable character of mankind. " Among things com- of natural mou to mankind is the desire of society; that is, not ^''^' of every kind of society, but of one that is peaceable and ordered accoi-ding to the capacities of his nature with others of his species. Even in children, before all instruction, a, propensity to do good to others displays itself, just as pity in that age is a spontaneous affection." We perceive by this re- mark, that Grotius looked beyond the merely rational basis of natural law to the moral constitution of human nature. The conservation of such a sociable life is the source of that law which is strictly called natural ; which comprehends, in the first place, the abstaining from all that belongs to others, and the restitution of it (if by any means in our possession), the fulfil- ment of )n-omises, the reparation of injury, and the right of hu- man punishment. In a secondary sense, natural law extends to prudence, temperance, and fortitude, as being suitable to naan'g natui-e. And, in a similar lax sense, we have that kind of jus- 1 " Prolegomena in librvua tie Jure Belli." Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 181 tice itself called clistributive (fiiaveiiijTiKt)), vfh'ich prefers abetter man to a worse, a relation to a stranger, the poorer man to a richer, according to the circumstances of the party and the case.^ And this natural law is properly defined " the dictate of right reason, pointing out a moral guilt or rectitude to be inherent in any action, on account of its agreement or dis- agreement with our rational and social nature ; and conse- quently that such an action is either forbidden or enjoined by God, the author of nature." ^ It is so immutable, that God himself cannot alter it ; a position which he afterwards limits by a restriction we have seen in Suarez, that if God com- mand any one to be killed, or his goods to be taken, this Avould not render murder or theft lawful, but, being com- manded by the Lord of life and all tilings, it would cease to be murder or theft. Tliis seems little better than a sophism im worthy of Grotius ; but he meant to distinguish between an abrogation of the law of nature, and a dis])ensation with it in a particular instance. The original position, in fact, is not stated with sufficient precision, or on a right principle. 88. Voluntary or positive law is either human or revealed. The former is either that of civil communities, positive which are assemblages of freemen, living in society ''^"^• for the sake of laws and common utility ; or that of nations, which derives its obligation from the consent of all or many nations : a law which is to be proved, like all unwritten law, by continual usage and the testimony of the learned. The revealed law he divides in the usual manner, but holds that no part of the Mosaic, so far as it is strictly a law, is at pre- sent binding upon us. But much of it is confirmed by the Christian Scriptures, and much is also obligatory by the law of nature. This last law is to be applied, d priori, by the conformity of the act in question to the natural and social nature of man ; a posteriori, by the consent of mankind : the latter argument, however, not being conclusive, but highly probable, when the agreement is found in all, or in all the more civilized nations.^ 80. Perfect rights, after the manner of the jurists, he dis- tinguishes from imperfect. The former are called sua, our 1 Id.. § 6-10. turpituJincm aut necessitatem moralem, 2 "Jus naturale est dictatum rectae ac consequenter ab auctore naturae Deo rationls, indicans actui alicui, ex ejus talem actum aut vetari aut prsecipi " — convenientia aut discouvenientia cum ipsa L. i. c. i. § 10. Uatura rationuli ac sociali, iuesuo moraloiu ^ lib. i. c. 1. 182 GROTIUS. Tart III. own, properly speaking, the objects of what they styled _ ^ commutative justice: the latter are denominated fit- toiperfe'ct ncsscs (aptitudines), such as equity, gratitude, and rights. domestic affection prescribe, but which are only the objects of distributive or equitable justice. Tliis distinction is of the highest importance in the immediate subject of tho work of Grotius ; since it is agreed on all hands that no law gives a remedy for the denial of these ; nor can Ave justly, in a state of nature, have recourse to arms in order to enforce thcm.^ 90. War, however, as he now proceeds to show, is not ab- Lawfui solutely unlawful either by the law of nature or that cases of of uatious, or of revelation. The proof is, as usual with Grotius, very diffuse ; his work being, in fact, a magazine of arguments and examples with rather a supere- rogatory profusion.- But tlie Anabaptist and Quaker super- stit^n has prevailed enough to render some of his refutation not unnecessary. After dividing war into public and private, and showing that the establishment of civil justice does not universally put an end to the riglit of private war (since cases may arise when the magistrate cannot be waited for, and others where his interference cannot be obtained), he shows that the public war may be either solemn and regular accord- ing to the law of nations, or less regular on a sudden emer- gency of self-defence ; classing also under the latter any war which magistrates not sovereign may in peculiar circumstances levy.^ And this leads him to inquire what constitutes sove- reignty ; defining, after setting aside other descriptions, tliat power to be sovereign whose acts cannot be invalidated at the pleasure of any other human authority, except one, wliicli, as in the case of a successor, has exactly the same sovereignty as itself.'* 91. Grotius rejects the opinion of those who hold the i)eo Resistance P^^ ^^ ^^ everywhere sovereign, so that they may by subjects restrain and punish kings for misgovernment ; quot- uniawfiii. j^^^ many authorities for the irresponsibility of kings. Here he lays down the principles of non-resistance, wliich he more fully inculcates in the next chapter. But this is done with many distinctions as to the nature of the principality, » Lib. i. c. 1. ' c. 2. » c. 3. * "Siimma potost.TS ilia dic-itiir, rujns aotus altcriu.s juri non subjocet Ita ul •Iterius voluDtatia liumauas uibitrio irriti possiut rudUi." — § 7. Chap. IV. DE JUKE BELLI ET PACIS. 183 which may be held by very different conditions. He speaks of patrimonial kinpjdoms, which, as he supposes, may be alienated like an inheritance. But, where the government can be traced to popular consent, lie owns that this power of alien- ation should not be presumed to be com])rised in the grant. Those, he says, are much deceived, who think, that, in king- doms where the, consent of a senate or other body is required for new laws, the sovereignty itself is divided ; for these restrictions must be understood to have been imposed by tlie prince on his own will, lest he should be entrapped into some- tliing contrary to his deliberate intention.^ Among other things in this chaptex', he determines that neither an unequal alliance (tliat is, where one party retains great advantages) nor a feudal liomage takes away the character of sovereignty from the inferior ; so far, at least, as authority over his own subjects is concerned. 92. In the next chapter, Grotius dwells more at length on the alleged right of subjects to resist their governors, and altogether repels it, with the exception of strict self-defence, or the improbable case of a hostile spirit, on the ])rinee's part, extending to the destruction of his peo|)le. Barclay, the . opponent of Buchanan and the Jesuits, had admitted the right of resistance against enormous cruelty. If the king has abili- cated the government, or manifestly relinquished it, he may, after a time, be considered merely a private person. But mere negligence in government is by no means to be reckoned a relinquisimient.- And he also observes, that if the sove- reignty be divided between a king and part of his subjects, or the whole, he may be resisted by force in usurping their share, because he is no longer sovereign as to that ; which he holds to be the case, even if the right of war be in him ; since that must be understood of a foreign war, and it could not be maintained that those who partake tlie sovereignty have not the right to defend it ; in which predicament a king may lose even his own share by the right of war. He proceeds to the case of usurpation ; not such as is warranted by long pre- scription, but Avhile the circumstances that led to the unjust possession subsist. Against such an usurper he thinks it law- * § 18. in privatum. Sed minime pro derelicto * " Si rex aut alius quis impcrium ab- habere rem censendus est qui earn tractat dicavit, aut in-inifeste habet pro derelicto, negligentiua." — C. 4, § 9. lu cum po5t ii tempus ouinia Ucent, qu89 184 GEOTIUS. PAra IIL fill to rebel, p!0 long as there is no treaty or voluntary act of allegiance, at least if the government de jure sanctions the insurrection. But, where there may be a doubt whether the lawful ruler has not acquiesced in the usurpation, a private person ought rather to stand by possession, than to taka the decision upon liirosclf.^ 93. The right of war, vvliich we must here understand in the . largest sense, — the employment of force to resist All men ^ . *^ naturally forcc, thougli by private men, — I'esides in all man- of ^var^'*' kind. Solon, he says, taught us that those common- wealths would be happy whei'ein each man thought the injuries of others were like his own.- The mere sociabi- lity of human nature ought to suggest this to us. And, though Grotius does not proceed with this subject, he would not have doubted that we are even bound by the law of nature, not merely that we have a riglit, to protect the lives and goods of othftrs against lawless violence, without the least reference to positive law or the command of a magistrate.'^ If this has been preposterously doubted, or affected to be doubted, in England, of late years, it has been less owing to the pedantry Avhich demands an express wTitten law upon the most pressing emergency, than to lukewarmness, at the best, in the public cause of order and justice. The expediency of vindicating these by the slaughter of the aggressors must depend on the peculiar circumstances ; but the right is paramount to any positive laws, even if (which with us is not the case) it were difficult to be proved from them. 94. We now arrive at the first and fundamental inquiry, ]{iccupancy by persons, and division of lands by the ccmmu- 1 Lib. ii. c. 1, § 8. Gronovius observes * "Ilodie omncs fenne tam .uriscon. jiithily aud truly on this : " Melius occidi suMi quaui theologi doceant recte homi- quam occidere injuria , non melius occi- nes a nobis jnterfici rurum defendeudarum di injuria quam occidere jui'e." causa." — § 13i 186 GKOTIUS. Pai;t IIL nity, lie rightly holds to be the two sources of territorial pro- priety.' Occupation is of two sorts; one by the community {per unh-ersitatem), the other (perfundos) by several posses- sion. What is not thus occupied is still the domain of the state. Grotius conceives that mankind have reserved a riglit of taking what belongs to others, in extreme necessity. It is a still more remarkable limitation of the right of property, that it carries very far his notions of .that of transit ; main- taining that not only rivers, but the territory itself, of a state may be peaceably entered, and that permission cannot be refused, consistently with natural law, even in the case of armies: nor is the apprehension of incurring the hostility of the power, who is thus attacked by the array passing through our territory, a sutficient excuse.^ This, of course, must now be exploded. Nor can, he thinks, the transit of merchandise be forbidden or impeded by levying any further tolls than are reciuired for the incident expenses. Strangers ought to be allowed to settle, on condition of obeying the laws, and even to occupy any waste tracts in the territory;^ a position equally untenable. It is less unreasonably that he maintains the general right of mankind to buy what they want, if the other p'arty can spare it; but he extends too far his prin- ciple, that no nation can be excluded by another from privi- leges which it concedes to the rest of the world. In all these positions, however, we perceive the enlarged and philanthropic spirit of the system of Grotius, and liis disregard of the usages of mankind when they clashed with his Christian prin- ciples of justice. But, as the very contrary supposition has been established in the belief of the present generation, it may be doubtful whether his own testimony will be thought suthcient. U7. The original acquisition of property was, in the infency Ri?htof of human societies, by division or by occupancy: it occupancy, jg j^^^y i^y occupaucy aloue. PauUus has reckoned as a mode of original acquisition, if we have caused any thing to exist, " Si quid ipsi, ut in rerum natura esset, fecimus." This, though not well exjjressed, must mean the produce of labor. Grotius observes, that this resolves itself into a continuance of a prior right, or a new one by occupancy, and therefore no > "Sic etiam metua "ab eo in qucm neganJum transltuin non valet." — Iib.it belluiu justum movet is liui transit, ad c. 2, § 13. * § 10, 17. Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 187 peculiar mode of acquisition. In those things which naturally belong to no one, there may be two sorts of occupation, — do- minion or sovereignty, and property. And, in the former sense at least, rivers, and bays of the sea, are capable of occupation. In wiiat manner this may be done, he explains at length.'^ But tliose who occupy a [)ortion of tlie sea have no right to obstruct others in fishing. This had been the subject of a controversy of Grotius with Selden ; the one in his IMare Liberum denying, the other in his IMare Clausum sustaining, tlie right of England to exclude the fishermen of Holland from tlie seas which she asserted to be her own. 98. The right of occupancy exists as to things derelict, or aliandoned by their ■ owners. But it is of more Relinquish- importance to consider the presumptions of such iut""tofi*- relinquishment by sovereign states, as distinguished from mere prescription. The non-claim of the owner, during a long period, seems the only means of giving a right where none oi'iginally existed. It must be the silent acquiescence of one wlio knows his rights and has his free will. But, when this abandonment has once taken place, it bars unborn claimants ; for he who is not born, Grotius says, has no rights : "Ejus qui nondum est natus nullum est jus."^ 99. A right over persons may be acquired in three ways, — by generation, by their consent, by their crime. In children, we are to consider three periods, — that of pe^ons. imperfect judgment, or infancy ; that of adult age in ^^f-^'^^' the father's family ; and that of emancipation, or fbris- familiation, when they have ceased to form a part of it. In the first of these, a child is capable of property in possession, but not in enjoyment ; in the second, he is subject to the parent, only in actions which affect the family ; in the tliird, he is AvhoUy his own master. ^ All beyond this is positive law. The paternal power was almost peculiar to the Romans, thoujih the Persians are said to have had something of the same. Grotius, we perceive, was no ally of those who ele- vated the patriarchal poAver, in order to found upon it a despotic ])olity ; nor does he raise it by any means so high as Bodin. The customs of Eastern nations would, perhaps, have warranted somewhat more than he concedes.^ 100. Consent is the second mode of acquiring dominion. » C. 3. » C 4 » Id., 5. 188 GROTIUS. Papt III The consociation of male and female is the first species of By consent it, whicli is princijtally in marriage, for Avhich the inmaniage. promise of the woman to be faithful is required. But he thinks that there is no mutual obligation by the law of nature ; whicli seems designed to save the polygamy of the patriarchs. He then discusses the chief questions as to divorce, polygamy, clandestine marriages, and incest ; holding, that no unions ai"e forbidden by natural law, except in the direct line. Concubines, in the sense of the Roman jurispru- dence, are true Christian wives.^ 101. In all other consociations except marriage, it is a rule In common- that the majority can bind the minority. Of these, wealths. ^j^g principal is a commonwealth. And here he maintains tlie right of every citizen to leave his country, and that the state retains no right over those whom it has ban- ished. Subjection, which may arise from one kind of consent, is either private or public : the former is of several species, among which adoption, in the Roman sense, is the noblest, and servitude the meanest. In the latter case, the master has not the right of life and death over his servants, though some laws give him impunity. He is pei-]dexcd about the right over persons born in slavery, since his theory of its origin will not support it. But in the case of public subjection, Avhere one state becomes voluntarily subject to another, he finds no difficulty about the unborn, because the people is the same, notwithstanding the succession of individuals ; which seems paying too much deference to a legal fiction.^ 102. The right of alienating altogether the territory, he Rir'ht of grants to patrimonial sovereigns ; but he denies alienating that a part can be separated from the rest without its subjects. consent, either by the community or by the sove- reign, however large his authority may be. This he extends to subjection of the kingdom to vassalage. The right of Alienation ''ihtiiiivtiiig pi'ivatc property by testament is founded, by testa- he tliiiiks, in natural law;'^ a position wherein I eaii '""" hy no means concur. In conformity with this, he derives tlie right of succession by intestacy from the pre- sumed intention of the deceased, and proceeds to dilate on the different rules of succession established by civil laws. Yet the rule, that paternal and maternal heirs siiall take respects 1 C. 6. » Id. » c. 6, § 14. Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACTS. 189 ivcly -what descended from the ancestors on each side, he conceives to be founded in the law of nature, though subject to tlie riuht of bequest.^ 103. in treating of the acquisition of pi-operty by the law of nations, he means only the arbitrary constitutions of the Roman and other codes. Some of these he propeiu- deems founded in no solid reason, though the law- j'^y^i''''*'''^® givers of every country have a right to determine such matters as they think fit. Thus the Roman la^v recognizes no property in animals ferce nuturce, which that of modern nations gives, he says, to the owner of the soil where they are found, not unreasonably any more than the opposite maxim is vinreasonable. So of a treasure found in the earth, and many other cases, wherein it is hard to say that the law of nature and rejxson prescribes one rule more than another.- 104. The rights of sovereignty and property may ter- minate by extinction of the ruling or possessing Extinction family without provision of successors. Slaves then "frights, become free ; and subjects, their own masters : for there can be no new riglit by occupancy in such. But a people or community may cease to exist, though the identity of persons, or even of race, is not necessary for its continuance. It may expire by voluntary dispersion, or by subjugation to another state. But mere change of place by simultaneous emigration will not destroy a political society, much less a change of internal government. Hence, a republic becoming a monarchy, it stands in the same relation to other commu- nities as before, and, in particular, is subject to all its former debts.* ' C. 7. In this chapter, Orotius tie- remarks, in a note on this passaj^e ; "511 cides that parents are not bound by strict ruui est lioc loco summum virum, cum justice to maintain tlicir cliildren. Tlie in pr.xcipua (luestione non male sentiret, case is stronger the other way, in return in tot salebr;is se conjecisse, totque mon- for early prott>ction. 15arbeyr:ic thinks sti-a ct cliiniuTas continxisse, ut aliquiil that aliment is due to children by strict novum dicorit, et (Jermanis potius ludi- right during iutancj'. brium deberet. rjuam (lallis et I'apsa - § 8. pariuii placeret."' 'i'liis, however, is very 3 § 2. At tlie end of this chapter, Gro- uncaudid, as Uarbeyrac truly points out; »ius unfortunately raises a question, his since neither of tiiiwu could take much solution of which laid him open to cen- interest in a theory which reserve! a 8ure. He incjuires to whom the coun- supremacy over the world to the Koraau tries formerly sutjject to the Houian people. It is probably the weakest p;is- Kmpire belong- And here he comes to sage in all the writings of Grotius, though the inconceivable paradox, that that em- there are too many which Jo m t euUauc^ pire, and the rights of the citizens of his fame. Uome, still siibsist. Gronovius bitterly 1 90 GROTIUS. Part HI. 105. In a chapter on the obhgatlons which the right of Someca- property imposes on others than the proprietor, we Euistirai find sonie of the more dehcate questions in the quts ions, (..^g^iij^fiy Qf natural hxw, sucli as rehite to the bond Jide possessor of anotlier's property. Grotius, always siding Avith the stricter moralists, asserts that he is bound not only to restore the substance, but the intermediate protits, without any claim for the valuable consideration which he may have paid. His commentator Barbeyrac, of a later and laxer school of casuistry, denies much of this doctrine.' lOG. That great branch of ethics which relates to the obligation of i)romises has been so diffusively handled by the casuists as well as philosophers, that Grotius deserves much credit for the brevity with which he has laid down the simple principles, and discussed some of the more difficult problems. That mere promises, or nuda pacta, where there is neither mutual benefit, nor what the jurists call synallagmatic contract, are binding on the conscience, whatever they may be, or ought to be, in law, is maintained against a distinguished civilian, Francis Connan ; nor does Barbeyrac seem to dispute this general tenet of moral philosophers. Puftendorf, however, says that there is a tacit condition in promises of this kind that they can be i)erformed without great loss to the promiser ; and Cicero holds them to be released, if their performance would be more detri- mental to one party than serviceable to tlie other. This gives a good deal of latitude ; but perhaps they are, in such cases, open to compensation witliout actual fulfilment A promise given without deliberation, according to Grotius lymself, is not binding. Those founded on deceit or error admit of many distinctions ; but he determines, in the cele- brated question of extorted promises, tliat they are valid by the natural, though their obligation may be annulled by the civil, law. lUit tlie promisee is bound to release a pro- mise tlius unduly obtained.- Tliese instances are sufficient 1 C. 10. Our o^^•n jiivispnidcnra poes Grotius, thou;4h (•onforniable to that lijion tlu! l)rii)ci|)li'S of (imtiiis. and uveii of tlio tlicolo.i;i<':(I rasuists in ijcnoral, i9 dcnitw tin; posfc^sor 1 IV :i li.id title, tlion;lea he a true one. jiistitin ex/'letrix, which tlie proper obli- lu a Subsequent passage, 1. iii. c. 19, gatiou of promises, ius such, requires. It § 4, Grotius seems to cai-ry this theory is also a proof how little the moral sense of the duty of releasing an luijust pro- of mankind goes along with the rigid niise so far as to deny the ol)ligation of casuists in this respect, that no one is the latter, and thus circuitouslv to :vgie« blamed for defending himself agJiinst a with the opposite class of casuists. » 12. 2 § 12. 192 JGROTIUS. Paet in diverges equally from that law. Not that he ever con- templated Avhat Smith seems to have meant by " natural jurisprudence," a theory of the principles which ought to run through, and to be the foundation of, the laws of all nations. But he knew that the judge in the tribunal, and the inward judge in the breast, even where their subjects of determi- nation appear essentially the same, must have different boundaries to their jurisdiction ; and that, as the general maxims and inflexible forms of external law, in attempts to accommodate themselves to the subtilties of casuistry, would become uncertain and arbitrary, so the finer emotions of the conscience Avould lose all their moral efficacy by restraining the duties of justice to that Avhich can be enforced by the law. In the course of this twelfth chapter, we come to a question much debated in the time of Grotius, — the lawfulness of usury. After admitting, against the common opinion, that it is not repugnant to the law of nature, he yet maintains the prohibition in the Mosaic code to be binding on all mankind.^ An extraordinary position, it would seem, in one who had denied any part of that system to be truly an universal law. This was, however, the usual determi- nation of casuists ; but he follows it up, as was also usual, with so many exceptions as materially relax and invalidate ■".he application of his rule. 109. The next chapter, on promissory oaths, is a corollary Promissory to the last two. It was the opinion of Grotius, as it oaths. |j3(j been of all theologians, and, in truth, of all mankind, that a promise or contract not only becomes more solemn, and entails on its breach a severer penalty, by means of this adjuration of the Supreme Being, but may even acquire a substantial validity by it, in cases where no prior obligation would subsist.- This chapter is distin- guished by a more than usually profuse erudition. But, notwithstandin"; the rijrid observance of oaths which he deems incumbent by natural and revealed law, he admits of a con- sideraltle autliority in the civil magistrate, or other superior, as a husband or fathtjr, to annul tiie oaths of inferiors before- hand, or to dispense with them afterwards ; not that they can release a moral obligation, but that the obligation itself is incurred under a tacit condition of their consent. And . he ' § 20. » C. 13. Chap. TV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 1 93 seems, in rather a sinjijular manner, to hint a kind of approval of such dispensations by the church.^ 110. "Whatever has been laid down by Grotlus in the hist three chaptei-s as to the natural obligations of man- Kngage- kind, has an especial reference to the main purport ^^^^ °^ of this gi-eat work, the duties of the supreme power, towards But tlie engagements of sovereigns give rise to many ^" ^"'^^' questions which cannot occur in those of private men. In the chapter which ensues, on the promises, oaths, and contracts of sovereigns, he confines himself to those engagements which immediately affect their subjects. These it is of great impor- tance, in the author's assumed province of the general confessor or casuist of kings, to place on a right footing ; because they have never wanted subservient counsellors, who would Avi'est the law of conscience, as well as that of the land, to the inter- ests of power. Grotius, in denying that the sovereign may revoke his own contracts, extends this case to those made by him during his minority, without limitation to such as have been authorized by his guardians.^ His contracts with his subjects create a true obligation, of which they may claim, though not enforce, the performance. He hesitates whether to call this obligation a civil or only a natural one ; and, in fact, it can only be determined by positive law.' Whether the successors of a sovereign are bound by his engagements, must depend, he observes, on the political constitution, and on the nature of the engagement. Those of an usurper he deter- mines not to be binding, which should probably be limited to domestic contracts, though his language seems lai'ge enough to comprise engagements towards foreign states.* 111. We now return from what, in strict language, may pass for a long digression, though not a needless one, public to the main stream of international law. The title of treaties. the fifteenth chapter is on Public Treaties. After several divisions, which it would at present be thought unnecessary to specify so much at length, Grotius enters on a question not then settled by theologians, whether alliances with infidel pow- ei-s were, in any circumstances, lawful. Francis I. had given 1 § 20. " Ex hoc fundamento dofondi = C. 14, § 1. ^ § 6. possiint absolutiones jurameutorimi, qufe * '' Contractibus vero eorum qui .•sine olim a princiiiibus. nunc ipsoruni prin- jure imperium invaserunt, non tcne- cipum Toluntate, quo niagis cautuin sit buutur populi aut Teri reges, nam hi pietati, ab ecclesia; prsesidibus exercen- jus obligandi populum non habuerunt." tiir." I 14. VOL. 111. 13 194 GEOTIUS. Part ni. great scandal in Europe by his league with the 1 urk. And, though Grotiiis admits the general lawfulness of such alliances, it is under limitations which would hardly have borne out the court of Fi-ance in promoting the aggrandizement of the com- mon enemy of Christendom. Another and more extensive head in the casuistry of nations relates to treaties that have been concluded without the authority of the sovereign. Tliat he is not bound by these engagements is evident as a leading rule ; but the course which, according to natural law, ought to be taken in such circumstances, is often doubtful. The famous capitulation of the Roman ai-my at the Caudine Forks is in point. Grotius, a rigid casuist, determines that the senate were not bound to replace their army in the condition from which the treaty had delivered them. And this seems to be a rational decision, though the Romans have sometimes incurred the censure of ill faith for their conduct. But if the sove- reign has not only by silence acquiesced in tlie eng-agement of his ambassador or general, which of itself, according to Grotius, will not amount to an implied ratification, but recog- nized it by some overt act of his own, he cannot afterwards plead t)ie defect of sanction.' 112. Promises consist externally in words, really in the in- Their inter- tcntiou of the parties. But, as the evidence of this pretation. intention must usually depend on words, we sliould adapt our general rules to their natural meaning. Common usage is to determine the interpretation of agreements, except where terms of a technical sense have been employed. But if the expressions will bear different senses, or if there is some apparent inconsistency in different clauses, it becomes neces- sary to collect the meaning conjecturally, from the nature of the subject, from the consequences of the projjosed interpre- tation, and from its bearing on other parts of the agreement. This serves to exclude unreasonable and unfair constructions from the equivocal language of treaties, such as was usual in former times to a degree which the greater prudence of con- tracting i>arties, if not their better faith, has rendered impossi- ble in modern iMU'ope. Among other rules of interpretation, wliether in private or public engagements, he lays down one, familiar to the jurists, l)ut concerning the validity of whidi some have doubted, — tliat tilings favorable, as they st}'le them, or conferring a benefit, are to be construed largely; 5 CIS. Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 195 things odious, or onerous to one party, are not to be stretched beyond the letter. Our own law, as is well known, adopts tin's distinction between remedial and penal statutes ; and it seems (wherever that which is favorabk; in one sense is not odious in another) the most equitable principle in public con- ventions. The celebrated question, the cause, or, as Polybius more truly calls it, the pretext, of the second Punic War, Avhether the terms of a treaty binding each party not to attack the alh'es of the other sliall comprehend those who have entered subsequent!}^ into alliance, seems, but i-ather on doubtful grounds, to be decided in the negative. Several other cases from liistory are agreeably introduced in this chapter.^ 113. It is often, he observes, important to ascertain whether a treaty be personal or real ; that is, whether it affect only the contractino; sovereiOT or the state. The treaties of re- publics are always real or permanent, even if the form of government should become monarchical ; but the converse is not true as to those of kings, which are to be interpreted according to the probable meaning where there are no words of restraint or extension, A treaty subsists with a king though he may be expelled by his subjects ; nor is it any breatjh of faith to take uj) arms against an usurper, with the lawful sovereign's consent. Tiiis is not a doctrine which would now be endured.^ 114. Besides those rules of interpretation which depend on explaining the words of an engagement, there are others ■\vhich must sometimes be employed to extend or limit the meaning beyond any natural construction. Thus, in the old law-case, a bequest, in the event of the testator's posthumous son dying, was held valid whei-e none was boi-n ; and instances of this kind are continual in the books of jurisprudence. It is equally reasonable sometimes to restrain the terms of a promise, where they clearly appear to go beyond the design of the promisor, or where supervenient circumstances indicate an exception which he would infallibly have made, A few sections in this place seem, perhaps, more fit to have been inserted in the eleventh chapter. 115. Tliere is a natural obliscation to make amends for injury to the natural rights of another, which is extended, by means of the establishment of property and of civil society, » C. 16. » 5 17. 196 GROTIUS. Part IH. to all which the laws have accorded him.^ Hence a cor- relative riffht arises, but a ris;ht which is to be dis- torepiiir tiiiguished from titness or merit, ihe jurists were iujury. accustoiiied to treat expletive justice, which consists in giving to every one what is strictly his own, separately from attributive justice, the equitable and right dispensa- tion of all things according to desert. With the latter, Grotius has nothing to do ; nor is he to be charged with introducing the distinction of perfect and imperfect rights, if, indeed, those phrases are as objectionable as some have accounted them. In the far greater part of this chapter, he considers the principles of this important province of natural law, the obligation to compensate damage, rather as it aifects private persons than sovereign states. As, in most in- stances, this tails within the jurisdiction of civil tribunals, the rules laid down by Grotius may, to a hasty reader, seem rather intended as directory to the judge, than to the con- science of the offending party. This, however, is not by any means the case: he is here, as almost everywhere else, a master in morality, and not in law. That he is not obsequi- ously following the Roman law, will appear by his determin- ing against the natural responsibihty of the owner for injuries committed, without his fault, by a slave or a beast.^ But sovereigns, l>e holds, are answerable for the piracies and robberies of their subjects when they are able to prevent them. This is the only case of national law wliich he discusses; but it is one of high importance, being, in fact, one of the ordinary causes of public hostility. This liability, however, does not exist where subjects, having obtained a lawful com- mission by letters-of-marque, become common pirates, and do not return home. 116. Thus far, the author begins in the eighteenth chapter, we have treated of rights founded on natural law, law of ^ with some little mixture of the arbitrary law of natious. nations. We come now to those which depend wholly on the latter. Such are the rights of ambassadors. We have now, therefore, to have recourse more to the usage of civilized peo[)le tluui to theoretical principles. The prac- tice of mankind has, in fact, been so much more uniform as to 1 Q_ 17. peries, in the legiU sense, which has ats» 2 This is against wliat wo read in the some classical authority, means Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 199 120. War is commonly grounded upon the right of punish- ing injuries; so tliat die general principles upon wliicli this riglit depends upon mankind ought well to be understood, before we can judge of so great a matter of national law. States, Grotius thinks, have a right, analogous to that of in- dividuals out of society, to punish heinous offences against the law of nature or of nations, though not affecting themselves, or even any other independent community. But this is to be df)ne very cautiously, and does not extend to violations of the positive divine law, or to any merely barbarous and irra- tional customs. Wars undei-taken only on this score are commonly suspicious. But he goes on to determine that war may l)e justly waged against those who deny the being and providence of God, though not against idolaters, much less for the sake of compelling any nation to embrace Christianity, unless they prosecute its professors, in which case they are justly lialjle to punishment. He pronounces strongly in this place against the prosecution of heretics.^ 121. This is the longest chapter in the work of Grotius, Several of his positions, as the reader may probably have observed, would not bear a close scrutiny ; the rights of indi- viduals in a state of nature, of mtigistrates in civil society, and of inde])endent communities, are not kept sufficiently distinct ; the equivocal meaning of right, as it exists correla- tively between two parties, and as it comprehends the general obligations of moral law, is not always guarded against. It is, notwithstanding these defects, a valuable commentary, regard being had to the time when it appeared, on the jirinciples botli of penal jurisprudence and of the rights of war. 122. It has been a great problem, whether the liabihty to punishment can be transmitted from one person to ^,^^5^ ^g. imother. This may be asked as to those who have sponsiw- been concerned in the crime, and those who have '**^^' not. In the hrst case, they ai-e liable as for their own offence, in having commanded, connived at, permitted, assisted, the actors in the crime before or after its perpetration. States are answerable for the delinquencies of their subjects when impunished. They are also bound either to punish, or to deliver up, those Avho take refuge within their dominions from the justice of their own country. He seems, however, to admit afterwards, that they need only comiiiand such persona » c. 20 200 GROTIUS. Pari III. to quit the country. But they have a right to inquire into and inform themselves of the guilt alleged ; the ancient privi- leges of suppliants being established for the sake of those who have been unjustly persecuted at home. The practice of modern Europe, he owns, has limited this right of demand- ing the delivery or punishment of refugees within narrow bounds. As to the punishment of those who have' been wholly innocent of the offence, Grotius holds it universally unjust, but distinguishes it from indirect evil, which may often fall on the innocent. Thus, when the estate of a father is confis- cated, his children suffer, but are not punished ; since their succession was only a right contingent on his possession at his death.^ It is a consequence from this principle, that a people, so far subject to its sovereign as to have had no control upon his actions, cannot justly incur punishment on account of them. 123. After distinguishing the causes of war into pretexts Insufficient ^^^ motivcs, and setting aside wars without any causes of assignable justification as mere robberies, he men- ^^' tions several pretexts which he deems insufficient ; such as the aggrandizement of a neighbor, his construction of fortresses, the right of discovery where there is ah'eady a possessor, however barbarous, the necessity of occupying more land. And here he denies, both to single men and to a people, the right of taking up arms in order to recover their liberty. He laughs at the pretended right of the emperor or of the pope to govern the world, and concludes with a singular warning against wars undertaken upon any pretended explana- Duty of tion of scriptural prophecies.^ It will be antici- avoiding it. pj^tgd, from the scrupulousness of Grotius in all his casuistry, that he enjoins sovereigns to abstain from war in a doubtful cause, and to use all convenient methods of avoiding it by conference, arbitration, or even by lot. Single combat itself, as a mode of lot, he does not wholly reject in this place. In answer to a question often put, whether a war can 1 C. 21, § 10. Hence it m-ouIJ follow, cerning those two laws. Conti.ication is by tlic )irinci|)le of (Ji-otius, that our law no more unjust towards the posterity of of forfeiture in high treason is just, being an offender than fine, from which of course part of the direct punishment of the it only differs in degree ; and, on the guilty ; but that of attainder, or corrup- other hand, the law has as much right to tion of blood, is unjust, being an inllic- exclude that posterity from enjoying pro- tion on the innocent alone. I incline to perty at all. as from enjoying that which concur in this distinction, and think it descends from a third party through the at least pliusible, though it was seldom blood, as we call it, of a criminal ancestor. er never taken in the dlscufsions con- ^ C. 22. Chap. FV. DE JURE BELLI ET PACIS. 201 be just on both sides, he replies, that, in relation to the cause or subject, it cannot be so, since there cannot be two opposite rights ; but, since men may easily be deceived as to the real right, a war may be just on both sides with respect to the agents.^ In another part of his work, he observes that resistance, even where the cause is not originally just, may become such by the excess of the other party. V24:. The duty of avoiding war, even in a just cause, us long as possible, is rather part of moral virtue in Andexpe- a large sense than of mere justice. But, besides '"«°'=y-^ the obligations imposed on us by humanity and by Chris- tian love, it is often expedient, for our own interests, to avoid war. Of this, however, he says little ; it being plainly a matter of civil prudence Avith which he has no concern.^ Dismissing, therefore, the subject of this chapter, he comes to the justice of wars undertaken for the sake of others. Sovereigns, he conceives, are not bound to the'sake take up arms in defence of any one of their sub- °^^j'J^^ jects who may be unjustly treated. Hence a state may abandon those whom it cannot protect without great loss to the rest ; but whether an innocent subject may be delivered up to an enemy, is a more debated question. Soto and Vasquez, casuists of great name, had denied this: Grotius, however, determines it affirmatively. This seems a remarka- ble exception from the general inflexibility of his adherence to the rule of right. For on what principle of strict justice can a people, any more than private persons, sacrifice, or put in jeopardy, the life of an innocent man ? Grotius is influenced by the supposition, that the subject ought volun- tarily to surrender himself into the hands of the enemy, for the public good; but no man forfeits his natural rights by refusing to perform an action not of strict social obliga- tion.^ 125. Next to subjects are allies, whom the state has bound itself to succor; and friendly powers, though with- ^j^.^^ out alliance, may also be protected from unjust attack. This extends even to all mankind; though war in behalf of strangers is not obligatory. It is also lawful to deliver the subjects of others from extreme mani- g^^^ fest oppression of their rulers ; and, though this has often been a mere pretext, we are not on that account to 1 C. 23. » C. 24 » C. 26. 202 GROTIUS. Part IH deny the justice of an honest interfLrence. He even thinka the right of foreign powers, in such ti case, more unequi- vocal than that of the oppressed people themselves. At the close of this chapter, he protests sti-ongly against those who serve in any cause for the mere sake of pay ; and holds them worse than the common executioner, who puts none but crimi- nals to death.^ 126. In the twenty-sixth and concluding chapter of this second book, Grotius investigates the lawfulness of serve in an bearing arms at the command of superiors, and unjust determines that subjects are indispensably bound not to serve in a war whicli they conceive to be clearly unjust. He even inclines, though admitting the prevailing opinion to be otherwise, to thuik, that, in a doubtful cause, they should adhere to the general moral rule in case of doubt, and refuse their personal service. This would evi- dently be impracticable, and ultimately subversive of poli- tical society. It, however, denotes the extreme scrupulosity of his mind. One might smile at another proof of this, ■where he determines that the hangman, before the perform- ance of his duty, should satisfy himself as to the justice of the sentence.^ 127. The rights of war, that is, of commencing hostility, Rights in have thus far been investigated with a comprehen- war. siveness that has sometimes almost hidden the sub- ject. We come now, in the third book, to rights in war. "Whatever may be done in war is permitted either by the law of nature or that of nations. Grotius begins with the first. The means morally, tliough not physically, necessary to attain a lawful end, are themselves lawful ; a proposition which he seems to understand relatively to the rights of others, not to the absolute moral quality of actions ; distinctions wiiich are apt to embarrass him. AVe have, tlierefore, a right to era- ploy three against an enemy, though it may be the cause of suffering to innocent persons. The principles of natural law anthorize us to prevent neutrals fi-om furnishing an enemy with the supplies of war, or with any thing else essential for his resistance to our just demands of redress, such as pro- visions in a state of siege. And it is remarkable that he refers this latter question to natural law, because he had not found any clear decision of it by the positive law of nations.^ 1 C. 25 » C. 26. » L. iu. c. 1. Chap. IV. DE JURE BELLI ET 1 ACIS. 203 128. In acting against an enemy, force is the nature of WJU-. But it may be inquired whether deceit is not xjseof also a hiwful means of success. The practice of na- '**'^*''- tions, ar I the autliority of most writers, seem to warrant it. Grotius ililates on different sorts of artifice, and, after admit- ting the hiwfuhiess of such as deceive by indications, comes to the question of words equivocal or wholly false. Tliis lie first discusses on the general moral principle of veracity, more prolixly, and with more deference to authority, than would suit a motjern reader ; yet this basis is surely indispensable for the support of any decision in public casuistry. The right, however, of employing falsehood towards an enemy, which he generally admits, does not extend to ]iromises, which are always to be kept, whether express or implied, especially Avhen con- firmed by oath; and more gi-eatness of mind, as well as more ChVistian simplicity, would be shown by abstaining wholly from falsehood in war. The law of nature does not permit us to tempt any one to do that which in him would be criminal, as to assassinate his sovereign, or to betray his trust; but we have a right to make use of his voluntary offers.^ 129. Grotius now proceeds from the consideration of natu- ral law or justice to that of the general customs of ^^^^^^^ ^^^ mankind, in which, according to him, the arbitrary customsof law of nations consists. By this, in the first place, ^r^f^^^^^ though naturally no one is answerable for another, it has been established, that the property of every citizen is, as it were, mortgaged for the liabilities of the state to which he belongs. Hence, if justice is refused to us by the sov- ereign, we have a right to indemnification out of the property of his subjects. This is conmionly called reprisals ; and it is a right which every private person would enjoy, were it not for the civil laws of most countries, which compel him to obtain the authorization of his own sovereign or of some tri- bunal. By an analogous right, the subjects of a foreign state have sometimes been seized in return for one of our own sub- jects unjustly detained by their government.' 130. A regular war, by the law of nations, can only be waged between i)olitical communities. AMierever Deciaratiom there is a semblance of civil justice and fixed law, "f ^^''^■ «uch a connnunity exists, however violent may be its actions. But a body of pirates or robbers are not one. Absolute inde- » L. iu. c. 1. » c. 2 204 GROTIUS. Pakt m, » pendence, however, is not required for the right of war. A formal declaration of war, though not necessary by the law of nature, has been rendered such by the usage of civilized nations. But it is required even by the former, that we should demand reparation for an injury, before we seek redress by force. A declaration of war may be conditional or absolute ; and it has been established as a ratification of regular hostilities, that they may not be confounded with the unwarranted acts of private men. No interval of time is required for their commencement after declaration.^ 131. All is lawful during war, in one sense of the word, which by the law and usage of nations is dispun- Uw^of na^- ishable. And this, in formal hostilities, is as much tiousover the right of one side as of the other. The subjects enemies. ^^ ^^^^ enemy, whether active on his side or not, be- come liable to these extreme rights of slaughter and pillage ; but it seems that, according to the law of nations, strangers should be exempted from them, unless, by remaining in the country, they serve his cause. Women, children, and prisoners may be put to death ; quarter or capitulation for Ufe refused. On the other hand, if the law of nations is less strict in this respect than that of nature, it forbids some things which na- tui'ally might be allowable means of defence, as the poisoning an enemy, or the wells from which he is to drink. The assassination of an enemy is not contrary to the law of nations, unless by means of traitors ; and even this is held allowable against a rebel or robber, who are not protected by the rules of formal war. But the violation of women is contrary to the law of nations.^ The rights of war with respect to enemies' pro- perty are unlimited, without exception even of churches or sepulchral monuments, sparing always the bodies of the dead.' 132. By the law of nature, Grotius thinks tliat we acquire a property in as much of the spoil as is sufficient to indemnify us, and to punish the aggressor. But the law of nations car- ries this much farther, and gives an unlimited property in all that has been acquired by conquest, which mankind are bound to respect. This riglit commences as soon as the enemy has lost all chance of I'ecovering his losses ; which is, in mova})le3, as soon as they are in a place within our sole power. The transfer of property in territories is not so speedy. The goods of neutrals are not thus ti*ansferred, when found in the cities or » c. a. » c. 4. » c. 6. Chap. IV. RIGHTS OF WAR. 205 on board the vessels of an enemj. Whether the spoil belongs to the captors, or to their sovereign, is so disputed a question, that it can hardly be reckoned a part of that law of nations, or universal usage, with which Grotius is here concerned. He thinks, however, that wliat is taken in public enterprises appertains to the state ; and that this has been the general practice of mankind. The civil laws of each people may- modify this, and have frequently done so.* 133. Prisoners, by the law of nations, become slaves of the captor, and their posterity also. He may prisoners treat them as he pleases with impunity. This has become been establislied by the custom of mankind, in order ^^^"^" that the conqueror might be induced to spare the lives of the vanquished. Some theologians deny the slave, even when taken in an unjust war, the right of making his escape ; from whom Grotius dissents. But he has not a right, in con- science, to resist the exercise of his master's authority. This law of nations as to the slavery of prisoners, as he admits, has not been universally received, and is now abolislunl in Christian countries, out of respect to religion.^ But, strictly, as an individual may be reduced into slavery, so may a whole (Kjnquered people. It is, of course, at the discretion of the conqueror to remit a portion of his right, and to leave as much of their liberties and possessions untouched as he pleases.'' 134. The next chapter relates to the right of postliminium ; one depending so much on the peculiar fictions of the „. , , . Koman jurists, that it seems strange to discuss it as postiimi part of an universal law of nations at all. Nor does "'"°'' it properly belong to the rights of war Avhich are betAveen belligerent parties. It is certainly consonant to natural just- ice, that a citizen returning from captivity should be fully restored to every privilege and all property that he had enjoyed at home. In modern Europe, there is little to whicli the jus postliminii can, even by analogy, be apphed. It has been determined, in courts of admiralty, that vessels recap- tured after a short time do not revert to their owner. This chapter must be reckoned rather episodical.* 135. AVe have thus far looked only at the exterior right, accorded by the law of nations to all who wage regular hosti- lities ir a just or unjust quarrel. This right is one of irapunitj^ » c. 6 > c 7 8 c. 8. ♦ 0. ». 206 MORAL LIMITATIOlSr OF RIGHTS. Part la alone ; but before our own conscience, or the tribunal of moral approbation in mankind, many things hitherto tation of '" spokcu of as lawful must be condemned. In the riRhtsin gj-g^ place, an unjust war renders all acts of force committed in its prosecution unjust, and binds the aggressor before God to reparation. Every one, general or soldier, is responsible in such cases for the wrong he has com- manded or perpetrated. Nor can any one knowingly retain the property of another obtained by such a war, though he should come to the possession of it with good faith.^ And aa nothing can be done, consistently with moral justice, in an unjust war, so, however legitimate our ground for hostilities may be, we are not at liberty to transgress the boundaries of equity and humanity. In this chapter, Grotius, after dilating with a charitable abundance of examples and authorities in favor of clemency in war, even towards those who have been most guilty in provoking it, specially indicates women, old men, and children, as always to be spared ; extending this also to all whose occupations are not military. Prisoners are not to be put to death, nor are toAvns to be refused terms of capitulation. He denies that the law of retaliation, or the necessity of striking terror, or the obstinate resistance of an enemy, dispenses with the obligation of saving his life. No- thing but some personal crime can warrant the refusal of quarter, or the death of a prisoner. Nor is it allowable to put hostages to death.- 13G. AH lumecessai'y devastation ought to be avoided, such as the destruction of trees, of houses, especially Moderation , , , i i- i -i t i /• required as Ornamental and pubhc buudmgs, and of every to spoil. tiling not serviceable in war, nor tending to pro- long it, as pictures and statues. Temples and se])ulchies are to be spared for the same or even stronger reasons. Thougli it is not the object of Grotius to lay down any political maxims, he cannot refi-ain in this place from pointing out several con- siderations of expediency, which should induce us to resti-ain the license of arms within the limits of natui-al law." There is no riglit by natui-e to more Ijooty, strictly speaking, tlian is sulRcient for our indemnity, wherein arc included the expenses of the war ; and the property of innocent persons, being sul)jects of our enemies, is only liable in failure of those who are primarily aggressors.'* » C 10. 2 C 11. • C. 12. * 13. Ch.u>. IV. MODERATIOX IN WAK. 207 137. The persons of prisoners are only liable, in strict moral justioe, so fur as is required for satisfaction And as to of our injury. Tlie slavery into which they may be prisoners. reduced ought not to extend farther tlian an obligation of per petual servitude in return for maintenance. The power over slaves by the law of nature is far short of what the arbitrary law of nations permits, antl does not give a right of exacting too severe lal)or, or of inflicting punishment beyond desert. The peculiuni, or private acquisitions of a slave by economy or donation, ought to be reckoned his property. Slaves, how- ever, captured in a just war, though one in which they have had no concern, are not warranted in conscience to escape, And I'ccover their liberty. But the children of such slaves are not in servitude by the law of nature, except so far as they have been obliged to their master for subsistence in infancy. With respect to prisoners, the better course is to let them redeem themselves by a ransom, which ought to be moderate.^ 138. The acquisition of that sovereignty which was enjoyec by a concpiered people, or by their rulers, is not only aiso in legitimate, so far as is wan-anted by the punishment conquest, they have deserved, or by the value of our own loss, but also so far as the necessity of securing ourselves extends. This last is what is often unsafe to remit out of clemency. It is a part of moderation in victory to incorporate the conquered witli our own citizens on equal terms, or to leave their inde- pendence on reasonable precautions for our own security. If this cannot be wholly conceded, their civil laws and municipal magistracies may be preserved, and, above all, the free exer- cise of their religion. The interests of conquerors are as much consulted, generally, as their reputation, by such lenient use of their advantages.- 139. It is consonant to natural justice that we should restore to the original owners all of whicli they have been despoiled in an unjust war, when it falls '^"utution into our hands by a lawful conciuest, without regard torighd to the usual limits or postliminium. Ihus, it an ambitious state comes to be stripped of its usurpations, this should be not for the benefit of the conqueror, but of the ancient possessors. Length of time, however, will raise the presiuuption of abandonment.^ Nothing should be taken 1 C. 14. » C. 16. » 0. 16. 208 PROMISES TO ENEmES. Part ID. m war from neutral states, except through necessity and with compensation. The most ordinary case is that of the passage of troops. The neutral is bound to strict impartiality in a war of doubtful justice.^ But it seems to be the opinion of Grotius, that, by the law of nature, every one, even a pri- vate man, may act in favor of the innocent party as far as the rights of war extend, except that he cannot appropriate to himself the possessions of the enemy ; that right being one founded on indemnification. But civil and military laws have generally restrained this to such as obey the express order of their government.'^ 140. The license of war is restrained either by the laws of Promises to "^^urc and natious, which have been already dis- eneniiesaad cussed, or by particular engagement. The obliga- piiates. ^j^^ ^£ promises extends to enemies, who are still parts of the great socie'y of mankind. Faith is to be kept even with tyrants, robbers, and pirates. He here again ad- verts to the case of a promise made under an unjust compul- sion ; and possibly his reasoning on the general principle is not quite put in the most satisfactory manner. It would now be argued that the violation of engagements towards the worst of mankind, who must be supposed to have some means of self-defence, on account of which we propose to treat with them, would produce a desperation among men in similar circumstances injurious to society. Or it might be urged, that men do not lose by their crimes a right to the performance of all engagements, especially when they have fulfilled their own share in them, but only of such as involve a positive injustice towards the other party. In this place he repeats his former doctrine, that the most invalid promise may be rendered binding by the addition of an oath. It follows, from the gene- ral rule, tliat a prince is bound by his engagements to rebel subjects ; above all, if tliey have had the precaution to exact his oath. And thus a change in the constitution of a mo- narchy may legitimately take place, ar)d it may become mixed instead of absolute by the irrevocable concession of the sov- ereign. The rule, that promises made under an unjust com- pulsion are not obligatory, has no application in a public and regular war.'^ Barbeyrac remarks on this, that if a conqueror, • C 17. ^ C. 19. respect to the general obligation of such • C. 19, § 11. There seems, as h.as promises, which he maintains in the se- been intimated above, to be some incon- conj book ; and now, as far as I collect Eistency in the doctnne of Grotius with his meaning, denies by implicatioa Chap. IV. TREATIES. 209 like Alexander, subdues an unoffending people with no spe- cious pretext at all, he does not perceive why they should be more bound in conscience to keep the promises of obedience they may have been compelled to enter into, than if he had been an ordinary bandit. And this remark shows us, that the celebrated problem in casuistry, as to the ol)ligation of com- pulsory promises, has far more important consequences than the payment of a petty sum to a robber. In two cases, how- (;vcr, Grotius holds that we are dispensed from keeping an engagement towards an enemy. One of these is, when it has been conditional, and the other party has not fulfilled his part of the convention. This is, of course, obvious, and can only be open to questions as to the precedence of the condition. The other case is where we retain what is due to us by way of compensation, notwithstanding our promise. This is permis- sible in certain instances.^ 141. The obligation of treaties of peace depends on their being concluded by the authority which, according to Treaties the constitution of the state, is sovereign for this ^""^''on,'!^* purpose. Kings who do not possess a patrimonial petent sovereignty cannot alienate any part of their domin- *"*'i°"'y- ions Avithout the consent of the nation or its representatives : they must even have the consent of the city or province which is thus to be transferred. In patrimonial kingdoms, the sov- ereign may alienate the whole, but not always a part, at pleasure. He seems, however, to admit an ultimate right of sovereignty, or dominium eminens, by which all states may dispose of the property of their subjects, and consequently alienate it for the sake of a gi*eat advantage, but subject to the obligation of granting them an indemnity. He even holds that the community is naturally bound to indemnify pri- vate subjects for the losses they sustain in war, though this right of reparation may be taken away by civil laws. The right of alienation by a treaty of peace is only questionable between the sovereign and his subjects : foreign states may presume its validity in their own favor .'^ 142. Treaties of peace are generally founded on one of two principles ; that the parties shall return to the con- jj^tte^ dition wherein they were before the commencement relating to of hostilities, or that they shall retain what they pos- *""' BBSS at their conclusion. The last is to be presumed in a case « c. l». » c. 20. VOL. in. 14 ^ 210 TRUCES AND CONVENTIONS. Part ni, of doubtful interpretation. A treaty of peace extinguishes all public grounds of quarrel, whether known to exist or not, but does not put an end to the claims of private men subsisting before the war, the extinguishment of which is never to be presumed. The other rules of interpretation which he lays down are, as usual with liim, derived rather from natural equity than the practice of mankind, though with no neglect or scorn of the latter. He maintains the right of giving an asylum to the banished, but not of receiving large bodies of men who abandon their countiy.^ 143. The decision of lot may be adopted in some cases, in order to avoid a war, wherein we have little chance of resist- ing an enemy. But that of single combat, according to Gro- tius's opinion, though not repugnant to the law of nature, is incompatible with Christianity; unless in the case where a ])arty, unjustly assailed, has no other means of defence. Ar- bitration by a neutral power is another method of settling differences, and in this we are bound to acquiesce. Wars may also be terminated by implicit submission or by capitula- tion. The rights which tliis gives to a conqueror have been already discussed. He concludes this chapter with a few observations upon hostages and pledges. With respect to the latter, he holds that they may be reclaimed after any lapse of time, unless there is a presumption of tacit abandonment.^ 144. A truce is an interval of war, and does not require i Truces and frcsli declaration at its close. No act of hostility is conventions, jj^^yl^-, J 1 dunng its continuaucc : the infringement of this rule by either party gives the other a right to take up arms without delay. Safe conducts are to be construed libe- rally, rejecting every meaning of the words which does not reach their spirit. Thus a safe conduct to go to a place im- plies the right of returning unmolested. The ransom of prisoners ought to be favored.^ A state is bound by the con- ventions in war made by its oificers, provided they are such as may reasonably be presumed to lie within their delegated au- thority, or such as tliey have a special commission to warrant, known to the other contracting party. A state is also bound by its tacit ratihcation in permitting the execution of any part of such a ti'eaty, tliough in itself not obligatory, and also by availing Itself of any advantage thereby. Grotius dwelk afterwards on many distinctions relating to this subject, whicli, 1 c. 20. » Id. » c. 21. Chap. IV. PALEY'S OBJECTIONS. 211 however, as far as they do not resolve themselves into the general princijile, are to be considered on the ground of posi- tive regulation.^ 145. Private persons, whether bearing arras or not, are as much bound as their superiors by the engagements ^qj,^ ^j. they contract with an enemy. This applies particu- private larly to the parole of a ])risoner. The engagement f'*-'^°"*- not to serve again, though it has been held iiuU by some jurists, as contrary to our obligation towards our country, is valid. It has been a question, whether the state ought to comjiel its citizens to keep their wprd towards the enemy. The better opinion is, that it should do so ; and this has been the practice of tlie most civilized nation?.^ Those who put themselves under the protection of a state engage to do nothing hostile towards it. Hence such actions as that of Zopyrus, who betrayed Babylon under the guise of a refugee, are not excusable. Several sorts of tacit engagements are established by the usage of nations, as that of raising a white flag in token of a desire to suspend arms. These are excep- tions from the general rule which authorizes deceit in Avar.^ In the concluding chapter of the whole treatise, Grotius briefly exhorts all states to preserve good faith and to seek peace at all times, upon the mild principles of Christianity.* 146. If the reader has had the patience to make his way through the abstract of Grotius, De Jure Belli, objections that we have placed before him, he will be fully ^adJb''"*' prepared to judge of the criticisms made upon this I'aiev, iin- treatise by Pa'ley and Dugald Stewart. "The '•«'^'^''"="''« writings of Grotius and Puffendorf," says the former, " are of too forensi(! a cast, too much mixed up with civil law and with the jurisprudence of Germany, to answer precisely the design of a system of ethics, the direction of private consciences in the general conduct of human life." But it was not the intention of Grotius (we are not at present concerned witli Puffendorf) to fumish a system of ethics ; nor did any one ever hold forth his treatise in this light. Upon some most impoi'tant branches of morality he has cer- tainly dwelt so fully as to answer the pin-jjose of "• directing the private conscience in the conduct of life." The great aim, however, of his inquiries was to ascertain the principles of natural right apphcable to independent com'aunities. » C. 22. » C. 23. » 0. 24. « C. 26 212 REPLY OF MACKINTOSH. Part UI. 147. Paley, it must be owned, has a more specious ut as it was not possible to lay down any solid principles of international riglit till the notions of rigiit of sovereignty, of dominion over things and persons, of war itself, were clearly estabhshed, it became indispensable to build upon a more extensive basis than later writers on tlio law of nations, who found the labor performed to their hands, have thought necessary. All ethical philosophy, even in those parts which bear a near relation to jurisprudence and to international law, was, in the age of C4rotius, a chaos of incoherent and arbitrary notions, brought in from various sources, — from the ancient schools, from the Scriptures, the fathers, the canons, the casuistical theologians, the rabbins, the jurists, as well as fi-om the practice and sentiments of every civilized nation, past and present, the Jews, the Greeks and Romans, the trading republics, the chivalrous kingdoms of modern Europe. If Grotius lias not wholly disentangled himself from this bewildering maze, through whieli he pain- fully traces his way by the lights of reason and revelation, lie has at least cleared up much, and put others still oftener in the right path, where he has not been able to follow it. Condillac, as here quoted by Stewart, has anticipated Paley's charge against Grotius, of laboring to support his conclusions by the authority of others, and of producing a long string of quotations to prove the most indubitable propositions. In what degree this very exaggerated remark is true, we liave already seen. But it should be kept in mind, that neitlier the disposition of the age in which Grotius lived, nor the real necessity of illustrating every part of his inquiries by tlie precedent usages of mankind, would permit him to treat of moral philosophy as of the abstract theorems of geometry. If his erudition has sometimes obstructed or misled him, which perhaps has not so frequently happened as these critics assume, it is still true, that a contemptuous ignorance of what has been done or has been taught, such as belonged to the school of Condillac and to that of Faley, does not very well qualify the moral pliilosopher for inquiry into the principles which are to regulate human nature, 152. "Araon'T the different ideas," Stewart observes, "which Chap. IV NATURAL JURISPRUDENCE. 215 have been formed of natural jurisprudence, one of the most common, especially in tlie earlier systems, supposes its ol)jcct to be, to lay down those rules of justice which would be bindin;:: on men living in a, social state without any positive institutions ; or, as it is frequently called by writers on tliis subject, living together in a state of nature. This idea of the provinci; of jurisprudence seems to have been uppermost in the mind of Grotius in various parts of his treatise." Alter tome conjectures on the motives which led the early writers to take this view of national law, and admitting that the rules of justice are in every case precise and indispensable, anO that their authority is altogether independent of that of the civil magistrate, he deems it " obviously absurd to spend much lime in speculating about the principles of this natural law, as applicable to men before the institution of governments." It may possibly be as absurd as he thinks it. But where has Grotius sliown, that this condition of natural society was uppermost in his thouglits ? Of the state of nature, as it existed among individuals before the foundation of any civil institutions, he says no more than was requisite in order to exhibit tlie origin of those rights which spring from property and government. But that he has, in some piirt es])ecially of his second book, dwelt upon the rules of justice binding on men subsequent to the institution of property, but independ- ently of positive laws, is most certain ; n6r is it possible for any one to do otherwise who does not follow Hobbes in con- founding moral with legal obligation ; a theory to which Mr. Stewart was of all men the most averse. 153. Natural jurisprudence is a term that is not always taken in the same sense. It seems to be of English origin ; nor am I certain, though my memory may deceive me, that I have ever met with it in Latin or in French. Strictly speak- \ng, as jurisprudence means the science of law, and is especially employed with respect to the Roman, natural juris- prudence must be the science of morals, or the law of nature;. It is, therefore, in this sense, co-extensive with etliics, and comprehends the rules of temperance, liberality, and benevo- lence, as much as those of justice. Stewart, however, seems to consider this idea of jurisprudence as an arbitrary exten- sion of the science derived from the technical phraj;eolog}' of the Roman law% " Some vague notion of tiiis kind," he says, '*has manifestly given birth to many of the digiessions of 216 1j"NIYERSAL JUKISPRUDENCE. Part III. Grotius." It may have been seen by the analysis of the entire treatise of Grotius, above given, that none of his digres- sions, if such they are to be called, have originated in any vague notion of an identity, or proper analogy, between the strict rules of justice and those of the other virtues. The Aristotelian division of justice into commutative and distribu- tive, which Grotius has adopted, might seem in some respect to bear out this supposition ; but it is evident, from the con- text of Stewart's observations, that he was referring only to the former species, or justice in its nioi*e usual sense, the observance of perfect rights, whose limits may be accurately determined, and whose violation may be redressed. 154. Natural jurisprudence has another sense imposed upon it by Adam Smith. According to this sense, its object, in the words of Stewart, is " to asceilain the general principles of justice which ought to be recognized in every municipal code, and to which it ought to be the aim of every legislator to accommodate his institutions." Grotius, in Smith's opinion, was "the first who attempted to give the world any thing like a system of those principles which ought to run through, and to be the foundation of, the laws of all nations ; and his treatise on the laws of peace and war, with all its imperfec- tions, is, pei-haps, at this day the most complete book that has yet been given on the subject." 155. The first, probably, in modern times, who conceived the idea of an universal jurisprudence was Lord Bacon. He places among the desiderata of political science the province of universal justice or the sources of law. " Id nunc agatur, ut fontes justiti:i3 et utilitatis publico} petantur, et in singulis juris partibus character quidam et idea justi exhibeatur, ad quem particularium regnorum et rerumpublicarum leges pro- bare, atque inde emendationem moliri, quisque, cui ha3c cordi erit et curje, possit."^ The maxims which follow are an admi- rable illustration of the principles which should regulate the enactment and expression of laws, as well as of much that should guide, in a general manner, the decision of courts of justice. They touch very slightly, if at all, any subject which Grotius has handled ; but certainly come far closer to natural jurisprudence, in the sense of Smith, inasmuch as they con- tain principles which have no limitation to the circumstances of particular societies. These maxims of Bacon, and all < De Augmentis, lib. viii. Chap. IV. UNFAIRNESS OF STEWART. 217 olhei-s that seem properly to come within the province of juris- prudence in this sense, which is now become not uncommon, the science of universal Imv, are resolvable partly into those of natural justice, partly into those of public expediency. Little, however, could be objected against the admission of universal jurisprudence, in this sense, among the sciences. But if it is meant that any systematic science, whether by the name of jurisprudence or legislation, can be laid down as to the principles which ought to determine the institutions of all nations, or that, in other words, the laws of each separate comiTuniity ought to be regulated by any universal standard, in matters not depending upon eternal justice, we must demur to receiving so very disputable a proposition. It is probable that Adam Smith had no thoughts of asserting it ; yet his language is not very clear, and he seems to have assigned some object to Grotius distinct from the establishment of natural and international law. "Whether this was," says Stewart, " or was not, the leading object of Grotius, it is not matei-ial to decide ; but, if this was his object, it will not be disputed that he has executed his d(3sign in a very desultory manner, and that he often seems to have lost sight of it alto- gether, in the midst of those miscellaneous speculations on political, ethical, and historical subjects, which form so large a portion of his treatise, and which so frequently succeed each other without any apparent connection or common aim." 156. The unfairness of this passage it is now hai'dly incum- bent upon me to point out. The reader has been enabled to answer that no political speculation will be found in the volume De Jure Belli ac Pacis, unless the disquisition on the origin of human society is thus to be denominated ; that the instances continually adduced from history are always in illus- tration of the main argument ; and that what are here called ethical speculations are in fact the real subject of the book, since it avowedly treats of obligations on the conscience of mankind, and especially of their rulers. Whether the Vari- ous topics in this treatise " succeed each other without appa- rent connection or common aim," may best be seen by the titles of the chapters, or by the analysis of their contents. There are certainly a very few of these that have little in common, even by deduction or analogy, with international law ; though scarce any, I think, which do not rise naturally out of the pre\ious discussiou. Exuberances of this kind 218 GROTIUS VINDICATED AGAINST Part Ilf. are so common in writers of great reputation, that, where they do not transgress more than Grotius has done, the censure of irrelevancy has been always reckoned hypercritical. 157. "The Roman system of jurisprudence," Mr. Stewart proceeds " seems to have Marped, in no inconsiderable degree, the notions of Grotius on all questions connected with the theory of legislation, and to have diverted his attention from that i)hilosophical idea of law so well expressed by Cicero: * Non a praetoris edicto, neque a duodecim tabulis, sed penitus ex intima philosophia hauriendam juris disciplinam.' In this idolatry, indeed, of the Roman law, he has not gone so far as some of his commentators, who have afhrmed that it is only a different name for the law of nature ; but that his partiality for his professional pursuits has often led him to overlook the immense diifereuce between the state of society in ancient and modern Europe will not, I believe, now be disputed." It is probable that it will be disputed by all who are acquainted with Grotius. The questions connected with the theory of legislation which he has discussed are chiefly those relating to the acquisition and alienation of property in some of the earlier chapters of the second book. That he has not, in these disquisitions, adopted all the determinations of the Roman jurists, is certain : whether he may in any parti- cular instance have adhered to them more than the best theoiy of legislation would admit, is a matter of variable opinion. But Stewart, Avholly unacquainted with tlie civil laws, appears to have much underrated their value. In most questions of private right, they foi-m the great ba^^is of every modern legislation ; and as all civilized nations, including our own, have derived a large portion of their jurisprudence from tliis source, so even the theorists, who would disdain to be ranked as disciples of Paullus and Papinian, are not ashamed to be their plagiaries. 158. It has been thrown out against Grotius by Rousseau,^ — and the same insinuation maybe found in other >-imiicated Writers, — that he confounds the fact with the right, asainst j^j^j (jjy Juties of uatious with their practice. How Rousseau. ,. , ,. . . , • n ■, • i • xr. little foundation there is for this calumny is sufri- ciently apparent to our readers. Scrupulous, as a casuist, to an excess hardly reconcihible with the security and welfare of good men, he \\as the first, beyond the precincts of the con- > Contrat Social. Ch.\p. IV. STEWART AND ROUSSEAU 219 fessional or the church, to pour the dictates of a sanit-like innocence into the ears of p-inces. It is true, that in recog- nizing the legitimacy of slavery, and in carrying too far the principles of obedience to government, he may be thought to have deprived mankind of some of their security against injustice ; but this is exceedingly different from a sanction to it." An implicit deference to what he took for divine truth wjis the first axiom in the philosophy of Grotius. If he was occasionally deceived in his application of this principle, it was but according to the notions of his age; but those who wholly reject the authority must, of course, want a common standard by which his speculations in moral philosophy can be reconciled with their own. 159. 1 must now quit a subject upon which, perhaps, I have dwelt too long. The high tame of Dugald Stewart has i-endered it a sort of duty to vindicate from his hasty cen sur'es the memoi-y of one still more illustrious in reputation, till the lapse of time and the fickleness of literary fashion conspired with the popularity of his assailants to magnify his defects, and meet the very name of his famous treatise with a kind of scornful ridicule. That Stewart had never read much of Grotius, or even gone over the titles of his chap- ters, is very manifest; and he displays a similar ignorance as to the other writers on natural law, who for more than a century afterwards, as he admits himself, exercised a great influence over the studies of Europe. I have commented upon very few, comparatively, of the slips which occur in his pages on this subject. 160. The arrangement of Grotius has been bhrnied as unscientific by a more friendly judge. Sir James iiis arrange Mackintosh. Though I do not feel very strongly °''''"'- the force of his objections, it is evident that the law of nature might have been established on its basis, before the author passed forward to any discjuisition upon its reference to in- dependent communities. This w^ould have changed a good deal the principal object that Grotius had in view, and brought his treatise, in point of method, very near to that of Pnflendorf. But assuming, as he did, the authority recog- nized by those for whom he wrote, that of the Scriptures, he was less inclined to dwell on the proof which reason afibrds for a natural law, though fully satisfied of its validity even without reference to the Supreme Being. 220 DEFECTS OF GROTIUS. Taut III. 161. The real faults of Grotius, leading to erroneous determinations, seem to be rather an urmecessary ms defects, gcrupuiousness, and somewhat of old theological pre- judice, from which scarce any man in his age, who was not wholly indiiferent to religion, had liberated himself. The notes of Barbeyrac seldom foil to correct this leaning. Several later writers on international law havi. treated his doctrine of an universal law of nations, founded on the agreement of mankind, as an empty chimera of his inven- tion. But if he only meant by this the tacit consent, or. hi other words, the genei*al custom, of civilized nations, it does not appear that there is much difference between his theory and that of Wolf or Vattel. Chap. V. THE SEICENTISTI. 221 CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1600 TO 1650. Sect. L — On Italian Poetry. Characters of the Poets of the Seventeenth Century — Sometimes too much iepi«' ciated — Marini — Xassoni — Chiabrt" ra. 1. At the close of the sixteenth century, few remained in Italy to whom posterity has assigned a considerable reputation for their ])oetry. But the ensuing period niaTion of has stood lower, for the most part, in the opinion of thcSeicen- later ages, than any other since the revival of letters. The seicentisti, the writers of tlie seventeenth century, were stigmatized in modern criticism, till the word has been associated with nothing but false taste and every thing that should be shunned and despised. Those who had most influence in leading the literary judgment of Italy went back, some almost exclusively to the admiration of Petrarch and his contemporaries, some to the various writers who culti- vated their native poetry in the sixteenth century. Stdvini is of the former class ; Muratori, of the latter.^ 2. The last age, that is tlie concluding twenty years of the eighteenth century, brought with it, in many respects, a change of public sentiment in Italy. A mascu- so great as line tu)-n of thought, an expanded grasp of philosophy, f°™'"iy- a thirst, ardent to excess, for great exploits and noble praise, has distinguished the Italian people of the last fifty years from their progenitors of several preceding generations. It is possible tlmt the enhanced relative importance of the Lombards in their national literature may have not been ^ Muratori, Delia Perfetta Poesia, is one taincd some remarks by Salvini, a bigoted of the best books of criticism in the Italian Florentine, language : in the second Toliune are con- 222 THE SKICEXTISTI. Part IH. without its influence in rendering the public taste less fas- tidious as to purity of language, less fine in that part of aesthetic discernment which relates to the grace and felicity of expression, while it became also more apt to demand originality, nervousness, and the power of exciting emotion. The Avriters of the seventeenth century may, in some cases, have gained by this revolution; but those of the preceding ages, especially the Petrarchists whom Bembo had led, have certainly lost ground in national admiration. 3. Rubbi, editor of the voluminous collection called Par- Praiseof "^^^ Italiano, had the courage to extol the seicen- them by tisti for tlicir gcuius and fancy, and even to place Kubbi. them, in all but style, above their predecessoi-s. " Give them," he says, " but grace and purity, take from them their capricious exaggerations, their perpetual and forced metaphors, you will think Mai-ini the first poet of Italy ; and his followers, with their fulness of imagery and personifi- cation, will make you forget their monotonous predecessors. I do not advise you to make a study of the seicentisti ; it would spoil your style, perhaps your imagination : I only tell you that they were the true Italian poets. They wanted a sood stvle, it is admitted ; but thev were so for from wanting genius and imagination, that these perhaps tended to impair their style." ^ 4. It is probable that every native critic would think some Also by parts of this panegyric, and especially the strongly Saifi. hyperbolical praise of Marini, carried too far. But I am not sure that we should be wrctng in agreeing witli Rubbi, that there is as much catholic poetry, by which I mean that which is good in all ages and countries, in some of the minor productions of the seventeenth as in those of the eixteenth age. The sonnets, especially, have more indi- \iduality and more meaning. In tliis, however, I should wi.sli to include the latter portion of the seventeenth century. Salfi, a writer of more taste and judgment tlian Rubbi, has recently taken tlie same side, and remarked the superior originality, the more determi^ied individuality, the greater variety of subjects ; above all, what the Italians now most value, the more earnest patriotism of the later poets.'^ Tliosu ' P.-imaso Italiano, vol. xli. (AvTcrtiniento.) Rubbi, howevpr, pivi'S but two, out of his long collection iu fifty voluin(!S, to the writers of the seveuteeuth century. » Salfi, Uist. Litt d« I'ltalie (cor-tinuation de Gingufine), vol. xii. p. 42i. Chap. V. ADONE OF MAPJNT. 223 immediately before us, belonging to the first l.alf of the century, are h?ps numerous than in tlie former age : the son- neteers especially have produced much less ; and in the coUcfrtions of poetry, even in that of Rubbi, notwithstanding his eulogy, tliey take up very little room. Some, however, have obtained a dural)le renown, and are better known in Europe than any, except the Tassos, that flourished in the last fifty years of the golden age. 0. It must be confessed, that the praise of a masculine genius, either in thought or language, cannot be Adoneof bestowed on the poet of the seventeenth century M'"'""- whom his contemporaries most admired, — Giovanni Battista Marini. He is, on the contrary, more deficient than all the rest in such qualities, and is indebted to the very opposite characteristics for the sinister influence which he exerted on the public taste. He was a Neapolitan by birth, and gave to the world his famous Adone in 1623. As he was then fifty-four years old, it may be presumed, from the character of the poem, that it was in gi-eat part written long before ; and he had already acquired a considerable reputation by his other works. The Adone was received with an unbounded and ill-judging approbation: ill-judging in a critical sense, because the faults of this poem are incapable of defence ; but not unnatural, as many parallel instances of the world's enthusiasm have shown. No one had before carried the coi*- ruption of taste so far : extravagant metaphors, false thoughts, and conceits on equivocal words, are very frequent in the Adone ; and its author stands accountable, in some measure, for his imitators, who, during more than half a century, looked up to Marini with emulous folly, and frequently succeeded in greater deviations from pure taste, without his imagination and elegance. 6. The Adone is one of the longest poems in the world ; containintj more than 45,000 lines. He has shown itscUarac- some ingenuity in filling up the canvas of so slight ""^ a story by additional incidents from his own invention, and by long episodes allusive to the times in which he lived. But the subject, expanded so interminably, is essentially destitute of any superior interest, and fit only for an ener- vated people, barren of high thoughts and high actions, — the Italy, notwithstanding some bright exceptions, of the seven- teenth century. If we could overcome this essenLial source 224 CHAIiACTER OF THE ADONE. Paut IE. of weariness, the Adone has much to delight our fancy and our ear. Marini is, more than any other poet, the counter- part of Ovid : his fertility of imagination, his ready accumu- lation of circumstances and expressions, his easy flow of language, his harmonious versification, are in no degree inferior ; his faults are also the same ; for in Ovid we have all the overstrained figures and false conceits of Marini. But the Italian poet was incapable of imitating the truth to nature, and depth of feeling, wliich appear in many parts of his ancient prototype ; nor has he as vigorous an expression. Never does Marini rise to any high pitch: few stanzas, perhaps, are remembered by natives for their beauty; but many are gi-aceful and pleasing, all are easy and musical.^ " Perhaps," says Salfi, " with the exception of Ariosto, no one has been more a poet by nature than he ; "^ a praise, however, which may justly seem byperbolical to those who recall their attention to the highest attributes of poetry. 7. Marini belongs to that very numerous body of poets, Andpopu- who, delighted with the spontaneity of their ideas, larity. never reject any that ai-ise : their parental love forbids all preference ; and an impartial law of gavelkind shares their page among all the offspring of their brain. Such were Ovid and Lucan, and such have been some of our own poets of great genius and equal fame. Their fertility astonishes the reader, and he enjoys for a time the abundant banquet; but satiety is too sure a consequence, and he returns with less pleasure to a second perusal. The censure of criti- cism falls invariably, and sometimes too harshly, on this sort of poetry : it is one of those cases where the critic and the world are most at variance ; but the world is apt, in this 1 Five stanzas of the seventh canto, be- E cantino a Cupidine, ed a Bromio, ing a choral song of satyrs and bacchant!, Con numeri poetici un encomio." are thrown into versi sdniccioli, and have Cant. vii. st. US. been accounted by the Italians an extraor- Though this metrical skill may not be Uinary effort of skill, from the difficulty of ^f ^^^^ highest merit in poetry, it is no sustiiiniiig a metre, which is not strong in n,pre to be slighted than facility of touch rhymes, with so much spirit and ease. ;^ ^ painter. t^ch verse also is divided into three parts, 2 Vol. xiv. p. 147. The character of themselves separately silrurdnli, tliough ji^rini's poetrv which this critic has given not rhyming. One stanza will make this jg ;„ f,e„eral very just, and in good taste. clear : — C'orniani (vii. 123) has also done justice, " Ilor d' ellera s' adomino, e di pampino and no more than justice, to Marini. Ti- I giovaui, e le vergiui piii tenere, raboschi lia.s hardly said enough in hia E gemine nell' anima si stampino favor ; and as to Munitori, it was his busi- L' imagine di Libero, e di Veuere. ness to restore and maintain a purity of Tuttiardano.s'accendano,cdavampino, taste, which rendered him severe towards Qual Semele, eh' al folgore fu cenere ; the excesses of such poets as Marini Chap. V. TASSONI. 225 instance, to reverse its own judgment, and yield to the tribunal it had rejected. "To ]\Iarini," says an eminent Italian writer, " we owe the lawlessness of composition : the ebullition of his genius, incapable of restraint, burst through every bulwark, enduring no rule but that of his own humor, which was all for sonorous vei-se, bold and ingenious thoughts, fantastical subjects, a phraseology rather Latin than Italian ; and, in short, aimed at pleasing by a false appearance of beauty. It would almost pass belief how much this style was admired, were it not so near our own time, that we hear, as it were, the echo of its praise ; nor did Dante or Petrarch or Tasso, or perhaps any of the ancient poets, obtain in their lives so much applause."^ But Marini, who died in 1625, had not time to enjoy much of this glory. The length of this poem, and the ditFusf/uess which produces its length, render it nearly impossible to read through the Adone ; and it wants that inequality which might secure a preference to detached portions. The story of Psyche, in the fourth canto, may perhaps be as fjiir a specimen of INIarini as could be taken: it is not easy to destroy the beauty of that fable, nor was he unfitted to relate it with grace and interest ; but he has displayed all the blemishes of his own style.- 8. The Secchia Rapita of Alessandro Tassoni, pubUshed at Paris in 1622, is better known in Europe than sect:hia might have been expected from its local subject, idio- Kapita of matic style, and unintelligible personalities. li turns, as the title imports, on one of the petty wai-s, frequent among the Italian cities as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century, wherein the Bolognese endeavored to recover the bucket of a well, which the citizens of Modena in a prior incursion had carried off. Tassoni, by a poetical anachro- nism, mixed this with an earlier contest of rather more dignity between the little republics, wherein P^nzio, King of Sardinia, a son of Frederic II. , had been made prisoner. He has been reckoned by many the inventor, or at least the reproducer 1 Crescimbeni, ii. 470. Bake of good morals and good poetry, it 2 The Adone has been frequently charged should be taken out of every one's hands. T,ith want of decency. It was put to tlie After such invectives, it may seem extra- ban of the Roman Inquisition ; and grave ordinary, that, though the poem of Marini writers have deemed it necessary to pro- must by its nature be rather voluptuous, test against its Uceutiousuess. Andres it is by far less open to such an objection even goes so far as to declare, that no one than the Orlando Furioso, nor more, I be- can read the Adone whose he»irt as well as heve, than the Faery Queeu. No charge is taste is not corrupt ; and that, botli for the apt to be made so capriciously aa tliis. VOL. III. 15 226 CHIABRERA. Part HI, in modern times, of the mock-heroic style.' Pulci, however, had led the way; and, when Tassoni claims originality, it must be in a very limited view of the execution of his poem. He has certainly more of parody than Pulci could have attempt- ed : the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso, especially the latter, supply him with abundant opportunities for this ingeni- ous and lively, but not spiteful, exei'cise of wit; and he has adroitly seized the ridiculous side of his contemporary Marini. The combat of the cities, it may be observed, is serious enough, however trifling the cause, and has its due proportion of slaughter; but Tassoni, very much in the manner of the Morgante Maggiore, throws an air of ridicule over the whole. The episodes are generally in a still more comic style. A graceful facility and a liglit humor, which must have been inco)n])arably better understood by his countrymen and con- temporaries, make this a very amusing poem. It is exempt from the bad taste of tlie age ; and the few portions where the burlesque tone disappears are versified with much elegance. Perhaps it has not been observed, that the Count de Culagne, one of his most ludicrous characters, bears a certain resem- blance to Hudibras, both by his awkward and dastardly appearance as a knight, and by his ridiculous addresses to the lady whom he woos.- None, however, will question the originality of Butler. 9. But the poet of whom Italy has, in later times, been far more proud than of Marini or Tassoni, was Chia- brera. Of his long life the greater part fell within the sixteenth century ; and some of his poems were published before its close ; but he has generally been considered as belonging to the present period. Cliiabrera is tlie founder of a scliool in the lyric poetry of Italy, rendered afterwards more famous by Guidi, which affected the name of Pindaric. It is the Tlieban lyre which they boast to strike; it is from llie fountain of Dirce tliat they draw their inspiration ; and these allusions are as frequent in their verse, as those to Valclusa ' I'oileau seems to ao.UnowlcdKe himself the romance of Bertolclo, — all oldor thau Indebted to Tassoni for the Lutrin ; and Tjissoni ! \Vhat else are the popular t:iles Pope may have followed both in the first of chiMron, — .lohn the Giganticide, ami Bketch of the llape of the Lock, tliouf;h many more ( The poem of Tassoni had a what he has added is a purely oinj;inal con- very jcreat reputation. Voltaire did it in- ception. l!ut, in fact, the mock-heroic or justice, though it was much in his own burlesiiue style, in a general sense, is so line. natural, and moreover so common, that it - Cantos X. and XI. It was intendej Is idls to talk of its inventor. What else as a ridicule on Mariui, but repres<>itB a la llabelais Don Quixote, or, iu Italian, real personage. SaJfi, xiii. 147. Chai', V. CHIABRERA. 227 and the Sorga in the followers of Petrarch. Cliiabrera bor- rowed from Pindar that grandeur of sound, that pomp of epithets, tliat rich swell of imagery, that unvarying majesty of conception, which distinguish the odes of both poets. He is less frequently harsh or turgid, though the latter blemish has been sometimes observed in him, but wants also the mas- culine condensation of his prototype ; nor does he deviate so frequently, or with so much power of imagination, into such digressions as those which generally shade from our eyes, in a skilful jirofusion of ornament, the victors of the Grecian games wliom Pindar ])rofesses to celebrate. The poet of the house of Medici and of other princes of Italy, gi'eat at least in their own time, was not so much comi)elled to desert his im- mediate subject, as he who was paid for an ode by some wrestler or boxer, who could only become worthy of heroic song by attaching his name to the ancient glories of his native city. The profuse employment of mythological allusions, irigid as it aj>pears at present, was so customary, that we can hardly impute to it much blame ; and it seemed peculiarly appropriate to a style wlu'cJi was studiously formed on the Pindaric model.' The odes of Chiabrera are often panegyri- cal; and his manner was well fitted for that style, though sometimes we have ceased to admire those whom he extols. But he is not eminent for purity of taste, nor, I believe, of Tuscan language : he endeavored to force the idiom, more than it would bear, by constructions and inversions borrowed from the ancient tongues ; and these odes, splendid and noble as they are, bear, in the estimation of critics, some marks of the seventeeth century.- The satirical epistles of Chiabrera are praised by Salfi as written in a moral Horatian tone, abounding with his own ex))erience, and allusions to his time.^ But in no other kind of poetry has he been so highly success- ful as in the lyric ; and, though the Grecian robe is never cast away, he imitated Anacreon with as much skill as Pindar. His ligliter odes," says Crescimbeni, " are most beautiful and elegant, full of grace, vivacity, spirit, and delicacy, adorned with pleasing inventions, and differing in nothing but language from those of Anacreon. His dithyrambics I hold 1 Salfi justifies the continual introduc- their uiytholofry had not been ahnost ex tion of mytliolo^* by the Italian poets, ou elusive! y Greek. But perhaps all that waa the grouml that it wsis a part of their of classical antiquity niiglit be blended national inheritance, associat<'J with the in their sentiments with the memory of Diouuments and recollections 01 their glory. Home. ■ This would be more to the purpose, if ^ Salfi, xii. 260. 8 id.^ siii. 2013 (( 228 FOLLOWERS OF CinABRERA. Pakt III incapable of being excelled, all the qualities required in sucb compositions being united with a certain nobleness of expres- sion which elevates all it touches upon." ^ 10. The greatest lyric poet of Greece was not more the model of Chiabrera than his Roman competitor was of Testi. " Had he been more attentive to the choice of his expression," says Crescirabeni, " he might have earned the name of the Tuscan Horace." The faults of his age are said to be fi-e- quently discernible in Testi; but there is, to an ordinary reader, an Horatian elegance, a certain charm of gi-ace and ease, in his canzoni, which render them pleasing. One of these, beginning, Ruscelletto orgoglioso, is highly admired by Muratori, the best, perhaps, of the Italian critics, and one not slow to censure any defects of taste. It apparently alludes to some enemy in the court of Modena.^ The character of Testi was ambitious and restless, his life spent in seeking and partly in enjoying public offices, but terminated in prison. He had taken, says a later writer, Horace for liis model ; and perhaps, like him, he wished to appear sometimes a stoic, sometimes an epicurean ; but he knew not, like him, how to proiit by the lessons either of Zeno or Epicurus, so as to lead a tranquil and independent life.^ 11. The imitators of Chiabrera were generally unsuccess- Uis follow- ful : they became hyperbolical and exaggerated. «'^^- The Translation of Pindar by Alessandro Adimari, though not very much resembling the original, has been praised for its own beauty. But these poets are not to be confounded with the Marinists, to whom they are much superior. Ciampoll, whose Rime were published In 1628, may perhaps be the best after Chiabrera.^ Several obscure epic poems, some of which are rather to be deemed romances, are commemorated by the last historian of Italian literature. Among these is the Conquest of Granada by Grazlani, pub- lished in IGoO. Salfi justly observes, that the subject is truly epic ; but the poem itself seems to be nothing but a series of episodical intrigues without unity. The style, according to the same writer. Is redundant, the similes too frequent and monotonous ; yet he prefers it to all the heroic poems which had intervened since that of Tasso.' » Storia della Volgar Poesia, ii. 483. * Salfl, p. 303 ; Tiraboschl, -A. 864. » This canzone is iu Matliias, Oompo- Baillet, on the authority of others, speakl tiinenti Lirici, ii. 190. less honorably of Cianipoli. N. 1451. » Salfl, xii. 281. ' Id. vol. xiU. p. 94-123 Chap. V". SPANISH POETRY. 229 Sect. II. — On Spanish Poetri. Romances — The Argensolas — A'illegas — Gongora, and his School 12. The Spanish poetry of the sixteenth century might be arranged in three classes. In the first, we might r^^^ g^yj^, place that which was formed in the ancient school, of SpanUh though not always preserving its characteristics, — the short trochaic metres, employed in the song or the ballad, altogether national, or aspiring to be such, either in their subjects or in their style. In the second would stand that to which the imitation of the Italians had given rise, — the school of Boscan and Garcilasso ; and with these we might place also the epic poems, which do not seem to be essentially dif- ferent from similar productions of Italy. A third and not inconsiderable division, though less extensive than the others, is composed of the poetry of good sense, — the didactic, serai- satirical Horatian style, of which Mendoza was the founder, and several specimens of which occur in the Parnaso Espanol of Sedano. 13. The romances of the Cid, and many others, are referred by the most competent judges to the reign of Philip The ro- III.^ These are by no means among the best of mances. Spanish romances ; and we should naturally expect that so artificial a style as the imitation of ancient manners and sen- timents by poets in wholly a different state of society, though some men of talent might succeed in it, would soon degenerate into an affected mannerism. The Italian style continued to be cultivated : under Philip III., the decline of Spain in poet- i-y, as in arms and national power, was not so striking as after- 1 Duran, I{oman(;ero de Romances Doc- ternal evidence, without critical knowledge trinales, Amatorios, Festivos, &c. 1829. of the language, that those relating to the The Moorish romances, with a few excep- Cid are not of the middle ages, though lions, and those of the Cid, are ascribed some seem still inclined to give them a high by this author to the latter part of the antiquity. It is not sufficient to Siiy, that Bi.xteenth and the first half of the seven- the language has been modernized : the teenth century. In the preface to a for- whole structure of these ballads is redolent mer publication, Romances Moriscos, this of a low age ; and. if the Spanish critics writer has said, '• Casi todos los romances agree in this, I know not why foreigners que publicamos en este libro pertenecen al should strive against them. [It is hardly, Bi^lo 16mo, y algunos pocos 4 principio del perhaps, necessary to warn the reader, Imio. Los autores son desconocidos, pero that the celebrated long poem on the Cid BUS :bras han Ilegado, y merecido llegar i la is not reckoned among these romances. — posteiidad " It seems manifest from in- 1842.1 23C THE BROTHERS ARGENSOLA. Part hi. wards. Several poets belong to the age of that prince ; and even tliat of Philip IV. was not destitute of men of merited reputation.^ Among the best were two brothers, Lupercio Thebro- ^^^ Baiiholomew Argensola. These were chiefly thers Ar- distinguished in what I have called tlie third or Ho- genso a. j-fitian manner of Spanish poetry, though they by no means confined themselves to any peculiar style. " Lupercio," says Bouterwek, "formed his style after Horace with no less assiduity than Luis de Leon ; but he did not possess the soft enthusiasm of that pious poet, who, in the religious spirit of his poetry, is so totally unlike Horace. An understanding at once solid and ingenious, subject to no extravagant illusion, yet full of true poetic feeling, and an imagination more plastic than creative, impart a more perfect Horatian coloring to the odes, as well as to the canciones and soimets, of Lupercio. He closely imitated Horace in his didactic satires, a style of composition in which no Spanish poet had preceded him. But he never succeeded in attaining the bold combination of ideas which characterizes the ode-style of Horace ; and his conceptions have tlierefore seldom any thing like the Horatian energy. On the other hand, all his poems express no less precision of language than the models after which he formed his style. His odes, in particular, are characterized by a picturesque tone of expression which he seems to have im- bibed from Virgil rather than from Horace. The extravagant metaphors by which some of Herrera's odes are defoimed were uniformly avoided by Lupercio."" The genius of Bai'- tholomew Argensola was very like that of his brother, nor are their writings easily distinguishable ; but Bouterwek assigns, on the whole, a higher place to Bartholomew. Dieze inclines to the same judgment, and thinks the eulogy of Nicolas Anto- nio on these brothers, extravagant as it seems, not beyond their merits. 14. But another poet, Manuel Estevan de Villegas, whose vile poems, written in very early youth, entitled Ama- torias or Eroticas, were published in 1G20, has attained a still higher reputation, especially in other parts ' Antonio bestows unbounded praise on fable of Roncesvallcs. Diozc, while he de- a po«;m of the epic class, the liernardo of nies this absolute pre-eminence of Balbue- Balbuena, publislied at Bladrid in 1624, na, gives him a respectable place among thougli he complains that in liis own ago the many epic writers of Spain. But I do It lay hid in the corners of booksellers' not find him mentioned in Houterwek: in shops. Halhuena, in hig opinion, has left fact, most of these poems are very .scarce, all Spanish poets far behind him. The and are treasures for the bibliomaniacs, subject uf his poem is the Vers eoimuou '■' Hist, of Spanish Literature, p. 396. Chat. V. VILLEGAS - QUEVEDO. 23l of Europe. Dieze calls him " one of the best lyric poets of Spain, excellent in the various styles he has employed, but above all in his odes and songs. His original poems are full ofgcniu^;: his translations of Horace and Anacreon might often pass for original. Few surpass liim in harmony of verse : he is the Spanish Anacreon, the poet of the Graces."^ _ Bou- terwck, a more discriminating judge than Dieze, who is per- haps rather valuable for research than for taste, has observed, that " the graceful luxuriance of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in modern literature ; and, generally speaking, no modern writer has so well succeeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the modern. But constantly to ob- serve that correctness of ideas, which distinguished the clas- sical compositions of antiquity, was by Villegas, as by most Spanish poets, considered too rigid a requisition, and an unnecessary restraint on genius. He accordingly sometimes degenerates into conceits and images, the monstrous absurdity of which is characteristic of the author's nation and age. For instance, in one of his odes, in which he entreats Lyda to suffer her tresses to flow, he says, that, ' agitated by Zephyr, her locks would occasion a thousand deaths, and subdue a thousand lives ; ' and then he adds, in a strain of extrava- gance surpassing that of the INIarinists, ' that the sun himself would cease to give light, if he did not snatch beams from her radiant countenance to illumine the east.' But faults of this glaring kind are by no means frequent in the poetiy of Ville- gas ; and the fascinating grace with which he emulates his models operates with so powerful a charm, that the occasional occurrence of some little affectations, from which he could scarcely be expected entirely to abstain, is easily overlooked by the reader." ^ 15. Quevedo, who, having borne the surname of Villegas, lias sometimes been confounded with the poet we Q^g^^j^ have just named, is better known in Europe for his prose than his verse; but he is the author of numerous poems, both serious and comic or satirical. The latter are by much the more esteemed of the two. He wrote burlesque poetry with success, but it is frequently unintelligible except to natives. In satire he adopted the Juvenalian style.^ A few more might perhaps be added, especially Espinel, a poet 1 Geschichte der Spaiuschen Bichtkunst, p. 210. 2 Boutarwek, i. 479 » Id., p. 468. 232 DEFECTS OF TASTE IN SPANISH '\T:RSE. Pa«t UI of the classic school ; Borja de Esquillace, once viceroy of Peru, who is called by Bouterwek the last representative of that style in Spain, but more worthy of praise for with- standing the bad taste of his contemporaries than for any vigor of genius ; and Christopher de la Mena.' No Portu- guese poetry about this time seems to be worthy of notice in European literature, though Manuel Faria y Sousa and a few more might attain a local reputation by sonnets and other amatory verse. 1 6. The original blemish of Spanish writing, both in prose and verse, had been an excess of effort to say every tastcTin" thing in an unusual manner, a deviation from the Spanish beaten patlis of sentiment and language in a wider curve than good taste permits. Taste is the pre- siding faculty which regulates, in all works within her juris- diction, the struggling powers of imagination, emotion, and reason. Each has its claim to mingle in the composition ; each may sometimes be allowed in a great measure to predominate ; and a phlegmatic application of what men call common sense in aesthetic ci'iticism is almost as repugnant to its principles as a dereliction of all reason for the sake of fantastic absurdity. Taste also must determine, by an intui- tive sense of right somewhat analogous to that which regu- lates the manners of polished life, to what extent the most simple, the most obvious, the most natural, and therefore, in a popular meaning, the most true, is to be modified by a studious introduction of the new, the striking, and the beau- tiful ; so tliat neither what is insipid and trivial, nor yet what is forced and aflTected, may displease us. In Spain, as we have observed, the latter was always the prevailing fault. The public taste had been formed on bad models : on the Oriental poetry, metaphorical beyond all perceptible ana- logy ; and on that of the Provencals, false in sentiment, false in conception, false in image and figure. The national ciia- racter, proud, swelling, and ceremonious, conspired to give an inflated tone : it was also grave and sententious rather than lively or delicate, and therefore fond cf a strained and ambitious style. These vices of writing are carried to excess in romances of chivalry, which became ridiculous in the eyes of sen<;ible men, but were certainly very popular ; they affect also, though in a different manner, naach of the 1 Bouterwek, p. 488. Chap. V. LUIS DE GONGORA. 233. Spanish [»rose of the sixteenth century, and they belong to a great (leal of tlie poetry of that ago ; tliough it must be owned that much appears wholly exempt from them, and written in a very pure and classical spirit. Cervantes strove by example and by precept to maintain good taste ; and some of his contemporaries took the same line.^ But they had to fight against the predominant turn of their nation, which soon gave the victory to one of the worst manners of writing that ever disgraced public favor. 17. Nothing can be more opposite to what is strictly called a classical style, or one formed upon the best models of Greece and Rome, than pedantry. This an/for^ was, nevertheless, the weed that overspread the face f'jt'^i>.«^d of literature in those ages when Greece and Rome were the chief objects of veneration. Without an intimate discernment of their beauty, it was easy to copy allusions that were no longer intelligible, to counterfeit trains of thought that belonged to past times, to force reluctant idioms into modern form, as some are said to dress after a lady for whom nature has done more than for themselves. From the revival of letters downwards, this had been more or less obser- vable in the learned men of Europe, and, after that class grew more extensive, in the current literature of modern laneuaces. Pedantry, which consisted in unnecessary and perhaps unin- telligible references to ancient learning, was afterwards com- bined with other artifices to obtain the same end, — far-fetched metaphors and extravagant conceits. Tlie French versifiers of the latter end of the sixteenth century were eminent in both, as the works of Ronsard and Du Bartas attest. We might, indeed, take the Creation of Du Bartas more properly than the Euphues of our English Lilly, which, though very affected and unpleasing, does hardly such violence to common speech and common sense, for the type of the style which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, became popular in several countries, but especially in Spain, through the mis- placed labors of Gongora. 18. Luis de Gongora, a man of very considerable talents, and capable of writing well, as he has shown, in dif- „ /• I r- n 11 Ti Gongora. lerent st} les of poetry, Avas unfortunately led by an ambitious desire of popularity to introduce one which should ' Cei-vantes, in his Viage del P-u-naso, style ; but this, Dieze says, is all ironical praises Gongora, and even inii*^a-es his Gescli. der Cichtkunst, p. 250. 234 SCHOOLS FORMED BY GONGORA. Fart in. render his name immortal, as it has done in a mode which he did not design. This was his estih culto, as it was usually called, or highly poUshed phraseology, wherein every •word seems to have been out of its natural place. " In fulfilment of this object," says Bouterwek, "he formed for himself, with the most laborious assiduity, a style as uncom- mon as affected, and opposed to all the ordinary rules of the Spanish language, eithei in prose or verse. He parti- cularly endeavored to introduce into his native tongue the intricate constructions of the Greek and Latin, though such an arrangement of words had never been attempted in Spanish composition. He consequently found it necessary to invent a particular system of punctuation, in order to render the sense of his verses intelligible. Not satisfied with this patch- work kind of phraseology, he affected to attach an extra- ordinary depth of meaning to each word, and to diffuse an air of superior dignity over his whole style. In Gongora's poetry, the most common words received a totally new sig- nification ; and, in oi-der to impart perfection to his estilo cultOy he summoned all his mythological learning to his aid."^ "■ Gongora," says an English writer, " was the founder of a sect in literature. The style called in Castilian cultismo owes its origin to him. This affectation consists in using language so pedantic, metaphors so strained, and construc- tions so involved, that few readers have the knowledge re- quisite to understand the words; and still fewer, ingenuity to discover the allusion, or patience to unravel the sentences. These authors do not avail themselves of the invention of letters for the purpose of conveying but of conceaUng their ideas." '' 19. The Gongorists formed a strong party in literature, The schools a"d carried with them the public voice. If we formed by were to believe some writers of the seventeentli '*™' century, he Avas the greatest poet of Spain.^ Tlie age of Cervantes was over, nor was there vitality enough in the criticism of the reign of Phihp IV. to resist the con- tagion. Two sects soon appeared among these cultoristos: » l?outpr\vi'k p. 434. tcnce. The Portusuose have laid claim to 2 Lnra lIoll:imrs Lopi! ilu Vega, p. CA. tlic istilo culto as their property ; and one 3 Dieze, p. 250. Nicol'is Antonio, to the of tlieir writers wlio practises it — Manuel disgrace of liis judgment, maintains Hiis Ue Faiiay So usa — gives Don Seba.stiau the with the most extrav.-igant eulogy on Gon- credit of having been the first who wrote It gora; and Baillet copies him: i)ut the iu prose. next age unhesitatingly reversed the sen- Chap. V. MALHERBE. 235 one who retained that name, and, like their master, affected a certain precision of style ; another, called conceptistoi, which went still greater lengths in extravagance, desirous only, it might seem, of expressing absurd ideas in unnatu- ral language.'^ The prevalence of such a disease, for no other analogy can so fitly be used, would seem to have been a bad presage for Spain ; but, in fact, like other diseases, it did but make the tour of Europe, and rage worse in some countries than in others. It had spent itself in France, when it was at its height in Italy and England. I do not perceive the close connection of the estilo culto of Gongora with that of Marini, whom both Bouterwek and Lord Holland suppose to have formed his own taste on the Spanish school. It seems rather too severe an imputation on that most ingenious and fertile poet, who, as has already been observed, has no fitter parallel than Ovid. The strained metaphors of the Adone are easily collected by critics, and seem extravagant in juxtaposition; but they recur only at intervals : while those of Gongora are studiously forced into every line, and are, besides, incomparably more refined and obscure. His style, indeed, seems to be like that of Lycophron, without the excuse of that prophetical mystery which breathes a certain awfulness over the symbolic language of the Cassandra. Nor am I convinced that our own metaphysical poetry in the reigns of James and Charles had much to do with either Marini or Gongora, except as it bore marks of the same vice, — a restless ambition to excite wonder by overstepping the boundaries of natui-e. Section III. Malherbe — Regnier — Other French Poets. 20. Malherbe, a very few of whose poems belong to the last century, but the greater part to the first twenty years of the present, gave a polish and a grace to the lyi'ic poetry of France, which has i-endered liis name cele- brated in her criticism. The public taste of that country is » Bouterwek, p. 438. 236 CRITICISMS ON MALHERBE'S POETRY. Part III, (or I should rather saj, used to be) more intolerant of defects in poetry, than rigorous in its demands of excellence. Mal- herbe, therefore, who substituted a regular and accurate ver- sification, a style pure and generally free from pedantic or colloquial phrases, and a sustained tone of what were reckoned elevated thoughts, for the more unequal strains of the six- teenth century, acquired a reputation which may lead some of his readers to disappointment. And this is likely to be in- creased by a vei-y few lines of great beauty which are known by heart. These stand too much alone in his poems. In general, we find in them neither imagery nor sentiment that yield us deliglit. He is less mythological, less affected, less given to frigid hyperboles, than his predecessors, but far too much so for any one accustomed to real poetry. In the panegy- rical odes, Malherbe displays some felicity and skill : the poet of kings and courtiers, he, wisely perhaps, wrote, even when he could have written better, what kings and courtiers would understand and reward. Polished and elegant, his lines sel- dom pass the conventional tone of poetry ; and, while he is never original, he is rarely impressive. Malherbe may stand in relation to Horace as Chiabrera does to Pindar : the ana- logy is not very close ; but he is far from deficient in that calm philosophy which forms the charm of the Roman poet, and we are willing to believe that he sacrificed his time reluctantly to the praises of the great. It may be suspected that he wrote verses for others ; a pi-actice not unusual, I believe, among these courtly rhymers : at least his Alcandre seems to be Henry IV., Chrysantlie or Oranthe the Princess of Conde. He seems himself in some passages to have affected gallantry towards Mary of Medicis, which at that time was not reck- oned an impertinence. 21. Bouterwek has criticised Malherbe with some justice, Criticisms ^"* ^^'^'^ greater severity.^ He deems him no poet ; upon his which, in a certain sense, is surely true. But we ^°^ '^" narrow our definition of poetry too much, when we exclude from it the versification of good sense and select diction. This may probably be ascribed to Malherbe ; though Bouhours, an acute and somewhat rigid critic, has pointed out some passages wliich he deems nonsensical. Another writer of the same age, Rapin, whose own taste was not very glow- ing, observes that there is much prose in Malherbe ; and that| 1 Vol. V. p. 238 Ch A 1-. V. REGNIER — KACAN - M AYNARD. . ^ ^pgel well as he merits to be called correct, he is a little too desi- rous of appearing so, and often becomes frigid.^ Boileau has extolled him, pei-haps, somewhat too highly, and La Harpe is inclined to the same side ; but, in the modern state of French criticism, the danger is that the Malherbes will be too much depreciated. "22. Tlie satires of Regnier have been highly praised by Boileau ; a competent judge, no doubt, in such mat- satires of ters. Some have preferred Regnier even to himself, I'^egmer. and found in this old Juvenal of France a certain stamp of satirical genius which the more polished critic wanted.^ These satires are unhke all other French poetry of the age of Henry IV. : the tone is vehement, somewhat rugged and coai-se, and reminds us a little of his contemporaries Hall and Donne, whom, however, he will generally and justly be thought much to excel. Some of his satires are borrowed from'' Ovid or from the Italians.'* They have been called gross and licentious ; but this only applies to one, the rest are unexceptionable. Regnier, who had probably some quarrel Avith Malherbe, speaks Avith contempt of his elaborate polish. But the taste of France, and especially of that highly culti- vated nobility who formed the court of Louis XIII. and his son, no longer endured the rude, though sometimes animated, versification of the okler poets. Next to Malherbe in reputa- tion stood Racan and Maynard, both more or less of his school. Of these it was said by their master, that uacm; Racan wanted the diligence of 3Iaynard, as ^Maynard ^^-vnard. did the spirit of Racan ; and that a good poet might be made out of the two."* A foreigner will in general prefer the former, who seems to have possessed more imagination and sensibility, and a keener relish for rural beauty. Maynard's verses, according to Pelisson, have an ease and elegance that few can imitate, which proceeds from his natural and simple construction.' He had more success in epigram than in his sonnets, which Boileau has treated with httie respect. Nor 1 Reflexions sur la Poetique, p. 147. — d'etre trop sage, il est souvent froiJ."- •' Malherbe a este le premier qui nous a re- p. 209. misdansleboncliemin, joignant lapurete 2 Bouterwek, p. 246 ; Lallarpe; Biogr. au grand .style ; mais comme il cominen<;a Univ. cette maniere, il ne put la porter jusques » Niceron, xi. 397. _ _ dans sa perfection , il }' a bien de la pro-^^e * Pelisson, Hist, de I'Academie, i. 2G0; dans ses vers." In another place he says, Baillet. Jugemens des Savans (Poetcs), "Malherbe est exact et correct; mais il n. 1510; La Harpe. Cours de Litteraturej ne hazarde rien, et par I'envie qu'il a Bouterwek, v. 260. ^ Idem. 238 VOITURE — SARRAZIN. Paiit III. does he speak better of Malleville, Avho chose no other species of verse, but seldom produced a finished piece, though not deficient in spirit and dehcacy. Viaud, more frequently known by the name of Theophile, a Avriter of no great eleva- tion of style, is not destitute of imagination. Such at least is the o[)inion of Rapin and Bouterwek.^ 23. The poems of Gombauld were, in general, published before the middle of the century ; his epigrams, which are most esteemed, in 1657. These are often lively and neat. But a style of playfulness and gayety had been introduced by Voiture. French poetry under Ronsard and his school, and even that of Malherbe, had lost the lively tone of INIarot, and became serious almost to severity. Voiture, with an appai'ent ease and grace, though without the natural air of the old writers, made it once more amusing. In reahly, the style of Voiture is artificial and elaboi-ate ; but, like his imitator Prior among us, he has the skill to disguise this from the reader. He must be admitted to have had, in verse as well as prose, a considerable infiuence over the taste of Fi-ance. He wrote to please Avomen, and women are grateful when they are pleased. Sarrazin, says his. biogra- pher, tiiough less celebrated than Voiture, deserves perhaps to be rated above him; with equal ingenui- ty, he is far more natural.^ The German historian of French literature has spoken less respectfully of Sarrazin, whose verses are the most insipid rhymed prose, such as he, not unhappily, calls toilet-poetry.^ This is a style Avhich finds little mercy on the right bank of the Rhine ; but the French are better judges of the merit of Sarrazin. ' Routerwek. 252. Rapiu says, " Theo- ^ BoutcrwfOc, v. 256. Specimens of all phile a. I'imagiuation grande et Id sens these poets will be found in tiie collection petit. 11 a des hardiesses heureuses i force of Auguis, vol. vi. ; and 1 must own, that, dese permettre tout." — Reflexions sur la with the exceptions of Malherbe, Kegnier, l'Qeti(|ue, p, 209. and one or two more, my own acnuaiat- ■•i Biogr. Umv ; IJaillet, o.l5^£j. ance with them extends little farther. Chaf. V. LOW STATE OF GERMAN LITERVTURE. 239 Section IV. Rise 01 Pf'ctry in Germany— Opitz and his Followers— Dutch Poets. 24. The German language had never been more despised by the h'arned and the noble than at the beginning j^^ ^^^^^ of the seventeenth century, which seems to be tlie of German lowest point in its native literature. The capacity ' ''"'^ "**■ was not wanting; many wrote Latin verse with success; the collection made by Gruter is abundant in these cultivators of a foreign tongue, several of whom belong to the close of the preceding age. But, among these, it is said that whoever essayed to write their own language did but fail; and the instances adduced are very few. The upper ranks began about this time to speak French in common society; the burghers, as usual, strove to imitate them; and, Avhat was far worse, it became the mode to intermingle French words with German, not singly and sparingly, as has happened in other times and countries, but in a jargon affectedly piebald and macaronic. Some hope might have been founded on the lite- rary academi(>s, which, in emulation of Italy, sprung up in this period. The oldest is The Fruitful Society (Die Literary Fruchtbnn(]ende GeseUschaft), known also as the Societies. Order of Palms, established at Weimar in 1617.^ Five princes enrolled their names at the beginning. It held forth the laudable purpose of purify-ing and correcting the mother tongue and of promoting its literature, after the manner of the Italian academies. But it is not unusual for literary associa- tions to promise much, and fail of performance: one man is more easily found to lay down a good plan, than many to co- operate in its execution. Probably this was merely the scheme of some more gifted individual, perhaps Werder, who translated Ariosto and Tasso;- for little good was effected by the institution. Nor did several others, which at different times in the seventeenth century arose over Germany, deserve more praise. They copied the academies of Italy in their quaint names and titles, in their by-laws, their petty ceremo- nials and symbolic distinctions, to which, as we always find in » Bouterwek, x. 35 ^ I'l., x. 29. 240 OPITZ. Part III. these self-elected societies, they attached vast importance, aad thought themselves superior to the world by doing nothing for it. "They are gone," exclaims Bouterwek, "and have left no clear vestige of their existence." Such had been the Meister- singers before them ; and little else, in effect, were the acade- mies, in a more genial soil, of their own age. Notwithstand- ing this, though I am compelled to follow the historian of German literature, it must strike us that these societies seem to manifest a public esteem for something intellectual, which they knew not precisely how to attain ; and it is to be observed, that several of the best poets in the seventeenth century be- longed to them. 25. A very small number of poets, such as Meckerlin and Spec, in the early part of the seventeenth century, ^' ^' though with many faults in point of taste, have been commemorated by the modern historians of literature. But they were wholly eclipsed by one whom Germany regards as the founder of her poetic literature, Martin Opitz, a native of Silesia, honored with a laurel crown by the emperor, in 1628, and raised to offices of distinction and trust in several courts. The national admiration of Opitz seems to have been almost enthusiastic ; yet Opitz was far from being the poet of enthusiasm. Had he been such, his age might not have understood him. His taste was French and Dutch; two countries of which the poetry was pure and correct, but not imaginative. No great elevation, no energy of genius, will be found in this German Heinsius or Malherbe. Opitz dis- played, however, another kind of excellence. He wrote the language with a purity of idiom, in which Luther alone, whom he chose as his model, was superior : he gave more sti-ength to the versification, and paid a regard to the collocation of syllables according to their quantity, or length of time required for articulation, which the earlier poets had neglect- ed. He is, therefore, reckoned the inventor of a rich and harmonious rhythm; and he also rendered the Alexandrine verse much more common than before.^ His sense is good ; he writes as one conversant with the ancients, and with man- kind : if he is too didactic and learned for a poet in the higher import of the word ; if his taste appears fettered by the models 1 Bouterwek (p. 94) thinks this no ad- seventeenthandfirst part of the eighteenth vantajje : a rhymed prose in Alexandrines century, overspread tlie German literature of the Chap. V. HIS FOLLOWERS. 241 he took for inutation ; if he even retarded, of which we can hardly be sure, the development of a more genuine nation- ality in German literature, — he must still be allowed, in a favorable sense, to have made an epoch in its history.^ 26. Opitz is reckoned the founder of what was called tho first Silesian school, rather so denominated from him iiis foUow- than as determining the birthplace of its poets. '''^• Tliey were chiefly lyric, but more in the line of songs and short effusions in trochaic metre than of the regular ode, and sometimes display much spirit and feeling. The German song always seems to bear a resemblance to the English : the identity of metre and rhythm conspires with what is more essential, a certain analogy of sentiment. Many, however, of Opitz's followers, like himself, took Holland tor their Par- nassus, and translated their songs from Dutch. Fleming was distinguished by a genuine feeling for lyric poetry : he made Opitz his model, but, had he not died young, would probably have gone beyond him ; being endowed by nature with a more poetical genius. Gryph or Gryphius, who belonged to the Fruitful Society, and bore in that the surname of the Immor- tal, with foults that strike the reader in every page, is also superior in fancy and warmth to Opitz. But Gryph is better known in German literature by his tragedies. The hymns of the Lutheran Church are by no means the lowest form of German poetry. They have been the work of every age since the Reformation ; but Dach and Gerhard, who, espe- cially the latter, excelled in these devotional songs, lived about the middle of the seventeenth century. The shade of Luther seemed to protect the church from the profanation of bad taste ; or, as we should rather say, it was the intense 1 Bouterwek. x. 89-119, has given an ela- turn quo cum aliia gentibus possit conten- borate rritii(UL' of the poetry of Opitz: dere." — Kp. 9'jy. Baillet observes, that '• lie is the father, not of German poetry, Opitz passes for the best of German poets, but of the modern German languajre of and the tirst who gave rules to that poetry, poetry, dtr neutrtn (Juitschrn Dirhler- and raised it to the state it \\vu\ since sprarjie.''' — p. 93. The fame of Opitz spread reached; so that lie is rather to be ae- beyond his country. Httle as liis language counted its father than its improver, was familiar. " Xon periit Gcrmania,"' Jugemcns des Savans (Poutos). n. 143G. Grotius writes to him, in 1(531, "Opiti But reputation is transitory. Though ten doctissime, ([ua> te habet looupletis.'^inium eilitions of the poems of Opitz were pub- testem, quid lingua Germanica, quid in- lished within the seventeenth century, — genia Germauica valeant." — Epist. 272. which Bouterwek thinks much for Oer- And afterwards, in 16.38, thanking him for many at that time, though it would not the pre.sent of his translation of the be so much in some countries, — scare* any Psalms: " Dignuserat rex poetainterprete one, except the lovers of old literature, Oermanorum poetarum rege ; nihil enim now aska for these obsolete productions, tibi blandiens dico ; ita sentioi te primum p. 90. Germanicae poesi formam datam et Uabi- VOL. III. 16 242 DUTCH POETRY — SPIEGEL. Part 111. theopathy of the German nation, and the simple majesty of their ecclesiastical music' 27. It has been the misfortune of the Dutch, a great people, Dutch a people fertile of men of various ability and erudi- poetry. ^j^^j^ ^ people of Scholars, of theologians and philo- sophers, of mathematicians, of historians, of painters, and, we may add, of poets, that these last have been the mere violets of the shade, and have peculiarly suffered by tlie narrow limits within wliich their language has been spoken or known. The Flemish dialect of the Southern Netherlands might have contributed to make up something like a national literature, extensive enough to be i-espected in Europe, if those pro- vinces, which now affect the name of Belgium, had been equally fertile of talents with their neighbors. 28. The golden age of Dutch literature is this first part of the seventeenth century. Their chief poets are Spiegel. gpigg^i^ Hooft, Cats, and Vondel. The first, who has been styled the Dutch Ennius, died in 1612 : his principal poem, of an ethical kind, is posthumous, but may probably have been written toAvards the close of the preceding century. '' The style is vigorous and concise ; it is rich in imagery and powerfully expressed, but is deficient in elegance and perspi- cuity."^ Spiegel had rendered much service to his native tongue, and was a member of a literary academy which pub- lished a Dutch grammar in 1584. Koornhert and Dousa, with others known to fame, were his colleagues; and be it remembered, to the honor of Holland, that in Germany or England, or even in France, there was as yet no institution of this kind. But as Holland at the end of the sixteenth century, and for many years afterwards, was pre-eminently the literary country of Europe, it is not surprising tliat some endeavors were made, though unsuccessfully as to JLuropean renown, to cultivate the native language. This language is also more soft, though less sonorous, tlian the German. 29. Spiegel was followed by a more celebrated poet, Peter „ ,, Hooft, who gave sweetness and harmony to Dutch Cats; verse. " The great creative power of poetry, it lias Vondel. y^^^^ g^i^i^ u he did not possess ; but his language is correct, his style agreeable, and he did much to introduce a better epoch "" His amatory and Anacreontic lines haAO never been excelled in tlie language ; and Hooft is also distin- » Bouterwek, x. 218; Eichhom, Iv. 888 » Biogr. Unir. » M. Chap. V. ENGLISH POETS. 213 guished both as a dramatist and an historian. He has been called the Tacitus of Holland. But here again his praises must by the generality be Uiken upon trust. Cats is a poet of a different class : ease, abundance, simplicity, clearness, and purity, are the qualities of his style ; his imagination is gay, his moi-ality poi>ular and useful. No one was more read than Father Cats, as the people call him ; but he is often trifling and monotonous. Cats, though he wrote for the multitude, whose descendants still almost know his poems by heart, was a man whom the republic held in high esteem : twice ambas- sador in England, he died great pensionary of Holland, in 1651. Vondel, a native of Cologne, but the glory, as he is deemed, of Dutch poetry, was best known as a tragedian. In his tragedies, the lyric part, the choruses which he retained after the ancient model, have been called the sublimest of odes. But some have spoken less highly of Vondel.^ 30. Denmark had no literature in the native language, except a collection of old ballads, full of Scandina- Danish vian legends, till the present period ; and in this it P'^''"y. does not ai)pear that she had more than one poet, a Norwe- gian bishop, named Arrebo. Nothing, I believe, was written in Swedish. Sclavonian, that is, Polish and Russian, poets there were ; but we know so little of those languages, that they cannot enter, at least during so distant a period, into the history of European literature. Sect. V. — Ox English Poetry. Imitators of Spenser — The Fletchers — Philosophical Poets — Denham — Donne - Cowley — Ilistorical and Narrative Poets — Shakspeare's Sonnets — Lyric Poeta — Milton's Lycidas, and other Poems. 31. The English poets of these fifty years are very nume- rous ; and, th jugh the greater part are not familiar to the general reader, they form a favorite study of pofts'^mi- those who cultivate our poetry, and are souglit by ^°"g"* all collectors of scarce and interesting literature. Many of them have, within half a century, been reprinted 1 Foreign Quart. Kev., vol. iv. p. 49. I am indebted to Eichhom, vol. iv. pait I. ; for this short account of tlie Dutch poets, and to the Biographie Universelle. 244 THE FLETCHERS. Part III. separately ; and many more, in the useful and copious collec- tions of Anderson, Chalmers, and other editors. Extracts have also been made by Headley, Ellis, Campbell, and Southey. It will be convenient to arrange them rather according to the schools to which they belonged, than in mere order of chronology. 32. Whatever were the misfortunes of Spenser's life, what- Phineas ever neglect he might have experienced at the hands Fletcher, ^f ^ Statesman grown old in cares which render a man insensible to song, his spmt might be consoled by the prodigious reputation of the Faery Queen. He was placed at once by his country above all the great Italian names, and next to Viro-Il araono; the ancients : it was a natural conse- quence that some should imitate what they so deeply rever- enced. An ardent admiration for Spenser inspired the genius of two young brothers, Phineas and Giles Fletcher. The first, very soon after the queen's death, as some allusions to Lord Essex seemed to denote, composed, though he did not so soon publish, a poem entitled The Purple Island. By this strange name he expressed a subject more strange : it is a minute and elaborate account of the body and mind of man. Through five cantos the reader is regaled with nothing but allegorical anatomy, in the details of which Phineas seems tolerably skilled, evincing a great deal of ingenuity in diversifying his metaphors, and in presenting the delineation of his imaginary island with as much justice as possible to the allegory without obtruding it on the reader's view. In the sixth canto, he rises to the intellectual and moral faculties of the soul, which occupy the rest of the poem. From its nature, it is insupera- bly wearisome ; yet his language is often very poetical, his versification harmonious, his invention fertile. But that per- petual monotony of allegorical persons, which sometimes displeases us even in Spenser, is seldom relieved in Fletcher ; the understanding revolts at the confused crowd of incon- ceivable beings in a philosophical poem ; and the justness of analogy, which had given us some jdeasure in the anatomical cantos, is lost in tedious descriptions of all possible moral qualities, each of them personified, which can never co-exist in the Purple Island of one individual. 33. Giles Fletcher, bi-other of Phineas, in Christ's Victory and Triumph, though his subject has not all the unity that might be desired, liad a manifest superiority in its choice. Chap. V. PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY. 245 Each uses a stanza of his own : Phineas, one of seven lines • Giles, one of eight. This poem was published in Giles 1610. Each brother alludes to the work of the ^'e^her. other, which must be owing to the alterations made by Pliineas in his Purple Island, written probably the first, but not pub- lished, I believe, till 1033. Giles seems to have more vigor than his elder brother, but less sweetness, less smoothness, and more affectation in his style. This, indeed, is deformed by words neither English nor Latin, but simply barbarous ; such as elamping, eU'azon, deprostrate, piirpured^ glitterand, and many others. They both bear much resemblance to Spenser. Giles sometimes ventures to cope with him, even in celebrated passages, such as the description of the Cave of Despair.^ And he has had the honor, in turn, of being followed by Milton, especidly in the fii'st meeting of our Saviour with Satan, in the Pai-adise Regained. Both of these brothei-s are deserving of much praise : they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an ex- cessive fondness for a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, — that of allegorical personification, — prevented their powers fi-om being effectively displayed. 34. Notwithstanding the popularity of Spenser, and the general pride in his name, that allegorical and ima- phiiosophi ginative school of poetry, of which he was the c^i poetry- greatest ornament, did not by any means exclude a very dif- ferent kind. The English, or such as by their education gave the tone in literature, had become, in the latter years of the queen, and still more under her successor, a deeply thinking, a learned, a philosophical people. A sententious reasoning, grave, subtle and condensed, or the novel and remote analogies of wit, gained praise from many whom the creations of an ex- cursive fancy could not attract. Hence much of the poetry of James's reign is distinguished from that of Elizabeth, except perhaps her last years, by partaking of the general character of tlie age ; deficient in simplicity, grace, and feeling, often obscure and pedantic, but impressing us with a respect for the man, where we do not recognize the poet. From this condition of i»ublic taste arose two schools of poetry, different in character, if not unequal in merit, but both appealing to the reasoning more than to the imaginative faculty as their judge. 1 Christ's Vict, and Triumph, ii. 23. 246 LORD BROOKE — DENHAM. Paet IIL 35. The fii-st of these may own as its founder Sir John Davies, whose poem on the Immortality of the Soul, roe. pyi^^jgj^g^j jj^ 1599, has had its due honor in our last volume. Davies is eminent for perepicuity ; but this cannot be said for another philosophical poet, Sir Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, the bosom friend of Sir Piiilip Sidney, and once the patron of Jordano Bruno. The titles of Lord Brooke's poems, A Treatise of Human Learning, A Treatise of Monarchy, A Treatise of Religion, An Inquisition upon Fame and Honor, lead us to anticipate moi'e of sense than fancy. In this we are not deceived : his mind was preg- nant with deep reflection upon multifai-ious learning ; but he struo-"'les to "ive utterance to thousrhts which he had not fully endowed with words, and amidst the shackles of rhyme and metre, which he had not learned to manage. Hence of all our poei« he may be reckoned the most obscure ; in aiming at condensation, he becomes elliptical beyond the bounds of the language ; and his rhymes, being forced for the sake of sound, leave all meaning behind. Lord Brooke's poetry is chiefly worth notice as an indication of that thinking spirit upon political science which was to produce the riper speculations of Hobbes and Harrington and Locke. 36. This argumentative school of verse was so much in unison with the character of that generation, that Daniel, a poet of a very different temper, adopted it in his panegyric addressed to James soon after his accession, and in some other poems. It had an influence upon others who trod generally in a different track, as is especially perceived in Denham'3 Giles Fletcher. The Cooper's Hill of Sir John Cooper's Denham, published in 1643, belongs, in a considera- ^^' ble degree, to this reasoning class of poems. It is also descriptive; but the description is made to slide into philo- sophy. The plan is original, as far as our poetry is concerned ; and I do not recollect any exception in other languages. Placing himself upon an eminence not distant from Windsor, he takes a survey of the scene ; he finds the tower of St. Paul's on its fartliest horizon, the Castle much nearer, and the Thames at liis feet. These, wnth the ruins of an abbey, sujv ply, in tui*n, materials for a reflecting rather than imaginative mind, and, with a stag-hunt, which he has very well described, fill up the canvas of a poem of no great length, but once of uo trifling reputation. Chap. V. METAPHYSICAL POETS. 247 •37. The epithet, majestic Denham, conferred by Pope, con- veys rather too much ; but Cooper's Hill is no ordinary jjoem. It is nearly the first instance of vigorous and rhythmical couplets; for Denham is incomparably less feeble than Browne, and less prosaic than Beaumont. Close in thought, and ner- vous in language like Davies, he is less hard and less mono- tonous ; his cadences are animated and various, perhaps a little beyond the regularity that metre demands ; they have been the guide to the finer ear of Dryden. Those who cannot endure the philosophic poetry must ever be dissatisfied with Cooper's Hill ; no personification, no ardent words, few me- taphors beyond the common use of speech, nothing that warms or melts or fascinates the heart. It is rare to find lines of eminent beauty in Denham ; and equally so to bo struck by any one as feeble or low. His language is always well chosen and perspicuous, free from those strange tui-ns of expression, frequent in our older poets, where the reader is apt to suspect some error of the press, so irreconcilable do they seem with grammar or meaning. The expletive do, which the best of his predecessors use freely, seldom occurs in Denham ; and he has in other respects brushed away the rust of languid and ineffective redundancies which have obstructed the popularity of men with more native genius than himself.' 38. Another class of poets in the reigns of James and his sou were those whom Johnson has called the meta- poetscaUed physical ; a name rather more applicable, in the mctaphy- ordinary use of the word, to Davies and Brooke. These were such as labored after conceits, or novel turns of thought, usually false, and resting upon some equivocation of language, or exceedingly remote analogy. This style Johnson supposes to have been derived from Marini. But Donne, its founder, as Johnson imagines, in England, wrote 1 The comparison by Denham between parison, and metapliorically on the other; the Thames and his own poetry was once and, if there be any lanjcuafte which does celebrated: — not express intellectual operations by ma- " Oh, could I flow lilie thee, and make thy t«™l "na^cs, into that language they can- streim translated.' Perhaps these me- My bri,;Ut example, as it is mv theme ! rfP^o-"^ f" '^^ "aturally applied to style, Thout;h deep, vet 'clear; though gentle, that no language of a cultivated people ,s ,". , i .,, . ' b fe > without them, liut the ground of ubjeo- vet not dull : j.. • • i- i n i ^i ,'^ ^ ■ o._„" -M » •,. I , a tion IS, in lact, that the lines cnntain no- Strong without rage; without o erflow- ., . V i. -t i j.i ^ •» i- i * . " .. ,, ,, ^ ' thing but wit, and that wit which turn3 °' ■ on a play of words. They are rathe? Johnson, while he highly extols these ingenious in this respect, and remarkably lines, truly observes, that " most of the harmonious, whi<;h is ])robably the secret words thus artfully opposed are to be of their popularity ; but, as poetry, tbe^ onderstoud simply on one side of the com- deserve no great praise. 248 DONNE. Part UI, before Marini, It is, in fact, as we have lately obsei-ved, the style which, though Marini has earned the discreditable repu- tation of perverting the taste of his country by it, had been gaining ground tlirough the latter half of the sixteenth cen- tury. It was, in a more comprehensive view, one modifi- cation of that vitiated taste which sacrificed all case and naturalness of writing and speaking for the sake of display. The mythological erudition and Grecisms of Ronsard's school, the euphuism of that of Lilly, the estilo cidto of Gongora, even the pedantic quotations of Burton and many similar writers, both in England and on the Continent, sprang, like the concetti of the Italians and of their English imitators, from the same source, a dread of being overlooked if they paced on like their neighbors. And when a few writers had set the example of successful faults, a bad style, where no sound prin- ciples of criticism had been established, readily gaining ground, it became necessary that those who had not vigor enough to rise above the fashion should seek to fall in with it. Nothing is more injurious to the cultivation of verse than the trick of desiring, for praise or profit, to attract those by poetry whom nature has left destitute of every quality which genuine poetry can attract. The best, and perhaps the only secure, basis for public taste, for an aesthetic appreciation of beauty, in a court, a college, a city, is so general a diffusion of classi- cal knowledge, as by rendering the finest models familiar, and by giving them a sort of authority, will discountenance and check at the outset the vicious novelties which always exert some influence over uneducated minds. But this was not yet the case in England. Milton was perhaps the first writer who eminently possessed a genuine discernment and feeling of antiquity ; though it may be perceived in Spenser, and also in a very few who wrote in prose. 39. Donne is generally esteemed the earliest, as Cowley Tonne ^^'^^ afterwards the most conspicuous, model of this manner. Many instances of it, however, occur in the lighter poetry of the queen's reign. Donne is the most inharmonious of our versifiers, if he can be said to have de- served such a name by lines too rugged to seem metre. Of his earlier poems, many are very licentious ; the later are chiefljc__. r devout. Few are good for much ; the conceits have not e^en ) ! the merit of being intelligible : it would perhaps be difficult to / \_ select three passages that we should care to read again. // Chap. "V CILiSHAW - COWLEY 249 40. The second of these poets was Crashaw, a man of some imagination and great piety, but whose softness (.j^gj^jj^^ of heart, united with feeble judgment, led him to admire and imitate whatever was most extravagant in the mystic writings of Saint Teresa. He was, more tlian Donne, a follower of Marini ; one of whose poems. The Massacre of the Innocents, he translated with success. It is difficult, in general, to find any thing in Crashaw that bad taste has not deformed. His poems were first published in 1646. 41. In the next year, 1647, Cowley's Mistress apjaeared ; the most celebrated performance of the miscalled „ , 1-1 -f • • PI Cowley. metaphysical poets. It is a series of short amatory poems, in the Italian style of the age, full of analogies that have no semblance of truth, except from the double sense of words and thoughts that unite the coldness of subtilty with the hyperbolical extravagance of counterfeited passion. A few Anacreontic poems, and some other light pieces of Cowley, have a spirit and raciness very unlike these frigid conceits ; and, in the ode on the death of his friend Mr. Harvey, he gave some proofs of real sensibility and poetic grace. The Pin- daric odes of Cowley were not published within this period. But it is not worth while to defer mention of them. Tliey contain, like all his poetry, from time to time, very beautiful lines ; but the faults are still of the same kind : his sensibility and good sense, nor has any poet more, are choked by false taste ; and it would be difficult to fix on any one poem in which the beauties are more frequent than the blemishes. Johnson has selected the elegy on Crashaw as the finest of Cowley's works. It begins with a very beautiful couplet, but I confess that little else seems, to my taste, of much value. The Complaint, probably better known tlian any other poem, appeal's to me the best in itself. His disappointed hopes give a not unpleasing melancholy to several passages. But his Latin ode in a similar strain is much more perfect. Cow- ley, perhaps, upon the whole, has had a reputation more above his deserts than any English poet ; yet it is very easy to per- ceive that some, who wrote better than he, did not possess so fine a genius. Johnson has written the life of Cowley with peculiar care ; and, as his summary of the poet's character is more favorable than my own, it may be candid to insert it in this place, as at least very discriminating, elaborate, and Wf^ll expressed. 250 NARRATIVE POETS — DANIEL. Part III. 42. "It may be affirmed without any encomiastic fervor, •Johnson's ^^^^^ ^^ brought to his poetic labors a mind replete character with learning, and that his pages are embellished of ''"^^ with all the ornaments wliich books could supply ; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gayety of the less ; * that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty nights ; that he was among those who freed translation from sei-vility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, ^\ alked by his side ; and that, if he left versification yet im- provable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it." 43. The poets of historical or fabulous narrative belong to another class. Of these the earliest is Daniel, whose voets: minor poems fall partly within the sixteenth century. Daniel. jjjg history of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster, a poem in eight books, was published in 1604. Faithfully adhei-ing to truth, which he does not suffer so much as an ornamental episode to interrupt, and equally studious to avoid the bolder figures of poetry, it is not surprising that Daniel should be little read. It is, indeed, certain that much Italian and Spanish poetry, even by those whose name has once stood rather high, depends chiefly upon merits which he abundantly possesses, — a smoothness of rhythm, and a lucid narration in simple language. But that which from the natu- ral delight in sweet sound is enough to content the ear in the kSouthern tongues, will always seem bald and tame in our less harmonious verse. It is the chief praise of Daniel, and must have contributed to what popularity he enjoyed in his own age, that his English is eminently pure, free from affectation of archaism and from pedantic innovation, with very little that is now obsolete. Both in prose and in poetry, he is, as to language, amrng the best writers of his time, and wanted but a greater confidence in his own power, or, to speak less indulgently, a greater share of it, to sustain his correct taste, calm sense, and moral feeling. 44. Next to Daniel in time, and much above him in reach Drayton's of mind, we place IMichael Drayton, whose Barons' Poiyoibion. ^y^rs have been mentioned under the preceding period, but whose more famous work was pubUshed partly in • Was not Milton's OJe on the N:itivity would .lohuson have thought Cowley B» Irritten as early as any of Cowley's ? And perior in gayety to Rir John Suckling J Chap. V. DRAYTON — BROWXE. 251 1613, and partly in 1G22. Drayton's Polyolbion is a poera of about 30,000" lines in length, written in Alexandrine coup- lets ; a measure, from its monotony, and ])erhaps from its fre- quency in doggerel ballads, not at all pleasing to the eai\ It contains a topographical description of England, illustrated with a prodigality of liistorical and legendary erudition. Such a poem is essentially designed to instruct, and speaks to the understanding more than to the fancy. The powers dis- played in it are, however, of a high cast. It has generally been a diflicidty Avith poets to deal witli a necessary enumera- tion of proper names. The catalogue of ships is not the most delightful part of the Iliad ; and Ariosto never encountered such a roll of persons or places without sinking into the tamest insipidity. Virgil is splendidly beautiful upon similar occasions ; but his decorative elegance could not be preserved, nor would continue to please, in a poem that kept up, through a great length, the effort to furnish instruction. Tlie style of Drayton is sustained, with extraordinary ability, on an equable line, from which he seldom much deviates, neither brilliant nor prosaic : few or no passages could be marked as impres- eive, but few are languid or mean. The language is clear, strong, various, and sufficiently figurative ; the stories and fictions interspersed, as well as the general spirit and liveli- ness, relieve the heaviness incident to topographical descrip- tion. There is probably no poem of this kind, in any other language, comparable together in extent and excellence to the Polyolbion ; nor can any one read a portion of it without admiration for its learned and highly gifted author. Yet perhaps no English poem, known as well by name, is so little known beyond its name ; for, while its immense length deters the common reader, it aflibrds, as has just been hinted, no great harvest for selection, and would be judged very unfairly by partial extracts. It must be owned also, that geography and antiquities may, in modern times, be taught better in prose than in verse ; yet whoever consults the Polyolbion for such objects will probably be repaid by petty knowledge which he may not have found anywhere else. 45. Among these historical poets I should incline to clasa William 13i-owne, author of a poem with the quaint j^rowne's title of Britannia's Pastorals; though his story, one Britinnia's of little interest, seems to have been invented by '^ ""^ ■ himself. Biowne, indeed, is of no distinct school among the 252 BEAUMONT — DA VENANT. Pakt III. writers of that age: he seems to recognize Spenser as hi« master ; but his own manner is more to be traced among later than earlier poets. He was a native of Devonshire ; and his principal poem, above mentioned, relating partly to the local scenery of that county, was printed in 1613. Browne is truly a poet, full of imagination, grace, and sweetness, though not very nervous or rapid. I know not why Headley, favora- ble enough for the most part to this generation of the sons of song, has spoken of Browne with unfair contempt. Justice, however, has been done to him by later critics.^ But I have not observed that they take notice of what is remarkable in the history of our poetical literature, that Browne is an early model of ease and variety in the regular couplet. Many passages in his unequal poem are hardly excelled, in this respect, by the fables of Dryden. It is manifest that Milton was well acquainted with the writings of Browne. 46. The commendation of improving the rhythm of the Sir John couplet is duc also to Sir .John Beaumont, author of Beaumout. ^ short poem on the battle of Bosworth Field. It was not written, however, so early as the Britannia's Pastor- als of Browne. In other respects, it has no pretensions to a high rank. But it may be added, that a poem of Drummond, on the visit of James I. to Scotland in 1617, is perfectly har- monious ; and, what is very remarkable in that age, he con- cludes the verse at every couplet with the regularity of Pope. 47. Far unlike the poem of Browne w^as Gondibert, pub- Davenant's Hshed by Sir William Davenant in 1650. It may Gondibert. pi-obably have been reckoned by himself an epic; but in that age tlie practice of Spain and Italy had effaced the distinction between the regular epic and the heroic romance. Gondibert belongs rather to the latter class by the entire want of truth in the story, though the scene is laid at the court of the Lombard kings ; by the deficiency of unity in the action ; by the intricacy of the events ; and by the resources of the fable, which are sometimes too much in the style of comic fiction. It is so imperfect, only two books and part of the » "Browne," Mr. Southey says, "is a admirers and imitators hereafter." "Ilia piiet who produced no slight effect upon poetry,'" Mr. Campbell, a far less indul- his contemporaries. George Wither, in his gent judge of the older bards, observes, happiest pieces, has learned the manner of "is not without beauty ; but it is the his friend ; and Milton may be traced to beauty of mere landscape and allegory, him. And, in our days, his peculiarities without the manners and pa.ssions that have been caught, and his beauties imi- constitute human interest." — Specimens tated by men who will themselves find of Knglish Poetry, iv. 323. Chai'. V. SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 253 third being completed, that we can hardly judge of the termi- nation it was to receive. Each book, however, after the manner of Spenser, is divided into several cantos. It con- tains about G,UOO lines. The metre is the four-lined stanza of alternate rhymes ; one capable of great vigor, but not perliaps well adapted to poetry of imagination or of passion. These, however, Davenant exhibits but sparingly in Gondibert : they are replaced by a philosophical spirit, in the tone of Sir John Davies, who had adopted the same metre, and, as some have thought, nourislied by the author's friendly intercourse with Hobbes. Gondibert is written in a clear, nervous English style : its condensation produces some obscui-ity ; but pedant- ry, at least that of language, will rarely be found in it ; and Davenant is less infected by the love of conceit and of extra- vagance than his contemporaries, though I would not assert that he is wholly exempt from the former blemish. But the chief praise of Gondibert is due to masculine verse in a good metrical cadence ; for the sake of which we may forgive the absence of interest in the story, and even of those glowing words and breathing tlioughts which are the soul of genuine poetry. Gondibert is very little read ; yet it is better worth reading than the Purple Island, though it may have less of that which distinguishes a i)oet from another man. 48. The sonnets of Shakspeare — for we now come to the minor, that is the shorter and more lyric, poetry of sonnets of the age — were published in 1 009, in a manner as ^''•I'^'^P^'^re. mystei-ious as their subjec^t and contents. They are dedi- cated by an editor (Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller) " to M\\ W. H., the only begetter of these sonnets." ^ No one, as far as I remember, has ever doubted their genuineness ; no one can doubt that they express not only real but intense emo- tions of the heart : but when they were written, who was the W. H. quaintly called their begetter, by which we can only understand the cause of their being written, and to what per- sons or circumstances they allude, has of late years been tiie subject of much curiosity. These sonnets were long over- ■ The precise words of the dedication Wisheth the ite the following : — Well-wishing Adventurer •I m xt 1 T> li. In setting forth •' To the only Begetter ij, rj? Of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. 11., The titlepage runs: " Shakspeare's Son- All Happiness nets, never before imprinted, 4 to. 1G0& And that eternity promised Q. Eld for T. T." By our ever-living jioet 254 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. Part IIL looked : Steevens spoke of them with the utmost scorn, as productions which no one could read: but a very different suffrage is generally given by the lovers of poetry ; and per- haps there is now a tendency, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions. They rise, indeed, in estimation, as we attentively read and reflect upon them ; for I do not think that at first they give us much pleasure. No one ever entered more fully than Shakspeare into the character of this species of poetry, which admits of no expletive imagery, no merely ornamental line. But, though each sonnet has gene- rally its proper unity, the sense, I do not mean the gramma- tical construction, will sometimes be found to spread from one to another, independently of that repetition of the leading idea, like variations of an air, which a series of them fre- quently exhibits, and on account of which they have latterly been reckoned by some rather an integral poem than a collec- tion of sonnets. But this is not uncommon among the Italians, and belongs, in fact, to those of Petrarch himself. They may easily be resolved into several series, according to their sub- jects : ^ but, when read attentively, we find them relate to one definite, though obscure, period of the poet's life ; in wliich^ an attachment to some female, which seems to have touched* neitlier his heart nor his fancy very sensibly, was over- powered, without entirely ceasing, by one to a friend ; and this last is of such an enthusiastic character, and so extravagant in the phrases that the author uses, as to have thrown an unac- countable mystery over the whole work. It is true, that in tlie poetry as well as in the fictions of early ages we find a more ardent tone of affection in the language of friendship than lias since been usual ; and yet no instance has been adduced of such rapturous devotedness, such an idolatry of admiring love, as one of the greatest beings whom nature ever i)roduced in the human form pours forth to some unknown youtJi in the majority of these sonnets. 49. The notion that a woman was their general object is > This has been done in ii late publica- former and latter part of the sonnets, tion, Shaksjieare's Antobiotrrapliical I'o- Mr. Urown's work did not fall into my ems,' by (ieoige ArmitaKe IJrown (1838). hands till nearly the time that tliepe. sheets It niiKht have oceurred to any attentive passed tliront^h the press, \vhich I nientioi. rea.l^r; but I do not know that the an,a- on aeconnt of some eoineidcuces of opinion, lysi.s was ever so completely made before, especially as to Sliak.spcare'8 kuowledi?e thoiiRh almost every one has been aware of Latiu. '.hat different per.sonu are aUdresseiJ in the Chap. V. SIIAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 253 totally untenable, and it is strange that Colei-iJge should have entertained it.' Those that were evidently The persoa addressed to a woman, tlie person above hinted, wii"i» they are by much the smaller part of the whole, — but twenty-eight out of one luindred and fifty-four. And this mysterious Mr. W. H. must be presumed to be the idolized friend of Shakspeare, But who could lie be ? No one re- (lorded as such in literary history or anecdote answers the description. But if we seize a clew which innumerable pas- sages give us, and suppose that they allude to a youth of high rank as well as personal beauty and accomplishment, in whose favor and intimacy, according to the base prejudices of the world, a player and a poet, though he were the author of Macbeth, might be tliought lionored, something of the strange- ness, as it appears to us, of Shakspeare's humiliation in address- ins iiim as a beinsr before whose feet he crouched, whose frown he feared, whose injuries, and tliose of the most insulting kind, — the seduction of the mistress to whom we have alluded, — he felt and bewailed without resenting ; something, I say, of the strangeness of this liumiliation, and at best it is but little, may be liglitened, and in a certain sense rendered intelligible. And it has been ingeniously conjectured within a few years, by inquirers independent of each other, that William Her- bert, Earl of Pembroke, born in 1;)80, and afterwards a man of noble and gallant character, thougli always of a licentious life, was shadowed under the initials of Mr. W. H. This hypothesis is not strictly proved, but sufficiently so, in my opinion, to demand our assent.^ 1 " It Roems to me. that the sonnets quoted, had any knowledge of their pri- could only li;ive come from a man deeply ority. in love, and in love with a woman ; and Drake has fixed on Lord Southampton there i.s one sonnet, which, from its incon- as the object of these sonnets, induced gruity, I take to be a purposed blind." — probably by the tradition of his friendship Table Talk, vol. ii. p 181). This sonnet with Shakspeare, and by the latter"s hav- the editor sui)poses to be the twentietli, ing dedicated to him his Venus and Adouis, which certainly could not have been ad- as well as by what is remarkable on the dressed to a woman ; but the proof is face of the series of sonnets, — that Shak- equally stron<; ;us to most of the rest, speare looked up to his friend " with reve- Coleridge's opinion is absolutely untena- rence and homage." But, unfortunately, ble ; nor do 1 conceive that any one else is this was only the reverence and homage of likely to maintain it after reading the son- an inferior to one of high rank, and not nets of Shiikspeare : but, to those who such as the virtues of Southampton might have not done this, the authority may have challenged. Proofs of the low moral justly .seem imposing. char.icter of "Mr. W. II." are continual. 2 In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1832, It was also impossible that Lord South- p. 217 etjwst, it will be sihmi, that this oc- ampton could be called " beaut«'0U3 and curred both to Mr. Boaden and Mr Hey- lovely youth," or " sweet boy." Mrs. wood Bright. And it does not appeiir, that Jameson, in her Loves of the Poets, has Mr. Brown, author of the work above adopted the same hypothesis, but is forced 256 DEUMMOND. Pakt m 50. Notwithstanding the frequent beauties of these sonnets, the pleasure of their pei'usal is greatly diminished by these circumstances ; and it is impossible not to wish that Shak- speare had never written them. There is a weakness and folly in all excessive and misplaced affection, which is not redeemed by the touches of nobler sentiments that abound in this long series of sonnets. But there are also faults of a merely critical nature. The obscurity is often such as only conjec- ture can penetrate ; the strain of tenderness and adoration would be too monotonous, were it less unpleasing ; and so many frigid conceits ai'e scattered around, that we might almost fancy the poet to have written without genuine emo- tion, did not such a host of other passages attest the contrary. 51. The sonnets of Drummond of Hawthoraden, the most Sonnets of Celebrated in that class of poets, have obtained, pro- Drummond bably, as much praise" as they deserve.^ But they and others. ^^.^ polished and elegant, free from conceit and bad taste, in pure unblemished English : some are pathetic or tender in sentiment, and, if they do not show much originality, at least would have acquired a fair place among the Italians of the sixteenth century. Those of Daniel, of Drayton, and of Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, are per- haps hardly inferior. Some may doubt, however, whether the last poet should be placed on such a level." But the difficulty in consequence to suppose some of the obtained ; " which seems to say the same earlier sonnets to be addressed to a wo- thing, but is in fact different. He ob- man. serves that Drummond '' frequently bor- Pemhroke succeeded to his father in 1601 : rows and sometimes translates from the I ii\cline to think that the sonnets were Italian and Spanish poets.'' — ^Southey's written about that time, some probably British Poets, p. 798. The furious invec- uarlier, some later. That they were the tive of Gifford against Drummond for .same iis Meres, in 1598, has mentioned having written private memoranda of his among the compositions of Shakspeare, conversations with Ben Jonson, which he •• his sugred sonnets among his private did not publish, and which, for aught we friends," I do not believe, both on account know, were perfectly faithful, is absurd. '.)f the date, and from the pecuUarly per- Any one else would have been thankful >onal allusions they contain. for so much literary anecdote. [Much has been written lately on the - Lord Stirling is rather monotonous, as subject of Shak.^pe.ire's sonnets ; and a sonneteers usually are ; and he addresses natural reluctance to admit any failings liis mistress by the appellation, " Fair in such a man has led some to fancy that tygress."' Campbell observes that there his mistress was no otlier than his wife, is elegance of expression in a few of Stir- Ann Hathaway, and others to conjecture ling's shorter pieces. — Vol. iv. p. 206. that he lent iiis pen to the amours of a The longest poem of Stirling is entitled friend. But I liave seen no ground to Domesday, in twelve books, or, as ho calls alter my own view of the ca.se, e.xcept that them, liours. It is written in tlie Italian possibly some other sonnets may have octave sbmza, and has somewhat of the been meant by Meres. — 1842.] condensed style of the philosophical school, 1 I concur in this with Mr. Campbell, which lie seems to have imitated j but his iv. 343. Mr. Soutliey thinks Drummond numbers are harsh " lias deserved the high reputation he has Chap. V. CAREW. 257 of finding the necessary rhymes in our language has caused most who haA'C attempted the sonnet to swerve from laws which cannot be transgressed, at least to the degree they have often dared, without losing the unity for which that complex mechanism was contrived. Certainly three quatrains of alter- nate rliynics, succeeded by a couplet, which Urumniond, like many other English poets, has sometimes given us, is the very worst form of the sonnet, even if, in deference to a scanty number of Italian precedents, we allow it to pass as a sonnet at all.^ We possess, indeed, noble poetry in the form of son- net ; yet with us it seems more fitted for grave than amatory composition : in the latter we miss the facility and grace of our native luiglish measures, the song, the madrigal, or the ballad. 52. Carew is the most celebrated among the lighter poets, though no collection has hitherto embraced liis entire writings. Headley has said, and Ellis echoes the praise, that " Carew lias the ease without the pedantry of Waller, and perhaps less conceit. Waller is too exclusively considered as the first man who brought versification to any thing like its present standard. Carew's pretensions to the same merit are seldom sufficiently either considered or allowed." Yet, in point of versification, others of the same age seem to have surpassed Carew, wliose lines are often very harmonious, but not so artiully constructed or so uniformly pleasing as those of AValler. He is remarkably unequal : the best of his little poems (none of more than thirty lines are good) excel all of his time ; but, after a few lines of great beauty, we often come to some ill-expressed or obscure or 1 The legitimate sonnet consists of two the third line, will make a real sonnet, quatrains and two tercets : as much skill, which Siiakspeai-e, Wilton, Bowles, and to say the least, is required for the nia- Wordsworth have often failed to give us, nagenient of the latter as of tlie former, even wliere they have given us something The rhymes of the last six lines are capa- good instead. ble of many arrangements ; but by far the [The common form of the Italian sonnet worst, and also the least common in Italy, is called rima diiiisa ; where the rhymes is that wu usually adopt, — the (il'th ami of the two quatrains are 1, 4, 5, 8 — 2. 3, sixth rhyming together, frequently after a G, 7 ; but the alternate rhyme sometimes, full pause, so that the sonnet ends with though less regularly, occurs. The tercets the point of an cpi;;ram. The best, a.stlie are either in W/«a iiiratenuta,Qr rii/ia alter- Italians hold, is the rhyming together of nata ; and great variety is found in these, the three uneven and the three even lines ; even among the early poets. Quadriopro- but, ;us our language is less rich in conso- fers the order a, b, a, b, a, b, where there nant terminations, there can be no objec- are only two rhyming terminations ; but tion to what ha.s abundant precedents even does not object to a, b, c, a, b, c ; or even in theirs, — the rhyming of the first and a, b, c, b, a, c. The couplet termination fourth, second and tilth, third and sixth he entirely condemns. Quadrio, Storii lines. This, with a break in the sense at d' ogni I'oesia, iii. 25. — 1342.] VOL. UI. 17 258 BEN JONSON. lAHTlll weak or inharmonious passage. Few will hesitate to acknow- ledge, that he has more fancy and more tenderness than Wal- ler, but less choice, less judgment and knowledge where to stop, less of the equability which never offends, less attention to the unity and thread of his little pieces. I should hesitate to give him, on the whole, the preference as a poet, taking col- lectively the attributes of that character ; for we must not, in such a comparison, overlook a good deal of very inferior merit which may be found in the short volume of Carew's poems. Tlie best have great beauty ; but he has had, in late criticism, his full share of applause. Two of his most pleasing little poems appear also among those of Herrick ; and as Carew's were, I believe, published posthumously, I am rather inflined to pi-efer the claim of the other poet, independently of some internal evidence as to one of them. In all ages, these very short compositions circulate for a time in polished society, while mistakes as to the real author arc natural.' 53. The minor poetry of Ben Jonson is extremely beau- „ , tiful. This is partly mixed with his masques and Ben Jonsou. . , -, • i i • i i i S mterludes, poetical and musical rather than dramatic pieces, and intended to gratify the imagination by the charms of song, as well as by the varied scenes that were brought before the eye ; partly in very short effusions of a single sen- timent, among which two epitaphs are known by heart. Jon- sou possessed an admirable taste and feeling in poetry, which his dramas, except the Sad Shepherd, do not entirely lead us to value highly enough ; and, when we consider how many other intellectual excellences distinguished him, — wit, obser- vation, judgment, memory, learning, — we must acknowledge that the inscription on his tomb, " O rare Ben Jonson ! " is not more pithy than it is true. I One of these poems begins, — the other variations are for the worse. I " Amon-st the myrtles a.s I walkM, '"'"^'^ '«^\'' ,'.' j" 'loubt whether he bor- Ix)ve and my sighs thus intertalk'd." '"'Z''^^ ''"'' '\''fi-"'''"^ ? ''"'•:' °'" ''if l'"^' self unproved upon. I must own that he Horriok wants four good lines which are 1,^^ a trick of spoiling wliat he t;ikes. In Carew ; and, as tliey are rather more c^jid^iinj, ii.,g ^q incomparable image on « likely to have been interpolated than left j.^j,, (Jmicjon' ; out, this leads to a sort of inference that ' ' o • he was the original : there are also some " Her fc('t beneath the petticoat, Dther petty improvements. The second Li/ce lillle mire, stole in and out, poem is that beginning, — As if they feared the Ught " " Ask me wliy I send you here Ilcrrick has it thus : — This firstling of the infant year." .. -j^^ ^^,^^^^ j.^^^^ ^.^^ ^„^.^^ ^^ ^^p Heirick gives the second line strangely, A little out ; " *' This sweet infanta of the year," ^ most singular parallel for an elejcant Aich is little clise than nonsense ; and all dancer. Chap. V. WITHER - HABINGTON - SUCKLING. 259 54. George "Wither, by siding witli the less poetical though more prosperous party in the civil war, and by a profusion of" temporary writings to serve the ends of faction and folly, has left a name which we were accustomed to despise, till Ellis did justice to " that playful fancy, pure 'taste, and artless delicacy of sentiment, whicii distinguish the poetry of his early youth." llis best poems were published in 1622, with tlie title. Mistress of Philarete. Some of them are liighly beautiful, and bespeak a mind above the grovelling Puritanism into which he afterwards fell. I think there is liardly any thing in our lyric poetry of this period equal to AVither's lines on his Muse, published by EUis.^ of). The poetry of Habington is that of a pure and amiable niind, turned to versification by tlie custom of the age, during a real passion for a lady of birth and '^ '°^ '^^' virtue, the Castara whom he afterwards married ; but it dis- plays no great original power, nor is it by any means exempt from the ordinary blemishes of hyperbolical compliment and far-fetched imagery. The poems of William, Earl Eariof of Pembr<)ke, long kno\\ii by the character drawn for i'»-'inbroke. him by Clarendon, and now as the object of Shakspeare's doting friendship, were ushered into the world after his death, with a letter of extravagant flattery addressed by Donne to Christiana, Countess of Devonshire.^ But there is little reli- ance to be placed on the freedom from interpolation of these posthumous editions. Among these poems attributed to Lord Pembroke, we find one of the best known of Carew's ; ^ and even the famous lines addressed to tlie Soul, which some have given to Silvester. The poems, in general, are of little merit ; some are grossly indecent ; nor would they be men- tioned here except for the interest recently attached to the author's name. But they throw no light whatever on tho sonnets of Shakspeare. 5G. Sir John Suckling is acknowledged to have left far behind him all former writers of song in gayety and ease : it is not equally clear that he has ever "'^ °^' since been surpassed. His poetry aims at no higher praise ; he shows no sentiment or imagination, either because he had 1 Ellis's Specimens of Early English of earlier date. The Countess of Revon- Poets. iii. 96. shire is not called dowager : her husband 2 The only edition that I have seen, or died in 1C43. that I find mentioned, of Lord Pembroke's , ., . , , .^t j ^ poems, is in 1660. But. as Domie di«;d h^ ' ^f^ "'t ."° T"* whither do Btr«y fcSl, I conceive that there must be one ^^" 8"''^''" '^'"'^ °^ '^»« '^- 260 LOVELACE — HERRICK. Part III them not, or because he did not require either in the style he chose. Perhaps the Italians may have poetry in that style equal to Suckling's ; I do not know that they have, nor do I believe that tliere is any in French : that there is none in Latin I am convinced.^ Lovelace is chiefly known TjQ yGl3.CC * by a single song : his other poetry is much inferior ; and indeed it may be generally remarked, that the flowers of our early verse, both in the Elizabethan and the subsequent age, have been well culled by good taste and a friendly spirit of selection. "VVe must not judge of them, or shall judge of them very favorably, by the extracts of Headley or Ellis. 57. The most amorous and among the best of our amorous „ . . poets was Robert Herrick, a clergyman ejected from his living in Devonshire by the Long Parliament, whose " Hesperides, or Poems Human and Divine," were published in 1648. Herrick's divine poems are, of course, such as might be presumed by their title and by his calling; of his human, which are poetically much superior, and proba- bly written in early life, the greater portion is light and voluptuous, while some border on the licentious and indecent. A selection was published in 1815, by which, as commonly happens, the poetical fame of Herrick does not suffer: a number of dull epigrams are omitted ; and the editor has a manifest preference for what must be owned to be the most elegant and attractive part of his author's rhymes. He has much of the lively grace that distinguishes Anacreon and Catullus, and api)roaches also, with a less cloying monotony, to the Basia of Johannes Secundus. Herrick has as much variety as the poetry of kisses can well have ; but his love is in a very slight degree that of sentiment, or even any intense passion : his mistresses have little to recommend them, even in his own eyes, save their beauties ; and none of these are omitted in his catalogues. Yet he is abundant in the re- sources of vei'se : witliout the exuberant gayety of Suckling, or perhaps the delicacy of Carew, he is sportive, fanciful, and generally of polished language. The faults of his age are sometimes apjjarent : though he is not often obscure, he runs, more perliaps for the sake of variety than any other cause, into occasional pedantry. He has his conceits and false thoughts ; but these are more than redeemed by the numerous 1 Suckling's Epithalaniium, thoujih not world, and is a matchless piece of UrelineM wtitttn for those " qui niusas colitis se- and facility, veneres," haa been read by almost all the Chap. V. MILTON. 2G1 very little poems (for those of Herrick are frequently not longer than epigrams), which may be praised without much more (lualification. than belongs to such poetry. 58. John ISIilton was born in 1609. Few are ignorant of his life, in recovering and recording every circum- jj.,^^^ stance of which no diligence has been spared, nor has it often been unsuccessful. Of his Latin poetry, some was wi-itten at the age of seventeen ; in English, we have nothing, I believe, the date of which is known to be earlier than the sonnet on entering his twenty-third year. In 1634 he wrote Comus, which was published in 1637. Lycidas was written in the latter year; and most of his shorter pieces soon ai'ter- wards, exccjit the sonnets, some of which do not come within the first half of the century. 59. Comus was sufficient to convince any one of taste and feeling, that a great poet had arisen in England, and nj^comus. one partly formed in a diiferent school from his con- temporaries. Many of them had produced highly beautiful and imaginative passages ; but none had evinced so classical a judgment, none had aspired to so regular a perfection. Jonson had learned much from the ancients ; but there was a grace in their best models which he did not quite attain. Neither his Sad Shepherd nor the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher have the elegance or dignity of Comus. A noble virgin and her young brothers, by whom this masque was ori- ginally represented, required an elevation, a purity, a sort of severity of sentiment, which no one in that age could have given but Milton. He avoided, and nothing loath, the more festive notes which dramatic poetry was wont to mingle with its serious strain. But for this he compensated by the bright- est hues of fancy and the sweetest melody of song. In Comus we find nothing prosaic or feeble, no false taste in the in cidents, and not much in the language ; nothing over which we should desire to pass on a second perusal. Tiie want of what we may call personality, — none of the characters hav- hig names, except Comus himself, who is a very indefinite being, — and the absence of all positive attributes of time and place, enhance the ideality of the fiction by a certain indistinctness not unpleasing to the imagination. 60. It has been said, I think very fairly, that Lycidas is a good test of a real feeling for what is peculiarly ^ycidM. called poetry. Many, or, perhaps we might say, 262 MILTON. Part IlL most readers do not taste its excellence ; nor does it follow that they may not greatly admire Pope and Dryden, or even Virgil and Homer. It is, however, somewhat remarka- ble that Johnson, who has committed his critical reputation by the most contemptuous depreciation of this poem, had, in an, earlier part of his life, selected the tenth eclogue of Vir- gil for peculiar praise,^ — the tenth eclogue, which, beautiful as it is, belongs to the same class of pastoral and personal {»xiegory, and requires the same sacrifice of reasoning criti- o.^m, as the Lycidas itself In the age of Milton, the po- etical world had been accustomed by the Italian and Spanish writers to a more abundant use of allegory tlian has been pleasing to their posterity ; but Lycidas is not so nuich in tne nature of an allegory as of a masque : the characters ;jass before our eyes in imagination, as on the stage ; they are chiefly mythological, but not creations of the i)oet. Our sympathy with the fate of Lycidas may not be much stronger than for the desertion of Gallus by his mistress ; but many poems will yield an exquisite pleasure to the imagination that produce no emotion in the heart, or none at least except through associations independent of the subject. 61. The introduction of St. Peter, after the fabulous deities of the sea, has appeared an incongruity deserving of censure to some admirers of this poem. It would be very reluctantly that we could abandon to this criticism the most splendid passage it presents. But the censure I'ests, as I think, on too narrow a principle. In narrative or dramatic poetry, where something like illusion or momentary belief is to be produced, the mind requires an objective possibility, a capa- city of real existence, not only in all the separate portions of the imagined story, but in their coherency and relation to a common whole. Whatever is obviously incongruous, what- ever shocks our previous knowledge of possibility, destroys, to a certain extent, that acquiescence in the fiction, which it is the true business of the fiction to produce. But the case is not the same in such poems as Lycidas. They pre- tend to no credibihty ; they aim at no illusion : they ai-e read with the willing abandonment of the imagination to a waking dream, and require only that general possibility, that com- bination of images which common expei'ience does not reject as incompatible, witliout which the fancy of the poet would > Adventurer, No. 92. CHAP. V. MILTON. 263 be only like that of the hinatic. And it had been so usual to blend sacred with mythological personages in allegory, that no one prol)ably in jNIilton's age would have been struck by the objection. 62. The Allegro and Penseroso are perhajis more fami- liar to us than any part of the writings of Milton. AUogro and They satisfy the critics, and they delight mankind. I'l^nseroso. The choice of images is so judicious, their succession so rapid, the allusions are so various and pleasing, the leading distinc- tion of the poems is so felicitously maintained, the versifi- cation is so animated, that we may place them at the head of that long series of descriptive poems which our language has to boast. It may be added, as in the greater ])art of Milton's writings, that they are sustained at an uniform pitch, with few blemishes of expression, and scarce any feebleness ; a striking contrast, in this respect, to all the contem[)ora- neous poetry, except perhaps that of Waller. Johnson has thought, that, while there is no mirth in his melancholy, he can detect some melancholy in his mirth. This seems to be too strongly put ; but it may be said that his Allegro is rather cheerful than gay, and that even his cheerfulness is not always without effort. In these poems he is indebted to Fletchei-, to Burton, to Browne, to Wither, and probably to more of our early versifiers ; for he was a great collector of sweets from those wild flowers. 63. The Ode on the Nativity, far less popular than most of the poetry of Milton, is perhaps the finest in the ode on the English language. A grandeur, a simplicity, a ^'^''^'t^y- breadth of manner, an imagination at once elevated and re- strained by the subject, reign throughout it. If Pindar is a model of lyric poetry, it would be hard to name any other ode so truly Pindaric ; but more has naturally been derived from the Scriptures. Of the other short poems, that on the deatli of the Marchioness of Winchester deserves particular men- tion. It is pity that the first lines are bad, and the last much worse ; for rarely can we find moi'e feeling or beauty than in some other passages. 64. The sonnets of Milton have obtained of late years the admiration of all real lovers of poetry. Johnson jj.^ sonneta has been as impotent to fix the public taste in this instance as in his other criticisms on the smaller poems of the author of Paradise Lost. These sonnets are indeed unequal ; 2*54 LATIN POETS OF FRANCE. Pakt IIL the expression is sometimes harsh, and sometimea obscure ; sometimes too much of pedantic aUusion interferes with the sentiment ; nor am I reconciled to his frequent deviations from the best Italian structure. But such blemishes are lost in the majestic simj)licity, the holy calm, that ennoble many of these short compositions. 65. Many anonymous songs, many popular lays, both of A.nony- Scottish and English minstrelsy, were poured forth Qous in this period of the seventeenth century. Those of °^ ''^' Scotland became, after the union of the crowns, and he consequent cessation of rude border frays, less warlike han before : they are still, however, imaginative, pathetic, and natural. It is probable that the best even of this class are a little older ; but their date is seldom determinable with much precision. The same may be said of the English bal- lads, which, so far as of a merely popular nature, appeal', by their style and other circumstances, to belong more frequently to the reign of James I. than any other period. Sect. VI. — On Latin Poetry. Latin Poets of France and other Countries — Of England — May — Milton. 66. France, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, Latin '^^^^ been remarkably fruitful of Latin poetry : it was poets of the pride of her scholars, and sometimes of her statesmen. In the age that we have now in review, we do not find so many conspicuous names ; but the custom of academical institutions, and especially of the seminaries con- ducted by the Jesuits, kept up a facility of Latin versification, which it was by no means held pedantic or ridiculous to exhibit in riper years. The French enumerate several with praise: Guijon ; Bourbon (Borbonius), whom some have com- pared with the best of the preceding century, and among whose poems that on the death of Henry IV. is reckoned the best; Cerisantes, equal, as some of his admirers think, lo Sar- bievius, and superior, as others presume, to Horace ; and Petavius, who, having solaced his leisure hours with Greek Chap V. GERMANY- ITALY -HOLLAND. 265 and Hebrew, as well as Latin versification, has obtained in the last the general suffrage of critics.^ I can speak of none of these from direct knowledge, except of Eorbonius, whose Dine on the death of Henry have not appeared, to my judgment, deserving of so much eulogy. G7. Tlie Germans wrote much in Latin, especially in the earlier decades of this period. ]Melissus Schedius, i,, Germany not undistinguished in his native tongue, might have "'"^ ^"^'y- been mentioned as a Latin poet in the last volume ; since most of his compositions were published in the sixteenth century. In Italy we have not many conspicuous names. The bad taste that infested the school of Marini spread also, according to Tiraboschi, over Latin poetry. Martial, Lucan, and Clau- dian became in their eyes better models than Catullus and Virgil. Baillet, or rather those whom he copies, and among whom Rossi (author of the Pinacotheca Virorum Illustrium, under the name of Erythra^us, a profuse and indiscriminating panegyrist, for the most part, of his contemporaries) furnislies the chief materials, bestows praise on Cesarini, on Querenghi, whom even Tiral)oschi selects from the crowd, and on Maffei Barberini, best known as Pope Urban VHI. 68. Holland stood at the head of Europe in this line of poetry. Grotius has had the reputation of writing m Holland: with spirit, elegance, and imagination.- But he is """S'"*- excelled by Heinsius, whose elegies, still more than his hex- ameters, may be ranked high in modern Latin. The habit, however, of classical imitation, has so much weakened all in dividual originality in these versifiers, that it is often difficult to distinguish them, or to pronounce of any twenty lines that they might not have been written by some other author. Compare, for example, the elegies of Buchanan with those of Heinsius, whei-ever there are no proper names to guide us. ' Tiaillct. Jugcmcns des Sc^avans, has canan a des odes digues de I'antiquite, criticised all these and several more. I{a- mais il a de grandes inegalites par !e me- pin's opinion on Latin poetry is entitled to lange de son caractero qui n'est pas assea much regard from his own excellence in uni." — Reflexions sur la Poi-tique, p. 208. it. He praises three lyrists, — Casimir, = [The Adauius Exul of Grotius. which, Magdelcnet, and Cerisantes ; the two lat- after going through several editions in tor being French. '• Sarbieuski a de I'ele- Holland before the middle of the seven- vation, mais sans purete ; Magdelenet est teenth century, has lately been retrana- pur, mais sans elevation. Cerisantes a lated by Mr. Barham, is not only of con- joint dans ses odes I'un et I'autre ; car il siderable poetical merit, but deSen'ing of 6crit noblement, et dun style assez pur. notice, as having suggested much to Mil Apres tout, il n'a pas tantde feu quo Casi- ton. Ijiuder perceived this, but waa mir, lequel avoit bien de I'esprit, et de cet strangely led to exaggerate the resem Mprit hcureux qui fait les poetes. Bu- blauce by forgery. — 1847.J 266 SARBIEVIUS. Part UI. A more finished and continued elegance belongs, on the whole (as at least I should say), to the latter: but, in a short passage, this may not be perceptible ; and I believe few would guess with much confidence between the two. Heinsius, however like most of the Dutch, is remarkably fond of a polysyllabic close in the pentameter ; at least in his Juvenilia, which, not- withstanding their title, are perhaps better than his later pro- ductions. As it is not necessary to make a distinct head for the Latin drama, we may heie advert to a tragedy by Ilcin- sivis, Herodes Infanticida. Tliis has been the subject of a ciitique by Balzac, for the most part very favorable ; and it certainly contains some highly beautiful passages. Perhaps the desci-iption of the Virgin's feelings on the nativity, though praised by Balzac, and exquisitely classical in diction, is not quite in the best taste.' 61). Sidonius Hosehius, a Flemish Jesuit, is extolled by Cajiim\r Baillet and his . authorities. But another of the Sarbievi- same Order, Casirair Sarbievius, a Pole, is far better ^' known ; and in lyric poetry, wliich he almost exclu- sively cultivated, obtained a much higher reputation. He had lived some years at Pome, and is full of Roman allusion. He had read Horace, as Sannazarius had Virgil, and Heinsius Ovid, till the style and tone became spontaneous ; but he has more of centonism than the other two. Yet, while he con- stantly reminds us of Horace, it is with as constant an inferi- ority : we feel that his Rome was not the same Rome ; that Urban VHl. was not Augustus, nor the Polish victories on the Danube like those of the sons of Livia. Hence his flat- tery of the great, though not a step beyond that of his master, seems rather more displeasing, because we have it only on his word that they were truly great. Sarbievius seldom rises high or pours out an original feeling ; but he is free from con- ceits, never becomes prosaic, and knows how to put in good ' " Oculosque nunc hue pavida nunc Laudemque matris virginis crimen illuc jacit, putat." Interque matrem Tirginemque hse- A critique on the poems of IJoinsius rent adhuc will be found in the Retrospective Keview, Suspensa matris gaudia, ac trepidus vol. i. p. 49; but notwithstanding the pudor. laudatory spirit, which is for the most .... saspe, cum blandas puer, part too indiscriminatiug in that publica- Aut a sopore lauguidas jactat ma- tion, the reviewer has not done justice to nus, Heinsius, and hardly seems, perhaps, a Tenerisque labris pectus intactum very competent judge of Latin verse. petit, The suffrages of those who were so, in Virginea subitus ora perfundit ru- favor of this Batavian poet, are collected bor, by Baillet, n. 1482. Chap. V. BARL^US. 207 language the commonplaces with which his subject happens to furnisirhim. He is to a certain degree, in Latin poetry, what Chiabrera is in Italian, but does not deserve so high a place. Sarbievius was perhaps the first who succeeded much in the Alcaic stanza, which the earlier poets seem to avoid, or 1o use unskilfully. But he has many unwarrantable licenses in his metre, and even false quantities, as is common to the gi-eat majority of these Latin versifiers. 70. Gasper BarLneus had as high a name, perhaps, as any Latin poet of this age. His rhythm is indeed excel- jjarteus. lent ; but, if he ever rises to other excellence, I have not lighted on tlie passages. A greater equality I have never found than in Barla^us : nothing is bad, nothing is striking. It was the practice with Dutchmen on their marriage to pur- chase epithalamiums in hexameter verse ; and the muse of Barla3us was in request. These nuptial songs are of course about Peleus and Thetis, or similar personages, interspersed with fitting praises of the bride and bridegroom. Such poetry is not likely to rise high. The epicedia, or funeral lamenta- tions, paid for by the heir, are little, if at all, better than the epithalamia; and the panegyrical effusions on public or pri- vate events rather worse. The elegies of Barlreus, as we generally find, are superior to the hexameters : he has here the same smoothness of versification, and a graceful gayety which gives us pleasure. In some of his elegies and epistles, he counterfeits the Ovidian style extremely well, so that they might pass for those of his model. Still there is an equabili- ty, a recurrence of trivial thoughts and forms, which, in truth, is too much characteristic of modern Latin to be a reproach to Barlaius. He uses the polysyllabic termination less than earlier Dutch poets. One of the epithalamia of Barlajus, it may be observed before we leave him, is entitled Paradisus, and recounts the nuptials of Adam and Eve. It is possible that Milton may have seen tliis : the fourth book of the Para- dise Lost compresses the excessive dififuseness of Barlajus ; but the ideas are in great measure the same. Yet, since tliis must naturally be the case, we cannot presume imitation. Few. of the poems of Barlanis are so redundant as this : he has the gift of stringing together mythological parallels and descrip- tive poetry without stint ; and his discretion does not inform him where to stop. 71. The eight books of Sylvae by Balde, a German eccle- 268 LAITN POETS : JONSTON — ALABASTER. Faist HI. siastic, Jire extolled by Baillet and Bouterwek far above their Baide. Value : the odes are tumid and unclassical ; yet Greek poem soiTie have Called him equal to Horace. Heinsius tried his skill in Greek verse. His Peplus Groeco- rum Epigrammatum was published in 1613. These are what our schoolboys would call very indiiferent in point of elegance, and, as I should conceive, of accuracy : articles and expletives (as they used to be happily called) are perpetually employed for the sake of the metre, not of the sense. 72. Scotland might perhaps contend with Holland in this as well as in the preceding age. In the Deliciae ofVcotiand. Poctarum Scotorum, published in 1637 by Arthur Psalms" ^ Jonston, we find about an equal produce of each cen- tury ; the whole number being thirty-seven. Those of Jonston himself, and some elegies by Scot of Scotstarvet, are among the best. The Scots certainly wrote Latin with a good ear, and considerable elegance of phrase. A sort of critical controversy was carried on in the last century as to the versions of the Psalms by Buchanan and Jonston. Thougli the national honor may seem equally secure by the superiority of either, it has, I believe, been usual in Scotland to mauitain the older poet against all the world. I am nevertheless inclined to think, that. Jonston's Psalms, all of which are in elegiac metre, do not foil short of those of Buchanan, either in elegance of style or in correctness of La- tinity. In the 137th, witli which Buchanan has taken much pains, he may be allowed the preference, but not at a great interval ; and he has attained this superiority by too much diffuseness. 73. Nothing good, and hardly tolerable, in a poetical sense, Owen's had appeared in Latin verse among ourselves till epigrams, ^-j^jg period. Owen'« epigrams (Audoeni Epigram- mAta), a well-known collection, were published in 1607: un- equal enough, they are sometimes neat, and more often witty ; Alabaster's ^^t thcy Scarcely aspire to the name of poetry. Ala- Roxana. baster, a man of recondite Hebrew learning, pub- lished in 1632 his tragedy of Roxana, which, as he tells us, was written about forty years before for one night's represen- tation, probably at college, but had been lately printed by some phxgiary as liis own. He forgets, however, to inform the reader, and thus lays himself open to some recrimination, that his tragedy is very largely borrowed from the Dalida of Chap. V. MAY -MILTON. 269 Groto, an Italian dramatist of the sixteenth centuiy.' The story, the characters, the incidents, almost every successive scene, many thoiiglits, descriptions, and images, are taken from this original ; but it is a very free translation, or rather differs from what can he called a translation. The tragedy of Groto is shortened ; and Alabaster has thrown much into another form, besides introducing much of his owni. The plot is full of all the accumulated horror and slaughter in which the Italians delighted on their stage. I rather prefer the original tragedy. Alabaster has spirit and fire, with some degree of skill ; but his notion of tragic style is of the " King Cambyses' vein : " he is inflated and hyperbolical to excess, which is not the case with Groto. 74. But the first Latin poetry which England can vaunt is May's Supplement to Lucan, in seven books, which jj -ggy carry down the history of the Pharsalia to the pieuient to death of C;vsar. This is not only a very sj)irited ''"*™- poem, but, in many places at least, an excellent imitation. The versification, though it frequently reminds us of his model, is somewhat more negligent. May seems rarely to fall into Lucan's tumid extravagances, or to emulate his phi losophical grandeur : but the narration is almost as impetuous and rapid, the images as thronged ; and sometimes we have rather a happy imitation of the ingenious sophisms Lucan is apt to employ. The death of Cato and that of Ca3sar are among the passages well Avorthy of praise. In some lines on Cleopatra's intrigue with Cassar, while married to her brother, he has seized, with felicitous effect, not only the broken cadences, but the love of moral paradox, we find in Lucan.^ 75. Many of the Latin poems of Milton were written in early life ; some even at the age of seventeen. His name, and the just curiosity of mankind to trace the development of a ' I am inilebtcd for the knowledge of = . . . . " Ncc crimen inosse this to a manuscript note I found in the Concubitu nimium tali, Clcopatni, puta- copy of Ahibastcr's Itoxana in the liritisli bunt Museum : " Haud multum abest hfrc tra- Qui I'tolcmocorum thalamos, consuetariue. gedia a pura versione tragedise Italica; jura LudoTici (.iroti Ca-ci Iladriensis cui titu- Inecstse novere domus, fratremque sorori lus Dalida." This induced me to read the Coiijugio junctam, sacrae sub nomine tredw tras'-'Jy of Groto, which I had not pre- Ma.jus adulterio dehi'tum ; tiirpius isset, viouslv done. Quis credat? justi ad thalamos Cleopatra The title of Roxana runs thus : " Rox- niariti, ana tragedia a plagiarii nnguibus Tindi- Utque minus lecto peccaret,adultera facta catii aucta et aguita. ab autore Gul. est." Alut)a£tro. Lond. 1632." 270 MILTON'S LATIN POETRY. Part HI. mighty genius, would naturally attract our regard. They are Milton'" "^ themselves full of classical elegance, of thoughts Latin natural and pleasing, of a diction culled with taste poems. fVom the gardens of ancient poetry, of a versifica- tion remarkably well cadeneed and grateful to the ear. There is in them, without a marked originality, which Latin verse can rarely admit but at the price of some incorrectness or impropriety, a more individual display of the poet's mind than we usually find. " In the elegies," it is said by Warton, a very competent judge of Latin poetry, " 0\i([ Avas professedly Milton's model for language and versifica- tion. They are not, however, a perpetual and uniform tissue of Ovidian phraseology. With Ovid in view, he ha.s an original manner and character of liis own, which exhi- bit a remarkable perspicuity of contexture, a native faci- lity and fluency. Nor does his observation of Roman models oppress or destroy our great poet's inherent powers of invention and sentiment. I value these pieces as much for their fancy and genius as for their style and expres- sion. That Ovid, among the Latin poets, was JMilton's favor- ite, appears not only from his elegiac but his hexametric poetry. The versification of our author's hexameters has 3'et a different structure from that of the Metamorphoses : Mil- ton's is more clear, intelligible, and flowing ; less desultory, less familiar, and less embarrassed with a frequent recur- rence of periods. Ovid is at once rapid and abrupt." ^ Why Warton should have at once supposed Ovid to be IVIilton's favorite model in hexameters, and yet so totally different as he represents him to be, seems hard to say. The structure of our poet's hexameters is much more Virgilian ; nor do I see the least resemblance in them to the manner of Ovid. These Latin poems of Milton bear some traces of juvenility, but, for the most part, such as please us for that very reason : it is the spring-time of an ardent and brilliant fiincy, before the Btern and sour spirit of polemical Puritanism had gained entrance into his mind, — the voice of the Allegro and of ( 'omus. > ^V.■l^ton''B essay on the Latin poetry of Milton, inserted at length in TodJ's editica Chap. VI. DECIJXE OF ITALIAN THEATRE. 271 CHArXER VI. mSTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1660. Sect. I. — On the Italian and Spanish Drama. Character of the Italian Theatre in this Age — BonarelU — The Spanish Theatre — CalJeron — Appreciation of his Merits as a Dramatic i'oot. 1. The Italian theatre, if we should believe one of its his- torians, fell into total decay during the whole course of the seventeenth century, though the number of the luuan dramatic pieces of various kinds was by no means *'><«^'^re- small. He makes a sort of apology for inserting in a copious list of dramatic performances any that appeared after IGOO, and stops entirely with 1650.i g„j j,-j ^j^j^ i^^ seems hardly to have done justice to a few, which, if not of remarkable excellence, might be selected from the rest. Andreini is per- haps best known by name in England, and that for one only of his eighteen dramas, the Adamo, which has been supposed, on too precarious grounds, to have furnished the idea of Para- dise Lost in the original form, as it was planned by its great author. The Adamo was first published in IGlo, and after- wards with amplification in 1G41. It is denominated "A Sacred Representation ; " and, as Andreini was a player by profession, must be presumed to have been brought upon the stage. It is, however, asserted by Riccoboni, that those who wrote regular tragedies did not cause them to be represented : probably he might have scrupled to ^ive that epithet to the Adamo. Ilayler and Walker have reckoned it a composition of considerable beauty. 2. The majority of Italian tragedies in the seventeenth century were taken, like the Adamo, fiom sace^ «!ubj<^48, ' Riccoboni Hist, du Tb^aitre mjH^, TO* «. 272 FILLI D: seme. ?AKi m. mcludlng such as ecclesiastical legends abundantly supplied. Few of these gave sufficient scope, either by action or charac- ter, for the diversity of excitement which the stage demands. Tragedies more truly deserving that name were the Solimano of Bonarelli, the Tancredi of Campeggio, the Demetrio of Rocco, which Salfi prefers to the rest, and the Aristodemo of Carlo de' Dottori. A drama by Testi, L'Isola di Alcina, bad some reputation ; but in this, which the title betrays not to be a legitimate tragedy, he introduced musical airs, and thus trod on the boundaries of a rival art.^ It has been suggested with no inconsiderable probability, that, in her passion for the melodrame, Italy lost all relish for the graver tone of tragedy. Music, at least the music of the opera, con- spired with many more important circumstances to spread an effeminacy over the public character. 3. The pastoral drama had always been allied to musical Fiiiidi sentiment, even though it might be without accom- Sciro. paniment. The feeling it inspired was nearly that of the opera. In this style we find one imitation of Tasso and Guarini, inferior in most qualities, yet deserving some regard, and once popular even witli the critics of Italy. This was the Filli di Sciro of Bonarelli, published at Ferrara — a city already fallen into the hands of priests, but round whose deserted palaces the traditions of poetical glory still lingered — in 1607, and represented by an academy in the same place soon afterwards. It passed through numerous editions, and was admired, even beyond the Alps, during the whole cen- tury, and perhaps still longer. It displays much of the bad taste and affectation of that period. Bonarelli is as strained in the construction of history, and in his characters, as he is in his style. Celia, the heroine of this pastoral, struggles with a double love ; the original idea, as he might truly think, of his drama, which he wrote a long dissertation in order to justify. It is, however, far less conformable to the truth of nature than to the sophisticated society for which he wrote. A wanton capricious court-lady migbt perhaps waver, with some warmth of inclination towards both, between two lovers, " Alme dell' alma mia," as Celia calls them, and be very willing to possess citber. But what is morbid in moral affection seldom creates sympathy, or is fit either for narrative poetry or the stage. 1 Salfi, Continuation de Gingnen6, toI. the Italian stage, Saggio Storico-Critico xii. chap. ix. Besides this larger work, dclla Comniedia Italians. Riiifi published in 1829 a short essay on Ch.*p. VI. EXTE5rrORA?fEOUS COMEDY. 273 Bonarelli's diction is studied and polished to the higliest degree ; and, though its false refinement and affected graces often dip])lease us, the real elegance of insulated passages makes us pause to admire. In harmony and sweetness of sound, he seems fully equal to his predecessors, Tasso and Guai-ini ; but he has neither the patlios of the one, nor the fertility of the other. The language and turn of thought seems, more tlian in the Pastor Fido, to be that of tlie opera ; wanting, indeed, nothing but the intermixture of air to be perfectly adapted to music. Its great reputation, which even Crescimbeni does his utmost to keej) up, proves the decline of good taste in Italy, and the lateness of its revival.' 4. A new fashion, which sprung up about 1620, both marks the extinction of a taste for genuine tragedy, and, by Transia- furnishing a substitute, stood in the way of its revi- Spanish val. Translations from Spanish tragedies and ti'agi- dramas, comedies, those of Lope de Vega and his successors, replaced the native muse of Italy. These were in prose and in three acts, irregular of course, and with very different characteristics from those of the Italian school. " The veiy name of tra- gedy," says Riccoboni, " Ijecame unknown in our country : the monsters which usurped the place did not pretend to that glo- rious title. Tragi-comedies rendered from the Spanish, such as Life is a Dream (of Calderon), the Samson, the Guest of Stone, and others of the same class, were the popular orna- ments of the Italian stage." - 0. The extemporaneous comedy had always been the amusement of the Italian populace, not to say of all E^u^^nipo- who wished to unbend their minds.'' An epoch in nmeous this art was made in IGll by Flaminio Scala, who '^"'"*^ ^ first published the outline or canvas of a series of these pieces ; the dialogue being, of course, reserved for the in- genious performers.'* This outline was not quite so shoi-t as that sometimes given in Italian play -bills : it explained the I Istoria della volgar Poesia, iv. 147. to develop them iu extemporaneous dia- He places the Filli di Sciro next to the logue." Siuli a sketch w;is calleil a see- Aiiiinta. nario, contaiuing the subject of each scene, - Hist, du Theatre Italien, i. 47- aud those; of Flaminio Scala were cele- * The extemporaneous comedy wa.s brated. Saggio Storico-Critioo, p. 3S. The called Comuiedia delK Arte. "It consist- pautominie, as it exists among us, is th« ed," Sivys Salti, '' iu a mere .sketch or plan descendant of this extemporaneous comn- of a dramatic composition, the part.s in dy. but with little of the wit aud spirit which, having been h.ardly shadowed out, of its progenitor, were iussigued to different actors who «ero * Salti, p. iO. VOL. ni. 18 274 SPANISH STAGE — CALDERON. Part IH, drift of eaoli actor's part in the scene, but without any distinct hint of what he was to say. Tlie construction of these fables is censured by Riccoboni as weak ; but it would not be rea- sonable to expect that it should be otherwise. Tiie talent of the actors supplied the delicieney of wi'iters. A certain quick- ness of wit, and tact in catching the shades 'of manner, com- paratively rare among us, are widely dif!\ised in Italy. It would be, we may well suspect, impossible to establish an extemporaneous theatre in England which should not be stupidly vulgar.' But Bergamo sent out many Harlequins, and Venice many Pantaloons. They were respected, as brilliant wit ought to be. The Emperor Mathias ennobled Cecehini, a famous Harlequin ; who was, however, a man of letters. Tbese actors sometimes took the plot of old comedies as their outline, and dishgured them, so as hardly to be known, by their extemporaneous dialogue.^ 6. Lope de Vega was at the height of his glory at the be- Spanish ginning of this century. Perhaps the majority of stage. |jjg (Ji-amas fall within it; but enough has been said on the subject in the last volume. His contemporaries and immediate successors were exceedingly numerous ; the efful- gence of dramatic literature in Spain corresponding exactly in time to that of England. Sev(>ral are named by Bouterwek and Velasquez : but one only, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, must be permitted to arrest us. This celebrated man number oir was bom in 1600, and died in 1G83. From an early his pieces. . ^„q ^-^j after the middle of the century, when he en- tered the church, he contributed, with a fertility only eclipsed by that of Lope, a long list of tragic, historic, comic, and tragi-comic dramas to the Spanish stage. In the latter period of his life, he confined himself to the religious pieces called Autos Sacraraentales. Of these, 97 are published in ' Tbis is only meant as to dialogue and extiiigiiisbeil), derives it from the mimes as to the public stage. The talent of a and Atellatiian comedies of ancient Italy, single actor, like the latean critics had not seemed to wai'rant my frigid character of one who has soraetimea been so much applauded. 9. La Vida es Sueno rises, in its subject as well as style, LaA'idaes above the ordinary comedies of Calderon. Basilius, Sueno. King of Poland, a deep philosopher, has, by consults ing the stars, had the misfortune of ascertaining that his unborn son Sigismund would be under some extraordinary infkiences of evil passion. He resolves, in consequence, to conceal his birth, and to bring him up in a horrible solitude, where, it hardly appears why, he is laden with chains, and covered with skins of beasts ; I'eceiving meantime an excellent education, and becoming able to converse on every subject, though destitute of all society but that of his keeper Clotaldo. The inheritance of the crown of Poland is supposed to have devolved on Astolfo, Duke of Moscovy ; or on his cousin Es- trella, who, as daughter of an elder branch, contests it with him. The play opens by a scene, in which Rosaura, a Mos- covite lady, who, having been betrayed by Astolfo, has fled to Poland in man's attire, descends the almost impassable preci- pices which overhang the small castle wherein Sigismund is confined. This scene, and that in which he first appears, are impressive and full of beauty, even now that we are become accustomed in excess to these theatrical wonders. Clotaldo discovers the prince in conversation with a stranger, who, by the king's general order, must be detained, and probably for death. A circumstance leads him to believe that this stranger is his son ; but the Castilian loyalty transferred to Poland forbids him to hesitate in obeying his instructions. The king, however, Avho has fortunately tletermined to release his son, and try an experiment upon the force of the stars, coming in at this time, sets Rosaura at liberty. 10. In the next act, Sigismund, who, by the help of a sleep- ing potion, has been conveyed to the palace, wakes in a bed of down, and in the midst of royal splendor. He has little difficulty in understanding his new condition, but preserves a not unnatural resentment of his former treatment. The malign stars prevail : he treats Astolfo with the utmost aa*ro- Cqap. vl la vida es sue5;'o. 277 gance, reviles and threatens his father, throws one of his servants out of the window, attempts the hfe of Clotaldo and tlie honor of Rosaura. The king, more convinced than ever of the tnitli of astrology, directs another soporific drauglit to be administered ; and, in the next scene, we find the prince again in his prison. Clotaldo, once more at his side, per- suades him that his late royalty has passed in a dream ; wisely observing, however, that, asleep or awake, we should always do what is right. 11. Sigismund, after some philosophical reflections, pre- pares to submit to the sad reality which has displaced his vision. But, in the thh-d act, an unforeseen event recalls him to tlie world. The army, become acquainted with his rights, and indignant that the king should transfer them to Astolfo, break into his prison, and place him at theii' head. Clotaldo expects nothing but death. A new revolution, however, has taken ])lace. Sigismund, corrected by the dismal consequences of giving way to passion in his former dream, and apprehend- ing a similar waking once more, has suddenly overthrown the sway of the sinister constellations that had enslaved him : he becomes generous, mild, and master of himself; and, the only pretext for his disinheritance being removed, it is easy that he sliould be reconciled to his father ; that Astolfo, aban- doning a kingdom he can no longer claim, should espouse the injured Rosaura ; and that the reformed prince should become the husband of Esti'ella. The incidents which chiefly relate to these latter characters have been omitted in this slight analvsis. 12. This tragi-comedy presents a moral not so contemptible in the age of Calderon as it may now appear, — that the stars may influence our will, but do not oblige it. If we could extract an allegorical meaning from the chimeras of astrology and deem the stars but names for the circumstances of birtl and fortune which affect the character as well as condition of every man, but yield to the pei-severing energy of self-correc- tion, we might see in this fable the shadow of a permanent and valuable truth. As a play, it deserves considerable praise : the events are surprising without excessive improba- bility, and succeed each other without confusion ; the thoughts are natural, and poetically expressed ; and it requires, on the whole, less allowance for the different standard of national taste than is usual in the Spanish drama. 278 STYLE OF CALDERON. Pakt iIL 13. A secreto Agravio secreta VenganQa is a domestic tragedy, which turns on a common story, — a hus- AgraTio se- band's I'evengo on one whom he erroneously believes creta Ven- ^q jjg gtjn ^ favored, and who had been once an accepted lover. It is something like Tancred and Sigismunda, except that the lover is killed instead of the hus- band. The latter pnts him to death secretly, which gives name to the play. He afterwards sets fire to his own house, and, in the confusion, designedly kills his wife. A friend com- municates the fact to his sovereign, Sebastian, King of Portu- gal, who applauds wliat has been done. It is an ati-ocious play, and speaks terrible things as to the state of public senti- ment in Spain, but abounds with interesting and touching passages. 14. It has been objected to Calderon. and the following style of defence of Bouterwek seems very insufficient, that Caiaeron. ^us servants converse in a poetical style like their masters. "The spirit, on these particular occasions," says that judicious but lenient critic, " must not be misunderstood. The servants in Calderon's comedies always imitate the lan- guage of their masters. In most cases, they express them- «?elves like the latter, in the natural language of real life, and often divested of that coloring of the ideas, without which a dramatic work ceases to be a poem. But whenever romantic gallantry speaks in the language of tenderness, admiration, or flattery, then, according to Spanish custom, every idea becomes a metaphor ; and Calderon, who was a thorough Spaniard, seized these opportunities to give the reins to his fancy, and to suffer it to take a bold lyric flight beyond the boundaries of nature. On such occasions, the most extrava- gant metaphoric language, in the style of the Italian Mari- nists, did not appear unnatural to a Spanish audience ; and even Calderon himself had for that style a particular fondness, to the gratification of which he sacrificed a chaster taste. It was his ambition to become a more refined Lope de Vega or a Spanish Marini. Thus in his play, Bien vengas Mai si vengas solo, a waiting-maid, addressing her young mistress who has risen in a gay humor, says ' Aurora would not have done wrong had she slumbered that morning in her snowy crystal, for that the sight of her mistress's charms would suffice to di-aw aside the curtains from the couch of 8ol.' She adds, that, using a Spanish idea, ' it might theii, Chap. VI. CALDEKONS MERITS OVERRATED. 279 indeed, be said that the sun had risen in her lady's eyes.' Valets, on the like occasion, speak in the same style ; and when lovers address coni|)liments to their mistresses, and these reply in the same strain, the play of far-fetched meta- phors is ajigrav'ated by antitheses to a degree which is intole- rable to any but a Spanish-formed taste. But it must not be forgotten, that this language of gallantry was, in Calderon's time, spoken by the fashionable world, and that it was a ver- nacular property of the ancient national poetry." ^ What is this but to confess that Calderon had not genius to raise him- self above his age, and that he can be read only as a " Triton of the minnows;" one who is great but in comparison with his neighbors ? It will not convert bad wi-iting into good, to tell us, as is ])erpetually done, that we must place ourselves in the author's position, and make allowances for the taste of his age or the teniper of his nation. All this is true relatively to the author himsel'", and may be pleaded against a condemnation of his talents ; but the excuse of the man is not that of the work. 15. The fame of Calderon has been latterly revived ia Europe through the praise of some German ci'itics, jjj^ merits but especially the unbounded panegyric of one of sometimes their greatest men, William Schlegel. The passage is well known for its brilliant eloquence. Every one must diifer with reluctance and respect from this accomplished writer ; and an Englishman, acknowledging with gratitude and admiration what Schlegel has done for the gloiy of Shakspeare, ought not to grudge the laurels he showers upon another head. It is, however, rather as a poet than a drama- tist that Calderon has received this homage ; and, in his poet- ry, it seems to be rather bestowed on tlie mysticism, which finds a responsive chord in so many German hearts, than on what we should consider a more universal excellence, — a sym- path}- with, and a power over, all that is true and beautiful in nature and in man. Sismondi (but the distance between Weimar and Geneva in matters of taste is incomparaI)ly greater than by the public road), dissenting from this eulogy of Schlegel. which he fairly lays before the reader, stigmatizes Calderon us eminently the poet of the age wherein he lived, — ■ ' p. 507. It li;»s been ingeniously bint- their masters, and designed to make it ed iu the Quarterly Review, vol. XXV., that ridiculous, liut this i3 ^''obablv too re- the high-flown language of servants in fined au excuse Bpanisli dramas is a parody on Umt of 280 CALDERON'S MERITS OVERRATED. 1'art III the age of Philip IV. Salfi goes so far as to say we can liardly read Calderon without indignation ; since he seems to have had no view but to make his genius subservient to the lowest prejudices and superstitions of his country.^ In tlie twenty-fifth volume of the Quarterly Review, an elaborate and able critique on the plays of Calderon seems to have estimat- ed him without prejudice on either side. " His boundless and inexhaustible fertility of invention, his quick power of seizing and prosecuting every thing with dramatic effect, the unfailing animal spirits of his dramas (if we may venture on the expression), the general loftiness and purity of his senti- ments, the rich facility of his verse, the abundance of his language, and the clearness and precision with which he embodies his thoughts in words and figures, entitle him to a high rank as to the imagination and creative faculty of a poet ; but we cannot consent to enrol him among the mighty masters of the human breast." ^ His total want of truth to nature, even the ideal nature which poetry embodies, justifies at least this sentence. " The wildest flights of Biron and Romeo," it is observed, " are tame to the heroes of Calderon : the Asiatic pomp of expression, the exuberance of metaphor, the perpetual recurrence of the same figures (which the poetry of- Spain derived from its intercourse with the Arabian conquerors of the peninsula), are lavished by him in all their fulness. Every address of a lover to a mistress is thickly studded with stars and flowei's : her locks are always nets of gold, her lips rubies, and her heart a rock, which the rivers of his tears attempt in vain to melt. In short, the language of the heart is entirely abandoned for that of the fancy : the brilliant but false concetti which have infected the poetical literature of every country, and wliich have been universally exploded by pure taste, glitter in every page, and intrude into ev(;ry speech." ^ » Hist. Litt, de Ginguen^, toI. xii. p. 499. » P. 24 • P. li. Chat. VI. FREXCH DRAMA. 281 Sect. II. — On the French Drama. Early French Dramatists of this Period — Oorncille — Ilis principal Tragedies — Kotrou. IG. Aaiong the company who performed at the second the- atre of Paris, that established in the Marais, was piaysof Hardy, who, like Shakspeare, uniting both arts, was ^ardy. himself tlie author of 600, or, as some say, 800 dramatic pieces. It is said that forty-one of these are extant in the collection of his works, which I have never seen. Several of them were written, learned by heart, and represented within a week. His own inventions are the worst of all : his trage- dies and tragi-comedies are borrowed, with as close an adhe- rence to the original text as possible, from Homer or Plutarch or Cervantes. Tiiey have more incident than those of his predecessors, and are somewhat less absurd ; but Hardy is a writer of little talent. The Marianne is the most tolerable of his tragedies. In these he frequently abandoned the cho- rus ; and, even where he introduces it, does not regularly close the act with an ode.^ 17. In the comedies of Hardy, and in the many burlesque farces represented under Henry IV. and Louis XIII., no regard was paid to decency, either in the language or the circumstances. Few persons of rank, especially ladies, at- tended the theatres.^ These were first attracted by pastoral representations, of which Racan gave a successful example ir his Artenice. It is hardly, however, to be called a drama. But the stage being no longer abandoned to the populace, and a more critical judgment in French literature gaining ground (encoui-aged by Richelieu, who built a large room in his palace for the representation of Mirame, an indifferent tragedy, part 1 Fontenelle, Hist, du Theatre Francjois, thing licentious in his comedies. The (ill (Kuvies de Fonteuellc, iii. 72) ; Suard, only rem.'un of grossne.ss, Fontenelle oh- Melanges de Litterature, vol. iv. serves, was that the lovers se tutoi/oient ; ''■ Suard, p. 134. Kotrou hoa.sts, that, but, as he gravely goes on to lemark, '• le Bince he wrote for the theatre, it had be- tutoyement ne choque pa? les bonnes couie so well regulated, that respectable nia'urs ; il ne choque que la politesse et women might go to it with as little scru- la vraie galanterie." — p. 91. But the last pie as to the Luxembourg Garden. Cor- instance of this heinous offence is in I« licille, however, has, in general, the credit Menteur. of having purified the stage : after his s Suard, vhi suprd lecond piece, CUtandre, he admitted no- 282 THE CID. Part HI. of which was suspected to be his own'), the ancient theatre began to be studied ; rules were laid down, and partially ob- served ; a perfect decorum replaced the licentiousness and gross language of the old writers. Mairet and Rotrou, though without rising in their fii'st plays much above Hardy, just served to prepare the way for the father and founder of the national theatre.^ 18. The Melite of Coi-neille, his first production, was repi-e- sented in 1629, when he Avas twenty-three years of age. This is only distinguished, as some say, from those of Hardy by a greater vigor of style ; but Fontenelle gives a very different opinion. It had at least a success which caused a new troop of actors to be established in the Marais. His next, Clitan- dre, it is agreed, is not so good. But La Veuve is much better : irregular in action, but with spirit, chai*acter, and well-invented situations, it. is the first model of the higher comedy.^ These early comedies must, in fact, have been rela- tively of considerable merit, since they raised Corneille to high reputation, and connected him with the literary men of his time. The Medea, though much borrowed fi-om Seneca, gave a tone of grandeur and dignity unknown before to French tragedy. This appeared in 1635, and was followed by the Cid next year. 19. Notwithstanding the defence made by La Harpe, I cannot but agree with the French Academy in their criticism on this play, that the subject is essentially ill chosen. No circumstances can be imagined, no skill can be employed, that will reconcile the mind to the mari-iage of a daughter with one that has shed her fiither's blood ; and the law of unity of time, which crowds every event of the drama within a few hours, renders the promised consent of C'himene (for such it is) to this union still more revolting and improba- ble.'* The knowledge of this termination re-acts on the reader during a second perusal, so as to give an irresistible impres- sion of her insincerity in her previous solicitations for liis death. She seems indeed, in several passages, little else > FontencUe, pp. 84. 96. * Ja Ilarpe has said that Chimene does - Id. p. 78. It is difficult in Fmnco, as not i>roniise at List to marry Hodrigup, It is witli us, to ascei'tain tlio dato of plays, thonsli the spwtiitor perceives that sho because they were often reiircseiited for will do so. He forgets that she has coin- years before they came from the press. Tt missioned her lover's sword in the duftl is conjectured by Fontenelle, that one or with Don Saucho : — two pieces of Mairet and Uotrou ma V liave ra^ ■ >• 1,1.^1. nn _ ■ , , 1 ,. 11 ■ Sors Tanitiueur dun combat dont Chi- preceded any by Corneille. . ' , . ,,._»„,„ ^ j » Suaid ; FonteneUe ; La Ilarpe. '^'"^^ *=' ^* P"^' "^^^ ^- ^- ^' Chap. VI. STYLE OF COKNEILLE. 283 than a (rapjic coquette, and one of the most odious kind.' The English stage at that time was not exempt from great violations of nature and decoi-um : yet, had the subjeft of the Cid fallen into the hands of lieaumont and Fletcher (and it is one which they Avould have willingly selected, for the sake of the effective situations and contrasts of passion it affords), the part of Cliimene would have been managed by them with great warmtli and spirit, though probal»ly not less incongruity and extravagance ; but I can scarcely believe that the con- clusion would have been so much in the style of comedy Her death, or retirement into a monastery, would have seemed more consonant to her own dignity and to that of a tragic subject. Corneille was, however, borne out by the tradition of Spain, and by the authority of Guillen de Castro, whom he imitated. 20. The language of Corneille is elevated ; his sentiments, if sometimes hypei-bolical, generally noble, when he style of has not to deal with the passion of love. Conscious ^'"^neuie. of the nature of his own powers, he has avoided subjects wherein this must entirely predominate : it was to be, as he thought, an accessory but never a principal source of dramatic interest. In this, however, as a general law of tragedy, he was mistaken : love is by no means unfit for the chief source of tragic distress, but comes in generally with a cold and feeble effect as a subordinate emotion. In those Roman sto- ries which he most affected, its expression could hardly be otherwise than insipid and incongruous. Corneille prol)al)ly would have dispensed with it, like Shakspeare in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar; but the taste of his c(mtemporaries, formed in the pedantic school of romance, has imj)osed fetters on his genius in almost every drama. In the Cid, wliere the sul)ject left him no choice, he has perhaps succeeded better in the delineation of love than on any other occasion ; yet even here we often find the cold exaggerations of complimentary verse, instead of the voice of nature. But other scenes of tliis play, especially in the first act, whicli bi-ing forward the proud Castiliau characters of the two fathers of Rodrigo and Chi- ' In these lines, for example, of the third ;ict, scene 4th : — " Malitrc le? feux fi beaux qui lonipeiit ina eolere, Je ferai iiion possible a liien venger mou pere ; Jlai.^ maljire la risriieur crun si cruel dovnir. Mon unique souhait est de ne rien pouvoir." It is true that he found this in his Spanish origin^il \ l"i' '•»•''•' does not render the ioil' ttttiou judicious, or the sentiment either uioral or -«u theatrically f pecious. 28 1 LES HORACES. Fart HI. mene, are full of the nervous eloquence of Corneille ; and the genei'al style, though it may not have borne the fastidious criticism either of the Academy or of Voltaire, is so far above any thing which liad been heard on the French stage, tliat it was but a very frigid eulogy in the former to say tliat it " had acquired a considerable reputation among works of the kind." It had at that time astonished Paris : but the prejudices of Cardinal Richelieu and the envy of inferior authors, joined perhaps to the proverbial unwillingness of critical bodies to commit themselves by warmth of praise, had some degree of influence on the judgment which the Academy pronounced on the Cid ; though 1 do not think it was altogether so unjust and uncandid as has sometimes been supposed. 21. The next tragedy of Corneille, Les Horaces, is hardly r „ open to less objection than the Cid ; not so much Les Horaces. ^ y i t-v i • • i t because there is, as the I' rench critics have disco- vered, a want of unity in the subject, which I do not quite perceive, nor because the fifth act is tedious and uninteresting, as from the repulsiveness of the story, and the jarring of the sentiments with our natural sympathies. Corneille has com- plicated the legend in Livy with the marriage of the younger Horatius to the sister of the Curiatii, and thus placed his two female personages in a nearly similar situation, which he has taken little pains to diversify by any contrast in their charac- ters. They speak, on the contrary, nearly in the same tone ; and we see no reason wliy the hero of the tragedy should not, as he seems half disposed, have followed up the murder of his sister ])y tliat of his wife. More skill is displayed in the opposition of character between the combatants themselves ; but the mild, though not less courageous or patriotic, Curiatius attaches the spectator, who cares nothing for the triumph of Rome, or the glory of tlie Horatian name. It must be con- fessed, that the elder Horatius is nobly conceived : the Roman energy, of which we find but a caricature in his brutish son, shines out in him with an admirable dramatic spirit. I shall be accused, nevertheless, of want of taste, when 1 confess that his celebrated Q/i'il mourut has always seemed to me less eminently sublime than tlie general suffrage of France has declared it. There is nothing very novel or striking in the proposition, that a soldier's duty is to die in the field rathe'* than desert his post by flight ; and, in a tragedy full of the hyperboles of Roman patriotism, it appears strange that we CiiAP. VI. CINNA — POLYEUCTE. 285 should be astonished at that which is the piinciplc of all military honor. The words are emphatic in their position, and calculated to draw forth the actor's energy: bu this is an artifice of no great skill ; and one can hardly help tliink- ing, that a spectator in the pit would spontaneously have anticipated the answer of a warlike father to the ieminine question, — • "Que vouliez-vous qu'U fit centre trois?" The style of tliis tragedy is reckoned by the critics superior to that of the Cid ; the nervousness and warmth of Corneille IS more displayed ; and it is more free from incorrect and trivial expression. 22. Cinna, the next in order of time, is probably that tragedy of Corneille which would be placed at the ^.^^^ head by a majority of suffrages. His eloquence reached here its highest point ; the speeches are longer, more vivid in narration, mox-e pliilosophical in argument, more abundant in tliat strain of Roman energy which he had de- rived chiefly from Lucan, more emphatic and condensed in their lanL'uage and versification. But, as a drama, tliis is deserving of little praise : the characters of Cinna and JNIaxi- mus are contemptible, that of Emilia is treacherous and un- grateful. She is indeed tlie type of a numerous class who have followed her in works of fiction, and sometimes, unliap- pily, in real life ; the female patriot, theoretically, at least, an assassin, but commonly compelled, by tlie iniquity of tlie times, to console herself in practice Avith safer transgressions. We have had some specimens ; and other nations, to their shame and sorrow, have had more. But even the magnani- mity of Augustus, whom we have not seen exposed to instant danger, is uninteresting; nor do we perceive Avhy lie should bestow his friendship as well as his forgiveness on the de- tected traitor that cowers before him. It is one of those subjects wliich might, by the invention of a more complex plot than history furnishes, have better excited the spectator's attention, but not his sympathy. 23. A deeper interest belongs to Polyeucte ; and this is the only tragedy of Corneille wherein he affects the „ j ^^. heart. There is, indeed, a certain incongruity, which we cannot overcome, between the sanctity of Christian martjT- dom and the language of love, especially when the latter is 286 RODOGUNE — POMPET, Paet m, ratlier the more prominent of tlie two in the conduct of tiie drama.^ But the beautiful character of Pauline would re- deem much greater defects than can be ascribed to this tra- gedy. It is the noblest, perhaps, on the French stage, and conceived with admirable delicacy and dignity.^ In the style, however, of Polyeucte, there seems to be some return towards the languid tone of commonplace which had been wholly thrown off in Cuuia.'^ 24. Rodogune is said to have been a favorite with the „ , autlior. It can hardly be so with the generality of his readers. The story has all the atrocity of the older school, from whirh Corneille, in his earlier plays, had emancipated the stage. It borders even on ridicule. Two princes, kept by their mother, one of those furies Avhom our own Webster or Marston would have delighted to draw, in ignorance which is the elder, and consequently entitled to the throne, are enamoured of Kodogune. Their mother makes it a condition of declaring the succession, that they should shed the blood of this princess. Struck with horror at such a pro- position, they refer their passion to the choice of Kodogune, wlio, in her turn, demands the death of th^ ir mother. The embarrassment of these amiable youths may be conceived. La Harpe extols the fifth act of this tragedy, and it may per- haps be effective in representation. 25. Pompey, sometimes inaccurately called the Death of Pomn(>y, is more defective in construction than even any other tragedy of Corneille. The hero, if Pom- p«^y is such, never appears on the stage ; and, his' death being recounted at the beginning of the second act, tlie real subject of the piece, so far as it can be said to have one, is the pun- ishment of his assassins ; a retribution demanded by the moral ' The coterie at the Hotel Rambouillet cient to constitute an heroic character. It thought that Polyeucte would not sue- is not the conduct of rauline, which, in cccd, on account of its religious character, every Christian or virtuous woman, mu>t Corneille. it is said, was about to withdraw naturally be the same, but the tine senti- h is tragedy but was dissuaded by an actor ments and langu.-i^c! which accompany it, of so little reputation that he did not that render her part so noble, even bear a part in the performance, i'ou- '^ In the second scene of the second act, tcndle, p. 11 il. between SeTerus and Pauline, t%vo chanac- - Fontenellc thinks that it shows "«n ter.s of the most elevated class, the former g;rand attachemi'nt i son devoir, et un quits the stage with this line, — grand carai'tcre '" in I'auline to desire that n Adieu, trop vertueux objet,et tropch.ir- Severus should save her husband s life, maut." Instead of procuring the latter to be exe- ruted that she might marry her lover, i ho latter replies,— }(etlexions sur la roJti(iue, sect. 1(1. This " Adieu, trop malheui-eux, et trop parfait Is rather an odd notion of what Is suffi- amant." Chap. VI. HERACLIUS — NICOMEDE — CORNEILLE. 287 pense of the spectator, but hardly important enough for dra- matic interest. The character of Cassar is somewhat weak- ened by his passion for Cleopatra, which assumes more the tone of devoted gallantry than truth or probability warrants ; but Cornelia, though with some Lucanic extravagance, is full of a Roman nobleness of spirit, W'liich renders her, after Pau- line, but at a long interval, the fiiiesL among the female cha- racters of Corneille. The lantruasfe is not beneath that of his earlier tragedies. 26. In lleracliiis we begin to find an inferiority of s'yle. Few passaijee, especially after the first act, are writ- „ ,. ten with much vigor ; and the plot, instead or the faults we may ascribe to some of the former dramas, a too great simplicity and want of action, offends by the perplexity of its situations, and still more by their nature ; since they are wholly among the proper resources of comedy. The true and the fiilse Heraclius, each uncertain of his paternity, each afraid to espouse one who may or may not be his sister ; the embarrassment of Phocas, equally irritated by both, but aware that, in putting either to death, he may punish his own son; the art of Leon tine, who produces this confusion, not by silence, but by a series of inconsistent falsehoods, — all these are in themselves ludicrous, and sucli as in comedy could pro- duce no other effect than laughter. 27. Nicomede is generally placed by the critics below He- raclius ; an opinion in which I should hardly concur. The plot is feeble and improbable, but more tolerable than the st^ange entanglements of Heraclius ; and the spirit of Corneille shines out more in the characters and sentiments. None of his later tragedies deserve much notiie, except that we find one of his celebrated scenes in Sertorius, a drama of little general merit. Nicomede and Sertorius were both first represented after the middle of the century. 28. Voltaire has well distinguished " the fine scenes of Corneille, and the fine tragedies of Racine." It can pauits and perhaps hardly be said, that, with the exception of beauties o( Polyeucte, the former has produced a single play which, taken as a whole, we can commend. The keys of the passions were not given to his custody. But in that which he introduced upon the French stage, and which long con- tinued to be its boast, — impressive, energetic declamation, thoughts masculine, bold, and sometimes sublime, conveyed in 288 LE MENTEUR — OTHER FRENCH TRAGEDIES. Part It,. a style for the most part clear, condensed, and noble, and in a rhythm sonorous and satisfactory to the ear, — he has not since been equalled. Lucan, it has always been said, was the favointe study of Corneille. No one, perhaps, can admire one who has not a stronsr relish for the other. That the tragedian has ever surpassed tlie highest flights of his Roman prototype, it might be difficult to prove : but, if his tire is not more intense, it is accompanied by less smoke; his hyper- boles, for such he has, are less frequent and less turgid ; his taste is more judicious ; he knows better, especially in descrip- tion, what to choose and where to stop. Lucan, however, would have disdained the politeness of the amorous heroes of Corneille ; and though often tedious, often offensive to good taste, is never languid or isfnoble. 29. The first French comedy written in polite language, LeMen- without low wit or indcccncy, is due to Corneille, or teur. rather, in some degree, to the Spanish author whom he copied in Le Menteur. Tliis has been improved a little by Goldoni ; and our own Avell-known farce. The Liar, is bori-ovved from both. The incidents are diverting, but it belongs to the subordinate class of comedy ; and a better moral would have been shown in the disgrace of the principal character. Another comedy about the same time, Le Pedant Joue, by Cyrano de Bergerac, had much success. It has been called the first comedy in prose, and tlie first wherein a provincial dialect is introduced : the remark, as to the former circumstance, shows a forgetfulness of Larivey. Mo- liere has borrowed freely from this play. . 30. The only tragedies, after those of Corneille, anterior to Other 1050, which the French themselves hold Avorthy French of remembrance, are the Sophonisbe of Mairct, in twgc OS. ^i^j(,]j gome characters and some passages are vigor- ou.sly conceived, but the style is debased by low and ludicrous thoughts, which later critics never fail to point out with severity ;' the Scevole of Uuiyer, — the best of several good tragedies, full of lines of great simplicity in expression, but which seem to gain force through their simplicity, — by one who, thougli never sublime, adopted with success the severe and reasoning style of Corneille;'' the Marianne of Tristan, which, at its appearance in 1(537, jiassed for a rival of tho Cid, and remained for a century on the stage, but is now 1 Suard, uW fvprd. * Suard, p. 196. Chap. VI. WENCESLAS OF ROTROU. 289 riilicnlcfl for a style alternately tnrgkl and luclicrous ; and the Wenceslas of Rotrou, which had not ceased perhaps thirty years since to he represented. 31. This trngedy, tlie hest work of a fertile dramatist, who did himself honor by a ready acknowledgment of wenoesUs the superiority of Corneille, instead of canvassing of i^ot'ou- the suffrages of those who always envy genius, is by no means so much below that great master, as, in the unfortunate efforts of his later years, he was below himself. Wenceslas was represented in 1G47. It may be admitted, that Rotrou had conceived his plot, which is wholly original, in the S{)irit of Corneille : the masculine energy of the sentiments, tlie delineation of bold and fierce passions, of noble and heroic love, the attempt even at political philosophy, are copies of that model. It seems, indeed, that in several scenes Rotrou must, out of mere generosity to Corneille, have determined to outdo one of his most exceptionable psissages, the consent of Chimene to espouse the Cid. His own curtain drops on the vanishing reluctance of his heroine to accept the hand of a monster whom she hated, and who had just murdered her lover in his own brother. It is the Lady Anne of Shak speare ; but Lady Anne is not a heroine. Wenceslas is not unworthy of comparison with the second class of Corneille's tragedies. But the ridiculous tone of language and sentiment which the heroic romance had rendered popular, and from which Corneille did not wholly emancipate himself, often appears in this piece of Rotrou ; the intrigue is rather too complex, in the Spanish style, for tragedy ; the diction seems frequently obnoxious to the most indulgent criticism ; but, above all, the story is essentially ill contrived, ending in the grossest violation of poetical justice ever witnessed on the stage, the impunity and even the triumph of one of the worst ;haracters that was ever drawn. vou m. 19 290 ENGLISH DRAMA. Paet HI Sect. III. — On the English Drama. London ITieatres — Shakspeare — .7onson — Beaumont and Fletcher — Ma«singer— Other English Dramatists 32. The English drama had been encoui'aged through the reicn of P^lizabeth by increasing popularity, not- Populanty .^, -. , , •' •.■,'. of the stage -Withstanding tlie strenuous opposition ot a party EHrabeth Sufficiently powerful to enlist the magistracy, and, in a certain measure the government, on its side. A progressive improvement in dramatic writing, possibly also, though we know less of this, in the skill of the actors, ennobled, while it kept alive, the public taste ; the crude and insipid compositions of an P^dwards or a Whetstone, among numbers more whose very names are lost, gave way to the real genius of Green and Marlowe, and after them to Shak- speare. 33. At the beginning of this century, not less than eleven Number of regular play-houses had been erected in London theatres, j^,^,^ jjg subui'bs : Several of which, it appears, were still in use ; an order of the privy council in 1 GOO, restraining the number to two, being little regarded. Of these, the most important was that of the Black Friars, with which another, called the Globe, on the opposite side of the river, waa connected ; the same company performing, at the former in winter, at the latter in summer. This was the company of which Burbage, the best actor of the day, was chief, and to -which Shakspeare, who was also a proi)rietor, belonged. Their names appear in letters patent, and other legal instru inents.^ 34. James was fond of these amusements, and had en Encouraged couraged them in Scotland. The Puritan influence by James, which had been sometimes felt in the council of Elizabeth, came speedily to an end ; though the rej)resenta- tion of plays on Sundays, a constant theme of complaint, but I Shakspeare probably retired from the T. wrote a letter thanking Shakspeare foi peared a few years before the Merry Wives of Windsor- they both turn on English life in the middle classes, and on » "No doubt," says ColoridKe, " tlit'y — TuWe Tulk, ii. 306. I am not quite (Beaumont and Fletcher) imitiited the sure that I luiderstaud this expression; ease of {^^ntleuianly couvei-satiou better but prol)ably the meaning is not very dif» than Shaksi>eare, who was unahle not to ferent from what I have said. tx) too uiucli associated to succeed in this." Chap. VI. MEASURE FOR MEASURE JJ95 the same passion of jealousy. If, tlien, we compare these two productions of our greatest comic dramatists, tlie vast supe- rioi-itj of Shakspeare will appear undeniable. Kitely, indeed, has more energy, more relief, more excuse, perhaps, in what might appear, to his temper, matter for jealousy, than the wretched, narrow-minded Ford ; he is more of a gentleman, and commands a certain degree of i-espect: but dramatic just- ice is better dealt upon Ford by rendering him ridiculous, and he suits better the festive style of Sliakspeare's most amusing play. His light-hearted wife, on the other hand, is drawn with more spiiit than Dame Kitely ; and the most ardent admirer of Jonson would not oppose Master Stephen to Slender, or Bobadil to Falstaff. The other characters are not parallel enough to admit of comparison: but in their diversity (nor is Shakspeare perhaps in any one play moi'C fertile) and their amusing peculiarity, as well as in the con- struction and arrangement of the story, the brilliancy of the wit, the perpetual gayety of the dialogue, we perceive at once to whom the laurel must be given. Nor is this comparison instituted to disparage Jonson, whom we have praised, and ^hall have again to praise so highly, but to show how much easier it was to vanquish the rest of Europe than to contend with Shakspeare. 40. Measure for Measure, commonly referred to the end of 1603, is perhaps, after Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth, Measure for the play in wliich Shaks])eare struggles, as it were, ^i<^"»"e- most with the over-mastering power of his own mind ; the depths and intricacies of being, which he has searched and sounded with intense reflection, perplex and harass him ; his personages arrest their course of action to ])0ur forth, in lan- guage the most remote from common use, thoughts which few could grasp in the clearest expression ; and thus he loses something of dramatic excellence in that of his contemplative philosophy. The Duke is designed as the representative of this philosopliical character. He is stern and melancholy by temperame^it, averse to the exterior shows of power, and se- cretly conscious of some unfitness for its practical duties. The subject is not very hai)i)ily chosen, but artfully improved by Shakspeai'e. In most of the numerous stories of a similar nature, which bt^fore or since his time have l>een rehited, the sa(M-ifice of chastity is really made, and made in vain. There is, however, something too c"^rse and disgusting in such a 296 . LEAR. Paet m. Btory ; and it would have deprived liim of a splendid exhibi- tion of character. The virtue of Isabella, inflexible and in- dependent of circumstance, has something very grand and elevated : yet one is disposed to ask, whether, if Claudio had been really executed, the spectator would not have gone away with no great affection for her ; and at least we now feel that her reproaches against her miserable brother, when he clings to life like a frail and guilty being, are too harsh. There is gi'eat skill in the invention of Mariana ; and, without this, the story could not have had any thing like a satisftxctory termina- tion : yet it is never explained how the Duke had become acquainted with this secret, and, being acquainted with it, how he had preserved his esteem and confidence in Angelo. His intention, as hinted towards the end, to marry Isabella, is a little too commonplace : it is one of Shakspeare's hasty half- thoughts. The language of this comedy is very obscure, and the text seems to have been printed with great inaccuracy. I do not value the comic parts highly : Lucio's impudent profligacy, the i-esult rather of sensual debasement than of natural ill disposition, is well represented ; but Elbow is a very inferior repetition of Dogberry. In dramatic effect, Measure for Measure ranks high : the two scenes between Isabella and Angelo, that between her and Claudio, those ■where the Duke appears in disguise, and the catastrophe in the fifth act, are admirably written and very interesting ; ex- cept so far as the spectator's knowledge of the two stratagems which have deceived Angelo may prevent him fi-om partici- pating in the indignation at Isabella's imaginary wrong, which her lamentations would excite. Several of the circumstances and characters are borrowed from the old play of Whetstone, Promos and Cassandra ; but very little of the sentiments or language. What is good in Measure for Measure is Shak- Bpeare's own. 41. If originality of invention did not so much stamp almost every play of Shakspeare that to name one as the most original seems a disparagement to others, we might say, that this great prerogative of genius was exercised above all in Lear. It diverges moi-e from the model of regular tragedy than INIacbeth or Othello, and even more than llandet; but the fable is better constructed than in the last of these, and it displays full as much of the almost Buperhyraan inspiration of the poet as the other two.. Lear Chap. VI. TIMON OF ATHENS. 297 himself is, perhaps, the most wonderful of dramatic concep- tions; ideal to satisfy the most romantic imagination, yet idealized from the reality of nature. Shakspeaie, in prepar- ing us for tlie most intense sympathy with this old man, fii-st abases him to the ground : it is not CEdipus, against whose respected age the gods themselves have conspired ; it is not Orestes, noble-minded and allbctionate, wliose crime has been virtue ; it is a headstrong, feeble, and selfish being, whom, in the first act of the tragedy, nothing seems capable of redeem- ing in our eyes; nothing but what follows, — intense woe, unnatural wrong. Then comes on that splendid madness, not absurdly sudden, as in some tragedies, but in which the strings that keep his reasoning power together give way one after the other in the frenzy of rage and grief. Then it is that we find, what in life may sometim(iS be seen, the intellec- tual energies grow stronger in calamity, and especially under wrong. An awful eloquence belongs to unmerited suffering. Thoughts burst out, more profound than Lear in his prosper- ous hour could ever have conceived ; inconsequent, for such is the condition of madness, but in themselves fragments of coherent truth, the reason of an unreasonable mind. 42. Timon of Athens is cast, as it were, in the same mould as Lear : it is the sam6 essential character, the same Timon of generosity more from wanton ostentation than love -*-"i'^'^- of others, the same fierce rage under the smart of ino-ratitude, the same rousing u}) in that tempest of powers that had slum- bered unsuspected in some deep recess of the soul ; for, had Timon or Lear known that philosophy of human nature in their calmer moments which fury brought forth, they would never have had such terrible occasion to display it. The thoughtless confidence of Lear in his children has somethino- in it far more touching than the self-beggary of Timon ; though both one and the other have prototypes enough in real life. And as we give the old king more of our pity, so a more intense abhorrence accompanies his daughters and the evil characters of tliat drama, than we spare for the miserable sycophants of the Athenian. Their thanklessness is antici- pated, and springs from the very nature of their calling : it verges on the beaten road of comedy. In this play there is neither a female personage, except two courtezans, who hardly Bpoak ; nor is there any prominent character (the honest steward is not such) ledeemed by virtue enough to be estima- 298 LEAB AND TIMON. Part HI ble ; for the cynic Apemantus is but a cynic, and ill replaces the noble Kent of the other drama. The fable, if fable it can be called, is so extraordinarily deficient in action, a fault of which Shakspeare is not guilty in any other instance, that we may wonder a little how he should have seen in the single delineation of Timon a counterbalance for the manifold objec- tions to tliis subject. But there seems to have been a period of Siiaksjieare's life when his heart Avas ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience ; the memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection misjdaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature wliich intercourse with unworthy associates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches, — these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the concep- tion of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind. This type is first seen in the philo- sophic melancholy of Jaques, gazing with an undiminished serenity, and with a gayety of fancy, though not of manners, on the follies of the world. It assumes a graver cast in the exiled Duke of the same play, and next one rather more severe in the Duke of Measure for Measure. In all these, however, it is merely contemplative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the impulses of a perturbed heart under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances ; it shines no longer as in the former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful coruscations amidst feigned gayety and extrava- gance. In Lear it is the fiash of sudden inspiration across the incongruous imagery of madness ; in Timon it is obscured by the exaggerations of misanthropy. These plays all belong to n(,'arly tlie same period; As You Like It being usually referred to 1 600, Hamlet, in its altered form, to about 1 602, Timon to the same year, Measure for Measure to 1 603, and Lear to 1 604. In the later plays of Shakspeare, especially in IMacbeth and the Tempest, much of moral speculation will be found ; but he has never returned to this type of character in the personages. Timon is less read and less pleasing than the great majority of Shakspeare's ])lays; but it abounds with signs of his genius. Schlegel observes, that, of all his works, it is that which has most satire ; comic in representation of the parasites, indignant and Juvenalian in the bursts of Timon himself. 43. Pericles is generally reckoned to be in pait, and only in Chap. VT. PERICLES. '290 part, tlie work of Shakspeai-e. From the poverty and bad mana Ilurd, in his notes on Horace's Art maintains the obvious constrnction of of Poetry, vol. i. p. 02, hius some very that piissiigo: " Notum si eallida verbum good remarks on the diction of Shakspeare, Heddidcrit junctura novum." That pro- euggested by the callida jiniclura of the posed by Lambiuus and lieattio, which Itoiiiau poet, illustrated by many instances, bcfiiiis witli noi-uin, is inadmissibIo,*aad These remarks botli serve to brin;;; out the gives a worse sense. Bkill of Shakspeare, and to explain the ^ (iilford's Life of Jonson, p. 65; ColUaTi disputed passage in Horace. Hurd justly iii. 275 Chap. VI. THE ALCHEMIST — VOLPONE. 307 and learning to this cluster of poets. There lias been, how- ever, a prevalent tradition tliat Jonson was not without some malignant and envious feelings towards Shakspeare. Gilford has repelled this imputation witli considerable success, though we may still suspect that there was something caustic and saturnine in the temper of Jonson. 56. The Alcliemist is a play wliich long remained on the stage, though T am not sure that it has been represent- TheAiche- ed since the days of Garrick, who was famous in mist. Abel Drugger. Notwithstanding the indiscriminate and inju- dicious panegyric of Gilford, I believe there is no I'eader of taste but will condemn the outi-ageous excess of pedantry with which the first acts of this play abound ; pedantry the more intolerable, that it is not even what, however unfit for the English stage, sciiolars might comprehend, but the gibber- ish of obscure treatises on alchemy, which, whatever the commentators may choose to say, was as unintelligible to all but a few half-witted dupes of that imposture as it is at present. Much of this, it seems impossible to doubt, Avas omitted in representation. Nor is his pedantic display of learning con- fined to the part of the Alchemist, who had certainly a right to talk in tlie style of his science, if he had done it with some moderation. Sir Epicure Mammon, a worldly sensualist, placed in the author's own age, pours out a torrent of glutton- ous cookery from the kitchens of Ileliogabalus and Apicius : his dishes are to be camels' heels, the beai-ds of barbels and dissolved ))earl,^ crowuing all with the paps of a sow. But, while this habitual error of Jonson's vanity is not to be over- looked, we may truly say, that it is much more than compen- sated by the excellences of this comedy. The plot, with great simplicity, is continually animated and interesting; the cha- •acters are conceived and delineated with admirable boldness, truth, spirit, and variety; the humor, especially in the two Puritans, a sect who now began to do penance on the stage, is amusing ; the language, when it does not smell too much of book-learning, is forcible and clear. The Alchemist is one of the three plays which usually contest the superiority among those of Jonson. 57. Tlie second of these is The Fox, which, according to general o|)inion, has been placed above the Alche- voipone, op mist. Notwithstanding tiie dissent of Gilford, I 'J-'ii«*'"^- should concur in this sutfi-age. The fable belongs to a higher 808 THE SILENT WOMAN. lUux ill. class of comedy. Without minutely inquiring whether the Roman hunters after the inheritance of tue i-ich, so well de- sci'ibed by Horace, and especially the costly presents by Avhich they endeavored to secute a better return, are altogether according to tlie manners of Venice, where Jonson has laid his scene, we must acknowledge, that he has displayed the base cupidity, of wliich there will never be wanting exami)les among mankind, in such colors as all other dramatic poetry can hardly rival. Cumberland has blamed the manner in which Volpone brings ruin on his head by insulting, in dis- guise, those whom he had dujjed. In this, I agree Avith Gif- ford, there is no violation of nature. Besides their ignorance of his person, so that he could not necessarily foresee the effects of Voltore's rage, it has been well and finely said by Cumberland, that there is a moral in a villain's outwitting himself. And this is one that many dramatists have dis played. 58. In the choice of subject, The Fox is much inferior to Tartuife, to which it bears some very general analogy. Though the Tartuffe is not a remarkably agreeable play, The Fox is much less so : five of the principal characters are wicked almost beyond any retribution that comedy can dis- pense ; the smiles it calls Ibrth are not those of gayety, but scorn ; and the parts of an absurd English knight and his wife, tliough very humorous, are hardly prominent enough to enliven the scenes of guilt and fraud which pass before our eyes. But, though too much pedantry obtrudes itself, it does not overspread the pages with nonsense as in the Alchemist ; the characters of Ceha and Bonario excite some interest ; the diiferences, one can hardly say the gradations, of villany are marked with the strong touclies of Jonson's pen ; the incidents succeed rapidly and naturally ; the dramatic effect, above all, is perceptible to every reader, and i-ises in a climax through tlie hist two acts to tlie conclusion. 59. The Silent Woman, which has been named by some The Silent witli the Alchcmist and the .Fox, falls much below ■Woman. them in vigorous delineation and dramatic effect. It has more diversity of manner than of character; the amusing scenes border sometimes on farce, as where two cowardly knights are made to receive blows in the dark, each supposing them to come from his adversary ; and the catastrophe is neither ploaiiing nor probable. It is written with a great deal Chap. VI. BEAUMONT AXD FLETCHER. 309 of spirit, and has a value as the representation of London life in the higher ranks at that time. But, upon the whole, I should be inclined to give to Every Man in his Humor a much superior place. It is a proof of Jonson's extensive learning, that the story of this play, and several particular passages, have been detected in a writer so much out of the beaten track as Libanius.^ 60. The pastoral di-ama of the Sad Sheplierd is the best testimony to the poetical imagination of Jonson. g^^ ^^ Superior in originality, liveliness, and beauty to the iierd. Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, it reminds us rather, in language and imagery, of the Midsummer Night's Dream ; and perhaps no other poetry has come so near to that of Shak- speare. Jonson, like him, had an extraordinary command of English, in its popular and provincial idioms, as well as what might be gained from books ; and, though his invincible pedan- try now and then obtrudes itself into the mouths of shepherds, it is compensated by numerous passages of the most natural and graceful expression. This beautiful drama is imperfect, hardly more than half remaining, or, more probably, having ever been written. It was also Jonson's last song : age and poverty had stolen upon him ; but, as one has said who expe- rienced the same destiny, " the life was in the leaf," and his laurel remained verdant amidst the snow of his honored head. The beauties of the Sad Shepherd might be reck- oned rather poetical than dramatic ; yet the action is both diversified and interesting to a degree we seldom find in tlie pastoral drama : there is little that is low in the comic speeches, nothing that is inflated in the serious. 61. Two men once united by friendsliip, and for ever by fame, the Dioscuri of our zodiac, Beaumont and Fletcher, rose upon the horizon, as the star of and ™ Shakspeare, though still in its fullest brightness, ^leteher. was declining in the sky. The first in order of time, among more than fifty plays published with their joint names, is the Woman-Hater, represented, according to Langbaine, in 1607, 1 Gifford discovered this. Dryden, who up from the life. Dryden g-Ives it as liis has given an examination of the Silent opinion that there is more wit and acute- Woman, in his Essay on Dramatic I'oetry, ness of fancy in this play than in any of takes Morose for a real character, and Ben Jonson's, and that he has described sitys that he had so been informed. It is the conversation of gentlemen with more possible that there might be some founda- gayety and freedom than in the rest of his tion of truth in this : the skeleton i.") in comedies, p 1('7. liiba'uus, but Jou30u may hare filled it 310 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Part IH. and ascribed to Beaumont alone by Seward, though, I believe, merely on conjecture.^ Beaumont died at the age of thirty, in 1615 ; Fletcher, in 1625. No difference of manner is perceptible, or at least no critic has perceived any, in the plays that appeared between these two epochs : in fact, the greater part were not printed till 1G47, and it is only through the records of the play-house that we distinguish their dates. The tradition, howevei', of their own times, as well as the earlier death of Beaumont, give us reason to name Fletcher, when we mention one singly, as the principal author of all these plays ; and of late years this has perhaps become more customary than it used to be. A contemporary copy of verses, indeed, seems to attribute the greater share in the Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, and King and No King, to Beaumont. But testimony of this kind is very precarious. It is sufficient that he bore a part in these three. 62. Of all our early dramatic poets, none have suffered such mangling by the printer as Beaumont and Etate of Fletcher. Their style is generally elliptical, and not their text, y^jj.y perspicuous ; they use words in peculiar senses ; and there seems often an attempt at pointed expression, in which its meaning has deserted them. But, after every effort to com])rehend their language, it is continually so remote from all possibility of bearing a rational sense, that we can only have recourse to one hypothesis, — that of an extensive and irreparable corruption of the text. Seward and Simpson, who, in 1750, published the first edition in which any en- deavor was made at illustration or amendment, though not men of much taste, and too fond of extolling their authors, showed some acuteness, and have restored many passages in a probable manner, though often driven out at sea to conjec- ture something, where the received reading furnished not a vestige which they could trace. No one since has made any great progress in this criticism, though some have carped at these editors for not performing more. The problem of 1 Vol. i. p. 3. lie also thinks The Nice imassisted composition of Fletcher." On Valour exclusively lieaumonfs. These the other haiul, he says, " not the slightest two appear to mo about the worst in the doubt can l)o entertained that of the earlier collection. plays in the present collection (ami among [The latest editor of Peaumont and those plays are the best), Beaumont con- Fletcher is inclined to modify this opi- tributed a lar;;o (perhaps the weightier) nion, latterly pi-evalent, a.s to the respective portion." — Some Account of the Lives eharea of tlie two poels. The Woman-Ha- and Writinas of Beaumont and Fletcher, tei, he thiuka, was "in all probability the preliied to Mr. Dyce"s edition. — 1847-' Chap. VI. THE MAID'S TRAGEDY. 311 actual restoration in most i)lace9, where the printers or tran- scribers have made such strange havoc, must evidently be insoluble.' Go. The first play in the collected works of Beaumont and Fletclicr, though not the earliest, is the INIaid's Tra- rphe jiaia's ged}'^ ; and it is among the best. None of their I'ragoay. female characters, though tiiey are often veiy successful in beautiful delineations of virtuous love, attaches our sympathy like Aspasia. Her sorrows are so deej), so pure, so unmer- ited ; she sustains the breach of plighted faith in Amyntor, and the taunts of vicious women, with so much resignation, so little of that termagant resentment which these poets are a])t to infuse into their hei'oines ; the poetry of her speeches is so exquisitely imaginative, — that, of those dramatic persons who are not prominent in the development of a story, scarce any, even in Shakspeare, are more interesting. Nor is the praise due to tlie Maid's Tragedy confined to the part of Aspasia. In Melantius we have Fletcher's favorite charac- ter, the brave, honest soldier, incapable of suspecting evil till it becomes impossible to be ignorant of it, but unshrinking in its punishment. That of Evadne well disjjlays the audacious security of guilt under the safeguard of power : it is highly theatrical, and renders tlie success of this tragedy not sur- orising in times when its language and situations could bo endured by the audience. We may remark in this tragedy, as in many others of these dramatists, that, while pouring out the uidiniited loyalty fashionable at the court of James, they are full of implied satire, which could hardly escape observa- tion. The warm eulogies on military glory, the scorn of slothful peace, the pictures of dissolute baseness in courtiers, seem to spring from a sentiment very usual among the Eng- lish gentry, a rank to which they both belonged, of dislike to that ignominious government ; and, though James was iar enough removed from such voluptuous tyrants as Fletcher has portrayed in this and some other plays, they did not serve to exemplify the advantages of monarchy in the most attract- ive manner. G4. The Maid's Tragedy, unfortunately, beautiful and essentially moral as it is, cannot be called a tragedy for maids, and indeed should hardly be read by any respecta- ' [The recent edition of Mr. Dvce has gone IJir towards a restorat;on of the genuine text. —1847.1 312 PIULASTER — KING AND NO KING. Parf UL ble woman. It abounds with that studiously protracted inde- cency whicli distinguished Fletcher beyond all our early dramatists, and is so much incorporated with liis plays, that very few of them can be so altered as to become tolerable at present on the stage. In this he is strikingly contrasted with Shakspcare, whose levities of this kind are so transitory, and tio much confined to language, that he has borne the pro- cess of purification with little detriment to his genius, or even to his wit. 65. Pliilaster has been, in its day, one of the best known „, ., , and most popular of Fletcher's plays.^ This was Philaster. . , i • i ^ -r->i m i owmg to the pleasing characters ot 1 huaster and Bellario, and to the frequent sweetness of the poetry. It is nevertheless, not a first-rate play. The plot is most absurdly managed. It turns on the suspicion of Arethusa's infidelity ; and the sole ground of this is, that an abandoned woman, being detected herself, accuses the princess of unchastity. Not a shadow of presumptive evidence is brought to confirm this impudent assertion ; which, however, the lady's father, her lover, and a grave, sensible courtier, do not fail implicitly to believe. How unlike the chain of circumstance, and the devilish cunning, by which the Moor is wrought up to think his Desdemona false ! Bellario is suggested by Viola ; there is more jiicturesqueness, more dramatic importance, not per- haps more beauty and sweetness of aifection, but a more elo- quent development of it, in Fletcher : on the other hand, there is still more of that improbability which attends a successful concealment of sex by mere disguise of clothes, though no artifice has been more common on the stage. Many other circumstances in the conduct of Fletchei-'s story are ill contrived. It has less wit than the greater part of his comedies ; for among such, according to the old distinc- tion, it is to be ranked, though the subject is elevated and serious. 66. King and No King is, in my judgment, inferior to Phi- King and laster. The language has not so much of poetical no King beauty. The character of Arbaces excites no sym- pathy : it is a compoimd of vain-glory and violence, which ' Dryden says, but I know not liow p. 100. Piiilaster was not printed, accortl- truly, that I'liiliiBter was " the fir-:t play ing to Langbaiue, till 1G20: I do not know that broiif^ht lieaumont and Fletcher in that we have any evidunce of the date of estoem ; foi-, before that, they had wiil- its representation. ten two or tUreo very unsuccessfully." — Chap. TI. THE ELDER BROTHER. 313 rather demands disgrace from poetical justice than reAvai'd. Panthea is innocent, but insipid ; Mardonius, a good specimen of what Fletcher loves to exhibit, the plain, lionest courtier. As for JBessus, he certainly gives occa.sion to several amusing scenes ; but his cowardice is a little too 2;larin2; ; he is ueitlier so laughable as Bobadil, nor so spriglitly as Parolles. The princi])al merit of this play, which rendered it popular on the stage for many years, consists in the effective scenes where Arbaces reveals his illicit desire. That especially with ]\Iar- donius is artfully and elaborately written. Shakspeare had less of this skill ; and his tragedies suffer for it in their dra- matic effect. The scene between John and Hubert is an exception, and there is a great deal of it in Othello ; but, in general, he may be said not to have exerted the |)o\ver of detaining the spectator in that anxious suspense, which creates almost an actual illusion, and makes him tremble at every word, lest the secret which he has learned should be imparted to the imaginary person on the stage. Of this there are seve- ral fine instances in the Greek tragedians, the famous scene in the ffidipus Tyrannus being the best ; and it is possible that the superior education of P'letcher may liave rendered him familiar -with the resources of ancient tragedy. These scenes in tlie present play would have been more highly powerful, if the interest could have been thrown on any cha- racter superior to the selfish braggart Arbaces. It may be said, perhaps,* that his humiliation through his own lawless passions, after so much insolence of success, affords a moral : he seems, hoAvever, but imperfectly cured at the conclusion, which is also hurried on with unsatisfactory rapidity. 67. The Polder Brother has been generally reckoned among the best of Fletcher s comedies. It displays in a The Eider new form an idea not very new in fiction : the power ^"■o'^J't- of love, on the first sight of a woman, to vivify a soul utterly ignorant of the passion. Charles, the Elder Brother, much unlike the Cymon of Dryden, is absorbed in study ; a mere scholar without a thought beyond his books. His indifference, perhaps, and ignorance about the world, are rather exagge- rated, and border on stupidity ; but it Avas the custom of the dramatists in that age to produce effect in representation by very sudden developments, if not changes, of character. The other persons are not ill-conceived : the honest, testy Mira- mout, who admires leai-ning without much more of it than 314 THE SPANISH CURATE. Pa in- HI. enables him to sign his name ; the two selfish, woildly fathers of Charles and Angelina, believing themselves shrewd, yet the easy dupes of coxcomb manners from the covirt ; the spiiited Angelina ; the spoiled l)ut not worthless Eustace, — show Fletcher's great talent in dramatic invention. In none of his mere comedies has lie sustained so uniformly elegant and pleas- ing a style of poetry : the language of Charles is naturally that of a refined scholar ; but now and then, perhaps, we find old Miramont talk above himself. The underplot hits to the life the licentious endeavors of an old man to seduce his inferior ; but, as usual, it reveals vice too broadly. This comedy is of very simple construction, so that Cibber was obliged to blend it with another. The Custom of the Country, in order to compose from the two his Love Makes a jSlan ; by no means the worst play of that age. The two plots, however, do not harmonize very Avell. 68. The vSpanish Curate is, in all probability, taken from one The Spanish of those comedics of intrigue Avhich the fame of Lope Curate. jjg Vega had made popular in Europe.^ It is one of the best specimens of that manner : the plot is full of incident and interest, without being dilficult of comprehension, nor, with fair allowance for the conventions of the sUige and man- ners of the country, improbable. The characters are in full relief, without caricature. Fletcher, with an artifice of which he is very fond, has made the fierce resentment of Violante break out unexpectedly from the calmness she had sho\\Ti in the first scenes ; but it is so well accounted for, that we see nothing unnatural in the development of passions for which there had been no previous call. Ascanio is again one of Fletcher's favorite delineations; a kind of Bellario in his modest, affectionate disposition ; one in whose prosperity the reader takes so much pleasure, that he forgets it is, in a world- ly sense, inconsistent with that of the honest-hearted Don Jamie. The doting husband, Don Henrique, contrasts Avell with the jealous Bartolus ; and both afibrd by their fate the sort of moral which is looked for in comedy. The underplot of tlie lawyer and his wife, while it shows how licentious in princijjle as well as indecent in language the stage had become, is conducted with incomparable humor and lunusement. Con- ' [The Spanish Curate, Mr. Dyoe in- de CeppiJ(!S. of which an English trani>Ia- IbnuK us, is foiuidcd on (iiM-artlo, tli(! llu- tioii, by Leonard Diggex, appeared in 162i fortunate Spaniard, a novel by Uom;ulo — 1817.J Chap. VI. TIIE CUSTOM OF THE COU^^ TRY. 315 greve borrowed part of this in the Old Bachelor, without by any means equalling it. Upon the whole, as a comedy of this class, it deserves to be placed in the liighest rank. G9. The Custom of the Country is much deformed by ob- scenity, especially the first act. But it is full of The Custom noljleness in character and sentiment, of interesting of tiie situations, of unceasing variety of action. Fletcher ^°"°"^y- has never shown what he so much delights in drawing, — the contrast of virtuous dignity with ungoverned passion in wo- man, — with more success than in Zenocia and Hippolyta. Of these three plays we may say, perhaps, that there is more poetry in the Polder Brother, more interest in the Custom of the Country, more wit and spii-it in the Spanish Curate. 70. The Loyal Subject ought also to be placed in a high rank among the works of Beaxnnont and Fletcher. The Txjyai There is a play by HeyAvood, The Koyal King and Subject. Loyal Subject, from wiiich the general idea of several circum- stances of this has been taken. That Heywood's was the original, though the only edition of it is in 1637, while the Loyal Subject was i-epresented in 1G18, cannot bear a doubt. The former is expressly mentioned in the epilogue as an old play, belonging to a style gone out of date, and not to be judged witii rigor. Heywood has therefore the praise of having conceived the character of Earl Marshal, upon which Fletcher somewhat improved in Archas ; a brave soldier, of that disinterested and devoted loyalty which bears all ingrati- tude and outrage at the hands of an unworthy and mis-T^uided sovereign. In the days of James, there could be no more courtly moral. In each play, the prince, after depriving his most deserving subject of honors and Ibrtune, tries his fidelity by commanding him to send two daughtei-s, whom he had educated in seclusion, to the court, Avith designs that the father may easily suspect. The loyalty, however, of these honest soldiers submits to encounter this danger ; and the conduct of the young ladies soon proves that they might be trusted in the fiery trial. In the Loyal Subject, Fletcher has beautifully, and with his light touch of pencil, sketched the two virtuous sisters : one high-spirited, intrepid, undisguised ; the other shrinking with maiden modesty, a tremulous dew-drop in the cup of a violet. But, unfortunately, liis original taint betrays itself, and the elder sister cannot display her scorn of licen- tiousness without borrowing some of its language. K Shak- 816 THE SCORNFUL LADY. Pap.i IH. speare had put these loose images into the mouth of Isabella, how ditFereutly we should have esteemed her character ! 71. We find in the Loyal Subject what is neither pleasing nor probable, the disguise of a youth as a girl. This was, of course, not offensive to those who saw nothing else on the stage. Fletcher did not take this from Heywood. In the whole management of the story he is much superior : the no- bleness of Archas, and his injuries, are still more displayed than those of the Earl JMarshal ; and he has several new characters, especially Theodore, the impetuous son of the Loyal Subject, who does not brook* the insults of a prince as submis- sively as his fatlier. wliich fill the play with variety and spirit. The language is in some places obscure and probably corrupt, but abounding with that kind of poetry wliich belongs to Fletcher. 72. Beggar's Bush is an excellent comedy ; the serious Beggar's parts interesting, the comic diverting. P^very charac- Bush. ^gj. svxpports itself well : if some parts of the plot have been suggested by As You Like It, they are managed so as to be original in spirit. Few of Fletcher's plays furnish more proofs of his chai-acteristic qualities. It might be repre- sented with no great curtailment. 73. The Scornful Lady is one of those comedies which TheSoom- exhibit English domestic life, and have therefore a fuiLady. yaluc independent of their dramatic merit. It does not ecjual Beggar's Bush, but is full of effective scenes, which, when less regard was paid to decency, must have rendered it a popular play. Fletcher, in fact, is as much superior to Sliakspeare in his knowledge of the stage, as he falls below him in that of human nature.^ His fertile invention was 1 [Mr. Dyce, as well as an earlier editor Savil. But, while making this avowal, of Beaumont and Fletcher, thinks the why did not he add, that the Waiting- greater part of this comedy written by AVoman in tlie Scornful Lady is called ifieauniont. Mr. Dyce adds : " In the Abigail ? Here was a heinous theft ; and, edition of 1750, Tlieobald has a notend. Edith is on the point of giving up her purpose, when, some others in the cons])iracy coming in, she recovers herself enough to exhort them to strike the blow.^ 83. The sentiments and style of Fletcher, where not con „ ^ ^ cealed by obscurity, or corruption of the text, are tnents and xevy dramatic. We cannot deny that the depths of mati/"^^ Shakspeare's mind were often unfathomable by an audience : the bow was drawn by a matchless hand ; but the shaft went out of sight. All might listen to Flet- cher's ])leasing, though not ])rofound or vigorous, language ; his thoughts are noble, and tinged with the ideality of romance, his metaphors vivid, though sometimes too forced ; he pos- sesses the idiom of English without much jiedantry, though in many passages he strains it beyond common use ; his versi- ficatiouj though studiously irregular, is often rhythmical and sweet. Yet we are seldom arrested by striking beauties ; good lines occur in every page, fine ones but rarely : we lay down the volume with a sense of admiration of what ne have read, but little of it remains distinctly in the memory. Fletcher is not much quoted, and has not even afforded 1 Hotrou. Jn his Wi'nccplas, as we have of theiv contcntkns with men. But lion- •Iready obpcrvod. has done soiuctliiii;^ of esses aie l)ec<)ine very good painters ; and the same kind : it may have been meant it is but through their '■leniency that we as an ungenerous and calumnious attack are not delineated in such a style as would cu the constiiney of the female sex. If avenge them for the injuries of t.hes« lions were painters, the old fable says, tragedians, they would exhibit a very different view Chap. VI. TRAGEDIES OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 323 copious materials to those wlio cull the beauties of ancient lore. 84. In variety of character, there can lie no comparison 1)C- twecn Fletcher and Shakspcare. A few types return Their cha- npon us in the former: an old general, proud of his '^"^''-■''''■ ^vars, faithful and passionate; a voluptuous and arbitrary kinp: (for his princi])les of obedience do not seem to have inspired him with much confidence in royal virtues) ; a sup- ple courtier, a high-spirited youth, or one more gentle in manners but not less stout in action ; a lady, fierce and not always very modest in her chastity, repelling the solicitations of licentiousness; another impudently vicious, — form the usual pictures for his canvas. Add to these, for the ligliter comedy, an amorous old man, a gay spendthrift, and a few more of the staple characters of the stage, and we have the materials of Fletcher's dramatic world. It must be remembered, that v,e compare him only with Shakspeare ; and that, as few drama- tists have been more copious than Fletcher, few have been so much called upon for inventions, in which the custom of the theatre has not exacted mucli originality. The great fertility of his mind in new combinations of circumstance gives as much appearance of novelty to the personages tliemselves as an unreflecting audience rccpiires. In works of fiction, even tliose whicli are read in the closet, this variation of the mere dress of a character is generally found suHicient for the public. 85. The tragedies of Beaumont and Fletchei*, by which our ancestors seem to have meant only plays -wherein Their tra- any one of the personages, or at least one whom the £*"•"-'* spectator would wish to keep alive, dies on the stage, are not very numerous ; but in them we have as copious an effusion of blood as any contemporary dramas supply. The conclusion, indeed, of these, and of the tragi-comedies, which form a larger class, is generally mismanaged. A ^jrojicnsity to take the audience by surprise leads often to an unnatural and un- satisfactory catastrophe : it seems their aim to disappoint common expectation, to bafHe reasonable conjecture, to mock natural sympathy. This is frequently the practice of our modern novelists, Avho find no better resource in the poverty of their invention to gratify the jaded palate of the ^vorld. 8C. The comic talents of those authors far exceeded their skill in tragedy. In comedy they founded a new school, at 324 FEMALE CHARACTERS. Pakt IIL least in England, the vestiges of which are still to be traced in Inferior to ^"'" ^''^^tre. Their piuys are at once distinguishable tiu'ircom- from thosc of tlieir contemporaries by the regard * "'^' to dramatic eii'e.;t wliicii infiiienced tlie writer's im- agination. Though not personally connected with the stage, they had its picture ever befoi-e their eyes. Hence their in- cidents are numerous and striking; their characters sometimes slightly sketclied, not drawn, like those of Jonson, from a pre- concei'ved design, but pi'eserving that degree of individual distinctness which a common audience requires, and often highly humoi'ous without extravagance ; their language bril- liant with wit ; their measure, though they do not make great use of prose, very lax and rapid, running frefpiently to lines of thirteen and fourteen syllables. Few of their comedies are without a mixture of grave sentiments or elevated charac- ters ; and, though there is much to condemn in tlieir indecency and even licentiousness of principle, they never descend to the coarse buffoonery not unfrequent in their age. Never were dramatic poets more thoroughly gentlemen, according to the standard of their times ; and, when we consider the court of James I., we may say tliat they were above that standard.^ 87. The best of Fletcher's characters are female . he Their fe- Wanted that large sweep of reflection and experi- maiecha- ence which is required for the greater diversity of racters. ^i^^ other sex. None of his women delight us like Imogen and Desdemona ; but he has many Imogens and Des- demonas of a fainter type. Spacelia, Zenocia, Celia, Aspasia, Evanthe, Lucina, Ordella, Oriana, present the picture that cannot be greatly varied without departing from its essence, but which never can be repeated too often to please us, of faithful, tender, self-denying female love, superior to every thing but vii-tue. Nor is he less successful, generally, in the contrast of minds stained by guilty passion, though in this he 1 "Their plots were Benerally more re- them arrived to its hi^rhest perfeetion : giilar than Shaltspeare's, especially those what words have since been taken in, are which were made before lieauiuont's death ; rather superfluous than oriiamentjil. Their and they understood and imitated the plays are now the most pleasant and fre- conversation of gentlemen much better; qucnt entertainments of the stjige ; two whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of theirs being acted through the year for of wit in repartees, no poet bcfoi-e them one of Shakspeare's or .lonson's : the rca- coulil paint as they have done. Humor, son is, because tliere is a certain (fiyety in which lien .lonson derived from particular their comedies, and pathos in their more persons, they ni.ade it not their business to serious plays, which suits generally with all de.scribe : they represented all the pas.sions men's humors. Shakspeare's language is fery lively, but, .above al'., love. I am likewise a little obsolete, and .Tonson' s wit kpt to believe the llaglish lauguage in fails short of theirs." — Dry den, p. 101, Chap. VT. MASSINGER. 325 sometimes exafrgerates the outline till it borders on caricature. But it is in vain to seek in Fletcher the strong conceptions of Sliakspeare, the Shylocks, the Lcars, the Othcllos. Schlcgel has well said, that " scarce any thing has been wanting to give a place to Beaimiont and Fletcher among the great drama- tists of Europe but more of seriousness and depth, and the regulating judgment which prcsci-ibes the due limits in every part of composition." It was for want of the former qualities that they conceive nothing in tragedy very forcibly ; for want of the latter, that they spoil their first conception by extrava- gance and incongruity.^ 88. Tlie reputation of Beaumont and Fletcher was at its height, and most of their plays had been given to the stage, when a worthy inheritor of their mantle appeared in Philip Massinger. Of his extant dramas, the Virgin 3Iartyr, pub- lished in 1C22, seems to be the earliest: but we have reason to believe that sevei-al are lost ; and even this tragedy may have been represented some years before. The far gi-eater part of his remaining pieces followed within ten years : the Basliful Lover, which is the latest now known, was >vritten in ]636. Massinger was a gentleman, but in the service, ac- cording to the language of those times, of the Pembroke family ; his education was at the university, his acquaintance both with books and with the manners of the court is familiar, his style and sentiments are altogether those of a man pol- ished by intercourse of good society. 89. Neither in his own age nor in modern times does ]\Ias- singer seem to have been put on a level w^ith Fletcher or Jonson. Several of his plays, as has been just observed, are said to have perished in manuscript : few were represented after the Restoration; and it is only in consequence of his having met with more than one editor who has published his ' " Shakspearc," eays Drydon. "writ To conclude all. he was a limb of Shak- better between man and man. Fletcher epeare." — p. 301. This comparison i3 betwixt man and woman : consequently rather generally than strictly just, as is the one described friendship better, the often the case with the criticisms of Dry- other, love : yet ShakSpeare taught Fleteh- den. That Fletcher wrote better than cr Uy write love, and .Juliet and Desdemona Shakspearc " between man and woman." are oripnals. It is true the scholar had or iu displaying love, will be granted when t!ic softest soul, but the master had the he shall be shown to have excelled Ferdi- kinder. . . . Sliakspeare had an universal nand and Miranda, or Posthumus and mind, which comprehended all characters Imogen. And. on the other hand, it Is and passions ; Fletcher, a more confined unjust to deny him credit for having and limited : for though he treated love in sometimes touched the stronger emotions, perfection, yet lionor, ambition, revenge, especially houor and ambition, with great and generally all the stronger p;issions, skill, though much inferior to that of he cither touched not, or not masterly. Shakspearc 826 MASSmGER — HIS CHARACTERS. Pakt IH. collected works in a convenient form, that he is become tol erahly familiar to the general reader. He is, however, far more intelligible than Fletcher: his text has not given so much embarrassment from corruption, and his general style is as perspicuous as we ever find it in the dramatic poets of that age. The obscure passages in Massinger, after the care that Gifford has taken, are by no means frequent. 90. Five of his sixteen plays are tragedies, that is, are Oenorai concludcd in death : of tlie rest, no one belongs to nature of the class of mere comedy, but by the depth of the his drama, j^j^gj-gg^^ ^}jg danger of the virtuous, or the atrocity of the vicious characters, as well as the elevation of the gen- eral style, must be ranked with the serious drama, or, as it was commonly termed, tragi-comedy. A shade of melancholy tinges the writings of Massinger; but he sacritices less than his contemporaries to the public taste for superHuous blood- shed on the stage. In several of his plays, such as the Picture or the Renegado, where it Avould have been easy to determine the catastrophe towards tragedy, he has preferred to break the clouds with the radiance of a setting sun. He consulted in this his own genius, not eminently pathetic nor energetic enough to display the utmost intensity of emotion, but abounding in sweetness and dignity, apt to delineate the loveliness of virtue, and to delight in its recompense aiter trial. It has been surmised, that the religion of Massinger was that of the Church of Rome ; a conjecture not im- probable, though, considering the ascetic and imaginative piety which then prevailed in that of England, we need not absolutely go so far for his turn of thought in the Virgin Martyr or the Renegado. 91. The most striking excellence of this poet is his con- iiis deiinea- ccption of character ; and in this I must incline to tionsof place him above Fletcher, and, if I may venture character. ^^ ^^^ j^.^ ^^^^ abovc Jonson. He is free from the hard outline of the one, and the negligent looseness of the other. He has indeed no great variety, and sometimes re- peats, witli such bare modifications as the story demands, the type of his first design. Tims the extravagance of conjugal affection is portrayed, feeble in Theodosius, frantic in Domi- tian, selfish in Slorza, suspicious in Mathias ; and the samo impulses of doting love return upon us in the guilty culogiea of Mallefort on his daughter. The vindictive hypocrisy of Chap. VT. HIS SUBJECTS. 327 3Iontreville in the Unnatural Combat has nearly its counter- part in that of Francesco in the Duke of Milan, and is again displayed with more striking success in Luke. Tliis last villain, indeed, and tliat original, masterly, inimitable con- ception, Sir Giles Overreach, are sufficient to establish the rank of JNLassinger in tliis great province of dramatic art. But his own disposition led him more willingly to pictures of moral beauty. A peculiar refinement, a mixture of gentle- ness and benignity Avith noble daring, belong to some of his favorite characters, to Pisander in the Bondman, to An- tonio in A Very Woman, to Charolois in the Fatal Dowry. It may be readily supposed, that his female characters are not wanting in these graces. It seems to me, that he has more variety in his Avomen than in the other sex, and that they are less mannered than the heroines of Fletcher. A slight deo-ree of error or passion in Sophia, Eudocia, Marcclia, without weakening our sympathy, serves both to jn-event the monoto- ny of perpetual rectitude, so often insipid in fiction, and to bring forward the development of the story. 92. Tlie subjects chosen by Massinger are sometimes his- torical ; but others seem to have been taken from nis sub- French or Italian novels, and those so obscure that J'"^'^- his editor Gifford, a man of much reading and industry, ha3 seldom traced them. This, indeed, was an usual pi-actice of our ancient dramatists. Tlieir works have, consequently, a romantic character, presenting as little of the regular Plau- tine comedy as of the Greek forms of tragedy. They are merely novels in action, following probably their models with no great variation, except the lower and lighter episodes which it was always more or less necessary to combine with the story. It is from this choice of subjects, perhaps, as much as from the peculiar temper of the poets, that love is the predominant affection of the mind which they display; not cold and conventional, as Ave commonly find it on the French stage, but sometimes, as the novelists of the South Avere prone to delineate its emotions, fiery, irresistible, and almost resembling the fatalism of ancient tragedy ; sometimes a subdued captive at the chariot wheels of honor or religion. The range of human passion is, consequently, far less exten- sive than in Shakspeare ; but the variety of circumstance, and the modifications of the paramount affection itself, corapen- Bated for this deficiency. S28 MASSINGER'S TRAGEDIES. Part III. 93. Next to the grace and dignity of sentiment in Massin- Beauty of ger, we must praise those qualities in his style, his st.vie. p^very modern critic has been struck by the peculiar beauty of his language. In his harmonious swell of numbers, in his pure and genuine idiom, which a text, by good fortune and the diligence of its last editor, far less corrupt than that of Fletcher, enables us to enjoy, w^e find an unceasing charm. The poetical talents of Massinger were very considerable, his taste superior to that of his contemporaries ; the coloring of his imagery is rarely overcharged ; a certain redundancy, as some may account it, gives fulness, or what the painters call impasto, to liis style, and, if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, is on the whole suitable to the character of his composition.^ 94. The comic powers of this wi'iter are not on a level Inferiority ^^'^^!^ ^'^® scrious : with somc degree of humorous of his comic conception, he is too apt to aim at exciting ridicule poweri.. ^^ caricature ; and his dialogue wants altogether the sparkling wit of Shakspeare and Fletcher. Whether from a consciousness of this defect, or from an unhappy compliance with the viciousness of the age, no writer is more contaminat- ed by gross indecency. It belongs indeed chiefly, not per- haps exclusively, to the characters he would render odious ; but upon them he has bestowed this flower of our early thea- tre with no sparing hand. Few, it must be said, of his plays are incapable of representation merely on this account ; and the offence is therefore more incurable in Fletcher. 95. Among the tragedies of Massinger, I should incline , , . to prefer the Duke of Milan. Tlie plot borrows Some of his , ,. i • • • t • i ^ tragedies euougli from liistory to give it dignity, and to coun- panicuiar- tyi-i;);^i;,nce in some measure the predominance of the passion of love which the invented jiarts of the dra- ma exhibit. The characters of Sforza, Marcelia, and Fran- cesco, are in Massinger's best manner ; the story is skilfully and not improbably developed ; the pathos is deeper than wo generally find in his writings ; the eloquence of language, \ ' [T quote tlie following criticism from lorjuial language is left at the greatest Coleridge, without thorouglily assenting distance ; yet sonietliing of it is j re- to it: "The styles of Massinger's plays served, to render the dialogue probable: and the Samson Agoiiistes are tlie two in Massinger tlie style is diilereuced, but extremes of the arc within which the differenced in the smallest degree possible, diction of dramatic poetry may oscillate, from animated conversation, by the vein Shakspeare in his great plays is the mid- of poetry." — Table Xalk, Tjl. ii. p. 121.— (loiut. In the Samson Agooistes, col- 1842.J - . Chap. YI. MASSINGEE — FORD. 329 especially in the celebrated speech of Sforza before the Empe- ror, has never been surpassed by him. ]\Iany, however, placo the Fatal Dowry still higher. This tragedy furnished Koavo with the story of his Fair Penitent. The superiority of tho original, except in suitableness for representation, has long been acknowledged. In the Unnatural Combat, probably among the eiu-liest of Massinger's Avorks, Ave lind a greater energy, a boliler strain of figurative poetry, more command of terror, and perhaps of pity, than in any other of his dramas. Hut the dark shadows of crime and misery Avhich overspread this tragedy belong to rather an earlier period of the English stage than that of Massinger, and were not congenial to his temper. In the Virgin Martyr, he has followed the Spanish model of religious Autos, Avith many graces of language and a beautiful display of Christian heroism in Dorothea ; but the tragedy is in many respects unpleasing. 9G. The Picture, The Bondman, and A Very Woman, may be reckoned among the best of the tragi-comedies of And ot hu JMassinger. But the general mei-its as well as "''i*''" vi'vs- defects of this Avriter are perceptible in all ; and the difference betAveen these and the rest is not such as to be apparent to every reader. Two others are distinguishable as more Eng- lish than the rest ; the scene lies at home, and in the age ; and to these the common voice has assigned a superiority. They are A NeAv Way to Pay Old Debts and The City JNIadam. A character draAVB, as it appears, from reality,^ and, though darkly Avicked, not beyond the province of the higher comedy. Sir Giles Overreach, gives the former drama a strik- ing originality and an impressive vigor. It retains, alone among the productions of Massinger, a place on the stage, Gilibrd inclines to prefer the City Madam ; Avhich, no doubt, by the masterly delineation of Luke, a villain of a different order from Overreach, and a larger portion of comic humor and satire than is usual Avith this Avriter, may dispute the palm. But there seems to be more violent improbability in the conduct of the plot, than in A Ncav Way to Pay Oid Debts. 97. Massinger, as a tragic Avriter, appears to mo second only to Shakspeare: in the higher comedy, I can ^^^ hardly think him inferior to Jonson. In Avit and spi-ightly dialogue, as Avell as in knoAvledge of theatrical effect, he falls very much below Fletcher. These, however, are the 330 FORD -SHIRLEY. Pakt lU. great names of the English stage. At a considerable distance below Massiiiger we may place his contemporary John Ford. In the choice of tragic subjects from obscure tictions, which have to us the charm of entire novelty, they resemble each other ; but in the conduct of tlieir fable, in tlie delineation of their cliaracters, each of these poets has his distinguishing excellences. " I know," says Gilford, " few things more diffi- cult to account for than the deep and lasting impression made by the more tragic portions of Ford's poetry." He succeeds, however, pretty well in accounting for it : the situations are awfully interesting, the distress intense, the thoughts and lan- guage becoming the expression of deep sorrow. Ford, with none of the moral beauty and elevation of Massinger, has, in a much higher degree, the power over tears : we sympathize even with his vicious charactei'S, with Giovanni and Anna- bella and Bianca. Love, and love in guilt or sorrow, is almost exclusively the emotion he portrays : no heroic passion, no sober dignity, will be found in his tragedies. But he con- ducts his stories well and witliout confusion ; his scenes are often highly wrought and effective ; his characters, with no striking novelty, are well supported ; he is seldom extravagant or regardless of probability. The Broken Heart has gene- rally been reckoned his finest tragedy ; and if the last act had been better prepared, by bringing the love of Calantha for Ithocles more fully before the reader in the earlier part of the play, there would be very few passages of deeper pathos in our dramatic literature. " The style of Ford," it is said by Gitlbrd, " is altogether original and his oavii. Without the majestic march which distinguishes the poetry of Massinger, and with little or none of that light and playful humor which characterizes the dialogue of Fletcher, or even of Shirley, he is yet elegant and easy and harrjonious ; and though rarely sublime, yet suflTiciently elevated for the most pathetic tones of that passion on whose romantic energies he chiefly delighted to dwell." Yet he censures afterwards Ford's aftectation of uncouth phrases, and perplexity of language. Of comic abili- ty this writer does not display one particle. Nothing can be meaner than those portions of his dramas, which, in compli- ance with the prescribed rules of that age, he devotes to the dialogue of servants or buftbons. 98. Shirley is a dramatic writer much inferior to those who have been mentioned, but has acquii-ed some degree of reputa- Chap. VI. SHIRLEY— HEYWOOD. 331 tion, or at least notoriety of name, in consequence of the new edition of his plays. These arc between twenty and g thirty in number; some of them, however, written in conjimctiou with his fellow-dramatists. A few of these are tragedies, a few are comedies drawn from P^nglish manners ; but in the greater ]«irt we find the favoi'ite style of that age, the characters foreign and of elevated rank, the interest seri- ous, but not always of buskined dignity, the catastrophe fortunate ; all, in short, that has gone under the vague appel- lation of tragi-comedy. Shirley has no originality, no force in conceiving or delineating character, little of pathos, and less perhaps of wit : his dramas produce no deep impression in reading, and of course can leave none in the memory. But his mind was poetical ; his better characters, especially females, express pure thoughts in pure language ; he is never tumid or affected, and seldom obscure ; the incidents succeed rapidly ; the personages are numerous ; and there is a general animation in the scenes, which causes us to read him with some pleasure. No very good ]ilay, nor possibly any very good scene, could be found in Shirley ; but he has many lines of considerable beauty. Among his comedies, the Gamesters may be reckoned the best. Chai-les I, is said to have declared, that it was " the best play he had seen these seven years ; " and it has even been added, that the story was of his royal suggestion. It certainly deserves praise both for language and construction of the plot, and it has the advantage of exposing vice to ridicule ; but the ladies of that court,.the fair forms whom Vandyke has immortalized, must have been very different indeed from their posterity if they could sit it through. The Ball, and also some more among the comedies of Shirley, are so far remark- able and worthy of being read, that they bear witness to a more polished elegance of manners, and a more free inter- course in the higher class, than we find in the comedies of the preceding reign. A queen from France, and that queen Hen- rietta Maria, was better fitted to give this tone than Anne of Denmark. But it is not from Shirley's pictures that we can draw the most favorable notions of the morals of that age. 99. Heywood is a writer still more fertile than Shirley : between forty and fifty jdays are ascribed to him. We have mentioned one of the best in the second ''^^°° volume, ante-dating, perhaps, its appearance by a few years. In tlie English Traveller he has returned to something like S32 WEBSTER. Part in. tlic subject of A "Woman killed with Kiudness, but wnth less success. This play is written in verse, and with that ease and perppicuity, seldom rising to passion or figurative jioetry, which distinguishes this dramatist. Young Gcraldine is a beautiful sjjecimen of the Platonic, or ratlicr inflexibly virtu- ous lover, whom the writers of this age delighted to portray. On the other hand, it is difficult to pronounce whether the lady is a thorough-paced hypocrite in the first acts, or falls from virtue, like Mrs. Frankfort, on the first solicitation of a 6tranger. In cither case, the character is unpleasing, and, we may hope, improbable. The underplot of this play is largely borrowed from the Mostellaria of Plautus, and is diverting, though somewhat absurd. Heywood seldom rises to much vigor of poetry ; but his dramatic invention is ready, his style is easy, his chai'acters do not transgress the boundaries of nature, and it is not surprising that he was popular in his )wn age. 100. Webster belongs to the first part of the reign of James. He possessed very considerable powers, and ought to be ranked, I think, the next below Ford. With less of poetic grace than Shirley, he had incomparably more vigor ; with less of nature and simplicity than Heywood, be had a more elevated genius and a bolder pencil. But the deep sorrows and terrors of tragedy were peculiarly his pro- vince. " His imagination," says his last editor, " had a fond familiarity with objects of awe and fear. The silence of the pepulchre, the sculptures of marble monimients, the knolling of church bells, the cerements of the coi-pse, the yew that roots itself in dead men's graves, are the illustrations that most readily present themselves to his imagination." I think this well-written sentence a little one-sided, and hardly doing just- ice to the variety of Webster's power ; but, in fact, he was as deeply tainted as any of his contemjioraries with the savage taste of the Italian school, and, in the Duchess of Malfy, scarce- ly leaves enough on the stage to bury the dead. 101. This is the most celebrated of Webster's dramas. The liis Duchess story is takcu from Bandello, and has all that accu- of Muify. mulation of wickedness and horror which the Italian novelists perversely described, and our tragedians as perverse- 1}^ imitated. But the scenes are wrought up with skill, and produce a strong impression. Webster has a superiority in delineating character above many of the old dramatists ; he is Chap. VI. WEBSTER — OTHER DRAMATISTS. 333 Beldom extravagant beyond the limits of conceivable nature ; we find guilt, or even the atrocity, of human passions, but not that incarnation of evil spirits which some more ordi- narv dramatists loved to exhibit. In the character of the Duchess of Malfy herself, there wants neitlie.* originality, nor slvill of management; and I do not know that any dramatist after Sliakspeare would have succeeded better in the dithcult scene where she discloses her love to an inferior. There is perhaps a little failure in dignity and delicacy, especially towards the close ; but the Duchess of Malfy is not drawn as an Isabella or a Poi-tia : she is a love-sick widow, virtuous and true-hearted, but more intended for our sympathy than our reverence. 102. The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, is not much inferior in language and spirit to the Duchess vittoria of Malfy; but the plot is more confused, less inter- Corou.bona. esting, and worse conducted. Mr. Dyce, the late editor of Webster, praises the dramatic vigor of the part of Vittoria, but justly differs from Lamb, who speaks of " the innocence- resembling boldness" she displays in the trial scene. It is ratlier a delineation of desperate guilt, losing in a counterfeited audacity all that could seduce or conciliate the tribunal. Webster's other plays are less striking: in Appius and Vir ginia he has done perhaps better than any one who has attempted a subject not on the whole very promising for tragedy ; several of the scenes are dramatic and effective ; the language, as is usually the case with Webster, is written so as to display an actor's talents, and he has followed the received history sufficiently to abstain from any excess of slaughter at the close. Webster is not without comic wit, as well as a power of imagination : his plays have lately met with an editor of taste enough to admire his beauties, and not very over-partial in estimating them. 103. Below Webster, we might enumerate a long list of dramatists under tlie first Stuarts. iNIarston is a tumid and ranting tragedian, a wholesale dealer in murders and ghosts. Chapman, who assisted lien Jonson and some others in com- edy, - deserves but limited praise for his Bussy d' Amboise. The style in tliis and in all his tragedies is extravagantly hyperbolical : he is not very dramatic, nor has any power of exciting emotion except in those wdio sympathize with a timiid pride and self-confidence. Yet he has more thinking thaii 334 DRAMATISTS. Pakt IIL many of the old dramatists ; and the praise of one of his critics, though strongly worded, is not without some founda- tion, that Ave " seldom find richer contemplations on the nature of man and the world." There is also a poetic impetuosity in Chapman, such as has redeemed his translation of Homer, hy which we are hurried along. His tragi-comedies, All Fools and The Gentleman Usher, are pei'haps superior to his trage- dies.^ Rowley and Le Tourneur, especially the former, have occasionally good lines ; but we cannot say that they were very superior dramatists. Rowley, however, Avas often in comic partnership with Massinger. Dekker merits a higher rank : he co-operated with Massinger in some of his plays, and mani- fests in his own some energy of passion and some comic humor. Middleton belongs to this lower class of dramatic Writers : his tragedy entitled " Women bewai'C Women " is founded on the story of Bianca Cappello ; it is full of action, but the characters are all too vicious to be intcrestinij:, and the language does not rise much above mediocrity, lu come- dy, IVIiddleton deserves more praise. " A Trick to catch tiie Old One," and several others that bear his name, are amusiug and spirited. But Middleton Avrote chiefly in conjuuctiou with others, and sometimes with Jonsou and Massinger. i Chapman is ^rell reviewed, and at length, in an article of the IletrcepectiTe ■Review, vol. iv p. 333, and again in vol. T. Chap. VH. DECLINE OF TASTE IX ITALY. 335 CHAPTER \^I. HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE, FROM ICOO TO 1660. Section I. Italian Writers —Borcalini —Grammattcnl and Critical Works — Gracian — Krenca ■Writers— r.alzac—Voiture — French Academy — Vaugehus — Patru and i/e Maistre — Style of EngUsli Prose — Earl of Essex — KnoUes — SeTcral other English Writers 1. It would be vain probably to inquire from what general causes we should deduce the decline of taste in Italy. Define of None, at least, have occurred to my mind, relating ^te in to political or social circumstances, upon which we ^' could build more than one of those sophistical theories which assume a casual relation between any concomitant events. Bad taste, in fact, wliether in literature or the arts, is always ready to seize upon the public, being in many cases no more than a pleasure in faults which are really fitted to please us, and of whicli it can only be said that they hinder or impair the greater pleasure we should derive from beauties. Among these critical sins, none are so dangerous as the display of ingenious and novel thoughts or turns of phrase ; for, as such enter into the definition of good writing, it seems very difficult to pei-suade tlie world that they can ever be the characteristics of bad writing. The metes and bounds of ornament, the fine shades of distinction which regulate a judicious choice, are only learned by an attentive as well as a naturally susceptible mind ; and it is no rare case for an unprepared multitude to jn-efer the worse picture, the woi-sc building, the worse poem, the worse speech, to the better. Education, an acquaintance Avith just critit^ism, and still more the habitual observation of what is truly bear.tiful in nature or art, or in the literature of taste, will so'iietimcs generate almost a national tact that rejects the temptations of a meretricious and false style ; but 336. STYLE OF GALILEO. Pakt IH. experience has shown that this happy state of public feeling will not be very durable. Whatever might be the cause of it, this ajje of the Italian seicentisfi has been reckoned almost as inauspicious to good -writing in prose as in verse. " If \vc except," says Tiraboschi, " the Tuscans and a very few more, never was our language so neglected as in this period. We can scarce bear to I'cad most of the books that were pub- lished, so rude and full of barbarisms is their style. Few had any other aim than to exercise their wit in conceits and metaphors ; and, so long as they could scatter them profusely over their pages, cared nothing for the choice of phrases or the purity of grammar. Their eloquence on public occasions was intended only for admiration and applause, not to per- suade or move." ^ And this, he says, is applicable alike to their Latin and Italian, their sacred and profane, harangues. The academical discourses, of which Dati has collected many in his Prose Florentine, are poor in comparison with those of the sixteenth.' 2. A later writer than Tiraboschi has thought this sentence against the seicentisti a little too severe, and, condemning equally with him the bad taste characteristic of that age, endeavors to rescue a few from the general censure.'' It is at least certain that the insipidity of the cinque cento writers, their long periods void of any but the most trivial meaning, their affectation of the faults of Cicero's manner in their own language, ought not to be overlooked or wholly pardoned, while we dwell on an opposite defect of their successors, — the perpetual desire to be novel, brilliant, or profound. Tliis may doubtless be the more offensive of the two ; but it is, perhaps, not less likely to be mingled with something really worth reading. 3. It will not be expected that we can mention many Italian books, after Avhat has been said, which come very pre- cisely within the class of j)olite literature, or claim any ])raise Style of on the ground of style. Their greatest luminary, Galileo. Galileo, wrote with clearness, elegance, and spirit; no one among the moderns liad so entirely rejected a dry and technical manner of teaching, and thrown such attractions round the form of truth. Himself a poet and a critic, he did not hesitate to ascribe his own philosophical perspicuity to the constant perusal of Ariosto. This I have mentioned in > Vol. xi. p. 416. » Id. » Salfi, xiv. 11. Chap. Vn. BE^nTTIYOGLIO — BOCCALINI. 337 another place: but we ca.nnot too much remember that all objects of intellectual pursuit are as bodies actin;; with reci- procal forces in one S3'stcm, beino; all in relation to the facnlti(?s of the mind, wliich is itself but one ; and tliat the most extensive acquaintance with the various provinces of literature will not fail to strengthen our dominion over those we more peculiarly deem our own. The school of Galileo, especially Torricelli and Redi, were not less distinguished than hiniself for their union of elegance with philosophy.^ 4. The letters of Bentivoglio are commonly known. This epistolary art was always cultivated by the Italians, first in the Latin tongue, and afterwards in their own. Bentivoglio has written Avith equal dignity and ease. Galileo's letters are also esteemed on account of their style as well as of what they contain. In what is more peculiarly called elocjuence, the Italians of this age are rather emulous of success than successful : the common defects of taste in themselves, and in those who heard or read them, as well as, in most instances, the uninteresting nature of their subjects, exclude them from our notice. 5. Trajan Boccalini was by his disposition inclined to poli- tical satire, and possibly to political intrigue ; but we jjo^r.^jinj., have here only to mention the work by which he is News from best known. Advices from Parnassus (Ilagguagli di ^''"'"'"^^^"*- Parnaso). If the idea of this once ]iopular and celebrated book is not original, Avhich I should rather doubt, though without immediately recognizing a similarity to any thing earlier (Lucian, the common prototype, excepted), it has at least been an original source. In the general turn of Boccali- ni's fictions, and perhaps in a few particular instances, we may sometimes perceive what a much gi-eater man has imitated : they bear a ceilain resemblance to those of Addison, though the vast su])eriority of the latter in felicity of execution and variety of invention may almost conceal it. The Eaggua- gli are a series of despatches from the court of Apollo on Parnassus, where he is surroimded by eminent men of all ages. This fiction becomes in itself very cold and monoto- nous ; yet there is naucli variety in the subjects of the decisions made by the god with the advice of his counsellors, and some strokes of satire are well hit, though more perhaps fail of effect. But we cannot now catch the force of every passage. 1 Salfi, xiv. 12, vol.. III. 22 838 BOCCALmi. Pakt in. Boccaliiii is full of allusions to his own time, even -where the immediate subject seems ancient. This book was pubhslied at A^enice in 1G12, at a time when the ambition of Spain was refrarded with jealousy by patriotic Italian?, who thoufrht that pacific republic tlieir bulwark and their • glory. He inveighs, tlierefore, against the military spirit and the profes- sion of war ; " necessary sometimes, but so tierce and inhuman that no fine expressions can make it honorable." ^ Nor is lie less severe on the vices of kings, nor less ardent in his eulo- gies of liberty ; the government of Venice being reckoned, and not altogether untruly, an asylum of free tliought and action in compai-ison with that of Spain. Aristotle, he reports in one of liis despatches, Avas besieged in his villa on Parnassus by a number of armed men belonging to different princes, who insisted on his retracting the definition he had given of a tyrant, that he was one wlio governed for his own good and not that of the people, because it would apply to every prince, all reigning for their own good. The philosopher, alarmed by this demand, altered liis definition ; which was to run thus, that tyrants were certain persons of old time, wliose race was now quite extinct.- Boccalini, however, takes care, in general, to mix something of playfulness with his satire, so that it could not be resented without appai-cnt ill-nature. It seems, indeed, o us, free from invective, and rather meant to sting than to wound. But this, if a common rumor be true, did not secure him against a beatinir of whicli he died. The stvle of Boc- calini is said by the critics to be clear and fluent, ratlier than correct or elegant ; and he displays the taste of his times by extravagant metaphors. But to foreigners, who regard this less, his Advices from Parnassus, unequal of course, and occasionally tedious, must a})pear to contain many ingenious allusions, judicious criticisms, and acute remarks. G. The Pictra del Paragone by the same author is an odd, nis Piptra ^"^^ rather awkward, mixture of reality and fiction, del Piira- all levelled at the court of Spain, and designed to keep eont. alive a jealousy of its ambition. It is a kind of episode or supplement to the Pagguagli di Paruaso, the lead- ing invention being |)reserved. Boccalini is an interesting writer, on account of the light he throws on the history and sentiments of Italy. He is in this work a still bolder writer tlmn ir. the former ; not only censui'ing Spain without mercy, > Ba£g. 76. * Id. 76. Chat. VII. PALLAVICINO. 33J) but even the Venetian aristocracy, observing upon the inso- lence of the young nobles towards the citizens, though he justi- lies the senate ibr not punishing tlie former more frequently with death by public execution, which would lower tlie nobility in the eyes of the ])eoi)le. They were, however, he says, as severely punished, when their conduct was bad, by exclusion from olliees of trust. The Pietra del Paragonc is a kind of p(ditica!, as the Kagguagli is a critical, miscellany. 7. About twenty years alter Boecalini, a young man ap- peared, by name Fen-ante Pallavicino, who, with a „ ' 111 • • 1 , ItTianto lame more local and ti-ansitory, with less respecta- I'aUavi- bility of character, and probably with inferior ta- """' lents, trod to a certain degree in his steps. As Spain had been the object of satire to the one, so Avas Rome to the other. Urban V'lll., an ambitious pontiff, and vulnerable in several respects, was attacked by an imprudent and self-confident enemy, safe, as he imagined, under the shield of Venice. But Pallavicino, having been trejianned into the power of the pope, lost his head at Avignon. None of his writings have fallen in my way : that most celebrated at the time, and not wholly dissimilar in the conception to the Advices from Parnassus, was entitled The Courier Robbed ; a series of imaginary letters which such a fiction gave him a pretext for bringing together. Perhaps we may consider Pallavicino as rather a counterpart to Jordano Bruno, in the satirical charac- ter of the hitter, than to Boecalini.^ 8. The Italian language itself, grammatically considered, was still assiduously cultivated. The Academicians Dictionary of Floi'encc published the first edition of their eele- i^eiia brated Vocabolario della Crusca in 1G13. Jt was •"'"'*'"*• avowedly founded on Tuscan j)rinciples, setting up the four- teenth century as the Augustan period of the language, -which they disdained to call Italian ; and though not absolutely excluding the great writers of the sixteenth age, whom Tus- cany had not produced, giving in general a manifest prefer- ence to their own. Italy has rebelled against this tyranny of Florence, as she did, in the So^-ial War, against ihat of Kome. Her Lombard and Roauignol and Nea|)olitan writers have claimed the rights of equal citizenship, and fairly Avon them in the field of literature. The Vocabulary itself was not received as a legislative code. Beni assailed it by his i Comiani, Tiii 205 ; Salfl, xiv. 4fi 840 GRAJDLITICAL WORKS. Part IIL Anti-Crusca the same year; many invidiously published mar- ginal notes to point out the inaccuracies ; and, in the frequent revisions and enlargements of this dictionary, the exclusive character which it atlected has, I believe, been nearly lost. 9. Buonmattei, himself a Florentine, was the first Avho completed an extensive and methodical grammar, cai'works: "developing," says Tiraboschi, "the whole economy i5uomiiattfi;,ju,j system of our language." It was published Bartoh. . •' ,. . P .'^ . ,. ' . , entu'e, alter some previous impressions or parts, with the title, Delia Lingua Toscana, in lG4o. This has been reckoned a standard Avork, both for its authority, and for the clearness, precision, and elegance with which it is writ- ten ; but it betravs something of an academical and Florentine spirit in tlie rigor of its grammatical criticism.^ Bartoli, a Ferrarese Jesuit, and a man of extensive learning, attacked that dogmatic school, Avho were accustomed to proscribe common phrases with a JVon si pud (It cannot be used), in a treatise entitled II torto ed il diritto del Non si puo. His object was to justify many expressions thus authoritatively condemned, by the examples of the best writers. This book was a little later than the middle of the century .- 10. Petrarch had been the idol, iu general, of the preceding Tassoni's "S^ '■> ''^"*-^' ^^^^'^ ^^^i ^^c was the peculiar divinity of remarks on the Florentines. But this seventeenth century was.. e raic . .^ ^j^^ productions of the mind, a period of revolu tionary innovation : men dared to ask Avhy, as well as Avhat they ought to worship; and sometimes the same who rebelled against Aristotle, as an infallible guide, were equally contu- macious iu dealing with the great names of literature. Tas- soni published in 1G09 his Observations on the Poems of Petrai-ch. They are not Avritten, as Ave should doav think, adversely to one whom he professes to honor above all lyric poets in the world ; and, thougli his critical remarks are some- Avhat minute, tlicy seem hardly unfair. A Avriter like Pe trarch, Avliose iame has been raised so high by his style, is surely amenable to this severity of examination. The finest sonnet!* Tassoni generally extols, but giA'CS a preference, on the Aviiole, to the odes ; which, even if an erroneous judgment, cannot be called unfair upon the author of both.'^ He pro- ' Tiraliosohi, xi. 409; Salfi. xiii. 308. canzoni, per qnanto a mi no pare, fiirono ' Coriiiani, vii. 259 ; Salfi, xiii. 417. (lUoUe, clie pouta grandu e fUiuoso U> fo" • '• Tutte Iu rime, tiitti i vur^i iu gone- ceio."' — p. itj. nle dul i'utrarcu lo feccro poeU ; ma la Ciup. Vn. SFOKZA PALLAVICINO. 341 duces many parallel passages from the Latin poems of Petrarch himself, as well as from the ancients and from the earlier Itahans and Provencals. The manner of Tassoni is often humorous, original, intrepid, satirical on his own times : he was a man of real taste, and no servile worshipper of names. 11. Galileo was less just in his observations upon Tasso. They are written with severity, and sometimes an caiiioo's insuhinfr tone towards the jjreat poet, passing; over remarks n 4i *i *•<• 1 V.1 I 1 on lasso. generally the most beautiinl verses, though he some- times bestows praise. The object is to point out the imita- tions of Tasso from Ariosto, and his general inferiority. The Observations on the Art of Writing by Sforza Pallavicino, the histon'an of the Council of Trent, published sforz-i Pai- at Rome, 1G4G, is a work of general criticism con- laTkino; taining many good remarks. What he says of imitation is worthy of being compared with Hurd ; though he will be found not to have analyzed the subject with any thing like BO much ^ncuteness, nor was this to be expected in his age. Pallavicino has an ingenious remark, that elegance of style is produced by short metaphors, or metaforette as he calls them, Avhicli give us a more lively apprehension of an object than its proper name. This seems to mean only single words in a figurative sense, as opposed to phrases of the same kind. He writes in a pleasing manner, and is an accomplished ci'itic without pedantry. Salfi has given rather a long analysis of tliis treatise.^ The same writer, treading in the steps ^^^ ^^.^^^ of C'orniani, has extolled some Italian critics of this critical period, whose writings I have never seen, — Beni, ^'*®'^** author of a prolix commentary in Latin on the Poetics of Aristotle ; Peregi'ino, not inferior, perhaps, to Pallavicino, though less known, whose theones are just and deep, but not expressed with sufficient perspicuity ; and Fioretti, who as sumed the fictitious name of Udeno Nisieli, and presided ovei an academy at Florence denominated the Ajjatisti. The Pro gymnasmi "Poetici of this writer, if we may believe Salfi, as cend to that higher theory of criticij^m which deduces its rules, not from jjrecedents or arbiti-ary laws, but from tlie nature of the human mind, and has, in modern times, been distinguished by the name of a'sthetic.- 12. In the same class of polite letters as these Italian writ- » Vol. xiii. p. 440. » Comiani, vil. 156 ; Salfi, xiii. 426. 842 STFvADA — GRACIAJ!?. Pakt HL ingg, we may place the Prolusiones Academicoe of Famianus Proiusiones Stracla. They ai-e ap^reeably written, and bespeak ofstrada. j^ cultivated taste. The best is the sixth of the second book, containing the imitations of six Latin poets, which Addison has made well known (as I hope) to every reader in the 115th and 119th numbers of the Guardian. It is here that all may judge of this happy and graceful fiction ; but those who have read the Latin imitations themselves will perceive that Strada has often caught the tone of tlie ancients with considerable felicity. Lucan and Ovid are, perhaps, best counterfeited, Virgil not quite so well, and Lucretius worst of the six. The other two are Statius and Claudian.* In almost every instance, the subject chosen is approjiriated to the cha- racteristic peculiarities of the poet. 13. The style of Gongora, which deformed the poetry of s anish Spain, extended its influence over prose. A writer prose: named Gracian (it seems to be doubtful which of Gracian. ^^^^^ brothers, Lorenzo and Balthazar) excelled Gon- gora himself in the affectation, the refinement, the obscurity of his style. " The most voluminous of his works," says Bouterwek, " bears the affected title of El Criticon. It is an allegorical picture of the whole course of human life, divided into Crises, that is sections, according to fixed points of view, and clothed in the formal garb of a pompous romance. It is scarcely possible to open any page of this book without recog- nizing in the author a man who is in many respects far from common, but who, from the ambition of being entirely uncom- mon in thinking and writing, studiously and ingeniously avoids nature and good taste. A profusion of the most ambiguous subtleties expressed in ostentatious language are scattered throughout the work ; and these are the more offensive, in consequence of their union with the really grand view of the relationship of man to nature and his Creator, which forms the subject of the treatise. Gracian would have been an ex- cellent writer, had he not so anxiously wished to be an extraordinary one." ^ 14. The writings of Gracian seem, in general, to be the quintessence of bad taste. The woi-st of all, probably, is El Eroe, which is admitted to be almost unintelligible by tho ' A writer, quoted in Itlount's Ccnsiirsi Autorum, p. 859, praises the imitation Cf Claudiau above the rest, but ttiiukd all excellent. > lUst of Spanish Literature, p. 533. Chap. VH. FRENCH PROSE. 343 number of far-fetclied expressions, though there is more than one French transUition of it. El Pohtieo Fernando, a pane- gyric on Ferdinand the Cathohc, seems as empty as it is affected and artificiah The style of Gracian is always pointed, emphatic, full of that Avhich looks like profundity or novelty, though neither deep nor new. He seems to have written on a maxim he recommends to the man of the world : "■ If he desires that all should look up to him. let him permit himself to be known, but not to be understood." ^ His treatise entitled Agudeza y Arte di Ingenio is a system of concetti, digested under their different heads, and selected from Latin, Italian, and Spanish writers of that and the preceding age. It is said in the Biographic Unlverselle, that this work, though too metaphysical, is useful in the critical history of literature. Gracian obtained a certain degree of popularity in France and England. 15. The general taste of French writers in the sixteenth century, as we have seen, was simple and lively, full Yrench of sallies of natural wit and a certain archness of ob- prose : servation, but deficient in tliose higher qualities of language Avhich the study of the ancients had taught men to admire. In public harangues, in pleadings, and in serinons, these characteristics of the French manner were either intro- duced out of place, or gave way to a tiresome pedantiy. Du Vair was the first who endeavored to bring in a more elabo- rate and elevated diction. Nor was this confined to the ex- ample he gave. In 1 607 he published a treatise on French eloquence, and on the causes through which it had remained at so low a point. This work relates chiefly to the eloquence of the bar, or at least that of public speakers ; and the causes which he traces ai'e chiefiy such as would operate on that kind alone. But some of his observations are applicable to style in the proper sense ; and his treatise has been reckoned the first which gave France the rules of good writing, and the desire to practise them.^ A modern critic, who censures the Latinisms -of Du Vair s style, admits that his tx-eatise on elo- quante makes an epoch in the language.' * " Si quiere (iiie le voiioren todos, per- Baillet. Goujot has copied or aoridgej initase al conocimicnto, no i. la compre- Gibert. without distinct acknowledgment, liension." and not always carefully preserving tUa 2 Gibert. Jugemens des Savans sur Ics sense, ttuteurs tiiii ont tniite de la rhetorique. ^ Neufchutcau, preface aux (EuTIM Tim work is aune:icd to some ^Utions of de Pascal, p. 181 844 BALZAC. Paet m Balzac. 16. A more Jislinguished era, however, is dated from 1625, when tlie letters of Balzac Avere pubHshed.^ There had indeed been a few intermediate works, which contributed, though now little known, to the improvement of the language. Among these, the translation of Florus by Coeffeteau was reckoned a masterpiece of French style ; and Vaugelas refers more frequently to this than to any other hook. The French were very strong in translations from the classical writers ; and to this they are certainly much indebted or the purity and coiTCctness which they reached in their own language. These translators, however, could only occupy a secondary place. Balzac himself is hardly read. " The polite world," it was said a hundred years since, "knows Character "othing now of thesc works, which were once its of his writ- delight."^ But his writings are not formed to dehght '"^" those who wish either to be merry or wise, to laugh or to learn ; yet he has real merits, besides those which may be deemed relative to the age in which he came. His lancuase • . . . . CO iS polished, his sentiments are just, but sometimes common. 1 The same writer fixes on this as an opocli, and it was generally aduiittcil in the fevcnteenth century. The editor of Balzac's Works in 1665 says, after speak- ing of the unformed state of the French language, full of provincial idioms and incorrect phrases : '• M. de Balzac est venu en ce temps de confusion et de dtsordre, oa toutes les lectures quil faisoit et toutes les actions qu"if entendoit lui devoieut €tre guppectes, o'l il avoit i so deficr do tous les niaitres et de tous les exemples ; rt o u il ne pouvoit arriver a son but qu'eu Sx'loignant de tous les chcmins battus, ni inarclier dans la bonne route qu-apres se Tetre ouverte a lui-nieme. II Ta ouverte en effet, et pour lui et pour les autres ; il y a fait entrer un grand nombre dheu- rcux genies, uont il etoit le guide et le rcodele : et si la France voit au.)ourd"hui que ses tcrivaius sent plus polis ot plus irguliers que ite- ment.cette diversite de sons et de cadences, qu'il n'est point de plus delicieux concert que celui de ecs paroles. C'est eu pla^ant tous les mots avec tant d'ordre et de jus- tesse qu'il ne laisse rien de mol ni de foible dans son discours," &c. This regard to the cadence of his periods is characteris tic of Balzac. It has not, in general, been much practised in France. not\vithst.and- ing some splendid exceptions, especially in Eossuet. Olivet observes, that it wag the peculiar glory of Balzac to have shown the capacity of the language for this rhythm. Hist, de l'.\cad. Francaise, p. 84. liut has not Du Vair some claim also? Neufchateau gives a much more limited eulogy of Balzac. " II avoit pris a la lettro les reflexions de Du Vair sur la trop grande bassesse de notre eloquence. 11 s'eu form.a une haute idee ; mais il se tronipe d"abord dans Fapjilieation, car il porta dans le style epi^tolairc qui doit etre fauiilier et legcr, I'enflure hjperbo- lique, la pompe, et le nombre, qui ne convient qu'aux grandes declamations et aux harangues oratoires. . . . Ce defaut de Balzac tontribua ]ieut-etrc a son suc- ees ; carle goi'it n"etoit pas forme; mais il se corrigea dans la suite, et eu parrou- rant son recueil on s^ajier^oit des pi ogres 6en. the Kambouillets, no oae was admitted tiana, p. 101. — 1842.J Chap. VH. DIS LETTERS. 347 addressed to INIadarae de Rambonillet and to several otiicr pei-sons of both sexes. Though imicli too hibored aud affect- ed, they are evidently the original type of the French episto- hiry school, including those in P^ngland -who have ibriiied themselves upon it. Pope very frequently imitated Voiture ; Walpole not so much iu his general correspondence, but he knew how to fall into it. The object was to say what meant little, with the utmost novelty iu the mode, and Avith the most ingenious compliment to the person addi-essed ; so that he should admire himself and admire the -writer. They are, of course, very tiresome after a short time ; yet their ingenuity is not without merit. Balzac is more solenm and dignilied, and it must be owned that he has more meaning. Voiture seems to have fancied that good sense spoils a man of wit. But he has not so much wit as esprit ; and his letters serve to exemplify the meaning of that word. Pope, in addressing ladies, was nearly the ape of Voiture. It was untbrtuuately thought necessary, in such a correspondence, either to aiicct despairing love, which was to express itself with all possible gayety, or, where love was too presumptuous, as with the Kambouillets, to pour out a torrent of nonsensical flattery, which was to be rendered tolerable by far-fetched tunis of thought. Voiture has the honor of having rendered this style fashionable. But, if the bad taste of others had not perverted his own, Voiture would have been a good writer. His letters, especially those written from Spain, are sometimes truly Avitty, and always vivacious. Voltaire, who speaks contemptuously of Voiture, might have been glad to have been the author of some of his jenx ct esprit ; that, for example, addressed to the Prince of Conde in the character of a pike, Ibundcd on a game where the prince had jilayed that fish. We shoidd remember, also, that Voiture held liis place in good society upon the tacit condition that he should always strive to be witty.^ 21. But the Hotel Kambouillet, with its false theories of taste derived in a great measure from the romances of Scudery and C'alprenede, and encouraged by the agreeably artificial manner of Voiture, would have produced, in all j)ro- ' Nothing, says Olivet, could be more imagination enjouec, qui faisoit prendre opposite tlian JJalzao and Voiture. " L'lin i\ toutcs ses peusees nn air de galanterio pe poitoit toujours au sulilime, rautre 1/uu, memo lorsqu'il vouloit plaisanter, toujours au delicat. L'un avoit unc imu- etoit toujours gnive ; I'autre, dans les pnation ulevee qui jetoit de la noblesse occasions nieme serieuses, trouvoit a m« " daos lea moindres chosos ; I'autrc, une Uist. de I'AcaUeiuie, p. 83- 318 FREXCn ACADEaiT. Takt UL bability, but a transient effect. A far more imporant event was the establisliment of the French Academy. Establish- ,, i i i . • • ^ i i i i iiwnt of trance was ruled by a ^'ont nunister, who loved her KrmhIi rrlory and his o'.vii. This, indeed, has been common Acaaemj'. o ^ . 4 i- , to ni-any statesmen ; but it Avas a more peculiar honor to Rielielieu, tliat he felt the dignity wliicli lettei-s conlerred on a nation. He was himself not deficient in literary taste : his epistolary style is manly, and not without elegance: he wrote theology in his own name, and history in that of Meze- ray ; but, what is most to the present purpose, his remarkable fondness for the theatre led him not only to invent subjects for other poets, but, as it has been believed, to compose one forgotten tragi-comedy, Miraine, without assistance.^ He availed himself, fortunately, of an opportunity which almost every statesman would have disregarded, to found the most illustrious institution in the annals of polite literature. 22. The French Academy sprang I'rom a private society of men of letters at Paris, who, about the year 1629, agreed to meet once a Aveek, as at an ordinary visit, conversing on all subjects, and especially on literature. Such among them as were authoi"s communicated their Avorks, and had the advan- ta^-e of free and fair criticism. This continued for three or four years Avith such harmony and mutual satisfaction, that the old men, Avho remembered this period, says their historian, Pelisson, looked back upon it as a golden age. They AA'ere but nine in number, of Avhom Gombauld and Chapelain are the only names by any means famous ; and their meetings were at first very private. jNIore by degrees Avere added, among others Boisrobei't, a favorite of Kichelieu, Avho liked to hear from him the iicavs of the toAvn. The Cardinal, pleased Avith the account of this society, suggested their public establishment. This, it is said, Avas unpleasing to every one of them, and some proposed to refuse it : but the consideration, that the offers of such a man Avere not to be slighted, over- poAA-ered their modesty ; and they consented to become a roy;d institution. They noAV enlarged their numbers, created oHicei-s, and began to keep registers of their proceedings. These records commence on jVIarch i;3, lGo4, and are the basis of Pelisson's history. The name of French Academy Avas chosen after some deliberation. They Avcre established by letters patent in January, 1 iyoii, Avhich the Parliament of Paris 1 FonteneUe, Ilist. du Ibe4tr«, ^. 96. CiiAP. nr. ITS OBJECTS AND CONSTITUTION. 345 enregistercd with great reluctance, requiring not only a letter from Riclielicu, but an express order IVoin the king ; uud when this was completed in July, lGo7, it was Avitli a singu- lar proviso, that the Academy sliould meddle with nothing but the embellishment and improvement of the French language, and such books as might be written by themselves, or l)y oth- ers who should desire their interference. This learned body of lawyers had some jealousy of the innovations of Richelieu ; and one of them said it reminded him of the satire of Juve- nal, where the senate, after ceasing to bear its part in public at!;iirs, Avas consulted about the sauce for a turbot.^ 23. The professed object of the Academy was to purify the language from vulgar, technical, or ignorant usages, j^^ objects and to establish a fixed standard. The Academi- anaconsti- cians undertook to guard scrupulously the correctness of their own works, examining the argimients, the method, the style, the structure of each particular word. It was ])roposed by one that they sliould swear not to use any word wliich had been rejected by a plurality of votes. They soon began to labor in their vocation, always bringing words to the test of good usage, and deciding accordingly. These decisions are recorded in their registers. Their number was fixed by the letters patent at forty, having a director, chancellor, and secre- tary ; the two former changed every two, afterwards every three months, the last chosen for life. They read discourses weekly, which, by the titles of some that Pelisson has given us, seem rather trifling and in the style of tbe Italian acade- mies ; but this practice was soon disused. Their more impor- tant and ambitious occupations were to compile a dictionary and a grammar : Chapclain drew up the scheme of tlie former, in which it was determined, for the sake of bi-evity, to give no quotations, but to form it from about twenty-six good authoi-s in prose, and twenty in verse. Vaugelas was intrusted with the chief direction of tliis work. 24. Tlie Acatlemy Avas subjected, in its \cry infancy, to a severe trial of that literary integrity without wliich ,, ... , such an mstitution can only escajjC from being per- si critiiiu.' nicijus to the republic of letteis by becoming too oii""-'^'^- despicable and odious to produce mischief. On the appear unee of the Cid, Richelieu, Avho had taken up a strong preju- dice against it, insisted that the Academy shouM publish their 1 PelissoQ Ilist. de I'Acadcmie Fran^aiM. 350 FEENCH ACADraiT. Part m. opinion on this play. The more pnideit part of that body were very loath to declare tliemselves at so early a period of their own existence : but the Cardinal was not aj^t to take excuses ; and a committee of three was appointed to examine the Cid itself, and the observations upon it which Scudery had already published. Five months elapsed before the Sen- timens de I'Academie Fran(;aise sur la Tragedie du Cid were made public in November, 1 Go7.^ These are expressed with much respect for Corneille, and profess to be drawn up with his assent, as well as at the instance of Scixdery, It has been not uncommon to treat this criticism as a servile homage to power. But a perusal of it will not load us to confirm so severe a reproach. Tiie Sentimens de FAcademie are drawn up Avith great good sense and dignity. The spirit, indeed, of critical orthodoxy is apparent ; yet this Avas surely paixlonable in an age when the violation of rules had as yet produced nothing but such pieces as those of Hardy. It is easy to sneer at Aristotle when we have a Shakspeare ; but Aristotle formed his rules on the pi-actice of Sophocles. The Academy could not have done better than by inculcating the soundest maxims of criticism ; but they were a little too narroAV in tlieir application. The ]iarticular judgments which they pass on each scene of the play, as well as those on the style, seem for the most part very just, and such as later critics have gene- rally adopted ; so that we can really see little ground for the allegation of undue compliance Avith the Cardinal's prejudices, except in the frigid tone of their praise, and in tlieir omission to proclaim tliat a great dramatic genius had arisen in France.'* But tliis is so mucli the common vice or bHndness of critics, that it may have sprung less from baseness than from a fear to compromise their own superiority by vulgar admiration. The Academy had great pretensions, and CorneiUe was not yet the Corneille of France and of the A\'orld. 1 rellison. The printed edition bears doit pus to\ite i son 'bonhcur. et la nature the ilate of ITiSS. lui a ete assez lilicrale piiur excuser la 2 They coneluile bv saving, that, in fortune si elle lui a etc proili{.'ue." spite of the faults of tliis play, "la naivete The Academy, justly, in my opinion, ct la vehemence de ses passions, la force blame Corneille for making Chimene con- ct la dclicatesse (h; plusieurs de ses pen- Rent to marry Kodrifiue th MAISTRE. 353 praise what has struck me in the substance of his plea lings; wliicii. wlietlier read at this d[\y in France or not, arc, I may ventiii-c ro say, wortliy to he stmiied by lawyers, like tliose to which I Iiave compared them, the strictly forensic portion of Grei'U oratory. In some speeches of Palni which are moie gcrerally praised, — that on his own reception in the Aca- demy, and one complimentary to Christina, — it has seemei the year liVJH. It is Ibinid in tlie vVpoloiry for tlie ^''■■''=='- Jiiui of Ks.-ex, published anionic the works of Lord Bacon, and passinji, I suppose, conunonly ibr his. Jt seems neverthe- less, in my judgment, far more probaljly genuine. "We have nowliere in our early writei-s a How of -words so easy and graceful, a structure so haruKniious, a series of antitheses so spirited Avithout affectation, an absence of quaiutness, pedant- i-y, and vulgarity so truly gentlemanlike, a paragraph so worthy of the most brilliant man of his age. This could not have come from Bacon, who never divested himself of a certain didactic formality, even if he could have counterfeited that chivalrous generosity which it Avas not in his nature to feel. It is the language of a soldier's heart, Avith the unstudied grace of a noble courtier.^ . 31. IvnoUes, already known by a spirited translation of Bodin's Conunonwealth, published in IGIO a copious Knoiies'a History of the Turks, bringing down his nai'rativc uistoryof ^ ii t J. 4.- T 1 • c the Turks. to the most recent tunes. Johnson, in a paper oi the llambler, has given him the superiority over all English ' " A woril for my friendsliip with tlie chief iiiou of actimi, ;inJ favor goiierally to the men of war ; aiul then 1 come to their main objection, which is my cross- ing of tlie treaty in liaml. For most of tliem tliat are accounted the chief men of action. I do confess, I do entirely love tliera. They have been my companions both abroad and at home ; somt; of tliem beg;in the wars with me, most have had place under uie, and many liave had me a vitness of their rising from captains, lieu- tenants, and private men to those charges which since by tlu'ir virtue tliey have ob- tained. Now that I have tried them, I would choose them for friends, if 1 had tlieiii not: before I had tried them, (Jod by his ))rovidi'nce chose them for me. I love them for mine own sake; for I find swectnes.s in their conversation, strong assistance iu their employnscnts witli me, and happiness in their friendsliip. I love them for their virtues' sake, .and for their greatness of mind (for little minds, though never so full of virtue, e.in be but a little virtuous), an Rambler, No. 122. Chap. VU. RALEIGH. 357 phrase cfTective : but he is exempt from the usual blemishes of his age ; and his command of tlie language is so extensive, that we should not err in jjlacing him among tlie first of our elder writers. Comparing, as a specimen of Knolles's man- ner, his description of tlie execution of Mustapha, son of Solyman, with that given by Robcrloon, where the latter his- torian has been as circumstantial as his limits would permit, we shall perceive that the Ibrmer paints better his story, and deepens better its interest.' 32. Raleigh's History of the World is a proof of the respect for laborious learning that had long distin- n^iei^ii-g cuished Euroi)C. AVe should expect from the prison- iiistoo- of f ,. K-,. ^. '■ , . . ^ . the World. hours of a soldier, a courtier, a busy mtriguer in state affairs, a poet and man of genius, something well worth our notice ; but hardly a prolix history of the ancient world, hardly disquisitions on tlie site of Paradise and the travels of Cain. These are probably translated, with little alteration, from some of the learned writings of the Continent : they are by much the least valuable portion of Raleigh's work. The Greek and Roman story is told more fully and exactly thaa by any earlier Engli.sh author, and with a plain eloquence which has given this book a classical reputation in our lan- guage, though from its length, and the want of that critical sifting of facts which we now justly demand, it is not greatly read. Raleigh has intermingled political reflections, and illustrated his history by episodes from modern times, which perhaps are now the most interesting passages. It descends only to the second Macedonian "War: the continuation might have been more generally valuable ; but either the death of Prince Henry, as Raleigh himself tells us, or the new schemes of ambition which unfortunately opened upon his eyes, prevented the execution of the large jdan he had formed. There is little now obsolete in the words of Raleigh, nor, to any great degree, in his turn of i)hrase ; the periods, when pains have been taken with them, show that artificial structure which we find in Sidney and Hooker; he is less pedantic than most of his contemporaries, seldom low, never afl'ected. 1 KaoUes. p. 515. Kobertson's Charles observed, that I misht have mentionpd the Fifth, book xi. [The principal autho- Busbequius in a former volume among tity for this description appears to be the good Latin writers of the blxteentta Busbequius. in his excellent Legationis century. — 1842.] lurclcac Epijtolae. It has been justly S58 DANIEL — BACON. Pakt III. 33. Daniel's History of England from tlic Conquest to the Daniel's Rt^ig" of Edward III., published in 1G18, is deserv- Histi.ry of ing of somc attention on account of its language. KngiaJiii- J,, jg -^vj-itten with a freedom from all stiffness, and a purity of style, which hardly any otlier work of so early a date exlnbits. These qualities are indeed so remarkable, that it would requii'e a good deal of critical observation to distinguish it even from writings of the reign of Anne ; and, where it differs from them (I speak only of the secondary class of works, which have not much individuality of man- ner), it is by a more select idiom, and by an absence of the Gallicism or vulgarity which are often found in that age. It is true that the merits of Daniel are chiefly negative ; he is never pedantic or antithetical or low, as his contemporaries •were apt to be : but his periods are ill-constructed ; he has little vigor or elegance ; and it is only by observing how much pains he must have taken to reject phrases which were grow- ing obsolete, that we give him credit for having done more than follow the common stream of easy writing. A sliglit tinge of archaism, and a certain majesty of expression, icla- tively to colloquial usage, were thouglit by Bacon and Raleigh congenial to an elevated style: but Daniel, a gentleman of the king's household, wrote as the court spoke ; and his facility would be pleasing if his sentences had a less negligent structure. As an historian, he has recourse only to common authorities; but his narration is iluent and perspicuous, wath a regular vein of good sense, more the characteristic of his mind, both in vei-se and prose, than any commanding vigor. 34. The style of Bacon has an idiosyncrasy which we might expect from his genius. It can rarely indeed happen, and only in men of secondary talents, that the language they use is not by its very choice and collocation, as well as its meaning, the rejjresentative of an individuality that distinguishes tlu'ir turn of thought. Bacon is elaborate, BCntentious, often Avitty, often metaphorical ; nothing could be fcspared; his analogies are generally striking and novel; his Btyle is clear, precise, forcible ; yet there is some ckgreo of stiH'm.'ss about it, and, in mere language, he is inferior to Raleigh. The History of Henry VIL, admirable as many jmssages are, seems to be written rather too ambitiously, and with too great an absence of simplicity. Chap. Vil. CLARENDON — ICON BASILICE. 859 3o. The polemical Avritiiif^ of IMilton, which chiefly fall within tnis period, contain several bnists of his jjjjjg^ splendid imagination and grandeur of soul. They are, however, much inferior to the Areopagitica, or Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. INIany passages in this famous tract are admirably eloquent ; an intense love of lib- erty and truth glows through it ; the majestic soul of Milton breathes such high thoughts as had not been uttered before : vet even here he frequently sinks in a single instant, as ia usual with our old writers, from his highest flights to the ground; his intermixture of familiar with learned phrasecdogy is unpleasing, his structure is affectedly elaborate, and he seldom reaches any harmony. If lie turns to invective, as sometimes in this treatise, and more in his Apology for Smec- tymniuip, it is mere ribaldrous vulgarity blended with pedan- try : his wit is always poor and without ease. An absence of idiomatic grace, and an use of harsh inversions violating the rules of the language, distinguish in general the writings of JMilton, and require, in order to compensate them, such high beauties as will sometimes occur. 3G. The History of Clarendon maybe considered as belong- ing rather to this than to the second period of the (.,jjj.g^j(,^ century, both by the proliable date of composition and by the nature of its style. He is excellent in every thing that he has perf()rmed with care ; his characters are beauti- fully delineated ; his sentiments have often a noble gi-avity, which the length of his periods, far too great in itself, seems to befit ; but, in the general course of his narration, he is negligent of grammar and perspicuity, with little choice of words, and therefore sometimes idiomatic Avithout ease or elegance. The otTicial ])apers on the royal side, which are generally attributed to him, are written iu a masculine and majestic tone, far superior to those of the parliament. The latter had, howe\er, a writer wlio did tliem honor: May's Ilistoi-y of the Parliament is a good model of genuine Eng- lish ; he is plain, terse, and vigorous, never slovenly, though with few remarkable passages, and is, in . style as well as substance, a kind of contrast to Clarendon. 37. The liunous Icon Basilice, ascribed to Charles I., may deserve a place in Hterary history. If A\e could The icon trust its panegyrists, few books in our language ^''-i^^®- Lave done it more credit by diguity of seutiment, and beauty 360 BURTON'S ANATOMY. Paei la of style. It can hardly be necessary for me to express ray unhesitating conviction, that it was solely Avritten 'by Bishop Ganden, who, after the Restoration, uneqnivocally claimed it as his own. The folly and impudence of such a claim, if it could not be substantiated, are not to be presumed as to any man of good understanding, fair character, and high station, without stronger evidence than has been alleged on the other side : especially when we find that those who had tlie best means of inquiry, at a time when it seems impossible that he falsehood of Gauden's assertion should not have been lemonstrated, if it were false, acquiesced in his pretensions. We have very little to place against this, except secondary testimony ; vague, for the most part, in itself, and collected by those whose veracity has not been put to the test like that of Gauden.^ The style also of the Icon Basilice has been iden- tiiied by Mr. Todd with that of Gauden by the use of several phrases so peculiar, that we can hardly conceive them to have suggested themselves to more than one person. It is, never- theless, superior to his acknowledged writings. A strain of majestic melancholy is well kept up ; but the personated sovereign is rather too theatrical for real nature, the language is too rhetorical and amplified, the periods' too artificially ela- borated. None but scholars and practised writers employ such a style as this. 38. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy belongs, by its sys- tematic divisions and its accumulated quotations, to Anatomy the class of mere erudition : it seems at first sight of Meiau- i[^q tliose tcdious Latin folios into which scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries threw the materials of their Adversaria, or commonplace-books, painfully selected and arranged by the labor of many years. But writing fortunately in English, and in a style not by any means devoid of point and terseness, with much good sense and observation of men as well as of books, and having also I Tliero is only one claimant, in a pro- authorship of a book not ^Tritteu by him- per eense. for tho Icon Basilitx', which is self, but imiversally asiribeil to anotlior, (iaujon liim.self: the king neitlier appears and which had never lieen in his posses- by liimserted la terms kis own himself, or told the world, " I am Junius " Chap. Vli. EARLE'S CHAKACTERS — 0\T:RBURT. 361 the skill of choosing his quotations for their rareness, ocMity, and amusing character, -witliont losing sight of their perti- nence to tlie sulijcct, lie hius prodiicecl a Avork of Avhich, as is well known, Johnson said tiiat it was the only one which had ever caused him to leave his bed earlier than he Iiad intended. Johnson, who seems to have had some turn for the singulari- ties of learning which fill the Anatomy of JMelaucholy, may perhaps have raised the credit of Burton iiigher than his desert. He is cloirjred bv excess of reading, like others of his age; and we may peruse entire chapters without finding more tliau a few lines that belong to himself. This becomes a wearisome style ; and, for my own part, I have not found much pleasure in glancing over the Anatomy of INIelancholy. It may be added, that he has been a collector of stories, far more strange than true, from those records of figments, the old medical writers of the sixteenth century, and other equally deceitful sources. Burton hved at Oxford, and liis volumes are apparently a great sweeping of miscellaneous literature from the Bodleian Library. 39. John Earle, after the Restoration, Bishop of Worces ter, and then of Salisbury, is author of Microcos- Earie's mographia, or a Piece of the Worlde discovered in characters. Essays and Characters, published anonpnously in 1628. In some of these short characters, Earle is worthy of comparison with La Bruyere ; iu others, perhaps the greater part, he has contented himself with pictures of ordinary manners, such as the varieties of occupation, rather than of intrinsic character, supply. In all, however, we find an acute observation and a happy humor of expression. The chapter entitled the Sceptic is best known : it is witty, but an insult throughout on the honest searcher after truth, which could have come only from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or pi'ofit. Earle is always gay, and quick to catch the ridicu- lous, especially that of exterior appearances : his style is short, describing well with a few words, but with much of the atieeted quaintness of that age. It is one of those books which give us a picturesque "dea of the manners of oui fathers at a period now become remote ; and for this reason, were there no other, it Avould deserve to be read. 40. But the Microcosmography is not an original Avork in its plan or mode of execution : it is a close imitation of the Characters of Sir Thomas Overbury. They both belong to 362 OVERBURY — JOXSON. Paf-t lit the favorite style of apothegm, in which every sentence is a Ovo'rhurvs point or a Avitticism. Yet the entire character so ciiaracttTs. delineated produces a certain cfliect : it is a Dutch picture, a Gerard Dow, somewliat too elahorate. Earle lias more natural humor than Overbury, and liit.s his mark more nci'.tly; the otlier is more satii'icnl, but oi'ten abusive and vulgar. The Fair and Happy Milkmaid, often quoted, is the best of his characters. The wit is often trivial and Hat; the sentiments have nothing in them general, or worthy of much remembrance ; praise is only due to the gi-aphic skill in delineating character. Earle is as clearly the better, as Over- bury is the moi'c original, writer. 41. A book by Ben Jonson, entitled Timber, or Disco- Jonson-8 veries made upon Men and jNfatter,^ is altogether Biscoveiies. miscellaneous, the gi-eater part being general moral remarks, while another portion deserves notice as the only book of English criticism in the first part of the seventeenth century. The observations are unconnected, judicious, some- times witty, frequently severe. The style is -what was called pregnant, leaving much to be filled up by tlie reader's refiec- tion. Good sense, and a vigorous manner of grappling with every subject, will generally be ibund in Jonson ; but he does not reach any very profound ciiticism. His l^nglish Gram- mar is said by Gifibrd to have been destroyed in the confla- gration of his study. What we have, therefore, under that name, is, he thinks, to be considered as properly the materials of a more complete work that is lost. We have, as I appre- hend, no earlier grannnar upon so elaborate a plan: every rule is illustrated by examples, almost to redundance ; but he is too copious on what is common to other languages, and perhaps not full enough as to our peculiar iiUom. 1 £" Timber," I suppose, Ls meant aa a ludicrous translation of Sylva. — 1812.1 Chap. VH. CERVANTES. 363 Sect. II. — Ox Fictiox. CKVantes — Frcncb Romauces — Calproncde — Scudcri — Latin anj English Works of J-'iction. 42. TiiK first part of Don Quixote was publislicd in IGOj, We have no reason, I believe, to suppose that it Pubiira- was written long before. It became imnK^diately jj"^" [^"^^j^ popular ; and the admiration of the world raised up ote. envious competitors, one of whom, Avellenada, ]iublished a continuation in a strain of invective against the author. Cer- vante:*, who cannot be imagined to have ever designed the leaving his romance in so unhnislied a state, took time about the second part, which did not appear till 1015. 43. Don Quixote is almost the only book in the Spanish language which can now be said to possess so much itsrcpu- of an I2uropean reputation as to be popularly read totwn. in every country. It has, however, enjoyed enough to com pensate for the neglect of the rest. It is to Europe in general wdiat Ariosto is to Italy, and Shakspeare to P^ng- land ; the one book to which the slightest allusions may be made without affectation, but not missed without discredit. Numerous translations and countless editions of them, in every language, bespeak its adaptation to mankind : no critic has been paradoxical enough to withhold his admiration, no reader has ventured to confess a want of relish for that in which the young and old, in every climate, have, age after age, taken delight. They have doubtless believed, that they un- derstood the author's meaning; and, in giving the reins to the gayety that his fertile invention and comic humor inspired, never thought of any deeper meaning than he announces, or delayed their enjoyment for any metapliysical investigation of his plan. 44. A new school of criticism, howevei", has of late years ai'isen in Gei*many, acute, ingenious, and sometimes x^.^,.ie^, eminently successful in philosophical, or, as they de- of its de- nominate it, aesthetic analysis of works of taste, but ■^'°°' gliding too much into refinement and conjectural hypothesis, and witli a tendency to mislead men of inferior capacities for this kind of investigation into mere paradox and absurdity. An instance is supplied, in ray opinion, by some remarks of 364 CERVANTES. Vkkt III. Boutcrwek, ?till more explicitly developed hy Sismondi, on the design of Cervantes in Don Quixote, and whicli have been repealed in other publications. According to these Avj-i- tcrs, the primary idea i.s that of a " man of elevated ciiarac- ter, excited by heroic and enthusiastic feelings to the exti-ava- gant pitcli of wishing to restoie the age of chivalry; nor is it possible to form a more mistaken notion of tliis work than by considering it merely as a satire, intended by the author to ridicule the absurd ])assion for reading old romances."^ "The fundamental idea of Don Quixote," says Sismondi, " is the eternal contrast between the spirit of jioetry antl that of prose. ]Men of an elevated soul propose to themselves as the object of life to be the defenders of the weak, the support of the o])pressed, the chami)ions of justice and innocence. Like Don Quixote, they find on every side the image of the virtues they worship : they believe that disinterestedness, nobleness, courage, in sliort, knight-errantry, are still prevalent; and, with uo calculation of their own powers, they expose them- selves for an ungrateful wovld, they oiler themselves as a sacrifice to the laws and rules of an imaginary state of soci- ety."- 45. If this were a true representation of the scheme of Don Quixote, we cannot wonder that some persons should, as M. Sismondi tells us they do, consider it as the most melancholy book that has ever been written. They consider it also, no doubt, one of the most immoral, as chilling and pernicious in its influence on the social converse of mankind, as the Prince of Machiavel is on their political intercourse. " Cervantes," he proceeds, " has shown us in some measure the vanity of greatness of soul and the delusion of heroism. He has drawn in Don Quixote a perfect man (uti Itomme accompli), who is, nevertheless, the constant object of ridicuh;. Brave beyond the fabled knights he imitates, disinterested, honora- ble, generous, the most faithful and respectful of lovers, the best of masters, the most accomi)lished and well educated of gentlemen, all his enterjirises end in discomfiture to himself, and in mischief to others." M. Sismondi descants upon the perfections of the Knight of La Mancha with a gravity whicli it is not rpiite easy for his readers to preserve. 40. It might be answered by a phlegmatic observer, that a mere enthusiasm for doing good, if excited by vanity, and I Foutenrek, p. 834. ' Litterature du Midi, vol. iii. p. 339. CnAA Vn. DOX QUIXOTE. SG5 not nccompanied by common sense, will seldom be very serviceable to ourselves or to others ; that men who, pr,habiy in their heroism and care for the oppressed, Avoidd enoiu'ous. throw open the rages of lions, and set gnlley-^Iaves at liberty, not lbrfi;etting to break the limbs of harmless persons whom tliev mistake for wronir-doers, are a class of whom Don Qiiix- ote is the real type ; and that, the world being mn( h the worse for such heroes, it might not be immoral, notwithstand- ing their benevolent enthusiasm, to put them out of counte- nance by a little ridicule. This, hoAvever, is not, as I conceive, the primary aim of Cervantes; nor do I think that the exhi- bition of one gi'cat truth, as the predominant but concealed moral of a long Avork, is in the spii-it of his age. He pos- sessed a very thoughtful mind and a prolbund knowledge of luimanity ; yet the generalization which the hypothesis of Boutei'wek .and Sismondi requires for the leading conception of Don Quixote, besides its being a little inconsistent Avith the valorous and romantic character of its author, belongs to a more ad\'anced period of philosophy than his OAvn. It Avill at all events, I presume, be admitted, that aa^ cannot reason about Don (Quixote except from tlie book; and I think it may be shown in a feAv Avords, that these ingenious Aviiters have been chiefly misled by some Avant of consistency Avhich circumstances i)roduced in the author's delineation of his hero. 47. In the first chapter of this romance, Cervantes, Avith a few strokes of a great master, sets before us the pan- PiiTcremo per gentleman, an early riser and keen sportsman, t^e Tv" two who, " Avhen he Avas idle, Avhich Avas most part of the P^r's. year," gave himself up to reading books of chivalry till he lost his Avits. The e\'ents that fblloAv are in every one's recol- lection : his lunacy consists, no doubt, only in one idea ; but this is so absorbing that it perA'erts the evidence of his senses, and predominates in all his language. It is to be observed, therefore, in relation to the nobleness of soul ascribed to Don Quixote, that every sentiment he utters is borrowed with a punctilious rigor from the romances of his library ; he resorts to them on every occasion for precedents : if he is intrepidly brave, it is because his madness and Aanity have made him believe himself unconquerable ; if he bestoAVS kingdoms, it ia because Amadis Avould have done the same ; if lie is honora- ble, courteous, a redresscr of wrongs, it is in pursuance of 36G CERVANTES. Part HI. these prototypes, from whom, except that he seems rather more scrupulous in chastity, it is liis only boast not to diverge. Those who talk of the exulted character of Don Quixote seem really to forget, that, on these subjeL-ts, he has no charac- ter at all : he is the echo of romance ; and to praise him is merely to say, that the tone of chivalry, which these produc- tions studied to keep up, and, in the hands of inferior artists, foolishly exaggerated, was full of moral dignity, and has, in a subdued degree of force, modelled the character of a man of honor in the present day. But throughout the first two vol- umes of Don Quixote, though in a few unimportant passages he talks rationally, I cannot find more than two in which he displays any other knowledge, or strength of mind, than the original delineation of the character Avould lead us to expect. Is. The case is much altered in the last two volumes. Cervantes had accpxired an immense popularity, and perceived the opportunity, of which he had already availed himself, that this romance gave for displaying his own mind. He^ had be- come attached to a hero who had made him illustrious, and suffered himself to lose sight of the clear outline he had once traced for Quixote's personality. Hence we find in all this second part, that, although the lunacy as to knights-errant remains unabated, he is, on all other subjects, not only ration- al in the low sense of the word, but clear, acute, profound, sarcastic, cool-headed. His philosophy is elevated, but not enthusiastic; his imagination is poetical, but it is restrained by strong sense. There are, in fact, two Don Quixotes : one, whouT Cervantes first designed to draw, the foolish gentleman of La Mancha, whose foolishness had made him frantic; the other, a highly gifted, accomplished model of the best chival- ry, trained in all the court, the camp, or tlie college could impart, but scathed in one portion of his mind l)y an inexpli- cable visitation of monomania. One is inclined to ask why this Don Quixote, who is Cervantes, should have been more likely to lose his intellects by reading romances than Cervan- tes himself. As a matter of bodily disease, such an event is doul)tless possi])le; but nothing can be conceived more im- pr()})er for fiction, notliiug more inca[)able of affording a moral lesson, than the insanity which arises wholly from disease. Insanity is, in no point of view, a theme for ridicule ; and tliis is an inherent fiiult of the romance (foi- those who have ima"-ined that Cervantes lias not rendered Quixote ridiculous O Chap. VII. DON QUIXOTE. 3G7 have a strange notion of tlie word) ; but the tlionghtle?^sncs3 of mankind, rather tlian their insensibility (for they do not connect niadiiess with misery), furnishes some apolojiy for the first two volumes. In proi^ortiou as we perceive, below the veil of mental delusion, a noble intellect, \vc feel a painful sympathy with its humiliation : the character becomes more complicated and interestinji, but has less truth and natural- ness ; an objection which might also be made, <-omparalively speaking, to the incidents in the latter volumes, whractised to create suspense, or complicate the action, we shall think Cervantes fully deserving of the glory that attends this monument of his genius. It is not merely that he is supe- rior to all his predecessors and contemporaries. This, though it might account for the European fame of his romance, would be an inadequate testimony to its desert. Cervantes stand? on an eminence, below which we must place the best of his successors. We have only to compare him with L( Sage or Fielding, to judge of his vast superiority. T( Scott, indeed, he must yield in the variety of his power ; but, in the line of comic I'omance, we should hardly think Scott his equal. 51. The moral novels of Cervantes, as he calls them (Novellas Exemplares), are written, I believe, in a Minor no- v , i ..i-ii^ veis of good Style, but too short, and constructed with too Cenantes. jj^^j^ artifice to rivct our interest. Tlieir simplicity and truth, as in many of the old novels, have a certain other charm ; but, in the present age, our sense of satiety novels : in works of fiction cannot be overcome but by excel- Spanish. jej^ce. Of the Spanish comic romances, in the pica- resque style, several remain : Justina was the most famous. One that does not strictly belong to this lower class is the Marcos de Obregon of Espinel. This is supposed to have suggested much to Le Sage in Gil Bias ; in fact, the first story we meet with is that of Mergellina, the physician's wife. The style, though not dull, wants the grace and neat- ness of Le Sage. This is esteemed one of the best novels that Spain has produced. Italy was no longer the seat of this literature. A romance of chivalry by Marini (not the poet of that name), entitled II Caloandro (IG-iO), Andit^tUan. ^^..^^ translated but indilfei-ently into French by Scuderi, and has been praised by Salfi as full of imagination, with characters skilfully diversified, and an interesting, well- conducted story .^ « Salfl, vol. xiT. p. 83. Chap. Vll. FRENCH ROMANCES — GOirBERTILLE. 369 52. France, in the sixteenth century, content with Amadia de Gaul and the numerous romances of the Spanisli _ , , , .,1 ,-1 IT French ro- school, had contributed very httle to that hteraturc. mances: But now she had native writers of both kinds, the ^''''■'-■''• pastoral and heroic, who completely superseded the models they had before them. Their earliest essay was the Astree of b'Uric. Of this i)astoral romance the first volume was published in IGIO; the second, in 1G20 : three more came slowlj'- forth, that the world might have due leisure to ad- mire. It contains about 5,500 pages. It would be almost as discreditable to have read such a book through at pres- ent, as it was to be ignorant of it in the ages of Louis XIII. Allusions, however, to real circumstances served in some measure to lessen the insipidity of a love-story which seems to equal any in absurdity and want of inter- est. The style, and I can judge no farther, having read but a few pages, seems easy and not unpleasing : but the pas- toral tone is insufferably puerile ; and a monotonous solemnity makes us almost suspect, that one source of its popularity was its gentle etlect when read in small portions before retir- ing to rest. It was, nevertheless, admired by men of erudition, like Camus and Huet ; or even by men of the world, like Rochefoucault.^ 53. From the union of the old chivalrous romance with this newer style, the courtly ])astoral, sprang another „ . kind of fiction, the French heroic romance. Three mimces. nearly contemporary writers, Gomberville, Calpre- ^■ii'"^^'^* nede, Scuderi, supplied a number of voluminous stones, frequently historical in some of their names, but utterly destitute of truth in circumstances, characters, anc' manners. Gomberville led the way in liis Polexandre, fir? publislied in lG-)2, and reacliing in later editions to aboiu 0,000 pages. " This," says a modern Avriter, " seems to have been the model of the works of Calprenede and Scnuleri This ponderous work may be regarded as a sort of inter mediate production between the later com])ositioiis and iht* ancient fabh's of chivalry. It has, indeed, a clo-e af!i:ii(y to the heroic romance; but many of tlie exploits ot" llio hero are as extra\agant as those of a paladin or kniglit of the Round Table." - No romance in the language has so 1 Dunlop's nistory of Fiction, Tol. iii. p. 184: Bio^rapliie Universelle ; Coutonrek vol. V. p. 295. s Duulop, iu. 230. VOL. in. 24 870 CALPREXEDE. Part in complex an intrigue, insomuch tliat it is foUoAvecI with clifR- ciilty ; and the author has in successive editions ca])ricion.^ly remodelled parts of his story, which is wholly of his own invention.' 0-4. Calprenede, a poet of no contemptible powers of imagination, poured forth his stores of rapid invon- aprenj e. ^.^^^ j^^ several romances more celebrated than that of Gomberville. The iirst, which is contained in ten octavo volumes, is the Cassandra. This appeared in 1G42, and was followed by the Cleopatra, published, according to the custom of romances, in successive parts, the earliest in 1G4(3. La Ilarpe thinks this unquestionably the best work of Cal[)re- nede ; Bouterwek seems to prefer the Cassandra ; Pharamond is not wholly his own ; five out of twelve volumes belong to one De Vaumoriere, a continuator.^ Calprenetle, like many others, had but a life-estate in the temple of fame, and, more happy perhaps than greater men, lived out tlie whole favor of tlie world, which, having been largely showered on his head, strewed no memorials on his grave. It became, soon after his death, through the satire of Boileau and the influ- ence of a new style in fiction, a matter of course to turn him into ridicule. It is impossil»!e that his romances should be read again ; but those who, for the ])urposes of general criti- cism, liave gone back to these volumes, find not a little to praise in his genius, and in some measure to explain his ])opu- larity. " Calprenede," says Bouterwek, " belonged to the extravagant party, which endeavored to give a trium])h to genius at the expense of taste, and by that very means played into the hands of tlie opposite party, which saw nothing so laudable as the observation of the rules which taste pre- scribed. We have only to become acquainted with any one of the prolix romances of Cal})renede, such, for instance, as the Cassandra, to see clearly the s\nv\t which animates the whole invention. AVe find there again the lieroism of chi- valry, tlie enthusiastic raptures of love, the struggle of duty with passion, the victory of magnanimity, sincerity, and humanity, over force, fraud, and barbarism, in the genuine cliaracters and circinnstances of romance. The events are skilfully interwoven; and a truly poetical keeping belongs to the whole, however extended it may be. The diction of Calprenede. is a little monotonous, but not at all trivial, « Biojjr. Univ. » Dunlop, ili. 259. Chap. VII. SCUDERI. 371 and seldom affected. It is like that of old romance, giave, circumstantial, somewliat in tlic chronicle style, but pictur- esque, aprccable, full of sensibility and simplicity. INIany pas- sa,ses mijiht, if versified, find a place in the most beautiful poem of this class." ^ iji). The lionors of this romantic literature have long been shaied bv tlie female sex. In the age of Kichelieu t^p^j^.^.; and Mazarin, this was represented by jNIademoiselle de Scuderi, a name very glorious for a season, but which unfortunately did not, like tliat of Cal[)renede, continue to be such during tlie Avhole life-time of her who bore it. The old age of JNIademoiselle de Scuderi was ignominiously treated by the pitiless IJoileau ; and, reaching more than her nine- tieth year, slie almost survived her only offspring, those of lier pen. In her youth, she had been the associate of the Kambouillet circle, and caught pei-haps in some measure from them what she gave back with interest, — a tone of perpetual affectation, and a pedantic gallantry, which could not withstand tlie first a])proach of ridicule. Her first romance was Ibrahim, ])ublislied in 1035; but the more celebrated were the Grand Cyrus and the Clelie. Each of these two romances is in ten volumes.- The persons chiefly connected with the Hotel Rambouillet sat for their pictures, as Persians or Babylonians, in Cyrus. Julie d'Angennes herself bore the name of Arte- nice, by which she was afterwards distinguished among her friends ; and it is a remarkable instance not only of the po{)u- larity of these romances, but of the respectful sentiment, which, from the elevation and purity no one can deny them to exhibit, was always associated in the gravest persons witli their fictions, that a prelate of eminent fame for eloquence, Flechier, in his funeral sermon on this lady, calls her *' the incomparable Artenice." ^ Such an allusion would appear to us misplaced ; but we may presume that it was not so thought. Scuderi's romances seem to have been remarkably the favor- ites of the clergy: Iluet, Mascaron, Godeaa, as much as Fle<-hier, were her ardent admirers. " I find," says the second of these, one of the chief ornaments of tlie French pulpit, in writing to Mademoiselle de Scuderi, " so much in your works calculated to reform the world, that, in the sermons I am now > Boutcrwek, vi. 230. ' niogr. Univ.; Dunlop; Bouterwek. s Sennons de FlC-chier, u. 325 (edit. 1G90). But probably Bossuet would not haT« ttooped to this allusion. 372 SCUDEEI — BARCLAY. Part III. preparing for the court, you will often be on my table by the side of St. Augustin and St, Bernard." ' In the writings of this lady, we see tlie last footstep of the old chivalrous romance. She, like Cal[>renede, had derived from this source the predo- minant characteristics of her personages, — an exalted gene- rosity, a disdain of all selfish considerations, a courage which attempts impossibilities and is rewarded by achieving them, a love outrageously hyperbolical in i)retence, yet intrinsically without passion ; all, in short, that Cervantes has bestowed on Don Quixote. Love, however, or its counterfeit, gallantry, plays a still more leading part in the French romance than in its Castilian prototype ; the feats of heroes, though not less wonderful, ai-e less prominent on the canvas; and a meta])hy- sical pedanti-y replaces the pompous metaphors in which the knight of sorrowful countenance had taken so much delight. The approbation of many pei-sons, far superior judges to Don Quixote, makes it impossible to doubt that the romances of Calprenede and Scuderi were better than his library. But, as this is the least possible praise, it will certainly not tempt any one away from the rich and varied repast of liction which the last and present century have spread before him. Made- moiselle de Scuderi has perverted history still more than Cal- prenede, and changed her Romans into languishing Parisians. It is not to be forgotten, that the taste of her party, though it did not, projierly speaking, infect Corneille, compelled him to weaken some of his tragedies. And this must be the justifi- cation of Boileau's cutting ridicule upon this trulj' estimablo woman. Slie had certainly kejjt up a tone of severe and high morality, with which the aristocracy of Paris could ill dis- pense ; but it was one not dithcult to feign, and there might be Tartuffes of sentiment as well as of religion. AVhatever is false in taste is apt to be allied to what is insincere in character. 5G. The Argenis of Barclay, a son of the defender of royal Argonis of authority against republican theories, is a Latin Barclay. romaucc, Superior perhaps to those after Cervantes, which the Spanish or French language could boast. It has indeed always been reckoned among political allegories. That ' BlopfT. Univ. Slailemoiselle Je Scuderi well, as appears by her epigram oa hcf was not giltej by nature witli beauty, or, own picture by Nanteuil : RS this biographer more bluntly says, " Nanteuil en faisant nion image, "etait d'uue extreme laideur.-' She would A de son art divin signale le pouTOir ; probably have wished this to have been Je hais mes yeux dans men mlroir, otherwise, but carried oS the matter very Ju les aime daus 80a ouvrage." Chap. VH. CAMPANELLA. 373 the state of France in the last years of Henry III. is partially shadowed in it, can admit of no doubt : several chai'acters are faintly veiled either by anagram or Greek translation of their names ; but whether to avoid the insipidity of servile alle- gory, or to excite the reader by perplexity, Barclay has mingled so much of mere fiction with his stor}-, that no attempts at a regular key to the whole work can be successful ; nor in fact does the fable of this romance run in any parallel stream witli real events. His object seems, in great measure, to have been the discussion of political questions in feigned dialogue. But, though in these we find no want of acuteness or good sense, they have not at present much novelty in our eyes ; and though the style is really pleasing, or, as some have judged, excellent,^ and the incidents not ill contrived, it might be hard to go entirely through a Latin romance of 700 pages, unless indeed we had no alternative given but the perusal of the similar works in Spanish or French. The Argenis was published at Rome in 1G22 : some of the pei'sonages introduced by Barclay are his own contemporaries ; a proof that he did not intend a strictly historical allegory of the events of the last age. The Euphormio of the same author i-esem- uis Ru- bles in some degree the Argenis ; but, with less of P^^orrn'o- story and character, has a more direct reference to European politics. It contains much political disquisition ; and one whole book is employed in a description of the manners and laws of different countries, with no disguise of names. o7. Campanella gave a loose to his fanciful humor in a fiction, entitled The City of tlie Sun, published at campanei- Frankfort in 1G23, in imitation, perhaps, of the ia"s city Utopia. The City of the Sun is supposed to stand °^' ^ upon a mountain situated in Ceylon, under the equator. A community of goods and women is established in this repub- lic, the principal magistrate of which is styled Sun, and is elected after a strict examination in all kinds of science. Campanella has brought in so much of his own philosophical system, that we may presume that to have been the object of tliis romance. The Solars, he tells us, abstained at first from flesh, because they thought it cruel to kill animals. " But ' ColcriJ^e lias pronounced an ardent Latinity is more that of Pefronius Arbiter ; and rather excessive eulogy on the Ian- but I am not well enough acquainted guagc of the Argenis, preferring it to that with that writer to speak confidently, of Livy or Tacitus. Coleridge's Itemains, The same observatiou seems applicable t» vol. 1. p. 257. I cannot by any means go tlie Kuphormjo. this Irngtb: it haa struck me that the 874 EXGLISH BOOKS OF FICTION. Paiit III. aftenvards considering that it would be equally cmel to kill plants, which are no less endowed with sensation, so that they must perish by famine, they understood that iirnoble tilings were created for the use of nobler things, and now eat ail things without scruple." Another Latin romance had some celebrity in its day, the i\Ionarchia Solipsorum, a satire on the Jesuits in tlie fictitious name of Lucius Cornelius Euro])eus. It has been ascribed to more tlian one person : the probable author is one Scotti, Avho had himself belonged to the order.' This book did not seem to me in the least interesting : if it is so in any degree, it must be not as mere fiction, but as a revelation of secrets. 58. It is not so much an extraordinary as an unfortunate Few hooks deficiency in our own literary annals, that England of fiction in should havc been destitute of the comic romance, or "° ''° ■ that derived from real life, in this period ; since in fact we may say the same, as has been seen, of France. The 'picaresque novels of Spain wei"e thought well worthy of trans- lation ; but it occurred to no one, or no one had the gift of genius, to shift the scene, and imitate tlieir delineation of native manners. Of how much value Avoukl have been a genuine English novel, the mirror of actual life in the various ranks of society, written under Elizabeth or under the Stuarts ! We should have seen, if the execution had not been very coarse, and the delineation absolutely confined to low charac- ters, the social habits of our forefathers better than by all our other sources of that knowledge, — the plays, the letters, the traditions and anecdotes, the pictures or buildings, of the time. Notwithstanding the interest which all profess to take in the history of manners, our notions of them are generally meagre and imperfect ; and hence modern works of fiction are but crude and inaccurate designs when they endeavor to represent the living England of two centuries since. Even Scott, who had a line instinctive perception of truth and nature, and who had read much, does not appear to have seized the genuine tone of conversation, and to have been a little misled by the style of Shakspeare. This is rather elaborate; and removed from vulgar use by a sort of archaism in phrase, and by a pointed turn in the dialogue, adapted to theatrical utterance, but wanting the ease of ordinai-y speech. 59. I can only produce two books by English authors, in t Biogr Univ., arts. " Scotti and Inchoffer; " Niceron, Tols. xxjcv. and xxxix. Ciur. VII. UALL — GODWIN. 37^ this first part of the seventeenth century, which fall properly under the class of novels or i-oinances ; and, of these, „ , T • '111 • • 1 -4 r 1 4 1 Munaus one IS written in Latin. I his is the iMunans Alter Alter .-t ct Idem of Bisliop Hall, an imitation of the latter Jl';'/""*' and weaker volumes of Rabelais. A co'.mtry in Terra Australis, is divided into four regions, — "Crapulia, Vira- ginia, 3Ioronea, and Lavernia. Maps of the whole land and of particular regions are given ; and the nature of the satire, not much of which has any especial reference to lilngland, may easily be collected. It is not a very successful effort. GO. Anotlier prelate, or one who became sucli, Francis Godwin, was the author of a much more curious ooj^^in-a story. It is called the Man in the Moon, and relates .Tourney to the journey of one Domingo Gonzalez to that planet. This was written by Godwin, according to Antony Wood, while he was a student at Oxford.^ By some internal proofs, it must have been later tlian 1599, and before the death of Elizabeth in 1G03, But it was not publislied till 1038. It was translated into French, and became the model of Cy- rano de Bergerac, as he was of Swift. Godwin himself had no prototype, as far as I know, but Lucian. He resem- bles tliose writers in the natural and veracious tone of his lies. The fiction is rather ingenious and amusinjr throusrhout ; but the most remarkable part is the hap[)y conjectures, if we must say no more, of his philosophy. Not only does the writer declare positively for the Copernican system, which was uncommon at that time, but he hiis surprisingly under- stood tlie principle of gravitation ; it being distinctly supposed that the eiu'th's attraction diminishes with the distance. Nor is the following passage less curious: "I must let you under- stand that the globe of the moon is not altogether destitute of an attractive power; but it is far weaker tlian that of the earth: as if a man do but spring upwards with all hi?, force, as dancei's do when they show their activity by capering, he shall be able to mount lifty or sixty feet high, and then he is quite ])eyond all attraction of the moon." By this device, Gonzalez returns from his sojourn in the latter, though it required a more complex one to bring him thither. "The moon," he observes, " is covered with a sea, except the parts ' Athenae Oxonienses, vol. ii. col. 558. work, and takes Dominic Gonzalez for th« It is remarkable that Mr. Bunlop has real author, llist. of Fiction, iii. 394 been ignorant of Godwin's claim to this 376 HOWELL— AGRIPPA D'AUBIGXfi. Part m, which seem somewhat darker to us, and are dry land. ' A contrary hypothesis came afterwards to prevail ; but we must not expect every thing from our ingenious young student. Gl. Though I can mention nothing else in English which iiowoirs comes exactly within our notions of a romance, we Doaona-s may advert to the Dodona's Grove of James Howell. Grove. ,|,j^jg j^ ^ Strange allegory, without any ingenuity in maintaining the analogy between the outer and inner story, which alone can give a reader any pleasure in allegorical Avritins. The subject is the state of Europe, especially of En'dand, about 1G40, under the guise of animated trees in a forest. The style is like the following : " The next morning the royal olives sent some prime elms to attend Prince Roco- lino in quality of officers of state ; and, a little after, he was - brought to the royal palace in the same state Elaiana's kings use to be attended the day of their coronation." Tlie contri- vance is all along so clumsy and unintelligible, the invention so poor and absurd, the story, if story there be, so dull an echo of well-known events, that it is impossible to reckon Dodona's Grove any thing but an entire failure. Howell has no wit ; but he has abundance of conceits, flat and common- place enough. With all this, he was a man of some sense and observation. His letters are entertaining ; but they scarcely deserve consideration in this volume. 02. It is very possible that some small works belonging to Adventures ^^^^^ extensive class have been omitted, which my of Baron rcadcrs, or myself on second consideration, might deVicaeste. ^^j^-^^j, ^^^^ unworthy of notice. It is also one so mis- cellaneous, that we might fairly doubt as to some .which have a certain claim to be admitted into it. Such are the Adven- tures of the Baron de Fajneste, by the famous Agrippa dAu- bigne (whose autobiography, by the way, has at least the liveliness of fiction) ; a singular book, written in dialogue, where an imaginary Gascon baron recounts his tales of the camp and the court. He is made to speak a patois not quite easy for us to understand, and not perhaps worth the while ; but it seems to contain much that illustrates the state of France about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Much in this book is satirical ; and the satire fidls on the Catholics, whom Fieneste, a mere foolish gentleman of Gas- cony, is made to defend against an acute Huguenot. Chap. VIII. STATE OF SCIENCE. 377 CHAPTER VIII. HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL AND TUYSICAL SCIENCE FROM IGOO TO 16&0 Section I. Inrcntion of Logarithms by Napier — New Geometry of Kcplcr and CaTalien — Alstbra — Harriott — Descartes — Astronony — Kepler — Galileo — Coperniran Sys- tem Ix'gins to prevail — Cartesian Theory of the World — Mechanical Discoveriei of Galileo — Descartes — lly drost;itics — Optics. 1. In the last part of tliis work, avc have followed the pro- gi-ess of mathematical and physical knowledge down g^^^^^j. to the close of the sixteenth century. The ancient science in geometers had done so much in their own province ^Ifnt^Jij!!* of lines and figures, that little more of imi)ortance could be effected, except by new methods extending the liniits of the science, or derived from some other source of invention. Algebra had jieldcd a more abundant harvest to the genius of "the sixteenth century ; yet something here seemed to be wanting to give that science a character of utility and refer- ence to general truth ; nor had the formula; of letters and radical signs that perceptible beauty which often wins us to delight in geometrical theorems of as little ai)parent usefulness in their results. Meanwhile, the primary laws, to which all mathematical reasonings in their relation to physical truths must be accommodated, lay hidden, or were erroneously con- ceived ; and none of these latter sciences, with the exception of astronomy, were beyond their mei-e infancy, either as to observation or theory.^ 2. Astronomy, cultivated in the latter part of the sixteenth century with much industry and success, was repressed, among other more insuperable obstacles, by the laborious calcula- ' In this chapter my obligations to Ilistoire dcs SlaUiematiques, \vhich must Uontucla are so numerous, that I shall be understood to be my principal authori- geldom make particular references to bis tjr as XafoQli, 378 NAPEER. Part UI. • tions that it required. The trigonometrical tables of sineg, Tedious- tangents, and secants, if they were to produce any nessofcai- tolerable accuracy in astronomical observation, must cuiatious. ^^ computed to six or seven places of decimals, upon which the regular processes of multiplication and division were jierpetually to be employed. The consumption of timo as well as risk of error which this occasioned was a serious evil to the practical astronomer. 3. John Napier, laird of JMerchiston, after several attempts Napier-? in- ^^ diminish this labor by devices of his invention, Tentioii of was hajipy enough to discover his famous method of logaritums. iog.^j.itij,„^, xiiis lie first published at Edinburgh in 1614, with the title, Mirifi;'i Logarithmorum Canonis De- scriptio, seu Arithmeticarum Su|)putationum INIirabilis Abbre- viatio. He died in 1618; and, in a posthumous edition entitled Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio, 1619, the method of construction, which had been at first withheld, is given ; and the system itself, in consequence, perhaps, of the suggestion of his friend Briggs, underwent some change. 4. The invention of logarithms is one of the rarest in- Their stauces of sagacity in the history of mankind ; and nature. [^ jj.^g heen justly noticed as remarkable, that it issued complete from the mind of its author, and has not received any imj)rovement since his time. It is hardly neces- sary to say that logarithms are a series of numbers, arranged in tables parallel to the series of natural numbers, and of such a construction, that, by adiling the logarithms of two of tlie latter, we obtain the logarithm of their product; by subtracting the logarithm of one number from that of another, we obtain that of their quotient. The longest processes, therefore, of multi[)lication and division are spared, and re- duced to one of mere addition or subtraction. 5. It has been supposed, that an arithmetical fact, said to be mentioned by Archimedes, and which is certainly n"mbiiiM° jiointed out in the work of an early German writer, it jiroperly: after stating very clearly taui, sen nmnerum. .luaui ad .-ontinuani: that there are no proper numbers but p^.^,ut hora sunonnitur esse (juid continu- intesers, he meets the objection, thatfrae- „„, ,„ ,,^rt,,^ aivni,.:!e, qutinivis quidem tions are called iateraiedi.ite numbers, y^-^^ram i»artiuaj ad totum ratio numerij '• Concedo quidem .sic respouderi posse; expruuatur." — JJia^uesis Universalis, c. t •ciicedo etiam numeros quo? fractos to- 880 NAPIER — BRIGGS. Part IIL a lower point one which would carry it through four feet in the same time, there must, by the nature of a continually acccle- ratcfl motion, be some point between these where the velocity might be rei)resented by the number tlu-ee. Hence, wherever the numbers of a common geometrical series, like 2, 4, 8, IG represent velocities at certain intervals, the intermediate num- bers will represent velocities at intermediate intervals ; and thus it may be said, that all numbers are terms of a geometri- cal progression, but one which should always be considered as what it is, — a progression of continuous, not discrete quan- tity, capable of being indicated by number, but not number itself. 7. It was a necessary consequence, that, if all Clumbers By Napier ^^"^^^ ^^ treated as terms of a progression, and if their indices could be found like those of an ordinary series, the method of finding products of terms by addition of indices would be universal. The means that Napier adopted for this purpose were surprisingly ingenious ; but it would be dithcult to make them clear to those who are likely to require it, especially without the use of lines. It may suffice to say that his process was laboi-ious in the higliest degree, consisting of the interpolation of 6,931,472 mean proportionals between 1 and 2, and repeating a simihxr and still more tedious opex'a- tion for all prime numbers. The logarithms of other numbers were easily obtained, according to the fundamental principle of the invention, by adding their factors. Logarithms appear to have been so called because they aie the sum of these mean ratios, Zoywv hpid/jor. 8. In the original tables of Napier, the logarithm of 10 Tables of ^^'''^^ 2.o()25850. In those ])ublislied afterwards Nupierana (1018), lie changed this for 1.0000000; making, of ^""*' course, that of 100, 2.0000000, and so forth. This construction has been followed since ; but those of the first method are not wholly neglected : they are called hyperbolical logarithms from expressing a property of that curve. Napier found a coadjutoi- well worthy of him in Henry Briggs, pro- fessor of geometry ut Gresham College. It is un;ertain from which of them the change in the form of logarithms pro- ceeded. Briggs, in KJhS, i)ublished a table of logarithms up to 1,000, calculated by himself. This was Ibllowed in 1()24 by his greater work, Arithinetica Logaritlnnica, containing Uie logarithms of all natural numbers as high as 20,000, aiid Chap. VIII. KEPLER. 381 again from 90,000 to 100,000. Tliese are calculated to four- teen places of decimals ; thus reducing the error, wliich, strictly speaking, must always exist from the principle of logarithmical construction, to an almost infinitesimal fraction. He haron nc piiisse farile- la geometrie ; et loin do conduiro 4 I'sr- mont rcdniro 4 In foniio aiic-ienno de ii'iir, cvttv methode, au coatraire, a ct6 demonstration. Ainsi, c'est s'arretor i utile pour atteindre i dn.s verites qui I'ecorce que de cliicaner sur le mot d'in- avoient echappc juscju'alors aux efTC'i'ts divisibles. U est impropre si Ton veut, des geomutre.';." — Montucla, vol. ii. p. 39 luais il n'en resulte aucuu danger pour Chap. VIH. BRTGGS — GIRARD. 385 this ; but. Roberval could not achieve the problem, in which Galileo also and Cavalieri failed, though it seems to have been solved afterwards by Viviani. " Such," says Montucla, "was the superiority of Descartes over all the geometers of his age, that questions which most perplexed them cost liim but an ordinary degree of attention." In tiiis problem of the tangents (and it might not ])erhaps have been worth while to mention it otherwise in so brief a sketch), Descartes made use of the principle introduced by Kepler, considering the curve as a polygon of an infinite number of sides, so that an infinite- ly small arc is equal to its chord. The cycloid has been called by Montucla the Helen of geometers. This beauty was at least the cause of war, and produced a long controversy. The Italians claim the original invention as their own ; but Montucla seems to have vindicated tlie right of France to every solution important in geometry. Nor were the friends of Roberval and Fermat disposed to acknowledge so much of the exclusive right of Descartes as was challenged by his disciples. Pascal, in his history of the cycloid, enters the lists on the side of Roberval. This was not published till 1G58. 15. Without dwelling more minutely on geometrical trea- tises of less importance, though in themselves valua- progress of ble, such as that of Gregory St. Vincent in 1 047, or Algebra. the Cyclometricus of Willebrod Snell in 1621, we come to the progress of analysis during tliis period. Tlie works of Vieta, it may be observed, were chiefiy published after the year 1600. • They left, as must be admitted, not much in principle for the more splendid generalizations of Harriott and Des- cartes. It is not unlikely that the mere employment of a more perfect notation would have led the acute mind of Vieta to truths which seem to us who are acquainted with them but a little beyond what he discovered. 16. Briggs, in his Arithmetica Logarlthmica, was the fii-st who clearly showed what is called the Binomial Briggs; Theorem, or a compendious method of involution, by ^"'^'■'^• means of the necessary order of co-etficients in the successive powers of a binomial quantity. Cardan had partially, and Vieta more clearly, seen this ; nor, as far as his notation went, was it likely to escape the profound mind of the latter. jMljert Girard, a Dutchman, in his Invention Nouvelle en Algcbre, 1629, conceived a better notion of negative root«i VOI-. ni. S86 HARRIOTT. Part III. than his predecessors. Kven Vieta had not paid attention to them in any sokition. Girard, however, not only assigns their form, and shows that, in a certain class of cubic e(|iiations, there must always be one or two of this description, but uses this remarkable expression: "A negative solution means in geometry that the minus recedes as the plus advances."^ It seems manifest, that, till some such idea suggested itself to the minds of analysts, the consideration of negative roots, though they could not possibly avoid perceiving their existence, would merely have confused their solutions. It cannot, therefoi-e, be surprising that not only Cardan and Vieta, but Harriott him- self, should have paid little attention to them. 17. Harriott, the companion of Sir Walter Raleigh in Vir- „ . ., ginia, and the friend of th*e Earl of Northumberland, Hamott. ? , , , , , o t ■ ^^,' m whose house he spent the latter part ot his lite, was destined to make the last great discovery in the pure sci- ence of algebra. Though he is mentioned here after Girard, since the Artis Analyticre Praxis was not published till 1631, this was ten years after the author's death. Harriott arrived at a complete theory of the genesis of equations, which Car- dan and Vieta had but partially conceived. By bringing all the terms on one side, so as to make them equal to zero, he found out that e-^ery unknown quantity in an equation has as many values as the index of its powers in the first term denotes ; and that these values, in a necessary sequence of combinations, form the co-etHcieuts of the succeeding terms into Avhich the decreasing powers of the unknown quantity enter, as they do also, by their united product, the last or known term of the equation. This discovery facilitated the solution of equations by the necessary composition of their terms which it displayed. It was evident, for example, that each integral root of an equation must be a factor, and conse- quently a divisor, of the last term.^ 18. Harriott introduced the use of small letters instead of capitals in algebra ; he employed vowels for unknown, conso- nants for known quantities, and joined them to express tlieir 1 " La solution par moins s'explique en work cannot be said to hare suppressed or gdometrie en rctrogrudant, ct le moins extenuated the merits of Vieta, or to have recule oil le plus avanee."'— Montuela, claimiMl any thing for Harriott but \yhat p. 112. lie is allowed to have deserved. Montuela - Harriott's book is a thin folio of a justly observes, that Harriott very rarelg hundred and eighty pages, with very little makes an equation equal to zero, by bring- besides exiiniples; for his principles are ing all the quantities to one side of tlM Bhortly and obscurely laid down. Who- cquatiou. OTer is the author of the preface to this Chap. VIII. DESCAETES. 'dS7 product.^ There is certainly not much in this ; but its evi- dent convenieuce renders it wonderful that it should have been reserved for so late an era. Wallis, in his History of Algebra, ascribes to Harriott a long list of discoveries, which have been reclaimed for Cardan and Vieta, the great found- ers of the higher algebra, by Cossali and Montucla.^ The latter of these writers has been charged, even by foreigners, with similar injustice towards our countryman ; and that he has been provoked by what he thought the unfairness of Wallis to something like a depreciation of Harriott, seems as clear as that he has himself robbed Cardan of part of his due credit in swelling the account of Vieta's discoveries. From the general integrity, however, of Montucla's writings, I am much inclined to acquit hiin of any wilful partiality. 19. Harriott had shown what were the hidden laws of algebra, as the science of symbolical notation. But jj^gpartes one man, the pride of France and wonder of his contemporaries, was destined to flash light upon the labors of the analyst, and to point out what those symbols, so darkly and painfully traced, and resulting commonly in irrational or even impossible forms, might represent and explain. The use of numbers, or of letters denoting numbers, for lines and rectangles capable of division into aliquot parts, had long been too obvious to be overlooked, and is only a compendious abbreviation of geometrical proof. The next step made was the perceiving that irrational numbers, as they are called, represent incommensurable quantities ; that is, if unity be taken for the side of a square, the square-root of two will represent its diagonal. Gradually, the application of nume- rical and algebraical calculation to the solution of problems respecting magnitude became more frequent and refined.^ It is certain, however, that no one before Descartes had employed algebraic formulai in the construction of curves ; that is, had taught the inverse process, not only how to ex- press diagrams by algebra, but how to turn algebra into diagrams. The ancient geometers, he observes, were scrupu- lous about using the language of arithmetic in geometry, ' Oughtrea, in his Clavis Mathematioa, discoven-il late. They are, however, given published in 11)31, ahlnv'viatua the rules also by Harriott. Walli.-ii Algebra, of Vieta, though he still used capital let- - These in.ay be found in tlie article ters. He also gave succinctly the praxis " Harriott "' of the Biographia Britannica. of algebra, or the elenienta'ry rules wo Wallis. however, does not suppress the find in our common books, which, though honor due to Vieta quite as much as il what are now first learned, were, from intimated byMontucla. the singular course of algebraical liistory, * See note la vol. ii. p. 316 388 lUS PLAGLVRISM FKOM HARRIOTT. Part 111. which could only proceed from their not perceiving the relation between the two; and this has produced a great deal of obscurity and embarrassment in some of their demonstra- tions.^ 20. The principle which Descartes estaJjlishes is, that every curve of those which are called geometrical cation of" has its fundamental equation expressing the constant algebra, to j-elation between the absciss and the ordinate. Thus the rectangle under the abscisses of a diameter of the circle is equal to the square of the ordinate ; and the other conic sections, as well as higher curves, have each their leading property, which determines -their nature, and shows how they may be generated. A simple equation can only ex- press the relation of straight lines : the solutions of a quadratic must be found in one of the four conic sections, and the higher powers of an unknown quantity lead to curves of a superior order. The beautiful and extensive theory deve- loped hy Descartes in this short treatise dispftiys a most consummate felicity of genius. That such a man, endowed with faculties so original, should have encroached on the just rights of others, is what we can only believe with reluctance. 21. It must, however, be owned, that, independently of the suspicions of an unacknowledged appropriation pia^aHsm of what otlicrs had thought before him, which unfor- from liar- tunately hang over all the writings of Descartes, he has taken to himself the whole theory of Harriott on the nature of equations, in a manner which, if it is not a remarkable case of simultaneous invention, can only be reck- oned a very unwarrantable plagiarism. For not only he does not name Harriott, but he evidently introduces the subject as an important discovery of his own, and, in one of his lettei-s, asserts his originality in the most positive language.^ Still 1 CEuvres de Descartes, v. 323. je le determine generalemen ten toutes 2 '■ Tant s'en faut quelesehoses que j'ai equations, au lieu que lui n"en avant ■ Sorites puissent etre aisOnient tirees de doiiue que quelques exeuiples particu- Viete, qu"au contraire C(! ijui est cause liers. doiit il fait toutefois si gmud etat que mon traitc est difficile i entendre, qu'il a voulu ctmclure son li\Te par li, il c'est que j'ai tache a. u'y ricn luettre que a iiiontro qu"il ne le pouvoit determiner ce ((uej'ai crfi n'avoir point etc su ni par en p'licral. Et ainsi jai commence oj lui ni par aucun a\itre ; conime on pcut il avoit achevu, ce que j'ai fait toutefois voir si on confere ce que jai ecrit du sans y penser ; car j'ai plus fenillete nonibre des racines (jui sont en chaque Viete dcpuis que j'ai rei;u votre derniere Equation, dans la page 872, qui est I'eu- que je n'avois jamais fait auparavant, droit oil je commence i donner les regies Tayant trouvii ici par ha-sard entre les de mon algebre, avec ce que Victe en i mains d'uu de mes amis; et entre nous, je ^crit tout i la fin de son livre, De Emen- ne trouve pas qu'il en aittant su que datione iEquationuK ; car on verra que je pensois, nonobstant qu'il fat fort ha- Chap. Vm. FERMAT. 889 it is quite possible, that, prepared as the way had been by Victa, and gifted as Descartes was with a wonderfully intui- tive acutcness in all mathematical reasoning, he may in tliis, as in other instances, have divined the whole theory by him- self. Montucla extols the algebra of Descartes, that is, so much of it as can be fairly claimed for him without any pre- cursor, very highly ; and ?ome of his inventions in the treat- ment of equations have long been current in books on that science. He was tlie first who showed what were called impossible or imaginary roots, though he never assigns them, deeming them no quantities at jdl. He was also, perhaps, the first who fully understood negative roots, though he still retains the appellation, false roots, which is not so good as Harriott's epithet, privative. According to his panegj-rist, he first pointed out, that, in every equation (the terms being all on one side) which has no imaginary roots, there are as many changes of signs as positive roots, as many continuations of them as negative. 22. The geometer next in genius to Descartes, and perhaps nearer to him than to any third, was Fermat, a man ^ •^ /. , . , I • ^1 -r» Fermat of various acqun-ements, of high rank in the Jrar- liamcnt of Toulouse, and of a mind incapable of envy, forgiv ine: of detraction, and delighting in truth, with alniost too much indiflerence to praise. The works of Fermat were not pub- hshed till long after his death in 1665 ; but his frequent dis- cussions with Descartes, by the intervention of their common correspondent Mei-senne, render this place more appropriate for the introduction of his name. In these controvei-sies, Des- cartes never behaved to Fermat with the respect due to his talents : in fact, no one was ever more jealous of his own pre- eminence, or more unwilling to acknowledge the claims of those who scrupled to follow him implicitly, and who might in any manner be thought rivals of his fame. Yet it is tliis unhappy temper of Descartes which ought to render us more bile." This is in a letter to Mersenne iu to Descartes in 1G49, plainly intimates to 1637. OJuvresdeUescavtes, Tol. vi. p.300. him that he has only copied Harriott as The charge ol plairiarisui from Harriott to the nature of equations. (Euvre-s de •vra.s brought against Descartes in his life- Descartes, vol. x. p. 373. To this accusa- time: Koberyal, when an English gentle- tion Descartes made no reply. SceBio- inan showed hiiu the Artis Analyticse graphia Dritannica. art. •' Harriott.'' The I'rixis, exclaimed eagerly, •' II Ta tu '. il Biographie Universelle unfairly suppresses Ta vu 1 " It is also a very suspicious cir- all mention of this, and labors to depre- «>umstance, if true, .i.s it appears to be, ciate Harriott. that Descartes w;is in England the year See Leibnitz's catalogue of the supposed (1631) that Harriott's work appeared, thefts of Descartes in vol. iii. p. 100 of this Carcayi, a fiiend of Roberval, in a letter work. 890 ASTRONOMY — KEPLER. Part IH. slow to credit the suspicions of his designed plagiarism from the discoveries of others ; since this, combined with his un- willingness to acknowledge their merits, and affected ignorance of their writings, would form a character we should not read- ily ascribe to a man of great genius, and whose own writings give many apparent indications of sincerity and virtue. But, in fact, thei^e was in this age a great probability of simultane- ous invention in science, from developing principles that had been partially brought to light. Thus Roberval discovered the same method of indivisibles as Cavalieri, and Descartes must equally have been led to his theory of tangents by that of Kepler. Fermat also, who was in possession of his prin- cipal discoveries before the geometry of Descartes saw :he light, derived fi'om Kepler his own celebrated method, de maximis et minimis ; a method of discovering the greatest or least value of a variable quantity, such as the ordinate of a curve. It depends on the same principle as that of Kepler. From this he deduced a rule for drawing tangents to curves different from that of Descartes. This led to a controversy between the two geometei-s, carried on by Descartes, who yet is deemed to have been in the wrong, with his usual quick- ness of resentment. Several other discoveries, both in pure algebra and geometry, illustrate the name of Fermat.^ 23. The new geometry of Descartes was not received with Algebraic the Universal admiration it deserved. Besides its nouuccess- Conciseness, and the inix)ad it made on old prejudices fui at first, as to geometrical methods, the general boldness of the author's speculations in physical and metaphysical philo- sophy, as well as his indiscreet temper, alienated many who ought to have appreciated it ; and it was in his own country, where he had ceased to reside, that Descartes had the fewest admirei-s. Roberval made some objections to his rival's alge- bra, but with little success. A commentary on the treatise of Descartes by Schooten, professor of geometry at Leyden, first appeared in 1G49. 24. Among those who devoted themselves ai-dently and Astronomy : successfully to astronomical observations at the end Kepler. ^f jj^y sixteenth century, was John Kepler, a native of Wirtemburg, who had already shown that he was likely to inherit the mantle of Tycho Brahe. He published some > A good article ou Fermat by M Maurice will be found in the Biographie UnV verseUe. Chap. VIH. THE THREE LAWS OF KEPLER. 391 astronomical treatises of comparatively small importance in the first years of the present period ; but in 1 009 he made an epoch in that science by his Asti'onomia Nova aiTiolayriTbc, or Commentaries on the Planet Mars. It had been aUvays assumed, that the heavenly bodies revolve in circular orbits round their centre, whether this were taken to be the sun or the earth. There was, however, an apparent eccentricity or deviation from this circular motion, wliich it had been very difficult to explain ; and, for this, Ptolemy had devised his complex system of epicycles. No planet showed more of this eccentricity tlian Mars; and it was to Mars that Kepler turned his attention. After many laborious researches, be was brought by degrees to the great discovery, that the mo- tion of the planets, among which, having adopted the Coper- nican system, he reckoned the earth, is not performed in circular but in elliptical orbits, the sun not occupying the centre, but one of the foci of the curve ; and, secondly, that it is performed with such a varying velocity, that the areas described by the radius-vector, or line which joins this focu3 to the revolving planet, are always proportional to the times. A planet, therefore, moves less rapidly as it becomes more distant from the sun. These are the first and second of the three great laws of Kepler. The third was not discovered by him till some years ai'terwards. ^ lie tells us himself, that on the 8th of May, 1G18, after long toil in investigating the proportion of the periodic times of the planetary movements to their orbits, an idea struck his mind, which, chancing to make a mistake in the calculation, he soon rejected ; but, a week after, returning to the subject, he entirely established his grand discovery, that the squares of the times of revolu- tion are as the cubes of the mean distances of the planets. This was first made known to the world in his Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1619 ; a work mingled up with many strange eflTusions of a mind far more eccentric than any of the planets with which it Avas engaged. In the Epitome Astronomiaj Copei-nicanaj, printed the same year, he endea- vors to deduce this law from his theory of centrifugal forces. He had no small insight into the principles of universal gravi- tation, as an attribute of matter; but several of his assump- tions as to tlie laws of motion are not consonant to truth. There seems, indeed, to have been a considerable degree of good fortune in the discoveries of Kepler ; yet this may be 392 GALILEO — JUPITER'S SATELLITES. Part HL deemed the reward of his indefatigable laboriousness, and of the ingenuousness with which he renounced any hypothesis that he could not reconcile with his advancing knowledge of the phenomena. 25. The appearance of three comets in 1618 called once „ . , more the astronomers of Europe to siieculate on Conjectures i t mi -ii as to the nature or those anomalous bodies, iney still comets. passed for harbingers of worldly catastrophes; and those who feared them least could not interpret their appa- rent irregularity. Galileo, though Tycho Brahe had formed a juster notion, unfortunately took them for atmospheric mete- ors. Kepler, though he brought them from the far regions of space, did not suspect the nature of their orbits, and thought that, moving in straight lines, they were finally dispei-sed, and came to nothing. But a Jesuit, Grassi, in a treatise, De Tri- bus Cometis, Kome, 1619, had the honor of explaining what had baffled GaHleo, and first held them to be planets moving in vast ellipses round the sun.^ 26. But, long before this time, the name of Galileo had become immortal by discoveries, which, though they Sscotery of would Certainly have soon been made by some other, jupiter^s perhaps far inferior, observer, were happily reserved satellites. {. ,^. , , •, , • i • c j.\ r^ i-i • tor the most philosophical genius ot the age. Galileo assures us, that, having heard of the invention of an instru- ment in Holland which enlarged the size of distant objects, but knowing nothing of its construction, he began to study the theory of refractions, till he found by experiment, that, by means of a convex and concave glass in a tube, he could mag- nify an object threefold. He was thus encouraged to make another which magnified thirty times ; and this he exhibited in the autumn of 1609 to the inhabitants of Venice. Having made a present of his first telescope to the senate, who rewarded him with a pension, he soon constructed another; and in one of the first nights of January, 1610, directing it towards the moon, was astonished to see her surface and edges covered with inequalities. These he considered to be moun- tiins, and judged by a sort of measurement that some of them must exceed those of tlie earth. His next observation was of the milky way ; and this he found to derive its nebulous lus- tre from myriads of stars not distinguishable, through Iheir remoteness, "by the unassisted sight of man. The nebulai in > The Biogr. Univ., art. " Grassi," ascribes this opinion to Tycho. Chap, Vni. OTHER DISCOVERIES BY GALILEO. 393 the constellation Orion he perceived to be of the same charac- ter. Before his delight at these discoveries could have sub- sided, he turned his telescope to Jupiter, and was surprised to remark three small stars, which, in a second night's observa- tion, had changed their places. In the course of a few weeks, he was able to determine by their revolutions, which are very rapid, that these are secondary planets, the moons or satellites of Jupiter; and he had added a fourth to their number. These marvellous revelations of nature he hastened to an nounce in a work, aptly entitled Sidereus Nuncius, published in March, 16 10. In an age when the fascinating science of astronomy had already so much excited the minds of philoso- phers, it may be guessed with what eagerness this intelligence from the heavens was circulated. A few, as usual, through envy or prejudice, affected to contemn it. But wisdom was justified of her children. Kepler, in his Narratio de Obser- vatis a se Quatuor Jovis Satellitibus, 1610, confirmed the discoveries of Galileo. Peii'esc, an inferior name no doubt, but deserving pf every praise for his zeal in the cause of knowledge, having with difficulty procured a good telescope, saw the four satellites in November, 1610; and is said by Gassendi to have conceived at that time the ingenious idea, that their occultations might be used to ascertain the longi- tude.* 27. This is the greatest and most important of the discove- ries of Gajileo. But several others were of the other dis- deepest interest. He found that the planet Venus covenes by had phases, that is, periodical differences of apparent ™' form, like the moon ; and that these are exactly such as would be produced by the variable reflection of the sun's light ou the Copernican hypothesis ; ascribing also the faint light on that part of the moon which does not receive the rays of the sun, to the reflection from the earth, called by some late writers eai-th-shine ; which, though it had been suggested by MiEstlin, and before him by Leonardo da Vinci, was not generally received among astronomers. Another striking phenomenon, though he did not see the means of explaining it, was the tri[)le appearance of Saturn, as if smaller stars were conjoined, as it were, like wings to the planet. This, of course, was the ring. 28. Meantime the new auxiliary of vision which had 1 Gassendi, Vita Peirescii, p. 77. 894 COPERNICAN SYSTEM. Paiit Hi. revealed so many wonders could not lie unemployed in the hands of others. A publication by John Fabriciua eundiscov-* at Wittenberg, in July, 1611, De Maculis in Sole ered. visis, annouTiced a phenomenon in contradiction of common 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 un- luckily mistook for the orb of Mercury in its passage over the solar orb. Fabricius was not permitted to claim this discovery as his own. Scheiner, a Jesuit, professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, asserts, in a letter dated 12th of November, 1611, that he first saw the spots in the month of Mai-ch in that year ; but he seems to have paid little attention to them before that of October. Both Fabricius, however, and Scheiner, may be put out of the question. We have evidence that Harriott observed the spots on the sim as early as December 8th, 1610.^ The motion of the spots suggested the revolution of the sun round its axis completed in twenty- four days, as it is now determined ; and their frequent alterations of form as well as occasional disappearance could only be explained by the hypothesis of a luminous atmosphere in commotion, a sea of flame, revealing at intervals the dark central mass of the sun's body which it envelops. 20. Though it cannot be said, perhaps, that the discoveries Co erniran ^^ Galilco would fully provc the Copernic£,n system systcn. held of the world to thosc who were already insensible to by Galileo, reasoning from its sutficiency to explain the phe- nomena, and from the analogies of nature, they served to familiarize the mind to it, and to break down the strong ram- part of prejudice 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 assertion which drew down upon him the notice of the church. But, in these eighty years since the publication of the treatise of Copernicus, his prose- lytes had been surprisingly few. They were now becoming more numerous : several had written on that side ; and Galileo had begun to foi-m a school of Copernicans who Avere spreading over Italy. The Lincean society, one of the most useful and renowned of Italian academies, founded at Rome » fMontucla, ii. 106 ; Ilutton's Dictionary, art. " Harriott." The claim of Harrio'.l had been established by Zach, in Berlin Xransactions for 1788. — 1842.J Chap. VIII. PERSECUTION OF GALILEO. 395 by Frederic Cesi, a young man of noble birth, in 1C03, had as a fundamental law to apply themselves to natural philoso- phy; and it was impossil)le that so attractive and rational a system as that of Copernicus could fail of pleasing an acute and ingenious nation strongly bent upon science. The cluu-ch, liowever, had taken alarm : the motion of the earth was con- ceived to be as repugnant to Scripture as the existence of antipodes had once been reckoned; and, in 1616, Galileo, though respected, and in favor with the court of Rome, \\as compelled to promise that he would not maintain that doctrine in any manner. Some letters that he had published on the subject were put, with the treatise of Copernicus and other works, into the Index Expurgatorius, where, I believe, they still remain.^ 30. He seems, notwithstanding this, to have flattered him self, that, after several years had elapsed, he might ^^.^ ^j^. elude the letter of this prohibition by throwing the logues, and arguments in favor of the Ptolemaic and Copernican P'^'^'^'"" ""^ systems into the form of a dialogue. This was published iu 1632 ; and he might, from various circumstances, not unrea sonably hope for impunity. But his expectations were deceived. It is well known that he was compelled by the Inquisition at Rome, into whose hands he fell, to retract in the most solemn and explicit manner the propositions he had so Avell proved, and which he must have still believed. It is unnecessary to give a circumstantial account, especially as it has been so well done in the Life of Galileo by the late Mr. Drinkwater Bethune. The Papal court meant to humiliate Galileo, and through him to strike an increasing class of phi- losophers with shame and terror; but not otlierwise to punish one of whom even the inquisitors must, as Italians, have been proud : his confinement, though Montucla says it lasted for a year, was very short. He continued, nevertheless, under some restraint for the rest of his life, and, though he 1 DriuUwatcr Bethunp's Life of Galileo ; consumpsissent setatciii, aut subtilius aut Fabroni. Vita- Italoruni, toI. i. The for- verius aut ctirim aceuratius cxplioatum mer seems to lie mistaken in supposing expectari potuerit.' — p. 118. It seems, that Galileo diit not endeavor to prove iu fact, to have been this over-desire to his svstem compatible with Scripture. In prove his tlieorv ortliodox, which inccnsea a letter to Christina, the Grand Duche.ss the church against it. See an extraordi- of 'J'uscanv. the author (Brenna) of the nary article on this subject in the eighth Life in Fabroni's work tells us, he argued number of the Dublin ISeview (18'38). very elaborately for that purpose. "Inea Many will tolerate propositions inconsist- videlicet epistoirt philosophus no.st<'r ita ent with orthodoxy, wlien thev are not disserit, «t nihil etiam ab hominibus, brought into ininiediate juxtaposition with qui omnem in sacrarum literarum studio it. 396 PROGRESS OF COPEROTCAN SYSTEM. Part IIL lived at his own villa near Florence, was not permitted to enter the city.^ 31. The church was not mistaken in supposing that she tps should intimidate the Copernicans, but very much alarmed by SO in expecting to suppress the theory. Descartes "^'*' was so astonished at hearing of the sentence on Galileo, that he was almost disposed to bum his papers, or at least to let no one see them. " I cannot collect," he says, " that he who is an Italian, and a friend of the pope, as I understand, has been criminated on any other account than for having attempted to establish the motion of the earth. I know that this opinion was formerly censured by some cardi- nals ; but I thought I had since heard that no objection was now made to its being publicly taught even at Rome." ^ It seems not at all unlikely that Descartes Avas induced, on this account, to pretend a greater degree of difference from Co- pernicus than he really felt, and even to deny, in a certain sense of his own, the obnoxious tenet of the earth's motion.^ He was not without danger of a sentence against truth nearer at hand; Cardinal Richelieu having had the intention of procuring a decree of the Sorbonne to the same effect, which, through the good sense of some of that society, fell to the ground.* 32. The progi'ess, however, of the Copernican theory in , Europe, if it may not actually be dated from its con- jrro^Tess 01 ■*■ *^ Copernican dcmnatiou at Rome, was certainly not at all slower system. after that time. Gasseudi rather cautiously took that side ; the Cartesians brought a powerful re-enfbrceraent ; Bouillaud and several other astronomers of note avowed themselves favorable to a doctrine, which, though in Italy it lay under the ban of the Papal power, was readily saved on this side of the Alps by some of the salutary distinctions long in use to evade that authority.^ But in the middle of the seventeenth century, and long afterwards, there were mathe- 1 Fabroni. Ilis Life is written in good The very idea shows that he must have Latin, with knowledge and spirit, more deeply felt the restraint imposed upon than Tiraboschi has ventured to display. him in his country. Kpist. Grot., 407, It appears from some of (Irotius's Epis- 44(i. ties, that (.ialileo had thouglits, about 1()35, ^ Vol. vi. p. 239: he says here of the of seeking the protection of the United motion of the earth, "Je confesse que s'il Provinces. But, on account of his ad- est fau.x, tons les fondenuns de ma plii- vauced age, ho gave this up : " Fessus Ioso|)hie le sont aussi." Benin constituit manere in quibus est 3 Vol. vi. p. 50. locis, et potius quae ibi sunt incommoda * Montucla, ii. 297. jicrpeti, quam malje a'tati uiigrandi onus, o Id., ii. 60. et novas parandi amicitias imponere." Ch.\p. Vm DENIAL OF GENERAL GRAVITATION. 397 maticians, of no small reputation, Avho struggled stam'hly for the immobility of the earth ; and, except so far as Cartesian theories might have come in A'ogue, we have no reason to believe that any persons unacquainted with astronomy, either in this country or on the Continent, had embraced the S}'stem of Copernicus. Hume has censured Bacon for rejecting it ; but, if Bacon had not done so, he would have anticipated the rest of his countrymen by a full quarter of a century. 33. Descartes, in his new theory of the solar system, as- pired to explain the secret sprin";s of nature, while Kepler and Galileo had merely showed their effects, denies ge- By what force the heavenly bodies were impelled, y^t™tJou'" by what law they were guided, was certainly a very different question from that of the orbit they described or the period of their revolution. Ke])ler had evidently some notion of that universally mutual gravitation which Ilooke saw more clearly, and Newton established on the basis of his geometry.^ But Descartes rejected this \vith contempt. " For," he says, " to conceive this, we must not only sup})ose that every portion of matter in the universe is animated, and animated by several different souls which do not obstruct one another, but that those souls are intelligent, and even divine ; that they may know what is going on in the most remote jdaces witiiout any messenger to give them notice, and that they may exert their powers there." ^ Kei)ler, who took the world for a single animal, a leviathan that roared in caverns and breathed in the ocean-tides, might have found it difficult to answer this, Avhich would have seemed no objection at all to Campanella. If Descartes himself had been more patient towards opinions which he had not formed in his own mind, that constant divine agency, to which he was, on other occasions, a[)t to resort, could not but have suggested a sufficient explanation of the gravity of matter, without endowing it with self-agency. He had, however, fallen upon a complicated and original scheme, the most celebrated, perhaps, though not the most admirable, of the novelties which Descartes brought into philosophy. 34. In a letter to Mersenne, Jan. 9th, lGo9, he shortly states that notion of the material universe which he afterwards * ' If the earth and moon," he says, this attraction of t\w moon, he account* " were not retained in their orbits, they for tides. lie compares the attnietiou ojf would fall one on another ; the moon mov- the planet towards the sun to that of Ing about ^| of the way, the earth the heavy boilies towards the earth.. rest, supposing them eciually dense." By * Vol. ix. p. 5LiO. 898 CARTESIAX THEORY OF THE WORLD. Part HI. published in the Principia Philosophiae. " I will tell you," he Cartesian ^^7^' "that I coiiceive, or rather I can demonstrate, theory of that, besides the matter which composes tei'restrial the world, jj^^jj^g^ there are two other kinds : one very subtle, of which the parts are round, or nearly round, like grains of sand, and this not only occupies the pores of terrestrial bodies, but constitutes the substance of all the heavens ; the other incomparably more subtle, the parts of which are so small, and move with such velocity, that they have no determinate figure, but readily take at every instant that which is required to fill all tlie little intervals which the other does not occupy."^ To this hypothesis of a double ether he was driven by his aversion to admit any vacuum in nature ; the rotundity of the former corpuscles having been produced, as he fancied, by their continual circular motions, which had rubbed off their angles. This seems at present rather a clumsy hypothesis ; but it is literally that which Descartes presented to the world. 35. After having thus filled the universe with different sorts of matter, he suj^jjoses that the subtler particles, formed by the perpetual rubbing-off of the angles of the larger in their progress towards sphericity, increased by degrees till^ there was a superiluity that was not required to fill up the intervals; and this, flowing towards the centre of the system, became the sun, a very subtle and liquid body ; while in like manner the fixed stars were formed in other systems. Round these centres the whole mass is whirled in a number of distinct vortices, each of which carries along with it a planet. The centrifugal motion imj^els every particle in these vortices at each instant to fly oft' from the sun in a straight line ; but it is retained by the pressure of those which have already escaped and form a dtnser sphere beyond it. Light is no more than the effect of particles seeking to escape from the centre, and pressing one on another, though perhaps without actual motion.- The planetary vortices contain sometimes smaller vortices, in which the satellites are whirled round their principal. 36. Such, in a few words, is the famous Cartesian theory, which, fallen in esteem as it now is, stood its ground on the J Vol. viii. p. 73. etre plus aiscnumt enUmdu, .se dcTOit - " J"ai .sdiivinit avcrti (lue par la lunii- rapporter i oettu proi)cnsion ; d'oj il est 6rc je n'cutciidoi.s pas taut le mouvenieut manifest*! que selon moi Ton iiu doit en- quc cetfe inclinatiou ou propou.sion quo tcndre autre chose par les couluurs que ces petits corps out 4 se niouvoir, et les differentes Tarietes qui an-ivent en ce« que ce que je dircis du mouvement, pour propensiona."' — Vol. vii. p. 193 Chap. Vm. CARTESLVN THEORY. 399 continent of Europe for nearly a century, till tlie simplicity of the Newtonian system, and, above all, its conformity to tlio reality of things, gained an undisputed predominance. Be- sides the arbitrary suppositions of Descartes, and the various objections that were raised against the absolute plenum of space and other parts of his theory, it has been urged that his vor- tices are not reconcilable, according to the laws of motion in fluids, with the relation, ascertained by Kepler, between the periods and distances of the planets ; nor does it appear why the sun should be in the focus, rather than in the centre of their orbits. Yet within a few years it has seemed not im- possible that a part of his bold conjectures will enter once more with soberer steps into the schools of philosophy. His doctrine as to the nature of hght, improved as it was by Huygens, is daily gaining ground over that of Newton ; that of a subtle ether pervading space, which in fact is nearly the same thing, is becoming a favorite speculation, if we are not yet to call it an established truth ; and the atiirmative of a problem which an eminent writer has started, whether this ether has a vorticose motion round the sun, would not leave us very far from the philosophy which it has been so long our custom to turn into ridicule. 37. Tlie passage of Mercury over the sun was witnessed by Gassendi in 1631. This phenomenon, though it Transits of excited great interest in that age, from its having ^iff"/^,,^ been previously announced, so as to furnish a test of astronomical accuracy, recurs too frequently to be now con sidered as of high importance. The transit of Venus is much ipore rare. It occurred on Dec. 4, 1039, and was then only seen by Horrox, a young Englishman of extraordinary mathe- matical senius. There is reason to ascribe an invention of great importance, though not perhaps of extreme ditliculty, — tliat of the mici'ometer, — to Horrox. 38. The satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus are not so glorious in the scutclieon of Galileo as his dis- Laws of covery of the true principles of mechanics. These, ""e-ihamcs. as we have seen in the preceding volume, were very imper- fectly known till he appeared ; nor had the additions to that science since the time of Archimedes been important. The treatise of Galileo, Delia Scienza Mecanica, has been said, I know Jiot on what authority, to have been written in 1592. It was not published, however, till 1634, and then only iu a 400 GALILEO. Pakt IIL French translation by Mersenne ; the original not appearing till 1 649. This is chiefly confined to statics, or the doctrine of equilibrium: it was in his dialogues on motion, Delia Jsuova Scienza, published in 1638, that he developed his great prin- statics of ciples of the science of dynamics, the moving forces Galileo. Qf bodies. Galileo was induced to write his treatise on mechanics, as he tells us, in consequence of the fruitless attempts he witnessed in engineers to raise weights by a small force, " as if with their machines they could cheat nature, whose instinct as it were by fundamental law is, that no resist- ance can be overcome except by a superior force." But as one man may raise a weight to the height of a foot by divid- ing it into equal portions, commensurate to his power, M'hich many men could not raise at once ; so a weight, which raises another gi-eater than itself, may be considered as doing so by successive instalments of force, during each of which it tra- verses as much space as a corresponding portion of the larger weight. H^nce the velocity, of which space uniformly tra- versed in a given time is the measure, is inversely as the masses of the weights ; and thus the equilibrium of the straight lever is maintained, when the weights are inversely as their distance from the fulcrum. As this equilibrium of unequal weights depends on the velocities they would have if set in motion, its law has been called the principle of virtual velo- cities. No theorem has been of more important utility to mankind. It is one of those great truths of science, which, combating and conquei'ing enemies from opposite quarters, — prejudice and empiricism, — justify the name of philosophy against both classes. The waste of labor and expense in machinery would have been incalculably greater in modern times, coidd we imagine this law of nature not to have been discovered ; and, as their misapplication prevents their em- ployment in a proper direction, we owe, in fact, to Galileo the immense effect which a right application of it lias produced. It is possible that Gdileo was ignorant of the demonstration given by Stevinus of the law of equilibrium in the inclined ])lane. His own is different ; but he seems only to consider th<; case when th(5 direction of the force is parallel to that of the plane. 39. Still less was known of the principles of dynamics than of those of statics, till Galileo came to investigate them. The acceleration of lalling bodies, whether perpendicularly Chap. Vm. HIS DYNAMICS. 401 or on inclined planes, was evident ; but, in what ratio this took place, no one had succeeded in determining, msdyna- though many had offered conjectures. He showed °"'=*- that tlie velocity acquired was proportional to the time from the commencement of falling. This might now be de- monstrated from the laws of motion ; but Galileo, who did not perhaps distinctly know them, made use of experiment. He then proved l)y reasoning that the spaces traversed in fall- ing were as the squares of the times or velocities ; that their increments in equal times were as the uneven numbers, 1, 3, 5, 7, and so forth; and that the whole space was half what would have been traversed uniformly from the beginning with the final velocity. These are the great laws of accelerated and retarded motion, from which Galileo deduced most impor- tant theorems. He showed that the time in which bodies roll down the length of inclined planes is equal to that in which they would fall down the height, and in different planes is pro- portionate to the height ; and that their acquired velocity is in the same ratios. In some propositions he was deceived ; but the science of dynamics owes more to Galileo than to any one philosopher. The motion of projectiles had never been under- stood : he showed it to be parabolic ; and, in this, he not only necessarily made use of a principle of vast extent, that of compound motion (which, though it is clearly mentioned in one passage by Aristotle,^ and may probably be implied, or even asserted, in the reasonings of others, as has been observed in another place with respect to Jordano Bruno, does not seem to have been explicitly laid down by modern writers on mechanical science), but must have seen the principle of curvi- linear deflection by forces acting in infinitely small portions of time. The ratio between the times of vibration in pendu- lums of unequal length had early attracted Galileo's attention. But he did not reach the geometrical exactness of which this subject is capable.^ He developed a new principle as to the resistance of solids to the fracture of their parts, which, though Descartes as usual treated it with scorn, is now estab- lished in philosophy. " One forms, however," says Playfair, " a very imperfect idea of this philosopher from considering the discoveries and inventions, numerous and splendid as they are, of which he was the undisputed author. It is by follow- ing his reasonings, and by pursuing the train of his thoughts, 1 Drinkwatei's Life of Galileo, p. 80. ' Fabroni. VOL. ni. 26 402 DESCARTES — HIS MECHANICS. Pakt HI. in his own elegant tliougli somewhat diffuse exposition of them, that we become acquainted with the fertihty of his genius, with the sagacity, penetration, and compreliensiveness of his mind. 'J'he service which he rendered to real know- ledge is to be estimated not only from the truths wliich he discovered, but from the errors which he detected ; not merely from the sound ])rinciples which he established, but from the pernicious idols which he overthrew. Of all the writers who have lived in an age which was yet only emerging from igno- rance and barbarism, Galileo has most entirely the tone of true philosophy, and is most free from any contamination of the times, in taste, sentiment, and opinion." ^ 40. Descai'tes, who left notliing in philosophy untouched, Mficiianics turned his acute mind to the science of mechanics, •of Des- . sometimes with signal credit, sometimes very unsuc- cartes. cessfully. Hc rcduced all statics to one principle, — that it requires as much force to raise a body to a given height as to raise a body of double weight to half the height. Thia is the theorem of virtual velocities in another form. In many respects he displays a jealousy of Galileo, and an unwilling- ness to acknowledge his discoveries, which puts himself often in the wrong. " I believe," he says, " that the velocity of very heavy bodies which do not move very quickly in descending increases nearly in a duphcate ratio ; but I deny that this is exact, and I believe that the contrary is the case when the movement is very rapid."- This recourse to the air's resistance, a circumstance of which Gahleo was well aware, in order to diminish the credit of a mathematical theorem, is unworthy of Descartes; but it occurs more than once in his letters. He maintained also, against the theory of Galileo, that bodies do not begin to move with an infinitely small velocity, but have a certain degree of motion at the first in- stance which is afterwards accelerated.^ In this too, as he meant to extend his theoiy to falling bodies, tha consent of philosophers has decided the question against him. It was a corollary from these notions, that he denies the increments of spaces to be according to the progression of uneven numbers.* ' Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclop. soit. ne passent point par tons les (logr6« Britan. (le tardivete ; mais que des le premier 2 (Euvres de Descartes, Tol. viii. p. 24. moment ils ont certaiiie Vitesse qui s'aug- 3 "II faut savoir, quoiquo Galilee et meiito apres de beaucoup, et c'est de cett« quelques autres disent an contraire, seir« very ordinary land I do not hear that there are any composition was iu Hjtii. passhoppen at all ; but if there be, they 414 LANGUAGE OF BRUTES. Part III. whether this is done through the organs of the voice. The fourth question is, in how many modes animals express their feelings. These are by look, by gesture, by sound, by voice, by language. Fabricius tells us that he had seen a dog, meaning to expel another dog from the place he wished him- self to occupy, begin by looking fierce, then use menacing gestures, then growl, and finally bark. Inferior animals, such as Avorms, have only the two former sorts of communication. Fishes, at least some kinds, have a power of emitting a sound, though not properly a voice : this may be by the fins or gills. To insects also he seems to deny voice, much more language, tliough they declare their feelings by sound. Even of oxen, stags, and some other quadrupeds, he would rather say that they have voice than language. But cats, dogs, and birds have a proper language. All, however, are excelled by man, who is truly called (iipoip, from his more clear and distinct articulations. 7. In the fifth place, however difficult it may appear to understand the language of brutes, we know that they under- stand what is said to them ; how much more, therefore, ought we, superior in reason, to understand them ! He proceeds from hence to an analysis of the passions, which he reduces to four, — joy, desire, grief, and fear. Having thus drawn our map of the passions, we must ascertain by observation what are the articulations of which any species of animals is capable, which cannot be done by description. His own experiments were made on the dog and the hen. Their arti- culations are sometimes complex ; as, when a dog wants to come into his master's chamber, he begins by a shrill small yelp, expressive of desire, which becomes deeper, so as to denote a mingled desire and annoyance, and ends in a lament- able howl of the latter feeling alone. Fabricius gives several other rules deduced from observation of dogs, but ends by confessing that he has not fully attained his object, which was to furnish every one with a compendious method of under- standing the language of animals : the inquirer must therefore proceed upon these rudiments, and make out njore by obser- vation and good canine society. He shows, finally, from the different structure of the organs of speech, that no brute can ever rival man ; the chief instrument being the throat, which we use only for vowel sounds. Two imj)ortant questions are hardly touched in this little treatise : first, as has been said, Chap. TX. COLUMNA — BAUHm. 415 whether brutes can communicate specific facts to each other ; and, secondly, to wliat extent they can associate ideas with the laiip;nage of man. These ought to occupy our excellent naturalists. 8. Cohimna, belonging to the Colonna family, and one of the greatest botanists of the sixteenth century, main- Botany: tained the honor of that science during the present <-""'"'""'*• period, whicli his long life embraced. In the Academy of the Lincei, to which the revival of natural philosopliy is greatly due, Columna took a conspicuous share. His Ecphrasis, a history of rare plants, was publislied in two parts at Rome, in IGOG and IGIG. In this he laid down the true basis of the science, by establishing the distinction of genera, which Gesner, Ca^salpin, and Joachim Camerarius had already con- ceived, but which it was left for Cohimna to confirm and em- ploy. He alone, of all the contcmpoi-ary botanists, seems to have appreciated the luminous ideas which Ciesalpin had bequeathed to posterity.^ In his posthumous observations on the Natural History of Mexico by Hernandez, he still further developed the philosophy of botanical arrangements. Colum- na is tlie first who used copper instead of wood to delineate plants ; an improvement Avhich soon became general. This was in the <^uTo6uaavoc, sive Plantarum aliquot Historia, 1594. There are ei-rors in this Avork ; but it is remarkable lor the accuracy of the descriptions, and for the correctness and beauty of the figures.- 9. Two brothers, John and Gaspar Bauhin, inferior in phi- losophy to Columna, made more copious additions to ^^^^^ ^^^ the nomenclature and description of plants. The Oaspar elder, who was born in 1541, and had acquired some "''"''''*• celebrity as a botanist in the last century, lived to complete, but not to publish, an Historia Plantarum Universalis, which did not a])pcar till 1650. It contains the descriptions of 5,000 species, and the figures of 3,577, but small and ill-exe- cuted. His brother, though much younger, had preceded him, not oidy by the Phytopinax in 1596, but by his chief work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici, in 1623. "Gaspar Bau- hin," says a modern botanist, "is inferior to his brother in his descriptions and in sagacity ; but his delineations are better, and his synonymes more complete. They are both below Clusius in description, and below several older botanistfj in * Biogr. Univ. » Id. SprengeL 416 ANATOMY AND SrEDICESTE. Tart III! their figures. In their firrangement they follow Lobel, and have neglected the lights -which Ca^salpin and Cohinina had held out. Their chief praise is to have brought together a great deal of knowledge acquired by their predecessors ; but the merit of both has been exa^rgerated."^ 10. Johnson, in 163G, published an edition of Gerard's _ , . Herbal. But tlie Theatrum Botanicuni of Parkinson, Parkinson. .,„,„. , „ i ,. , . m lb40, is a work, says 1 ulteney, oi mucli more ori- ginality than Gerard's ; and it contains abundantly mare mat- ter. AVe find in it near 3,800 plants ; but many descriptions recur more than once. The arrangement is in seventeen classes, partly according to the known or supposed qualities of the plant, and partly according to their external character.^ " This heterogeneous classification, which seems to be founded on that of Dodoens, shows the small advances that had been made towards any truly scientific distribution : on the con- trary, Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson had rather gone back, by not sufficiently pursuing the example of Lobel." Sect. II. — On Anatomy and Medicine. Claims of Early Writers to the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood — Ilarrey — Lacteal Vessels discovered by Asellius — Jledicine. 11. The first important discovery that was made public vaires of ^^ ^^^'^ ccntury was that of the valves of the veins ; the veins whicli is justly ascribed to Fabricius de Aquapen- discovere . jg^^j^^ j^ pj-ofessor at Padua ; because, though some of these valves are described even by Berenger, and further observations were made on the subject by Sylvius, Vesalius, and other anatomists, yet Fallopius himself had in tliis in- stance thrown back the science by denying their existence ; and no one before Fabricius had generalized the discovery. This he did in his public lectures as early as 1524; but 1 Biogr. Univ. Piilteney speaks more time, relating to the liistory of vegctaWcs, hiRhly of .lohn T.auliin : "That wliich and is cMruted with tliat accura>-y and (Jesnrr iii-vfonncil lor zoijlogy, .lolin J'.aii- critical judgment whi
  • e alone. Whether he knew of the passages Re Anatoniica, lib. -vii. p. 177, edit. 1559), in Servetus or no, notwithstanding his which I have not found quoted by Portal claim of originality, is not fierhaps niaui- or Sprengel, is as follows: " Inter hos fest ; the coincidence as to the function of ventriculos septum adest, per quod fere the lungs in aerating the blood is reniark- onines existiuiaut sanguini a dextro vcn- able ; but, if Columbus had any direct triculo ad sinistrum atlitum patcficri : id knowledge of the Christianismi Kcstitutio, ut fierct facilius, in transitii ob vitalium he did not choose to follow it in the spirituum gcueiationcm demiun reddi ; remarkable discovery that there is no ned longa errant via ; nam sanguis jier perforation in the septum between the arteriosam vonam ad pulmoneni fertur ; ventricles. ibique attenuatur ; deindo cum acre una - Tiraboschi, x. 49; Corniani, vi. g, per arteriam v(Mialcm ad sinistrum cordis He cinotes, on the authority of another ventriculum dofertur; quod nemo hacte- Italian writer, "11 giudizio di due illustri nus aut aniuiadvcrtit aut scriptum reli- Inglcsi, i fratclU Hunter, i quali, esami- quit; licet niaxinieetab omnibus animad- nato bene il processo di questa causa, si vertendum."' He afterwards makes a maravigliniw ilrlla senienza data in fa- remark, in which Servetus had preceded vore (ltiloroconcittn>ts have hitherto supposed, with Galen, that tlie mechanism of the pulse is the same as that of respi- ration. But he not less than three times makes an exception for Columbus, to wliom he most expressly refers the theory of a pulmonary circulation.^ Of Ca^salpin he certainly says nothing; but there seems to be no presumption that he was acquainted v/ith that author's wi-itings. Were it even true that he had been guided in his researches by the obscure pas- sages we have quoted, could this set aside the merit of that patient induction by which he established his own theory ? Ctesalpin asserts at best, what we may say he divined, but did not know to be true : Harvey asserts what he had demonstrat- ed. Tiie one is an empiric in a philosophical sense ; the other, a legitimate minister of truth. It has been justly said, that he alone discovers Avho proves ; nor is there a more odious oifice or a more sophistical course of reasoning than to impair the credit of great men, as Dutens wasted liis erudition in doing, by hunting out equivocal and insulated passages from older writers, in oixler to depreciate the originality of the real teachers of mankind.- It may indeed be thought wonderful, ' " I'a'ne onincs hue usque anatomici bus) tanto sanguine opus esse ad nutritio- n-.cjici et philosophi suppouunt cum Ga- nem pulmouuui, cum hoc vas,vena videlicet Icno eundem usiini esse pulsus, quam arteriojia [id est, arteria pulmoualis] ex- rospiratioiiis."' But though he certainly superct magnitudine utrumqiie ramura claims the doctrine of a general circula- distributionis ven;c cavas desceudeutiB tion as wholly his own. and counts it a cruralom." — p. 16. paradox which will startle every one. he - This is the gener.al character of a as expressly refers (pp. 3S and -11 of the really learned and interesting work by E.\ercitatio) that of a pulmonary trans- Dutens, Origine des Decouvertes attri- niission of the blood to Columbus, peri- buijes aux Modernes. Justice is due to Ihsimo dorlissiinotjiie aiiatomico; and those who liave first struck out, even oliserves, in liis prooemium, as an objec- without following up, original ideas in tion to the received theory, " quoniodo any science ; but not at the expense of prubabile est {uti notavit Kualdus Cotum- those who, generally without kiiowledgs 422 HARVEY'S TREATISE ON GENERATION. Pakt III that Servetus, Columbus, or Csesalpin should not have more distinctly apprehended the consequences of what they main- tained, since it seems difficult to conceive the lesser circulation without the greater ; but the defectiveness of their views is not to be alleged as a counterbalance to the more steady saga- city of liarvey. The solution of their falling so short is, that they were right, not indeed quite by guess, but upon insuifi- cient proof; and that tlie consciousness of this, embarrassing their minds, prevented them from deducing inferences which now appear irresistible. In every department of philosophy, the researches of the first inquirers have often been arrested t>y similar causes.^ 19. Harvey is the author of a treatise on generation, Harre 's wherein he maintains tliat all animals, including treatise on men, are dei'ived from an egg. In this book we first generation. ^^^^ ^^^ argument maintained against spontaneous generation, which, m the case of the lower animals, had been generally received. S])rengel thinks this treatise prolix, and not equal to the author's rejjutation.^ It was first published in 1651. 20. Next in importance to the discovery of Harvey is that Lacteais ^^ Asellius as to the lacteal vessels. Eustachius had discovered observed the thoracic duct in a horse. But Asellius, by Asellius. j^^j.g ^j chance, as he owns, than by sagacity, per- ceived the lacteals in a fat dog whom he opened soon after it had eaten. This Avas in 1622; and his treatise, De Lacteis of what had been said before, haye de- vras supposed to produce. See Dutens, duced the same principles fi'om reasoning vol. ii. pp. 8-13. Mr. Coleridge has been or from observation, and carried them out deceived in the same manner by some to important consequences. Pascal quotes lines of Jordano Bruno, which he tal The biographer of Harvey in the glad to avail themselves of such hunters Biographie Universelle strongly vindicates into obscure aijtid by elles ne .sc trouvercut etayees par aucnne ♦he words mnloihc and Titpiiptpnriivov experience, par aucun fait ; et Ton peut , ' , , • „ dire de C'l-salinn qu'u divina pri-sque la ttiuaroc; but otliers, and especially one ^^..^^^j^ circulation dont les lois lui Inrent from Nemesius. on which soni" reliance totalemcnt inconiuies ; la decouverte en has been placed, mean nothing more tlian ^^^^^ reservOe a (Uiillaume Harvey, the liux and reflux of the blood, which 2 njst. de la Medeciue, iv. 299"; Tortkl, the contraction and dilatation of the heart 5j_ ^yy CUAP. IX. OPl ICS — MEUrCIXE - VAN HELMONT. 425 Venis, was published in 1G27.^ Harvey did not assent to this discoveiy, and endeavored to dispute the use of the vessels ; nor is it to his honor, that, even to the end of his life, he dis- resrarded the subsecjuent confirmation that Pecquet and Bar- tholin had furnished.^ The former detected tiie common origin of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels in 1647, though his work on the subject was not pul)lished till 1G51. But Glaus Rudbeck was tlie first who clearly distinguished these two kinds of vessels. 21. Scheiner proved that the retina is the organ of sight, and that the humors serve only to refract tlie rays optical which paint the object on the optic nerve. This was discoveries in a treatise entitled Oculus, hoc est, Fundamentum ^ Opticum, 1019.^ The writings of several anatomists of this period, such as Riolan, Vesling, Bartholin, contain partial accessions to the science ; but it seems to have been less enriched by great discoveries, after those already named, than in the preceding century. 22. The mystical medicine of Paracelsus continued to have many advocates in Germany. A new class of en- medicine: thusiasts sprung from the sa)ne school, and, calling VanUei- themselves Rosicrucians, pretended to cure diseases by faith and imagination. A true Rosicrucian, they held, bad only to look on a patient to cure him. The analogy of mag- netism, revived in the last and present age, was commonly employed.'* Of this school the most eminent was Van Ilel- mont, who combined the Paracelsian su])erstitions with some ori£i;inal ideas of his own. His general idea of medicine was, that its business was to regulate the arclueus, an immaterial principle of life and health ; to which, like Paracelsus, he attributed a mysterious being and efiicacy. The seat of the archajus is in the stomach ; and it is to be effected either by a scheme of diet or through the imagination. Sprengel praises Van Ilelmont for overthrowing many current errors, and for announcing principles since pursued.-' The French physicians 1 Portiil, ii. 481 ; Sprengel, iv. 201. force, or astrum, which cannot act with- Peiresc, soon after this, got the hody of a out a bo;l.v, hut pnsses from one to au- man fresh lian^jeJ after a good supper, other. All things in the macrocosm aro and had the pleasure of confirming the found also in the microcoSm. The inward discovery of .\sellius by- his own eyes, or astral man is Gabalis, from which th* Gassemli, Vita I'eireseii, p. 177. science is named. This Gabalis. or imagi- - Sprengel, iv. 203. nation, is as a magnet to external objects, ^ Id. 270. which it thus attracts. Medicines act by * All in nature, says Croll of llesse, a magnetic force. Sprengel, iii. 3S2. one of the principal thcosophists in me- * Vol. t p. 22. diciae, is living ; all that lives has its vital 424 OEIENTAL LITERATUEIL. Paet Hi. adhered to llie Hippocratic school, in opposition to what Sprengel calls the Cliemiatric, which more or less may be reckoned that of Paracelsus. The Italians were still re- nowned in medicine. Sanctorius, De Medicina Statica, 1G14-, seems the only work to which we need allude. It is loaded with eulogy by Portal, Tiraboschi, and other writers.^ Section III. On Oriental Literature — Hebrew Learning — Arabic and olher Eastern Languages. 23. DuRiiirG no period of equal length since the revival of Diffusion of letters has the knowledge of the Hebrew language Hebrew. been apparently so much diftused among the literary world as in that before us. The frequent sprinkling of its characters in works of the most miscellaneous erudition will strike the eye of every one who habitually consults them. Nor was this learning by any means so much confined to the clergy as it has been in later times, though their order natu- rally furnislied the greater portion of those who labored in that field. Some of the cliief Hebraists of this age were laymen. The study of this language prevailed most in the Protestant countries of Europe ; and it was cultivated with much zeal in England. Tlie period between the last years of Elizabeth and the Eestoration may, perhaps, be reckoned that in which a knowledef ul for reference. Chap. IX. THE BUXTORFS. 425 Postel, indeed, had made some attempts at this in the last century, bnt liis learning was very slight ; and Schindler pub- lished in 1G12 a Lexicon Pentaglottum, in which the Arabic, as well as Syriac and Chaldaic, were placed in apposition with tlie Hebrew text. Lonis do Dien, whose Eemarks on all the Books of the Old Testament were published at Ley- den in 1648, has frequently recourse to some of the kindred languages, in order to explain the Hel)reAv.^ But the first instructors in the latter had been Jewish rabbis ; and the Hebraists of the sixteenth age had imbibed a prejudice, not unnatural though unfounded, that their teachers were best conversant with the language of their Ibrefathers.- They had derived from the same source an extravagant notion of the beauty, antiquity, and capacity of the Hebrew ; and, com- bining this with still more chimerical dreams of a mystical philosophy, lost sight of all real principles of criticism. 25. The most eminent Hebrew scholars of this age were the two Buxtoifs of Basle, father and son, both TheCux- devoted to the rabbinical school. The elder, Avho tons. had become distinguished before the end of the preceding century, published a grammar in 1600, whicli long continued to be reckoned the best, and a lexicon of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, in 1 G23, which was not superseded for more than a hundred years. Many other works relating to these three dialects, as well as to tliat of the later Jews, do honor to the erudition of the elder Buxtorf ; but he is considered as re- presenting a class of Hebraists, which, in the moj-e compre- hensive Orientalism of the eighteenth century, has lost much of its credit. The son trod closely in his father's footsteps, whom he succeeded as professor of Hebrew at Basle. They held this chair between them more than seventy years. The younger Buxtorf was engaged in controversies which had not begun in his father's life-time. Morin, one of those learned Protestants who had gone over to the Church of Rome, syste- matically labored to "establish the authority of those versions wliich the church had approved, by weakening that of the text which passed for original.^ Hence he endeavored to show, — though this could not logically do much for his object, — that 1 Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Tes- p. 375. But Miinstcr, Fajiius, and several tament, p. 494. otiiers, who are found i" 'lie Cntici S.iori, 2 This -was not the case with Luther, gave way to the prejudice iu favor of nib- •who rejected the authority of the rabbis, biuical opinions, and their comnientarie* «.nd thought none but (Christians could ai-e consequently tcx) Judaical. — p. 496 anderstand the Old Xestameab. Simon, * Simon, p. {i22. 426 VOWEL-POINTS. VAnr UL the Samaritan Pentateuch, tlien lately brought to Europe, which is not in a different language, but merely the Hebrew written in Samaritan characters, is deserving of preference above what is called the Masoretic text, from which the Pro- testant versions are taken. The variations between these are sufficiently numerous to affect a flivorite hypothesis borrowed from the rabbis, Init strenuously maintained by the generality of Protestants, that the Hebrew text of the Masoretic recen- sion is perfectly incorrupt.^ Mori^'s opinion was opposed by Buxtorf and Hottinger, and by other writers even of the liomish Church. It has, however, been countenanced by Simon and Kennicott. The integrity at least of the Hebrew copies was gradually given up ; and it has since been shown that they differ greatly among themselves. The Samaritan Pentateuch Avas first published in 164.">, several years after this controversy began, by Sionita, editor of the Parisian Polyglott. This edition, sometimes called by the name of Le Jay, contains most that is in the Polyglott of Antwerp, with the addition of the Syriac and Ai-abic versions of the Old Testament. 26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of Louis Cappel, professor of that langiiage at Saumur, pdnte' the Arcanum Punctuationis Revelatum, in 1 624. He rejected maintained in tliis an opinion promulgated by Elias by Cappel. j^^^-^^^^ ^^^j j-^gl^j 1^^ ^j^^ jlj,^^ reformers and many other Protestants of the highest authority, though contrary to that vulgar orthodoxy which is always omnivorous, that the vowel-points of Hebrew were invented by certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. They had been generally deemed coeval with the language, or at least brought in by Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprising that Buch an hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind ; and Cappel was obliged to publish his work in Holland. The Protestants looked upon it as too great a concession in favor of the Vulgate, which, having been translated before the Masore- tic punctuation, on Cappel's hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim to stand on higher ground, and ^vas not to be judged by these innovations. After twenty years, the younger liuxtorf endeavored to vindicate the antiquity of vowel-points ; but it is now confesscnl that the victory remained with Cappel, wlio has been styled the father of Hebrew criti- » Simon, p. 522 ; Eichborn, v. 404. Chaj". IX. HEBREW SCHOLAKS — CHALDEE — SYRIAC. 427 cism. IH3 principal work is tho Critica Sacra, piiblishefl at Paris in 1G.')0, wlierein lie still further discredits the existing manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as the Maso- rctic punctuation.^ 27. Tlie rabl»inical literatni-e, meaning as well tlie Talmud and other ancient books, as those of the later ages Hebrew since the revival of intellectual pursuits among the scholars. Jews of Spain and the East, gave occupation to a considerable class of scliolars. Several of these belong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Liglitfoot, Selden, and Pococke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by Cuna^us in Jus Kegium Ilebneorum, 1 023, and especially by Selden, both in the Uxor Hebraica and in the treatise De Jure Natural! et Gentium juxta Hebroeos. But no one has left a more durable reputation in this literature than Bochart, a Protestant minister at Caen. His Geographia Sacra, published in 1G16, is not the most famous of his works, but tlie only one which falls within this period. It dis]ilays great learning and saga- city ; but it was impossible, as has been justly observed, that he could thoroughly elucidate this subject at a time when we knew comparatively little of modei-n Asia, and had few good books of travels. A similar observation might of course be applied to his Hierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture. Both these works, however, were much extolled in the seventeenth century. 28. In the Chaldee and Syriac languages, which approach so closely to Hebrew that the best scholars in the chnkieo latter are rarely unacquainted with them, besides andSynaxj the Buxtorfs, we find Ferrari, author of a Syriac lexicon, published at Rome in 1622 ; Louis de Dieu of Leyden, whose Syriac grammar appeared in 1626; and the Syriac trans- lation of the Old Testament in the Parisian Polyglott, edited by Gabriel Sionita, in 1642. A Syriac college for the Maronites of Libanus had been founded at Home by Gregory XIII. ; but it did not as yet produce any thing of import- ance. ^ Simon. Eiohhorn, &c. A cTotailcil vowels. Schultens was the first, accord account of this controversy about vowel- ing to Datlie, who proved that neither points between Cappel and the IJuxtorfs party could bo reckoned wholly victori will be found in the 12th volume of the ous. It seems, however, that the points Bibliotheque Universelle ; and a shorter now in use are acknowledged to be com jmc'S in PMchborn's Einleitung in das paratively modern. Dathe, Prrefatio ao alte Testament, vol. i. p. 242. \\'altoui Prolegomena, Lips. 1777, p 27 - [Itisnot universally agreed, thatCappel 18i7.] was altogether in the right about Hebrew 428 AEABIC — EEPENIUS — GOLIUS. Paet IU. 29. But a language incomparably more rich in litei'ary treasures, and long neglected by Europe, b(gan now to take a conspicuous ])lace in the annals of learning. Scaligcr deserves the ^lory of being the first real Arabic scholar ; for Postel, Christman, and a very few more of the sixteenth century, are hardly worth notice. His friend Ca- saubon, who extols his acquirements, as usual, very highly, de\oted himself some time to this study. But Scaliger made use of the language chiefly to enlarge his OAvn vast sphere of erudition. lie published nothing on the subject ; but his col- lections became the base of Rapheling's Arabic lexicon, and it is said that they were far more extensive than what appears in that work. He who properly added this language to the domain of learning was Erpeuius, a native of Gorcum, who, „ . at an early aae, had gained so unrivalled an acquaint- Erpemus • , ^'^ r\ ■ ^ ^ ■ 1- ance witli the Urieutal languages as to be appomted professor of them at Ley den, in 1613. He edited, the same year, the above-mentioned lexicon of Eapheliug, and published a grammar, wliich might not only be accounted the first com- posed in Europe that deserved the name, but became the guide to most later scholars. Erpeuius gave several othei works to the world, chiefly connected witli the Arabic version of the Scriptures.^ Golius, his successor in the Oriental chair at Levden, besides publishing a lexicon of the Gohus. , '',.,. . - ^ , -111 language, which is said to be still tlie most copious, elaborate, and comjilete that has appeared,- and several edi- tions of Ai'abic Avritings, poetical and historical, contributed still more extensively to bring the range of Arabian literature before the Avorld. He enriched with a hundred and fifty manuscripts, collected in his travels, the library of Leyden, to which Scaliger had bequeathed forty." The manuscripts belonging to Erpeuius found their Avay to Cambridge ; while, partly by the muniiicence of Laud, partly by later accessions, the Bodleian Library at Oxford became extremely rich in this line. The much larger collection in the Escurial seems to have been chiefly formed under Philip HL England was now as conspicuous in Arabian as in Hebrew learning. Sel- den, Greaves, and Pococke, especially the last, who was pro- bably equal to any Oriental scholar whom Europe had hitherto produced, by translations of the historical and philosophical 1 Bio!^. Univ. • Jcnisi'h, I'racfatio in Meninski Thesaurus Linguarum Orientallum, p. 110. * Biogr Univ. Chap. EX. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 429 writings of the Saracenic period, gave a larger compass to general erudition.^ 30. The remaining languages of the East are of less impor- tance. Tiie Turkish had attracted some degree of q^,^^,^ attention in the sixteenth century : but the first Kxst«ra grammar was published by Megiser, in 1612, a very ''"«''''=*^- slight performance ; and a better at Paris, by Du Ryer, in IGoO.- The Persic grammar was given at Rome by Ilaiuion- di, in 1G14; by Dieu, at Leyden, in 1G39; by Greaves, at London, in 1G41 and 1641).^ An Armenian dictionary, by llivoli, 1621, seems the only accession to our knowledge of that ancient language during this period.* Atlianasius Kir- cher, a man of immense erudition, restored the Coptic, of which Europe had been wholly ignorant. Those farther east- ward had not yet begun to enter into the studies of Europe. Nothing was known of the Indian ; but some Chinese manu- scripts had been brouglit to Rome and Madrid as early as 1580 ; and, not long afterwards, two Jesuits, Roger and Ricci, both missionaries -in China, were the first who acquired a suffi- cient knowledge of the language to translate from it.^ But scarcely any further advance took place before the middle of the century. Section IV. On Geography and lIistoi7. 31, PuRCnAS, an English clergyman, imbued by nature, like Hakluyt, witli a strong bias towards geogra})hi- purchas-s cal studies, after having formed an extensive library I'^'s'""- in that department, and consulted, as he jirofesses, above 1,200 authors, published the first volume of his Pilgrim, a collection of voyages in all parts of the world, in 1GI3: four mare followed in 1G25. The accuracy of this useful compiler has been denied by those who have had better means of know- ledge, and probably is inferior to that of ITakluyt ; but his labor was fixr more comprehensive. The Pilgrim was, at all 1 Jenisch ; Eichhom ; Biogr. Universelle ; Biogr. Britannica. « Eiohhom, v. 367. a Id., 320 « Id., ^51. « Id., 64. 430 OLEAEroS AND PIETRO DELLA VALLE. Part EI. events, a great source of knowledge to tlie contemporaries of Purchas.^ 32. Olearius was ambassador from the Duke of Holstein to oiearius Muscovy and Persia from 1633 to 1639, His and I'ietro travels, in German, were published in 1647, and have been several times reprinted and ti-anslated. He hns -well described the barbarism of Russia and the despo- tism of Persia ; he is diffuse and episodical, but not weari- some ; he observes well and relates faithfully ; all who have known the countries he has visited are said to speak well of hira.^ Pietro della Valle is a far more amusing writer. He has thrown his travels over Syria and Persia into the form of letters written from time to time, and which he professes to have recovered from his corresjiondents. This perhaps is not a very probable story, both on account of the length of the letters, and the want of that reference to the present time and to small passing events, which such as are authentic com- monly exhibit. His observations, however, on all the coun- tries he visited, especially Persia, are apparently consistent with the knowledge we have obtained from later travellers. Gibbon says that none have better observed Persia ; but his vaaiity and prolixity are insufferable. Yet I think that Della Valle can hardly be reckoned tedious ; and if lie is a little egotistical, the usual and almost laudable characteristic of travellers, this gives a liveliness and i-acy air to his narrative. What his wife, the Lady Maani, an Assyr'an Christian, whom he met with at Bagdad, and who accompanied him through his long wanderings, may really have becin, \?e can only judge from Lis eulogies on hei- beauty, her fidelity, luid her courage ; but she throws an air of romance over his adventures, not unpleasing to the rea ^er. The travels of Pieti'o della Valle took place from 1614 to 162G; but the book was fii'st pub- lished at Rome in 1 65 and has been translated into different languages. 33, The Lexicon Geographicum of Ferrari, in 1627, Avas Lexicon of the chicf general Avoi'k on geography : it is alphabeti- Fcrrari. pj^]^ .^j contains 9,600 articles. The errors have been correc-ted in later editions, so that the first would proba- bly be required in order to estimate the knowledge of its author's age.'" ' Uiogr. Univ. ; Piiterton's Collection ^ Biogi-. Universclle. of Voyages and Travels. The latter does 3 Salli, xi. 418 ; lUogr. Uuiverselte. i.ot value Purchas highly for correctness. CUAP. IX. BLAEW — DAVILA — BENTIVOGLIO. 431 34. The best measure, perhaps, of geographical science, are the maps published from time to time, as perfectly Maps of for the most j)art, we may presume, as tlieir editors ^^'•"^'^• could render them. If Ave compare the map of the world in the Thealrum Orbis Terrarum sive Novus Atlas of Blaew in 1G48 with that of the edition of Ortelius published at Anv werp in 1G12, the improvements will not appear exceedingly great. America is still se})aratcd from Asia by the Straits of Anian, about lat. 60 ; but the coast to the south is made to trend awav more than before : on the N. E. coast Ave find Davis's Sea, and Estotiland has vanished to give Avay to Greenland. Canada continues to be most inaccurately laid doAvn, though there is a general idea of lakes and rivers better than in Ortelius. Scandinavia is far better, and tolera- bly correct. In the South, Terra del Fuego terminates in Cape Horn, instead of being united to Terra Australis : but, in the East, Corea appeal's as an oblong island ; the Sea of Aral is nut set doAvn, and the "Wall of China is placed north of tlie fiftieth i)arallel. India is very much too small, and the shape of the Caspian Sea is Avholly inaccurate. But a com- parison Avith the map of Ilakluyt, mentioned in our second volume, will not exhibit so much superiority of Blaew's Atlas. The lattei', hoAvever, shows more knoAvIedge of the interior country, especially in North America, and a better outline in many parts of the Asiatic coast. The maps of particular regions in Europe are on a large scale, and numerous. Speed's maps, 1 646, appear by no means inferior to those of BlacAV ; but several of the errors are the same. Considering tlie progress of commerce, especially that of the Dutch, during this half-century, we may rather be surprised at the defective state of these maps. 35. Tavo histories of general reputation Avere published in the Italian language during these fifty years : one, naviia ana of the civil wars in France by Davila, in 1 630 ; and Bentivo-iio. another, of those in Flanders by Cardinal BcntiA'oglio. Both of these had the adA"antage of interesting subjects : they had been sufficiently conversant Avith the actors to knoAv much and to judge Avell, Avithout that particular resjionsibility Avhich tempts an liistorian to prcA'arication. They Avcre both men of cool and sedate tempers, accustomed to think policy a game in Avhicli the strong play Avith the AA'eak ; obtuse, especially the former, in moral sentiment; but, on this account, not 432 MENDOZA'S WARS OF GRANADA. Pabt UL inclined to calumniate an opposite party, or to withhold admi- ration from intellectual power. Both these histories may be read over and over with pleasure : if Davila is too refined, if he is not altogether faithful, if his style wants the elegance of some older Italians, he more than redeems all this by the importance of his subject, the variety and picturesqueness of his narration, and the acuteness of his reflections. Bentivog- iio is reckoned, as a writer, among the very first of his age. 36. The history of the War of Granada, that is, the rebel- Meiidoza's ^^*^" *^^" ^^^^ Moriscos in 15G5, by the famous Diego Wars of de Mendoza, was published posthumously in 1610. Granada, j^^ j^ placed by the Spaniards themselves on a level with the most renowned of the ancients. The French liave now their first general historian, Mezeray, a writer Mezeray. esteemed for his lively style and bold sense, but little read, of course, in an age like the last or our own, which have demanded an exactness in matter of fact, and an extent of En-iish historical erudition, which was formerly unknown. historiaus. y^e now began, in England, to cultivate historical composition, and with so much success, that the present period was far more productive of such works as deserve remem- brance than a wliole century tliat next followed. But the most Enn-iish considerable of these have already been mentioned. histories. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's History of Henry VHI. ought liere to be added to the list, as a book of good authori- ty, relatively at least to any that preceded, and written in a manly and judicious spirit.^ Camden's Life of Elizabeth is also a solid and valuable history. Bacon's Life of Henry VIL is something more : it is the first instance in our lan- guage of the application of philosopliy to reasoning on pubhc events in the manner of the ancients and the Italians. Praise upon Henry is too largely bestowed : but it was in the nature of Bacon to admire too much a crafty and selfish policy ; and he tliought also, no doubt, that so near an ancestor of his own sovereign should not be treated with severe impartiality. » [I/ird Herbert's Life of Henry YlTl. lie wrote nny part is not clear. Wood'i w.vi coiuposeil with Rreat assistance from Athenx Oxonienses (UUss's edition), vol. Thomas M:isters, of a Cloncesti-rsliire iii. p. 71). — 1853.] family, who collected materials : whether Chap. K. GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE. 433 Section V. On the General State of Literature. 37. Of the Italian and other Continental universities, we have little to say beyond what may be collected from universi- the general tenor of this literary history, that they ^'*^^- contribnted little to those departments of knowledge to which we have paid most attention, and, adiiering pertinaciously to their ancient studies, were left hehind in the advance of the human mind. They were, indeed, not less crowded with scholars than before, being the necessary and prescribed road to lucrative, professions. In theology, law, and medicine, — sciences the. tv/o former of which, at least, did not claim to be progressive, — they might sustain a respectable posture : in philosophy, and even in polite letters, they were less promi- nent. 38. The English universities are, in one point of view, very different from those of the rest of Europe. Their ^ „ . 1 l30Llie:an great endowments created a resident class, neither Library teachers nor students, who might devote an unbroken *^°""'^'^'^- leisure to learning with the advantage of that command of books which no other course of life could heive afforded. It is true that in no age has the number of tliese been great; but the diligence of a few is enough to cast a veil over the laziness of many. The century began witli an extraordinary piece of ibrtune to the University of Oxford, which formed in the seventeenth century, whatever it may since have been, one great cause of her literary distinction. Sir 'Tliomas Bodley, with a munificence which has rendered his name more immor- tal than the foundation of a family could have done, bestowed on the university a library collected by him at great cost, building a magnificent room for its reception, and bequeatlicd large funds for its increase. The building was completed in 160G; and Casaubon has, very shortly afterwards, given such an account of tlie university itself, as well as of t!ie Bodleian Library, as will ])erhaps be interesting to the reader, though it contains some of those mistakes into which a stranger is apt to fall. 39. "I wrote you word," he says in July, 1613, to one of VOL. ni. 28 434 UNIVERSITT OF OXFORD. Paet m. bio correspondents, '* a month since, that I was going to Ox- . foi-d in order to visit that university and its library, Sfount'o/ of which I had heard much. Every thing proved be- Oxford. ^.Q,-,f| ^-^j expectation. The colleges are numerous, most of them very rich. The revenues of these colleges main- tain above two 'thousand students, generally of respectable parentage, and some even of the first nobility ; for what we call the habits of pedagogues {pcedagogica vit(s ratio) is not found in these English colleges. Learning is here cultivated in a liberal style-; the heads of houses live handsomely, even splendidly, like men of rank. Some of them can spend ten thousand" livres [about £1,000 at that time, if I mistake not] by the year. I much approved the mode in which pecuniary concerns are kept distinct from the business of learning.^ Many still are tbund, who emulate the liberality of their predecessors. lience new buildings rise every day; even some new colleges are raised from the foundation ; some are enlarged, such as that of Merton, over which Saville presides, and several more. There is one begun by Cardinal Wolsey, which, if it should be completed, will be worthy of the greatest admiration. But he left at his death many buildings, which he had begun, in an unfinished state, and which no one expects to see complete. None of the colleges, however, attracted me so much as the Bodleian Library, a work rather for a king than a private man. It is certain that Bodley, living or dead, must have expended 200,000 livres on that building. The ground-plot is the figure of the let- ter T. Tlie part which represents the perpendicular stem was formerly built by some prince, and is very handsome : the rest Avas added by Bodley with no less magnificence. In tlie lower i>art is a divinity school, to which perhaps nothing in Europe is comparable. It is vaulted witli pecu- liar skill. The upper story is the library itself, very well built, and fitted with an immense quantity of books. Do not imagine that such plenty of manuscripts can be found here as in the Royal Library (of Paris) : there are not a few manuscripts in England, but nothing to what the king possesses. But the number of printed books is won- derful, tuul increasing every year ; for Bodley has be- queathed a considerable revenue for that purpose. As long 1 "Res stuJiosorum ct ratinnes separatoe sunt, quotl vaUe probavi." I haw ^ven the translation which seemed host ; but I may be mistaken. Chap. IX. BODLEIAN AND CONTINENTAL LIBRARIES. 435 as I remained at Oxford, I passed whole days in the library ; for books cannot be taken out, but tlie library is open to all scholars for seven or eight hours every day. You might always see, therefore, many of these greedily enjoying tlie banquet prepared for them, which gave me no small pleasure." ^ 40. The Earl of Pembroke, Selden, and above all, Arch- bishop Laud, greatly improved the Bodleian Library. It became, especially through the munificence of that prelate, extremely rich in Oriental manuscripts. The Duke of Buckingham presented a collection made by Erpenius to the public library at Cambridge, wliich, though far behind that of the sister university, Avas enriched by many donations, and became very considerable. Usher formed the lil)rary of Tri- nity College, Dublin ; an university founded on the English model, with noble revenues, and a corporate body of fellows and scholars to enjoy them. 41. A catalogue of the Bodleian Library was published by James in 1G20. It contains about 20,000 articles, catalogue Of these, no great number tire in English, and such or isoaTeian as there are chiefly of a later date than the year ^^^'■"'^'^y- 1600: Bodley, perhaps, had been ratlier negligent of poetry and plays. The editor observes, that there were in the library three or four thousand volumes in modern Iau2;ua2;es. This catalogue is not classed, but alphabetical ; which James men- tions as something new, remarking at the same time the diificidty of classification, and that in the German catalogues we find grammars entered under the head of philosophy. One published by Draud, Bibliotheca Classica, sive Cata- logus Officinalis, Frankfort, 1625, is hardly worth mention. It professes to be a gen(;ral list of printed books ; but, as the number seems to be not more than 30,000, all in Latin, it must be very defective. About two-fifths of the whole are theological. A catalogue of the library of 8ion College, founded in 1631, was printed in 1650: it contains eight or )iine thousand volumes.- 42. The library of Leyden had been founded by the first Prince of Orange. Scaliger bequeathed his own to continental it; and it obtained the Oriental manuscripts of Golius. lii-raries. A catalogue had been printed by Peter Bertius as early as 1597.^ Many public and private libraries either now began > Casaub. Epist. 899. » In Miiseo Britannico. « Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, o. 3- 436 ITALIAN ACADEMIES. Part IH. to be formed in France, or received great accessions ; among the latter, those of the historian De Thou, and the president Seguier.' No German library, after that of Vienna, had been so considerable as one formed in the course of seve- i-al ages by the Electors Palatine at Heidelberg. It con- tained many rare manuscripts. On the capture of the city by Tilly in 1G22, he sent a number of tliese to Rome; and they long continued to sleep in the recesses of the Vatican. Napoleon, emulous of such a jirecedent, obtained thirty-eight of the Heidelberg manuscripts by the Treaty of Tolentino, which were transmitted to Paris. On the restitution of these in 1815, it was justly thought that prescription was not to be pleaded by Rome for the rest of the plunder, especially when she was recovering what she had lost by the same right of spoliation ; and the whole collection has been replaced in the library of Heidelberg. 43. The Italian academies have been often represented as Italian partaking in the alleged decline of literary spirit dur- academies, jng the first part of the seventeenth century. Nor is this reproach a new one. Boccalini, after the commencement of this period, tells us that these institutions once so famous had fallen into decay ; their ardent zeal in literary exercises and discussions having abated by time, so that, while they had once been frequented by private men, and esteemed by princes, they were now abandoned and despised by all. Tliey petition Apollo, therefore, in a chapter of his Rag- guagli di Parnasso, ibr a reform. But the god replies, that all things have their old age and decay, and as nothing can prevent the neatest pair of slippers from wearing out, so nothing can rescue academies from a similar lot ; hence he can only advise them to suppress the worst, and to supply their places by others.^ If only such a counsel were required, the institution of academies in general would not perish. And, in fact, we really tind that while some societies of this class came to nothing, as is always the case with self-consti- tuted bodies, the seventeenth century had births of its own to boast, not inferior to the older progeny of the last age. The Academy of Humorists at Rome was one of these. It arose casually at the marriage of a young nobleman of the Mancini family, and took the same line as many have done, reciting verses and discourses, or occasionally representing plays. > Jugler, Ilist. Litteraria c. 3. * Ragg. xviii. c. 1. Chap. IX. • THE LTNCEI. 437 Tlie trngedy of Demetrius, by Rocpo, one of this academy, is reckoned amonc^ tlie best of the aire. The Apatisti of Flo- rence took their name from P'ioretti, who had assumed the appellation of Udeno Nisielo, Acaderaico Apatista. The Rozzi of Siena, whom tlie government had suppressed in 1568, revived again in 1G05, and rivalled another society of the same city, the Intronati. The former especially dedicated their time to pastoral in the rustic dialect {commedia rvsH- cale), a species of dramatic writing that might amuse at the moment, and was designed for no other end, though several of these farces are extant.^ 44. The Academy Delia Crusca, which had more solid objects for the advantage of letters in view, has been mentioned in another place. But that of the Lincei, founded by Fredei-ic Cesi, stands upon a higher ground than any of the rest. Tliis young man was born at Rome in l0(S5, son of the Duke of Acqua .Sparta, a father and a family known only for their pride and ignorance. But nature had created in Cesi a philosophic mind: in conjunction with a few of similar dispositions, he gave his entire regard to science, and projected himself, at the age of eighteen, an academy, that is, a private association of friends for intellectual pur- suits, which, with reference to their desire of piercing with acute discernment into the depths of truth, he denoTuinated the Lynxes. Their device was that animal, with its eyes turned towards heaven, and tearing a Cerbei'us with its claAvs ; thus intimating that they were prepared for war against error and falsehood. The church, always suspii-ious, and inclined to make common cause with all established tenets, gave them some trouble, though neither theology nor politics entered into tlieir scheme. This eml>raced, as in their academies, poetry and elegant literature ; but physical science was their peculiar ol)ject. Porta, Galileo, Colonna, and many' other distinguished men, both of Italy and the Transalpine coun- tries, were enrolled among the Lynxes ; and Cesi is said to have framed rather a visionary plan of a general combination of philosophers, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, which should extend itself to ever}' part of Europe. The constitu- tions of this imaginary order were even published in 1G24: they are suih as could not have been realized, but, from the organization and secrecy that seem to have been their cle- • Salfi, vol. xii. 438 PREJUDICE FOR ANTIQUITY. Part Ifl. ments, might not improbably have drawn down a prosecution upon themselves, or even rendered the name of phiIoso])hy obnoxious. Cesi died in 1G30 ; and his Academy of Lynxes did not long survive the loss of their chief.^ 45. The tide of public opinion had hitherto set regularly in one direction ; ancient times, ancient learning, ancient foAnti-*^ wisdom and virtue, were regarded with unqualilied quity (li- veneration ; the very course of nature was hardly miuib c . |j^.|j(j^,(>j {q ]jq ti^g same, and a common degeneracy was thouglit to have overspread the earth and its inhabitants. This had been at its height in tlie first century after the revival of lettei-s ; the prejudice in favor of the past, always current with tlie old, who affect to dictate the maxims of experience, conspiring with the genuine lustre of classical literature and ancient history, which dazzled the youthful scholar. But this aristocracy of learning was now assailed by a new power which had risen up in sufficient strength to dispute the pre-eminence. We, said Bacon, are the true ancients : what we call the antiquity of the world was but its infancy. Tliis thought, equally just and brilliant, was c^aught up and echoed by many : it will be repeatedly found in later works. It became a question whether the moderns had not really left behind their progenitors ; and though it has been hinted, that a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther than the giant, this is, in one sense, to concede the point in dispute.''* 46. Tassoni was one of the first who combated the estah- lished prejudice by maintaining that modern times are not inferior to ancient : it well became his intrepid disposition.'' But Lancilotti, an Italian ecclesiastic, and member of several academies, pursued tliis subject in an elaborate work, intended to prove, — first, that the worhl was neither morally worse nor more afflicted by calamities than it had been ; secondly, that the intellectual abilities of mankind had not degenerated. It bears tlie general title, L'lloggidi, To-Day ; and is thi-ough- out a ridicule of those whom lie calls Hoggidiani, perpetual declaimcrs against the present state of things. He is a very copious and learned writer, and no friend to antiquity ; each chapter being entitled Disiiiganno, and intended to remove 1 Salfi, xi. 102 ; Tir.ibosclii, xi. 42, 243. in nostros \isus conversis adjioore aliquid. 2" Ac queniiulnioauin pygmjcua liu- non supcroilia tollcrc.aut parvi faccre, qui mens Kigi>nti^ iiisiilcnn loiigiiis quain '^\v^:is an to nos fucrunt, dcbeimis." — ()yprianus. piospiTOre, noquc taincn ?u K'.i?''"*"' "'"jo- Vita C'aiiipancllre, p. 15. rem habere aut sibi iiuiltuiii tribueri! po- » Salfi, 3d. 381. test, ita nos Teterum laboribus vigiliisquo Chap. IX. LANCILOTTI — HAKEWILI — BROWNE. 43ft some false prejudice. The first part of this work appeared in 1G23; the second, after the autlior's death, not till IG08. Lancilotti wrote another book, with somewhat a similar object, entitled Farfalloni degl' Antichi Istorici, and designed to turn the ancient historians into ridicule ; with a good deal of pleasantry, but chiefly on account of stories wliich no one in his time would have believed. The same groimd was taken soon afterwards by an English divine, George Hakewill, in his A))ulogy, or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of tlie World, published in 1G27. This is designed to prove, that there is not that perpetual and universal decay in nature which many suppose. It is an elaborate refutation of many absurd notions which seem to have prevailed ; some believing that even physical nature, the sun and stars, the earth and waters, were the worse for wear. A greater number thought this true of man : his age, his size, his strength, his powers of mind, were all supposed to have been deteriorated. Hakewill patiently and learnedly refuted all this. The moral character of antiquity he shoAvs to be much exaggerated, animadverting especially on the Romans. The most remarkable, and certainly the most disputable, chapters are those which relate to the literary merits of ancient and modern times. He seems to be one of the first who ventured to put in a claim for the latter. In this he anticipates AVotton, who had more to say. Hakewill goes much too far in calling Sidney's AiTadia '' nothing inferior to the choicest piece among the ancients ;" and even thinks "he should not much wrong Virgil by matching him with Du Bartas." The learning shown in this treatise is very exten- sive ; but Hakewill has no taste, and cannot perceive any real superiority in the ancients. Compared with Lancilotti, he is much inferior in liveliness, perhaps even in learning ; but I have not observed that he has borrowed any thing from the Italian, whose publication was but four years earlier. 47. Browne's Inquiry into Vulgar P^i-rors displays a great deal of erudition, but scarcely raises a high notion Browne's of Browne himself as a philosopher, or of the state of Vuig;ir physical knowledge in England. Tlie errors he in- "^*^'°' dicates are such as none but illiterate persons, we should think, were likely to hold ; and I believe that few on the Continent, so late as 1646, would have required to have them ex[)loded with such an ostentation of proof. Who did not knew thai 440 NICOLAS PEIRESC. ' Part Ol. the phoenix is a fable ? Browne was where the learned in Europe Imd been seventy years before, and seems to have been one of those who saturate tlieir minds with bad books till they have little room for any thing new tliat is bettei'. A man of so much credulity and such an irregular imagination as Browne was almost sure to believe in witchcraft and all sorts of spiritual agencies. In no respect did he go in advance of his age, unless we make an exception for his declaration against persecution. He seems to have been fond of those trifling questions which the bad taste of the school- men and their contemporaries introduced ; as whether a man has fewer ribs than a woman, whether Adam and Eve had naveks, whether Methusakdi was the oldest man ; the prob- lems of children ])ut to adults. With a strong curiosity and a real love of truth, Browne is a striking instance of a merely empirical mind : he is at sea with sails and a rudder, but without a compass or log-book ; and has so little notion of any laws of nature, or of any inductive reasoning either as to efficient or final causes, that he never seems to judge any thing to be true or false except by experiment. 48. In concluding our review of the sixteenth century, we Lifea d Selected Pinelli, as a single model of the literary characterof character, which, loving and encouraging knowledge, eiresc. -^ ^^^^ ^^^ little distinguished by any writings to fall naturally witiiin the general subject of these volumes. The period which we now bring to a close will furnish us with a much more considerable instance. Nicolas Peiresc was born in 1580, of an ancient fomily in Pi'ovence, which had for some generations held judicial offices in the Parliament of Aix. An extraordinary thirst for every kind of knowledge charac- terized Peiresc from his earliest youth ; and being of a weak constitution as well as ample fortune, though he retained, like his family, an honorable post in the parliament, his time was principally devoted to the multitarious pursuits of an enlightened scholar. Like Pinelli, he delighted in the rari- ties of art and antiquity ; but his own superior genius, and the vocation of that age towards science, led him on to a far more extensive field of inquiry. We have the life of Peireso Avritten by his countryman and intimate friend Gassendi ; and no one who has any sympathy with science or with a noble character will read it without pleasure. Few books, indeed, of that period are more full of casual information. CuAP IX. HIS CUARACTER, AND COURSE OF LIFE 441 49. Peiresc travelled much in the eai-ly part of his life: he was at RoiAe in IGOO, and came to England and Holland in 1G06. The hard drinking, even of our learned men,' disconcerted his southern stomach ; but he was repaid by the society of Camden, Saville, and Cotton. The king received Peiresc courteously, and he was present at the opening of l)arliament. On returning to his native province, he began to form his extensive collections of marbles and medals, but especially of natural history in every line. He was, perhaps, the first who observed the structure of zoopliytes, though he seems not to have suspected their animal nature. Petrifac- tions occupied much of his time ; and he framed a theory of them which Gassendi ex[)lains at length, but which, as might be expected, is not the truth. ^ Botany was among his favor- ite studies ; and Europe owes to him, according to Gassendi, the Indian jessamine, the gourd of Mecca, the real Egyptian papyrus, whicli is not that described by Prosper Alpinus. He (irst planted ginger, as well as many other Oriental plants, in an European garden, and also the cocoa-nut, from which, however, he could not obtain fruit. 50. Peiresc was not less devoted to astronomy : he had no sooner heard of the discoveries of Galileo than he set himself to procure a telescope, and had, in the course of the same year, IGIO, the pleasure of observing the moons of Jupiter. It even occurred to him that these might serve to ascertain the longitude, though he did not follow up the idea. Galileo indeed, with a still more inventive mind, and with more of mathematics, seems to have stood in the way of Peiresc. He took, as far as appears, no great pains to publish his re- searches ; contenting himself with the intercourse of literary men who passed near him, or with whom he could maintain correspondence. Several discoveries are ascribed to him by Gassendi: of their originality I cannot venture to decide. " From his retreat," says another biographer, "'Peiresc gave more encouragement to letters than any prince, more even than the Cardinal de Richelieu, who, some time afterwards, founded the French Academy. Worthy to have been called by Bayle the attorney-general of literature, he kept always on the level of progressive science, published manuscripts at hi3 own expense, followed the labors of the learned throughout Europe, and gave them an active impulse by liis ov7n aid." I Gassendi, Vita Peirescii, p 51. * i*- 147. 442 PEIRESC. Pakt 111 Scaliger, Salmasius, Holstenius, lurcher, IMersemie, Grofius. Valois, are but some of the great names of Europe whom he assisted by various kinds of liberality.^ He published nothing himself; but some of his letters have been collected. 51. The character of Peiresc was amiable and unreserved among his friends ; but he was too much absorbed in the love of knowledge for insij)id conversation. For the same reason, his biographer informs us, he disliked the society of women, g.'iiiiing nothing valuable from the trifles and scandal upon which alone they could converse.'^ Possibly the society of both sexes at Aix, in the age of Peiresc, was such as, with no excessive fastidiousness, he might avoid. In his eagerness for new truths, he became somewhat credulous ; an error not perhaps easy to be avoided, while the accumulation of facts proceeded more rapidly than the ascertainment of natui-al laws. But, for a genuine liberality of mind and extensive attainments in knowledge, very few can be compared to Peiresc ; nor, among those who have resembled him in this employment of wealth and leisure, do I know that any names have descended to posterity with equal lustre, except our two countrymen of the next generation, who approached so nearly to lus character and course of life, — Boyle and Evelyn. » Biogr. Universelle. * Gassendi, p. 219. Bin> OF VOL. m INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. By henry HALLAM, LL.D., F.R.A.S., FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE KSTITOTE OP FRANCE. VOLUIilE IV. CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME. Part IV. ON THE LITERATURE OF TUE SECOND HALF OF TUB SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATUKE LN EUROPE, FROM 1650 10 1700. James Frederic Gronovius . James Grouovius .... Gnevius Isaac Vossius Decline of German Learning Spanheim Jesuit Collcfjes in France . Port-Royal Writers: Lancelot Latin Grammars: Perizonius Delphin Editions 12 Le Fevre and the Daciers ... 13 Henry Valois. Complaints of Decay of Learning .... 14 English Learning: Diiport . . 14 Greek not much studied ... 15 Page 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 12 Page Gataker's Cinnus and Antoninus 16 Stanley's yEsciiylus 16 Otiier English Philologers . . . 16 Bentley:'^his Epistle to Mill . . 17 Dissertation on Phalaris ... 17 Disadvantages of Scholars in that Age 19 Thesauri of Grasvius and of Gro- novius 19 Fabretti 20 Numismatics: Spanlieim; Vail- lant 21 Chronology: Usher 21 Pezron 23 Marsham . 23 CHAPTER H. HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Decline of Papal Influence . . 24 l)ispute of Louis XIV. with Inno- cent XI 24 Four Articles of 1682 .... 25 Dupin on the Ancient Discipline 20 Dupiu's Ecclesiastical Library . 27 Fleur\''s Ecclesiastical History . 28 His Dissertations 23 Protestant Controversy in France 28 Bossuet's Exposition of Catholic Faith 29 His Conference with Claude . . 30 IV CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. Page Correspondence -with Jlolanus and Leibnitz 31 His A'ariations of Protestant Churclies 32 An,i;lican AVritings against Popery 33 Taylor's Dissuasive 33 Barrow; Stillingfleet .... 34 Janseniiis 34 Condemnation of his Augustinus in France 35 And at Rome 3C The Jansenists take a Distinction 36 And are persecuted 37 Progress of Arminianism ... 38 Courcelles 38 Liniborch 38 Le Clerc 39 Sancrot't's Fur Prredestinatus . . 39 Arminianism in England ... 40 Bull's Harmonia Apostolica . . 41 Hammond; Locke; Wilkins . 42 Socinians in England .... 42 Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicena; . . 43 Page Not Satisfactory to all . . . . 44 Mystics 44 Fenelou 44 Change in the Character of Theo- logical Literature 45 Freedom of many Writings . . 46 Tiiouglits of Pascal 40 Vindications of Christianity . . 51 Progress of Tolerant Principles . 52 Bavle's Philosophical Commen- taiy 53 Locke's Letter on Toleration . . 53 Fi'ench Sermons 55 Bourdaloue 56 Compared with Bossuet ... 56 Funeral Discourses of Bossuet . 56 Flcchicr 58 iMiglish Sermons: Barrow. . . 59 South 60 Tillotson 60 Expository Theology .... 61 Pearson on the Creed .... 61 Simon's Critical Histories ... 62 CHAPTER in. HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Aristotelian Metaphysics . . . C3 Their Decline. Thomas White . 64 Logic 64 Stanley's Histoiy of Philosophy . 65 Gale's'Court of Gentiles ... 66 Cudworth's Intellectual System . 66 Its Object 67 Sketch of it 67 His Plastic Nature 68 His Account of Old Philosophy . 68 His Arguments against Atheism 69 Mr.re . _ 70 (■assendi 71 His Logic 71 His Theory of Ideas 72 And of the Nature of the Soul . 72 Distinguishes Ideas of L'ctiection 74 Also Intellect from Imagination . 74 His Philosophy misunderstood by Stewart 76 Bernier's Epitome of Gassendi . 77 I'rocess of (,'artesian Philosophy . 78 La Forge; Itegis ^79 Huet's Censure of Cartesianism . 80 Port-Koyal Logic 81 JIalebrancho 84 His Style 85 Sketch of his Theory .... 85 Character of INLalebranche ... 99 Compared with Pascal .... 100 Arnauld on True and False Ideas 101 Norris 101 Pascal 103 Spinosa's Ethics 104 Its General Originality = . . . 104 View of his Metaphysical Theory 105 Spinosa's Theory of Action and Passion 114 Character of Spinosism . . . 115 Cilanvil's Scepsis Scicntifica . . 117 His I'his Ultra 120 Daluarno 121 Wilkins 123 Locke on Human Understand- ing 123 Its Merits 122 Its Detects 124 Origin of Ideas, according to Locke 125 Vague Use of the Word " Idea' 126 CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. An Error as to Geometrical Fifjiirc His Notions as to (he Soul . . And its Iniinatciiaiity .... His Love of Truth, and Origina- lity Page 129 137 138 139 Pag« Defended in two Cases .... 140 His View of Innate Ideas . . . 142 General Praise 142 Locke's Conduct of Understand- in'^ 144 CHAPTER IV. IIISTOKY OF MORAL AND rOLITICAL PIULOSOrilY AND OF /UEIS- rUUDENCE, FR03I 1650 TO 1700. Casuistry of the Jesuists . . .140 Pascal'sProvincial Letters . .140 Their Trutli questioned by some 147 Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium .. 148 Its Cliaracter and Defects . . .148 Cudwortli's Immutable Morality 149 Nicole; La Placette 150 Other Writers 100 Moral Svstcm of Spinosa . . . 151 Cumberfand's De Legibus Natun« 153 Analysis of Prolegomena . . . 154 HisTlicory expanded attenvards 157 Remarks on Cumberland's The- ory 163 Puffendorf 's Law of Nature and Nations 165 Analysis of this Work .... 1C5 Pufiendorf and Paley compared. 171 lioclietbucanlt 172 La Brujere 174 Education: Milton's Tractate . 175 Locke on Education. Its Merits 175 AudDefecU 176 Fenelon on Female Education . 181 PuHendorf 's Tlieory of Politics . 183 Politics of Spinosa 187 His Theory of a Monarchy . . 189 Amelot de la Houssaye .... 191 Harrington's (_)ceana .... 191 Patriarciia of Fihner .... 192 Sidney's Discourses on Govern- ment 103 Loclce on Government .... 194 Observations on this Treatise . 201 Avis aux iJefugiez, perhaps by Bayle 202 Political Economists 203 Mun on Foreign Trade .... 204 Cliiid on Trade 204 Locke on the Coin 205 Statistical Tracts 206 Works of Leibnitz on Roman Law 208 Civil Jurists: Godefroy; Domat 209 Noodt on Usury 210 Law of Nations: Puffendorf . . 210 CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF POETRY, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Improved Tone of Italian Poetry 211 Filicaja 211 Guidi 213 Menzini 214 Salvator Rosa; Kedi . . . . 214 Other Poets 215 Christina's Patronage of Letters 215 Society of Arcadians .... 215 La Fontaine 21G Character of his Fables. . . .216 Boilcau: his Epistles .... 217 His Art of Poetiy 218 Comparison with Horace . . .219 The Lutrin 219 General Character of his Poetry 219 Lj'ric Poetry lighter than before 220 Benserade 220 Chaulieu 220 VI CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. ect Pastoral Poetry . . Segrais Deshoulicres . . . Fontenelle .... Bad Epic Poems . . German Poetry . . Waller •Butler's Hudibras Paradise Lost: Choice of Subj Open t'j some DifHculties Its Arrangement . . Characters ot' Adam and Eve He owes less to Homer than tlio Tragedians . . . Compared with Dante Elevation of his Style His Rlindness . . . His Passion for Music Faults in Paradise Lost Its Progress to Fame Paradise Itegained . Pago 221 221 221 221 222 222 223 223 224 221 225 22G 22G 227 228 22y 230 230 230 231 Vagt Samson Agonistes 232 Diyden: his Earlier Poems . • 233 Absolom and Achitophel . . . 233 Mac Elecknoe 231 The Hind and Panther .... 235 Its singular Fable 235 Its Reasoning 230 The Fables 238 His Odes: Alexander's Feast . 237 His Translation of Virgil . . .23' Decline of Poetry from the Re- storation 238 Some Minor Poets enumerated . 238 Latin Poets of Italv 240 Ceva " 240 Sergardi 240 Of France: Quillet 241 jNIenage 241 Kapin on Gardens ..... 241 Sauteul 243 Latin Poetry in England . . . 243 CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF DRA3IATIC LITERATURE, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Italian and Spanish Drama Racine's tirst Tragedies Andromaque Britannicus Berenice Bajazct Mithridate Iphigenie Phedre Esther Athalie Racine's Female Characters . . Racine compared with Corneille Beauty of his Style Thomas Corneille: his Ariane . IManlius of La Fosse Moliere . . . L'Avare L'lkole des Femmes . . . Lo Alisanthropc Les Fennnes Savantes . . . . Tarlullb Bourgeois Gentilhomme ; George Dandin Cbaiacter of Moliero . . . . 244 244 245 24C 248 248 240 250 251 251 252 253 253 254 255 255 250 2 5 (J 257 25S 250 259 2G0 2t>l Les Plaideurs of Racino . . . Regnard : Lc Jouer His other Plays Quinaidt; Boursault Dancourt Brueys Operas of Quinault Revival of the English Theatre . Change of Public Taste . . . Its Causes Heroic Tragedies of Dryden . . His later Tragedies .'.... Don Sebastian Spanish Friar . Otway Southern Lee Congreve ('(imedies of Charles II. 's Reign \\'yclu'rley luiprovi'mentafterthc Revolution Congi'eve I.ove for I^ove His other Comedies . . . . . Farqidiar; V'aubrugh t . . . 262 202 203 263 2G4 2ti4 265 268 266 287 287 268 268 2ca 270 271 271 271 271 272 273 273 271 274 275 CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. VU CIIAPTER VII. inSTORT OF rOLITE LITEKATUUE IN PROSE, FR05I 1G50 TO 1700. Page Low State of Literature ia Italy 270 Cresciiiibeni 270 A<;e of I.ouis XIV. in France . 277 Foutuiiulle: his Cliaracter . . . 278 His Dialogues of tlie Dead . . 278 Tliose of l-'eiieion 279 Fontenellu's IMurality of Worlds 279 His History of Oracles .... 280 St. Kvrenioiul 280 IMadanie de Sevii^nd .... 281 Tl-e French Academy .... 282 French Grammars 283 Bouliours' Futretiens d'Ariste et d'Fugene 284 Attacked by Barbier d'Aucour . 285 La IManiere de Bien Penser . . 280 Kapin's Keflections on Eloquence and Poetry 287 His Parallels of Great Men . . 287 Bossu on Epic Poetry .... 288 Fontenelle's Critical Writings . 288 Preference of French Language to Latin ........ 289 General Superiority of Ancients disputed 289 Charles Perrault 289 Fontenellc 290 Boileau's Defence of Antiquity . 291 First Keviews: Journal des S^a- vans 291 Reviews established by Bayle . 293 And Le Clerc 293 Leipsic Acts 294 Layle's Thoughts on the Comet . 295 I'aga His Dictionary 295 Baillet; Morhof 29G The Ana 290 iMiglish Style in this Period . . 297 Ho'bbes 208 Cowley 299 ICvelvn 299 Dryilen 300 His Essay on Dramatic Poesy . 301 Improvements in his Style . . 301 His Critical Character .... 302 liymer on Tragedy 303 sir William Temple's Essays . 303 Style of Locke 804 Sir George ALickenzie's Essays . 304 Andrew Fletcher 304 Walton's Complete Angler . . 305 Wilkins's New World .... 305 Antiquity defended by Temple . 306 Wotton's Ketlectious .... 307 Qiievedo's Visions 307 French Heroic Komances . . . 308 Novels of Madame La Fayette . 308 Scarron's lioman Comique . . 309 Cyrano de Bergerac 310 Segrais 310 Perrault 310 Hamilton 311 Telemaque of Fenelon . . • .311 Deficiency of English Romances 312 Pilgrim's Progress 313 Turkish Spy 314 Chiefly of English Origin . . . 315 Swift's Tale of a Tub . . . 317 CHAPTER VIII. mSTORY OF PnYSICAL. AXD OTHER LITERATURE, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Reasons for omitting Mathema- tics 818 Academy del Cimento . . . .318 Royal Society 319 Academy of "Sciences at Paris . 320 State of "Chemistry 320 Becker 321 Boyle His Metaphysical Works . . . Extract Irom one of them . . . His Merits in Pliysics and Che- mistry General Character of Boyle . . Of Hooke and others . . . . 322 32:1 323 323 32.? 324 vm CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. Lemery Slow I'rogi-ess of Zoologj- . . . licibre l{a\- His Synopsis of Quadrupeds . . Merits of this Work L'edi Swanimerdam . Lister Comparative Anatomy . . . . Hotaiiy Jinii;'ius Morison Kay Kivinus Tournefort Vegetable Physiology . . . . Grew His Anatomy of Plants . . . He discovers tiie Sexual System Camerarius confirms this . . . Predecessors of Grew . . . . Maipiglii Early Notions of Geology . . . Burnet's Theory of the Earth . Other Geologists Page 325 325 32G S2G 327 327 328 328 328 329 329 329 330 331 332 333 333 333 334 334 335 335 335 330 337 Protogsea of Leibnitz . . . . Circulation of Blood established Willis: Vieussens Maipiglii Other Anatomists Medical Theories Polyglot of Walton Hottinger Spencer Bocliart Pococko . D'Herbclot Hyde Maps of the Sansons . . • . De Lisle's Map of the World . . Voyages and Travels . . . . Historians De Solis Memoirs of De Retz Bossuet on Universal History Eniilisli Historical Works . . . Burnet General Character of 17th Cen- tury Conclusion . ' Page 337 339 339 340 340 341 342 342 343 313 343 343 343 344 345 345 346 346 346 347 347 347 848 348 ISDKX 848 INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEE]STH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. PART IV. ON TIIE LITERATURE OF THE SECOND ILVLF OF THl, SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. CHAPTER I. mSTORY OP ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1650 TO 1700. Section I. Dutch Scholars — Jesuit and Jansenist Philologers — Delphin EJitions — French Scholars — English Scholars — Bentley. 1. The death of Salmusius, about the beginning of this period, left a chasm in critical literature which no james one was equal to fill. But the nearest to this giant Q^^^^J^jg of philology was James Frederic Gronovius, a na- tive of Hamburg, but drawn, like several more of his coun- trymen, to the universities of Holland, the peculiarly learned state of Europe through the seventeenth century. The prin- cipal labors of Gronovius were those of correcting the text of Latin writers : in Greek w^e find very little due to him.* His notes form an useful and considerable part of those which are collected in what are generally styled the Variorum edi- tions, published, cliiefly after 1660, by the Dutch booksellers, J Baillet, Critiques Qrammairiens, n. 648 j Blount ; Biogr. Univ. 10 DECLINE OF GERMAN LEARNING. Pakt IV. These contain selections from the older critics, some of them, especially those first edited, indifferently made, and often mutilated ; others with more attention to preserve entire the original notes. These, however, are for the most ])art only critical, as if explanatory observations were below the notice of an editor ; thougli, as Le Clerc says, those of JNIanutius on Cicero's epistles cost him much more time than modern edi- tors have given to their conjectures.^ In general, the Vario- rum editions were not greatly ])rized, with the exception of those by the two Gronovii and Graivius.'^ 2. The place of the elder Gronovius, in the latter part of James this present period, was filled by his son. James Gronovius. Qronovius, by indefatigable labor, and by a greater number of editions which bear his name, may be reckoned, if not a greater philologer, one not less celebrated 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, — Bent- ley and Burman, — he kept a high place for several years." Gi'ievius, another German, whom the Dutch universities had attracted and retained, contributed to the Va- riorum editions, chiefiy those of Latin authoi's, an erudition not less copious than that of any contemporary scliolar. o. The philological character of Gerard Vossius himself, Isaac if we might believe some partial testimonies, fell Vossius. short of that of liis SOU Isaac ; whose observations on Pomponius Mela, and an edition of Catullus, did him extraordinary credit, and liave placed him among the first philologers of this age. He was of a more lively genius, and perhaps hardly less erudition, than his father, but with a para- doxical judgment, and has certainly rendered much less service to letters.* Another son of a great father, Nicolas Heinsius, has by none been placed on a level with him ; but his editions of Prudent ius and Claudian are better than any that had preceded them. 4. Germany fell lower and lower in classical literature. r BaiUet, n. 714 CiiAP. I. TANAQUIL FxVBElt — THE DACIERS. 13 authors as well as of editors was referred to Huet, who fixed the number of the former at forty. The idea of an index, on a more extensive plan than in any earlier editions, was also due to Iluet, who had designed to fuse those of each work into one more general, as a standing historical analysis of the Latin lan"-uage.^ These editions are of very unequal merit, as might be expected from the number of persons employed; a list of whom will be found in Baillet.- 9. Tanaquil Faber, thus better known than by his real name, Tanncguy le Fevre, a man learned, animated, j^ ^^.^ not fearing the reproach of pai'adox, acquired a con- a»*^.'te siderable name among French critics by several edi- tions, as well as by otlier writings in philology. But none of his literary productions were so celebrated as his daughter, Anne Le Fevre, afterwards Madame Dacier. The knowledge of Greek, though once not very uncommon in a woman, had become ])rodigious in tlie days of Louis XIV.; and, when this distinguished lady taught Homer and Sappho to speak French prose, slie appeared a phoenix in the eyes of her countrymen. She was undoubtedly a person of very rare talents and estimable character: her translations are numer- ous, and reputed to be correct, though Niceron has obseiwed that she did not raise Homer in the eyes of those who were not prejudiced in his favor." Her husband was a scholar of kindred mind and the same pursuits. Their union was face- tiously called the wedding of Latin and Greek. But each of this learned couple was skilled in both languages. Dacier was a great translator : his Horace is perhaps the best known of his versions ; but the Poetics of Aristotle have done him most honor. The Daciers had to fight the battle of anti- quity against a generation both ignorant and vain-glorious, yet keen-sighted in the detection of blemishes, and disposed to avenge the wrongs of their fathers, who had been trampled upon by pedants, with the help of a new pedantry, that of tlie court and the mode. With great learning, they had a com- petent share of good sense, but not perhaps a suiRciently discerning taste, or liveliness enough of style, to maintain a cause tliat had so many prejudices of the world now enlisted against it.'' -o' ' Huetiana, p. 92. have been mentioned as the chef-d'auvrt ' Critiques Grammairiens, n. 605. of one whom Rentley calls faininarum 3 [It has been remarked, that her edition doctissima. — 1847. J of CaUmachuSj'rith critical notes, ought to * Baillet; Niceron, vol.iii. ; Biblioth^qut 1 4 ENGLISH LEARNING. Part IT. .10. Henry Valois might have been mentioned before for Henry Va- ^^^^ edition of Ammianiis Marcellinus, in 1636, which J?'*- , . ^ established his i:)hilolo2;ical reputation. Many other nfcu-oayof works u\ tlie same line or criticism lollovrcd. He learuiiig. jj. j^mong the great ornaments of learning in thia period. Kor was France destitute of others that did her honor. Cotelier, it is said, deserved by his knowledge of Greek to be i)laced on a level with the great scholars of former times. Yet there seems to have been some decline, at least towards tlie close of the century, in that prodigious erudition which had distinguished the preceding period. " For we know no one," says Le Clerc, about 1699, "who equals in learning, in diligence, and in the quantity of his works, tlie Scaligers, the Lipsii, the Casaubons, the vSalmasii, the IMeursii, the Vossii, the Seldens, the Gronovii, and many more of former times." ^ Though perhaps in this reflection there was some- thing of the customary bias against the present generation, we must own that the writings of scholars were less massive, and consequently gave less ap]iarent evidence of industry, than formerly. But in classical philology, at least, a better day was about to arise ; and the first omen of it came from a country not yet much known in that literature. 11. It has been observed in a former passage, that, while Enn-iish England was very far from wanting men of extensive learning: erudition, she had not been at all eminent in ancient or classical literature. The proof which the absence of critical Avritings, or even of any respectable editions, fur- nishes, app(?ars weighty; nor can it be repelled by sufficient testimony. In the middle of the centur}', James Duport, Greek professor at Cambridge, deserves honor by standing almost alone. " He appears," says a late biographer, " to have been the main instrument by whicli literature was upheld in this university during the civil disturbances of the seventeenth century ; and, though little known at present, he enjoyed an almost transcendent reputation for a great length of time among his contemporaries as well as in the generation which immediately succeeded." ^ Duport, however, has little claim to this reputation, except by translations of the writings of tliiivcr?cllc, X. 293, xxii. 170, xxiv. 241, nombro tics Piivans cVIIollandc. II n'est 2C1 ; I'iogr. Univ. plus dans co pais-li des (ions faits comme ' J'arrhasiana, vol. 1. p. 225. ".Tcvicns Jos. Scaliger, liaudiu.';, Ileinsius, Salma- d'apprcndre," says Charles I'atin in ont' of sius, et Urotius." — p. 582. his letters, "que 51. (jronovius est niort - Museum Criticum, vol. ii. p. G72 (by iiLeyden. II restoit presquc tout suul du the Bishop of Gloucester aud Bristol). Chap. 1. GREEK — GAT AKER. 15 Solomon, the Book of Job, and the Psalms, into Greek hexa- meters ; concerning which his biographer gently intimates, that '"his notions of versification were not formed in a se- vere or critical school;" and by wluit has certainly been more esteemed, his Homeri Gnomologia, which Le Clerc and Bishop JMonk agree to praise, as very useful to the stadent of Homer. Dii])ort gave also some lectures on Theophrastua about lG')(j, which were afterwards published in Needham's edition of that author. " In these," says Le Clerc, " he ex-plains words with much exactness, and so as to show that he imderstood the analogy of the language."^ "Tiiey are, upon the whole, calculated," says the Bishop of Gloucestei', " to give no unfavorable opinion of the state of Greek learn- ing in the university at that memorable crisis." 12. It cannot be fairly said, that our universities declined in general learning under the usurpation of Crom- oi.ge,. ^gt well. They contained, on the contrary, more extra- nmch ordinary men tlian in any earlier period, but not ^'" "^ ' generally Avell affected to the predominant power. Greek, however, seems not raucli to have flourished, even immediately after the Restoration. Barrow, who was chosen Greek pro- fessor in 1G60, complains that no one attended his lectures. " I sit like an Attic owl," he says, " driven out from the so- ciety of all other birds." ^ According indeed to the scheme of study retained from a more barbarous age, no knowledge of the Greek language appears to have been required from the students, as necessary for their degrees. And if we may believe a satirical writer of the time of Charles II., but one whose satire had great circulation and was not taxed with falsehood, the general state of education, both in the schools and universities, was as narrow, pedantic, and unprofitable as can be conceived.^ 13. We were not, nevertheless, destitute of men distin- guished for critical skill, even from the commencement of > nibliotheque Ciioisic. xxv. IS. about IGSO consisted of logic, ethics, natu- 5 See a bii\L;i\ipliical memoir of Barrow ral philosophy, aiij mathematics: the prefixei to IIjg'ios"s edition of his worlcs. latter branch of kno.vleige, which was This contains a sketch of studies pursued destined subsequently to "take the lead, in the Unirersity of Cambridge from the and almost S'.vallosv up the rest, had then twelfth to the seventeenth century, brief but recently become an object cf much indeed, but such as I should have been attention." — Monk's Life of Bentley, p. 6. glad to have seen before. — p. G2. Xo al- — lSi2.] teration in the statutes, so far as they ^ Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of related to study, was made after the time the Contempt of the Clergy. This little of Henry VIII. or Edward VI. tract was published in 1670, and went [" Tlie studies of the Cambridge schools through tea editions by 1693. 16 STANLEY— ENGLISH PHILOLOGERS. Fart IV tills pcriofl. The first was a very learned divine, Thomas GatM [I am inilebteil to Mr. Dyre for re- deed, appear to have been written by John miudins me, that Mill only superintended Gregory, whom Kisliop Monk calls " a man the publication of >hilala ; the prolego- of prodigious learning,"' not long before mena having been written by Ilody. the the Civil War. See a full account of this notes and Latin translation by Chilmead, edition of Malala in Life of Bentley, i. 25- In the reign of Charles I. The notes, in- — 1847-] VOL. IV. 2 18 PHALARIS. Pakt IT against Bentley.' The Cambridge giant of criticism replied in an answer which goes by the name of Bentley against Boyle. It was the first great literary Avar that had been waged in England ; and, like tluit of Troy, it lias still the pre- rogative of being remembered, after the Ej)istles of Phalaris ai'e ahr.ost as mnch l)nried as tlie walls of Troy itself. Both combatants were skilftd in wielding the sword: the arms of Boyle, in Swift's language, were given him by all the gods ; bnt liis antagonist stood forward in no such figurative strength, master of a learning to which nothing parallel had been known in England, and tliat directed by an understanding prompt, discriminating, not idly sceptical, but still farther removed from trust in authority, sagacious in perceiving cor- ruptions of language, and ingenious, at the least, in removing them ; with a style rapid, concise, amusing, and superior to Boyle in that Avhich he had chiefiy to boast, a sarcastic wit.^ 18. It may now seem extraordinary to us, even without looking at the anachronisms or similar errors which Bentley has exposed, that any one should be deceived by the Epistles of Phalaris. The rhetorical commonplaces, the cold declama- tion of the sophist, the care to please the reader, the absence of that simplicity with which a man who has never known restraint in disguising his thoughts or choosing his words is sure to express himself, strike us in the ])retended letters of this buskined tyrant, the Icon Basilice of the ancient world. But this was doubtless thought evidence of their authenticity by many who miglit say, as others have done, in a happy vein of metaphor, that they seemed " not written with a pen, but with a sceptre." The argument from the use of the common dialect by a Sicilian tyrant, contemporary with Pythagoras, is of itself conclusive, and would leave no doubt in the present da}'. • "The principal share in the iintler- thnt of scliool-boys, and not always suffi- taking fell to the lot of Attorbury : this cient to preserve them from Jistressin.t; mi^- was .sus))ecteJ at the time, ami lias Awo takes. But iirofoun'.l literature wa.s at that been plaeeil beyond all donlit by tlie pub- period confined to few, while wit and rail- iioation of a letter of his to lloyle." — lery found numerous and eajjer veader.s. Monk's T^ife of IJentloy, p. Hi). Tt may be doubtful whetlier liusby hiin- - "In point of cl.i.ssioal learnin;;, the self, by wlioui every one of the ronfede- joint stock of the confederacy bore up pro- rated band had been educated, possessed portion to that of lientley : their iii'r|uiint- kno.vled.^e which would have (lualiliod nnce .vitli several of the books upon which him to enter the lists in such a conlro- they comment appears only tb have be^jun versy.'' —Monk's l!entl(\y, p. OU. \V:ir- upon that occasion, and sometimes they burton has justly said, that I5entley by liia are indebtoil for their knowie:l;;e of them wit foiled the Oxford luea at their own to tlieir adversary ; compared with his weapons. boundless erudition, their learning was Chap. I. THESAURI OF GR.EVIUS AND GROXOYIUS. , 19i r^i 19. "It may be reraarkecl," says tlie Bishop of Gloucester, "that a scholar at that time possessed neither the aids nor the encouragements which are now presented t.'^sof'*' to smooth the paths of literature. Tlie grammars of •"'■''o'-ts in .IT- T /-I 1 1 • ,' 1 1 that ajse. the l^atni and (jreek languages were mi perfectly and erroneously taught ; and tlie critical scholar must have felt severely the absence of suliicient indexes, particularly of the voluminous scholiasts, grammarians, and later writers of Greece, in the examination of which no inconsiderable por- tion of a life might be consumed. Bentley, relying upon his own exertions and the resources of his own mind, pursued an original path of criticism, in which the intuitive quickness and subtilty of his genius qualified him to excel. In the faculty of memory, so important lor such pursuits, he has himself candidly declared that he was not particularly gifted. Conse- quently he practised throughout life the precaution of noting in the margin of his books the suggestions and conjectures which rushed into his mind during their perusal. To this habit of laying up materials in store, we may partly attribute the surprising rapidity with which some of his most important works Avere completed. He Avas also at the trouble of con- structing for his own use indexes of aiithors quoted by the principal scholiasts, by Eustathius and other ancient commen- tators, of a nature similar to those afterwards published by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Gra^ca ; which latter were the produce of the joint labor of various hands." ^ Sect. U. — Ox Antiquities. Graevius ana Gronovius — Fabretti — Numismatic AVriters — Ciironology. _ 20. The two most industrious scholars of their time, Graj- vius and Gronovius, collected into one body sucli of Ihe numerous trcajj^cs on Roman and Greek an- oZ^ylnl"^ liquities as they thought most wortliy of preserva- «"^iof . tion in an uniform and accessible work. Tliese form the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romauarum, by Grtevius, iu twelve volumes ; the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Grtecaruin, hy > Monk'8 Life of Eentley, p. 12. 20 FABRETTI. Part IV. Gronovius, in thirteen volumes ; the former published in 1694, tlie first volumes of the latter in 1697. They comprehend many of the labors of the older antiquaries already comme- morated from the middle of the sixteenth to that of the seven- teenth century, and some also of a later date. Among these, in the collection of Grtevius, are a treatise of Albeil Kubens, son of the great painter, on the dress of the Romans, particu- larly the laticlave (Antwerp, 1665), the enlarged edition of Octavius Ferrarius on the same subject, several treatises by Spanheim and Ursatus, and the Roma Antica of Nardini, published in 1666. Gronovius gave a place in his twelith volume (1702) to the very recent work of a young English- man, Potter's Antiquities, which the author, at the request of the veteran antiquary, had so much enlarged, that the Latni translation in Gronovius is nearly double in length the first edition of the English.^ The warm eulogies of Gronovius attest the merit of tliis celebrated work. Potter was but twenty-three years of age : he had of course availed himself of the writings of Meursius, but he has also contributed to supersede them. It has been said, tliat lie is less exact in attending to the difference of times and places than our finer criticism requires.- 21. Bellori, in a long list of antiquarian writings, Falconieri in several more, especially his Inscriptioncs Athleti- Fabrctti. ^^^ maintained the honor of Italy in this province, so justly claimed as her OAvn.'^ But no one has been account- ed equal to Raphael Fabretti, by judges so compet/3nt as Maffei, Gravina, Fabroni, and Visconti.* His diligence in collecting inscriptions was only surpassed by his sagacity in explai'iiing them ; and his authoi-ity has been preferred to that of any other antiquary.^ His time was spent in delving among ruins and vaults to explore th.e subterranean treasures of Liitium : no heat nor cold nor rain, nor badness of road, could deter him from these solitary peregrinations. Yet the glory of Fabretli must be partly shared with his horse._ This wise and faithful animal, named Marco Polo, had acquired, it is said, the habit of standing still, and^is it were pointing, when he came near an antiquity ; his master candidly owning 1 The fir^t caitidii of Pnttcr's Antiqui- Tcry fivonibli! binsraphcrs, — Fal)roni in ties was pu'bli-^lied in lO'JT iiud 11)98. Vitie Itnlciriim, vol. vi. ; aud Viscouti. in 2 liio'T Univ the liiof;iapliiu Univcrst-Ue. 3 SallT, vol. xi. p. 364. ' Fabroiii, ji. 187 ; Biogr. Univ. * Fabrctti's life has been written by two Chap. 1. NUMISMATICS — CHRONOLOGY. 21 that several things which would have escaped him had been detected by the antiquarian quadruped.^ Fabretti's principal works are tlu-ee dissertations on the Roman aqueducts, and one on the Trajan column. Little, says Fabroni, was known before about the Roman galleys or their naval affairs in gene- ral.^ Fabrctti was the first who reduced lapidary remains into classes, and arranged thc;m so as to illustrate each other ; a method, says one of his most distinguished successors, which has laid the foundations of the science.^ A profusion of collateral learnino; is mingled with the main stream of all his investigations. 22. No one had ever come to the study of medals with such stores of erudition as Ezekiel Spanheim. Tiie earlier Avriters on the subject, Vico, Erizzo, Ange- nuitics': loni, were not coraiiarable to him, and had rather ^p?"*^*^™! 11 1 • • c • 1 Vaillant. dwelt on the genuineness or rarity of couis than on their usefulness in illustrating history. Si)anheini's Disserta- tions on the Use of jMedals, the second improved edition of which appeared in 1G71, first connected them with the most profound and critical research into antiqnit}'.'* Vaillant, tra- velling into the Levant, brought home great treasures of Greek coinage, especially tliose of the Seleucidte ; at once enrichinn; the cabinets of the curious, and establishing histori- cal truth. Medallic evidence, in fact, may be reckoned among tliose checks upon the negligence of historians, that, having been retrieved by industrious antiquaries, have created a cautious and discerning s[)irit 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 f;\irly be proved. Jobert, in 1692, consolidated the researches of Si)anheim, Vaillant, and other numismatic writers, in his book entitled La Science des Medailles, a better system of the science than had been pub- lished.' 23. It would, of course, not be difficult to fill these pages with brief notices of other books that fall witliin the cticnoiogy: extensive range of classical antiquity. But we Usiier. have no space for more tlian a mere enumeration, which would give little satisfaction. Clironology has received some 1 Fabroni, p. 193 * Bibl. Choisio, vol. xxii. * P. 201. ^ liiogr. Uuiv. » Biogr. Univ 22 USHER — PEZRON. Part IV attention in former volumes. Our learned Archbishop Usher might there have been named, since the first part of his Annals of the Old Testament, which goes down to the year cf the world 3828, was publislied in 1G50. The second part followed in 1654. This has been the chronology generally adopted by English historians, as well as by Bossuet, Calmet, and Rolliu, so tliat for many years it might be called tho orthodox scheme of Europe. No former annals of the world had been so exact in marking dates, and collating sacred history with profane. It was therefore exceedingly conve- nient for those, who, possessing no sufficient leisure or learning for these inquiries, might very reasonably confide in such authority. 24. Usher, like Scaliger and Petavius, had stiictly con- _ formed to the Hebrew chronology in all scriptural dates. But it is well known that the Septuagint version, and also the Samaritan Pentateuch, differ greatly from the Hebrew and from each other ; so that the age of the world has nearly 2,000 years more antiquity in the Greek than in the original text. Jerome had followed the latter in the Vulgate ; and, in the seventeenth century, it was usual to maintain the incoi-rupt purity of the Hebrew manuscripts, so that when Pezron, in his Antiquite des Temps devoilee, 1687, attempted to establish the Septuagint chronology, it excited a clamor in some of his church, as derogatory to the Vulgate translation. Martianay defended the received chronology, and the system of Pezron gained little favor in that age.^ It has since become more popular, chiefly perhaps on account of the greater latitude it gives to speculations on the origin of kingdoms and other events of the early world, which are cer- tainly somcAvhat ci*amped in the common reckoning. But the Septuagint chronology is not free from its own difficulties, and the internal evidence seems rather against its having been the original. Where two must be wrong, it is possible that all three may be so ; and the most judicious inquirers into ancient history have of late been coming to the opinion, that, with certain exceptions, there ai'e no means of establishing an entire accuracy in dates before the Olympiads. While much of the more ancient history itself, even in leading and impor- tant events, is so precarious as must be acknowledged, there can be little confidence in chronological schemes. They seem, ^ Biogr. Univ., arts. " Pezion and Martianay ; " Bibliotheque Univ., xxiv. 10& Chax'. I. SIR JOHN MARSHAM. 23 however, to be very seducing, so that those who enter upon the subject as sceptics become believers in their own theory. 25. Among those who addressed their attention to particu- lar i)ortions of chronoloGfy, Sir John Marsham ought to be mentioned. In his Canon Chronicus ^gyptia- cus, he attempted, as the learned were still more prone than they are now, to reconcile conflicting authorities without rejecting any. He is said to have first started the ingenious idea, that the Egyptian dynasties, stretching to such immense antiquity, were not successive, but collateral.* Marsham fell, like many others after him, into the unfortunate mistake of confounding Sesostris with Sesac. But, in times when disco- veries that Marsham could not have anticipated were yet at a distance, he is extolled by most of those who had labored, by help of the Greek and Hebrew writers alone, to fix ancient history on a stable tbundation, as the restorer of the Egyptian annals. > Biogr. Britannica. 24 DECLINE OF PAPAL L\FLIJENCE. Pact IV CHAPTER II. HTSIOliY OF TUEOLOGICAL LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700. Section I. Papal Power limited by the Gallican Church — Dupin — Fleury — Protestant Contro- versy — Bossuet — His Assaults on Protestantism — Jansenism — Progress of Arminiauism in England — Trinitarian Controversy — Defences of Christianity — PiLscal's Thoughts — Toleration — Boyle — Loclie — French Sermons — And English — Other Theological Works. 1. It lias been observed in the last volume, that, while Decline of I'ttle OP no decline could be perceived in the general Papal Church of Rome at the conclusion of that period intiuence. ^yijjp]^ ^yg |]^g^ }^f^,] bcforc US, jct the Papal author- ity itself had lost a part of that formidable character, which, through the Jesuits and especially Bellarmin, it had some years before assumed. This was now still more decidedly manifest : the temporal power over kings was not, certainly, renounced, for Rome never retracts any thing ; nor was it perhaps without Italian Jesuits to write in its behalf: but the common consent of nations rejected it so strenuously, that on no occasion has it been brought forward by any accredited or eminent advocate. There was also a growing disposition to control the court of Rome : the treaty of Westplialia was concluded in utter disregard of her protest. But such mat- ters of history do not belong to us, when they do not bear a close relation to the warfare of the pen. Some events there were which have had a remarkable influence on the tlieological literature of France, and indirectly of the rest of Europe. 2. Louis XIV., more arrogant, in his earlier life, than Dispute of bigoted, became involved in a contest with Inno- wi'thVuiw-' cent XL, by a piece of his usual despotism and centxi. contempt of his subjects' rights. He extended in 1673 the ancient prerogative, called the regale, by which CiiAP. n. FOUR ARTICLES OF 1682. 25 the king enjoyed the revenues of vacant bishoprics, to all the Jiingdom, though many sees had been legally exempt i'roni it. Two bishops appealed to the pope, wlio interfered in their hivor more peremptorily than the times would per- mit. Innocent, it is but just to say, was maintaining the fair riglits of the cliurch, rather than any claim of his own. But the dispute took at length a different form. P'rancc was rich in prelates of eminent worth ; and among such, as is evident, the Cisalpine theories had never lain wholly dormant since the Councils of Constance and Basle. Louis convened tlie ftmious assembly of the Galilean clergy in 1G82. Bossuet, who is said to have felt some apprehensions lest the spirit of resistance should become one of rebellion, was appointed to open this assembly ; and his sermon on that occasion is among his most splendid works. His posture was indeed magnifi- cent ; he stands forward not so much the minister of religion as her ai-bitrator ; Ave see him poise in his hands earth and lieaven, and draw that boundary line which neither was to transgress; he speaks the language of reverential love towards the mother-church, that of St. Peter, and the ftiirest of her daughters to which he belongs, conciliating their transient feud : yet, in this majestic tone which he assumes, no arrogance betrays itself, no thought of himself as one endowed with transcendent influence ; he speaks for his church, and yet we feel that he raises himself above those for whom he speaks.^ 3. Bossuet was finally intrusted with drawing up the four articles, wdiich the assembly, rather at the instiga- Fourart;- tion perhaps of Colbert than of its own accord, pro- <=''-'« "f it^S2. mulgated as the Gallican Creed on the limitations of Papal authority. Tiiese declare, 1. That kings are subject to no ecclesiastical power in temporals, nor can be deposed directly or indirectly by the chiefs of the church ; 2. That the decrees of the Council of Constance as to the Papal authority are in full force, and ought to be observed ; 3. That this authority can only be exerted in conformity with the canons received in the Gallican Church ; 4. Tliat though the' pope has the principal share in determining controversies of faith, and his decrees extend to all churches, they are not absolutely final, unless tlie consent of the Catholic Church be super- added. It appears that some bishops would have willingly used stronger language ; but Bossuet foresaw the risk of an » Tliis sermon wUl be found in (Euvres de Bossuet, > oi ix. 26 DUPIN ON ANCIENT DISCIPLINE. Part IV absolute scLism. Even thus the Gallican Church ajtproached so nearly to it, that, the pope refusing the usual bulls to bishops nominated by the king according to the concordat, between thirty and ibrty sees at last were left vacant. No reconciliation was effected till 1G93, in the pontificate of Inno- cent XII. It is to be observed, wdiether the French writers slur this over or not, that the pope gained the honors of war ; the bishops, who had sat in the assembly of 1 682, writing separately letters which have the appearance of regretting, if not reti-acting, what they had done. These were, however, worded with intentional equivocation ; and, as the court of Rome yields to none in suspecting the subterfuges of words, it is plain that it contented itself with an exterior humiliation of its adversaries. The old question of the regale was tacitly settled ; Louis enjoyed all that he had desired ; and Rome might justly think herself not bound to fight for the privileges of those who had made her so bad a return.^ 4. The doctrine of the four articles gained ground perhaps T, . in the Church of France through a work of great Dupin on ... ..^^ ii* the ancient bolducss, and derivmg authority from the learnnig discipline, ^j^^^ judgment of its author, Dupin. In the height of the contest, while many were considering how far the Gal- lican Church might dispense with the institution of bishops at Rome, that point in the established system which evidently secured the victory to their antagonist, in the year 1G86, he published a treatise on the ancient discipline of tlie church. It is written in Latin, which he probably chose as less obnox- ious than his own language. It may be true, which I cannot affirm or deny, that each position in this work had been advanced before ; but the general tone seems undoubtedly more adverse to the Papal supremacy than any book which could have come from a man of reputed orthodoxy. It tends, notwithstanding a few necessary admissions, to represent almost all that can be called power or jurisdiction in the see of Rome as acquired, if not abusive, and would leave, in a practical sense, no real pope at all; mere primacy being a trifle, and even the right of interfering by admonition be- ing of no great value, when there was no definite obligation to obey. The principle of Dupin is, that, the church having * I hare derived most of this account prelates in 1693. But. wlien the Roman from Baupset's Life of Bossuet, vol. ii. legions had passed uiiiter the joke at lh« B.Hh the bishop and his hiograi)hcr shuffle Caudine Forks, they were ready to takt a good deal about the letter of the Uallican up arms again. Chap. II. DUPIX. . 27 reached her perfection in the fourth century, we should en- deavor, as far as circumstances will admit, to restore the discipline of tliat age. But, even in the Galilean Church, it has generally been held that he has urged his argument farther than is consistent with a necessary subordination to Rome.^ 5. In tlie same year, Dupin publislied the first volume of a more celebrated work, his Nouvelle Bibliotheque p,,pi„.s ^, les Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, a complete history of cipiasUcai fheological literature, at least witliin the limits of the ^ '""^' church, which, in a long series of volumes, he finally brought down to the close of the seventeenth century. It is unques- tionably the most standard work of that kind extant, what- ever deficiencies may have been found in its execution. The immense erudition requisite for such an undertaking must \»ave rendered it inevitable to take some things at second hand, or to fajl into some errors ; and we may add other causes less necessary, — the youtli of the writer in the first foluraes, and the rapidity with which they appeared. Integ- rity, love of truth, and moderation, distinguish this ecclesi- astical history, perhaps beyond any other. Dupin is often near the frontier of orthodoxy ; but he is careful, even in the eyes of jealous Catholics, not quite to averstep it. This work was soon ti-anslated into English, and furnished a large part of such knowledge on the subject as our own divines pos- sessed. His free way of speaking, however, on the Roman supremacy and some other points, excited the animadversion of more rigid persons, and among others of Bossuet, who stood on his own vantage-ground, ready to strike on every side. The most impartial critics have been of Dupin's mind ; but Bos- suet. like all dogmatic champions of orthodoxy, never sought truth by an analytical process of investigation, assuming his own possession of it as an axiom in the controversy.- 6. Dupin was followed a few years afterwards by one not his superior in learning and candor (though deficient in neither), but in skill of narration and beauty of style, — Claude 1 Bibliotheque Universelle. \\. 109. The de Bossuet, vol. xxx. Dupin seems not book is very clear, concise, and iearnej, to have held the superiority of bishops to 80 that it is worth reading througli by priests /wrs rfi'iino. which provokes the pre- thoso who would understand such mat- lateof jleaux. •' Ces grands critiques sont ters. I have not observed that it b much peu favorables aux superiorites ecclesias- quoted by English writers. tiques, et n';umeut guere plus celles del 2 Bibliotheque Universelle. iii. 33, vii. 6vequea que celle du pape." — p. 491 i35, sxii. 1^ ; Biot:r. UniTerselle : CEuvrus 28 FLEURY, Part IV FIciiry. The first volume of his Ecclesiastical Ilistoiy came j.,„„ry,g forth in 1G91 ; but a part only of tlie long series Eccirsiasti- falls \\-ithin tliis century. The learning of Fleury cai iiistory. ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^j^ ^^ ^^ frequently not original, and liis prolixity to be too great for an elementary liistorian. Tlie former is only blamable -when he has concealed liis imme- diate authorities ; few -works of great magnitude liave been written wholly from the prime sources; with regard to liia dilfuseness, it is very convenient to those who want access to the original writers, or leisure to collate tlicm. Fleury has been called by some, credulous and nncritical; but he is esteemed faithful, moderate, and more respectful or cau- tious than Dupin. Yet many of his volumes are a continual protest against the vices and ambition of the mediaeval popes ; and his Ecclesiastical History must be reckoned among the causes of that estrangement, in spirit and affection, from the court of Rome, which leavens the theological literature of France in tlie eighteenth century. 7. The Dissertations of Fleury, interspersed with his His- liis Dis- tory, were more generally read and more conspicu-; Bertations. o^,giy excellent. Concise, but neither dry nor super- ficial ; luminous, yet ajipearing simple ; philosophical without the affectation of profoundity, seizing all that is most essen- tial in their subject without the tediousness of detail or the pedantry of quotation ; written, above all, with that clearness, that ease, that unaffected purity of taste, which belong to the French style of tliat best age, — they present a contrast not only to the inferior writings on philosophical history with which our age abounds, but, in some res})ects, even to the best. It cannot be a crime that these Dissertations contain a good deal, which, after more than a century's labor in his- torical inquiry, has become more familiar than it was. 8. The French Protestants, notwithstanding their disarmed Pr-testant Condition, Avere not, I apprehend, mucli opprcssevliich IMolanus has re* course, in order to make out some pretence for his ignominious surrender. Leibnitz, Avith whom tlie correspondence broke off in 1G93, and was renewed again in 1G99, seems not (juite so yielding as the other ; and the Last biographer of Bossuet suspects, that the German philosopher was insincere or tortu- ous in the negotiation. lathis were so, he must have entered upon it less of his own accord than to satisfy tlie Princess Sophia, who, like many of her family, had been a little Avaver- ing, till our -Act of Settlement became a true settlement to their faith. This bias of the court of Hanover is intimated in several passages. The success of this treaty of union, or rather of subjection, was as little to be expected as it was desirable : the old spirit of Lutheranism was much worn out, but there must surely have been a determination to resist so unequal a compromise. Rome negotiated as a conqueror with these beaten Carthaginians ; yet no one had beaten them but themselves.' 12. The warfare of the Eoman Church may he carried on either in a series of conflicts on the various doctrines tions of '*^' wherein the reformers separated from her, or by one Protestant pjtched battle on the main question of a conclusive Churches. 1 . , . , , , t-. ^5 i authority somewhere ni the church. Bossuet s tem- per, as well as his inferiority in original learning, led him in preference to the latter scheme of theological strategy. It was also manifestly that course of argument which was most likely to persuade the unlearned. lie followed uj) the blow which he had already struck against Claude in his famous work on the Variations of Protestant Churches. Never did his genius find a subject more fit to display its characteristic impetuosity, its arrogance, or its cutting and merciless spirit of sarcasuT. The weaknesses, the inconsistent evasions, the extravagances of Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and Beza, pass,, one alter another, before us, till these great reformers seem, hke A i(;tim-prisoners, to be hewn down by the indignant prophet. Tiiat Bossuet is candid in statement, or even iaith- ful in quotation, I should nnicli doubt : he gives tlie words of his adversaries in his own Frencli; and the references are not made to any specified ethtion of their voluminous writings. The main point, as he contends it to be, that the Protestant churches (ibr he does not confine this to persons) fluctuated » CEuvrcs de Bosptiet, vols. xxv. and xxvi. Chap. II. TAYLOR'S DISSUASIVE. S3 much in tlie sixteenth century, is sufficiently proved ; but it remained to show that tiiis was a reproach. Those who have taken a different vieAV from Bossuet may perhaps think tliat a little more of this censure would have been well incurred ; lliat they have varied too little, rather than too much ; and that it is tar more ditlieult, even in controversy with the Ciiurch of Rome, to withstand the inference which their lonir creeds and confessions, as well as the lan2;uaire too common with their theologians, have furnished to her more ancient and catholic claim of infallibility, than to vindicate those successive varia- tions wlueh are analogous to the necessary course of human reason on all other subjects. The essential fallacy of Roman- ism, that truth must ever exist visibly on earth, is implied in the whole strain of Bossuet's attack on the variances of Pro- testantism : it is evident that variance of opinion proves error somewhere ; but, unless it can be shown that we have any certain method of excluding it, this should only lead us to be more indulgent towards the judgment of others, and less confident of our own. The notion of an intrinsic moral criminality in religious error is at the root of the whole argu- ment ; and, till Protestants are well rid of this, there seems no secure mode of withstanding the effect wliich the vast weight of authority asserted by the Latin Church, even where it has not the aid of the Eastern, must produce on timid and scru- pulous minds. 13. In no period has the Anglican Church stood up so powerfully in defence of the Protestant cause as in . ,. that before us. From the era of the Restoration to -n-ruings the close of the century, the war was unremitting p"'""^ and vigorous. And it is particularly to be remarked, tliat the principal champions of the Church of England threw off that ambiguous syncretism which had displayed itself under the first Stuarts, and, comparatively at least with their immediate predecessors, avoided every admission which might facilitate a deceitfid compromise. We can only mention a few of the writers who signalized themselves in this contro- versy. 14. Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery was published in IGGl; and, in this his latest work, Ave find the same Taylor's general strain of Protestant reasoning, the same re- ^''^suasive. jection of all but scriptural autliority, the same free exposure of the inconsistencies and hJlacies of tradition, the same ten- VOL. IV. 8 54 BARROW— STILLINGFLEET—JANSENICS. Pakt IV. deucy to excite a sceptical feeling as to all except the primary doctrines of religion, which had characterized the Liberty of Pi'ophesying. Tiiese are mixed, indeed, in Taylor's manner, ■with a few passages (they are, I think, but few), whicli, singly taken, might seem to breathe not quite this spirit ; but the tide flows for the most part the same way, and it is evident that his mind had undergone no change. The learning in all his writings is profuse; but Taylor never leaves me with the impression that he is exact and scrupulous in its application. In one part of this Dissuasive from Popery, having been re- proached with some inconsistency, he lias no scruple to avow, that, in a former work, he had employed weak arguments for a iaudable pui-pose.^ 15. Barrow, not so extensively learned as Taylor, who had Barrow; read rather too much, but inferior perhaps even in stiiungfleet. ^i^^^ respect to hardly any one else, and above him in closeness and strength of reasoning, maintained the combat against Rome in many of his sermons, and especially in a long treatise on the Papal supremacy. Stillingfleet followed, a man deeply versed in ecclesiastical antiquity, of an argu- mentative mind, excellently fitted for jiolemical dispute, but perhaps by those habits of his life rendered too much of an advocate to satisfy an impartial reader. In the critical reign of James II., he may be considered as the leader on the Pro- testant side ; but Wake, Tillotson, and several more, would deserve mention in a fuller history of ecclesiastical literature. 16. The controversies always smouldering in the Church of Rome, and sometimes breakinsr into flame, to which Jansemus. » • t-, i • • • ,. » • , , . . the Anti-Pehigian writmgs of Augustm had origi- nally given birth, have been slightly touched in our former volumes. It has been seen, that the rigidly predestinarian theories had been condemned by the court of Rome in Baius ; that the opposite doctrine of Molina had narrowly escaped censure; that it was safest to abstain from any language not verbally that of the church or of Augustin, whom the church held inconti'overtible. But now a more serious and celebrated controversy, that of the Jansenists, pierced as it were to the heart of the church. It arose before the middle of the cen- tury. Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, in his Augustinus, pub- 1 Taylor's Works, x. 304. This is not argument'! ami authorities in controversf gurprising. as in his Buctor Dubitautium, wliich we do uot believe to ba TaiiU. si. 484, he uiaiutains the right of using Chap. II. JANSENIUS. S.*^ lished after his death in 1640, gave, as he professed, a faithful statement of the tenets of that father. " We do not inquire," he says, " what men ought to believe on the powers of human nature, or on the grace and predestination of God, but what Augustin once preached with the apitrobation of tlie church, and has consigned to wi-iting in many of his Avorks." This book is in three parts : the iirst containing a history of the Pelagian controversy ; the second and third, an exposition of the tenets of Augnstin, Jansenius does not, however, confine himself so much to mere analysis, but that he attacks the Jesuits Lessius and Molina, and even reflects on the bull of J'ius V. condemning Baius, which he cannot wholly approve.^ 17. Richelieu, who is said to have retained some animosity against Jansenius on account of a book called Mars Gallicus, which he had written on the si signed by the clergy, condenuiing the propositions of Jausonius, whicli was finally establisiied in IGGl ; and those who refused, even nuns, under- went a harassing persecution. The most striking instance nf this, which still retains an historical character, Avas the dis- solution of the famous convent of Port-Royal, over which Angelica Arnauld, sister of the great advocate of Jansenism, had long presided with signal reputation. This nunnery Avas at Paris, having been removed in 1 G44 from an ancient Cis- tei'tiau convent of the same name, about six leagues distant, and called, for distinction, Port-Royal des Champs. To this now unfrequented building some of the most eminent men re paired for study, whose writings being anonymously published have been usually known by the name of their residence. Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Lancelot, De Sacy, are among the Messieurs de Port-Royal, an appellation so glorious in tlie seventeenth century. The Jansenists now took a distinction very reasonable, as it seems, in its nature, between the authori ty whicli asserts or denies a })roposition, and that which doe> the like as to a fact. They refused to the pope, that is, it this instance, to the church, the latter infallibility. We can not prosecute this part of ecclesiastical history farther: it writings of any literary importance had been produced by th( controversy, they would demand our attention ; but this does not appear to have been the case. The controversy between Arnauld and JNIalebranche may perhaps be an exception. The latter, carried forward by liis original genius, attempted to deal Avith the doctrines of theology as Avith metaphysical problems, in his Traite de la Nature et de la Grace. Arnauld animadverted on this in his Reflexions Philosophiques et Theologiques. Malebranche replied in Lettres du Pere Male- branche a im de ses Amis. This Avas published in 1G8G ; and the controversy between such eminent masters of abstruse reasoning began to excite attention. Malebranche seems to have retired first from the field. His antagonist had great advantages in the dispute, according to received systems of 38 CODRCELLES — LniBOECH. Part IV theology, -wifh which he was much more conversant, and per haps, ou the whole, in the philosopliieal part of the question This, however, cannot be reckoned entirely a Jansenistic con- troversy, though it involved those perilous ditiiculties which had raised that flame.* 21. The credit of Augustin was now as much shaken in ProKress of ^^^*^ Protcstant as in the Catholic regions of Europe. Armjnian- Episcopius had given to the Remonstrant party a '*'"■ reputation which no sect so inconsiderable in its sepa- rate character has ever possessed. The Dutch Arminians were at no time numerous ; they took no hold of the people i they had few churches, and, though not persecuted by the now lenient policy of Holland, were still under the ban of an ortho- dox clergy, as exclusive and bigoted as before. But their writings circulated over Europe, and made a silent impression on the adverse party. Tt became less usual to bring forward the Augustinian hypothesis in prominent or unequivocal lan- guage. Courcelles, born at Geneva, and the succcs- cource es. ^^^^ ^^ Episcopius in the Remonstrant congregation at Amsterdam, with less genius than his predecessor, had per- haps a more extensive knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity. His works were much in esteem with the theologians of tiiat way of thinking ; but they have not fallen in my way. 22. Limborch, great-nephew of P^piscopius, seems, more than any other Arminian divine, to have inherited l.is Limborch. jjj^^j-,tig j^jg j^^^^ important work is the Theologia Ciiristiana, containing a system of divinity and morals, in seven books and more than 1)00 pages, publishcd^in 108G. It is the fullest delineation of the Arminian scheme ; but as the Arminians were by their principle free inquirei-s, and not, like other churches, bondsmen of symbolical formulaiics, no one book can strictly be taken as their representative. The tenets of Limborch are, in the majority of disputable points, such as impartial men have generally tbund in tlie primitive or Ante- Nicene lathers ; but in some he ])robably deviates from them, steering far away from all that the Protestants of the Swiss reform had abandoned as superstitious or imintelligiblc. 23. John Le Clerc, in the same relationship to Courcelles that Limborch Avas to Episcopius, and like him transj)lantca from Geneva to the more libend air, at that time, of the United 1 An account of this controversy will be found at length in the second volume of the Biblioth^que UniverseUf Chap. II. LE CLERC — SANCROFT. 39 Provinces, claims a lii,2;h place among the Dutcli Arminians ; for, tliou"^h he did not maintain their cause either in systematic or polemical writings, his commentary on the Old Testament, and still more his excellent and celebrated reviews, the Bibliotheqnes Universelle, Clioisie, and Ancienne et JModerne, must be reckoned a perpetual combat on tlK«t side. These journals enjoyed an extraordinary influence over Europe, and deserved to enjoy it. Le Clerc is generally tem- perate, judicious, appeals to no passion, displays a very exten- sive though not perhaps a very deep erudition, lies in wait for the weakness and temerity of those he reviews ; thus some- times gaining the advantage over more learned men than himsLdf. He would have been a perfect master of that sort of criticism, then newly current in literature, if he could have repressed an irritability in matters personal to himself, and a degree of prejudice against the Romish writers, or perhaps those styled orthodox in general, which sometimes disturbs the phlegmatic steadiness with which a good reviewer, like a practised sportsman, brings down his game.' 24. The most remarkable progress made by the Arminian theology was in England. This had begun under g^^p^oft-s James and Charles ; but it was then taken up in Fur I'rae- conjunction with that patristic learning which adopt- ^«*'">'^'"* cd the fourth and fifth centuries as the standard of orthodox faith. Perhaps the first very bold and unambiguous attack on ' Bishop Monk observes, that Lc Clerc he did not well understand ; but this can- " seems to have beeu the first person who not warrant scornful language towards so Hnderstnod the power which may be I'xor- general a scholar, and one who served cised over literature by a reviewer." — Life literature so well. That he made himself of Beutley, p. '21)9. This may be true, a despot in the republic of letters by a especially as he was ncsarly tiie first re- system of terror is a charge not made out, viewer, and certainly better than his pre- as it seems to me, by the general character decessors. IJut this remark is followed by of Le Clerc 's criticisms, which, where lie a sarcastic animadversion upon Le'Cierc's has no personal quarrel, is temperate and ignorance of Greek metres, and by the moderate), neither traducing men nor im- severe assertion, that, "by an ab.soluto puting motives. I adhere to the character eystemof terror, he made hunselfii despot of his reviews given in the text; and in the republic of letters."' having early in life become ac(iuiinte,l [The former is certainly just: Le Clerc with them, and having been accustome 1, was not comparalile to Bentley, or to by books then esteemed, to think higlil,- many who Ir.ive followed, in hi.s critical of Le Clerc, I must be excu.sed froi.i f )1- knowledge of Greek metres : which, .at the lowing a change of fashion. This uot(^ h is present day, would be held very cheap, beeu modified on the complaint of tliu He is, however, to be judged relatively learned prelate quoted in it. whom I had to his predecessors ; and, in the particular not the slightest intention of offending, but departmeut of metrical rules, few had who might take .some expres.sions, with known much more than he did ; as we respect to perioilical criticism, as personal may perceive by the Greek compositions to himself; whicii neither were .so nie:iDt, of Citsaubou and other eminent scholars, nor, as far as T know, could apply to any Le Clerc might have been more prudent reputed writings of his compositioD — ji abstaining fioni interference with what 1847 40 ARMINIANISM. Part IY. tlie Calvinistic system -u'liicli we sliall mention came from this quartei*. This was in an anoymous Latin pamphlet entitled Fur Pra3clestinatu>, published in IGol, and generally ascribed to Sancroft, at that time a young man. It is a dialogue between a thief under sentence of death and his attendant minister, wherein the former insists upon his assurance of being predestinated to salvation. In this idea there is nothing but what is sufficiently obvious ; but the dialogue is conducted with some spirit and vivacity. Every position in the thief's mouth is taken from eminent Calvinistic writers ; and what is chiefly worth notice is, that Sancroft, for the first time, has ventured to arraign the greatest heroes of the Reformation ; not only Calvin, Beza, and Zanchius, but, who had been hith- erto spared, Luther and Zwingle. It was in the nature of a manifesto from the Arminiau party, that they Avould not defer in future to any modern authority.^ . 25. The loyal Anglican clergy, suffering persecution at the , . . hands of Calvinistic sectaries, miijht be naturally ism ia expected to cherish the opposite principles. These ngan . ^^.^ manifest in the sermons of Barrow, rather per- haps by his silence than his tone, and more explicitly in those of South. But many exceptions might be found among lead- ing men, such as Sanderson ; while in an opposite quarter, among the younger generation who had conformed to the times, arose a more formidable spirit of Arminianism, which changed the face of the English Church. This was displayed among those who, just about the epoch of the Restoration, were denominated Latitude-men, or more commonly Latitudi- narians, trained in the principles of Episcopius and Chilling- worth ; strongly averse to every compromise with Popery, and thus distinguished from the high-church party ; learned rather in profane philosophy than in the fa'thers ; more full of Plato and Plotinus than Jerome or Chrysostom; great maintainers of natural religion, and of the eternal laws of morality ; not very solicitous about systems of orthodoxy, and limiting very con- siderably beyond the notions of former ages the fundamental ' The Fur Prfrjpstin.itus is reprinted in nitz informs us Uiat it is a translation D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft. It is muc'i the from a Dutch tract, published at the be- best proof of ability that the ■worthy arch- ginning of tlie ,\rniinian controversy, bishop ever pave. liaylc. lie says, was not aware of tliis, and [The superiority of this little piece to quotes it as written in I'^nglish. Theodi- •ny tiling else ascribed to Sancroft is easily cea, sect. 1()7. Sancmft, as appears by explained. It was not his own ; of which D"0yly \s Life of him, was in Ilo'land from his biographers have been ignorant. Leib- 1657 to 1G59. — 1853.] Chap. II. BULL. 41 tenets of Christiiinity. This is given as a general character, but varying in the degree of its application to particular per- son?. IJurnet cnumorates as the chief of this body of men, More, C'udworth, "Whichcot, Tillotson, Stillingflcet ; eonie, especially the last, more tenacious of the authoHty of the lathers and of the church than others, bt;t all concurring in the adoption of an Arminiau theology.^ This became so pre- dominant before the Ivevolution, that few English divines of eminence remained -who so much as endeavored to steer a middle coin-sc, or to dissemble their renunciation of the doc- trines Avhich had been sanctioned at the Synod of Dort by the delegates of their church. " The Theological Institutions of Episcopius," says a contemporary write)-, " were at that time (IG80) generally in the hands of onr students of divinity in both universities, as the best system of divinity that had appeared."- And he proceeds afterwards: "The Remon- strant writers, among whom there were men of excellent learning and parts, had now ac(iuired a considerable reputa- tion in our miiversities by the means of some great men anion"- us." This testimony seems irresistible ; and as, one hundred years before, the Institutes of Calvin were read in the same academical studies, we must own, unless Calvin and Episcopius shall be maintained to have held the same tenets, that Bossuet might have added a chapter to the Variations of Protestant Churches. 26. The methods adopted in order to subvert the Augus- tinian theology were sometimes direct, by explicit ^^,,.3 controversv, or by an opposite train of scriptural iiarmonia •i . *^ 1 • n Apostolica. niterpretation m regular connnentaries ; more tre- quently perhaps indirect, by inculcating moral duties, and especially by magnifying the law of nature. Among the first class, the Harmonia Ajjostolica of Bull seems to be reckoned the principal work of this period. It was published in 1G69, and was fiercely encoimtered at first not merely by the Pres- byterian party, but by many of the church ; the Lutheran tenets as to justification by faith being still deemed orthodox. Bull establishes as the groundwork of his harmony between the apostles Paul and James, on a subject where their lan- guage appai'eutly clashes in terms, that we are to interpret 1 Burnefs History of UU Own Times, i. 187 ; Account of the new Sect called LatituUinarians. in the colieofiuu of tracts entitled The Phuenix, vol. ii. p. 499. 3 Nelsoa's Life of Bull, in Lull's Works, Tol. viii. p. 257. 42 HAMMOND — LOCKE — WILKINS. Part TV St. Paul by St. James, and not St. James by St. Paul; because the latest autliority, and that which may be presumed to have explained wliat was obscure in the former, ought to prevail,' — a rule doubtless applicable in many cases, what- ever it may be in this. It at least turned to his advantage ; but it was not so easy for him to reconcile his opinions with those of tlie reformers, or with the Anglican articles. 27. The Paraplirase and Annotations of Hammond on the iiimmond- ^6"^^ Testament give a different color to the Epistles lioeko; of St. Paul from that which they display in the ' ^'"^' hands of Beza and the other theolo2;iaus of the six- teenth century ; and the name of Hammond stood so high with the Anglican clergy, that he naturally turned the tide of interpretation his own way. The writings of Fowler, Wil- kins, and Whichcot, are chiefly iutended to exhibit the moral lustre of Christianity, and to magnify the importance of vir- tuous life. Wilkins left an unfinished work on the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion. Twelve chapters only, about half the volume, were ready for the press at his death : the rest was compiled by Tillotson as well as the materials left by the author would allow ; and the expressions employed lead us to believe that much was due to the editor. The latter's preface strongly presses the separate obligation of natural religion, upon which ])oth the disciples of Ilobbes, and many of the less learned sectaries, were at issue with him. 28. We do not find much of importance written on the Tri- Socinians in nitarian controversy before the middle of the sevcn- Kagiand. tecntli ccutury, except by the Socinians themselves. But the case was now very different. Though the Polish or rather German Unitarians did not produce more distinguished men than before, they came more forward in the field of dis- pute. Finally expelled from Poland in IGGO, they sought refuge in more learned as well more tolerant regions, and especially in the genial soil of religious liberty, — the United Provinces. Even here they enjoyed no avowed toleration but the pi'ess, with a very sliglit concejilment of place, under the attractive words Eleutheropolis, Irenopolis or Freystadt, was ready to scn-ve them with its natural impartiality. They began to make a slight progress in England ; the writings of Biddle were such as even Cromwell, though habitually tole- rant, did not ovei'look ; the author underwent an imprisonment * Nelson's Life of Bull. Chap. II. BULL'S "DEFENCE." 43 both at that time and after the Restoration. In general, the Unitarian writers preserved a disguise. Milton's treatise, not long since bronglit to light, goes on the Arian hypothesis, whicli had probably been countenanced by some others. It became connnon, in the reign of Charles II., for the English divines to attack the Anti-Trinitarians of each denuniination. 29. An epoch is sui)posed to liave been made in this contro- versy by tlie famous work of Bull, Defensio Fidei BuirsDe- Nicenai. This was not primarily directed against (v."*'" *''Jo» the heterodox party. In the Dogmata Theologica of Petavius, published in 1G44, that learned Jesuit, laboriously compiling passages from the fathers, had come to the con- clusion, that most of those before the Nicene Council had seemed, by their language, to run into nearly the same heresy as that which the council had condemned; and this inference appeared to rest on a long series of quotations. The Armi- nian Courcelles, and even the English philosopher Cudworth, the latter of whom was as little suspected of an heterodox lean- ing as Petavius himself, had arrived at the same result ; so that a considerable triumph was given to the Arians, in which the Socinians, perhaps at that time more numerous, seem to have thought themselves entitled to partake. Bull had, there- fore, to contend with authorities not to be despised by the learned. 30. The Defensio Fidei Nicena; was published in 1G85. It did not want answerers in England ; but it obtained a gi'eat veinitation ; and an assembly of the French clergy, through the inlluence of Bossuet, returned thanks to the author. It was indeed evident, that Petavius, though he had certainly formed his opinion with perfect honesty, was preparing the way for an inlerenc(!, that, if the primitive fathers could be heterodox on a point of so great magnitude, we must look for infallibility, not in tliem nor in the diffusive church, but in general coun- cils presided over by the pope, or ultimately in the pope him- self. This, though not unsuitable to the notions of some Jesuits, was diametrically o])posite to the principles of tho Galilean Church, which professed to repose on a perpetual and catholic tradition. 31. Notwithstanding the popularity of this defence of the Nicene faith, and the learning it displays, the author was far from ending the controversy, or from satisfying all his read- ers. It was alleged, that he does not meet the questioa with 44 MYSTICS — FE2^EL0N. Pakt IV which he deals ; that the word dfioovmor, being almost new Noi satis- "* ^^'^ ^^^^ ^'^ ^'^^ council, and being obscure and factory mctaphysical in itself, required a precise definition to make the reader see his way before him, or. at least, one better than Bull has given, which tlie adversarj' might probably adopt witliout much scruple ; that tlie passages adduced from the fathers are often insufficient for his purpose, that he confounds the eternal essence with the eternal per- sonality or distinctness of the Logos, though well aware, of course, that many of the early writers employed different names (IvdiuOeTor and Tcpo(popLKo^') for these ; and that he does not repel some of the passages which can hardly be^r an ortliodox interpretation. It was urged, moreover, that his own hypo- thesis, taken altogether, is but a palliated Ananism ; that bi' insisting, for more than one hundred pages, on ih*^, subordina- tion of the Son to the Father, he came close vo what since has borne that name, though it might not be precisely what had been condemned at Kice, and could not be reconciled with the Athanasian Creed, except by such an interpretation of the latter as is neither probable, nor has been reputed orthodox. 32. Among the theological writei-s of the Eoman Church, jj . and, in a less degree, among Protestants, there has always been a class, not inconsiderable for numbers or for influence, generally denominated mystics, or, when their lanfruajre has been more unmeasured, enthusiasts and fanatics. These may be distinguished into tAvo kinds, though it must readily be understood that they may often run much into one another, — the first believing that the soul, by immediate communion with the Deity, receives a peculiar illu- mination and knowledge of truths not cognizable by the under- standing ; the second less solicitous about intellectual than moral light, and aiming at such pure contemplation of the attributes of God, and such an intimate perception of spiritual Jife, as may end in a sort of absorption into the divine essence. But 1 should not probably have alluded to any writings of _ , this description, if the two most conspicuous lumina- ries of the ri-encli Church, liossuet aiul r enelon, liad not clashed with each other in that famous controversy of Quietism, to which the enthusiastic writings of IMadame Gnyon gave birth. The " Maximes des Saints " of Fenelon I have never seen : some editions of his entire works, as Chap. II. CHANGE IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 45 they affect to be, do not inckide what the eliiirch has cou- deiniied ; and the orlghial book has probably become scarce.^ Feiielon appears to have been treated by his friend, (shall we call him?) or rival, Avith remarkable harshness. Bossnet niiprllt have felt some jealousy at the rapid elevation of the Arclibishop of Cambray : but we need not have recourse to this ; the ricjor of orthodoxy in a temi)er like his will account for all. There could be little doubt but that many saints honored by the church had uttered things quite as strong as any that Fenelon's work contained. Bossnet, however, suc- ceeded in obtaining its condemnation at Rome. Fenelon was of the second class above mentioned among the mystics, and seems to have been absolutely free from such pretences to illumination as we find in liehmen or Barclay. The pure, disinterested love of God was the main-spring of his reli- gious theory. The Divine Qv'onomy of Poiret, 1686, and the writings of a German Quietist, Spener, do not require any particular mention.- 33. This latter period of the seventeenth century was marked by an increasing boldness in religious inquiry : we change in find more disregard of authority, more disposition *|.'^'^"|.'t',![^^' to question received tenets, a more suspicious criti- io;,'icai cism both as to the genuineness and the credibility ^"'-■'^^"i''e- of ancient writings, a more ardent love of truth, that is, of per- ceiving and understanding wliat is truth, instead of presuming that we possess it without any understanding at all. Much of this was associated, no doubt, with the other revolutions in literary opinion ; with the philoso})hy of Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Ilobbes, Bayle, and Locke ; Avith the spirit which a slightly learned yet acute generation of men rather conver- sant with the world than with libraries (to whom the appeal in modern languages must be made) was sure to breathe ; with that incessant reference to proof which the physical sciences taught mankind to demand. Hence quotations are compara- tively rare in the theological writings of this age : they are better reduced to their due office of testimony as to fact, some- times of illustration or better statement of an argument, but not so miicli alleged as argument or authority in themselves. Even those who combated on the side of established doctrinea wei-e compelled to argue more from themselves, lest the pub- ' fit is rc'iJi-intcd in tU<' cJition of Tenelou's worlcs, Versailles, 1820. — 1847.] * Bibl. UniverseUo, v. 412, xvi. 224. 46 THOUGHTS OF PASCAL. Pam IV. lie, their umpire, should reject, with an opposite prejudice, what had enskived the prejudices of their fathers. 34. It is well known, that a disbelief in Christianity became ^ , very frequent about this time. Several books, more ofmanj- Or Icss, appear to indicate this spirit; but the cliargo. witiDgs. Yms, often been made witli no sufficient reason. Of Hobbes enough has been already said, and Spinosa's place as a metapliysician will be in the next chapter. His Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, published anonymously at Amsterdam, Avith tlie false date of Hamburg, in 1G70, contains many ob- servations on the Old Testament, Avhich, though they do no- really affect its general authenticity and truth, clashed with the commonly received opinion of its absolute inspiration. Some of these remarks were, if not borrowed, at least repeat- ed in a book of more celebrity, Sentiments de quelques Theologiens d'HoUande sur I'liistoire Critique du Perc Simon.° This work is written by Le Clerc ; but it has been doubted whether he is the author of those acute but hardy questions on the inspiration of Scripture which it contains. They must, however, be presumed to coincide for the most ])art with his own opinion ; but he has afterwards declared his dissent from the hypothesis contained in these volumes, that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. The Archajo- logia Philosophica of Thomas Burnet is intended to dispute the literal history of the creation and f\dl. But few will pretend that either Le Clerc or Burnet were disbelievers in revelation. 35. Among those who sustained the truth of Christianity Thoughts by argument rather than authority, the first place ofi'aTeai. ]yQ([^ i,^ oi'dcr of time and of excellence is due to Pascal, though his Thoughts were not published till 1G70, some years after his death, and, in the first edition, not without suppressions. Tliey have been supposed to be frag- ments of a more systematic work that he had planned, _ or pcrhiips only reflections committed to paper, with no design of publication in their actual form. But, as is generally the case with works of genius, we do not easily persuade our- selves that they could have been improved by any such altera- tion as would have destroyed their type. They are at present bound together by a real coherence through the piedoniinant character of the reasonings and sentiments, and give us every tiling that we could desire in a more regular Chap. II PASCAL. 47 treatise without the tedious verbosity which regularity is apt to produce. The style is not so polished as in the Provincial Letters, and the sentences are sometimes ill constructed and elliptical. Passages almost transcribed from Montaigne hav" been published by careless editors as Pascal's. oG. But the Thoughts of Pascal are to be ranked, as a monument of his genius, above the Provincial Letters, though some have asserted the contrary. They burn with an intense light ; condensed in expression, sublime, energetic, rajjid, they hurry away the reader till he is scarcely able or willing to distinguish the sopliisms from the truth which they contain. For tliat many of them are incapable of bearing a calm scru- tiny is very manifest to those who apjdy such a test. The notes of Voltaire, though always intended to detract, ar3 sometimes unanswerable ; but the splendor of Pascal's elo- quence absolutely annihilates, in effect on the general reader, even this antagonist. 37. Pascal had probably not read very largely, which has given an ampler sweep to his genius. Except the Bible and the writings of Augustin, the book that seems most to have attracted him was the Essays of Montaigne. Yet no men could be more unlike in jjersonal dispositions and in the cast of their intellect. But Pascal, though abhorring the religious and moral carelessness of Montaigne, found much that fell in with his own reflections in the contempt of human opinions, the perpetual humbling of human reason, which runs through the bold and original work of his predecessor. He quotes no book so frequently ; and indeed, except Epictetus, and once or twice Descartes, he hardly quotes any other at all. Pascal was too acute a geometer, and too sincere a lover of truth, to countenance the sophisms of mere Pyrrhonism ; but, like many theological writers, in exalting faith he does not always give reason her value, and furnishes weapons which the sceptic might employ against himself. It has been said that he denies the validity of the proofs of natural religion. Tliis seems to be in some measure an error, founded on mistaking the objections he puts in the mouths of unbelievers for his own. But it must, I think, be admitted that his arguments for the being of a God aie too often a tutiori, that it is the safer side to take. S8. The Thoughts of Pascal on miracles abound in proofs oi his acuteness and originality; an originality much more 48 PASCAL. Part IV. striking when we recollect that the subject had not been discussed as it has since, but with an intermixture of some sophistical and questionable positions. Several of them have a secret reference to tlie famous cure of his niece, JMaderaoi- BcUe Perier, by tlie holy thorn. But he is embarrassed with the difficult question wliether miraculous events are sure tests of the doc-trine which they support, and is not wholly consist- ent in his reasoning, or satisfactory in his distinctions. I am unable to pronounce whether Pascal's other observations on the rational proofs of Christianity are as original as they are frequently ingenious and powerful. o'J. But the leading principle of Pascal's theology, that from Avhich he deduces the necessary truth of revelation, is the fallen nature of mankind ; dwelling less upon scriptural proofs, which he takes for granted, than on the evidence which he supposes man himself to supply. Nothing, how- ever, can be more dissimilar than his beautiful visions to the vulgai' Calvinism of the pulpit. It is not the sordid, grovel- ling, degraded Caliban of that school, but the ruined arch- angel, that he delights to paint. Man is so great, that his greatness is manifest even in his knowledge of his own misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that to know we are miserable is misery ; but still it is greatness to know it. All his misery proves his greatness : it is the misery of a great lord, of a king, dispossessed of their own. Man is the feeblest branch of nature, but it is a branch that thinks. He requires not the universe to crush him. He may be killed by a vapor, by a drop of water. But, if the whole universe should crush him, he would be nobler than tliat which causes his death, because he knows that he is dying, and the universe would not know its power over him. This is, very evidently, sophistical and declamatory ; but it is the sophistry of a fine imagination. It would be easy, however, to find better passages. The dominant idea recurs in almost every page of Pascal. His melancholy genius plays in wild and rapid flashes, like lightning round the scathed oak, about the fallen greatness of man. He per- ceives every cliaracteristic (piality of his nature under these conditions. They are the solution of every ])roblem, the clearing-up of every inconsistency that perplexes us. "Man," he says very finely, "has a secret instinct that leads him to seek diversion and employment from without; which springs Chap. H. PASCAL. 49 from the sense of his continual misery. And he has another secret instinct, remaining from the greatness of liis original nature, which teaches liim that happiness can only exi.-t in repose. And irom these two contrary instincts there arises in him an obscure propensity, conceakxl iu his soul, wiiidi prompts him to seek repose tln-ougli agitation, and even to fancy that tlie contentment he does not enjoy will be found, if, by struggling yet a little longer, he can open a door to rest."' dO. It can hardly be conceived, that any one would think the worse of human natui-e or of himself by reading these magnificent lamentations of Pascal. He adorns and ennobles the degeneracy that he exaggerates. The i-uined aqueduct, the broken column, the desolated city, suggest uo ideas but of dignity and reverence. No one is ashamed of a misery which bears witness to his grandeur. If Ave should persuade a laborer that the blood of princes flows in his veins, we might spoil his contentment with the only lot he has drawn, but scarcely kill iu him the seeds of pride. 41. Pascal, like many others who have dwelt on this alleged degeneracy of mankind, seems never to have disen- tangled his mind from the notion, that what we call human nature has not merely an arbitrary and grammatical, but an intrinsic objective reality. Tiie common and convenient forms of language, the analogies of sensible things, which the imagi- nation readily supplies, cons[)ire to delude us into this fallacy. Yet thougli each man is born with certain jjowers and disposi- tions which constitute his own nature, and the resemblance of these iu all his fellows produces a general idea, or a collective appellation, whichever we may preler to say, called the nature of man, few would in this age explicitly contend lor the exist- ence of this as a substance capable of qualities, and those qualities variable, or subject to mutation. The corruption of human natiu-e is therefore a jihrase which may con\ey an intelligible meaning, if it is acknowledged to be merely ana- logical and inexact, but will mislead those wdio do not keep this in mind. Man's nature, as it now is, that which each man and all men possess, is the innnediate workmanship of God, as much as at his creation ; nor is any other hypotliesis consistent Avith theism. 42. This notion of a real universal in human nature pre* 1 (Euvres de Pascal, vol i. p. 121. VOL. IV 4 50 PASCAL. Pakt rv. Bents to us in an exaggerated light those anomalies from vvliieh writers of Pascal's school are apt to infer some vast cliange in our original constitution. Exaggerated, I say; for it cannot be denied that we frequently perceive a sort of inco- herence, as it appears at least to our defective vision, in the same individual ; and, like threads of various hues sliot through one Aveb, the love of vice and of virtue, the strength and weakness of tlie heart, are wonderfully blended in gelf- coutradictory and self-destroying conjunction. But, even if we should fail altogether in solving the very first steps of this problem, there is no course for a reasonable being except to acknowledge the limitations of his own faculties ; and it seems rather unwarrantable, on the credit of this humble confession, that we do not compreliend the depths of what has been with- held from us, to substitute something far more incomprehensi- ble and revolting to our moral and rational capacities in its place. "What," says Pascal, "can be more contrary to the rules of our wretched justice, than to damn eternally an .infant incapable of volition for an offence wherein he seems to have had no share, and which was committed six thousand yeai-s before he Avas born? Certainly, nothing shocks us more rudely than this doctrine ; and yet, without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to our- selves. Man is moi-e inconceivable without this mystery, than the mystery is inconceivable to man." 43. It miglit be wandering from the proper subject of these volumes if we were to pause, even sliortly, to inquire whether, while tlie creation of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the connection of moral and ])hysical e-sil in mankind with his place in that creation ; and, esp.ecially, whether the law of continuity, which it lias not pleased his Maker to break witli resjicct to his bodily structure, and which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to tlie lower forms of animal life by the common conditions of nourishment, reproduction, and self-defence, has not rendered necessary botii the ])hysical appetites and the propensities which termi- nate in self; whether, again, the superior endowments of his intellectual nature, liis susceptibility of moral emotion, and of thos(! disinterested affections, which, if not exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than any inferior being; above all, the gifts of conscience, and a capacity to know God, — might CuAV. n. VINDICATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 • not be expected, even beforehantl, bj their conflict mth the animal passions, to produce some partial inconsistencies, some anomalies at least, Avliich lie could not liimsclf exjjlain, in so compound a being. P^very link in the long chain of creatioii does not j^ass by easy transition into the next. There are necessary chasms, and, as it -were, leaps, from one creature to another, which, though not exceptions to the law of conti- nuity, are accommodations of it to a new series of being. If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed tlie stars, and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land be- tween animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both ! But tliese are things which it is ditficult to touch; nor would they have been here introduced, but in order to weaken the force of positions so confidently asserted by many, and so eloquently by Pascal. 44. Among tlie works immediately designed to confirm the truth of Christianity, a certain reputation was ac- viadio;!- quired, throush the known erudition of its author, tions of 1 ,1 T-> '^ X X- T' T !• TT i IT 1 Christianity. by the Demonstratio J^^vangelica ot liuet, liisliop of Avranches. This is pai-aded with definitions, axioms, and propositions, in order to challenge tiie name it assumes. But the axioms, upon which so much is to rest, are olten question- able or eciuivocal; as, for instance: "Omnis prophetia est verax, qua^ praidixit res eventu dcinde completas; " equivocal in the word verax. Huet also confirms his axioms by argu- ment, which sliows that they ai-e not truly such. The whole book is full of learning ; but he frequently loses sight of the points he would prove, and his quotations fall beside tiie mark. Yet he has furnished much to others, and possibly no earlier work on the same subject is so elaborate and comprehensive. The next place, if not a higher one, might be given to tlio treatise of Abbadie, a Frencli refugee, publislied m 1G81. His countrymen bestow on it tlie highest eulogies ; but it was never so well known in England, and is now almost forgotten. The oral conferences of Limborch with Orobio, a Jew of con- siderable learning and ability, on the prophecies relating to the Messiah, were reduced into writing, and published : they are still in some request. No book of this period, among many that were written, reached so high a reputation in 52 PROGEESS OF TOLERATION Part FV • England as Leslie's Short Method with the Deists, published in 1G94; in which he has started an argument, pursued with more critical analysis by others, on the peculiarly distinctive marks of credibility that pertain to the scriptural miracles. The authenticity of this little treatise has been idly ques- tioned on the Continent, for no better reason than that a translation of it has been published in a postliumous edition (1732) of the works of Saint Real, who died in 1692. But posthumous editions are never deemed of sufficient authority to establish a literary title against possession ; and Prosper INIarchand informs us that several other tracts, in this edition of Saint Real, are erroneously ascribed to him. The internal evidence that the Short Method was written by a Protestant should be conclusive.^ 45. Every change in public opinion which this period wit- Pro-ress of Hcsscd Confirmed the principles of religious toleration tolerant that had taken root in the earlier part of the cen- prmcip es. ^^^^,^ _ ^j^^ progress of a larger and more catholic theology, the weakening of bigotry in tlie minds of laymen, and the consequent disregard of ecclesiastical clamor, not only in England and Holland, but to a considerable extent in France ; we might even add, the violent proceedings of the last government in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the cruelties which attended it. Louis XIV., at a time when mankind were beginning to renounce the very theory of per- secution, i-enewed the ancient enormities of its practice, and thus unconsciously gave the aid of moral sympatliy and indig- nation to the adverse argument. The Protestant refugees of France, scattered among their brethren, brought home to all minds the great question of free conscience ; not with the 1 The Biogrnphie Universolle, art. " I/>s- posed author's Uoatli, without attestation, lie," says, " (Jet ouvrage, qui pusse pour ee is no literary evidence at all, even where qu'il a fait de niieux, lui a ete contcste. the book is published for the first time, Le Uocteur Glei^h [sic] a fait de grands much less where it has a known slalii.i as efforts pour prouvcr e visions of hope which within no gre;it length of time, to emu- wait upoa the untried youth of royalty, in late the funeral discnurse of Itossuet on its sympithy with !;r.indeur anui lilate.l, the sudlen death of Henrietta of Orleans, with beauty and innocence precipitated lie had before hiiu a subject incomparably into the tomb. Nor did he .sink beneath h:3 more deep in interest, more fertile iu great subject, except a.s compared with Bossuet. and touchin;; associations : he had to de- The sermon to which my allusion will be scribe, not the false sorrow of courtiers, understood is esteemed by many the finest uot the shriek of sudden surprise that effort of this preacher: but, if read to- echoed by night iu the halls of Versailles, gether with that of its prototype, it will not the apocryphal penitence of one so be laid aside as uhuost feeble aud uniui tainted by the world's intercouise, but pressive. 58 flEchier. PAitT IV. not appear to show so little effort as some have fancied ; the amplifications arc sometimes too unmeasured; the language sometimes borders too nearly on that of the stage ; above all, there is a tone of adulation not quite pleasing to a calm posterity. o4. Flechier (the third name of the seventeenth century, ^ ,. for IMassillon belonirs only to tlie nexOi like Bossuet, has been more celebratetl tor Ins luneral sermons than for any others; but in this line it is unfortunate for him to enter into unavoidalde competition with one whom he can- not rival. The Frencli critics extol Flechier for the arrange- ment and harmony of his periods ; yet even in this, according to La Harpe, he is not essentially superior to Bossuet; and to an English ear, accustomed to tlie long swell of our own writers and of the Ciceronian school in Latin, he will proba- bly not give so much gratiiicatlon. He does not want a moral dignity, or a certain elevation of thought, without which the funeral panegyric must be contemptible : but he has not the majestic tone of Bossuet ; he does not, like him, raise the heroes and princes of the earth in order to abase them by paintings of mortality and weakness ; or recall the hearer in every passage to something more awful than human power, and more magnificent than human grandeur. This religious solemnity, so cliaracteristic in Bossuet, is hardly felt in the less emphatic sentences of Flechier. Even whtue his exordium is almost worthy of comparison, as in the funeral discourse on Turenne, we find him degenerate into a trivial eulogy, and he fiatters both more profusely and with less skill. His style is graceful, but not without affectation and false taste.^ La Harpe has compared him to Isocrates among the orators of Greece ; the place of Demosthenes being, of course, reserved for Bossuet.' 1 [La Ilarpe justly ridicules an cxpres- fooncry. " The language ofSegneri." the pion of Flechier, in his funeral sermon on snme writer ohserves, " is always full of Ma Janie de Montiiusier : " Un aniien disait dignity and harmony. He inlaid it with autrefois ([uc les homuics etaient ncs pour sjilendid and elegant expressions, and h;i3 I'action et pour la conduite du nionde, et tluis obtained a place among the authors que les dames n'etaient niies que pour le to wliuni authority has heen given by tlie repos et pour la retraite." — 1842.] Delia Crusca dictionary. His periods are - The native critics ascribe a reform in llowing, natural, and intelligible, without the style of preaching to Paolo Segneri, the alfectation of obsolete Tuscanisms, whom Corniani does not liesitate to call, which i)ass for graces of the language with with the sanction, lie says, of posterity, many." Tiraboschi, with much commcn- the father of Italian elociuence. It is to dation of Segneri, admits that we find iu be remembered, that in no country has the liim some vestiges of the false taste lie en- pulpit been so much degraded by empty deavored to reform. The very little that 'leclaiuation, and even Ijy a stupid buf- Iliave seen of the sermons if Segueri givel Cn.vr. n. BARROW. 59 , 55. The style of preaching in England was lees ornamen- tal, and spoke less to the imagination and affections, j-ngUsh tlian these celebrated writers of the Gallican sernions: Church ; but in some of our chief divines it had ^'"^°*- its own excellences. The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, a comprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled. Ko better proof can be given than his eight sermons on the government of the tongue : cojjious and exhaustive without tautology or superfluous declamation, they are, in moral preaching, wliat the best parts of Aristotle are iii ethical philosophy, with more of development and a more extensive observation. It would be said of these sermons, and indeed, Avith a few exceptions, of all those of Barrow, that they are not what is now called evangelical : they indicate the ascendency of an Arminian party, dwelling, far more than is usual in the pulpit, on moral and rational, or even temporal inducements, and some- times hardly abstaining from what would give a little offence in later times.^ His quotations also from ancient philoso- phers, though not so numerous as in Taylor, are equally uncongenialto our ears. In his st}'le, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we may censure a redun- dancy, and excess of apposition : it is not sufficient to avoid strict tautology ; no second phrase (to lay down a general rule not without exception) should be so like the first, that the reader would naturally have understood it to be comprised no impression of anv merit that can be poi Ti fate pregar tanto da un Dio per roi rt'ckoneil more than relative to the iiiise- crocefisso? O confuKionel O vituiiei-o! rible tone of liis predecessors. Tlie fol- vergogna!'' — Itaccolta ili Prose Italianc lowiiiy; specimen is from one of his most {in Classici Italiani), vol. ii. p. 345. achnired sermons: •■ K Cristo non potri This is certainly not the manner of Bos- ottenere da voi che gli rimettiate un torto. suet, and more like that of a third-rate un affronto, un aggravio, una parolina .' Methodist among us. Che vorreste da Christo? Vorrcstech" cgli ^ Thus, in his sermon against evil- vi si gett:ii=se supplichevole a piedi a chie- Fpeaking(.\vi.), Barrow treats it as fit '• for dcrvi questa grazia .' lo son quasi per rustic boors, or men of coarsest education dire oh' egli il fai-ebbe ; perche se non and employment, who, having their minda dubiti di prostrarsi a piedi di un traditore, debased by being conversant in meanest qual' era Ciiuda. di lavarglieli. di asciugar- affairs, do vent their sorry passions, and gli.'li, di baciarglieli, non si vergognerebbe, bicker about their petty concernments, in cred" io, di farsi vedere ginotchiuni a pie such strains: who also, not being capable vostri. Ma vi fa bisogno di t;into per of a fair reputation, or sensible of disgrace niuovcrvi a compiacerlo ? Ah Cavalieri, to themselves, do little value the credit of Cavalieri, io non vorrei questa volta farvi others, or care for aspersing it. But such arros.-ire. Nel resto io so di certo, che se language is unworthy of those persons, ultrcttanto fosseavoidomandatodaquella and cannot easily be drawn from them, donna che chiamate la vostra dama, da who are wont to exercise their thoughts quella, di cui forsennati idolatrate il volto, about nobler matters," &c. No one would indovinate le voglie, ambite le grazie, non venture thLs now liom the pulpit. ri liixutA picgar taat<) a coucedergUelo. £ 60 SOUlli — TILLOTSON. Pakt R. therein. Barrow's language is more antiquated and formal than that of his age ; and he abounds too much in uncom- mon words of Latin derivation, frequently such as appear to have no authority but his own. 56. South's sermons begin, in order of date, before the Restoration, and come down to nearly the end of °"' ■ the century. They were much celebrated at the time, and retain a jwrtion of their renown. This is by no means surprising, Soutli had great qualifications for that popularity which attends the pulpit ; and his manner was at that time original. Not dilfuse, not learned, not formal in argument like Barrow, with a more natural structure of sen- tences ; a more pointed, though by no means a more fair and satisfactory, turn of reasoning ; with a style clear and P^nglish, free from all pedantry, but abounding with those colloquial novelties of idiom, which, though now become vulgar and offensive, the age of Charles II, affected ; sparing no personal or temporary sarcasm, but, if he seems for a moment to tread on the verge of buffoonery, recovering himself by some stroke of vigorous sense and language, — such was the witty Dr, South, whom the courtiers deliglited to hear. His sermons want all that is called unction, and sometimes even eariiest- ness, which is owing, in a great measure, to a perpetual tone of gibing at rebels and fanatics ; but there is a masculine spirit about them, which, combined with their peculiar characteristics, would naturally fill the chui-ches where he might be heard. South appears to bend towards the Ai-minian theology, without adopting so much of it as some of his contemporaries. 57. The sermons of Tillotson were for half a century more read than any in our language. They are ° ''°°' now bought almost as waste paper, and hardly i-ead at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, as abundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckoned ver- bose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great a degree as some of his eminent predecessors ; but there is certainly little vigor or vivacity in his style. Full of the Rojnish controversy, he is perpetually recurring to that "world's debate;" and he is not much less ho.-tile to all the Calvinistic tenets. What is most remarkable in the theology of Tillotson, is his strong assertion, in almost all his sermons, of the principles of natural religion and morality, not only as the basis of all revelation, without a dependence Chap. II. PEARSON. 61 on which it cannot be believed, but as nearly coini'ident with Christianity in their extent ; a length to wliicli few at present would bt; ready to follow him. Tillotson is always of a tole- rant and catli'olic spirit, enforcing right actions rather tiian orthodox oj)inions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigots of his own age. .')8. It lias I'.cconie necessary to draAV towai-ds a conclusion of tliis chapter: the materials are far from being KxpofUorj exhausted. In expository, or, as some call it, exe- t^'^^^^si- getical theology, the English divines had already taken a conspicuous station. jVndres, no partial estimator of Protes- tant writers, extols them Avith marked praise.^ Tliose who belonged to the earlier part of the century form a portion of a vast collection, — the Critici Sacri, published by one Bee, a bookseller, in IGGO. This was in nine folio volumes; and in 1GG9, Matthew Pool, a nonconforming minister, produced his Synopsis Criticorum in five volumes ; being in great measure an abridgment and digest of the former. Bee complained of the infraction of his copyright, or rather his e Defense de la Tradition dcs Saints primee i Trevoux, Id. Tol. ij. p. 313, Peres; (Kuvres de ]!ossiiet, vol. v., and Bausset, Vie dc Bossuet, It. 276. Instructions but la Version du N. T., iui- OiiAi: m. ARISTOTELIAN UiiTAPHYSICS. Gfl CHAPTER ni. HTSTOUY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1650 TO 1700 Aiistoteli.ins — Logicians — Cudworth — SIcetch of the Philosophy of GassenOi • Cartesi.inisni — I'ort-Koyal Loj^c — Analysis of the Search for Truth of Jlale- braucho, anJ of the Ethics of Spinosa — Glanvil — Loclie's Essay oa the Uiuuaa UnJerstamliug. 1. The Aristotelian and scliolastic metaphysics, though shaken on every side, and especially by the rapid Aristotelian pi-ogress of the Cartesian theories, had not lost their metaphysics, hold over the tlieologians of the Roman Cliurch, or even the Protestant universities, at the beginning of this period, and hardly at its close. Bmcker enumerates several writers of that class in Germany;' and we find, as late as lG9o. a formal injunotion by the Sorbonne, that none wlio taught phi- losophy in the colleges under its jurisdiction sliould introduce any novelties, or SAverve from the Aristotelian doctrine.' The Jesuits, rather unfortunately for their credit, distinguished themselves as strenuous advocates of the old philosophy, and thus lost the advantage they had obtained in philology aa enemies of barbarous prt^'udice, and encouragers of a progres- sive spirit in their disciples. Rapin, one of their most accom- plished men, after speaking with little respect of the Novum Orgauum, extols the disputations of the schools as the best method in the education of young men, who, as he fancies, have too little experleuL'C to delight in physical science.^ 1 A'ol. iv. See his long and laborious Aristotelicae doctrina; .studere. quam hac- chapter on tlie Aristotelian philosophers tenus usurpatum fuerit in Acadeniii Pa- of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- risiensi, censuit Societas injungendum essa rics: no one else seems to have done more illis. inio et lis qui docent i)hilosop'iiam in than copy Brucker. collej^iis suo rej;iniini creditis, ne deinceps - '• Cum reiatum esset ad Societatem novit;itibus studeant, aut ah Aristotulica (Sorhonicam) nonnuUos philosophia; pro- doctrina dollectant. 31 Dec. 1693." — Ar- fessores, e.^ iis etiain aliquanJo qui ad So- gentre, CoUectio Judicioruni, ii. 150. cietatem anhelant, novas quasdaui doc- '•' Ueiiexious sur la PoJtiquu, p. 3u3. trmas in philosophicis sectari, miavLsque He admits, however, that to iiitroducs 6i LOGIC. pakt rv. 2. It is a clifRcult and dangerous choice, in a nev\ state of ptxblic opinion (and we have to make it at present), ciine^ '^ between that wliich may itself pass away, and that Tho'uas whicli nnist efface what has gone before. Those who clung to the ancient philosophy believed that Bacon and Descartes were the idols of a transitory fashion, and that the wisdom of long ages would regain its ascendency. Tliey wci-c deceived, and their own reputation has been swept olF witli the systems to which tliey adhered. Thomas White, an English Catholic priest, whose Latin appellation is Albius, endeavored to maintain the Aristotelian metaphysics and the scholastic terminology in several works, and especially in an attack upon Glauvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing. This book, entitled Sciri, I know only througli Glauvil's reply in his second edition, by which White appears to be a mere Aristo- telian. He was a friend of Sir Kenehn Digby, who was him- self, though a man of considerable talents, incapable of disen- tangling his mind from the Peripatetic hypotheses. The power of words indeed is so gx-eat ; the illusions of what is called realism, or of believing that general terms have an objective exterior being, are so natural, and especially so bound up both with our notions of essential, especially theolo- gical, truth, and with our popular language, — that no man could in that age be nuich censured for not casting off liis fetters, even Avhen he had heard the call to liberty from some modern voices. We find that, even after two centuries of a l)etter method, many arc always ready to fall back into a vei-bal process of theorizing. 3. Logic was taught in the Aristotelian method, or rather , . in one which, mth some change ibr the worse, had been gradually founded upon it. Burgersdicius, in this and in other sciences, seems to have been in repute • ymiglecius also is mentioned with praise.^ These lived both more experiment and observation would se Pert la religion pour s'expliqucr dans lie an iinproveiiient. " Du reste il y a ap- ses decisions." )i;iren(e que les loix, qui ne .'-oudVent i " La Lopriue de Smij^lecius," says Ra- ])oiiit d'iiinovatioii duns I'usafre des clio.-es pin," est un lielouvrafje.'' The same writer uiiiverxellenK^iit ctablics, n'autoriseroiit proceeds to observe, tliiit the Spaniards of point d'autve metUode que celle qui est tlie lirccedint; century had corrupted lo^io anjourd'liui en usage dans les univer- by their subtilties. *' Kn sejetant dans des sites; alin de ne p.is donner tro)) de li- speculations cri'U.ses qui iravoicnt rien de tencu i\ la piussion qu'on a naturellemont r/'cl, leurs philosophes trouverent Tart pour les iiouvelles opinions, dont le LtnwA d"avoir de la raison malgre le bon sens, et est d'une dangereusc consequence dans de donner do la coulenr, I't meuic ju no un etat bien regie ; vu particulierenient S(;ais quoi de specieuse, i ce qui etoi' 'e que la philnsophie est un des orgunea dont plus deraisounable." — p. 832. But **»is Chap. HI. STANLEY'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPnY. 65 in the former part of the century. But they were superseded, at least in England, by Wallis, Avhose Institutio I,ofrica3 ad Communes Usus Accommodata was pubHshed in lGy7. Ho chiims, as an improvement upon the received system, Iho classifying singular propositions among universals.* Kamus had made a third class of them, and in this he seems to have been generally followed. Aristotle, though it does not appear that he is explicit on the subject, does not rank them as par- ticular. That Wallis is right will not be doubted by any one at present ; but his originality we must not assert. The same had been perceived by the authors of the Port-Royal Logic ; a work to which he has made no allusion.^ Walhs claims also as his own the method of reducing hyj.othetical to categorical syllogisms, and proves it elaborately in a separate dissertation. A smaller treatise, still much used at Oxford, by Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logicte, 1691, is clear and concise, but seems to contain nothing very important ; and he alludes to the Art de Fenser in a tone of insolence, which must louse indignation in those who are acquainted with that excellent work. Aldrlch's censures are, in many instances, mere cavil and misrepresentation : I do not know that they are right in any.'^ Of the Art de Penser itself, we shall have something to say in the course of this chapter. 4. Before we proceed to those whose philosophy may be reckoned original, or at least modern, a very few de- g^^^jpy-g serve mention who have endeavored to maintain or lUstory of restore that of antiquity. Stanley's History of ^ "'°"'*''^ ^' Philosophy, in 1655, is in great measure confined to biography, must have been rather the fault of their trina rcccsserint ; coque niulta introdiix- Diotaphvsics than of what is strictly erint iuccinmoaa de quibus suo loco dice- called logic. tur." — p. 125. He has afterwards ;i 1 '• Atque hoc signanter notatum velim, separate dissertation or thesis to provis quia novus forte hie %idear, et pra^tcr this more at length. It seems th;it tliii nlioruni loquendi fonnulani h;vc dieere. Kamists held a third class of propositions, Nam plerique In^aci projiositionem quam neither universal nor particular, to which vocant .singularem, hoc est, de subjecto thev ^Jive the name of pro/7na, equivalent individuo sive singulari, ])ro particulari to sinjriilar. habent, non uuiversali. Sed ])eri^eram hoc - Art de Penser. part ii. ch.-tp. iii. faciunt, et prater mentoni Aristotehs » One of Aldrich's charges against the (qui. (luaiitum memini, nunquam ejusiiio- author of the Art de I'enser is, that ho di singnlarem, rrjv Kara utlM<: ajipellat brings forward as a great discovery tlie aut pro tali habet). et j.rater rei naturam : equality of the .-ingles of a chiliagon to 1990 Kon enin. hie agitur de particulaiitnte riglit angles ; and another is, tiiat he gives subject! (quod arofiov voeat Ari.toteUs. -'.^ a" example ol a regu ar s;, !log,.m one •• '• i r taut ha-s obviously live terms : thus ex- oou Kara j2(poO sed de partialitate pra^- jn-eting the Oxford students for whom lie dicationis. . . . Neque ego interim novator wrote to believe that Antony Arnauld censendus sum qui h.TC dixerim, sed illi neither knew the first book of Kuclid noi potius novatores qui ab AristoteUea doc- the mere rudiments of commoik logic. VOL. IV. 6 66 CUDWORTH'S INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM. Tart TV. and compreliencls no name later than Carneades. Most is derived from Diogenes Laertius ; but an analysis of the Pla- tonic ])hilosophy is given from Alcinous, and the author has compiled one of the Peripatetic system from Ai-istotle himself. Tlie doctrine of tlie Stoics is also elaborately deduced from various sources. Stanley, on the whole, brought a good deal from an almost untrodden field ; but he is merely an historian, and never a critic of pliilosophy.^ o. Gale's Court of the Gentiles, which appeared partly in Gale's Court IfiG'-^ i^ud partly in later years, is incomparably a of Goutiius. n^ore learned work than that of Stanley. Its aim is to prove that all heathen philosophy, whetlier barbaric or Greek, was borrowed from the Scriptures, or at least from the Jews. The first part is entitled, Of Philology, which traces tlie same leading jirineiple by means of language ; the second, Of Philosophy ; the third treats of the Vanity of Philosophy ; and the fourth, of Reformed Philosophy, " wherein Plato's moral aud metai)hysic or prime philosophy is reduced to an usual form and method." Gale has been reckoned among Platonic philosophers, and indeed he processes to find a great resemblance between the ])hilo3ophy of Plato and his own. But he is a determined Calvinist in all respects, and scruples not to say, " Whatever God wills is just, because he wills it ; " and again, " God Avilleth nothing without himself because it is just, but it is therefore just because he willeth it. The reasons of good and evil extrinsic to the divine essence are all dependent on the divine will, either decernent or legisla- tive." ^ It is not likely that Plato would have acknowledged such a disciple. G. A much more eminent and enlightened man than Gale, Cudworth's Kalph Cudworth, by his Intellectud System of the Intellectual Uuiversc, published in 1G78, but written several jstem. . y,g,-jj.g |)(.foi.(3^ placed himself in a middle point be- tween the declining and rising schools of philosophy : moro independent of authority, and more close perhaps in argmnenr, than the former; but more prodigal of learning, more technical in language, and less conversant with analytical and inductive ' [Tn former filUions, through an over- for the source of thi? mistiUe. which wa!) sijjfht alto;;etlier iuexplicalile by mo at ]ire- courteously |iniute.l out to me; hut I sent, I had said that Stanley dues not tliinU it fitter to uiaUe ihis ^uM.cacUuow- mention Kpicurus, wlio occupies a con- leilj;inent tli ui silently to withdraw the Biderablo space in the History of I'hiloso- sentence. — 1S47.] pby. I Uavo searched my notes in vain ' Part iv. p. S3S. CiiAr. m. ITS OBJ F.CT — SKETCH OF IT. 67 processes of reasoning, than the latter. Upon tlie whole, how- ever, he belongs to the school of antiquity ; and probably his wish was to be classed with it. Qiidworth was one of those whom Hobbes had ronscd by the atheistic and immoral theo- ries of the Leviatliau ; nor did any antagonist perhaps of that philosopher bring a more vigorous understanding to the com- bat. This understanding was not so much obstructed in its own exercise by a vast erudition, as it is sometimes concealed by it from the reader. Cudwoith has passed more for a recorder of ancient philosophy, tlian for one who might stand in a respectable class among philosophers ; and his work, though long, being unfinished, as well as full of digression, its object has not been fully apprehended. 7. This object was to establish the liberty of human actions against the fatalists. Of these he lays it down that ^^^ ^^.^ there are three kinds : the first atheistic ; the second admitting a Deity, but one acting necessarily and Avithout moral perfections ; tlie third gi-anting the moral attributes of God, but asserting all human actions to be governed by neces- sary laws which he has ordained. The fii-st book of the In- tellectual System, which alone is extant, relates Avholly to the proofs of the existence of a Deity against the atheistic fatal- ists, his moral natui-e being rarely or never touched ; so that the greater and more interesting part of the work, for the sake of which the author proj(!cted it, is wholly wanting, unless Ave take for fragments of it some writings of the author preserved in the British Museum. 8. The fn-st chapter contains an account of the ancient corpuscular philosophy, which, till corrupted by Leu- sketch cippus and Democritus, Cudworth takes to have °^ ''• been not only theistic, but more consonant to theistic princi- ples than any other. These two, however, brought in a fatalism gi'ounded on their own atomic theory. In the second chapter, he states very fully and fairly all their arguments, or rather all that have ever Ijecn adduced on the atlieistic side. In tlu! third, he expatiates on tlie hylozoic atheism, as he calls it, of Strato, which accounts the miiverse to be animated in all its parts, but without a single controlling intelligence ; and adverts to another hypothesis, which gives u vegetable but not sentient life to the world. 9. This leads Cudworth to his own famous theory of a plastic nature, a device to account for the operations of physicaJ 68 CUDWORTH'S ACCOUNT OF OLD PHILOSOPHY. Part IV laws without the continued agency of the Deity. Of this plastic His plastic energy he speaks in rather a confused and indefinite nature. maunei*, giving it in one phice a sort of sentient life, or what he calls "a drowsy unawakened cogitation," and always treating it as an entity or real being. This langiiago of Cudworth, and indeed the whole hypothesis of a plastic nature, was unable to stand the searching eye of Bayle, who, in an article of his dictionary, pointed out its unphilosojihical and dangerous assumptions. Le Clerc endeavored to sup])ort Cudworth against Bayle, but with little sxiccess.^ It has had, however, some partisans, though rather among physiologists than metaphysicians. Grew adopted it to explain vegetation ; and the plastic nature differs only, as I conceive, from what Hunter and Abernethy have called life in organized bodies by its more extensive agency : for if we are to believe that there is a vital power, not a mere name for the sequence of phenomena, which marshals the molecules of animal and vegetable substance, we can .see no reason why a similar energy should not detei'mine other molecules to assume geome- trical figures in crystallizp.tion. The error or paradox con- sists in assigning a real iniity of existence, and a real power of causation, to that which is unintelligent. 10. The fourth chapter of the Intellectual System, of vast His acoovnit ^cugth, and occupying half the entire work, launches ofoiaphiio- into a sea of old philosophy, in order to show the Bophy. unity of a supreme God to have been a general belief of antiquity. "In this fourth chapter," he says, "we were necessitated by the matter itself to run out into philolo- gy and antiquity, as also in the other parts of the book we do often give an account of the doctrine of the ancients ; which, however some over-severe philosophers may look upon fasti- diously or undervalue and depreciate, yet as Ave conceived it often necessary, so possibly may the vai-icty thereof not be inigrateful to others, and this mixture of philology throughout the whole sweeten and allay the .'severity of philosophy to them ; the main thing which the book pretends to, in the mean time, being the ])hil<;sopliy of religion. But, for our part, Ave neither call philology, nor yet philoso})hy, our mis- tre.ss, but serve ourselves of either as occasion retiuireth."- 11. The Avhole fourth chapter may be reckoned one great episode ; and, as it contains a store of useful knoAvledge on > Bibliothequo Choisie, vol. v. ' I'refacb, p. 37- CiiAp. in. HIS ARCmrENTS AGAIXST ATHEISM. 69 ancient philosophy, it has not only been more read than the rernaiiiing part of the Intellectual System, but has been the cause, iu more than one respect, that the work has been erroneously judged. Thus Cudworth has been reckoned, by very respectable authorities, in the Platonic school of phi- losophers, nudf even iu that of the later Platouists ; for which I perceive little other reason than tliat he has gone diffusely into a supposed resemblance between the Platonic and Chris- tian Trinity. Whether we agree with him in this or no, the subject is insulated, and belongs only to the liistory of theolo- gical opinion : in Cudworth's own philosopliy, he appears to be an eclectic ; not the vassal of Plato, Plotiiius, or Ai'istotle, though deeply versed in them all.^ 12. In the fifth and last chapter of the first and only book of the Intellectual System, Cudwortlt, reverting to the various atheistical arguments which he had stat- men^'t?'* ed in the second chapter, answers tliera at great -ig^'nft length, and, though not witliout much erudition, '^ '^^'^' perhaps more than was requisite, yet depending chiefly on his own stores of reasoning. And inasmuch as even a second rate philosoplier ranks higlier in literary precedence than the laost learned reporter of other men's doctrine, it may be luifbrtunate for Cudworth's reputation that he consumed so much time iu the preceding chapter upon mere learning, even though that should be reckoned more useful than his own reasonings. Tliese, however, are frequently valuable ; and, as I have intimated a])ove, he is partially tinctured by the philo- sophy of his own generation, while he endeavors to tread in the ancient paths. Yet he seems not awai-e of the place wliich Bacon, Descartes, and Gassendi were to hold ; and not only names them sometimes with censure, hardly with praise, but most inexcusably throws out several intimations that they had designedly served the cause of atheism. The disposition of the two former to slight the argument from final causes, though it might justly be animadverted upon, could not warrant this most uncandid and untrue aspersion. But 1 [" Cudworth, '■ says a late verv k-arncil oeptire representations. He deserves the and strong-minded writer, •• should be ruad highest praise for intef^ritv as a writer: witli the notes of Moshcim ; unless, in- his leirning was superabundant, and his deed, one be so ac^lf his de- ness of Gospels, vol. ii. p. 215. — 1S4.7.] 70 MORE. Part IV justice was even-hauded. Cudworth himself did not escape the slander of bigots : it was idly said by Dry den, that he had put the arguments against a Deity so well, that some thought he had not answered them ; and, if Warburton may be be- lieved, the remaining part of the Intellectual System was never published, on account of the world's malignity in judg- ing of the first.^ Pi'obably it was never written. 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 stiflf and pedantic, as is the case with all our older metaphysicians, abounding in words which the P^nglish language has not recognized. He is full of the ancients, but rarely qiiotes the schoolmen. Hobbes is the adversary with wliom he most grapples : the materialism, the resolving all ideas into sensation, the low morality of that writer, were obnoxious to the animadversion of so strenuous an advocate of a more elevated philosophy In some respects, Cudworth has, as I conceive, much the advantage ; in others, he will generally be thought by oui metaphysicians to want precision and logical reasoning ; and, upon the whole, we must rank him, in philosophical acumen, far below Hobbes, Malebranche, and Locke, but also far above any mere Aristotelians or retailers of Scotus and Aquinas.^ 14. Henry More, thoiigh by no means less eminent than Cudworth in his own asre, ought not to be placed on More o ■ o ^ i the same level. More fell not only into the mystical notions of the later Platonists, but even of the Cabalistic writers. His metaphysical philoso|)hy was borrowed in great measure from them ; and though he was in correspondence with Descartes, and enchanted with the new views that opened upon him, yet we find that he was reckoned much less of a Cartesian afterwards, and even wrote against parts of the theory.'' The most peculiar tenet of More was the exten- sion of spirit : acknowledging and even striving for the soul's immateriality, he still could not conceive it to be unextended. ' Wiirburton's preface to Divine Lega- about the oraniprosence of the Deity : tion, vol. ii. Doscartas thought that he was " partout i. - [The inferiority of Cudworth to Hobbes raison de sa puissanc<% ct qu'i raison de is not at present very manifest to me. — son essenci' il n'a absolument aucune rela- 1847.] tion au lieu." More, who may be called a 3 Baillot, Vie de Descartes, liv. vii. It lover of extension, maintained a strictly must be ob.served that More never wholly local presence. — (Euvres de Descartea, agrted with Descartes. Thus they differed vol. x. p. 239. CHAi-. III. GASSENDI— HIS LOGIC. 71 Yet it seems evident, that if we give extension as well as figure, which is implied in finite extension, to the single self- consciotis monad, qualities as heterogeneous to thinking as material impenetrability itself, we shall find it in vain to deny the possibility at least of tlie latter. Some, indeed, miglit question whether what we call matter is any real being at all, except as extension under peculiar conditions. But this con- jecture need not here be pressed. 15. Gassendi himself, by the extensiveness of his erudition, mav be said to have united the two schools of snecu- „ lative philosophy, the historical and the experimental ; though the character of his mind determined him far more towards the latter. He belongs, in point of time, rather to the earlier period of the century ; but, his Syntagma Philosophi- cum having been published in 1058, we have deferred the review of it for this volume. This posthumous work, in two volumes folio, and nearly 1,600 pages closely printed in double columns, is divided into three parts, — the Logic, the Physics, and the Ethics ; the second occupying more than five-sixths of tlie ^vhole. The Logic is introduced by two proemial books : one containing a history of the science from Zeno of Elea, the parent of systematic logic, to Bacon and Descartes ;^ the other, still more valuable, on the criteria of truth ; shortl}' criticising also, in a chapter of this book, the several schemes of logic which he had merely de- scribed in the former. After stating very ])rolixly, as is usual with him, the argiunents of the sceptics against the evidence of the senses, and those of the dogmatics, as he calls tiiem. who refer the sole criterion of truth to tlie understanding, he propounds a sort of middle course. It is necessary, he ob- serves, before we can infer truth, that there should be some sensible sign, aiadrjrbv arjimov ; for, since all the knowledge we possess is derived from the sense, the mind must first lia"v e Bome sensible image, by which it may be led to a knoAvledire of wliat is latent and not perceived by sense. Hence we ' " PraetcrouTuluni porro non est ob earn, autem in eo est, ut Ijene imagine iiiur, qua- qua est. celebritatcni Organuni, sive logioa tenus vult esse imprimis exuenJa omnia Fraucisoi Haconis Verulamii." lie extols prajudioia. ae novas Jeinde notiones idea-s- Bacon higlily, but gives an analysis of the ve ex novis d-ruitenue lactis expcnmentls Novum Orgsmum without much criticism, induceudas. Logica Cartesii re.-te quidem De Logical Origine. c. x. Verulamii imitationea)ieocxorditur, qimd " Logica Verulamii,''Ga,ssendi. says in an- ad bene imagiuandum prava priejudirm Otber place, " tota ac per se ad phy.sicani, exuenda, rectd veroindueuda vult," &,c. — atque adeo ad veritatem notitiamve reruni p. 90. germanam babendam contendit. Prsecipue 72 GASSENDI'S THEORY OF IDEAS. Part IV. may distinguish in ourselves a double criterion : one hj which we perceive the sign, namely, the senses ; another by which we understand through reasoning the latent thing, namelj, tlie intellect or rational faculty.' This he illustrates by tlie ])ore3 of the skin, which we do not perceive, but infer their exist- ence by observing the permeation of moisture. 16. In the first part of the treatise itself on Logic, to His theory which tlicsc two books are introductory, Gassendi of ideas, j^jyg do^yn again his favorite principle, that every idea in the mind is ultimately derived from the senses. But, while* what the sen-es transmit are only singular ideas, the mind has the faculty of making general ideas out of a number of these singular ones when they resemble each other.- In this part of his Logic, he expresses himself clearly and un- equivocally a conceptualist. 17. The Physics were expanded with a prodigality of learn- ing upon every province of nature. Gassendi is full of quotation; and his systematic method manifests the compre- hensiveness of his researches. In tlie third book of the second part of the third section of the Physics, he treats of the immateriality, and, in the fourteenth, of tlie immortality, of the soul, and maintains the afiirmative of both propositions. This may not be what those who judge of Gassendi merely from his objections to the Meditations of Descartes have sup- posed. But a clearer insight into his metaphysical theory will be obtained from the ninth book of tlie same part of the Physics, entitled De Intellectu, on the Human Under- standing. 18. In this book, after much display of erudition on the Andofthn tcuets of philosoplicrs, he determines the soul to be nature of au incor[)oreal substance, created by God, and infused the soul. • j^j.^ ^Y^^ body, so tliat it resides in it as an informing and not merely a present nature, foi-ma informans, et rioii limpliciter assistens.^ He next distinguishes intellection or understanding from imagination or perce|)tiou ; wliich is wor- thy of particular notice, because, in his controversy with Des- cartes, he had thrown out doubts as to any distinction between 1 p. 81. If this passage be well attended pruished the aladi]rhv arifiuov, the sensi- to, it will show how the philosopliy (if ^^^ a.ssori,iti;d sii;n, from the unimagiiiabla Gassendi lias been niisuiuli'rstoo.l by those objecls of pure iutellect, as we shaU soon who confound it with the merely sensual g^g pchool iif metaphysicians. No one has ■> y, 93 more cluarly, or more at length, distin- 3 p] ^^jj Chap. IU. fflS THEORT OF THE SOUL. 73 them. We have in ourselves a kind of faculty which enables •IS, by means of reasoning, to understand that which by no endeavors we can imagine or represent to the mind.^ Of this, the size of the sun, or innumerable otlier examples, miglit be given ; the mind having no idea suggested by the imagina- tion of the sun's magnitude, but knowing it by a peculiar operation of reason. And hence we infer that the intellectual soul is iininaterial, because- it understands tliat which no mate- rial image presents to it ; as we infer also that the imaginative faculty is material, because it employs the images snpplied by sense. It is true, that tlie intellect makes use of these sensi- ble images as steps towards its retisoning upon things which cannot be imagined ; but the proof of its immateriality is given by this, that it passes beyond all material images, and' attains a true knowledge of that whereof it has no image. 19. Buhle observes, that, in what Gassendi has said on the power of tlie mind to umlerstand what it cannot conceive, there is a forgetfulness of liis principle, that nothing is in the understanding which has not been in the sense. But, unless we impute rejjeated contradictions to this philosopher, he must have meant tliat axiom in a less extended sense than it has been taken by some who liave since employed it. By that which is " in the understanding," he could only intend definite images derived from sense, which must be present before the mind can exercise any faculty, or proceed to reason up to unimaginable things. The fallacy of the sensualist school, English and French, has been to conclude that Ave can have no knowledjre of that which is not " in the understanding ; " an inference true in the popular sense of words, but false in the metaphysical. 20. There is, moreover, Gassendi proceeds, a class of reflex 1 " Itaque est in nobis intellectus species, TJ propria, seu ratiocinando, earn osee in quaratiociuandoeoprovehimur, utaliquitl sole magnitudinem coniprehendit, ac pari iutelligamus, quod imaginari, vel cujus modo Cictera. Nempo ex hoc efRcitur, ut habere obversantem iniaginem, quantum- rem sine specie materiali intelligens, esse cunque animi vires contenderimus, non immaterialis debeat : sicuti phautjisia ex possimus." . . . After instanciug tlie size eo niaterialis arguitur, quod materiali of the Sim, " possuut consimilia sexcenta specie ut^itur. Ac utitur quidem etiauj Bfl-^rri. . . . Aerum quidem istudsufticiut, intellectus speciebus phant;isia perceptLs, nt constet quidpiam nos iiitelligere quod tanquam gradibas. ut ratiocinando asse- imaginari non liceat. et intelleetum ita quatur ca. qu?e deiiiceps sine speciebus essedistinctum a phantasia. utcum phan- p!iant;ismatir 1 appluation seule de 1 entende- ^^ .^ ^^^^.^ particular essay of his own rncnt aux phantomes ou idces de la plian- ^^ j,^^ Gas.-^endian phila-^opliv, which I taisie, avcc 1 intell.-ction pure quo nous j^^^^ ,,^j ^^^^ ^/^^ j,^.,.-^.^ p,^i(ive avons par le raisonnement. et que nous ti- „i,,i tions to his prcdece.-.sor, I should be rous par consequ.-nce. I) o , v.eiit que .^haps inclined to doubt whether he, ceux qui se persuadent qu il n y a aucune ^^.,^„ ^^..^, ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^.^^ „f ^ i,,^,.^^ ,j^j 8ubst.inee incorporelle. pan^e qu lis ne con- j^,,^,, ^^ ,„,« i.ldv a work as the Svntiigma HfOivent rien que dans une espece ou image p),i,osophioun. ;" but the abridgment of corporello, se trompent en yons in 1678, and, finding in Gassendi. this the doctrine of Locke on ideas of reflection, conceived that it did not faithfully represent its own original. But this was hardly a very plausible conjecture ; Bernier being a man of considerable ability, an intimate friend of Gassendi, and his epitome being so far from concise that it extends to eight 1 Pitiliminary Dissertation to Encyclo- a letter to Rivet, that he should not have pjeJia. , exaiuineil so closely the iiiet:i physics of 2 OasseiKii Opera, vol. ri. p. 130. These Descartes, if he h.-.il been treated by him letters are interesting' to those who would with as much politeness as he had ex- Btudv the iihilosopliv of Gassendi. pected. Vie de Descartes, liv. vi. The 3 ijaillet, in his Life of De.scavtes, would letortof Descartes, '• OCaro! " (.seevol. iii. lead us to think that Gassendi wa;* too of this work, p. 86) offended O.issendi, much iuUuenced by personal motives in and cawed a coldness ; which, according writing against Descartes, who had men- to Daillet, Sorbi re aggravated, acting a tioncd the phenomena of parlielia, without treacherous part iu exasperating the mind iiUuding to a dissertatiou of Gassendi on of Giisseudi. the subject. The latter, it seems, owu? in 78 PROCESS OF CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. Part IV. small volumes. Having not Indeed collated the two books, but read them Avitliiu a short interval of time, I can say that Bernier has given a faitliful account of the ])hilosophy of Gas- seudi, as it is contained in the Syntagma Philosophicum, — for he takes notice of no other work ; nor has lie liere added any thing of his own. But in 1082 he published another little book, entitled Doutes de M. Bernier sur ([uelques uns das priucipaux Chapitres de son Abrege de la Philosophie de Gassendi. One of these doubts relates to the existence ol space ; and in another place he denies the reality of eternitv or abstract duration. Bernier observes, as Descartes ha; done, that it is vain and even dangerous to attempt a defini- tion of evident things, such as motion, because we are apt to mistake a definition of the word for one of the thing ; and philosophers seem to conceive that motion is a real being, when they talk of a billiard-ball communicating or losing it.^ 28. The Cartesian philosophy, whicli its adversaries had Process of G^pGctcd to expire witli its founder, spread more and Cartesian more after his deatli ; nor had it ever depended on p u osop y. ^j^y personal favor or popularity of Descartes, since he did not possess such except with a few friends. The churches and schools of Holland were full of Cartesians. The old scholastic philosophy became ridiculous : its distinc- tions, its maxims, were laughed at, as its adherents complain ; and probably a more fatal blow was given to the Aristotelian system by Descartes tlian even by Bacon. The Cartesian theo- ries were obnoxious to the rigid class of theologians ; but two parties of considerable importance in Holland, the Arminians and the Coccejans, generally espoused the new philosophy. Many speculations in theology were immediately connected with it, and it acted on the free and scrutinizing spirit which began to sap tlie bulwarks of established orthodoxy. The Cartesians were denounced in ecclesiastical synods, and were hardly admitted to any office in the church. They were condemned by several universities, and especially by that of Leyden in 1G78," for the position that the truth of Scripture 1 Kvcn Gassendi has definoil duration ground tliat it was an innovation on th-s "an incorporeal flowing extuusion,"' wliiclx Aristotelian philosophy so lonj; received ; ig a };ood instance of the success that can and ordained, — " ut in Academia intia attend such dctiiiitions of shnple ideas. Aristotelicie philosophiiu limites, quas liic [ThounU this is not a proper delinition liactenus recepta fuit, nos contineamus, of duration, it is, perhai)s, not ill ex- utiiue in posterum nee philosophijc, ne- pressed as an analo^^y. — 1847.] que noniinisOartesiani in disputationibus. ^ Leyden liad condemned the whole leetionibus aut publicia aliis exercitiis, neo Cartesian system as early as 1661, on the pro uec contra mentio fiat." UtrecUt ia CiiAr. IlL LA FORGE. 79 must be proved by reason. Nor were they less exposed to persecution in France.^ ^ 29. The Cartesian ])hilosophy, in one sense, carried in itself the seeds of its own decline ; it was tlie Scylla of many dogs ; it taught men to think for themselves, and to think often bet- ter than Descartes had done. A new eclectic philosophy, or rather the genuine spirit of free inquiry, made Cartesianism cease as a sect, though it left much that had been introduced by it. AVe owe thanks to these Cartesians of the seventeenth century for their strenuous assertion of reason against pre- scriptive authority : the latter part of this age was signalized by the overthrow of a despotism which had fought every inch iu its retreat ; and it was manifestly after a- struggle, on the Continent, with tliis new philosophy, that it was ultimately vanquished." 30. The Cartesian writers of France, the Low Countries, and Germany, were numerous and respectable. La La Forge; Forge of Saumur first develoi)ed the theory of oc- ^<^sis- casioual causes to explain tlie union of soul and body, wherein he was followed by Geulinx, Regis, Wittich, and Malebranche." But this and other innovations displeased the stricter Cartesians, who did not find them in their master. Clauberg in Germany, Clerselier in France, Le Grand in the Low Countries, should be mentioned among the leaders of the school. IJut no one has left so comprehensive a statement and defence of Cjirtesianism as Jean Silvain Regis, Avhose 1644, had gone farthor ; anil her decree is nullis opinionibus ad aliarum celebrium couched in terms wliich might have bren Academiarum exempluni hie usitata, ita used by any one who wished to ridicule ut veteris et receptic philosophia; funda university prejudice by a forgery. " Ke- nienta non labefacteut." — Tepel. Hist, jicere novam istuin pliilosophiam, priuio I'hilos. Cartesiana^ p. 75. quia veteri philosophiie, quam AeademiiC ' An account of the manner in which toto orbi terrarum hactenus optimo con- the Cartesians were harassed through the Bilio docuere, adversatur, ejus'iue funda- Jesuits is given by M. Cousin in the Jour menta, subvertit ; deinde quia juventutem nal des Savans, March, 1838. a veteri et sana philosophia avertit, impe- - For the fate of tlie Cartesian philoso. ditquc quo minus ad culmen eriir/ilium's phy in the hfe of its founder, see the life provehatiir; eo quod istius propsumpta; of Descartes by Baillet, 2 vols, in quarto, philosophise aduiiniculo tec/inolugemata which he afterwards abridged in 12ino. ill auctonim lihris profes/tnrnnujiie lectio- After the death of Descartes, it m.ay b« libus et disputationibiis usitata, ptrcipere best traced by means of Brucker. Buhle,;U icqiiit ; postremo quod ex eadeui varire usual, is a mere copyist of his predecessor, alsre et absurdte opiniones partini consig- lie has, however, given a fuller account nantur, partini ab improvida juveiitute de- of Regis. A contemporary History of Car- duci possint pugnantes cum cafteris disci- tesian Philosophy by Tepel contains rathet plinis et facultatibus, atque imprimis cum . a neatly written summary of the contro- orthodo.xa theologia : censere igitur et sta- vcrsies it excited, both in the lifetime of tuereomnes philosoi)hiani in liac Araacmia Descartes and for a few years afterwards, docentes imposterum a tali instituto et » Tennemaun (Manuel de la Philosopliie, Incepto abstinere debere, contentos modira ii. 99) ascribes this theory to Geulinx. Se« iibertate dissenliendi in singularibtis non- also Brucker, y. 704. 80 REGIS. Part IV. Systeme de la Philosopliie, in tliree quarto volumes, appeared at Paris in 1690. It is divided iuto foiu- parts, ou Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. In the three latter, Regis claims nothing as his own, except some explanations : " All that I have said being due to M. Descartes, whose method and principles I have followed, even in explanations that are different from his own." And in his Logic he professes to have gone little beyond the author of the Art de Penser.* Notwithstanding this rare modesty. Regis is not a wi'iter un- worthy of being consulted by the studious of philosophy, nor deficient in clearer and fuller statements than will ahvays be found in Descartes. It might even be said, that he has many things which woidd be sought in vain through his master's Avritings, though I am unable to prove that they might not be traced in those of the intermediate Cartesians. Though our limits will not permit any further account of Regis, I will give a few passages in a note.- 31. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, a man of more general liucfs cen- erudition than philosophical acuteness, yet not quite sure of Car- witliout this, arraigned the whole theory in his Cen- eManism. ^^^^^^ Philosophi* Cartesian;T5. He had been for many years, as he tells us, a favorer of Cartesianism; but his ' It is remarkable that Regis says no- line chose fixe et permanente, consiste thing about figures and modes of svllo- dans la jjensee. puisque je sais par expe- gism : " Nous ne dirons rien dus figures ni rience que nies pensees sont dans un Hux des sjllogisnies en general ; car bien que continuel, et que je ne pense jamais i la tout cela puisse servir de quelque chose meme chose deux moniens de suite ; mais pour la sjieculation de la logique, il n'est quand je considere la difficuUe de plus au moins daucun usage pour la pratique, pres, je con^ois aisement qu'elle vient de laquelle est I'unique but ([ue nous nous ce que le mot de penxce est equivoque, et souimes proposes daus ce traite." — p. 37. que je m'en sers iudilTeremment pour sig- 2 Regis, iu imitation of his master, and nifier la pensee qui constitue ma nature, perhaps with more clearness, observes that et pour designer les differentes nianieres our knowledge of our own existence is not d"etre de cette pensee ; ce qui est une derived from rea.soning. "mais par une con- erreur extreme, car il y a cette dilTerence noissame simple et interieure, qui precede entre la pensee qui constitue ma nat',;re, toutes les connoissances acquises, et ([ue et les pensees qui n'en sont que les ma- j'appelle conscience. Pin eflet, quand je nieres d'etre, que la jiremiere est une pen- dis quejeconnoisou que je crolscounoitre, see fixe et permanente, et que les autres ceje presuppose lui-nieme mon existence, sont des pensees changeanteset passagercs. etant impossible que jeconnoisse,ouseule- C"est pourquoi, afin de doniier une idee nicnt que ,je croie connoitre, et (jue je ne exacte de ma nature, je dirai que je suis Fois pas (|Uelque chose irexistant."' — p. GS. une pensee qui existe en elle-meme, et qui The Cartesian ]iaradox, as it at first ap- est le snjet de toutes mes inauieres de pears, that thinking is th<' es.--ence of tlie penser. .le dis que je suis luie pensee soul. Regis has explained away. After ]iour niarquer ce que la pensee qui cou- coniing to the conclusion. ''.le suis done stitue nia nature a de conimun avec la une pensee."' luMnimediiifely corrects him- jionsee en giiunil (|ui com]. rend sous sol Felf: " t'epend.int je craius encore de me toutes k'S m.iiiieres parficuli'res de pen- definlr mal, quand je dis que je suis une ser: et j"ajoute, (Hii existe en elle-meme, pensee, qui a la propriete de douter et et qui est le sujet de dilToreutes manieres U"avoir de la certitude ; car quelle ai)))a- de penser, pour designer ce que cette pen fence y a-t-il que ma nature, q,ui doit otre see a de paitiei'Uer qui la distingue d« Chap. Ill, PORT-ROYAL LOGIC. 81 retractation is very complete. It cannot be denied, that Huet strikes well at the vulnerable jmrts of tlie Cartesian meta- physics, and exposes tlieir alternate scepticism and dogmatism with some justice. In other respects he disphiys an inferior knowledge of the human mind and of the principles of reason- ing to Descartes. He repeats Gassendi's cavil, that " Cogito, ei'go sum," involves the truth of " Quod cogitat, est." The Cartesians, Huet observes, assert the major, or universal, to be deduced from the minor ; which, though true in things known by induction, is not so in propositions necessarily known, or as the schools say, d priori, as that the whole is greater than its part. It is not, however, jirobable that Descartes would have extended his reply to Gassendi's criticism so far as this : some have referred our knowledge of geometi-ical axioms to mere experience, but this seems not agreeable to the Cartesian theory. 32. The influence of the Cartesian philosophy was dis- played in a treatise of deserved reputation, L'Art port-iioyai de Penser, often called the Port-Royal Logic. It ^°°'°- seems to have been the work of An.tony Arnauld, with sorao assistance, perhaps, by Nicole. Arnauld was not an entire Cartesian ; he had himself been engaged in controversy vsrith Descartes : but his understanding was clear and calm, his love of truth sincere, and he could not avoid recognizing the vast la pensee en general, vu qu'elle n'existe cording to him, are the bases of all cer- que dans rentendemeut de celui qui la taiiity in pliysical truth. Vrom the second concoit ainsi que toutes les autres natures axiom he deduces the objectivity or cause universelles." — p. 70. exemjiUtire of his idea of a perfect beinj; ; Every mode supposes a .substance wherein and his proof .seems at least more clearly It exists. From this axiom, Re^is deduces put than by Descartes. Every idea im- the objective being of space, because we plies an objective reality ; for otherwise have the ide:us of length, breadth, and there would be an efi'ect without a c.au.se. depth, which cannot belong to our.selves, Yet in this we have t!ie sophisms and beg- our souls having none of these properties; ging of questions of wliich we may see nor could the i-.leas be suggested by a many instances in Spinosa. superior being, if space did not exist, be- In" the .second pirt of the first book of iiause they would be the representations his metap'iysics. llegis treats of the union of nonentity, which is impossible. But of .soul and body, and concludes that the this transcendental proof is too subtle for motions of the bodv only .act on the .soui fhe world. by a special will of God", who h;is deter- It is an axiom of Kegis, that we only mined to produce certain thoughts simul- know things withcut us by meaiif of ideas, taueously with certain bodilv motio'.is. — and thit things of which we have no p. 124. "God is the eflRcient first cause of jdinis are in regard to us as if they did not all eSects ; his creatures are but secondarily exist at all. Another axiom is, that all efficient. ]5ut. a,s they act immediately, ide.is, considered in respect to their repre- we may ascribe all niodel beings to tlio sentitive property, depend on objects ;us efficiency of second causes. And he pre- their types, or causes exemplaircs. And fers tliis expression to that of occasional a tliird, that the cause excmplaire of causes, usual among the Cartesians, be- Ideus must contain all tiie properties which cause he f.uicies the latter rather iIerog». the ide;is represent. These axioms, ac- tory to the fixed will of God. VOL. IV. 6 82 L'ART DE TENSER. Part IV superiority of the new philosophy to that received in the schools. Tliis logic, accordingly, is perhaps the first regular treatise on that science that contained a protestation, tliough in very moderate language, against the Aristotelian metliod. The author tells us, that, after some doubt, he had resolved to insert a few things rather troublesome and of little value, such as the rules of- conversion and the demonstration of the syllogistic figures, chiefly as exercises of the understanding, for which ditficulties are not without utility. The method of syllogism itself he deems little serviceable in the discovery of truth ; while many things dwelt upon in books of logic, such as the ten categories, rather Injure than improve the reasoning faculties, because they accustom men to satisfy themselves with words, and to mistake a long catalogue of arbitrary definitions for real knowledge. Of Aristotle he speaks in more honorable terms than Bacon had done before, or than Malebranche did afterwards ; acknowledging the extraordinary merit of some of his writings, but pointing out with au Independent spirit his failings as a 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 nature and origin, In the chief differences of the objects they rejiresent, in their simplicity or composition, in their extent, as universal, particular, or singular ; and, lastly, in their distinctness or confusion. The word " idea," It Is observed, Is among those which are so clear that we cannot explain them by means of others, because none can be more dear and simple than themselves."^ But here it may be doubtful whether the sense in wlilch the word is to be taken must strike every one In the same way. The clearness of a word does not depend on its association with a distinct con- ception in our own minds, but on the generality of this same association in the minds of otiiers. 34. No follower of Descartes has more unambiguously than this author distinguished between imagination and intellection, though he gives the name of Idea to l)()th. JMany suppose, he says, that they cannot conceive a thing when tliey cannot imagine it. But we cannot Imagine a figure of 1,000 sides, though we can conceive it and reason upon it. AVe may, indeed, get a confused image of a figure with many sides : but » c. 1. Ctiap. III. L'AKT DE PENSER. 83 these are no more 1,000 than they are 999. Thus also we have ideas of thniking, affirming, denying, and the like, though we have no imagination of these operations. By ideas, there- fore, we mean, not images i)ainted in the fancy, but all that is in our minds when we say that we conceive any thing, in whatever manner we may conceive it. Hence it is easy to judge of the falsehood of some opinions held in this age. One philosopher has advanced, that we have no idea of God ; another, that all reasoning is but an assemblage of words con- nected by an alfirmation. He glances here at Gassendi and Hobbes.^ Far from all our ideas coming from the senses, as the Aristotelians have said, and as Gassendi asserts in his Logic, we may say, on the contrary, that no idea in our minds is derived from the senses except occasionally {par occasion) ; that is, the movements of the brain, which is all that the organs of sense can affect, give occasion to the soul to form ditlerent ideas Avhich it would not otherwise form, though these ideas have scarce ever any resemblance to what occurs in the organs of sense and in the brain, and though there are also very many ideas, which, deriving nothing from any bodily image, cannot without absurdity be referred to the senses.^ This is ])erha|)S a clearer statement of an important tiuth than will be found in Malebranche, or in Descartes himself. 35. In the second part, Arnauld treats of Avords and propo- sitions. Much of it may be reckoned more within the |)ro- vince of grammar than of logic. But as it is inconvenient to refer the student to works of a different class, especially if it should be the case that no good grammars, written with a regard to logical principles, were then to be found, this can- not justly be made an objection. In the latter chapters of this second part, he comes to much that is strictly logical, and taken from ordinary books on that science. The third part relates to syllogisms; and notwithstanding the author's low estimation of tiiat method, in comparison with the genei-nl regard for it in the schools, he has not omitted the coranioii explanations of mood and figure, ending with a concise uut good account of the chief soi)hisms. 36. The fourth and hist part is entitled, On Method, and 1 The reflection on Gassendi is a mere had himself been to blame in this contro- cavil, as will appear by remarking what he versy with the father of the new philoso- ha.s really said, and which we have quoted phy, and the disciples (caUing the author a few pages above. The Cartesians were of L'Art de Penser such in a general HcnseJ resolute in using one sense of the word retaliated by equal captiousness. " idea," while Gassendi used another. He ^ C. 1. 34 MALEBRANCHE. PAnr IV. contains the principles of connected reasoning:, which he justly observes to be more important than the rules of single syllogisms, wherein few make any mistake. The laws of demonstration given by Pascal are here laid down with some enlargement. Many observations not wholly bearing on mere- ly logical proof are found in this part of the treatise. 37. The Port-Royal Logic, though not perhaps very much read in England, has always been reckoned among the best works in that science, and certainly had a great influence in rendering it more metaphysical, more ethical (for much is said by Arnaidd on the moral discipline of the mi^tl in order to fit it for tlie investigation of truth), more exempt from technical barbarisms, and trifling definitions and divisions. It became more and more acknowledged, that the rules of syllo gism go a very little way in rendering the mind able to follow a course of inquiry witliout error, much less in assisting it to discover truth ; and that even tlieir vaunted prerogative of securing us from fallacy is nearly ineffectual in exercise. The substitution of the French language, in its highest polisli, for the uncouth Latinity of tlie Aristotelians, was another advantage of which the Cartesian school legitimately availed themselves. 38. Malebranche, whose Recherche de la Verite was pub- Maie- lished in 1674, was a warm and almost enthusiastic branche. admii'er of Descartes ; but his mind was independent, searching, and fond of its own inventions: he acknowledged no master, and in some points dissents from the Cartesian school. His natural temperament was sincere and rigid: he judges the moral and intellectual failings of mankind witli a severe scrutiny, and a contemptuousness not generally unjust in itself, but displaying too great confidence in his own sui)criority This was enhanced by a religious mysticism, which enters, as an essential element, into his philosophy of the mind. The fame of Malebranche, and still more the popularity in modern times of his Search for Truth, has been affected by that pecu liar hypothesis, so mystically expressed, the seeing all things in God, which has been more remembered than any other pai-t of that treatise. " The union," he says, " of the soul to God is the only means by which we acquire a knowledge of truth. This union has indeed been rendered so obscure by original Bin, that few can understand what it means : to those who follow blindly the dictates of sense and passion, it appeai-a CiiAP. III. HIS STYLE. S5 imaginaiy. The same cause has so fortified the connection between the soul and body, that we look on them as one substance, of which the latter is the princijjal part. And hence we may all fear, that we do not well discern the con- fused sounds with which the senses fill the imagination from that pure voice of truth which speaks to the souL The body speaks louder tlian God himself; and our pride makes us presumptuous enougli to judge without waiting tor tliose words of truth, without which we cannot truly judge at all. And the present work," he adds, " may give evidence of this ; for it is not published as being infallible. But let ray readers judge of my opinions according to the clear and distinct answers they shall receive from the only Lord of all men, after they shall have interrogated him by paying a serious attention to the subject." This is a strong evidence of the enthusiastic confidence in supei-natural illumination which belongs to Malebranche, and which we are almost surprised to find united with so much cool and acute rea- soning as his writings contain. 39. The Recherche de la ^'erite is in six books ; the first five on the errors springing from the senses, from the imagination, from the understanding, from the na- tural inclinations, and from the passions. The sixth con- tains the method of avoiding these, which, however, has been anticipated in great measure throughout the preced- ing. Malebranche has many repetitions, but little, I think, that can be called digressive ; though he takes a large range of illustration, and dwells rather ditlusely on topics of sub- ordinate importance. His style is admirable ; cleai*, precise, elegant ; sparing in metaphors, yet not wanting them in due place; warm, and sometimes eloquent; a little redundant, but never passionate or declamatory. 40. Error, according to JNIalebranche, is the source of all human misery: man is miserable because he is a sketch of sinner, and he would not sin if he did not consent to ^* (heory. (!rr. For the will alone judges and reasons, the understand- ing only perceives things and their relations, — a deviation from common language, to say the least, that seems quite mmecessary.' The will is active and free ; not that we can avoid willing our own happiness ; but it possesses a power of tui-ning the understanding towards such objects as please us, 1 L. i. c. 2. 8G MALEBRANCIIE. Paet IV. and commanding it to examine every tiling tlioroughly, else we should be perpetually deceived, and without remedy, by the appearances of truth. And this liberty we should use on every occasion : it is to become slaves, against the will of God, when we acquiesce in false appearances ; but it is in obedience to the voice of eternal truth Avhich speaks within us, that we submit to those secret rcproaclies of reason, which accompany our refusal to yield to evidence. There are, therefore, two fundamental rules, — one for science, the other for morals : never to give an entire consent to any proposi- tions, except those which are so evidently true that we cannot refuse to admit them without an internal uneasiness and reproach of our reason ; and never fully to love any thing which we can abstain from loving without remorse. We may feel a gi-eat inclination to consent absolutely to a probable opinion ; yet, on reflection, we shall find that we are not com- pelled to do so by any tacit self-reproach if we do not. And we ought to consent to such probable opinions for the time until we have more fully examined the question. 41. The sight is the noblest of our senses ; and, if they had been given us to discover truth, it is through vision that we should have done it. But it deceives us in all that it represents ; in the size of bodies, their figures and motions, in light and colors. None of these are such as they appear, as he proves by many obvious instances. Thus we measure the velocity of motion by duration of time, and extent of space ; but of duration the mind can form no just estimate, and the eye cannot determine equality of spaces. The diameter of the moon is greater by measurement when she is high in the heavens : it appears greater to our eyes in the horizon.^ On all sides we are beset with error tlirough our senses, Not that the sensations themselves, properly speaking, deceive us. We are not deceived in supposing that we see an orb of light befoi'e the sun has risen above tlie horizon, but in supposing that what we see is the sun itself. Were Ave even delirious, we should see and feel what our senses present to us, though our judgment as to its reality would be erroneous. And this judgment we may withhold by assenting to nothing without perfect certainty. 42. It would have been impossible for a man endowed with * L. I. c. 9. Malebranche was engaged afterwards in a controversy with Rejps on this particular question of the borizootol moon. Chap. HI. SKETCH OF HIS THEORY. 87 siicli intrepidity and acuteness as Malebranche to overlook the question, so naturally raised by this sceptical theory, as to the objective existence of an external world. Tliere is no necessary connection, he observes, between tlie presence of an idea iu tlie soul, and tlie existence of the thing which it represents ; as dreams and delirium prove. Yet we may be confident, that extension, iigure, and movement do generally exist without us when we perceive them. These are not iraaginaiy : we are not deceived in belie\'ing their reality, though it is very difficult to prove it. But it is far other- wise with colors, smells, or sounds ; for these do not exist at all beyond the mind. This he proceeds to show at considera- ble length.^ In one of the illustrations subsequently written in order to obviate objections, and subjoined to the Recherche de la Verite, Malebranche comes again to this problem of the reality of matter, and concludes by subverting every argument in its favor, except what he takes to be the assertion of Scripture. Berkeley, who did not see this in the same light, had scarcely a step to take in his own famous theory, which we may consider a? having been an- ticipated by Malebranche, with the important exception that what was only scepticism, and denial of certainty, in the one, became a positive and dogmatic affirmation in the other. 43. In all our sensation?, he proceeds to show, there ai*e four thinjrs distinct in themselves, but which, examined as they arise simultaneously, we are apt to confound : these are the action of the object, the effiict upon the organ of sense, the mere sensation, and the judgment we form as to its cause. We fall into errors as to all these, confounding the sensation with the action of bodies, as when we say there is heat in the fire, or color in the rose ; or confounding the motion of tlie nerves with sensation, as Avhen we refer heat to the hand ; but most of all, in drawing mistaken inferences as to the nature of objects from our sensations.- It may be here remarked, that what Malebranche has properly called the judgment of the mind as to the cause of its sensations, is precisely what Reid denominates perception ; a term less clear, and Avhich seems to have led some of his school into important errors. The language of the Scottish philosopher appears to imply that he considered perception as a distinct and original faculty of the mind, rather than what it is, — a complex operation of the judg- > L. i. c. 10. » c. 13 88 PERCEPTION. Part IV. ment and memory, applying knowledge already acquired by experience. Neither he, nor his disciple Stewart, though aware of the mistakes that have arisen in this province of metaphysics by selecting our instances from the phenomena of vision instead of the other senses, have avoided the same soiirce of error. The sense of sight has the prerogative of enaliliug us to pronounce instantly on the external cause of our sensation ; and tliis perception is so intimately blend- ed A\dth the sensation itseltj that it does not imply in our niuds, whatever may be the case with young children, the east consciousness oi" a judgment. But we need only make our experiment upon sound or smell, and we shall at once acknowledge that there is no sort of necessary connection between the sensation and our knowledge of its correspond- ing external object. We hear sounds continually which we are incapable of referring to any particular body ; nor does any one, I suppose, deny that it is by experience alone we leam to pronounce, with more or less of certainty accord- ing to its degree, on the causes from which these sensations proceed.^ 1 [The word "perception" has not, in this passage, been used in its most ap- proved sense ; but the language of phi- losophers is not uniform. Locke often con- founds perception with sensation, so as to employ the words iudilTerentl3-. But this is not the case when he writes with atten- tion. "The ideas," he says, "we receive from sensation are oft<.'n in grown people altered by the judgment without our taiiing notice of it;" instancing a globe, " of whicli tlie idea imprinted in our own mind is of a Hat circle variously shadowed ; but we, having been by use accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what altera- tions are made in the retiections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances of things into their causes ; so that, from that which truly is variety of shadow or color, collectiug tlie figure, it makes it pass for a mark of a figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform color, when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously colored." — li. ii. ch. 9. M. (Cousin, there- fore, is hardly just in saying tliat '• pcr- cejition, according to l/)cke, does notliing but perceive the sensatiim, — it is hardly more than an effect of the sensation.'- — Oours de I'Hist. do la I'hilosophie, vol. ii. p 136, edit. 1829. Doubtle-ss perception is the eifect of sensation ; but Locke ex tends the word, in this passage at least, to much of which mere sensation has only furnished the materials, to the inferences derived from experience. Later metaphy- sicians limit more essentially the use of the word. " La perception," says M. de Remu.sat, " dans sa plus grande complicite, n"est que la distinction mcntale de Tobjet de la sensation." — Es.sais de Philosophic, vol. ii. p. 372. Kant, \vith his usual acuteuess of discrimination, analyzes the process. We have, first, the phenomenon, or appearance of the object, under whicli he compreliends the impression made on the organ of sense ; secondly, the sensa- tion itself; thirdly, the representiitiou of the object by the mind ; fourthly, tlie reference of this representation to the ob- ject. And there may be. but not neces- sarily, the conception or knowledge of what the object is. Id., vol. i. p 270. Locke sometimes seems to use the word " perception " for the third of these ; lieid very frequently for the fourth. In his first work, indeed, the Inquiry into the Human Mind, he expressly distinguishes pcrcc|ition from " that knowledge of the objei'ts of sense, which is got by i-ea.souing. Tiicri' is no re.asouing in perception. Tlie belief which is implicil in it is the effect of iustluct."' — Uliai>. vi. § 20. But, in tact, lie limits the strict province of perceplioa to the primary qualities of matter, and to Chap/III. sensation - IMAGINATION. 89 44. Sensation he defines to be " a modification of the soul in relation to something which passes in the body to wliich she is united." These sensations we know by experience ; it is idle to go about defining or explaining them ; this cannot be done by v/oixls. It is an error, according to IMalebranche, to believe that all men have like sensations from the same objects. In this he goes farther than Pascal, who thinks it probable that they have ; while Malebranche holds it indubi- table, from the organs of men being constructed differently, that they do not receive similar impressions, instancing music, some smells and flavors, and many other things of the same kind. But it is obvious to reply, that he has argued from the exception to the rule ; the great majority of mankind agreeing as to musical sounds (which is the strongest case that can be put against his paradox) and most other sensations. That the sensations of different men, subject to such exceptions, if not strictly alike, are, so to say, in a constant ratio, seems as indis putiible as any conclusion we can draw from their testimony. 45. The second book of Malebranche's treatise relates to the imagination, and the errors connected with it. " The imagination consists in the power of the mind to form images of objects by producing a change in the fibres of that part of the brain, which may be called principal because it corre- sponds witli all parts of the body, and is the place where the soul, if we may so speak, immediately resides." This he sup- poses to be where all the filaments of the brain terminate ; so difilicult was it, especially in that age, for a philosopher who the iJea of space. Both Locke and Ileid, not at all in the three other senses. In however, sometimes extend it to the con- the other it is a reference of the sensation ception or knowlediie of the actual object, to a known object, and in all the senses: We have just quoted a passage from Locke. \\% perceive, an oak-tree, the strikiuj; of " In two of our senses, ".says Keid.'' touch the clock, the perfume of a violet. The and taste, there must be an iuuneiliate more philosophical sense of the word " per- application of tlie object to the orsian ; in ception" limits greatly the extent of the the other three, the oliject is //irfKCff/ at a faculty. ''We perceive," says Sir W. distance, but still by means of a medium Hamilton, on the passage last quoted from by which some impression is made upon Keid, "nothing but what is in relation to the organ." — Intellect. Powers, Essay II. the organ; and nothing is in relation ch. ii. 15ut perception of the object, to the organ that is not present to it. .\11 throuirh the organs of sound, smell, and the senses are, in fact, modifications of taste, mu;t of necessity unply a knowledge touch, as Uemocritus of old taught. We of it derived from experience. Those reach the distant reality, not by sense, not senses, by themselves, give us no percep- by perception, but by inference." Brown tion of external things. But the word has had said the same. This has been, in the one meaning in modern philosophy, and ca.seofsiglit. controverted by Dr. Whewell ; another in popular u. L. u c. 1. Chap. III. INTELLECTUAL PKOCESSES. i)l connection between the cerebral motions and the operations of the mind, but something like a subordination of the latter to a plastic power in the animal spirits of the brain. For if the differences in the intellectual powers of mankind, and also, as he afterwards maintains, in their moral emotions, are to be accounted for by mere bodily configuration as their regulating cause, little more than a naked individuality of consciousness seems to be left to the immaterial principle. No one, how- ever, whether he were staggered by this difficulty or not, had a more decided conviction of the essential distinction between mind and matter than this disciple of Descartes. The soul, he eays, does not become body, nor the body soul, by their union. Each substance remains as it is ; the soul incapable of exten- sion and motion, the body incapable of thought and desire. All the alliance between soul and body which is known to us consists in a natural and mutual correspondence of the thoughts of the former with the traces on the brain, and of its emotions with the traces of the animal spirits. As soon as the soul receives new ideas, new traces are iinprinted on the brain ; and, as soon as external objects imprint new traces, the soul receives new ideas. Not that it contemplates these traces, for it has no knowledge of them ; nor that the trace? contain the ideas, since they have no relation to them ; nor that the soul receives her ideas from the traces, for it is incon- ceivable that the soul should receive any thing from the body, and become more enlightened, as some philosophers (meaning Gassendi) express it, by turning itself towards the phantasms in the brain. Thus, also, when the soul wills that the arm should move, the arm moves, though she does not even know whiit else is necessary for its motion ; and thus, when the animal spirits are put into movement, the soul is disturbed, though slie does not even know that there are animal spii-its in the body. 48. These remarks of Malebranche it is important to familiarize to our minds; and those who reflect upon them will neither fall into the gross materialism to which many physiologists appear prone, nor, on the other hand, out of fear of allowing too much to the bodily organs, reject any sufficient proof tliat may be adduced for the relation between the cere- bral system and the intellectual processes. These opposite errors are by no means uncommon in the present age. But, without ex])ressing an opinion on that peculiar hypothesis 92 ASSOCIATIOJSI OF IDEAS. Paut IV. wliich is generally called phrenology, we might ask whether it is not quite as conceivable, that a certain state of portions of the brain may be the antecedent condition of memory or ima- gination, as that a certain state of nervous filaments may be, Avhat we know it is, an invariable antecedent of sensation. In neither instance can there be any resemblance or proper representation of the organic motion transferred to the soul ; nor ought we to employ, even in metaphor, the analogies of imi)ulse or communication. But we have two phenomena, between which, by the constitution of our human nature, and probably by that of the very lowest animals, there is a perpe- tual harmony and concomitance ; an ultimate fact, accoi'ding to the present state of our faculties, which may in some senses be called mysterious, inasmuch as we can neither fully appre- hend its final causes, nor all the conditions of its operation, but one which seems not to involve any appearance of contra- diction, and should therefore not lead us into the useless perplexity of seeking a solution that is almost evidently be- yond our reach. 49. The association of ideas is far more extensively deve- loped by Malebranche in this second book than by any of the old writers, not even, I think, with the exception of Hobbes ; though he is too fond of mixing tlie psycliological fsicts which experience furnishes with his j)recarious, however plausible, theory of cerebral traces. Many of his remarks are acute and valuable. Thus he observes, that writers who make iise of many new terms in science, under the notion of being more intelligible, are often not understood at all, whatever care they may take to define their words. We grant in theory their right to do this ; but nature resists. The new Avords, having no ideas previously associated with them, fall out of the read- er's mind, except in mathematics, where they can be rendered evident by diagrams. In all this part, Malebranche exjia- tiates on the excessive deference shown to authority, which, because it is great in religion, we suppose equally conclusive in philosophy, and on tlie waste of time which mere reading of many Ijooks entails ; experience, he says, having always shown that those who have studied most are the very persons who have led the world into the greatest errors. The whole of the cha])ters on this subject is wortli perusal. 50. In another ]r.\vi of this second book, Malebranche has opened a new and feitile vein, which he is far from having (]HAP. III. CONTAGIOUS i'UWER OF IM.\.GINATION. 93 exhausted, on what he calls the contagiousness of a powerful imagination. Minds of this character, he observes, rule those which are feebler in concejition : they give them by degrees their own habit, they impress their own type ; and as men of strong imagination are themselves for the most part very unreasonable, their brains being cut up, as it were, by deep traces, which leave no room ibr any thing else, no source of human error is more dangerous than this contagiousness of their disorder. This he exi)lains, in his favorite physiolo- gy, by a certain natural sympathy between the cerebral fibres of different men, Avhich being wanting in any one with whom we converse, it is vain to expect that he will enter into our views, and we must look for a more sympathetic tissue elsewhere. 51. The moral observations of Malebranche are worth more than these hypotheses with which they are mingled. Men of powerful imagination express themselves with force and vivacity, though not always in the most natural manner, and often with great animation of gesture : they deal with subjects that excite sensible images ; and from all this they acquire a great power of persuasion. This is exercised especially over persons in subordinate relations ; and thus children, servants, or courtiei-s adopt the opinions of their superiors. P^ven in religion, nations have been found to take up the doctrines of their rulers, as has been seen in England. In certain authors, who influence our minds without any weiglit of argument, this despotism of a strong imagination is exercised, which he particularly illustrates by the examples of T(;rtulliau, Seneca, and IMontaigne. The contagious power of imagination is also manifest in the credulity of mankind as to apparitions and witchcraft ; and he observes, that, where witches are burned, there is generally a great number of them, while, since some parliaments have ceased to punish for sor- cery, the offence has diminished within their jurisdiction. 52. The application which these striking and original views will l)ear spreads far into the regions of moral philosophy in the largest sense of that word. It is needless to dwell upon, and idle to cavil at, the physiological theories to which jNIale- branche has had recourse. False let them be, what is derived from the experience of human nature will always be true. No one general phenomenon in the intercommunity of man- kind with each other is more worthy to be remembered, or 94 IDEAS OF PURE INTELLECT. Part IV. more evident to an observing eye, than this contagiousness, as Malebranche phrases it, of a powerful imagination, espe- cially when assisted by any circumstances that secure and augment its influence. The history of every popular delusion, and even the petty events of every day in private life, are witnesses to its power. 53. The third book is entitled, Of the Understanding or Pure Spirit {rEsjmt Par). By the pure understanding he means the faculty of the soul to know the reality of certain thinjis without the aid of ima2;es in the brain. And he warns the reader that the inquiry will be found dry and obscure. The essence of the soul, he says, following his Cartesian theory, consists in thought, as that of matter does in extension ; will, imagination, memory, and the like, are modi- fications of thought or forms of the soul, as water, wood, or fire are modifications of matter. This sort of expression has been adopted by our metaphysicians of the Scots school in preference to the ideas of reflection, as these operations are called by Locke. But by the word thought (pensee), Malebranche, like Regis, does not mean these modifications, but the soul or thinking principle absolutely, capable of all these modifications, as extension is neither round nor square, though capable of either form. The power of volition, and, by parity of reasoning we may add, of thinking, is inseparable from the soul, but not the acts of volition or thinking them- selves ; as a body is always movable, though it be not always in motion. 54. In this book it does not seem that Malebranche has been very successful in distinguishing the ideas of pure intel- lect from those which the senses or imagination present to us ; nor do we clearly see what he means by the former, except those of existence and a (ew more. But he now hastens to liis peculiar hyj)Othesis as to the mode of perception. By ideas he undersfands the immediate object of the soul, which all the world, he supposes, Avill agree not to be the same with the external objects of sense. Ideas are real existences ; for they have ])i-operties, and represent very different things : but nothing can have no property.^ How, then, do they enter into • [CuJwortb uses the same argument cause whatever is, is singular. For though tor the reality of ideas. " It is a riilicu- whatever exi.st.s without the niiud be sin- lous conceit of a modern atheistic writer, gular, yet it is plain that there are con that universals are nothing else but names, ceptions in our minds objectively univer- ftttributed to nmny singular bodies, be- sal. Which universal objects of our mind, Chap. Ill MYSTICISM OF MALEDRiVNCIIE. 95 the mind, or become jpresent to it ? Is it, as the Aristotelians hold, by means of species transmitted from the external ob- jects ? Or ai-e they produced instantaneously by some faculty of the soul ? Or have they been created and posited as it were in the soul, when it began to exist ? Or does God pro- duce them in us whenever we think or perceive ? Or does the soul contain in herself, in some transcendental manner, whatever is in the sensible world ? These hypotheses of elder philosophers, some of which are not quite intelligibly distinct from each other, Malebranche having successfully refuted, comes to what he considers the only possible alternative ; namely, that tlie soul is united to an all-perfect Being, in whom all that belongs to his creatures is contained. Besides the exclusion of every other supposition which he conceives himself to have given, he subjoins several direct arguments in favor of his own theory, but in general so obscure and full of arbitrary assumption that they cannot be stated in this brief sketch.!" 55. The mysticism of this eminent man displays itself throughout this part of his treatise, but rarely leading him into tliat figurative and unmeaning language from which the inferior class of enthusiasts are never free. His philosophy, which has hitherto appeared so sceptical, assumes now the character of intense, irresistible conviction. The scepticism of Malebranche is merely ancillary to his mysticism. Ilia philosophy, if we may use so quaint a description of it, is subjectivity leading objectivity in chains. He seems to tri- umph in his restoration of the inner man to his pristine greatness, by subduing those fiilse traitors and rebels, the nerves and brain, to whom, since the great lapse of Adam, his posterity had been in thrall. It has been justly remarked by Brown, that in the writings of Malebranche, as in all theological metaphysicians of the Catholic Church, we per- ceive the commanding influence of Augustiu.- From him, though they exist not as such anywhere paradoxical, in expression at least, as any without it, yet ai-e tliey not therefore no- tiling in Malebr;inche. thing, but iiave an intolMgible entity, for [Brown meant to gu.ard against the no- this very reason, because they are conceiv- tion of Berkeley and JIalebranche, that able : for, sin( e nonentity is not con- ideas are any how separable from the ceivable, what<>vcr is conceivable .as an ob- uiind, or capable of being considered as joct of the mind is therefore something." — real beings. But he did not sufficiently Intellectual System, p. 731. — 1842.] distinguish between the percipient and the ' f/. iii. c. 6. perception, or what M. de Kemusat has 2 Philosophy of the Human Mind, T-ec- called, le viol ob.vrvi' par If moi. .A.s for hire XXX. Brown"a own position, that the word '' modification,' which we ewe to 'the idea is the min d," seems to me as Malebranche, though it Joes not well e:t 96 MALEBRANCHE'S DISSExVT FROM AUGUSTIN. Part IV. rathei" than, in the first instance, from Plato or Plotinus, it may be suspected that Malebranche, who was not very learned in ancient philosophy, derived the manifest tinge of Flatouism, that, mingling witli his warm admiration of Des- cartes, has rendered him a link between two famous systems, not very harmonious in their spirit and turn of I'easouing. But his genius, more clear, or at least disciplined in a more accurate logic, than that of Augustin, taught him to dissent from that father by denying objective reality to eternal truths, sucli as that two and two are equal to four ; descending thus one step from unintelligiljle mysticism. oG. "Let us repose," he concludes, "in this tenet, that God is the intelligible world, or the place of spirits, like as the material world is the place of bodies ; that it is from his power they receive all their modifications ; that it is in his wisdom they finil all their ideas ; and that it is by his love they feel all their well-regulated emotions. And, since his power and his wisdom and his love are but himself, let us believe with St. Paul, that he is not ftxr from each of us, and that ia him w^e live and move, and have our being." But sometimes Malebi'anche does not content himself with these fine effusions of piety. His theism, as has often been the case with mystical writers, expands till it becomes, as it were, dark with excessive light, and almost vanishes in its own effulgence. He has passages that approach very closely to the pantheism of Jordano Bruno and Spinosa ; one espe- cially, wherein he vindicates the Cartesian argument for a being of necessary existence in a strain which perhaps ren- ders that argument less incomprehensible, but certainly cannot be said, in any legitimate sense, to establish the existence of a Deity.^ 57. It is from the effect which the invention of so origina and striking an hypothesis, and one that raises such magni ficent conceptions of the union between the Deity and the I ress his own theory of independent ideas, ceive more than that, from not liaving I cannot help agreeing with l.ocko : " Wliat such a perception, my mind is come to Bcrvice does that word do us in one case or have sueli a perception? U'hicii is what tlie other, wlicn it is only a new word I as well knew befDre the word ' moditica- brought in witlimit any new eonceptiim at tion ' was made use of, wliicli. by its use, all? VoT my mind, when it sees a color lias made me conceive nothing more than or figure, is altered, I know, tVom the not wliat 1 conceived before." — Examination having such or such a perception to the of Ma.lebranche's theory, in Locke's works, having it; but when, to explain this, I vol. iii. p. 427, ed. ITli) — 1847.] am trilil, that eitlierof these perceptions is ' L. iii. c. 8 « modification of tiio mind, what do I eon- Chap. III. HIS CONTEIMPT TOR ARISTOTLE. 97 humarx soul, would produce on a man of an elevated and contemplative genius, that we must account for Malebranche's forgetfulness of much tliat he has judiciously said in part of his treatise, on the limitation of our faculties and the inijier- fect knowledge we can attain as to our intellectual nature. For, if we should admit that ideas are substances, and not accidents of the thinking spirit, it would still be doubtful whether he has wholly enumerated, or conclusively refuted, the possible hypotheses as to their existence in the mind. And his more direct reasonings labor under the same diih- culty from tlie manifest incapacity of our understandings to do more than form conjectures and dim notions of what we can so imperfectly bring before them. 58. The fourth and fifth Ijooks of the Recherche de la Verite treat of the natural inclinations and passions, and of the errors which spring from those sources. These books are various and discursive, and very characteristic of the author's mind ; abounding with a mystical theology, which extends to an absolute negation of secondary causes, as well as Avith poignant satire on the follies of mankind. In every part of his treatise, but especially in these books, Malebranche pur- sues with unsparing ridicule two classes, the men of learning, and the men of the woi-ld. With Aristotle and the whole school of his disci])les he has an inveterate quarrel, and omits no occasion of holding them Ibrth to contempt. This seems to have been in a great measure warranted by their dog- matism, their bigotry, their pertinacious resistance to modern science, especially to the Cartesian philosophy, which Male- branche in general followed. " Let them," he exclaims, " prove, if they can, that Aristotle, or any of themselves, has deduced one truth in physical idiilosophy from any principle peculiar to himself, and we will promise never to speak of lum but in eulogy." ' But, until this gauntlet should be taken up, he thought himself at liberty to use very different lan- iguage. " The works of the Stagirite," he observes, " are so obscure and full of indefinite words, that we have a color 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 any thing, because they make a great noise, and in reidity say nothing at all." * L. iv. o. o. veil. IT. 7 98 HIS OPINION OF LEARNED MEN. Part fV 59. But such philosophers are not the only class of the learned he depreciates. Those who pass their time in gazing through telescopes, and distribute provinces in the moon to their friends; those wlio pore over worthless books, such as the Rabbinical and other Oriental writers, or compose folio volumes on the animals mentioned in Scripture, while they can hardly tell what are found in their own province ; those who accumu- late quotations to inibrni us not of truth, but of what other men have taken for truth, — are exposed to his sharp, but doubt- less exaggerated and unreasonable, ridicule. Malebranchc, like many men of genius, was much too intolerant of what might give pleasui-e to other men, and too narrow in his mea- sure of utility. He seems to think little valuable in human learning but metaph}sics and algebra.^ From the learned he passes to the great, and, after enumerating the circumstances which obstruct their perception of truth, comes to the blunt conclusion, that men " much raised above the rest by rank, dignity, or wealth, or whose minds are occupied in gaining these advantages, are remarkably subject to error, and hardly capable of discerning any truths Avhich lie a little out of the common way."- GO. The sixth and last book announces a method of direct- ing our pursuit of truth, by Avhich we may avoid the many errors to which our understandings are liable. It promises to give them all the perfection of which our nature is capable, by prescribing the rules we should invariably observe. But it must, I think, be confessed that there is less originality in this method than we might expect. We find, hoAvever, many acute and useful, if not always novel, observations on the con- duct of the understanding ; and it may be reckoned among the books which would supply materials lor what is still wanting to philosophical literature, an ample and useful logic. We 1 It is rather annisiiif; to find, that, ''La plupart Je livresde certains savans while lamcuting tlie want of a review of ne sent labriques qu'i coups de diction- boolis, he pi'edicts tliiit we shall never see naires, ct ils n'out gueres lu que les tables one, ou account of the prejudice of man- des livres qu"ils citent, ou quelques lieux kind in favor of authors. The prophecy couununs, ranias.^es de differens auteurs. was falsified almost at the time. " On re- On n'oseroit cntrer d'avantjiRe dans le garde ordinairemcnt les auteurs couime detail de ees choses, ni en donner des des honmies rares et extraordinaires, ct exemples, de peur de choquer des per- beaucoup elevts au-dessus des autres : on soi.nes aussi fieres et aussi hilicuses que les revere done au lieu de les uiepriser sontcesfaux savans; car on ne prend pM et do le.s punir. Ainsi il n'y a ^I'l^res j)laisir i se laire iiijurier eu Grec ct eo d'apparence que les honimes i-rigent ja- Araho " luais uu tribunal pour examiner et pour ^ (j. 9. condamner tons les livres, qui ne font que oorrompru la r»ison." — 0. 8. Chap. Ill CHARACTER OF JLiLEBRANCHE. 99 are so frequently inattentive, he observes, especially to the pure ideas of the understanding, that all resources should be employed to fix our thoughts. And tor this purpose we may make use of the passions, tlie senses, or the imagination ; but the second with less danger than the first, and the third than the second. Geometrical figures he ranges under the 'aids supplied to the imagination rather tlian to the senses. He dwells much at length on the utility of geometry in fixing our attention, and of algebra in compressing and arranging our thoughts. All sciences, he well remarks (and I do not know that it had been said before), which treat of things distin- guishable by more or less in quantity, and which consequently may be represented by extension, are capable of illustration by diagrams. But these, he conceives, are inapplicable to moral truths, though sure consequences may be derived from them. Algebra, however, is far more useful in improving the understanding than geometry, and is in fact, with its sister arithmetic, the best means tliat we possess.^ But, as men like better to exercise the imagination tlian the pure intellect, geometry is the more favorite study of tlie two. Gl. Malebranche may, perhaps, be thought to have occu- pied too much of our attention at the expense of (.^^^^^4 more popular writers. But for this very I'eason, that of Maie- the Eecherche de la Verite is not at present much ^'^■^"'^^«- read, I have dwelt long on a treatise of so great celebrity in its own age, and whicli, even more perhaps than the meta- physical writings of Descartes, has influenced that department of philosophy. Malebranche never loses sight of tiie great principle of the soul's immateriality, even in his long and rather hypothetical disquisitions on the instrumentality of the ' L. vi.c. 4. All conceptions of abstract Cudworth has a somewhat similar re- Ideas, he justly remarks in another place, mark in his Immutable Jlorality, that the are accompauieJ with some imajiiiiation, cogitations we have of corporeal things thougli we are often not aware of it ; be- are usually, in his technical style, both cause these ide;is have no natural images noematical and phantasmatical together; or traces associated with them, but such the one being as it were the soul, and the only as the will of man or chance has other the body of them. " Whenever we given. Thus, in analysis, however general think of a pliautasmatical universal or the ideas, we use letters and signs always uuiv<'rsalized phantasm, or a thing which iissociated with the ideas of tlie things, we have no clear intellection of (as, for though they are not really related, and example, of the natureof a rose in general), or this reason do not give us false and con- there is a complication of something noe- fused notioiLS. Hence, he thinks, the ideas matical and something phantasmatical to- of things which can only be perceived by gether ; for phant;isms themselves as well the understanding may become associated sensations are always individual things." irith the traces on the brain, I. v. c. 2. p. 143. — [See also the quotation from Vhia is evidently as applicable to language Qassendi, supra, § 15. — lSi2.] ts it is to algebra. 100 COMPARED WITH PASCAL. Part IV. brain in acts of thouglit ; and his language is far less objec- tionable on this subject than that of succeeding philosophers. He is always consistent and clear in distinguishing the soul itself from its modifications and properties. He knew well and had deeply considered the application of mathematical and physical science to the philosophy of the human mhid. He is very copious and diligent in illustration, and very clear in definition. His principal errors, and the sources of them in his peculiar temperament, have appeared in the course of these pages. And to these we may add his maintaining some Cartesian paradoxes, such as the system of vortices, and the want of sensation in brutes. Tlie latter he deduced from the immateriality of a thinking principle, supposing it incredible ; though he owns it had been the tenet of Augustin, that there could be an immaterial spirit in the lower animals, and also from the incompatibility of any unmerited suffering with the justice of God.^ Nor was JMalebranche exempt from some prejudices of scholastic theology; and, though he generally took care to avoid its technical language, is content to repel the objection to his denial of all secondary causation from its making God the sole author of sin, by saying that sin, being a privation of righteousness, is negative, and consequently requires no cause. G2. Malebranche bears a striking resemblance to his great Compared Contemporary Pascal, though they were not, I be- with Pascal, lieve, in any personal relation to each other ; nor could either have availed himself of the other's writings. Both of ardent minds, endowed with strong imagination and lively wit, sarcastic, severe, fearless, disdainful of poj^ular opinion and accredited reputations ; both imbued with the notion of a vast difference between the original and actual state of man, and thus solving many phenomena of his being ; both, in different modes and degrees, sceptical, and rigorous in the exaction of proof; both undervaluing all human know- l(;dge beyond the regions of mathematics ; both of rigid strict- ness in morals, and a fervid enthusiastic piety. But in Male- branche there is a less overpowei-ing sense of religion ; his eye roams unblcHched in the light, before which tiiat ot Pas- cal had been veiled in awe ; he is sustained by a less timid » This ho had bnrrnwoa from a iiiaxini w!u-nce, it seems, th.'it father had infen-ed of Augustin: "Sub justo IJeo qviisiiuam the imiiutation ot'orifiinal sni to infants j a nisi mereatur, miser esse non potest ;" happy moae of escapius the difficulty. Chap. III. ARNAULD— NORKIS. 101 desire of truth, by g^reater confidence in the insf irations that are brcatlied i;?to his mind ; he is more quick in adopting a novel ojiinion, l)iit less a[)t to embrace a sophism in deience of an old one ; he has less energy, but more copiousness and variety. G3. Arnauld, who, though at first in personal friendship with INIalebrunrhe, held no friendship in a balance Amauidon with his steady love of truth, combated the chief true ana points of the other's theory in a treatise on True and False Ideas. This work I have never had the good fortune to see : it appears to assail a leading principle of Malebranche, the separate existence of ideas, as objects in the mind, inde- pendent and distinguishalde from the sensation itself. Ar- nauld maintained, as Keid and others have since done, that we do not perceive or feel ideas, but real oVyects, and thus led the way to a school w hich has been called that of Scotland, and has had a great popularity among our later metaphysi- cians. It would require a critical examination of his work, which I have not been able to make, to determine j^recisely what were the opinions of this philosojjher.^ G4. The peculiar hypothesis of jMalebranche, that we see all things in God, was examined by Locke in a short piece, contained in the collection of his works. It will i-eadily be conceived, that two philosophers, one eminently mistical, and endeavoring upon this highly transcendental theme to grasp in his mind and express in his language something beyond the faculties of man, the other as characteristically averse to mys- tery, and slow to admit any thing Avithout proof, would have hardly any cgmmon ground even to fight upon. Locke, therefore, does little else than complain that he cannot under- stand what Maleljranche has advanced ; and most of his readers will probably find themselves in the same position. Go. He had, however, an English supporter of some cele- brity in his own age, Norris ; a discijjle, and one . of tiie latest we have had, of the Platonic school of Henry JNIore. The principal metaj)liysical treatise of Norris, lus Essay on the Ideal World, was published in two parts, 1 Brucker; Buhle: Rcid"s Intellectual niitted them as modifications of the mind, Powers. [But foe what Sir W. Uauiiltou aud bUppcved, like Descartes and most has said in Kdinb. Kev.. vol. lii.. and in others, that perception of external objects his edition of Ueid, p. 298 f< «^/'^/. Though is representation, and not intuition — Arnauld denied the separate cxistenieof 1847.] Ideas, as held by Malebranche, he ad- 102 ' THOUGHTS OF PASCAL. Part IV. 1701 and 1702. It does not, therefore, come witliin our limits. Norris is more thoroughly Platonic than Malebranche, to whom, however, he pays great deference, and adopts his fundamental hypothesis of seeing all things in God. He is a writer of fine genius and a noble elevation of moral senti- ments, such as predisposes men for the Platonic schemes of theosophy. He looked up to Augustin with as much venera- tion as to Plato, and respected, more perhaps than Male- branche, certainly more than the generality of English writers, the theological metaphysicians of the schools. With these he mingled some visions of a later mysticism. But his reason- ings will seldom bear a close scrutiny. 66. In the Thoughts of Pascal we find many striking remarks on the lo^ric of that science with which ha was peculiarly convei-sant, and upon the general foundations of certainty. He had reflected deeply upon the sceptical objections to all human reasoning ; and though some- times, out of a desire to elevate religious faith at its expense, he seems to consider them unanswerable, he was too clear- headed to believe them just. "Reason," he says, "confounds the dogmatists; and nature, the sceptics."^ "We have an incapacity of demonstration, which the one cannot overcome : we have a conception of truth, which the others cannot disturb."^ He throws out a notion of a more complete method of reasoning than that of geometry, wherein every thing shall be demonstrated, which, however, he holds to be unattainable;" and perhaps on this account he might think the cavils of Pyrrhonism invincible by pure reason. But as he afterwards admits that we may have a full certainty of px'opositions that cannot be demonstrated, such as the infinity of number and space, and that such incapability of direct proof is rather a perfection than a defect, this notion of a greater completeness in evidence seems neither clear nor consistent.^ 67. Geometry, Pascal observes, is almost the only subject as to which we find truths wherein all men agree. And one cause of this is, that geometers alone regard the true laws of demonstration. These, as enumerated by him, are eiglit in number: 1. To define nothing which cannot be expressed in > CEuvres de Pascal, vol. i. p. 205. bles cfe demonstration n' est pas leur ob- * P. 208. sciirite, mai.i au contraire Icur extrgnie ' Peuscea de Pa.'scal, part i. art. 2. 6vidonco, ce inancjue de preuve n■^^st p;ia * '• Coinme la cause qui les rend incapa- un def.iut, mais plutot une perfectiou." Chap. IH. GENIUS OF PASCAL. 103 clearer terms tlian those in which it is already expressed ; 2. To leave no obscure or equivocal terms undefined ; 3. To employ in tlie definition no terms not already Jviiowii ; 4. To omit nothing in the principles from which we argue, unless we arc .-^ure it is granted ; 5. To lay down no axiom which i8 not perfectly evident ; fi. To demonstrate nothing which is as clear already as we can make it; 7. To prove every thing in the least doubtful, by means of self-evident axioms, or of propositions already demonstrated ; 8. To substitute mentally the definition instead of the thing defined. Of these rules, he says, the first, fourth, and sixth are not absolutely necessa- ry in order to avoid error ; but the other five are indispensable. Yet, though they may be found in books of logic, none but the geometers have paid any regard to them. The authors of these books seem not to have entered into the spirit of their own precepts. All other rules than those he has given are useless or miscliievous : they contain, he says, the whole art of demonstration.^ 68. The reverence of Pascal, like tha^jof Malebranche, for what is established in religion, does not extend to philosophy. We do not find in them, as we may sometimes perceive in the present day, all sorts of prejudices against the liberties of the human mind clustering together like a herd of bats, by an instinctive association. He has the same idea as Bacon, that the ancients were properly the children among mankind. Not only each man, he says, advances daily in science, but all men collectively make a constant progress ; so that all genera- tions of mankind during so many ages may be considered as one mnn, always subsisting and always learning; and the old age of this universal man is not to be sought in the period next to his birth, but in that which is most removed from it. Those we call ancients were truly novices in all things ; and we, who have added to all they knew the experience of so many succeeding ages, have a better claim to that antiquity which we revere in them. In this, with much ingenuity and much truth, there is a certain mixture of fallacy, which I shall not wait to point out. 69. The genius of Pascal was admirably fitted for acute observation on the constitution of human nature, if he had not seen every thing through a refracting medium of religious prejudice. When this does not interfere to bias his judgment, I (Euvros de Pascal, i. 66. 104 SPINOSA'S ETHICS. Part fV he abounds with fine remarks, though always a little tending towards severity. One of the most useful and original is tlie following :•' When we would show any one that he is mis- taken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject, for his view of it is generally riglit on this side, and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment that he was not Avrong in his judg- ment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole of the case. For Ave are less ashamed of not having seen the wholo, than of being deceived in what we do see ; and this may perhaps arise from an impossibility of the understanding's being deceived in what it does see, just as the perceptions of the senses, as such, must l)e always true."^ 70. The Cartesian philosophy has been supposed to have Spinosa's produced a meta])hysician very divergent in most of Ethics. I^jg theory from that school, — Benedict Spinosa. No treatise is written in a more rigidly geometrical metliod than his Ethics. It rests on definitions and axioms, from which the propositions aroi^lerived in close, brief, and usually per- spicuous demonstrations. The few explanations he has thought necessary are contained in scholia. Thus a fabric is erected, astonishing and bewildering in its entire eft'ect, yet so regu- larly constructed, that the reader must pause and return on his steps to discover an error in the workmanshi|>, while he cannot also but acknowledge the good faith and intimate per- suasion of having attained the truth, which the acute and deep-reflecting author everywhere displays. 71. Spinosa was born in 1G32 : we find by his correspond- ItsKenerai euce Avith Oldcuburg, in IGGl, that he had already originauty. developed his entire scheme ; and, in that with De Vries, in 16G3, the propositions of the Ethics are alluded to numerically, as we now read them.-' It was, therefore, the fruit of early meditation, as its fearlessness, its general disre- gard of the slow process of observation, its unhesitating dog matism, might lead us to expect. In what degree he had availed himself of prior Avriters is not evident ; witli Des- cartes and Lord Dacon he was familiar, and from the former he had derived some leading tenets ; but he observes, both in Lim and Bacon, what he calls mistakes as to the first cause « (Euvres (Ic Pascal, p. 149. Though trary asserted in other passages : he is not Pascal here says that the perreptious of uuifunuly r^msistent witli himself the senses ai-e always true, wc find the coa- '•' Spinosa; Opera I'osthuuia, p. 396, 460 Chap. HI. VIEW OF HIS MKTxVl'HYSICAL TlIEOKr. 105 and origin of things, their ignorance of the real nature of the human mind, and of the true sources of orror.^ The panthe- istic theory of Jordano Bruno is not very remote from that of Spinosa; hut tlie rhapsodies of the Italian, who seldom aims at proof, can liardly liave supplied much to the subtle mind of tlie Jew of Amsterdam. Buhle has given us an exposition of the Spinosistic theory.- But several proposi- tions in this, I do not find in the author; and Buhle has at least, without any necessity, entirely deviated from the ari-angc- nient he found in the Ethics, f his seems as unreasonable in a work so rigorously systematic, as it would be in the ele- ments of Euclid ; and I believe the following pages will prove more faithful to the text. But it is no easy task to translate and abridge a writer of such extraordinary conciseness as well as subtlety ; nor is it probable that my attempt will be intelli gible to those who have not habituated tiiemselves to meta- physical inquiry. 72. The first book or part of the PLthics is entitled Con- cerning God, and contains the entire theory of Spi- viewofhi« nosa. It may even be said that this is found in a metaphysi few of the first propositions; which being granted, '^''^ '^'^'^"''y- the rest could not easily be denied ; presenting, as they do, little more than new aspects of the former, or evident deduc- tions from them. Upon eight definitions and seven axioms reposes this philosophical superstructure. A substance, by the tliird definition, is ,-op. ii. and iii genere; quicquid enim in suo genere tan- * I'rop. vi. turn inenituni est, infinita dt! c.o attributa ^ Prop. vii. aegaxe possumus ; quod autem absolute CiiAi-. III. EXISTENCE OF GOD. • 107 woulfl otherwise be terminated by some other of the same nature and necessarily existing ; but two substances cannot have the same attribute, and therefore cannot both pos- sess necessary existence.' The more reality or existence any being possesses, the more attributes are to be ascribed to it. This, he says, appears by the definition of an at- tribute.- The proof, however, is surely not manifest ; nor do we clearly apprehend what he meant by degrees of reality or existence. But of this theorem he was very proud. I look upon the demonstration, he says in a letter, as capital {pal- niariam), that the more attributes w^e ascribe to any being, the more we are compelled to acknowledge its existence ; that is, the more we conceive it as true, and not a mere chimera ' And from this he derived the real existence of God, though the former pi-oof seems collateral to it. God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each expressing an eternal and infinite power, necessarily exists.^ For such an essence involves existence. And, besides this, if any thing does not exist, a cause must be given for its non-existence ; since this requires one as much as existence itself.^ 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 in something extrin- sic. But neither of these can prevent the existence of God. The later propositions in Spinosa are chiefly obvious cor oUaries from the definitions and a few of the first proposi- tions which contain the whole theory, which be proceeds tc expand. 75. There can be no substance but God. Whatever is, is in God; and nothing can be conceived without God." For he is the sole substance ; and modes cannot be conceived without a substance ; but, besides substance and mode, nothing exists. God is not corporeal ; but body is a mode of God, and there- fore uncreated. God is the permanent, but not the transient, cause of all things.^ He is the efficient cause of their essence as well as their existence, since otherwise their essence might be conceived w-ithout God, which has been shown to be absurd. Thus particular things are but the affections of 1 Prop. yiii. this precise number, since the definition 2 Proji. ix. of a niau does not involve it. Prop. -vlii. s P. 463. This is in the letter to De Schol. ii. Tries, above quotea. « Prop. xiv. * Prop. .xi. 7 " Delis est omniiini reriira causa Im- « If twenty men exist, neither more nor manens, sed non transiens "—Prop, xviit less, an extrinsic reason must be given for 108 . FINAL CAUSES. Paex IV. God's attributes, or modes in which they are deterininately expressed.^ 7G. Tliis pantheistic scheme is the fruitful mother of many paradoxes, upon which Spinosa proceeds to dwell. There is no contingency, but every tiling is determined by the necessity of the divine nature, both as to its existence and operation ; nor could any thing be produced by God otherwise than as it is.^ His power- is the same as his essence; for he is the necessary cause both of himself and of all things, and it is as impo.^sible for us to conceive him not to act as not to exist.^ God, considered in the attributes of his infinite substance, is the same as nature, that is, natura naturans ; but nature, iu another sense, or mitura natnrata, expresses but the modes under which the divine attributes appear.* And intelligence, considered in act, even though infinite, should be referred to natura naturaUi ; for intelligence, in this sense, is but a mode of thinking, which can only be conceived by means of our conception of thinking in the abstract, that is, by an attribute of God.'' The faculty of thinking, as distinguished from the act, as also those of desiring, loving, and the rest, Spinosa explicitly denies to exist at all. 77. In an appendix to the first chapter, De Deo, Spinosa controverts what he calls the prejudice about linal causes. Men are born ignorant of causes, but merely conscious of their own appetites, by which they desire their own good. Henpe they only care for the final cause of their own actions or those of others, and inquire no farther when they are satis fied about these. And finding many things in themselves and in nature, serving as means to a certain good, which things they know not to be provided by themselves, they have believed that some one has provided them ; arguing from the analogy of the means which they in other instances them- selves employ. Hence they have imagined gods ; and these gods they suppose to consult the good of men in order to be worship])ed by them, and have devised every mode of super- stitious devotion to insure the favor of these divinities. And, finding in the midst of so miuiy benefici.^1 things in nature not a few of an opi)osite effect, tlu^y have ascribed them to the an^-er of the Kods on account of the neglect of men to wor- 1 Prop. XXV. and CoroU. * Scl.ol. in prop. xxix. - Prop, xxix.-xxxiii. ^ Prop. xxxi. The atheism of Spmosa 3 Prop, xxxix.., and part ii. prop. Ui. is mauifest from this single proposition. Echol. Chap. III. INFINITE INTELLIGENCE. lOU ship them : nor has experience of calamities fulling alike on the pious and impious cured them of this belief; choosing ratlier to acko\vledg:e their ignorance of the reason Avhy good and evil are thus distributed, than to give up their theory. Spinosa thinks tlie hypothesis of final causes refuted by his proposition, that all things ]iai){)en by eternal necessity. More- over, if God were to act for an end, he must desire something Avhich he Avants ; for it is acknowledged by theologians, that he acts for liis own sake, and not tor the sake of things created. 78. Men, having satisfied themselves that all things were created for them, have invented names to distinguish that as good which tends to their benefit ; and, believing themselves free, have gotten the notions of right and wrong, praise and dispraise. And, when they can easily apprehend and recol- lect the relations of things, they call them well ordered ; if not, ill ordered ; and then say that God created all tilings in order, as if order were any thing except in regard to our imagination of it : and thus they ascribe imagination to God himself, unless they mean that he created things for the sake of our imagining them. 79. It lia-s been sometimes doubted Avhether the Spinosistic philosophy excludes altogether an infinite intelligence. That it rejects a moral providence or creative mind is manifest in every proposition. His Deity could at most be but a cold passive intelligence, lost to oiu- uudea-standings and feelings in its metaphysical infinity. It was not, however, in fixct so much as this. It is true, that in a few ])a#sages we find what seems at first a dim recognition of the fundamental principle of theism. In one of his letters to Oldenburg, he asserts an infinite power of thinking, which, considered in its infinity, embraces all nature as its object, and of wliich the thoughts proceed accoi-ding to the order of nature ; being its correlative ideas.' But afterwards he rejected the term, "power of think- ing," altogether. The first p]-o])Osition of the second part of the Ethics, or that entitled On the Mind, runs thus : Thought 1 •' Statuo (Inri in nntm-a poteiitinni infi- ftictioncm vt mentis tranquillitateni, f iinc- nitani c-(>j;itandi (iiuiMiuatcnusiiifinitii in Po ta potontia Kntis suninie pcrfocti et t'.jus ouiitinft totani natiiraiii iilijcctive, et ciijus innnutabili •ita fieri cleorcto."' — p. 4'.*8. cnf;itatiiines ))fo-ccm in most instances satisfactory. Its not delicieut, at least, in plausibility. .success in public opinion contributed much ' Dalgarno, many years .-ifterwards, to the renown of his work : for Stilliug- turned his attention to a subject of no lleet. Uioiigh not at all consjiicuous as slight interest, even in mere philosophy, — a philosopher, enjoyed a great deal of the instruction of the deaf and diimb. reputation ; and the world can seldom Ilis Didasealoeophus is perhaps the first understand why a man who excels in one attempt to found this on the analysis of province of literatUK! should fail in au- language ; but it is not so philosophicaJ other. Bo what has eince been cfl'eeled. CiiAi'. 111. ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 123 half a century was afterwards to elapse before any writer in our language (nor was the case very different in France, after the patronage accorded to it by Voltaire) could \yith much chance of success question any leading doctrine of its author. • Several circumstances no doubt conspired with its intrinsic excellence to establish so paramount a rule in an age that boasted of peculiar independence of thinking, and full of in- telligent and inquisitive spirits. The sympathy of an English ])iiblic witli Locke's tenets as to government and religion was among the chief of these; and the re-action that took place in a large portion of the reading classes towards the close of tlie eighteenth century turned in some measure the tide even in metaphysical dis(iuisition. It then became fashionable sometimes to accuse Locke of preparing the way for scepti- cism ; a charge which, if it had been truly applicable to some of his opinions, ought rather to have been made against the long line of earlier writers with whom he held them in com- mon ; sometimes, with more pretence, to allege that he had conceded too much to materialism ; sometimes to point out and exaggerate other faults and errors of his J^ssay, till we have seemed in danger of forgetting that it is perhaps the first, and still the most complete, chai-f of the human mind which ha^ been laid down, the most ample repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being, and the one book which we are still compelled to name as the most important in metaphysical science.^ Locke had not, it may be said, the luminous perspi- cacity of language we find in Descartes, and, when he does not soar too high, in Malebranche ; but he had more judg- ment, more caution, more patience, more freedom from para- dox, and from the sources of paradox, vanity, and love of system, than either. We have no denial of sensation to 1 [The first endeavor completely to having first gone painfully over the whole analyze the operations of the human un- ground, and, as far as the merely intcllec- derstauding wa* made by IIol)lies, in his tual part of man is concerned, explained Treatise of Human Nature ; for, import- In a grcat degree the various phenomena ant a-s are the services of Descartes to of his nature and the sources of his know- psychology, he did not attempt to give ledge. Much allowance ought to be made a full scheme. Gassendi, in his different by every candid reader for the defects of a writings, esiiecially in tlw Syntagma Philo- book, which was written with so little Sophie um, seems to have had as ext*'nsive .aid from earlier inquirers, and displays an object in view ; but his investigation throughout so many traces of an original was neither so close, nor perhaps so com- mind. The Ixiarings in our first voyages plete, as that of our countryman. Yet, of discovery were not all laid down ascor- "veu in this remarkable work of Hobbes, rectly as at present. It is not pleasant to we find accounts of seme principal facul- observe, that neither on the Continent ties cf the mind, so brief and iiusatisfac- nor, what is much worse, in Britain, has tory, and so much wholly omitted, thtit sufficient regard_been paid to this con- liocke can hardly be denied the praise of eideratioa — 1847.] 12 i ITS MERITS AND DEFECTS. [Part IV. brutes, no reference of mathematical truths to the will of God, no oscillation between the extrerae-s of doubt and of positive- ness, no bewildering mysticism. Certninly neither Ga-sendi nor even Ilobbes could be compared with him ; and it might be asked of the admirers of later philosophers, those of Tierkeley or Hume or IJartley or Reid or Stewart or Brown, without naming any on the continent of Europe, whether, in the extent or originality of their researches, any of these names ought to stand on a level with that of Locke. One of the greatest whom I have mentioned, and one who, though candid towards Locke, had no prejudice wliatever in his fiivor, has extolled the first two books of the Essay on Human Under- standing, which yet he deems in many resp' cts inferior to the tliird and fourth, as " a precious accession to the theory of the human mind; as the richest contribution of well-observed and well-described lixcts which was ever bt'queathed by a sin- gle individual ; and as the indisputable, though not always acknowledged, source of some of the most i-etined conclusions, with respect to the intellectual ])henomena, which have been since brought to light by succeeding inquirers." ^ lOG. It would be an unnecessary prolixity to offer in this place an analysis of s© well-known a book as the Its defects, j^ggj^y ^^^ ^|jg Human Understanding. Few have turned their attention to metaphysical inquiries without read- ing it. It has, how^ever, no inconsiderable faults, whicdi, though much over-balanced, are not to be passed over in a general eulogy. The style of Locke is wanting in philosophi- cal precision: it is a good model of the English language, but too idiomatic and colloquial, too indefinite and figurative, for the abstruse subjects Avith which he has to deal. We miss in every page the translucent simplicity of his great French predecessors. This seems to have been owing, in a considera- ble degree, to an excessive desire of popularizing the subject, and shunning the technical pedantry which had repelled the 1 Sfewarfs Preliminary Dissertation to tion : the same theory as to substance, Encvcloiincdiu liritannica, part ii. the formation of genera and s-pccies. the [No one Hems to have so much antici- association of idca.s. tlie same views as to pateil Locke, if we can whnllv rely on tlie axioms ami syllogisms. But as the Italian anahsis of a work unpuhlisheil, iind said who has given us tliis representation of to lie now lost, as I'atlier Paul Sarpi. Isither I'auTs philosophy had Locke hefore This is a short treatise, entitled Arte di him, and dues not qiicitc his o-,vn author's V/en IVnsare, an extract from the analysis words, we may susjicct that he has sonie- of which hy Marco Foscarini is given in what exagsenited the resemhlanec. I do Sarpi's Life, by I'.ianclii (liovini. vol. i. not think that any nation is more prone J). 81. W'v havi; here not only tlie dcriva- to claim every feather from the wings of tion of ideas from sense, but from rctlec- other birds. — 18-i7.] * niAP. in. ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 125 woM from intellectual philosophy. Locke displays in all his Avritings a respect, -which can hardly be too great, for men of tound under.«taiulinpf, uii])rc)ii^e " simple ide;us convey themselves into the iiiiud by all the wnyu of sensation aud n^rtection ; " and he enumerates pleasure aud pain power, existence, unity: to whieh he afterwards adds duration. " Re- liection ou the appearance of several ideas, one after ano'^Uer, iu our uiinds, is that which furuiaUes us with the idea of suc- cession ; ai'd the distance between any parts of that succession, or between the appearance of new ideas in our uiinds, is that we call duration." — B. ii. ch. 14, § 3. So of number, or unity, which he takes for the basis of the idea of number. •■ Amongst all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so is there none more simple than that of unity, or oue ; it has no shadow of variety or composition in it ; every object our senses are employed about, everv idea in our understandings, every thought of our minds, brings this idea along with it." — ch. X. § 1. Thus we have proofs, and more might easily be alleged, that Locke really sidmitted the understanding to be so far the source of new simple ideas, that several of primar}- importance arise in our minds, (tn the siii;i:fstioii of the senses, or of our observing the inward operations of our minds, which are not strictly to bo classed tliemselves as suggestions, or as acts of consciousness. And when we remem- ber al.so, that the power of the under- standing to compound simple ideas is a leading part of liis system, and also that certain ideas, which others take for simple, are reckoned by him, whether rightly or no, to be complex, we may he forced to admit, that the outcry raised against Locke as a teacher of the sensualist .school has been chietiy founded on inattention to his language, and to some inaccuracy in it. Stewart had already stated the true doctrine as to ideas of rellection. "In Bucli cases, all that can be .said is, that the e.xerei.se of a particular faculty furnishes the ocea.siou on whi(Oi certain simple no- tions are, by the laws of our constitution, prestmted to our thoughts ; nor does it seem possible for us to trace the origin of a particular notion any farther, than to «socrtain what the nature of the occasion was, which, in the first instance, intro- duced it to our acqu.aiutauce." — i'hilos Essays, I. chap. ii. It is true, that he proceeds to impute a different theory to Locke ; namely, thtit consciou.suess is ex- clusively the source of all our knowledge : which he takes to mean, that all our origi- nal ideas may be classed under acts of consciousness, as well as suggested by it. Hut, in his Dissertation, we have seen that he takes a more favorable view of the Essay on the Human Understanding in this great question of the origin of our ideas, and, as it now appears to me, be- yond dispute a more true one. The want of precision, so unhappily characteristic of Locke, has led to this misapprehension of his meaning; but surely no one can believe, hardly the most depreciating critic of Locki; at I'aris or Oxfoi'd, that he took duration and number for actual operations of the mind, such as doubting, or com- paring. I'rice had long since admitted, that Locke tiad no other meaning than that our ideas are derived, immediately or ultimately-, from sensation or rellection ; or, iu other words, '"that they furnish us with all the subjects, materials, and occa- sions of knowledge, comparison, and in- ternal perception. This, however, by no means renders them in any proper sense the source of all our ideas."' — Price's Dis- sertations on Morals, p. iO. Ousin enumerates, ius simple ideas not derived from sensation or reflection, space, duration, infinity, identity', substance, cause, and right. Locke would have re- plied, that the idea of space, as mere defi- niteextension, was derived from sensation ; and that of space generally, or what he has called expansion, w.as not simple, but complex ; that those of duration, cause (or power), and identity, were furnished by retiection ; that the idia. of right is not simple, and that those of substance and infinity are hardly formed by the mind at all. lie would add existence and unity to the list ; both, according to him, de I'ived from refiectiou. M. Cousin has by no moans done jus tice to Locke as ti> tiic idea of cruise. '• Ou salt ([Ue lx)cke. .apres avoir atUrme dans un chapitre sur I'idee de cause et d'effet, que cette idee nous est donnce par la sen- sation, s"avi.se, dans un ch.apitre dilTerent sur la puiss.ance, dune toute autre origine, bieu (^u°il s'ojjis^, au fond, de la uume Chap III VAGUE USE OF THE WORD "IDEA." 127 trary supposition, that Locke would liave hesitated for a moment to admit with Cudworth and Price, that the under- standin), bearing the date li377, says, " Space in itself .«eenis to be nothing but a capacity or pos.sibility for extended beings or bodies to be or exist;" and, '-The space where a real globe of a foot diameter exists, though we imagine it to be re.illy something, to have a real existence before and after its [the globe's] existence, there, in truth, is re:illy nothing." And finally, "Though it be true that the black lines drawn on a rule have the relation one to another of au inch distance, they being real sensible things ; and though it be also true that I, knowing the idea of an inch, can. imagine that length without imagining body, as well as I can imagine a figure without imagining body, — yet it is no more true that there is any real distance in that which we call imaginary space, than that there is any real figure there.'" — p. 185. I confess niy.self wholly at a loss how to reconcile such notions of space and dis- tance, not only with geometry, hut dyna- mics ; the idea of velocity involving that of mere exten.sion in a straight line, with- out the conception, necessarily implied, of any body except the moving one. 15ut it is worthy of remark, that Locke appears to have modified his doctrine here de- livered, before he wrote the Essay on the Ilunian Understanding ; where he argues at length, in language adapted to the common belief of the reality ol space, and once only observes that some may " take it to be only a relation resulting from the existence of other beings at a distance, while others understand the words of Solomon and St. I'aul in a literal sense" (b. ii. c. 1.3, § 27): by which singular re- ference to Scripture he may perhaps inti- mate that he does not perceive the force of the met;iphysic.al argument. I think it not impossible that the reading of Ncnvton, who had so emphatically pronounced him- self for the real existence of absolute 8p;we, Vad 80 far au effect upon the miad of Locke that he did not commit himself to an opposite hypotlie.-is. Kxccpt with a very fe.v speculative men, I helit.-ve the conviction, that space exists truly and in- dependeutly around us, to be universal in mankind. Locke was a philosopher, equally bold in following up his own inquiries, and cautious in committing them, except as mere conjectures, to the public. Perhaps an instance might be given from the re- markable anticipation of the theory of iSoscovichas to the nature of matter, wiiich Stewart has sagaciously inferred from a passage in the Essay on the Human Uu- derstanding. But if we may trust an anecdote in the Bibliotheque Raisonnec, vol. iv. p. 350, on the authority of Coste, the French tran.slator of that work, New- ton conceived the idea of lioscovich's theory, and suggested it to Locke, The quotatiou is in the words of the trans- lator : — " Ici M. Locke excite notre curiosite sans vouloir la satisfaire. Bien des gens s'etant imagines qn'il m'.avait communi- que cette mani«>re dVxpliquer la creation de la matiere, me prierent, pcu de temps apres que ma traduction cut vu le jour, de leur en f.iire part ; miiis je fus oblige de lour avouer ([ue M. L. m"en avait fait un secret a moi-meme. Enfin, longtemps apris sa uiort, M. le Chevalier Newton, i qui je parlais, par h.osarj, de cet endroit du livre de M. Locke, me dicouvrit tout le mystere. Souriant, il me dit d'abord, que c'etait lui-merae qui avait imagine cette maniire d'expliquer la creation de la matiere; que la pensee iui en etait venue dans lesprit, un jour quil vint i tomber sur cette question avec M. L. et un seig- neur Anglais i)lein de vie, et qui n'est pas moins illustre par Teteudue de ses lumisres que par sa nai.ssance. Et voici comment ii leur expliqua sa pensee. ' On pouvait,' dit-il, ' se former, en quelqne maniere, une idee de la creation de la matiere, en supposant ((ue Dieu eat empeche par sa puissance, que rien ne pat entierdins une certaine jiortionde Tespacc pur. que, de ?a nature, est penetrable, eternel, ueces.sai;v, infini ; car des-l\ cette portion' d'espace aurait I'impinetrabilite, Tune dei* quali- tes essentielles k la matiere. Et couuno Tespace pur est absolunient uniforme, on n"a qu"a supposer jue Dieu aurait communi(iue cette espece d'impenetra- biiite i uue .autre pareille portion de Pes pace, et cela nous donnerait, en quclque sorte, une ijecde lamobilite de la matiere, autre qu.alite qui Iui est aussi tras-essen- tielle.' Nous voila maiutenaat delivrcs i0 136 mNATE roEAS. Part IV before him, assigned another origin to one class of ideas ; but these were few in number, and in the next century two writers of considerable influence, Hartley and Condillac, attenii)ted to resolve them all into sensation. The ancient school of the Plutonists, and even that of Descartes, who had distinguished innate ideas, or at least those spontaneously suggesting them- selves on occasion of visible objects from those strictly belong- ing to sense, lost ground both in France and P^ngland ; nor had Leibnitz, who was deemed an enemy to some of our great English names, sufficient weiglit to restore it. In the hands of some who followed in both countries, the Avorst plirases of Locke were preferred to the best : whatever could be turned to the account of Pyrrhonism, materialism, or atheism, made a figure in the Epicurean system of a popular philosophy.^ The German metaphysicians from the time of Kant deserve at least the credit of having successfully withstood this coarse chercher ce que M. h. avait troure ton de cacher k ses lecteurs." — 15ibi. liaisoa- ne, vol. iv. p. 349. It is unnecessary to observe what honor the conjecture of Stewart does to his saga- city : for he was not very likely to have fallen on this passage in an old review little read, nor was he a map to conceal the obligation, had he done so. Tlie theory of Boscovich, or. as we may perhaps now say, of Newton, has been l:itely supported, •with abundance of new illustration, by the greatest genius in philosophical dis- covery whom this age and country can boast. I will conclude with throwing out a suggestion, whether on the hypothesis that matter is only a combination of forces, attractive or repulsive, and varying iu dif- ferent substances or bodies, as they are vulgarly called, inasmuch as all forces are capable of being mathematically ex- pressed, there is not a proper formula belonging to each body, though of course not assignable by us, which might be called its equation, and which, if known, would be the definition of its essence, .as strictly as that of a geometrical figure. — 18-17.] 1 ['L^ckc,'" says M. Cousin, " has cer- tainly not confounded sensation with tlie faculties cf the mind : ho expressly dis- tinguishe." them, but he makes the latter play a secondary and insignificant part, and concentres their action on .sensible data : it w,is but a step from thence to confounil them with sensibility ; and wo liave here the feeble germ of a future theory, that of transformed sensation, of sensation a.s the only principle of all the operationfl of the mind. Locke, without knowing or designing it, ha,s opened the road to this exclusive doctrine, by adding nothing to sensation but faculties whose whole business is to exercise themselves upon it with no peculiar or original pow- er."' — Ilist. de la i'hilos., vol. ii. p. 137. If the powers of combining, comparing, and generali/.ing the ideas originally de- rived from sense are not to be called pe- culiar and original, this charge might be sustained. 13ut though Locke had not the same views of the active and self-ori- ginated powers of the mind which have been t;Uven by others, if fio derived some ideas from sense to which a dilTereiit source has been assigned, it seems too much to sav that he makes the faculties play a secondary and insignificant part; when the part he attributes to them is that of giving us all our knowledge beyond that of mere simple sense : and, to use his own analogy, being to sensation v.hat the word.i of a language, in all their combinations, are to the letters which compose them. M. Cousin, and the other antagonists of Locke, will not contend that we coulij have had any knowledge of geometry ot arithmetic without .sensation ; and Locke has never supposed that we could have so much as put two idexs of extension or number together without the .active pow- ers of the mind. In this point I see no other difference between the two schools, than tnat one derives a few iileas from .>iense, which the other cannot trace to that source: and tliis is hardly sufficient to warrant the depreciation of ijocke aa a false and dangerous guide in philosophy. - - 1847.] Chap. Ill LOCKE'S NOTIONS AS TO THE SOUL. 137 Bensiialism ; though they may have borrowed much that their disci] )k'.s take for original, and added much that is hardly bet- ter tlian what they have overthrown, p" ranee has also made a rapid return since the beginning of this centuiy, and with more soundness of judgment than Germany, towards the doc- trines of the Cartesian school. Yet the opposite philosoj)hy to that which never rises above sensilde images is exposed to a danger of its own ; it is one which the infirmity of the human faculties renders perpetually at hand : few there are, who, in reasoning on subjects where we cannot attain what Locke has called " positive comprehensive ideas," are secure from falling into mere nonsense and repugnancy. In that part of physics which is simply conversant with quantity, this danger is probably not great; but, in all such inquiries as are sometimes called transcendental, it has perpetually shipwrecked the adventurous navigator. 114. In tlie language and probably the notions of Locke as to the nature of the soul, there is an indistinct- „. 1 ,-1 * • 1 • 11 1 "'^ notions ness more worthy ot tlie Ai'istotelian schoolmen than as to the of one conversant with the Cartesian philosophy. ^°"^' " Bodies," he says, "manifestly produce ideas in us by impulse; the only Avay which we can conceive bodies to operate in. If, then, external objects be not united to our minds, when they produce ideas in it, and yet we perceive these original quali- ties in such of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident thtrt some motion must be thence continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of our bodies to the brain, or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the exten- sion, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evi- dent some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion which produces those ideas which we have of them in us." He so far retracts his first position afterwards as to admit, "in consequence of what Mi-. Newton has shown in the Principia on the gravitation of matter towards matter," that God not only can put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what can be explained from what we know of mattei", but that he has actually done so. And he promises to correct the former passage ; which, however, he has never performed. In fact, he seems, by the use of phrases which recur too often to 138 LOCKE'S NOTIONS AS TO THE SOUL. Part IV. be thoiii^lit merely figurative, to have supposed that something in the bniin comes into local contact with the mind. He was here unable to divest himself, any more than the schoolmen liad done, of the notion that there is a proper action of the body on the soul in perception. The Cartesians had brought in the theory of occasional causes and other solutions of the phenomena, so as to avoid what seems so irreconcilable with an immaterial principle. No one is so lavish of a cerebral instrumentality in mental images as Malebranche ; he seema at every moment on the verge»of materialism ; he coquets, a3 it were, with an Epicurean physiology: but, if I may bo allowed to continue the metaphor, he perceives the moment where to stop, and retires, like a dexterous fair one, with unsmirched honor to his immateriality. It cannot be said that Locke is equally successful. 115. In another and a well-known passage, he has thrown Ana its im- out a doubt whether God might not superadd the materiality, fjiculty of thinking to matter ; and, though he thinks it probable that this has not been the case, leaves it at last a debatable question, wherein nothing else than presumptions are to be had. Yet he has strongly argued against the possi- bility of a material Deity upon reasons derived from the nature of matter. Locke almost appears to have taken the union of a thhiking being with matter for the thinking of matter itself. What is there, Stillingfleet well asks, hke self- consciousness in matter? "Nothing at all," Locke replies, "in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with it self- consciousness, will never be proved by asking how it is possi- ble to apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive." But if that we call mind, and of which we are self-conscious, were thus superadded to matter, would it the less be something real ? In what sense can it be compared to an accident or quality? It has been justly observed, that ■we are much more certain of the independent existence of mind than of that of matter. But that, by the constitution of our nature, a definite organization, or, what will be gene- rally thought the preferable hy[)otliesis, an organic molecule, should be a necessary concomitant of this immaterial princi- ple, does not involve any absurdity at all, whatever want of evidence may be objected to it. 116. It is remarkable, that, in the controversy with Stilling- Chap. III. HIS LOVE OF TRUTH AND ORIGINALITY 139 fleet on this passage, Locke seems to take for granted, that there is no immaterial principle in brutes ; and, as he had too much plain sense to adopt the Cartesian theory of their insen- sibility, he draws the most jilausible argument for the possi- bility of thought in matter by the admitted fact of sensation and voluntary motion in these animal organizations. "It is not doubted but that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant, superadded to matter, change not the properties of matter; but matter is, in these things, matter still." Few perhaps at present who believe in the immateriality of the human soul would deny the same to an elephant ; but it must be owned that the discoveries of zoology have pushed this to consequences which some might not readily adopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a little our prejudices ; yet there is no resting-place, and we must admit this, or be content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fibre. Brutes have been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes of mankind have been in civil polity : their souls, we see, w^ere almost universally disputed to them at the end of the seventeenth century, even by those who did not abso- lutely bring them down to machinery. Even Avithin the recollection of many, it was common to deny them any kind of reasoning faculty, and to solve their most sagacious actions by the vague word "instinct." We have come of late years to think better of our humble companions ; and, as usual in similar cases, the predominant bias, at least with foreign natu- ralists, seems rather too much of a levelling character. 117. No quality more remarkably distinguishes Locke than his love of truth. He is of no sect or party ; has no jjj^ j^^^ ^^ oblique design, such as we so frequently perceive, of truth, and sustaining some tenet which he suppresses ; no sub- ""t^nahty. missiveness to the opinions of others, nor, wliat very few lay aside, to his own. Without having adopted certain dominant ideas, like Descartes and Malebranche, he follows, with inflexi- ble impartiality and unwearied patience, the long process of analysis to which he has subjected the human mind. No great writer has been more exempt from vanity, in which he is very advantageously contrasted with Bacon and Descartes : but he is sometimes a little sharp, and contemptuous of his predecessors. The originality of Locke is real and unaffect- ed : not that he has derived nothing from others, which would be a great repi-oach to himself or to them ; but, in whatever he 140 LOCKE'S ORIGINALITY. Pakt IV. has in common Avith other philosophers, there is alway? a tinge of his own thoughts, a modification of tlie particuhir tenet, or at least a peculiarity of language Avhicli renders it not very easy of detection. "It Avas not to be expected," s;iys SteAvart, "that in a work so composed by snatches, to borrow a ]ihrase of the author, he should be able accurately to draw the line between his own ideas and the hints ibr which he was indebted to others. To those who are well acquainted with his speculations, it must appear CA'ident that he had studied diligently the metaphysical writings both of Hobbes and Gasscndi, and that he Avas no stranger to the Essays of Montaigne, to the philosophical Avorks of Bacon, and to ]\Ialebranche's Inquiry after Truth. That he Avas familiarly couAcrsant AA'itli the Cartesian system may be j^resumed from AA'hat Ave are told by his biographer, that it AA'as this Avhich first inspired him Avith a disgust at the jaj-gon of the schools, and led him into that train of thinkinir Avhicli lie afterwards prosecuted so successfully. I do not, howcA-er, recollect that he has anyAAiiere in his Essay mentioned the name of any one of those authors. It is probable, that, Avhen he sat down to Avrite, he found the result of his youthful read- ing so completely identified Avith the fruits of his subsequent reflections, that it AA-as impossible for him to attempt a separa- tion of the one from the other, and that he AA'as thus occasion- ally led to mistake the treasures of memory for those of invention. That this Avas really the case, may be further presumed from the peculiar and original cast of his phi-aseolo- gy, Avhich, though in general careless and unpolished, has alAA^ays the merit of that characteristical imity and raeiness of style AA'hich demonstrate, that, Avhile he AA-as Avriting, he con- ceived himself to be drawing only from his OAvn resources."^ 118. The Avriter, howCA'ci-, Avhom avc haA'e just quoted, has Defended in not quite done justice to the originality of Locke in two cases, nioi'e than one instance. Thus on this very passage WQ find a note in these Avords : " Mr. Addison has re^ marked, that Malebranche had the start of Locke by several years in his notions on the subject of duration. Some othei coincidences not less remarkable might be easily pointed out in the o[)inions of the English and of the French philosopher." I am not prepared to dispute, nor do I doubt, the truth of the latter sentence ; but, Avith respect to the notions of Male- 1 Preliminary Dissertation. Chai'. Ul. DEFINITION OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 141 branclie and Locke on duration, it must bo said, that they are neither the same, nor has Addisou iisserted tliem to be so.* Tiie one tlu-ew out au hypothesis with no attempt at proof: tho other offered an exphination of tlie phenomena. Wliat Locke lias advanced as to our getting the idea of duration by leflecting on the succession of our ideas seems to be truly his .)\vn. Whether it be entirely the right ex[)lanatiou, is another ([uestiou. It rather appears to me, tliat the internal sense, as we may not improperly call it, of duration, belongs separately to each idea, and is rather lost than suggested by their succes- sion. Duration is best perceived when we are able to detain an idea for some time without change, as in watching the motion of a pendulum ; and, though it is impossible for the mind to continue in this state of immobility more perhaps than about a second or two, this is sufficient to give us an idea of duration as tiie necessary condition of existence. Whether tliis be an objective or mei-ely a subjective necessity, is an abstruse question, whicli our sensations do not enable us to decide. But Locke appears to have looked ratlier at the measure of duration, by whicli we divide it into portions, than at the mere simi)licity of the idea itself. Such a measure, it is certain, can only be obtained through the medium of a suc- cession in our ideas. 119. It has been also remarked by Stewart, that Locke claims a discovery due rather to Descartes ; namely, tlie impossibility of defining simple ideas. Descartes, however, as well as the authors of the Port-Royal Logic, merely says, that words already as clear as we can make them do not require or even admit of definition. But I do not perceive that he has made the distinction we find in the Essay on the Human Understanding, tliat the names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition, while the names of all complex ideas are so. '' It has not, that I know," Locke says, '• been observed by anybody what words are, and what words are not, capable of being defined." The passage which I have quoted in another place froin Descartes' postiiumous dialogue, even if it went to this length, was unknown to Locke ; yet he might have acknowledged that he had been in some measure anticipated in other observations by that pliilosopher. 120. The first book of the Essay on the Human Under- standing is directed, as is well known, against the doctrine > Spectator, No. 94. 142 LOCKirS VIEW OF INNATE IDEAS. Paet IT of innate ideas, or innate pi'inciples in the mind. This haa His view heen often censured, as combating in some places a of innate tenet which no one would support, and as, in other passages, breaking in upon moral distinctions them- selves, by disputing the universality of their acknowledg- ment. With respect to the former charge, it is not perhaps easy for us to determine what might be the crude and con- fused notions, or at least language, of many who held the theory of innate ideas. It is by no means evident, that Locke had Descartes chiefly or even at all in his view. Lord Her- bert, whom he distinctly answers, and many others, especially the Platonists, had dwelt upon innate ideas in far stronger terms than the great French metaphysician, if indeed he can be said to have maintained them at all. The latter and more important accusation rests upon no other pretext than that Locke must be reckoned among those who have not admitted a moral faculty of discerning right from wrong to be a part of our constitution. But that there is a law of nature imposed by the Supreme Being, and consequently universal, has been 60 repeatedly asserted in his writings, that it would imply great inattention to question it. Stewart has justly vindicat- ed Locke in this respect from some hasty and indefinite charges of Beattie ;' but I must venture to think that he goes much too far when he attempts to identify the doctrines of the Essay with those of Shaftesbury. These two philosophers were in opposite schools as to the test of moi'al sentiments. Locke seems always to adopt what is called the selfish system in morals, resolving all morality into religion, and all religion into a regard to our own interest; and he seems to have paid less attention to the emotions than to the intellectual powers of the soul. 121. It would by no means be difficult to controvert other General tenets of this great man. But the obligations we praise. ^^yQ |q JjJ,^^ ^-q^. ^j^g Essay ou the Human Under- standing are never to be forgotten. It is truly the first real chart of the coasts, wherein some may be laid down incor- rectly, but the general relations of all are perceived. And we, who find some things to censure in Locke, have perhaps learned how to censure them from himself; we have thi'own • [To the p issagcs quoted by Stewart clares his belief, " that there is a law of (First Dissertation, p. 29) we may add a nature knowiihle by the light of nature." letter, since published, of Locke to Mr. — King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p 366. — Tyrrell, wherein he most expUcitly de- 1847.] Hhap. III. GENERAL PRAISE. 143 off so many false notions and films of prejudice by his help, that 'vve are become capable of judging our master. This is what has been the fate of all who have pushed onward the landmarks of science : they have made tliat easy for inferior men wliich was painluUy labored through by themselves. Among many excellent things in the Essay on Human Un- derstanding, none are more admirable than much of the third book on the nature of words, especially the three chapters on their imperfection and abuse.^ In earlier treatises of logic, at least in that of Port-lloyal, some of this might be Ibund ", but nowhere are verbal fallacies, and, above all, the sources from which they spring, so fully and conclusively exposed.^ 1 [In former editions I had said " the whole tliinl book,' which Mr. Mill calls " that immortal third book." Hut we must except the sixth chapter on the names of substances, in which I^ocke's reasoning against the real distinction of species in the three kingdoms of nature is full of false assumptions, and cannot be maintained at all in the present state of natural history. lie asks, ch. vi. § 13, " What are the alterations may or may not be in a horse or lead, without making either of them to be of another species ? " The answer is obvious, that an animal engendered between a horse and mare is a horse, and no other ; and that any altera- tion in the atomic weight of lead would make it a different species. " I once saw a creature,"' says Locke, " that was the issue of a cat and a rat, and had the plain marks of both about it.'' This cannot be true ; but, if it were, are there, therefore, no mere cats and mere rats? — 1847.] • [A highly distinguished philosopher, M. Cousin, has devoted nearly a volume to the refutation of Locke, discussing al- most every chapter in the second and fourth books of tlie Essay on Human Un- derstanding. In many of these treatises, I cannot by any means go along with the able writer ; and regret that he has taken so little pains to distinguish real from verbal differences of opinion, but lias, on the contrary, had nothing so much at heart as to depreciate the glory of one whom Kurope has long reckoned among the founders of metapliysiral science. It may have been wrong in Locke to employ the word iilfa in dilTcrent senses. l!ut, as undoubtedly he did not always mean by it an image in tlie mind, what can be less fair than such psussages as the follow- ing?^ — " Eh bien I songez y, vous n'avez de coimai.s.sance legitime de la pensee, de la volonte, de la seu.a3 un philosophe i la fois plus .sage ct plus incousisUint ((ue Locke. Que fait-il. Mes- sieurs? Dans le peril oil le pousse la phi- losophic, i; abandonne sa philosophic et toute philosophic, et il eu appelle au christiaiiisme, a la revelation. ;\ la foi ; et par foi, par revelation, il n'entend iKisune foi, une revelation philosophique ; cette interpretation n'appai'tient pas au temps . U4 LOCKE'S CONDUCT OF UNDERSTANDING. Part IV. 122. The same praiseworthy diligence in hunting error to its lurkinii-places distinguishes the short treatise on Locke's ~ ^ -^ , ^ ^ Conduct of the Conduct of the Understanding ; which, having ^"''^.^ heen orijrinally desio-ned as an additional chapter to etanding. t-. i • • i i - i i- • ^ • tlie -bssay/ is as it were the ethical application or its theory, and ought always to be read with it, if indeed, for the sake of its practical utility, it should not come sooner itto the course of education. Aristotle himself, and the whole of his dialectical school, had pointed out many of the sophisms against which Ave should guard our reasoning faculties ; but these are chiefly such as others attempt to put upon us iu dispute. There are more dangerous fallacies by which we cheat ourselves, — prejudice, partiality, self-interest, vanity, inattention, and indiff^erence to truth. Locke, who was as exempt from these as almost any man who has turned his mind to so many subjects where their influence is to be suspected, has dwelled on the moral discipline of tlie intellect in this trea- tise, better, as I conceive, than any of his predecessors ; though Vie have already seen, and it might appear far more at length to those who should have recourse to the books, that Arnauld and Malebranche, besides other French philosophers of the age, had not beeu remiss in this indispensable part of logic. de Locke ; il entend la foi et la revelation dans lo sens propre de la tliJolosjie la plus orthodoxe ; et il conclut ainsi : ' Par con- sequent, sur lexistence de l"esprit nous devonsi nous contentor de Tevidence de la foi.' ■' — p. 350. Who could suppose that all this imputation of unlimited scepti- cism, not less than that of Hume, .since it amounts to a doubt of the existence of our own minds, is founded on M. Cousin's misun Jcrstandin;; of the word spirit ? By spirits, or finite spirits, Ijocke did not nie;in our o-.vn minds, but created intelli- gences, dilferin^ from human, as the word WM constantly used in theological meta- physics. The sense of tlie i)assage to ■which M. Cousin refers is so clear, that no EuLjIish rs ider coul 1 misconceive it : pro- bably he was led wron;; by a translation in which In; found tlic! word es/>rir. IJut I really cannot inrij^ine any trans- lation to be so unfiitliful as to remove from M. (!ousiu the blime of extreme carelessness. The words of ljO<-!ve are " Concerning; finite spirits, as well as seve- ral other things, we must content our- selves with the evidence of fiith." — B. iv. oh. 11. But, at the b('i;inninjc of the same chapter, he says, "The knowledLjo of our •own being we have by intuition." And in the preceding, the tenth chapter, mora fully : " I think it is beyond question that man has a clear perception of his own being : he knows certainly that he exists, and that he is something. lie that can doubt whether he be any thing or no, I speak not to, no more than I would argue with pure nothing, or endeavor to con- vince nonentity that it were something." Compare this with M. Cousin's representa- tion. The name of Locke is part of our lite- rary inheritance, which, as Englishmen, we cannot sacrifice. If, indeed, the uni- versity at which he was educated cannot discover that he is, perhaps, her chief boast, if a declaimer from that quarter presumes to speak of '• the .sophist Locke," we mav console ourselves by recollecting ho'.v little intlueuce such a local party is likely to obtain over the literary world. But the fiuie of M. Cousin is so conspicu- ous, that his i>reiudices readily bccorao the prejudices of many, an 1 his inisrepro- sentations pass witli many for unanswera» ble criticisms. — 1847.) ' See a letter to Molvneux, dated April, 1097; Locke's Works "(foi. 1759), vol. iii. p. 53i). CnAP. ni. CONDUCT OF UXDERSTANDIN^G. Mo 1 23. Looke throughout this treatise labors to secure the i!j(iuircr I'roni that previous persuasion of his own opinion, which (Euvres de Pascal, vol. i. p. 4<^ 148 TAYLOR'S DUCTOR DUBITANTITM. Part IV. published at Mons in 1GG7, goes over the same gi-ound with less pleasantly, but not less learning. 3. The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appeared in the Enjilish lanfjuajie is the Ductor Puctor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, published in 16G0. u^''*"*' This, as its title shows, treats of* subjective morality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much discussed without establishing some principles of objective right and wrong, some standai'd by which the con- science is to be ruled. " The whole measure and rule of conscience," according to Taylor, " is the law of God, or God's will signified to us by nature or revelation ; and, by the several mannei-s and times and parts of its communication, it hath obtained several names, — the law of nature; the con- sent of nations ; right reason ; the Decalogue ; the sermon of Christ; the canons of the apostles; the laws, ecclesiastical and civil, of princes and governors ; fame, or the public repu- tation of things, expressed by proverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty. . . . These, being the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present book." 4. The heterogeneous combination of things so different in Its charac- nature and authority, as if they were all expressions teraud of the hiw of God, docs not augur well for the dis- tinctness of Taylor's moral philosophy, and would be disadvantageously compared Avith the P2cclesiastical Polity of Hooker. Nor ai'e we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. With many of Taylor's excellences, his vast fertility and his frequent acuteness, the Ductor Duliitantium exhibits his chai'acteristic defects : the waste of quotations is even greater than in his otlier writings, and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an intolerable prolixity. His so- lution of moral difficulties is often unsatisfactory : after an accumulation of arguments and authorities, we have the dis- appointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied nor cut; there seems a want of close investigation of pi'inciples, a frequent confusion and obscurity, which Taylor's two chief faults — excessive display of erudition, and redundancy of lan- guage — conspire to produce. Paley is no doubt often super- ficial, and sometimes mistaken ; yet in clearness, in conciseness, in freedom from impertinent reference to authority, he is far superior to Taylor. Chap. IV. CUD WORTH'S nniUTABLK MORALITY. 149 5. Taylor seems too much inclined to pide witli those who resolve all rijrht and wrong into the positive will of" God. The law of nature he defines to be " the univereal law of the world, or of mankind, to which we ai'C inclined by nature, invited by consent, prompted by reason, but which is bound upon us only by the command of God." Though, in the strict meaning of the word I(m', this may be truly said, it was surely required, considering the large sense wiiich that word has oi)tained as coincident with moral right, that a fuller explana- tion should be given than Taylor has even intimated, lest the goodness of the Deity should seem something arbitrary and precarious. And tliougli, in maintaining, against most of the scholastic metaphysicians, that God can dispense with the precepts of the Decalogue, he may be substantially right, yet his reasons seem by no means the clearest aud most sat- isfactory that miglit be assigned. It may be added, that, in his prolix rules concerning what he calls a probable con- Bcience, he comes very near to the much-decried theories of the Jesuits. There was indeed a vein of subtilty in Taylor's understanding which was not always without influence on his candor. G. A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, by Cudworth, was first published in 1781. Tliis cudirortu's may be almost reckoned a portion of his Intellectual immutable System, the oliject be'ng what he has declared to be ^°" ^' one of those which he had there in view. This was to prove that moral differences of right and wrong are antecedent to any divine law. He wrote, therefore, not only against the Cal- vinistic school, but in some measure against Taylor ; though he abstains from mentioning any recent author except Des- cartes, who had gone far in refei-ring all moral distinctions to the arbitrary will of God. Cudworth's reasoning is by no means satisfactory, and rests too mucli on the dogmatic me- taphysics which were going out of use. The nature or es- sence of nothing, he maintains, can depend u})on the will of God alone, which is the efhcient, but not the formal, cause of all things ; a distinction not very intelligible, but on which he seems to build his theory.^ For, though admitting that moral relations have no objective existence out of the mind, lie holds that they have a positive essence, and therefore are not nothing : whence it follows that they must be independent » p. 15. 150 NICOLE — LA PLACETTE. Pakt IV. of will. He pours out much ancient learning, though not so lavishly as in the Intellectual System. 7. The urgent necessity of contracting my sails in this last Nicole; La period, far the most abundant as it is in the variety piacette. j^j^^j extent of its literature, restrains me from more than a bare mention of several works not undeserving of re- gard. The Essais de Morale of Nicole are less i"ead than esteemed, says a late biographer.^ Voltaire, however, pro- phesied that they would not perish. " The chapter, espe- cially," he proceeds, " on the means of preserving peace among men, is a master-piece, to which notliing equal has been left to us by antiquity." ^ Tliese Essays are properly contained in six volumes ; but so many other pieces are added in some editions, that the collection under that title is very long. La Piacette, minister of a French church at Copen- hagen, has been called the Protestant Nicole. His Essais de Morale, in 1 G92 and other years, are full of a solid morality, rather strict in casuistry, and apparently not deficient in ob- servation and analytical views of human nature. They were much esteemed in their own age. Works of this kind treat so very closely on the department of pi'actical religion, that it is sometimes ditficult to separate them on any fixed principle. A less homiletical form, a comparative absence of scriptural quotation, a more reasoning and observing mode of dealing with the subject, are the chief distinctions. But, in the ser- mons of BaiTOw and some others, we find a great deal of what may be justly called moral philosophy. 8. A book by Sharrock, De Officiis secundum Rationis other Humanae Dictata, 1660, is occasionally quoted, and vmtcTs. seems to be of a philosophical nature." Velthuysen, a Dutch minister, was of more reputation. His name was rather obnoxious to the orthodox ; since he was a strenuous advocate of tolei-ation, a Cartesian in philosophy, and inclined to judge for himself. His chief works are De Principiis Justi et Decori and De Naturali Pudore.^ But we must now pass on to those who have exercised a greater influence in moi'al philosophy, — Cumberland and Pufiendorf, — after giving a short consideration to Spinosa. 9. The moral system, if so it may be called, of Spinosa, » Bio;;r. Uuiv. * Siicle do Louis XIV. ' Cumhcrland (in prfcfationc) De LcgibuB Natunc. * Biogr. Univ. ; IJarbeyrac's notes ou Puflenilorf, passhTi. Chap. IV. MORAL SYSTEM OF SPINOSA. 151 has been developed by him in the fourth and fifth j^arts of hia Ethics. We are not deceived in wliat might natu- jj^^j^j rally be expected from the unhesitating adherence System of jf Spinosa to a rigorous line of reasoning, that his ■"I"""**- ethical scheme would offer nothing inconsistent with the fun- damental pantheism of his philosophy. In nature itself, ho maintains as before, there is neither perfection nor imper- fection, neither good nor evil ; but these are modes of speak- ing, adopted to express the relations of things as they appear to our minds. Whatever contains more positive attributes capable of being apprehended by us than another contains, is more perfect than it. Whatever Ave know to be useful to ourselves, that is good ; and whatever impedes our attainment of good is evil. By this utility, Spinosa does not understand happiness, if by that is meant pleasurable sensation, but the extension of our mental and bodily capacities. The passions restrain and overpower these capacities ; and coming from •without, that is, from the body, render the mind a less power- ful agent than it seems to be. It is only, we may remember, in a popular sense, and subject to his own definitions, that Spinosa acknowledges the mind to be an agent at all : it is merely so in so far as its causes of action cannot be referred by us to any thing external. No passion can be restrained except by a stronger passion. Hence even a knowledge of what is really good or evil for us can of itself restrain no pas- sion, but only as it is associated with a perception of joy and sorrow, which is a mode of passion. This perception is neces- sarily accompanied by desire or aversion ; but they may often be so weak as to be controlled by other sentiments of the same class inspired by conflicting passions. This is the cause of the weakness and inconstancy of many ; and he alone is wise and virtuous who steadily pursues what is useful to himself; that is, what reason points out as the best means of preserving hrs well-being and extending his capacities. Nothing is abso- lutely good, nothing therefore is principally sought by a vir- tuous man, but knowledge, not of 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 or contradict it ; and, so far as men act by reason, they must agree in seeking what is conformable to their nature. And tliose who agree with us in living by reason are themselves of all things most suitable to our nature ; so that the society of such men Ls 152 MORAL SYSTEM OF SPINOSA. Pari IV. most to be desired ; and to enlarge that society by rendering men virtuous, and by pi-omoting their advantage -when they ai"e so, is most useful to ourselves. For the good of such as pursue virtue may be enjoyed by all, and does not obstruct our own. Whatever conduces to the common society of man- kind, and promotes concord among them, is useful to all ; and whatever lias an opposite tendency is pernicious. The pas- sions are sometimes incapable of excess ; but of this the only instances are joy and cheerfulness : more frequently they be- •omc pernicious by being indulged, and in some cases, such as latred, can never be usei'ul. AVc should therefore, for our own sakes, meet the hatred and malevolence of others Avith love and liberality. Spinosa dwells much on the preference due to a social above a solitary hfe, to cheerfulness above austerity ; and alludes frequently 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 pas- sions : the fifth. On Human Liberty, is designed to show, as had been partly done in the former, how the mind or intel- lectual man is to preserve its supremacy. This is to be effected, not by the extinction, which is impossible, but the moderation, of tlie passions ; and the secret of doing this, according to Spinosa, is to contemplate such things as are naturally associated with affections of no great violence. We find, that when Ave look at things simply in themselves, and not in their necessary relations, they affect us more powerfully : whence it may be inferred that we shall Aveaken the passion by viewing them as parts of a necessary series. We promote the same end by considering the object of the passion in many different relations, and in general by enlarging the sphere of our knowledge concerning it. Hence, the more adequate ideas Ave attain of things that affect us, the less Ave shall be over- come by the passion they excite. But, most of all, it should be our endeavor to refer all things to the idea of God. The more Ave understand ourselves and our passions, the more we shall love God ; for, the more Ave understand any thinj;, tlie more pleasure Ave have in contemplating it ; and Ave shall asso- ciate the idea of God witli tliis ])leasurable contemplation, which is the essence of love. The love of God should be the chief employment of the mind, liut God has no passions : therefore he Avho desires that God should love him, desires m Chap. IV. CUMBERLAKD'S \)E LEGIBUS NATURAE. 153 fact that he should cease to be God. And tlie more we believe others to be united in the same love of" God, the more we shall love him ourselves. 11. Tlic jijreat aim of the mind, and tlie greatest degree of virtue, is tlie knowledge of things in their essence* This knowledge is the perfection of human nature ; it is accom- panied with tlie greatest joy and contentment; it leads to a love of God, intellectual, not imaginative, eternal, because not springing from passions that perisli witli the body, being itself a portion of that infinite love Avith which God intellectually loves himself. In this love towards God our chief felicity con- sists, whicli is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself: nor is any one happy because he has overcome the passions ; but it is by being happy, that is, l)y enjoying the fulness of divine love, that he has become capable of overcoming them. 12. These extraordinary effusions confirm what has been hinted in another place, that Spinosa, in tlie midst of liis athe- ism, seemed often to hover over the regions of mystical theo- logy. This last book of the Ethics speaks, {is is evident, the very language of Quietism. In Spinosa himself it is not easy to understand the meaning : liis sincerity ouglit not, I think, to be called in question ; and this enthusiasm may be set down to the rapture of the imagination expatiating in the enchant- ing wilderness of its creation. But the possibility of combining such a tone of contem[)lative devotion with the systematic denial of a Supreme Being, in any personal sense, may put us on our guard against the tendency of mysticism, which may again, as it has frequently, degenerate into a similar chaos. 13. The science of ethics, in the third quarter of the seven- teenth century, seemed to be cultivated by three very divergent schools, — by that of the theologians, ^^^^^ who went no farther than revelation, or at least than UeU-gibus the positive law of God, for moral distinctions ; by that of the Platonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsic relations ; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who reduced them all to selrtsli prudence. A fourth theory, which, in some of its modifications, has greatly prevailed in the last two centuries, may be referred to Richard Cumberland, after- wards Bishop of Peterborough. His famous work, De Legi- bns Naturaj Disquisitio Philosophica, was published in 1672. It is contained in nine chaptei's, besides the preface or pro- legomena. 154 ANALYSIS OF PROLEGOMENA. Pakt IV. 14. Cumberland begins bj mentioning Grotius, Selden, and Anahsis ^"^ ^^' ^^^^ morc who havc investigated tlie laws of of proiego- nature d posteriori ; that is, by the testimony of au- Diena. tliors and the consent of nations. But as some objecticyis may be started against tliis mode of ])roof, which, though he does not hold them to be valid, are likely to have some effect, he prefei'S another line of demonstration, dedu- cing tlic laws ol' nature, as effects, from their real causes in the constitution of nature itself The Platonic theory of innate moral ideas, sulficient to establisli natural law, he does not admit. " For myself at least I may say, that I liave not been so fortunate as to arrive at the knowledge of this law by so compendious a road." He deems it, therefore, necessary to begin with what we learn by daily use and experience ; assum- ing nothing but the physical laws of motion shown by mathe- maticians, and the derivation of all their operations from the will of a First Cause. 15. By diligent obser^•atio^ of all propositions which can be justly reckoned general moral laws of nature, he finds that they may be reduced to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents, which tends to our own good as part of the wliole; as its opposite tends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own.' This tendency, he takes care to tell us, though he uses the present tense (conducit), has respect to the most remote consequences, and is so understood by him. The means which serve to this end, the general good, may be treated as theorems in a geometrical method.- Cum- berland, as we have seen in Spinosa, was captivated by the apparent security of this road to truth. 1 G. This scheme, he observes, may at first sight want the two requisites of a law, a legislator and a sanction. But what- ever is naturally assented to by our minds must spring from the author of nature. God is proved to be the autlior of every proposition wliich is pi-oved to be true by the constitu- tion of nature, which has him for its author.^ Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is, the happiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and in the oppo- site effects of its neglect ; and in a lux sense, though not that of the jurists, reward as well as i)unishment may be included in the word "sanction."'' But benevolence, that is, love and de- ' Prolt'comena, sect. 9. ' Sect. 13. « Sect. 12 • Sect. 14. Chai'. IV, DE LEGIRUS NATURE. 155 sire of good towards all rational beings, includcb piety towards God, the greatest of them all, as well as humanity.^ Cumbei land altogether abstains from arguments founded on revelation, and is perhaps the first writer on natural law'who has done so ; for they may even be found in Hobbes. And I think that he may be reckoned tlie founder of what is awkwardly and invidi- ously called the utilitarian school ; for, though similar expres- sions about the common good may sometimes be found in the ancients, it docs not seem to have been the basis of any ethical system. 17. This common good, not any minute particle of it, as the benefit of a single man, is the great end of the legislator and of him who obeys his will. And such human actions as by their natural tendency promote the common good may be called naturally good, more than those which tend only to the good of any one man, by how much the whole is gi-eater than this small part. And whatever is directed in the shortest way to this 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 arranged so as to produce happiness, is beautiful, being aptly disposed to its end, which is the definition of beauty ; so particular actions contributing to this general har- mony may be called beautiful and becoming.- 18. Cumberland acutely remarks, in answer to the objec- tion to the practice of virtue from tlie evils which fall on good men, and the success of the wicked, that no good or evil is to be considered, in this point of view, Avhicli arises from mei-e necessity, or exteinial causes, and not from our virtue or vice itself. He then shows, that a regard for piety and peace, for mutual intercourse, and civil and domestic polity, tends to the happiness of every one ; and, in reckoning the good consequences of virtuous behavior, we are not only to estimate the jileasure intimately connected with it, which the love of God and of good men produces, but the contingent benefits we obtain by civil society, which we promote by such conduct.^ And we see that in all nations there is some regard to good faith tyid the distribution of property, some respect to the obligation of oaths, some attachments to relations and friends. All men, therefore, acknowledge, and to a certain extent perform, those things which really tend to the common good. And though crime and violence sometimes prevail, yet » Prolegomena, sect. 16 ^ Sect. 16. » Sect. 20. 156 CmiBEKLAND. Pari IV. these are like diseases in the body, which it shakes off: ov if, like them, they prove sometimes mortal to a single commu- nity, yet human society is immortal, and the con-ervative principles of conlmon good have in the end far more etiicacy than those which dissolve and destroy states. 19. AVe may reckon the happiness consequent on virtue as a true sanction of natural law annexed to it by its author, and thus fultilling tlie necessary conditions of its definition. And thou2;h some have laid less stress on these sanctions, and deemed viitue its own reward, and gratitude to God and man its best motive, yet the consent of nations and common experience show us, tiiat the observance of the first end, which is the common good, will not be maintained without remu- neration or the penal consequences. 20. By this single principle of common good, we simplify the method of natural law, and arrange its secondary pre- cepts in such subordination as best conduces to the general end. Hence moral rules give way in particular cases, when they come in collision with others of more extensive impor- tance. For all ideas of. right or virtue imply a relation to the system and nature of all rational beings. And the princi- ples thus deduced as to moral conduct are generally applicable to political societies, which, in their two leading institutions, — the division of property and the coercive power of the magistrate, — follow the steps of natural law, and adopt these rules of polity, because they perceive them to promote the common weal. 21. From all intermixture of scriptural authority, Cum- berland proposes to abstain, building only on reason and experience ; since we believe the Scriptures to proceed from God, because they illustrate and promote tlie law of natui-e. He seems to have been the first Cin-istian writer who souglit to establish systematically tlie principles of moral right inde- pendently of revelation. They are, indeed, taken for granted by many, especially those who adopted the Platonic language ; or the schoolmen may have demonstrated them by arguments derived from reason, but seldom, if ever, without some collate- ral reference to theological authority. In this respect, there- fore, Cumberland may be deemed to make an epoch in the history of ethical [)hilosophy ; though Puifendorf, whose work was published the same year, may have nearly equal claims to it. If we compare the Treatise on the Laws of Nature Chap. IV. D£ LEGIBUS NATUR.E. lo7 with the Ductor Dubitantium of Taylor, written a very few years befoi-e, we shall lind ourselves in a new world of moral reasoninf^. The sclioohuen and lathers, the canonists and casuists, have vanished lilve ghosts at the first dayli^Iit : the continual ai)peal is to experience, and never to authority ; or, if autliority can be said to appear at all in the jiages of Cnnil)erland, it is that of the great apostles of experimental l)hilos()phy, — Descartes or llnygens, or Harvey or AVillis. Ills mind, liberal and comprehensive as well as acute, had been ibrcibly impi-essed witii the discoveries of his own age, both in mathematical science and in wliat is now more strictly called pliysiology. Fi-om this armory he chose his weapons, and emphjyed them, in some instances, with great sagacity and deptli of thought. From the brilliant success also of the modern analysis, as well as from the natural prejudice in favor of a mathematical method, Avhich arises from the ac- knowledged .superiority of that science in the determination of its i)roper truths, he was led to expect more Irom the use of similar processes in moral reasoning than we have Ibund justified by experience. And this analogy had probably some effect on one of the chief errors of liis ethical system, — the reduction, at least in tlieory, of the morality of actions to definite calculation. 22. The prolegomena or preface to Cumberland's treatise contains that statement of his system with wliich jj.^ thporv we have been hitheilo concerned, and which the expanaea whole volume does but expand. His manner of ^"'-''^"'''''^• reasoning is diffuse, abounding in repetitions, and often excur- sive : we cannot avoid jierceiving that he labors long on pro- positions which no adversary Avould dispute, or on •which tlie dispute could be little else than one of verbal definition. This, however, is almost tlie universal failing of ijreceding philosophers, and was only jnit an end to, if it can be said yet to have ceased, by tlie sliarper logic of controversy which a more general regard to metaphysical infjuiries, and a juster sense of the value of words, brought into use. 23. The question between Cumberland and his adversaries, that is, the scliool of lloblies, is stated to be, whether certain })ropositions of immutable truth, directing the voluntary ac- tions of men in choosing good and avoiding evil, and impos- ing an obligation upon tliem, independently of civil laws, aro necessarily suggested to the mmd by the nature of things and 158 CUMBERLAND. Part FV. by that of mankind. And the affirmative of this question ho undertakes to prove from a consideration of tlie nature of both : fi-om which many particular rules might be deduced, but above all that -which comprehends all the rest, and is the basis of his theory ; namely, that the greatest possi- ble benevolence (not a mere languid desire, but an energetic principle) of every rational agent towards all the rest consti- tutes the happiest condition of each and of all, so far a? depends on their own power, and is necessarily required foi tlieir greatest happiness ; whence the common good is the supreme law. That God is the author of this law appears evident from his being the author of all nature and of all the physical laws according to which impi-essions are made on our minds. 24. It is easy to observe by daily experience, that we have the power of doing good to othei's, and that no men m-e so happy or so secure as they who most exert this. And this may be proved synthetically and in that more rigorous method which he affects, though it now and then leads the reader away from the simplest argument, by considering our own faculties of speech and language, the capacities of the hand and coun- tenance, the skill we possess in sciences, and in useful arts ; all of which conduce to the social life of mankind and to their mutual co-operation and benefit. Whatever preserves and perfects the nature of any thing, — that is to be called good; and the opposite, evil : so that Hobbes has crudely asserted good to respect only the agent desiring it, and consequently to be variable. In this it Avill be seen that the dispute is chiefly verbal. 25. Two corollaries of great importance in the theory of ethics spring from a consideration of our physical powers. The first is, that, inasmuch as they are limited by their nature, we should never seek to transgress their bounds, but distinguish, as the Stoics did, things within our reach, Tu f^' i/fjiv, from those beyond it, tu ovk t'^' i)/ilv, thus relieving our minds from anxious passions, and turning them to the prudent use of the means assigned to us. The other is one which applies more closely to his general principle of morals ; that, as all we can do in respect of others, and all the enjoyment we or they can have of particular things, is limited to certain persons, as well as by S])ace and time, we perceive the neces- Bity of distribution, both as to things, from which spring the Chat. IV. ^ DE LEGIBUS NATURE. 159 riglits of propei'ty, and as to persons, by which our benevo- lence, though a general rule in itself, is practically directed towards individuals. For the conservation of an aggregate whole is tlie same as that of its divided parts, that is, of single persons, which requires a distributive exercise of the powers of each. Hence property and dominion, or meum and tuum, in the most general sense, are consequences from the general law of nature. Without a sup})ort from that law, according to Cumberland, without a positive tendency to the good of all rational agents, we should have no right even to things necessary tor our preservation ; nor have we that right, if a greater evil would be incurred by our preservation than by our destruction. It may be added, as a more universal reflection, tliat, as all which we see in nature is so framed as to persevere in its appointed state, and as the human body is endowed with the power of throwing off whatever is noxious and threatens the integrity of its condition, we may judge from this that the conservation of mankind in its best state must be the design of nature, and that their own voluntary actions conducing to that end must be such as the Author of nature commands and approves. 2G. Cumberland next endeavors, by an enlarged analysis of the mental and bodily structure of mankind, to evince their aptitude for the social virtues, that is, for the general benevo- lence which is the primary law of nature. We have the power of knowing these by our rational faculty, which is the judge of right and wrong, that is, of what is conformable to the great law ; and by the other faculties of the mind, as well as by the use of language, we generalize and reduce to propositions the determinations of reason. We have also the power of comparison, and of perceiving analogies, by means of which we estimate degrees of good. And, if we are careful to guard against deciding without clear and adequate apprehensions of things, our reason Avill not mislead us. The observance of something like this general law of nature by inferior animals, whicli rarely, as Cumberland supposes, attack those of the same species, and in certain instances live together, as if by a compact for mutual aid ; the peculiar contrivances in the human body which seem designed for the mainte- nance of society ; the possession of speech, the pathognomic countenance, the efficiency of the hand, a longevity beyond the lower animals, the duration of the sexual appetite through- 1 CO CUMBERLAND. ^ 1'ai:t IV out the year, with several other arguments derived from ana- tomy, — are urged tliroughout this chapter against the unsocial theory of Plobbes. 27. Natural good is defined by Cumberland with more lati- tude than has been used by Paley and by those of a later school, who confine it to happiness or pleasui'able perception. Whatever conduces to the preservation of an intelligent being, or to the perfection of his powers, he accounts to be good, without regard to enjoyment. And for this he appeals to ex- perience ; since we desire existence, as well as the extension of our powers of action, for their own sakes. It is of great importance to acquire a clear notion of what is truly good, that is, of what serves most to the happiness and perfection of every one ; since all the secondary laws of nature, that is, the rules of particular virtues, derive their autliority from this effect. These rules may be compared one with another as to the probability as well as the value of tlieir effects upon the general good; and he anticipates greater advantage from the employment of mathematical reasoning and even analytical forms in moral philosopliy than the different nature of the subjects would justify, even if the fundamental principle of converting the theory of ethics into calculation could be allowed.^ 28. A law of nature, meaning one subordinate to the great principle of benevolence, is defined by Cumberland to be a proiwsition manifested by the nature of things to the mind according to the will of the First Cause, and pointing out an action tending to the good of rational beings, from the per- formance of which an adequate reward, or from the neglect of wliich a punishment, will ensue by the nature of such rational beings. l^-eiy part of this definition he proves with exceeding prolixity in the longest chapter, namely, the fifth, of his treatise ; but we have already seen the foundations of Ills tlieory upon which it rests. It will be evident to the reader of this cliapter, tliat both Butler and Paley have been largely indeljted to Cumberland.^ Natural obligation he de- fines thus : No other necessity determines the will to act than I "En quippc tota (ilisciplina nioriim) gcs. I5y ralionibiis we must understand VfiNatur in scstiuianilis rationilius viiiuiii rntios; which brings out the calculating liunianarum ad conunuuu bonuin cutium tlieor>' in the strongest light, rationalium quicquam facientium, qurc ^ A groat part of the second and third quideni variant in ouini oasuuni possibi- chapters of Butler's Analogy will be found lium varietate."— Cap. ii. sect. 9. The in Cumberland. See cap. v. sect. 22. name is laid down in several other passa- Cn.vr. IV. DE LEGIBUS NATURE. ICl that of avoiding evil and of seeking good, so far as appears to be in onr power.^ INIoral oljligation is more limited, and is differently defined.- But the main point, as he justly observes, of the controversy is the connection between the tendency of each man's actions, taking them collectively through his life, to the good of the whole, and that to his own gi'eatest happiness and pei-fection. This he nndertakes to ehow, premising that it is two-fold; consisting immediately in the pleasure attached to virtue, and ultimately in the rewards which it obtains from God and from man. God, as a rational being, cannot be supposed to act without an end, or to have a greater end than the genend good ; that is, the happi- ness and perfection of his creatures.^ And his will may not only be shown a jjriori, by tlie consideration of his essence and attributes, but by the effects of virtue and vice in the order of nature which he has established. The rewards and punishments which follow at the hands of men are equally obvious ; and whether Ave regard men as God's instruments, or as voluntary agents, demonstrate that virtue is the highest prudence. These arguments are urged rather tediously, and in such a manner as not to encounter all the difficulties which it is desirable to overcome. 29. Two objections might be alleged against this kind of proof: that the rewards and punishments of moral actions are too uncertain to be accounted clear proofs of the will of God, and consequently of their natural obligation ; and that, by lay- ing so much stress upon them, we make private happiness the measure of good. These he endeavors to repel. Tlie contin- gency of a future consequence has a determinate value, which, if it more than compensates, for good or evil, the evil or good of a pi'esent acuon, ought to be deemed a proof given by the Author of nature, that reward or punishment are annexed to ihe action, as much as if they were its necessary conse- quences.'' This argument, perhajis sophistical, is an instance >f the calculating method affected by Cumberland, and which ft-e may pi-esume, from the then recent application of analysis o probability, he was the first to adopt on such an occasion. Puley is sometimes fond of a similar process. But, after these mathematical reasonings, he dwells, as before, on tlie bene- • " Non alia necespitas Toluntatpm ad bonumque quatcniis nobis apparet prc- tgendum dcteniiinat. quam malum in sequcndi." — Cap. t. sect. 7. (quantum tale esse nobis constat fngiendi, '■' Sect. 27. " Sect. 19. * Sect. 87. VOL. IV. 11 162 CUMBERLAND. Part 17. ficial effects of virtue, and concludes that many of them are BO uniform as to leave no doubt as to the intention of the Cre- ator. Against the charge of postponing the public good to that of the agent, he protests that it is wholly contrary to his principle, which permits no one to preserve his life, or what is necessary for it, at the expense of a greater good to the Jvhole.' But his explication of the question ends in repeating, that no single man's greatest felicity can by the nature of things be inconsistent witli that of all ; and that every such hypothesis is to be rejected as an impossible condition of the problem. It seems doubtful whether Cumberland uses always the same language on the question, whether private happiness is the final motive of action, which in this part of the chapter he wholly denies. 30. From the establishment of this primary law of univer- sal benevolence, Cumberland next deduces the chief secondary principles, which are commonly called the moral virtues. And among these he gives the first place to justice, which he seems to consider, by too lax an use of terms or too imperfect an analogy, as comprehending the social duties of liberality, courtesy, and domestic affection. The right of property, which is the foundation of justice, he rests entii-ely on its necessity for the common good : whatever is required for that prime end of moral action being itself obligatory on moral agents, they are bound to establish and to maintain separate rights. And all right so wholly depends on this instrumen- tality to good, that the rightful sovereignty of God over his creatures is not founded on that relation which he beai'S to them as their Maker, much less on his mere power, but on his wisdom and goodness, through which his omnipotence works only for their happiness. But this happiness can only be attained by means of an absolute right over them in their Maker, which is therefore to be reckoned a natural law. ol. Tiie good of all i-ational beings is a complex whole, being nothing but the aggregate of good enjoyed by each. We can only act in our proper sphei-es, laboring to do good. But this labor will be fruitless, or rather mischievous, if we do not keep in mind the higher gradations which terminate in ' " Sua oujupque fulicitas est pars vnlilo rationem quam habct unus homo ad ag- exi^iia finis illius, (jufiin vir vitu ratio- grcgatuin ux omnibus ratioialibus, qu88 nalis prosc((uitur, ct ad totuui linom, sci- minor est quiviii Nibei u>u«^a iirciula aj licet commune bonum, cui a natura seu uiolem univcr?i "Orpori* ' • S«»ct. 18 and a Deo intertexitur, earn tantum babet sect. 23 OHAP. IV. RE1L\RKS OX HIS THEORY. 163 universal bene\ olence. No man must seek his own advantage otherwise than that of his family permits ; or provide for his family to the detriment of his country ; or promote the good of his country at the expense of mankind; or serve mankind, if it were possible, Avitliout regard to the majesty of God.^ It is indeed sufficient that the mind should acknowledge and recollect this princi[)le of conduct, without having it present on every single occasion. But, where moral dilhculties arise, Cumberland contends that the general good is the only mea- sure by which we are to determine the lawfulness of actions, or the ])reference due to one above another. 32. In conclusion he passes to political authority, deriving it from the same principle, and comments with severity and success, though in the verbose style usual to him, on the sys- tem of Hobbes. It is, however, worthy of remark, that he not only peremptorily declares the irresponsibility of the su- preme magistrate in all cases, but seems to give him a more arbitrary latitude in the choice of measures, so long as he does not violate the chief negative precepts of the Decalogue, than is consistent with his own fundamental rule of always seeking the gi*eatest good. He endeavors to throw upon Hobbes, as was not unconnnou with the hitter's theological opponents, the imputation of encouraging rebellion wliile he seemed to sup- port absolute power ; and observes with full as much truth, that, if kings are bound by no natural law, the reason for their institution, namely, the security of mankind, assigned by the author of the Leviathan, falls to the ground. 33. I have gone rather at length into a kind of analysis of this treatise because it is now very little read, and yet was of great importance in the annals of ethical cumber- philosophy. It was, if not a text-book in either of '='°'i'« "'e- our universities, concerning which I am not confi- dent, the basis of the system therein taught, and of the books which have had most influence in this country. Hutcheson, Law, Paley, Priestley, Bentham, belong, no doubt some of them unconsciously, to the school founded by Cumberland. Hutcheson adopted the principle of general benevolence as the standard of virtue; but, by limiting the definition of goad to happiness alone, he simplified the scheme of Cumberland, who had included conservation and enlargement of capacity in its definition. He rejected also what encumbers the whole sys- > Cap. Tiii. sect. 14, 15. 164 REMAKKS ON CUMBERLAND'S THEORY. Part IV tem of Ills predecessor, — tlie including the Supreme Being among those rational agents whose good we are bound to pro- mote. Tiie schoolmen, as well as those M-hom they followed, deeming it necessary to predicate metaphysical infinity of all the divine attributes, reckoned unalterable beatitude in the number. Upon such a subject no wise man would hke to dog- matize. The difliculties on both sides are very great, and perhaps among the most intricate to which the momentous problem concerning the cause of evil has given rise. Cum- berland, whose mind does not seem to have been much framed to wrestle with mysteries, evades, in his lax verbosity, what might perplex his readers. S4. In establishing the will of a supreme lawgiver as essential to the law of nature, he is followed by the bisho]) of Carlisle and Palc}^, as well as by the majority of English moralists in the eighteenth century. But while Paley deems the recognition of a future state so essential, that he even includes in the definition of virtue that it is performed " for the sake of everlasting happiness," Cumberland not only omits this erroneous and almost paradoxical condition, but very slightly alludes to another life, tliough he thinks it proba- ble from the stings of conscience and on otlier grounds ; resting the whole argument on the certain consequences of virtue and vice in the present, but guarding justly against the supposition that any difference of happiness in moral agents can affect the immediate question except such as is the mere result of their own behavior. If any one had urged, like Paley, that, unless we take a future state into consideration, the result of calculat- ing our own advantage will either not always be in favor of virtue, or, in consequence of the violence of passion, will not always seem so, Cumberland would probably have denied tlie former alternative, and replied to the other, that we can only prcn-e the trntli of our tlieorems in moral philosophj-, and cannot romjjcl men lo adopt them. o5. Sir James Mackintosh, whose notice of Cumberland is rather too superficial, and liardly recognizes his influence on philoso])hy, observes that " the forms of scholastic argument serve more to encumlier liis style than to insure his exact- ness.'" 'J'here is not, liowever, much of scholastic form in the treatise on the Laws of Natui-e ; and this is expressly dis- claimed in the preface. But he has, as we have intimated, a > DUsertatioD on Ethical Philosophy, p. 48. (■flAP IV. PUFFEXDOrwF. 165 great deal too much of a mathomatical line of argument wliich never illustrates his mcaninir, and has sometimes misled his judgment. We owe probably to his fondness for this specious ilhisiou, I mean the application of reasonings upon quantity to moral subjects, the dangerous sophism, that a direct calcula tion of the higlvcst good, and that not relatively to particulars, but to all rational beings, is the measure of virtuous actions, the test by whicli we are to try our own conduct and that of others. And the intervention of general rules, by which Paley endeavored to dilute and render palatable this calculat- ing scheme of utility, seems no more to have occurred to Cumbci-Iand than it was adopted by Bentham. 3G. Thus, as Taylor's Ductor Dubifantium is nearly the last of a declining school, Cuml)erland's Law of Nature may be justly considered as the herald, especially in England, of a new ethical philosophy, of which the main characteristics were, first, that it stood cora])lete in itself without tlie aid of revela- tion ; secondly, that it appealed to no authority of earlier writers whatever, thougli it sometimes used them in illustra- tion ; thirdly, that it availed itself of observation and experi- ence, alleging them generally, but abstaining from particular instances of either, and making, above all, no display of erudi- tion ; and, fourthly, that it entered very little upon casuistry, leaving the applii^ation of principles to the reader. 37. In the same year, 1G72, a work still more generally distinguished than that of Cumberland was pub- lished at Lund, in Sweden, by Samuel Puffendorf, a Lnfof""^' Saxon by birth, who filled the chair of moral philo- ^'jitj're and sophy in that recently -founded university. This ' "" '°'^' large treatise. On the Law of Nature and Nations, in eight books, was abridged by the author, but not without some variations, in one perhaps more useful. On the Duties of a Man and a Citizen. Both have been translated into French and English : both were long studied in the foreign uinversi- ties, and even in our own. Puifendorf has been perhaps, in moral philosophy, of greater authority than Grotius, with whom he is frequently named in conjunction ; but this is not the case in international jurisprudence. 38. Puffendorf, after a very diffuse and technical chapter on moral beings, or modes, proceeds to assert a de- Analysis of monstrativc certainty in moral science, but seems this work. not to maintain an inherent right and wrong in actions ante* 166 PUFFENDORF. Part IV cedent to all law ; referring the rule of morality altogether to the divine appointment. He ends, however, bj admitting that man's constitution being what it is, God could not witliout inconsistency have given him any other law than that under which he lives.^ We discern good from evil by the understand- ing, which judgment, Avhen exercised on our own actions, is called conscience ; but he strongly protests against any such jurisdiction of conscience, independent of reason and know- ledge, as some have asserted. This notion " was first intro- duced by the schoolmen, and has been maintained in these latter ages by the crafty casuists for the better secunng of men's minds and fortunes to their own fortune and advan- tage." ^ Puffendorf was a good deal imbued with the Luthe- ran bigotry which did no justice to any religion but its own. 39. Law alone creates obligation : no one can be obliged except toAvards a superior. But, to compel and to oblige being different things, it is required for this latter that we should have received some great good at the hands of a superior, or have voluntarily submitted to his will. This seems to involve an antecedent moral right, which Puffendorf s general theory denies.'^ Barbeyrac, his able and watchful commenta- tor, derives obligation from our natural dependence on the supreme authority of God, wlio can punish the disobedient and reward others. In order to make laws obligatory, it is necessary, according to Puffendorf, tliat we sliould know both the laAV and the lawgiver's authority. Actions are good or evil, as they conform more or less to law. And, coming to consider the peculiar qualities of moral actions, he introduces tlie distinction of perfect and imperfect rights, objecting to that of Grotius and tlie Roman lawyers, expletive and distri- butive justice.'* This first book of Puffendorf is very diffuse : and some chapters are wholly omitted in the abridgment. 40. The natural state of man, such as in theory we may sui)pose, is one in whicli he was never placed, " thrown into the world at a venture, and then left entirely to himself with no larger endowments of body or mind than such as we now discover in men." This, however, he seems to think physi- cally possible to have been, which I should incline to question. Man, in a state of nature, is subject to no earthly superior ; but we must not infer thence that he is incapable of law, and has a right to every thing that is profitable to himself. But » c 2. 2 c. 3. » c. 6. * 0. 7. Chap. IV. LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 1G7 after discussing the position of Hobbes, that a state of nature is a slate of war, lie ends by admitting that the desire of peace is too weak and uncertain a security for its preservation among mankind."^ 41. The law of nature he derives not from consent of na- tions, nor from personal utility, but from the condition of man. It is discoveralde by reason: its obligation is from God. He denies that it is founded on the intrinsic honesty or turpitude of actions. It was free to God whether he would create an animal to whom the present law of nature should be applicable. But, supposing all things human to remain constant, the law of nature, though owing its institu- tion to the free will of God, remains unalterable. He there- fore neither agrees wholly with those who deem of this law as of one arbitrary and nuitable at God's pleasure, nor with those who look upon it as an image of his essential holiness and justice. For he doubts whether the law of nature is altogether conformed to the divine attributes as to a type ; since we cannot acquire a right with respect to God : so that his justice must be of a different kind from ours. Common consent, again, is an insufficient basis of natural law, few men having searched into the foundations of their assent, even if we could find a more general consent than is the case. And here he exj)atiates, in the style of Montaigne's s('hool, on the variety of moral opinions.- Puffendorf next 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 take away either by fraud or violence Avhat another man has ac- quired by his labor ; since others have not only the power of resisting you, but of taking the same freedom with your goods and possessions."^ This is evidently no answer to Hobbes or Spinosa. 42. The nature of man, his wants, his powers of doing mis- chief to others, his means of mutual assistance, show that he cannot be suj)ported in things necessary and convenient to him without society, so that others may promote his interests. Hence sociableness is a primary law of nature; and all actions tending towards it are commanded, as the opposite are for- bidden, by that law. In this he agrees with Grotius ; and, after he had become acquainted with Cumberland's work, » Lib. a. c. 2. 2 C. 3. 3 c. 3. 168 PUFFENDORF. Part IV. observes thai the funrlamental 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 j)arily answers, the theory of Hobbes. From Grotiiis he dissents in denying that tlie law of nature would be binding without religion, but does not think the soul's immortality essential to it.* The best division of natural law is into duties towards ourselves and towards others. But in the abridged work, the Duties of a Man and a Citizen, he adds those towards God. 43. The former class of duties he illustrates with much prolixity and needless quotation,- and passes- to the i-ight of self-defence, which seems to be the debatable frontier between the two classes of obligation. In this chapter, Putfendorf is free from the extreme scrupulousness of Grotius ; yet he differs from him, as well as from Barbeyrac and Locke, in denying the right of attacking the aggressor, where a stranger has been injured, unless where we are bound to him by promise.^ 44. All persons, as is evident, are bound to repair wilful injury, and even that arising from their neglect ; but not where they have not been in fault.'' Yet the civil action ob pauperiem, for casual damage by a beast or slave, which Grotius held to be merely of positive law, and which our own (in the only ap])licable case) does not recognize, Puffendorf thinks grounded on natural riglit. He considers several questions of reparation, chiefly such as we find ia Grotius. From these, after some intermediate disquisitions on moral duties, he comes to the more extensive province of casuistry, — the obligation of promises.^ These, for the most part, give perfect rights which may be enforced, though this is not universal : hence promises may themselves be called imperfect or perfect. The former, or nuclei pacta, seem to be obligatory rather by the rules of veracity, and for the sake of maintaining confidence among men, than in strict justice ; yet he endeavors to refute the opinion of a jurist, who held nuda pacta to involve no obligation beyond a com])ensation for damage. F'ree consent and knowledge of the whole subject are required for the validity of a promise: hence drunkenness takes away its obligation.'' Whether a minor is bound in con- science, though not in law, has been disputed ; the Romish casuists all denying it, unless he has received an advantage- « C. 3. 2 C 4. • C. 5. * Ub. ui. c. 1. '> Co. « C. fi. CuAf. IV. LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS. 169 La Pincette, it seems, after the time of Puffendorf, tliough a very rigid moralist, contines the obligation to cases where the other party sustains any real damage by the non-performance. T!ie world, in some instances at least, would exact more than the strictest casuists. Promises were invalidated, though not always mutual contracts, by error; and fraud in the other partv ainuds a contract. There can be no obligation, Puffen- dorf maintains, without a corresponding right : hence fear arising from the fault of the other party invalidates a promise. But those made to pirates or rebels, not being extorted by fear, are binding. Vows to God he deems not binding, unless accepted by him ; but he thinks that we may presume their acceptance when they serve to define or speciiy an indetermi- nate duty.^ Unlawful promises must not be performed by the party promising to commit an evil act ; and, as to performance of the other party's promise, he differs from Grotius in think- ing it not binding. Barbeyrac concurs with Puffendorf, but Paley holds the contrary ; and the common sentiments of mankind seem to be on that side.- 45. The obligations of veracity, Puffendorf, after much needless prolixity on the nature of signs and words, deduces from a tacit contract among mankind, that woi'ds, or signs of intention, shall be used in a definite sense which others may understand.-' He is rather fond of these imaginary compacts. The laxer casuists are in nothing more distinguishable from the more rigid than in the exceptions they allow to the gene- ral rule of veracity. Many, like Augustin and most of the fathers, have laid it down that all falsehood is unlawful ; even some of the jurists, when treating of morality, had done the Bame. But Puffendorf gives considerable latitude to devia- tions from truth, by mental reserve, by ambiguous words, by direct falsehood. Barbeyrac, in a long note, goes a good deal fartlier, and indeed beyond any safe limit.'* An oath, accord- ing to these writers, adds no peculiar obligation; another remarkable discrepancy between their system and that of the 1 C. 6. - C. 7. and a<-corJing to any sound theory of 3 L. iv. c. 1. ethics. Ljinj;, he says, as condemuud in * Bai'bevr.ic admits that peroral writers Siripturo, always means fraud or injury to of autliority since PufTeudorf had main- others. His doctrine is, that we are tained the strict obligation of veracity for to speak the truth, or to be silent, or to its own sake : Thoniasius, Buddaeus, Xoodt, feign and di.«semble. according as our own and, above all, La I'lacette. His own no- lawful interest, or that of our neighbor, tious are too much the other way, both may demand it. This is surely as untena- according to the received standard of hon- ble one way as any paradox in Augutstin orable and decorous character among men, or La Piacette can be the other. 170 PUFFENDORF. Pakt IY theological casuists. Oaths may be released by the party in favor of vhom they are made ; but it is necessary to observe whether the dispensing authority is really the obligee. 4G. We now advance to a different part of moral philoso- phy, — the riglits of ])roperty. Puffendorf first inquires into the natural right of killing animals for food ; but does not defend it very Avell, resting this right on the Avant of mutual obligation between man and brutes. The arguments from physiology, and the manifest propensity in mankind to devour animals, are much stronger. He censures cruelty towards animals, but hardly on clear grounds : the disregard of moral emotion, which belongs to his philosophy, prevents his judg- ing it rightly.^ Property itself in things he grounds on an express or tacit contract of mankind, while all was yet in common, that each should possess a separate portion. This covenant he supposes to have been gradually extended, as men perceived the advantage of separate possesoion, lands having been cultivated in common after severalty had been established in houses and movable goods; and he refutes those who maintain property to be coeval with mankind, and immediately founded on the law of nature.- Nothing can be the subject of property which is incajjable of exclusive occu- pation ; not therefore the ocean, though some narrow seas may be appropriated." In the remainder of this fourth book, he treats on a variety of subjects connected with property, which carry us over a wide field of natural and positive jurisprudence. 47. The fifth book of Puffendorf relates to price, and to all contracts onerous or lucrative, according to the distinction of the jurists, with the rules of their intorjiretation. ^ It is a running criticism on the Roman law, comparing it with right, reasori,°and justice. Price he divides into proper and emi- nent: the first being what we call real value, or capacity of procuring things desirable by means of exchange ; the second, the money value. What is said on this subject would now seem commonplace and prolix ; but it is rather interesting to observe the beginnings of political economy. Money, he thinks, was introduced by an agreement of civilized nations, as a measure of value. Puffendorf, of more enlarged views than Grolius, vindicates usury, which the other had given up ; 1 C. 3. s o! 4. Barbeyrac more wisely denies tliis assumed compact, and rests the right of property on indlTidual occupancy. • 0. 6. Chap. IV. PUFFENDORF AND l^VLEY COMPARED. 171 and mentions the evasions usually practised, such as the grant of an annuity for a limited term. 48. In the sixtli book, we have disquisitions on matrimony and the riglits incident to it, on paternal and on herile power. Among other questions, he raises one Avhether the husband lias any natural dominion over the wife. This he thinks hard to prove, except as his sex gives him an advantage ; but fit- ness to govern does not create a right. He has recourse, Iherefore, to his usual solution, — her tacit or express promise of obedience. Polygamy he deems contrary to the law of nature, but not incest, except in the direct line. This is con- sonant to what had been the general determination of philo- sophers.' The right of parents he derives fi-om the general duty of sociableness, which makes preservation of children necessary, and on the affection implanted in them by nature ; also on a presumed consent of the childi-en in return for their maintenance.- In a state of nature, this command belongs to the mother, unless she has waived it by a matrimonial con- tract. In childhood, the fruits of the child's labor belong to the father, though the former seems to be capable of receiv- hig gifts. Fathers, as heads of families, have a kind of sovereignty, distinct from the paternal, to which adult children residing with them are submitted. But after their emancipa- tion, by leaving their father's house, which does not absolutely require his consent, they are bound only to duty and reve- rence. The power of a master over his servant is not by nature, nor by the law of war, but originally by a contract founded on necessity. War increased the number of those in servitude. A slave, whatever Hobbes may say, is capable of being injured by his master ; but the laws of some nations give more power to the latter than is Avarranted by those of nature. Servitude implies only an obligation to perpetual labor for a recompense (namely, at least maintenance) : the evil necessary to this condition has been much exajro-erated by opinion.'" . 49. Puffendorf and Cumberland are tlie two great promo- ters, if not founders, of that school in ethics, which, p„(jp„jorf abandoning the higher ground of both pliilosophers andi'aiey and theologians, that of an intrinsic fitness and pro- *^°™P''^'^«^- priety in actions, resolved them all into their conduciveness towards good. Their utile, indeed, is very different from what » L. VL c. 1. » C. 2. » C. ? 172 ROCIIEFOUCAULT. Takx TV. Cicero has so named, wliich is merely personal ; but it is dif- ferent also from his honestum. The sociableness of Puffcn- dorf is perhaps much the same with the general good of Cumberland, but is somewhat less comjireliensivc and less clear. Paley, who had not read a great deal, had certainly read Puffendoif: he has borrowed from him several minor illustrations, such as the equivocal promise of Timur (called by Paley, Temures) to the garrison of Sebastia, and the rules for division of profits in partnership. Their minds were in some respects alike; both phlegmatic, honest, and sincere, Avithout warmth or fancy ; yet there seems a more thorough good-natui-e and kindliness of heart in our countryman. Though an ennobled German, Puffendorf had as little respect for tlie law of honor as Paley himself. They do not, indeed, resemble each other in their modes of writing: one was very laborious, the other very indolent ; one sometimes misses his mark by circuity, the other by ]M-ecipitance. The quotations in Puffendorf are often as thickly strewed as in Grotins, though he takes less from the poets ; but he seems not to build upon their authority, which gives them still more the air of super- fluity. His theory, indeed, which assigns no weight to any thing but a close geometrical deduction from axioms, is incom- patible with much deference to authority ; and he sets aside the customs of mankind as unstable and arbitrary. He has not taken much from Hobbes, whose principles are far from his, but a great deal from Grotius. The leading difference between the treatises of these celebrated men .is, that, wdiile the former contemidated the law that ought to be observed among independent communities as his primary object, to render Avhich more evident he lays down the fundamental jjrinciples of private right or the law of nature, the latter, on the other hand, not only begins with natural law, but makes it the great theme of his inquiries. oO. Few books have been more highly extolled or more R.-hofou- severely blamed than the Thoughts or ^Maxims of the cauit. Duke of La Kochcfovicault. They have, indeed, the greatest advantages for popidarity ; the production of u man less distinguished by his high rank than by his active participation in the factions of his country at a time when they reached the limits of civil Avar, and by his brilliancy among the accomplished courtiers of Louis XIV.; concise and energetic in expression ; reduced to those short aphorisms CH.VP. IV. ROCIIEFOUCAULT. 173 which leave much to the reader's acuteness, am yet save his labor ; not often obscure, and never wearisom ; an evident generalization of long experience, without pediiitr}', Avithout method, without deductive reasonings, yet wcarig au appear- ance at least of profundity, — they delight the intdigont though indolent man of the world, and must be read will some admi- ration by the philosopher. Among the books iitancient and modern times which record the conclusions of ceerving men on the moral qualities of their fellows, a higlwlace should be reserved for the ISIaxims of Rochefoucault. 51. The censure that has so heavily fallen upji this Avriter is founded on his proneness to assign a low and ifish motive to human actions, and even to those Avhich arQiost usually denominated virtuous. It is impossible to dispuithe partial truth of this charge. Yet it may be pleaded, tluuiany of his maxims are not universal even in their enunciatj; and that, in others, where, for the sake of a more effecti^expression, the position seems general, Ave ought to undermd it Avith such limitations as our experience may suggest. Ihe society with Avhich the Duke of La Rochefoucault Avaconversant could not elevate his notions of disinterested ))r(ty in man, or of unblemished purity in woman. Those Avltall them- selves the Avorld, it is easy to perceive, set a^, in their remarks on human nature, all the s|)ecies but theeh-es, and sometimes generalize their maxims, to an amusing^ree, from the manners and sentiments which have groAV,ip in the atmosphere of a court or an aristocratic societyiiochefou- cault Avas of far too reflecting a mind to be conjided xv'^th such mere worldlings ; yet he bears Avitness to thontracted observation and the precipitate inferences Avhiiin inter- coui-se Avith a single class of society scarcely foilsgenerate. The causticity of Kocheibucault is always directe^ainst the false virtues of mankind, but ncA-er touches tl-eality of moral truths, and leaves us less injured than the c heartless indifTerence to right which distils from the page!" Ilobbes. Kor does he deal in those SAveeping denials | goodness lo human nature which arc so frequently liazard(|uKler the mask of religion. His maxims are not exemptjin defects of a diiferent kind : they are sometimes refmed tdegree of obscurity, and sometimes, under an epigi-ammaticjn, convey little more than a trivial meaning. Perhaps^iAvever, it would be just to say that one-third of the uuijr desei-ve 174 LA BRUYIiKE. Part IV to be rememtered, as at least partially true and useful ; and this is a la'^e proportion, if we exclude all that are not in some measuc original. 52. The Jharactcrs of La Bruyere, published in 1687, a} roach to the Maxims of La Rochefoucault by their rujcre. j^.p^^i,^^gj^^^ their brevity, their general tendency to an unfavorole explanation of human conduct. This, never- theless, is rt so strongly marked ; and the picture of selfish- ness wants le darkest touches of his contemporary's coloring La Bruyeihad a model in antiquity, — Theophrastus, whos/ short booktf Characters he had himself translated, and pro fixed to hi 'wn ; a step not impolitic for his own glory, sinco the Greek'riter, with no contemptible degree of merit, has been incorarably surpassed by his imitator. IMany changes in the contion of society ; the greater diversity of ranks and occupation in modern Europe ; the influence of women over the other-i;, as well as their own varieties of character and manners ;ie effects of religion, learning, chivalry, royalty, — have giv^i'^G of some with his satire. But he is rather a boliAvri ^^^' '''^ ^S^ '^"*^ '^^^ position in the court; and what looks li], ^^'^ttery may well have been ironical. Few have been m" imitated, as well as more admired, than La Briiyero'^''^ fills up the list of those whom France has boasted »^f>i5t conspicuous for their knowledge of human nature. •'''^ others are JNIontaigne, Charron, Pascal, and llochefoi^"^^ ' but we might withdraw the second name without justice. CiLVi". IV. EDUCATION — MILTON'S TRACTATE. 175 53. Moral philosophy comprehends in its literature what- ever has been Avritten on tlie best theory and pre- Education, cepts of moral education, disregarding wjiat is con- Miitons fined to erudition, though this may frequently be partially treattxl in works of the former class. Education, notwithstanding its recognized importance, Avas miserably neglected in England, and quite as much pei-haps in every part of Europe. Schools, kept by low-born, illiberal pedants, teaching little, and that little ill, without regard to any judi- cious disci [)line or moral culture, on the one hand, or, on the other, a jjretence of instructicn at home under some ignorant and servile tutor, seem to have been the alternatives of our juvenile gentry. Milton raised his voice against these faulty methods in his short Tractate on Education. This abounds ■with bursts of liis elevated spirit ; and sketches out a model of public colleges, wherein the teaching should be more com- prehensive, more liberal, more accommodated to what he deems the great aim of education, than what was in use. " That," he says, " I call a comjdete and generous education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnani- mously all the oilices, both private and public, of peace and v/ar." But, when Milton descends to specify the course of studies he would recommend, it appears singularly ill-chosen and impracticable, nearly confined to ancient writers, even in mathematics and otlier subjects where they could not be suffi- cient, and likely to leave the student veiy far from that apti- tude for offices of war and peace wliich he had held forth as the reward of his dilijience. 54. Locke, many years afterwards, turned his thoughts to education with all the advantages that a strons: t«„i.»^ uuderstauduig and entu-e disniterestedness could give KUucation. him; but, as we should imagine, with some necessa- ^'^'"'-'"'^> ry deficiencies of experience, though we hardly perceive much of them in his writings. He looked on the methods usual in his age Avitli severity, or, some would say, with prejudice ; yet I know not by what proof we can refute his testimony. la his Treatise on Education, which inay be reckoned an intro- duction to that on the Conduct of the Understanding, since the latter is but a scheme of that education an adult person should give himself, he has uttered, to say the least, more good sense on the subject than will be found in any preceding writer. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or other 176 LOCKE ON EDUCATION. Pakt IV. ages, who think that to pour their wordy book-learaing into the memory is tlie true discipline of childhood. The culture of the intellectual and moral faculties in their most extensive sense, the liealth of the body, the accomplishments which common utility or social custom has rendered valuable, enter into ills 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, in Aristotle, the noble conception Avhich Milton has expressed, of forming the perfect man, is always predominant over mere literary instruction, if indeed the latter can be said to appear at all in their writings on this subject ; but we liad become the dupes of schoolmasters in our riper years, as we had been their slaves in our youth. Much has been written, and often well, since the days of Locke : but he is the chief source from which it has been ultimately derived ; and, though the P^mile is more attractive in manner, it may be doubtful whether it is as rational and practicable as the Treatise on Education. If they have both the same defect, that their authors wanted sutiicient observation of children, it is certain that tlie caution and sound judgment of Locke have rescued him better fi'om error. 00. There are, indeed, from this or from other causes, seve- , , , , ral passages in the Treatise on Education to which And defects. '■ '^ . ... ^ t i we cannot give an unhesitatmg assent. Locke ap- pears to have somewhat exaggerated the efficacy of education. This is an error on the right side in a work that aims at per- suasion in a practical matter; but we are now looking at theoi-etical truth alone. " I think I may say," he begins, " that, of all the men Ave meet with, nine parts of ten are Avhat they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. It is this Avhich makes the great difference in mankind. The little or almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences ; and there 'tis as in the fountains of some rivers, where a gentle application of the hand turns the iiexible waters into channels that make them take quite contrary courses ; and, by this little direction given them at first in the source, they receive dillerent tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant places." "I imagine," he adds soon afterwards, "the minds of children as easily turned tliis or that way as Avater itself." ^ « Treatise on Education, § 2. " The diflurence," he aflerwaids says, " to b* CiTAP. rV. LOCKE ON EDUCATION. 177 56. This passage is an instance of Locke's unfortunate fondness for analogical parallels, which, as far as I have observed, much more frequently obscure a philosophical Iheo- reiu than shed any light upon it. Nothing would be easier than to confirm the contrary proposition by such fancifid analogies from external nature. In itself, the position is hyperbolical to extravagance. It is no more disparagement to the uses of education, that it will not produce the like effects upon every individual, than it is to those of agriculture (I purposely use this sort of idle analogy), that we do not reap the same quantity of corn from every soil. Tiiose who are conversant with children on a large scale will, I 1)elieve, unani- mously deny this levelling efficacy of tuition. Tiie variety of characters even in children of the same family, where the domestic associations of infancy have run in the same trains, and where many physical congenialities may produce, and ordinarily do produce, a moral resemblance, is of sufficiently frequent occurrence to prove tliat in lunnan beings there are intrinsic dissimilitudes, which no education can essentially overcome. Among mere theorists, however, this hypothesis seems to be popular. And as many of these extend their notion of the plasticity of human nature to the effects of government and legislation, wliich is a sort of continuance of the same controlling power, they are generally induced to disregard past experience of human affairs, because they flat- tor tliemselves, that, under a more scientific administration, mankind will become something very different from what they have been. 57. In the age of Locke, if we may confide in what he tells us, the domestic education of children must have been of the worst kind. " If we look," he says, "into tlie common man- agement of children, we shall have reason to wonder, in the great dissoluteness of manners which the world complains of, that there are any footsteps at all left of virtue. I desire to know what vice can be named wliich parents and those about children do not season them with, and di'op into them the seeds of, as often as they are capable to receive them." The mode of treatment seems to have been passionate and often barbarous severity alternaflng with foolish indulgence. Their spirits \vere often broken down, and their ing(nuousnes3 found in the mnnncrs and abilities of men is owing more to their education tlian to any tiling else." — § 32 vou IV. 12 178 LOCKE ON EDUCATION. Part IV. destroyed, by the former ; their habits of self-will and sensu- ality confirmed by the latter. This was the method pursued by parents; but the pedagogues of course coutined themselves to their favorite sclieme of instruction and reformation by punishment. Dugald Stewart has animadverted on the aus- terity of Locke's rules of education.' And this is certainly the case in some respects. He recommends tliat cliildreu should be taught to expect nothing because it will give them pleasure, but only what will be useful to them ; a rule fit, in its rigid meaning, to destroy the pleasure of the present moment, in the only period of life that the present moment can be really enjoyed. No father himself, Locke neither knew how ill a parent can spare the love of his child, nor how ill a child can want the constant and practical sense of a parent's love. But, if he was led too far by deprecating the mischievous indulgence he had sometimes, witnessed, he made some amends by his censures on the prevalent discipline of stripes. Of this he speaks with the disapprobation natural to a mind already schooled in the habits of reason and virtue.^ "I cannot think any correction useful to a child where the shame of suffering for having done amiss does not work more upon him than the pain." Esteem and disgrace are the rewards and punisliments to which he princiitally looks. And surely this is a noble foundation for moral discipline. lie also recommends that children should be much with their parents, and allowed all reasonable liberty. I cannot think that 8te\y- art's phrase "hardness of character," which lie accounts for by the early intercourse of Locke with the Puritans, is justly applicable to any thing that we know of him ; and many more passages in this very treatise might be adduced to prove^ his kindliness of disposition, than will appear to any judicious person over-austere. He found, in fact, every thing wrong ; a false system of reward aiid punishment, a, false view of the objects of education, a false selection of studies, false methods of pursuing them. Where so much was to be corrected, it > Preliminary Dissertation to Encjclop. eil mopeJ creature, who linwever with his Oritiinn. unii;itural sobriety lie may ple;ise silly - " If severity carried to the highest people, who eoiimii'iid ta ue, inactive ejiil- pitch iloes prevail, ami works a cure upon Uren.^because they make no noise, nor the present unruly aistcniper. it is ol'ten give them any trouble; yet at last will bringing in the room of it a worse ami )irobably prove as uncomfortal)le a tliinjj more danserou8 disease by breaking the to his friends, as he will be all his life au mind; and then, in the plaee of a disor- useless thing to himself and others." derly young fellow, you have a low-spirit- § 51. Chap. IV. LOCKE ON EDUCATION. 179 was perhaps natural to be too sanguine about the effects of the remedy. 08. Of the old dispute as to pxiblic and private education, he says, that both sides have their inconveniences, but inchnes to prefer the latter, influenced, as is evident, rather by disgust at tlie state of our schools than by any general principk-.^ P'or he insists raucli on the necessity of giving a boy a snlli- cient knowledge of what he is to expect in the world. "Tlie longer he is kept hoodwinked, the less he will see when lie comes abroad into open dayliglit, and be the more exposed to be a prey to liimselt' and otliers." But this experience will, as is daily seen, not be supplied by a tutor's lectures, any more than by books ; nor can be given by any course save a public education. Locke urges the necessity of having a tutor well-bred, and with knowledge of the world, the ways, the humors, the follies, the cheats, the faults of the age he is fallen into, and particidarly of the country he lives in, as of far more importance than his scholarship. " The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it. . . . He that thinks not this of more moment to his son, and for which he more needs a governor, than the languages and Icai-ncd sciences, forgets of liow much more use it is to judge right of men and manage his affairs wisely with them, than to speak Greek and Latin, and argue in mood and figure, or to have his head filled with the abstruse speculations of natural i)hi- losophy and metaphysics; nay, than to be well versed in Greek and Koman writers, though that be much better for a gentleman than to be a good Peripatetic or Cartesian ; because these ancient authors observed and painted mankind well, and give the best light into that kind of knowledge. He that goes into the eastern parts of Asia will find al)le and acceptable men without any of these; but without virtue, knowledge of the world, and civility, an accomplished and valuable man can be found nowhere." - 59. It is to l)e remembered, that the person whose educa- tion Locke undertakes to fashion is an English gentleman. Virtue, wisdom, breeding, and learning, are desirable for such a one in their order, but the last not so much as the rest;^ It must be had, he says, but only as subservient to greater quali- ties. No objections have been more frequently raised against the scheme of Locke than on account of his depreciation of I § 70. ' § 9* » § 138. 180 LOCKE ON" EDUCATION. 1 art IT. classical literature and of the study of the learned languages. This is not wholly true : Latin he reckons absolutely necessa- ry for a gentleman, though it is absurd tliat those should learn Latin who are designed for trade, and never look again at a Latin book.^ If he lays not so much stress on Greek as a gentleman's study, though he by no means would abandon it, it is because, in fact, most gentlemen, especially in his age, have done very well without it; and nothing can be deemed indispensable in education of a child, the want of which docs not leave a manifest deficiency in tlie man. "No man," he observes, "can pass for a scholar who is ignorant of the Greek lano-uasre. But I am not here considering of the edu CD iJ O cation of a professed scholar, but of a gentleman."^ GO. The peculiar methods recommended by Locke in learn- ing language?, especially the Latin, api)ear to be of very doubtful utility, though some of them do not want strenuous supporters in the present day. Such are the method of interlinear translation, the learning of mere words without grammar, and, above all, the practice of talking Latin with h, tutor Avho speaks it well, — a phosnix wdiom he has not shown us where to find.^ In general, he seems to underrate the difficulty of acquiring what even he would call a competent learning, and, what is of more importance and no rare mistake in those who write on this subject, to confound the acquisition Df a language with the knowledge of its literature. The best ancient writers both in Greek and Latin furaish so much of wise reflection, of noble sentiment, of all that is beautiful and salutary, that no one who has had the happiness to knoAV and feel what they are, will desire to see their study excluded or stinted in its just extent, whei'ever the education of those who are to be the first and best of the conntr}^ is carried forwai'd. And though by far the greater portion of mankind must, by the very force of terms, remain in the ranks of intel- lectual mediocrity, it is an ominous sign of any times when no thought is taken for those who may rise beyond it. Gl. In every other part of instruction, Locke has still an eye to what is usefid for a gentleman. French he justly thinks should be taught before Latin : no geometry is required by him beyond Euclid; but he recommends geography, histo- ry and chronology, drawing, and, what may be thought now as little necessary for a gentleman as Homer, the jurisprudence > § 180 > § 196. « § ICo. Chap IV. FENELON ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 181 of Grotins and Piiffendorf. He strongly urges the writing English well, though a tiling commonly ncgleeted ; and, after sjieaking with contempt of tiie artificial systems of logic and rlietoric, sends tlic pupil to C'liillingworth for the best exam- ple of reasoning, and to Tully ibr tlie best idea of eloquence. "And let him read those tilings that arc well writ in English to perfect his style in the purity of our language." "^ ()2. It would be to ti-anscribe half this treatise, were we to mention all the judicious and minute observations on the management of cliihlren it contains. Wliatever may have been Locke's opportunities, he certainly availed himself of them to the utmost. It is as far as possible from a theoreti- cal book ; and, in many respects, the best of modern times, such as those of the Edg(!Worth name, might [)ass for develop- ments of his principles. The patient attention to every circumstance, a ])eculiar characteristic of the genius of Locke, is in none of his works better displayed. His rules for the health of children, though sometimes trivial, since the subject has been more regarded ; his excellent advice as to checking effeminacy and timorousness; his observations on their curiosi- ty, presumption, idleness, on their plays and recreations, — bespeak an intense though calm love of truth and goodness ; a quality which few have possessed more fully or known so well how to exert as this admiralde philosophei". Go. No one had condescended to spai-e any thoughts for female education, till Fenclon, in 1G88, published i-^npionon his earliest work, Sur I'Education des Filles. This female ,, . „ , . ... . , education was the occasion or lus appointment as preceptor to the grandchildren of Louis XIV. ; for much of this treatise, and perhaps the most valuable part, is equally applicable to both sexes. It may be compared with that of Locke, written nearly at the same time, and bearing a great resemblance in its spirit, lioth have tlio education of a polished and high- bred class, rather than of scliblars, before them ; and Fenc- lon rarely loses sight of his peculiar object, or gives any rule wliicli is not capable of being practised in femal(! edu- cation. In many respects he coincides with our English philosopher, and observes with him tliat a child learns much before he speaks ; so that the cultivation of his moral (luahties can hardly begin too soon. Both complain of the severity of parents, and deprecate the mode of bringing up by punish- 1 §188. 182 FENELON ON FEMALE EDUCATION. Part IV. ment. Botli advise the exhibition of virtue and religion in pleasing lights, and censure the austere dogmatism with which they were inculcated, before the mind was sufficiently developed to apprehend them. But the characteristic sweet- ness of Fenelon's disposition is often shown in contrast with the somewhat stern inflexibility of Locke. His theory is uniformly indulgent ; his method of education is a labor of love; a desire to render children happy for the time, as well as afterwards, runs through his book ; and he may perhaps be considered the founder of that school which has endeavored to dissipate the terrors and dry the tears of childhood. " I have seen," he says, " many children who have learned to read in play : we have only to read entertaining stories to them out of a book, and insensibly teach them the letters ; they Avill soon desire to so for themselves to the source of their amuse- ment." " Books should be given them well bound and gilt, with good engravings, clear types ; for all that captivates the imagination facilitates study: the choice should be such as contain short and marvellous stories." These details are now trivial ; but in the days of Fenelon they may have been otherwise. 64. In several passages, he displays not only a judicious spirit, but an observation that must have been long exercised. " Of all the qualities we perceive in children," he remarks, " there is only one that can be trusted as likely to be durable, which is sound judgment : it always grows with their growtli, if it is well cultivated ; but the grace of childhood is effaced ; its vivacity is extinguished ; even its sensibility is often lost, because their own passions and the intercourse of others insensibly harden the hearts of young persons who enter into the world." It is, therefore, a solid and just way of thinking which we should most value and most improve, and this not by any means less in girls than in the otlier sex ; since their duties, and the occupations they are called upon to fill, do not less require it. Hence he not only deprecates an excessive taste for dress, but, with more originality, points out the danger of that extreme delicacy and refinement which in- capacitate women for the ordinary afiairs of life, and give them a contempt ibr a country life and rural economy. 65. It will be justly thought at present, that he discourages too much the acquisition of knowledge by women. " Keep their minds," he says in one place, " as much as you can Chap. IV. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 183 within the usual limits, and let them understand that the modesty of their sex ought to shrink from science with almost as much dehcacy as from vice." This seems, how- ever, to he confined to science or philosophy in a strict sense ; for he permits afterwards a larger compass of reading. Wo- men shouUl write a good hand, understand ortliography and tlie four rides of arithmetic, which they will want in domestic allairs. To these he requires a close attention, and even focommends to women an acquaintance with some of the common forms and maxims of law. Greek, Roman, and French history, with the best travels, will be valuable, and keep them from seeking pernicious fictions. , Books also of eloquence and poetry may be read with selection, taking care to avoid any that relate to love : music and painting may be taught with the same precaution. The Italian and Spanish languages are of no use but to enlarge their knowledge of dangerous books : Latin is better as the language of the church ; but this he would recommend only for girls of good sense and discreet conduct, who will make no display of the acquisition. Sect. IL — On Political Philosophy. Pufliendorf—Spinosa — Harrington's Oceana — Locke on Government — Political Economy. G6. Ik the seventh book of Puffendorfs great work, he comes to political philosophy, towards which he had been gradually tending for some time ; primary soci- jorrTthe- eties, or those of families, leading the way to the con- ory of . politics sideration of civil government. Grotius derives the orisin of this from the natural sociableness of mankind. But this, as Puffendorf remarks, may be satisfied by the primary societies. The real cause was experience of the injuries Avhich one man can infiict on another.' And, after a prolix dis([uisi- tion, he concludes that civil society must have been constituted, first, by a covenant of a number of men, each with each, to form a commonwealth, and to be bound by the majority, in i L. Tii. 0. 1. 184 PUFFENDORF'S THEORY. Part IV. which primary covenant they must be unanimous, that is, every dissentient woukl retain liis natural liberty ; next, by a resolution or decree 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 obey lawful commands.^ Tliis covenant, as he attempts to show, exists even in a democracy, though it is less evident than in other forms. Hobbes had admitted the first of these covenants, but denied the second : Barbeyrac, the able commentator on Puffendorf, has done xactly the reverse. A state once formed may be conceived to exist as one person, witli a single will, represented by that of the sovereign, wherever the sovereignty may be placed. This sovereignty is founded on the covenants, and is not con- ferred, except indirectly like every other human power, by God. Puffendoi-f here combats the opi)Osite opinion, which churchmen were as prone to hold, it seems, in Germany as in England.^ 67. The legislative, punitive, and judiciary powers, those of making war and peace, of appointing magistrates, and levying taxes, are so closely connected, that no one can be denied to the sovereign. As to his right in ecclesiastical matters, Puffendorf leaves it for others to determine." He seems in this part of the work too favorable to unlimited monarchy ; de- claring himself against a mixed government. The sovereign power must be irresponsible, and cannot be bound by the law ■which itself has given. He even denies that all government is intended for the good of the governed, — a position strangely inconsistent with his theory of a covenant ; but he contends, that, if it were, this end, the public good, may be more pi-oba- bly discerned by the prince than by the people.* Yet he admits that the exorbitances of a prince should be restrained by cer- tain fundamental laws, and liolds tliat Jiaving accepted such, and ratified tliem by oath, he is not at liberty to break them ; arguing, with some apparent inconsistency, against those wlio maintain sucli limitations to be inconsistent with monarchy, and even recommending the institution of councils, without whose conseht certain acts of tlie sovereign shall not be valid. This can only be reconciled witli his former declaration against a mixed sovereignty, by the distinction familiar to our own con- stitutional lawyers, between the joint acts of A. and B., and I c. 2. » c. 3. » c. 4. * c. 6. Chap. IV. PUFFENDOUF'S THEORY. 185 the acts of A. with B.'s consent. But this is a little too techni- cal and unreal foi' philosophical politics. Governments not reducible to one of the three simple forms he calls irregular ; such as the Koman Republic or Gennan Empire. But there may be systems of states, or aggregate communities, eitlicr subject to one king by ditferent titles, or united by federation. lie inclines to deny that the majority can bind the minority in the latt(!r case, and seems to take it lor granted that some of the confederates can quit the league at pleasure.^ G8. Sovereignty over jicrsons cannot he acquired, strictly speaking, by seizure or occupation, as in the case of lands, and niquires, even after conquest, their consent to obey; which will be given, in order to secure themselves from the other rights of war. It is a problem whethei-, after an unjust con- quest, the ibrced consent of the people can give a lawful title to sovereignty. Puffendorf distinguishes between a monarchy and a republic tluis unjustly subdued. In the former case, so long as tlie lawful heirs exist or preserve their claim, the duty of restitution continues. But in tlie latter, as the people may live as happily under a monarchy as under a republic, he thinks that an usurper has only to treat them well, without scruple as to his title. If he o|)presses them, no course of years will make his title lawfuf, or bind them in conscience to obey ; length of possession being only length of injury. If a sovereign has been justly divested of his power, the commu- nity becomes immediately free ; but, if by unjust rebellion, his right continues till by silence he has appeared to aban don it.' G9. Every one will agree, that a lawful ruler must not he opposed within the limits of his authority. But let us put the case that he should command what is unlawful, or maltreat liis subjects. AVliatever Hobbes may say, a subject may be in- jured by his sovereign. But we should bear minor injuries patiently, and in the worst cases avoid personal resistance. Those ai-e not to be listened to who assert that a king, degen- erating into a tyrant, may be resisted and punished by his people. He admits only a right of self-defence, if he mani- festly becomes a public enemy : in all this he seems to go quite as far as Grotius himself. The next question is as to the right of invaders and usurpers to obedience. This, it will be observed, he had already in some measure discussed ; but > c. 6. » c. 7. 186 FUFFENDORFS THEORY. Pakt IV. Puffendorf is neither strict in metliod. nor free from repeti- tions. He labors much about the rights of the lawful prin* e, insisting upon them where tlie subjects have promised alle- giance to the usurper. This, he thinks, must be deemed temporary, until tlie legitimate sovereign has recovered his dominions. But what may be done towards promoting this end by such as have sworn fidelity to the actual ruler, he does not intimate.^ 70. Civil laws are such as emanate from the supreme power, with i-espect to things left indifferent by the laws of God and nature. What chiefly belongs to them is the form and method of acquiring rights, or obtaining redress for wrongs. If we give the law of nature ail that belongs to it, and take away from the civilians what they have hitherto engrossed and promiscuously treated, we shall bring the civil law to a much narrower compass ; not to say that at present, whenever the latter is deficient, we must have recourse to the law of nature, and that therefore in all commonwealths the natural laws sup- ply the defects of the civil.- He argues against Hobbes's tenet, that the civil law cannot be contrary to the law of na- ture ; and that what shall be deemed theft, murder, or adultery depends on the former. The subject is bound generally not to obey the unjust commands of hrs sovereign ; but in the case of war he thinks it, on the whole, safest, considering the usual difficulties of such questions, that the subject should serve, and throw the responsibility before God on the prince.^ In this problem of casuistry, common usage is wholly against the stricter theory. 71. Punishment may be defined an evil inflicted by authority upon view of antecedent transgression.* Hence exclusion, on political grounds, from public office, or separation of tiie sick for the sake of tlie healthy, is not puuislunent. It does not belong to distributive justice ; nor is the magistrate bound to apportion it to the malignity of the offence, tliough this is usual. Superior authority is necessary to punishment; and he differs from Grotius by denying that we have a right to avenparpiai of Attica. From each of these, councillors, fifty years of age, are to be chosen by the king, succeeding in a rotation quinquennial, or less, so as to form a numerous senate. This jissembly is to be consulted upon all public affairs, and the king is to be guided by its unanimous opinion. In case, however, of disi\greemeut, the diiierent propositions being laid before 190 fflS THEORY OF A MONAECHY. Part IV. the king, he may choose that of the minority, p«-ovidecl at least one hundred councillors have recommended it. The less remarkable provisions of this ideal polity it would be waste of time to mention ; except that he advises that all the citi- zens should be armed as a militia, and that the principal towns should be fortified, and consequently, as it seems, in their power. A monarchy thus constituted would probably not degenerate into the despotic form. Spinosa appeals to the ancient government of Aragon, as a proof of the possibility of carrying his theory into execution. ^ 7*J. From this imaginary, monarchy he comes to an aristo- cratical republic. In this he seems to have taken Venice, the idol of theoretical politicians, as his primary model, but with such deviations as affect the whole scheme of government, lie objects to the supremacy of an elective doge, justly observ- ing that the precautions adopted in the election of that magis- trate show the danger of the office itself, which was rather retained in the aristocratical polity as an ancient institution than from any persuasion of its usefulness. But the most remarkable discrepancy between the aristocracy of Spinosa and that of Venice is, that his great council, which ought, as he strongly urges, not to consist of less than five thousand, the greatness of its number being the only safeguard against the close oligarchy of a few fomilies, is not to be hereditary, but its vacancies to be filled up by self-election. In this election, indeed, he considers the essence of aristocracy to consist; being, as is implied in its meaning, a government by the best, who can only be pronounced such by the choice of many. It is singular that he never adverts to popular repre- sentation, of Avhich he must have known examples. Demo- cracy, on the contrary, he defines to be a government where political power falls to men by chance of birth, or by some means which has rendered them citizens, and who can claim it as their right, without regard to the choice of others. And a democracy, according to Spinosa, may exist, if the law should limit this privilege of power to the seniors in age, or to the elder branches of families, or to those who pay a certain amount in taxation ; although the numbers enjoying it should be a smaller portion of the community than in an aristocracy of the form he has recommended. His treatise breaks off near the bcfrinnin"; of the chapters intended to delineate the best model of democracy, which he declares to be one wherein Chap. IV. AlilELOT DE LA HOUSSAYE. 191 all persons in their own power, and not infamous by crime, should have a sliare in the public government. I do not know that it can be inferred from the writings of Spinosa, nor is his authority, p(>rhaps, sufficient to render the question of any interest, to which of the three plaus devised by liim as the best in their respective forms he would have ascribed the prefer- ence. 80. The condition of France under Louis XIV. was not very tempting to speculators on political theory, ^mpiotdo Whatever short remarks may be found in those ex- la Hous- cellent writers on other subjects who distinguish this ^'^^^' period, we can select no one book that falls readily into this class. For Telemaque we must find another place. It is scarcely Avortli while to mention the political discourses on Tacitus by Amelot de la Houssaye. These are a tedious and pedantic running commentary on Tacitus, affecting to deduce general principles, but much unlike the short and ])oignant observations of INIachiavel and Bacon. A whole volume on the reign alone of Tiberius, and printed at Paris, is not likely to repay a reader's trouble ; at least I have found nothing in it above the common level. I have no acquaintance with the other political writings of Amelot de la Houssaye, one of those wlio thought they could make great discoveries by ana- lyzing the constitution of Venice and other states. 81. England, thrown at the commencement of this period upon the resources of her own invention to replace „^ . an ancient monarchy by something new, and rich at ton's that time in reflecting as well as learned men, with ^'"^^°^- an unshackled press, and a growing disdain of authority as opposed to argument, was the natural soil of political theory. The earliest fruit was Sir James Ilanington's Oceana, pub- lished in 1G5G. This once-famous book is a political allegory, partly suggested, perhaps, by the Dodona's Grove of Howell, or by Barclay's Ai-genis, and a few other fictions of the pre- ceding age. His Oceana rejtresents England, the history of which is shadowed out with fictitious names. But this is preliminary to the great object, the scheme of a new common- wealth, wliicli, under the auspices of Olpliaus iSIegaletor, the Lord Archon, — meaning, of course, Cromwell, not as he was, but as he ought to have been, — the author feigns to have been established. The various laws and constitutions of this polity occupy the whole work. 192 HARRINGTON'S OCEANA. Part FV. 82. The leading principle of Harrington is, that power depends on property ; denying the common saying, that know- ledge or prudence is power. But this property must be in land, "because, as to property producing empire, it is re- quired that it should have some certain root or foothold, which except in land it cannot have ; being otherwise, as it were, upon the wing. Nevertlieless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and have little or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal to that of land. " ^ The law fixing the balance of lands is called by him agrarian ; and without an agrarian law he holds that no government, whether monarchical, aristocratic,, or popular, has any long duration : this is rather paradoxical ; but his distri- bution of lands varies according to the form of the common- wealth. In one best constituted, the possession of lands is limited to £2,000 a year ; which, of course, in his time was a much greater estate tlian at present. 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 pro- posing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation through the suffrage of the people given by the ballot." His more particuhir form of polity, devised for his Oceana, it would be tedious to give in detail: the result is a moderate aristocracy ; property, though under the control of his agrarian, which prevents its excess, having so great a share in the elections that it must predominate. But it is an aristocracy of what we should call the middle ranks, and might not be unfit for a small state. In general, it may be said of Harrington, that he is prolix, dull, pedantic, and seldom profound ; but sometimes redeems himself by just observations. Like most theoretical politicians of tliat age, he had an excessive admiration for the republic of Venice. His other political writings are in the same spirit as tho Oceana, but still less interesting. 84. The manly republicanism of Harrington, though some- I'Htrinroha timcs visionary and perhaps impracticable, shines by of Fiimer. comparison with a very opposite theory, which, hav- mg been countenanced in the early part of the century by I p 38 e(jit ;j77i. Venice right, shiiU go nearest to judge. = "If i be wnrtliy to give ndvice to a iiot«ithst:iuaing the dilTereiice that is in aian that would studv politi.-s. let him every policy, right of any government ill understand Venice : he that understands the world." - Uarrmgtou s Works, p. 292 Chap. IV, PATRIARCIIA OF FILMER. — SIDNEY. 193 our clerfj}'-, revived with additional favor after the Restoration. This was maintained in the Patriarcha of Sir Robert Fihner, •written, as it ai)pears, in the reign of Charles I., but not pub- lished till 1()8(), at a time -when very high notions of royal prerogative were as well received l)y one party as tliey were indignantly rejected by another. The object, as the author declares, was "to prove that tlie first kings were fathers of families ; tliat it is unnatural for the people to govern or to choose governors ; that positive laws do not infringe the natu- ral and fatlierly power of kings. He refers the tenet of natural liberty and the popular origin of government to the schoolmen ; allowing that all Papists and the reformed divines have imbibed it, but denying that it is found in the lathers. He seems, however, to claim the credit of an original hypo- thesis ; those who have vindicated the rights of kings in most points not having thought of this, but with one consent admit- ted the natural liberty and equality of mankind. It is certain, nevertheless, that the patriarchal theory of government, as the basis of actual right, was laid down as explicitly as by himself in what is called Bishop Overall's Convocation Book, at the beginning of the reign of James I. But this book had not been published when Filmer Avrote. His arguments are sin- gularly insufficient ; he quotes nothing but a few irrelevant texts from Genesis ; he seems not to have known at all the strength, whatever it may be, of his own case ; and it is liai-dly possible to find a more trifling and feeble work. It had, how- ever, the advantage of opportunity to be received by a party with approbation. 8.0. Algernon Sidnev was the first Avho devoted his time to a refutation of this patriarchal theory, propounded . 1 -11 1 ^^ • J. 1 • Piilney 8 as it was, not as a plausible hypothesis to explain Discourses ihe ori'rin of civil communities, but as a iiaramount onCovem- title, by virtue of which all actual sovereigns, who were not manifest usurpers, were to reign Avith an unmitigated despotism. Sidney's Discourses on Government, not pub- lished till 1G98, are a diffuse reply to Filmer. They contain, indeed, many chapters full of historical learning and judicious reflection ; yet the constant anxiety to refute that which needs no refutation renders them a little tedious. Sidney does not condemn a limited monarchy like the English ; but his par- tiality is for a form of republic which would be deemed too aristocratical for our popular theories. VOL. IV. 13 194 LOCKE ON GOVERNMENT. Part FV. 86. Locke, immediately after the Revolution, attacked the r . Patriarcha with more brevity, and laid down his Govern- own celebrated theory of government, ine tunda- ^'^'^^' mental principle of Filmer is, that paternal authority is naturally absohite. Adam received it from God, exer- cised it over his own children, and transmitted it to the eldest born for ever. This assumption Locke combats rather too dif- fusely, according to our notions. Filmer had not only to show this absolute monarchy of a lineal ancestor, but his power of transmitting it in coui-se of primogeniture. Locke denies that there is any natural right of this kind, maintaining the equality of children. The incapacity of Filmer renders his discomfiture not difficult. Locke, as will be seen, acknow- ledges a certain de facto authority in fathei-s 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 of the world. It is the question of natural right with wiiich he is here concerned ; and, as no proof of this had been offered, he had nothing to answer. 87. Li the second part of Locke's Treatise on Civil Gov- ernment, he proceeds to lay down what he holds to be the true principles upon which society is founded. A state of nature is a state of perfect freedom and equality, but within the bounds of the law of nature, which obliges every one, and renders a state of liberty no state of license. And the exe- cution of this law, in such a state, is put into every one's hands, so that he may punish transgressors against it, not merely by way of reparation for his own wrongs, but for those of others. " Every offence that can be committed in the state of nature, may, in the state of nature, be punished equally, and as far forth, as it may in a commonwealth." And not only independent communities, but all men, as he thinks, till they voluntarily enter into some society, are in a state of nature.^ 88. AVhoever declares by word or action a settled design against another's life, puts himself in a state of war against him, and exposes his own life to he taken away, either by the other party, or by any one who shall espouse his cause ; and ho Avho endeavors to obtain absohite power over another may be construed to have a design on his life, or at least to take away his property. Where laws prevail, they must determine 1 L. a. c. 2. Chap. IV. LOCKE ON GOVERNMENT. 195 the punishment of those who injure others ; but, if the law 13 Bilenced, it is hard to think but that the appeal to Heaven returns, and the aggressor may be treated as one in a state of wai-.^ 80. Natui-al liberty is freedom from any supei'ior jiower except the law of nature. Civil liberty is freedom from the dominion of any authority except tliat which a legie^lature, established by consent of the conmionwealth, shall confirm. No man, according to Locke, can by his own consent enslavo himself, or give power to another to take away his life ; for slavery, in a strict sense, is but a continuance of the state of war between a conqueror and his captive.- 90. The excellent chapter on property which follows would be sufficient, if all Locke's other writings had perished, to leave him a high name in philosopliy. Nothing can be moi-e luminous than his deduction of the natural right of property from labor, not merely in gathering the fruits of the earth or catching wild animals, but in the 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 i3 his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common." Whatever is beyond the scanty limits of individual or family labor has been appropriated under the authority of civil society. But labor is the primary basis of natural right. Nor can it be thought unreasonable that labor should confer an exclusive right, when it is remembered how much of every thing's value depends upon labor alone. " Whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is wholly owing to labor and industry." The superiority ii.f good sense and satisfactory elucidation of his principle, whicli Locke has manifested in this important chapter over Grotius and Pufifendorf, will strike those who consult those writers, or look at the brief sketch of their tlieories in the foregoing pages. It is no less contrasted with the puerile rant of Rous- seau against all territorial property. That property owes its origin to occupancy accompanied with laboi-, is now generally admitted ; the care of cattle being, of course, to be considered as one species of labor, and requiring at least a temporary ownership of the soil.^ > c. 3. * c. 4. » c. 5. 196 LOCKE ON GOVERNIMENT. Pakt tV. 91. Locke, after acutely remarking that the common ar- guments for the power of a father over his children woukl extend equally to the mother, so that it should be called parental jiower, reverts to the train of reasoning in the first book of this treatise aojainst the rejjal authority of fathers. What they possess is not derived from generation, but from the care tlicy necessarily take pf the infant child, and during his minority: the power then terminates, though reverence, support, and even compliance, are still due. Children are also held in subordination to their parents by the institutions of property, which commonly make them dependent both as to maintenance and succession. But Locke, which is worthy to be remarked, inclines to derive the origin of civil govern- ment from tlie patriarchal authority; one not strictly coercive, 3^et voluntai-ily conceded by habit and fiimily consent. " Thus the natural fathers of families, hj an insensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too ; and as they chanced to live long, and leave worthy and able heirs for several successions or otherwise, so they laid the foundations of hereditary or elective kingdoms."' 92. The necessity that man should not live alone produced the primary society of husband and wife, parent and children ; to which that of master and servant was early added, whe- ther of freemen engaging tlieir service for hire, or of slaves taken in just war, who are by the right of nature subject to the absolute dominion of the captor. Such a family may sometimes resemble a little commonwealtli by its numbers, but is essentially distinct from one, because its chief has no imperial power of life and death except over his slaves; nature having given him none over his children, though all men have a riglit to punish breaches of the law of nature in others according to the offence. But this natural power they quit, and resign into the hands of tlie community, when civil soci- ety is instituted; and it is in this union of the several rights of its meml>ers that the legislative right of the commonwealth consists, whether this be done by general consent at the first formation of govermnent, or by the adhesion which any in- dividual may give to one already established. By eitlier of these A^ays, men paa^ from a state of nature to one of ])olitics)l society ; the magistrate having now that ])Ower to redress injuries which had previously been each man's right. Hence > c. 6. Chai-. rV. LOCKE ON GOVERX^IENr. 197 absolute monarchy, in Locke's opinion, is no form of civil government ; for, there being no common authority to appeal to, the sovereign is still in a state of nature with regard to his subjects.^ 93. A community is formed by the i^nanimous consent of any body of men ; but, -when thus become one body, the determination of the majority must bind the rest, else it would not be one. Unanimity, after a community is once formed, can no longer he required ; Init this consent of men to form a civil society is that wliich alone did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world. It is idle to object, that we have no records of such an event ; for few commonwealths preserve the tradition of their own infancy, and whatever we do know of the origin of particular states gives indications of this" mode of union. Yet he again inclines to deduce the usual origin of civil societies from imitation of patriarchal authority, which, having been recognized by each family in the arbitration of disputes and even punishment of offences, was transferred with more readiness to some one person, as the father and representative head of the infant community. He even admits that this authority might tacitly devolve upon the eldest son. Thus the first governments were monarcliies, and tliose with no expi'ess limitations of power, till exposure of its abuse gave occasion to social laws or to co-ordinate authority. In all this he follows Hooker, from the first book of whose Ecclesiastical Polity he quotes largely in his notes.^ 94. A ditliculty commonly raised against the theory of compact is, that, all men being born under some government, they cannot be at liberty to erect a new one, or even to make choice whether they will obey or no. This objection Locke does not meet, like Hooker and the jurists, by supposing the agi'eement of a distant ancestor to oblige all his posterity : but, explicitly acknowledging that nothing can bind freemen to obey any government save their own consent, he rests the evidence of a tacit consent on the enjoyment of land, or even on mere residence within the dominions of the community; every man being at liberty to relinquish his possessions, or change his residence, and either incorporate himself with Hnother commonwealth, or, if lie can find an opportunity, set up for himself in some unoccupied part of the world. But < c " * c. 8. 198 LOCKE ON GOVERNMENT. Pakt TV nothing can make a man irrevocably a member of one societr, except his own vohintary declaration: such perhaps as tho oath of allegiance, which Locke does not mention, ought to be reckoned.^ 95. The majority having, in the first constitution of a state, the whole power, may retain it themselves, or delegate it to one or more persons.^ And the supreme power is, in other words, the legislature, sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it, without which no law can exist, and in which all obedience terminates. Yet this legislative authority itself is not absolute or arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of its subjects. It is the joint power of individuals surrendered to the state ; but no man has power over his own life or his neighbor's property. The laws enacted by the legislature must be conformable to the will of God, or natural justice. Nor can it take any part of the subject's pi'operty without his own consent, or that of the majority. " For if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people by his own authority, and Without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the funda- mental law of property, and subverts the end of government. For what property have I in that wliich another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?" Lastly, the legislative power is inalienable : being but delegated from the people, it cannot be transferred to others:^ This is the part of Locke's treatise which has been open to most objection, and which, in some measure, seems to charge with usurpation all the esta- blished governments of Europe. It has been a theoiy fertile of great revolutions, and perhaps pregnant with more. In some part of this chapter also, tliough by no means in the mo>t practical corollaries, the language of Hooker has led on- ward his more hardy disciple. 96. Though the legislative power is alone supreme in the constitution, it is yet subject to the people themselves, who may alter it whenever they find that it acts against the trust reposed in it ; all power given in trust for a particular end being evidently forfeited wlien that end is manifestly disre- garded or obstructed. But, while the government subsists, the legislature is alone sovereign ; though it may be the usage to call a single executive magistrate sovereign, if he has also a share in legislation. Where this is not the case, the appelhi- > c. 8. » c. 10. « c. 11. Chap. IV. LOCKE OX GOVERNMENT. 199 lion is plainly improper. Locke has in this chapter a remarka- ble passage, one perhaps of the first declarations in favor of a change in the electoral system of England. " To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied wlien Ave see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcot or more in- habitants than a shepherd is to be found, send as many repre- sentatives to the grand assembly of law-makers as a whole county, numerous in people, and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy, though most tliink it hard to find one, because the constitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act of the society, antecedent to all positive laws in it, a.id depending AvhoUy on the people, no inferior power can jdter it." But Locke is less timid about a remedy, and suggests that the executive magistrate might regulate the number of representatives, not according to old custom, but reason, which is not setting u\) a new legislatm-e, but restoring an old one. " Whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good of the peo- ple and the establishing the government on its true foundation, is, and always will be, just prerogative ; " ^ a maxim of too dangerous latitude for a constitutional monarchy. 97. Prerogative he defines to be " a power of acting according to discretion for the public good without the pre scription of the law, and sometimes even against it." This, however, is not by any means a good definition in the eyes of a lawyer ; and the word, being merely technical, ought not to have been employed in so partial if not so incorrect a sense. Nor is it very precise to say, that, in England, the prero- gative was always largest in the hands of our wisest and best princes, not only because the fact is otherwise, but because he confounds tlie legal prerogative with its actual exercise. This chapter is the most loosely reasoned of any in the ti'eatise.- 98. Conquest, in an unjust war, can give no right at all, unless robbei-s and pirates may acquire a right. Nor is any one bound by promises wliich unjust force extorts from him. If we are not strong enough to resist, we have no remedy save patience ; but our cliildren may appeal to Heaven, and repeat their appeals till they recover tlieir ancestral right, « C. 13. ' C. 14 200 LOCKE ON GOVERNMENT. Pakt IV wliich was to be governpcl by such a legislation as them- selves approve. He tliat appeals to Heaven must be sure that he has right on his side, and right, too, that is worth the trouble and cost of his appeal ; as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived. Even just conquest gives no further right than to reparation of injury ; and the jiosterity of the vanquished, he seems to hold, can forfeit nothing by tlieir parent's offence, so that they have always a right to throw off the yoke. The title of prescription, which has commonly l)een admitted to silence the complaints, if not to heal the wounds, of the injured, finds no favor with Locke.^ But hence it seems to follow, that no state, composed, as most have been, out of the spoils of conquest, can exercise a legitimate authority over the latest posterity of those it has incorporated. Wales, for instance, has an eternal right to shake off the yoke of ICngland ; for what Locke says of con- sent to laws by representatives is of little Aveiglit when these must be outnumbered in the general legislature of both coun- tries ; and indeed the first question for the Cambro-Britons would be, to detei-mine whether they would form part of such a common legislation. 99. Usurpation, which is a kind of domestic conquest, gives no more right to obedience than unjust war : it is necessary that the people should both be at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow and confirm a power which the constitution of their commonwealth does not recognize.'^ But tyranny may exist without usurpation, Avhenever the power reposed in any one's hands for the people's benefit is abused to their impoverishment or slavery. Force may never be op- posed but to unjust and unlawful force : in any other case, it is condemned before God and man. The king's person is in some countries sacred by law ; but this, as Locke thinks, does not extend to the case, where, by putting himself in a state of war with his people, he dissolves tlie government.''' A ])rince dissolves the government; by ruling against law, by hindering the regular assembly of the legislature, by changing the form of election, or by rendering the people subject to a foreign power. He dissolves it also by neglecting or abandon- inir it, so that the laws cannot be i)ut into execution. The ''IT government is also dissolved by breach ot trust m either the legislature or the prince : bj' the former, when it usurps an > c. 16. » c. 17. » c. 18. Chap. IV. OBSERVATIONS ON THIS TRELVTISE. 201 arbitrary power over the lives, liberties, and fortunes of the subject ; b}' the latter, when lie endeavors to corrupt the repre- sentatives or to inihience the choice of the electors. If it be objected, that no government will be al)le long to subsist if the l)Cople may set up a new legislature whenever they take otFence at the old one, he replies, that mankind are too slow and averse to quit their old institutions for this danger to be apprehended. ]\Iuch will be endured from rulers without mutiny or murnnir. Nor is any thing more likely to restrain governments than this doctrine of the i-iglit of resistance. It is as reasonable to tell men they should not defend them- selves against robbers, because it may occasion disorder, as to use the same argument for passive obedience to illegal dominion. And he observes, after quoting some other writers, that Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those who rely on him for their ecclesiastical polity.^ 100. Such is, in substance, the celebrated Treatise of Locke on Civil Government, which, with the favor of politi- cal circumstances, and the authority of his name, tions on became the creed of a numerous party at home ; IJ^"* '^'^ while, silently spreading the fibres from its root over Europe and America, it pre])ared the way for theories of poli- tical society, hardly bolder in their announcement, but ex- pressed with more passionate ardor, from which the great revolutions of tlie last and present age have sprung. But, as we do not launch our bark upon a stormy sea, we shall merely observe, that neitlier the Revolution of 1G88, nor the admin- istration of AVilliani III., could have borne the test by which Locke has tried the legitimacy of government. There was certainly no appeal to the people in tlie former ; nor would it have been convenient for the latter to have had the maxim established, that an attempt to corrupt the legislature entails a forfeiture of tlie intrusted power. Whether the opinion of Locke, that mankind ai-e slow to political change, be con- formable to an enlarged experience, must be judged by every one according to his reading and observation : it is at least very different from that whicli Hooker, to whom he defers BO gi'eatly in most of his doctrine, has uttered in the very first sentence of his Ecclesiastical Polity. For my own part, I must confess, that, in these latter chapters of Locke on Goveni- ment, I see, what sometimes appears in his ether writings, that 1 0.19 202 AVIS AUX REFUGlfiZ. ' Part IV. the influence of temporary circumstances on a mind a little too susceptible of passion and resentment, had prevented that calm and patient examination of all the bearings of this extensive subject which true philosophy requires. 101. But, whatever may be our judgment of this work, it is equally true that it opened a new era of political opinion in Europe. The earlier writings on the side of popular sove- reignty, whether those of Buchanan and Languet, of the Jesuits, or of the English republicans, had been either too closely dependent on temporary circumstances, or too much bound up with odious and unsuccessful factions, to sink very deep into the hearts of mankind. Their adversaries, with the countenance of every government on their side, kept pos- session of the field ; and no later jurist nor theologian nor philosopher on the Continent, while they generally followed their predecessors in deriving the origin of civil society from compact, ventured to. moot the delicate problem of resistance to tyranny, or of the right to reform a constitution, except in the most cautious and indefinite lana;ua";e. We have seen this already in Grotius and Puftendorf But the success of the English Revolution, the necessity which the powers allied against France found of maintaining the title of William, the peculiar interest of Holland and Hanover (states at that time very strong in the literary world) in our new scheme of go- vernment, gave a weight and authority to principles, which, without some such application, it might still have been thought seditious to propound. Locke too, long an exile in Plolland, was intimate with Le Clerc, who exerted a considerable in- fluence over the Protestant part of Europe. Barbeyrac, some time afterwards, trod nearly in the same steps, and, without going all the lengths of Locke, did not fail to take a very difterent tone from the two older writers upon whom he has commented. 102. It was very natural, that the French Protestants, among whom traditions of a turn of thinking not the most itefiifriez. favorable to kings may have been preserved, should, perimpsbj- jj^ ^\^q hour of scvcre persecution, mutiny in words and writings against the despotism that oppressed them. Such, it a])pears, had been the language of those exiles, as it is of all exiles, wlien an anonymous tract, entitled Avis aux Refugiez, was pul)lished with the date of Amsterdam, in 1G90. This, under pretext of giving advice, in the event of Chap. IV. POLITICAL ECONOMISTS. 203 their being permitted to return home, that they should get rid of their spirit of satire and of their republican tlieories, is a bitter and able attack on those who had taken refufre in Hoi- land. It asserts the principle of passive obedience ; extolling also the king of France and his government, and censuring the English Revolution. Public rumor ascribed this to Baylc : it has usually passed ibr his, and is even inserted in the collection of his miscellaneous works. Some, however, have ascribed it to Pelisson, and others to Larroque ; one already, and the other soon after, proselytes to the Church of Rome. Basnage thought it written by the latter, and pub- lished by Bayle, to whom he ascribed the preface. This is apparently in a totally opposite strain, but not without strong suspicion of irony or ill faith. The style and manner of the whole a]>pear to suggest Bayle ; and, thougli the supposition is very discreditable to his memory, the weight of presumption seems much to incline that way. 103. The separation of political economy from the general science which regards the Avell-being of communi- political ties Avas not so strictly made by the earlier philoso— **^*^'^°°^'^- pliers as in modern times. It does not follow that national wealth engaged none of their attention. Few, on the contra- ry, of those M'ho have taken comprehensive views, could have failed to regard it. In Bodin, Botero, Bacon, Hobbes, Puf- fendorf, we have already seen proofs of this. These may be said to have discussed the subject, not systematically, nor always with thorough knowledge, but with acuteness and in a ])liilosopliical tone. Others there were of a more limited range, whose habits of life and experience led them to particu- lar departments of economical inquiry, especially as to com- merce, the precious metals, and the laws affecting them. The Italians led the way : Serra has been mentioned in the last period, and a few more might find a place in this. De Witt's Interest of Holland can hardly be reckoned among economical writings ; and it is said by Morhof, that the Dutch were not fond of promulgating their commercial knowledge:' little, at least, was contributed from that country, even at a later period, towards tlie theory of becoming rich. But England now took a large share in this new literature. Free, inquisitive, thriv- ing rapidly in commerce, so that her progress even in the nineteenth century has hardly been in a greater ratio thau • Polyhistor, part iii. lib. iii. § 3. 204 MUN ox FOKEIGN TRADE. — CHILD. Part FV. before and after the middle of tlie seventeenth, if wo may- trust the statements of contemporaries, she produced some writers, who, though few of them merit the name of ]-)hiloso- phers, yet may not here be overlooked, on account of their influence, their reputation, or their position as links in the chain of science, 101. The first of these was Tiiomas Mun, an intelligent merchant in the earlier part of the century, wdiose Yoreiga posthuuious trcatisc, I'.ngland s 1 reasure by h oreign Trade. Trade, was published in 16G4, but seems to have been written soon after the accession of Charles I.^ IMun is generally reckoned the founder of what has been called the mercantile system. His main position is, that " the ordinary means to increase our wealth and treasure is by foreign trade, wherein we must ever observe this rule, to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value." ^ We must therefore sell as cheap as possible : it was by undersell- ing the Venetians of late years, that we had exported a great deal of cloth to Turkey .'' It is singular that Mun should not have perceived the dilRculty of selling very cheap the produc- tions of a country's labor, whose gold and silver were in great abundance. He was, however, too good a merchant not to acknowledge the inefficacy and impolicy of restraining by law the exportation of coin, which is often a means of increasing our treasux-e in the long-run ; advising instead a due regard to the balance of trade, or general surplus of exported goods, by which Ave shall infallibly obtain a stock of gold and silver. These notions have long since been covered with ridicule ; and it is plain, that, in a merely economical view, they must always be delusive. IMun, however, looked to the accumula- tion of a portion of this imported treasure by the state ; a resource in critical emergencies which we have now learned to despise since others have been at hand, but which in reality had made a great difference in the events of war, and changed the balance of power between many commonwealths. Child on Mun was followed, about 1670, by Sir Josiah Child, Trade. j,^ jj discoursc ou Trade, written on the same prin- ciples of the mercantile system, but more copious and varied. The chief aim of Child is to effect a reduction of tho » Mr. M'CuUooh sfiys (Tiitrfxltictory in.'5'> or 1040. T remarked some thing! Di^eoursc to Sniitirs Wtsilth of Nations) wliicli serve to -:ruT.v it up a little higher. \t had lost probably been written about - 1'. 11 (edit. lUGl). ^ i*. 18. Chap. IV. LOCKE ON THE COIN. 205 legal interest of money from six to four per cent, drawing an erroneous inference from the increase of wealth which had followed similar enactments. 105. Among the many difliculties with Avhich the goveni- ment of William III. had to contend, one of the Locke en most embarrassing was the scarcity of the precious '^^ ^'*'°- metals and depreciated condition of the coin. This opened the whole field of controversy in that jirovir ,'e of political economy; and the bold spirit of inquiry, uashackled by preju- dice in favor of ancient custom, which in all respects was ehai-acteristie of that age, began to work In- reasonings on general theorems, instead of collecting insulated and inconclu- sive details. Locke stood forward on this, as on so many subjects, with his masculine sense and habitual closeness of thinking. His Considerations of the Consequences of lower- ing Interest, and raising the Value of Money, were published in 1G91. Two further treatises are in answer to the pam- phlets of Lowndes. These economical writings of Locke are not in all points conformable to the modern principles of the science. He seems to incline rather too much towards the mercantile theory, and to lay too much stress on the posses- sion of the precious metals. From his excellent sense, how- ever, as well as from some expressions, I should conceive that he only considers them, as they doubtless are, a portion of the exchangeable wealth of the nation, and by their inconsumable nature, as well as by the constancy of the demand for them, one of the most important. "■ Riches do not consist," he says, '•in having more gold and silver, but in having more in proportion than the rest of, the world or than our neighbora, whereby we are enabled to procure to ourselves a greater plenty of the conveniences of life." lOG. Locke had the sagacity to perceive the impossibility of regulating the interest of money by law. It was an empiri- cal proposition at that time, as we have just seen, of Sir Josiah Child, to render loans more easy to the borrower by reducing the legal rate to four per cent. The whole drift of his reasoning is against any limitation, though, from fear of appearing too paradoxical, he does not arrive at that infer- ence For the reasons he gives in favor of a legal limit of interest, namely, that courts of law may iiave some rule where nothing is stipulated in the contract, and that a few money- lenders in the metropolis may not have the monopoly of aU 206 STATISTICAL TRACTS. Part IV. loans in England, are, especially the first, so trifling, that he could not have relied upon them ; and indeed he admits, that, iu other circumstances, there would be no danger from the second. But, his prudence having restrained him from speak- ing out, a famous writer almost a century afterwards came forward to assert a paradox, which he loved the better for seeming such, and finally to convince the thinking part of mankind. 107. Laws fixing the value of silver, Locke perceived to be nugatory, and is averse to prohibiting its exportation. The value of money, he maintains, does not depend on the rate of interest, but ou its plenty relatively to commodities. Hence the rate of interest, he thinks, but perhaps erroneously, does not govern the price of land ; arguing from the higher rate of land relatively to money, that is, the worse interest it gave, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, than in his own time. But one of Locke's positions, if generally received, would alone have sufficed to lower the value of land. " It is in vain," he says, " in a country Avhose great fund is land, to hope to lay the public charges of the government on any thing else : there at last it will terminate." The legislature soon proceeded to act on this mistaken theory in the annual land-tax ; an impost of tremendous severity at that time, the gross unfair- ness, hoAvever, of which has been compensated in later times by the taxes on personal succession. 108. In such a monetary crisis as that of his time, Locke was naturally obliged to consider the usual resource of raising the denomination of the coin. This, he truly says, would be to rob all creditors of such a proportion of their debts. It is jn-obable that his influence, which was very considerable, may have put a stop to the scheme. He contends in his P\n-thei Considerations, in answer to a tract by Lowndes, that clipped money should go only by weight. This seems to have been ao-reed by both parties ; but Lowndes thought the loss should be defrayed by a tax, Locke that it should fall on the holders. Honorably for the government, the former opinion prevailed. lOi). The Italians were the first who laid any thing like a Statistical foundation for Statistics or political arithmetic; that tracts. which is to tlie political economist what general history is to the philosopher. But their numerical reckonings of population, houses, value of lands or stock, and the like, though very curious, and sometimes taken from public docu- Chap. IV. STATISTICAL TRACTS. 207 ments, were not always more than conjectural, nor are they so full and minute as the spirit of calculation demands. Eng- land here acjain took the lead in Gi'aunt's Observations on the Bills of Mortality, IGGl, in Tetty's Political Arithmetic (posthumous in IG'Jl), and other treatises of the same ingeni- ous and philosophical person, and, we may add, in the Obser- vations of Gregory King on the Natural and Political State of England ; for, though these were not published till near the end of the eighteenth century, the manuscripts had fallen into the hands of Dr. Charles Davenant, who has made extracts from them in' his own valuable contributions to political arith- metic. King seems to have possessed a sagacity which has sometimes brought his conjectures nearer to the mark, than, from the imperfection of his data, it was reasonable 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. Sir William Petty, with a mind capable of just and novel theo- ries, Avas struck by the necessary consequences of an uniform- ly progressive population. Though the rate of movement seemed to him, as in truth it then was, much slower than Ave have latterly found it, he clearly saAv that its continuance would in an ascertainable length of time overload the world; "and then," according to the prediction of the Scriptures, "there must be Avars and great slaughter." He conceived that, in the ordinary course of things, the population of a country would be doubled in two hundred years ; but the whole conditions of the problem Avere far less understood than at present. Dav^enant's Essay on Ways and Means, 1G93, gained him a high reputation, Avhich he endeavored to aug- ment by many subsequent Avorks ; some falling Avithin the seventeenth century. He Avas a man of more enlarged X'eading than his predecessors, with the exception of Petty, and of close attention to the statistical documents Avhich Avere now more copiously published than before ; but he seldom launches into any extensive theory, confining himself rather to the accumulation of facts, and to the immediate inferences, generally for temporary purposes, Avhicb they supj)lied. 203 JU11I3 PRUDENCE. Part IV Sect. III. — On Jurisprudknce. 110. In 1667, a short book was published at Frankfort, by AVorks of ^ young man of twenty-two years, entitled Method! u-ibnitzon IsoviB Disccndaj Docendieque Jurisprudentife. The Oman aw. g^jgj^gg which of all otliers had been deemed to require the most protracted labor, the ripest judgment, the most experienced discrimination, was, as it were, invaded by a boy, but by one who had the genius of an Alexander, and for whom the glories of an Alexander were reserved. This is the first production of LeiV)nitz ; and it is probably in many points of view the most remarkable work that has premature- ly uuited erudition and solidity. AVe admire in it the vast range of learning (for, thoiigh he could not have read all the books he names, there is evidence of his acquaintance with a great number, and at least with a well-filled chart of litera- ture), the originality of some ideas, the commanding and comprehensive views he embraces, the philosophical spirit, the compressed style hi which it is wi-itten, the entire absence of juvenility, of ostentatious paradox,^ of imagination, ardor, and enthusiasm, which, thougli Leibnitz did not always want them, would have been wholly misplaced on such a subject. Faults have been censui-ed in this early performance; and the autlior declared himself afterwards dissatisfied Avith it.^' 111. Leibnitz was a passionate admirer of the Roman jurisprudence : he held the great lawyers of antiquity second only to the best geometers for strong and subtle and pro- found reasoning ; not even acknowledging, to any considerable degree, the contradictions {antinomice juris) which had per- 1 I use the epithet " ostentatious," bo- - This tract, and all the other works of cause some of his original theories are a Leibnitz on Jurisprudence, will be found little paradoxical : thus he lixs a singular in the fourth volume of his works by Du- notiou that the right of beciueathing pro- tens. An analysis by Bon, professor of pcrty by testament is derived from the in\- law at Turin, is jjrctixed to the Methodi mortality of the soul; the living heirs Kov.-b ; and he lias [loiii ted out a few errors, being, as it were, the attorn(!ys of those we Leibnitz says in a letter about 1(376, that supposed to be dead. '• Quia mortni revera his book was " elTusns jiotius qu.im scrip- adiiuc vivnnt, ideo manent doniini rcrum, tus, in itinere, sine libris," &c. ; and that (juos vero hfcredes reliciuernnt, concipieniti it contained some tilings he no longer sunt ut i>rocuratores in rem siiam." In our would have sail, though there were otherl own discussions on the law of entail, I am of which hi' did not repent, lierminier, not aware that this argument has ever been Hist, du Droit, p. 150. explicitly urged, though the advocates of perpetual control seem to have none better. CiiAr. rv. LEIBXITZ — GODEFROY — DOMAT. 209 plcxed their disciples in later times, and on which many vol- umes had been written. But the arrangement of Justinian he entirely dir^a|i])roved ; and in another work, Corporis Juria Keconcinnandi Katio, published in 1008, he pointed out the necessity and what he deemed the best method of a new distribution. Tliis appears to be not quite like Avhat he had previously sketched, and which was rather a philosophical than a very convenient method :' in this new arrangement he proposes to retain the texts of the Corpus Juris Civilis, but in a form rather like that of the Pandects than of the Institutes ; to the latter of which, followed as it has been among us by Hale and Blackstone, he was very averse. 112. There was only one man in the world who could have left so noble a science as philosophical jurisprudence for pur- suits of a still more exalted nature, and for which he was still more fitted; and that man was Leibnitz himself. He passed onward to reap the golden harvests of otiier fields. Yet the study of law has owed much to him : he did much to unite it with moral philosophy on the one hand, and with history on the other; a great master of Ijotli, he exacted perhaps a more comprehensive course of legal studies than the capacity of ordinary lawyers could gras]). In England also, its condu- civeness to professional excellence miglit be hard to prove. It is, however, certain that, in Germany at least, philology, history, and philosophy have more or less, since the time of Leibnitz, marched together under the robe of law. " He did but pass over that kingdom," says Lerminicr, "and he has reformed and enlarged it."- 113. James Godefroy was thirty years engaged on an edi- tion of the Theodosian Code, published several years after his death, in IGG'). It is by far the best juriFts: edition of that body of laws, and retains a standard Goaefroy; I'll- • 1 1 n • • 1 Domat. value m the historical department oi jurisjn-udence. Domat, a French lawyer, and one of the Port-Royal connec- tion, in his Loix Civiles dans leur Ordre Naturel, the first of five volumes of which appeared in 1G89, carried into effect the ]iroject of Leibnitz, by re-arranging the laws of Justinian, which, especially the Pandects, are avcU known to be confu- 1 In his Methodi Novsp, he divides law, 2. Succession ; 3. Possession ; 4. Contract ; In the didactic part, nccordini; to the scve- 5. lujury, which gives right to repara- ral sources of rights ; n.iniply, 1. Nature, tion. ■which gives us riglit over re.^ nullius, - Biogr. Univ. ; Lerminier, Hist, do things where there is no prior property ; Droit, p. 142. vol.. IV. 14 210 LAW OF NATIONS — PUFFENDORF. Fart IV. sedly distributed, in a more regular raetliod ; prefixing a book of his own on the nature and spirit of law in general. Tliis appears to be an useful digest or abridgment, some- thing like those made by Viner and earlier writers of our own text-books, but perhaps with more compression and choice : two editions of an English translation were published. Do- mat's Public Law, which might, perliaps, in our language, have been called constitutional, since we generally confine the epithet "■public" to the law of nations, forms a second part of the same work, and contains a more extensive system, where- in tlieological morality, ecclesiastical ordinances, and the fun- damental laws of the French monarchy, are reduced into method. Domat is much extolled by his countrymen ; but, in philosophical jurisprudence, he seems to display little force or originality. Gravina, who obtained a high name in this literature at the beginning of the next century, was known merely as a professor at the close of this ; but a Dutch jurist, Noodt on Gerard Noodt, may deserve mention for his treatise Usury. on Usury, in 1698, wherein he both endeavors to prove its natural and religious lawfulness, and traces its history through the Roman law. Several other works of Noodt on subjects of historical jurisprudence seem to fall within this century, though I do not find their exact dates of publication. 114. Grotius was the acknowledged master of all who studied the theory of international right. It was, NaTio"ns : pcrhaps, the design of Puffendorf, as we may con- Putfenaorf. jggture by the title of his great work on the Law of Nature and Nations, to range over the latter field with as assiduous diligence as the former. But, from the length of his prolix labor on natural law and the riglits of sovereigns, he has not more than one-twentieth of the whole volume to spare for international questions ; and this is in great measure copied or abridged from Grotius. In some instances he dis- a"-rees Avith his master. Puffendorf singularly denies, that compacts made during war are binding by the law of natui-e, but for weak and unintelligible reasons.' Treaties of peace extorted by unjust force, he denies with more reason to bo binding ; though Grotius had held the contrary." The infe- rior writers on the law of nations, or those who, like Wic- quefort, in his Ambassador, confined themselves to merely conventional usages, it is needless to mention. 1 B. vul. chap. 7. » Chap. 8. CuAP. V. ITALIAN rOETRY-FILICAJA. 211 CPIAPTER V. HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1650 TO 17C0. Sect. I. — Ox Italtan Poetry. Filicaja — Guidi — Menzini — Arcadian Society. 1. The imitators of JNIarini, full of extravagant metaphora, and the false thoughts usually called concetti, were in their vigor at the fominenceineut of this period. ^^^Jlf*^ But their names are now obscure, and have been itaiinu overwhelmed by the change of public taste, which has condemned and proscribed what it once most applauded. This change came on long before the close of the century, though not so decidedly but that some traces of the former manner are discoverable in the majority of popular Avriters. The general characteristics, howe\'ei-, of Italian poetry were Qow a more masculine tone ; a wider reach of topics, and a Belcction of the most noble ; an abandonment, except in the dghter lyrics, of amatory strains, and especially of such as Avcre languishing and querulous ; an anticipation, in short, as fiir as ihe circumstances of the age would permit, of tliat severe and elevated style which has been most affected for the last lifty years. It would be futile to seek an explanation of this man- lier spirit in any social or political causes ; never had Italy iu these respects been so lifeless : but the world of poets is often not the world around them, and their stream of living waters may flow, like that of Arethusa, without imbibing much from the surrounding brine. Chiabrera had led the way by the Pindaric majesty of his odes, and had disciples of at least equal name with himself. 2. Florence was the mother of one who did most to invigo- rate Italian poetry, Vincenzo Filicaja ; a man gifted j-jy^^ with a serious, pure, and noble spirit, from Avhich con- genial thoughts spontaneously arose, and wnth an imaginatioc 212 FILICAJA — GUIDI. P'aiT W. ralher vigorous than fertile. The siege of Vienna in 1683, and its glorious deliverance by Sobieski, are the subjects of six odes. The third of these, addressed to the King of Poland himself, is generally most esteemed, though I do not perceive that the first or second are inferior. His ode to Rome, on Christina's taking up her residence there, is in many parts highly poetical ; but the flattery of representing this event a3 suflicient to restoi-e the eternal city from decay is too gross. It is not, on the whole, so successful as those on the siege of Vienna. A better is that addressed to Florence, on leaving it for a rural solitude, in consequence of liis poverty and the neglect he had experienced. It breathes an injured spirit, something like the Complaint of Cowley, with which posterity are sure to sympathize. The sonnet of Filicaja, Italia mia, is known by every one who cares for this poetry at all. This* sonnet is conspicuous for its depth of feeling, for the spirit of its commencement, and, above all, for the noble lines Avith which it ends ; but there are surely awkward and feeble ex- pressions in the intermediate part. Armenti for regiments of dragoons could only be excused by frequent usage in poetry, which, I presume, is not the case, though we find the same word in one of Filicaja's odes. A foi-eigner may venture upon this kind of criticism. 3. Filicaja was formed in the school of Chiabrera ; but, with his pomp of sound and boldness of imagery, he is animated by a deeper sense both of religion and patriotism. We perceive more the language of the lieart : the man speaks in his genu- ine character, not Avith assumed and mercenary sensibility, like that of Pindar and Chiabrera. His genius is greater than liis skill : he abandons himself to an impetuosity which he cannot sustain, forgetful of the economy of strengtli and breath, as necessary for a poet as a race-horse. He has rarely or never any conceits or frivolous thoughts ; but the expression 13 sometimes rather feeble. There is a general want of sun- shine in Filicaja's poetry; unprosperous himself, he views nothing with a worldly eye ; his notes of triumph are without brilliancy, his predictions of success are without joy. He seems also deficient in the cliarms of grace and felicity. But his poetry is always the eflTusion of a fine soul: we veneiate and love Filicaja as a man, but we also acknowledge that be was a real ])oet. 4. Gu^di, a native of Pavia, raised liimself to the highest Cu.\r V GUIDI — MENZINI. 213 point that any lyric poet of Italy has attained. His odes are written at Rome from about the year 1 G8.') to the end „ ._.. 01 the century. Compared with Olnabrera, or even Filicaja, lie may be allowed the superiority : if he never rises to a higher pitch than the latter, if he has never chosen subje(;ts so animating, if he has never displayed so much deptli and truth of feeling, his enthusiasm is more constant, liis imagination more creative, his power of language more extensive and more felicitous. " He fiills sometimes," says Corniani, " into extravagance, but never into atfectation. . . . His peculiar excellence is poetical expression, always brilliant with a light of his own. The magic of his language used to excite a lively movement among the hearers when he recited his verses in the Arcadian Society." Corniani adds, that he is sometimes exuberant in words and hyperbolical in images.^ 5. The ode of Guidi on Fortune appears to me at least equal to any in the Italian language. If it has been suggested by that of Celio Magno, entitled Iddio, the resemblance does not deserve the name of imitation : a nobleness of thought, imagery, and language, prevails throughout. But this is the character of all his odes. He chose better subjects than Chia- brera ; for the ruins of Rome are more glorious than the living house of Medici. He resembles him, indeed, rather than any other poet, so that it might not always be easy to discern one from the other in a single stanza : but Guidi is a bolder, a more imaginative, a more enthusiastic poet. Both adorn and amplify a little to excess ; and it may be imputed to Guidi, that he has abused an advantage which his native language afforded. The Italian is rich in words, where the sound so Avell answers to the meaning, that it is hardly possi- ble to hear them without an associated sentiment : their effect is closely analogous to musical expression. Such are the adjectives denoting mental elevation, as superbo, aliiero, audace, gaf/Uardo, indomlto, maestoso. These recur in the poems of Guidi with every noun that will admit of them ; but sometimes the artifice is a little too transparent, and, though the meaning is not 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 a resource which the most me- chanical slave of music can employ. 6. The odes of Benedetto Menzini are elegant and in poeti- » Vol. viii. p. 224 214 MENZmi — SALT ATOR ROSA — REDI. Paitt IV. cal language, but such as does not seem very original ; nor d* . . they strike us by much vigor or animation of thought. The allusions to mythology, which we never find in Filicaja, and rarely in Guidi, are too frequent. Some of these odes are of considerable beauty; among which we may distinguish that addressed to Magalotti, beginning, " Un verde ramuscello in piaggia aprica." Menzini was far from con- fining himself to this species of poetry : he was better known iu others. As an Anacreontic poet, he stands, I believe, only below Chiabrera and Redi. His satires have been prefei-red by some to those of Ariosto ; but neither Corniani nor Salfi acquiesce in this praise. Their style is a mixture of obsolete phrases from Dante with the idioms of the Florentine popu- lace ; and, though spirited in substance, they ai-e rather full of commonplace invective. Menzini strikes boldly at priests and governments, and, what was dangerous to Orpheus, at the whole sex of women. His Ai't of Poetry, in five books, published in 1681, deserves some praise. As his atrabilious humor prompted, he inveighs against the corruption of con- temporary literature, especially on the stage; ridiculing also the Pindaric pomp that some affected, not perhaps without allusion to his enemy Guidi. His own style is pointed, ani- mated, sometimes poetical, Avhere didactic verse Avill admit of such ornament, but a little too diffuse and minute in criticism. 7. These three are the great restorers of Italian poetry SaiTator ^^^^^ ^^^^ Usurpation of false taste. And it is to be Rosa; observed that they introduced a new manner, very ^^' different from that of the sixteenth century. Several others deserve to be mentioned, though we can only do so briefly. The Satires of Salvator Rosa, full of force and vehe- mence, more vigorous than elegant, are such as his ardent genius and rather savage temper would lead us to expect. A far superior poet was a man not less eminent than Salvator, — the philosophical and every way accomplished Redi. Few have done so much in any part of science who have also shone so brightly iu the walks of taste. The sonnets of Redi are esteemed ; but his famous dithyrambic, Bacco in Toscana, is admitted to be the fii-st poem of that kind in modern lan- guage, and is as worthy of Monte Pulciano wine as the wiuo is worthy of it. 8. Maggi and Lemene bore an honorable part in the resto- ration of poetry, though neither of them is reckoned altogether Chap V. CHRISTINA — SOCIETY OF ARCADIANS. 215 to have pTirified himself from tlie infection of the preceding age. The sonnet of Pastorini on the imagined I'e- ^^j^^. ^^^^^ sistance of Genoa to the oppression of Louis XIV. in 1684, thougli not borne out by historical truth, is one of those breatliings of Itahan nationality which we always admire, and which had now become more common than for a century be- fore. It must be confessed, in general, that, when the protes- tations of a people against tyranny become loud enougli to be heard, we may suspect that the tyranny has been relaxed. 9. Rome was to poetry in this age what Florence had once been, though Rome had hitherto done less for the Christina's Italian muses than any other great city. Nor was p^'j^'JJ'^''^e« this so much due to her bishops and cardinals, as to a stranger and a woman. Christina finally took up her abode there in 1688. Her palace became the resort of all the learning and genius she could assemble around her : a literary academy was established, and her revenue was liberally dis- pensed in pensions. If Filicaja and Guidi, both sharers of her bounty, have exaggerated her praises, much may be par- doned to gratitude, and much also to the natural admiration which those who look up to power must feel for those who have renounced it. Christina died in 1690, and her own aca- demy could last no longer ; but a phoenix sprang at once from its ashes. Crescimbeni, then young, has the credit of having planned the Society of Arcadians, which began in society of 1690, and has eclipsed in celebrity most of the earlier Arcadians. academies of Italy. Fourteen, says Corniani, were the origi- nal founders of this society ; among whom were Crescimbeni and Gravina and Zappi. In course of time, the Arcadians vastly increased, and established colonies in the chief cities of Italy. They determined to assume every one a pastoral name and a Greek birthplace, to hold their meetings in some ver- dant meadow, and to mingle with all their compositions, as far as possible, images from pastoral life, — images always agreeable, because they recall the times of primitive innocence. This poetical tribe adopted as their device the pipe of seven reeds bound with laurel ; and their president or director was denominated general shepherd or keeper {custode genemle)} The fantastical part of the Arcadian Society was common to them w ith all similar institutions ; and mankind has generally » Corniani, -yiii. 301; Tiraboschi, xi. 43; Cresrvmbeni, Storia d'Arcadia (!>•• printed by MatliiasJ. 216 FRENCH POETRY — LA FONT AIXE. Fakt IV. required some ceremonial follies to keep alive the wholesome spirit of association. Their solid aim was to purify the na- tional taste. Much had been already done, and in great measure by their own members, Menzini and Guidi ; but their influence, which was of course more felt in the next century, has always been reckoned both important and auspicious to Italian literature. Sect. IL — On French Poetry. La Fontaine — Boileau — Minor Frcncli Poets. 10. "We must pass over Spain and Portugal as absolutely destitute of any name which requires commemora- on aine. ^j^j^^ jj^ France it was very different : if some earlier periods had been not less rich in the number of versi- fiers, none had produced poets wlio have descended with so much renown to posterity. The most popular of these was La Fontaine. Few writers have left such a number of verses which, in the phrase of his country, have made their fortune, and been, like ready money, always at hand for prompt quota- tion. His lines have at once a proverbial truth and a humor of expression which render them constantly applicable. Tliis is chiefly true of his P'ables ; for his Tales, though no one will deny that they are lively enougli, ai'e not reckoned so well written, nor do they supply so much for general use. 11. The models of La Fontaine's style were partly the an- Character cicut fabulists whom lie copied, for he pretends to no of his originality; partly the old French poets, especially Marot. From the one he took the real gold of his fables themselves ; from the other he caught a peculiar arch- ness and vivacity, which some of them had possessed, perhaps, in no less degree, but which becomes more captivating from his intermixture of a solid and serious wisdom. For, not- withstanding the common anecdotes (sometimes, as we may suspect, ratlier exaggerated) of La Fontaine's simplicity, he was evidently a man who had tliought and observed much about human nature, and knew a little more of the world than he cared to let the world perceive. Many of his fables are Chap. V. BOILEAU. 217 admirable: the grace of the poetry, the happy inspiration that seems to have dictated the turns of expression, place him in the first rank amona; fabulists. Yet the praise of La Fon- taine should not be indiscriminate. It is said that he gave the preference to Plia;drus and ^sop al)ove himself; and Bome have thouglit. that in this he could not have been sincere. It was at least a proof of his modesty. But though we cannot think of putting Phnedrus on a level with La Fontaine, were it only for this reason, that, in a work designed for the general reader (and surely fables are of this descrip- tion), the qualities that please the many are to be valued above those that please the few, yet it is true that the French poet might envy some talents of the Roman. Phnedrus, a writer scarcely prized enough, because he is an early school- book, has a perfection of elegant beauty which very few have rivalled. No word is out of its place ; none is redundant, or could be changed for a better : his perspicuity and ease make every thing appear un[)remeditated, yet every thing is wrought by consummate art. In many fables of' La Fontaine, this is not the case : he beats round the subject, and misses often before he hits. Much, whatever La Ilarpe may assert to the contrary, could be retrenched : in much the exigencies of rhyme and metre are too manifest.^ He has, on the other hand, far more humor than Pha^drus ; and, whether it be praise or not, thinks less of his fable, and more of its moral. One pleases by enlivening ; the other pleases, but does not enliven : one has more felicity, the other more skill ; but in such skill there is felicity. 12. The first seven satires of Boileau appeared in 1G66; and these, though much inferior to his later produc- Boiieau: tions, are characterized by La Harpe as the earliest i^'s ^pistios. poetry in the French language where the mechanism of its verse was fully understood, where the style was always pure I Let us take, for example, the first None of these lines appear to me very lines of L'llomnie ct la Couleuvre: — happy; but there can be no Joubt about " Un honune vit une couleuvre. t]'^^' '» ^^f^'^ whieli spoils the effect of Ah mechante> dit-ii, je rn'on vais faire un }^^ precedm.; and .. feebly y'-'J^ndai:' > ' •' The l;ust words are almost equally bad: AfeSle i tout Punivers ! no question could arise about the ^^•rp^H^ .° i I- • 1 cuilt. which had been assumed Detore. A CCS mots 1 ammal pervers £,' Ue^e petty blemishes are abundantly (C est If serpent que jejeux dire redeemed by the rest of the fable, which Etnontho,nme,onpourroU a,sc7nent i'y ^^/if^,!^ i„ ^,.„i,,. „f ti^o^gilts and A ces rn'ot'^^serpent se laissant attraper langaa^'«; and may be clas.sed with th« Estpris,misenuiisac: et.cequifutlepire. ^«st m the coUection. On rosoiut sa mort,_/T(i il coupabU ou non." 218 BOILEAU. Part IV. and elegant, where the ear was uniformly gratified. The Art of Poetry was published in 1G73, the Lutrin in 1674: the Epistles followed at various periods. Their elaborate though cqual)le strain, in a kind of poetry, which, never requiring high flights of fancy, escapes the censure of medi- ocrity and monotony which might sometimes fall upon it, generally excites more admiration in tliose who have been accustomed to tlie numerous defects of less finished poets, than it retains in a later age, when others have learned to emulate and preserve the same uniformity. The fame of Po]ie was transcendent for this reason ; and Boileau is the analogue of Pope in French literature. 13. The Art of Poetry has been the model of the Essay His Art of on Criticism : few poems more resemble each other. Poetry. j ^^jjj j^qj. ■^veigll in opposite scales two compositions, of which one claims an advantaire from its havinsr been origi- nal, the other from the " youth of its author. Both are uncommon efforts of critical good sense ; and both are distin- guished by their short and pointed language, Avhich remains in the memory. Boileau has very well incorporated the thoughts of Horace with his own, and given them a skilful adaptation to his own times. He was a bolder critic of his contemporaries than Pope. He took up arms against those wlio shared the ])ublic favor, and were placed by half Paris among great dramatists and poets, — Pradon, Desmarests, Brebffiuf. This was not true of the heroes of the Dunciad. His scorn was always bitter, and probably sometimes unjust ; yet posterity has ratified almost all his judgments. False taste, it sliould be remembered, had long infected the poetry of Elurope ; some steps had been lately taken to repress it : but extravagance, affectation, and excess of refinement, are weeds that can only be eradicated by a thorough cleansing of the soil, by a process of burning and paring, which leaves not a seed of them in the public mind. And when we consider the gross blemislies of this description that deform the earlier poetry of France, as of other nations, we cannot blami? the severity of Boileau, tliough he may occasionally have con- demned in the mass what contained some intermixture of real excellence. We have become of late years in England so enamoured of the beauties of our old Avriters (and certainly they are of a superior kind), that we are sometimes more than a little blind to theii' faults. Chap. V. THE LUTEIN. 219 14. By writinjT satires, epistles, and an Art of Poetry, Boileau has challenged an obvious comparison with comparison Horace. Yet they are very unlike : one easy, coUo- with^^ quial, abandoning himself to every change that arises °'^'^®' in his mind; the other uniform as a regiment under arms, always equal, always labored, incapable of a bold neglect. Poetry seems to have been the delight of one, the task of the other. The pain that Boileau must have felt in writing communicates itself in some measure to the reader ; we are fearful of losing some point, of passing over some epithet without sufficiently perceiving its selection: it is as with those pictures Avhich are to be viewed long and attentively, till our admiration of detached proofs of skill becomes weari- Bome by repetition. 15. The Lutrin is the most popular of the poems of Boileau. Its subject is ill chosen : neither interest ^^ Lutrin. nor variety could be given to it. Tassoni and Pope have the advantage in this respect : if their leading theme is trifling, we lose sight of it in the gay liveliness of description and episode. In Boileau, after we have once been told that the canons of a church spend their lives in sleep and eating, we have no more to learn, and grow tired of keeping company with a race so stupid and sensual. But the poignant wit and satire, the elegance and correctness of numberless couplets, as well as the ingenious adaptation of classical psissages, redeem this poem, and confirm its high place in the mock- heroic line. 1 6. The great deficiency of Boileau is in sensibility. Far below Pope or even Dryden in this essential quality, ^.^^^^^ which the moral epistle or satire not only admits, but character requires, he rarely quits two paths, — those of reason °^j'*^ and of raillery. His tone on moral subjects is firm and severe, but not very noble : a trait of pathos, a singlu touch of pity or tenderness, will rarely be found. This of itself serves to give a dryness to his poetry ; and it may be doubtful, though most have read Boileau, whether many have read him twice. 17. The pompous tone of Ronsard and Du Bartas had be- come ridiculous in the reign of Louis XIV. Even that of Malherbe was too elevated for the public taste: none at least imitated that writer, though the critics had set the ex- ample of admiring him. Boileau, who had done much to 220 BENSERADE — CHAULIEU. Pakt IV. turn away the world from imagination to plain sense, once attempted to emulate the grandiloquent strains of poetry Pindar in an ode on the taking of Namur, but with lighter jjQ such success as could encourage himself or otliers tnan before. . "^ to 1-epeat the expenment. Yet there was no want of gravity or elevation in the prose writers of Fi'ance, nor in the tragedies of Racine. But the French lauguasre is not very well adapted for the higher kind of lyric poetry, while it Buits admirably the lighter forms of song and epigram. And their poets in this age were almost entirely men living at Paris, either in the court, or at least in a refined society, the most adverse of all to the poetical character. The influence of wit and politenesss is generally directed towards rendering enthusiasm, or warmtli of fancy, ridiculous ; and without these no great energy of genius can be displayed. But, in their proper department, several poets of considerable merit ap- peared. 18. Benserade was called peculiarly the poet of the court: for twenty years it was his business to compose verses for the ballets represented before the king. His skill and tact were shown in delicate contrivances to make those who supported the characters of gods and goddesses in these fictions, being the nobles and ladies of the court, betray their real inclinations, and sometimes their gallantries. He even presumed to shadow in this manner the passion of Louis for Mademoiselle La Valiej-e, before it was publicly acknow- ledged. Benserade must have had no small ingenuity and adroitness ; but his verses did not survive those who called them forth. In a diiferent school, not essentially, perhaps, much more vicious than the court, but more careless of appear- ances, and rather proud of an immorality which it had no interest to conceal, that of Ninon I'Enclos, several of higher reputation grew up, — Chapelle (whose real name was L'Huil- lier), La Fare, Bachaumont, Laiuezer, 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 a style where Voltaire has so much left all others behind, that no compari- eon with him can ever be admitted. Chaulieu was an origi- nal genius : his pocitry has a marked character, being a happy mixture of a gentle and peaceable philosophy Avith a lively imagination. His verses flow from his soul, and, though often Chap. V. SEGRAIS — DESHOULIJ^KES — FONTENELLE. 221 negligent through indolence, are never in bad taste or affected. Harmony of versification, grace and gayety, with a voluptuous and Epicurean, but mild and benevolent, turn of tliaught, belong to Chaulieu ; . and these are qualities which do not fail to attract the majority of readers.^ 19. It is rather singular that a style so uncongenial to the spirit of that age as pastoral poetry a})pcars Avas Pastomi quite as much cultivated as before. But it is still v^^tvy. true, that the spirit of the age gained the victory, and drove the shepherds from their shady bowers, though without substi- tuting any thing more rational in the fairy tales which super- seded the pastoral romance. At the middle of the century and partially till near its close, the style of D'Urle and Scu- dery retained its popularity. Three poets of the age g ;g_ of Louis were known in pastoral : Segrais, Madame Deshoulieres, and Fontenelle. The first belongs most to the genuine school of modern pastoral ; he is elegant, romantic, full of complaining love ; the Spanish and French romances had been liis model in invention, as Virgil was in style. La Ilarpe allows liira nature, sweetness, and sentiment ; but he cannot emulate the vivid coloring of Virgil, and the language of his shepherds, though simple, wants elegance and harmony. The tone of his pastorals seems rather insipid, though La Harpe has quoted some pleasing lines. Madame Dcshou- Deshoulieres, with a purer style than Segrais, accord- ^'^'"^'^^■ ing to the same critic, has less genius. Others have thought her Idylls the best in the language.- But these seem to be merely trivial moralities addressed to flowers, brooks, and sheep; sometimes expressed in a manner both ingenious and natural, but, on the whole, too feeble to give much plea- sure. Bouterwek observes that her poetry is to be consi- dered as that of a woman, and that its pastoral morality would be somewhat childish in the mouth of man : Avhetlier this says more for the lady, or against her sex, I must leave to tiio reader. She has occasionally some very pleasing and even poetical passages.^ The third among these poets of the pipe is Fontenelle. But his pastorals, as Bouterwek says, p^mg^g^g are too artificial for the ancient school, and too cold for the romantic. La Harpe blames, besides this general fault, the negligence and prosaic phrases of his style. The 1 La Harpe; Bouterwek, vi. 127; Biogr. Univ. * Biogr. Univ. ^ Bouterwek, vi. 152. 222 ENGLISH POETRY. Pakt IV. best is that entitled Ismene. It is, in fact, a poem for the world ; yet, as love and its artifices are found everywhere, we cannot censure any passage as absolutely unfit for pastoral, save a certain refinement which belonged to the author in every thing, and which interferes with our sense of rural simplicity. 20. In the superior walks of poetry, France had nothing of Bad epic Avhich she has been inclined to boast. Chapelain, a poems. j^j^i^ of some credit as a critic, produced his long- labored epic, La Pucelle, in 1G56, which is only remembered by the insulting ridicule of Boileau. A similar fate has fallen on the Clovis of Desmarests, published in 1684, though the German historian of literature has extolled the richness of imagination it shows, and observed that, if those Avho saw nothing but a fantastic writer in Desmarests had possessed as much fancy, the national poetry would have been of a higher character.^ Brebceuf s translation of the Pharsalia is spirited, but very extravagant. 21. The literature of Germany was now more corrupted by German ^^^ tastc than evcr. A second Silesian school, but poetry. niuch inferior to that of Opitz, was founded by IIoflT- manswaldau and Lohenstein. The first had great facility, and imitated Ovid and Marini with some success. The second, with worse taste, always tumid and striving at some- thing elevated, so that the Lohenstein swell became a byword with later critics, is superior to Hoffmanswaldau in richness of fancy, in poetical invention, 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 unhappy name spiritless (geisdos), which, avoiding the tone of Lohenstein, became wholly tame and flat.^ Sect. III. — Ox English Poetry. Waller — Butler — Milton— Dryden — The Minor Poets. 22. We might have placed Waller in the foraier division of the seventeenth century with no more impropriety than we > Bouterwek, ri. 157. la., vol. X. p. 288 ; Ueinsius, iv. 28V ; Eichlaom, Geschichte der Cultur. Iv. kO Chap. V. WALLER- BUTLER'S HUDIBRAS. 223 might have reserved Cowley for the latter : both belong by the date of their Avritings to the two periods ; and, ^y^,[gj. perhaps, the poetry of Waller bears rather the stamp of tlie first Charles's age than of that which ensiwd. His repu- tation was great, and somewhat more durable than that of similar poets has generally been : he did not witness its decay in his own.i)rotracted life, nor was it much diminished at the beginning of the next century. Nor was this wholly unde- served. Waller has a more uniform elegance, a more sure facility and happiness of expression, and, above all, a greater exemption from glaring faults, such as pedantry, extravagance, conceit, quaiutness, obscurity, ungrammatical and unmeaning constructions, than any of the Caroline era Avith whom he would naturally be compared. We have only to open Carew or Lovelace to perceive the difference ; not that Waller is wholly without some of these faults, but that they are much less frequent. If others may have brighter passages of fancy or sentiment, Avhich is not difficult, he husbands better his resources, and, though left behind in the beginning of the race, comes sooner to the goal. His Panegyric on Cromwell Avas celebrated. " Such a series of verses," it is said by Johnson, " had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of these lines some are grand, some are gi-aceful, and all are musical. There is noAV and then a feeble A'ei-se, or a trifling thought ; but its great fault is the choice of its hero." It may not be the opinion of all, that CroniAvell's actions Avere of that obscure and pitiful character Avhich the majesty of song rejects ; and Johnson has before observed, that AValler's choice of encomiastic topics in this poem is very judicious. Yet his deficiency in poetical vigor Avill surely be traced in this com- position ; if he rarely sinks, he never rises very high ; and Ave find nuich good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of language and metre, Avithout ardor and Avithout imagination. In his amorous poetry he has little passion or sensibility ; but he is never free and petulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much in negations ; but, in a comparative estimate, perhaps negations ought to count for a good deal. 23. Hudibras Avas incomparably more popular than Para- dise Lost : no poem in our language rose at once to Butler's greater reputation. Nor can this be called epheme- i^udibraa. ral, like that of most political poetry. For at least half a 224 PARADISE LOST — CHOICE OF SUBJECT. Part IV century after its publication, it was generally read, and per- petually quoted. The wit of Butler has still preserved many lines ; but Hudibras now attracts comparatively few readers. The eulogies of Johnson seem rather adapted to what he remembered to have been the fame of Butler than to the feel- ings of the surrounding generation ; and since his time new soui'ces of amusement have sprung up, and writers. of a more intelligible pleasantry have superseded those of the seventeenth century. In the fiction of Hudibras there was never much to divert the reader, and there is still less left at present. But what has been censured as a fault, — the length of dialogue, which puts the fiction out of sight, — is in fact the source of all the pleasure that the work aftbrds. The sense of Butler is masculine, his wit inexhaustible, and it is supplied from every source of reading and observation. But these sources are often so unknown to the reader, that the wit loses its effect through the obsciu"ity of its allusions, and he yields to the bane of wit, a jjurbliud mole-like pedantry. His versification is sometimes spirited, and his rhymes humorous ; yet he wants that ease and flow whicli we requii-e in light poetiy. 24. The subject of Paradise Lost is the finest that has ever been chosen for heroic poetry : it is also man- Lost:'^* aged by Milton with remarkable skill. The Iliad choice of wauts comj)leteness : it has an unity of its own, but it is the unity of a part where we miss the relation to a whole. The Odyssey is not imperfect in this point of view^ ; but the subject is hardly extensive enough for a legiti- mate epic. The ^neid is spread over too long a space ; and perhaps the latter books, by the diversity of scene and subject, lose jKu-t of that intimate connection with the former which an epic poem requires. The Pharsalia is open to the same criticism as the Iliad. The Thebaid is not deficient in unity, or greatness of action ; but it is one that possesses no sort of interest in our eyes. Tasso is far superior, both in choice and manngemeut of his subject, to most of these ; yet the Fail of Man has a more general interest than the Crusade. 25. It must be ow^ned, nevertheless, that a religious epic Open to labors under some disadvantages : in proportion as some diffi- it attracts tliose who hold the same tenets with the cuities. author, it is regarded by those who dissent fi'om him with indifference or aversion. It is said that the discovery of Milton's Arianism, in t'iis rigid generation, has already im- Chap. V. ITS ARRANGEMEN'i . 225 paired the sale of Paradise Lost. It is also difficult to enlarge or adoru such a story by fiction. Milton has done much io this way ; yet he Avas partly restrained by the necessi;y of conforming to Scripture. 2G. The ordonnance or composition of the Paradise Lost is admirable ; and here we perceive the advantage it. nrrang*. which Milton's great familiarity with the Greek »ent.^ theatre, and his own original scheme of the poem, had given him. Every part succeeds in an order, noble, clear, and natu- ral. It miglit have been wished, indeed, tliat the vision of the eleventh book had not been changed into the colder narrative of the twelfth. But what can be more majestic than the first two books which open this great drama ? It is true that they rather serve to confirm the sneer of Dryden, that Satan is Milton's hero; since they develop a plan of action in that potentate, which is ultimately successful; the triumph that he and his host must experience in the fall of man being hardly compensated by their temporary conversion into ser- pents ; a fiction rather too grotesque. But it is, perhaps, only pedantry to talk about the liero ; as if a high personage were absolutely required in an epic poem to predominate over the rest. The conception of Satan is doubtless the first effort of Milton's genius. Dante could not have ventured to spare so much lustre for a ruined archangel, in an age when nothing less than horns and a tail were the orthodox creed.^ 1 ColeriJje has a fine passage which I In reading sucli a paragraph as tliis, cannot resist my desire to transcribe, we are struclc by the vast improvement "The character of Satiin is pride and of tlie highest criticism, the philo.sopliy of sensual indulgence, finding in itself the xsthetics, since the days of Addison. His motive of action. It is the character so papers in the Spectator on Paradise Lost often seen in little on the political stage, were perhaps superior to any criticism It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, that had been written in our language; and cunning wliich have marked the and we must always acknowledge their mighty huntei-8 of mankind from Nimrod good sense, their judiciousness, and the to Napoleon. The common fa-scination of vast service they did to our literature, in man is, that these great men, as they are .settling the Paradise Lost on its proper called, must act from some great motive, level. But how little they satisfy us, Milton has carefully marked in his Satan even in treating of the natura nntiinilcx, the intense selfishness, the alcohol of ego- the poem itself; and liow little conception tism, which would rather reign in liell thev show of the natura natiirans. the than serve in heaven. To place this lust individual genius of the author! Even in of self in opposition to denial of self or the periodical criticism of the present day, duty, and to show what exertions it would in the midst of much that is aflected, make, and what pains en lure, to accomplish much that is precipitate, much tliat is its end, is Milton's particular object in tlie written for mere display, we find occasional character of Satan. But around this cha- reflections of a profundity and discrimi- racter he has thrown a singularity of dar- nation which Ave should seek in Viiia jng, a grandeur cfsutTerance, and a ruined through Dryden or .\ddison, or the two BpTendor, which constitute the very height Wartons, or even Johnson, though much of poetic subUmity." — Coleridge's lie- superior to the rest. Kurd has, perhaps, mains, p. 176. the merit of being the first who in thi* VOL. IV 15 226 MILTON COMPARED WITH HOMER. Part IV. 27. Milton has displayed great skill in the delineations of Characters -A.dam aud Eve : he does not dress them up, after of Adam the fashion of orthodox theology, which had no spell to hind his free spirit, in the fancied robes of primi- tive righteousness. South, in one of his sermons, has drawn a picture of unfallen man, which is even poetical ; but it might be asked by the reader, AVhy, then, did he tall? Tiie lirst pair of Milton are innocent of course, but not less frail than their posterity ; nor, except one circumstance, which seems rather physical intoxication than any thing else, do we find any sign of depravity superinduced upon their transgi'ession. It might even be made a question for profound theologians, whether Eve, by taking amiss what Adam had said, and by self-conceit, did not sin before she tasted the fatal apple. The necessaiy paucity of actors in Paradise Lost is perhaps the apology of Sin and Death : they will not bear exact criticism, yet we do not wish tliem aAvay. 28. The comparison of Milton with Homer has been founded He owes On the acknowledged pre-eminence of each in his less to Q^yii language, and on the lax application of the than the word " cpic " to their gi-eat poems. But there was tragedians. ^.^^^ much in commou either between their genius or its products ; and Milton has taken less in direct imitation from Homer than from several other poets. His favorites had rather been Sophocles and Euripides : to them he owes the structure of his blank verse, his swell and dignity of style, his grave enunciation of moral and abstract sentiment, his tone of description, neither condensed like that of Dante, nor spread out with the diffuseness of the other Italians and of Homer himself. Next to these Greek tragedians, Virgil seems to have been his model ; with the minor Latin poets, except Ovid, he does not, I think, show any great familiarity ; and though abundantly conversant with Ariosto, Tasso, and Ma- rini, we cannot say that they influenced his manner, which, unlike theirs, is severe and stately, never light, nor, in the sense we should apply the words to them, rapid and ani- mated.* country aimed at philosophical criticism : assumes a dopnatic arrogance, TThich, as he had great, ingenuity, a good deal of it always olTeiuls the reader, SO for the reading, and a ficility in applying it; most part stands in tlie way of the au- but he did not feel very deeply, was some- tlior's own search for truth, what of a coxcomb, and having always ' The solenniity of Milton is striliing in before his eyes a model neither good in those passages where some other poets itself, uor made f .>r him to emulate, he would indulge a little in yoluptuousuess ; Chap. V. COIVIPARED WITH DANTE. 227 29. To Dante, however, he bears a much greater likeness. He has, in common with that poet, an uniform seri- compared ousness ; for the brighter coloring of both is but the ^'"' Danto. emile of a pensive mind, a fondness for argumentative speech, and for the same strain of argument. This indeed proceeds in part from the general similarity, the religious and even theological cast of their subjects : I advert particularly to the last part of Dante's poem. We may almost say, when we look to the resemblance of their prose writings in the proud sense of being born for some great achievement, which breathes through the Vita Nuova, as it does through Milton's earlier treatises, that they were twin spirits, and that each might have animated the other's body ; that each would, as it were, have been the other, if he had lived in the other's age. As it is, I incline to prefer Milton, that is, the Paradise Lost, both because the subject is more extensive, and because tho resources of his genius are more multifarious. Dante sins more against good taste, but only perhaps because there was no good taste in his time; for Milton lias also too much a disposition to make the grotesque accessory to the terrible. Could Milton have written the lines on Ugolino? Perhaps he could. Those on Francesca ? Not, I think, every line. Could Dante have planned such a poem as Paradise Lost? Not certainly, being Dante in 1300 ; but, living when Milton did, perhaps he could. It is, however, useless to go on with questions that no one can fully answer. To compare the two poets, read two or three cantos of the Purgatory or Para- dise, and then two or three hundred lines of Paradise Lost. Then take Homer, or even Virgil : the ditterence will be stink- ing. Yet, notwithstanding this analogy of their minds, I have not perceived that Milton imitates Dante very often, probably from having committed less to memory while young (and Dante was not the favorite poet of Italy when JNIilton was there), than of Ariosto and Tasso. 30. Each of these great men chose the subject that suited* liis natural temper and genius. What, it is curious to conjec- ture, would have been Milton's success in his original design, a British story ? Far less, surely, than in Paradise Lost : he wanted the rapidity of the common heroic poem, and would always have been sententious, perhaps arid and heavy. Yet, »nd tho more so, because this is not in Paradise Lost are rather too plain, and wholly unc ngenial to him. A few lines their gravity makes them worse. 22S STYLE OF MILTON". Paet FT. even as religious poets, there are several remaikable distinc- tions between Milton and Dante. It has been justly observed, that, in the Paradise of Dante, he makes use of but three leading ideas, — light, music, and motion ; and that IMilton has drawn heaven in less pure and spiritual colors.^ The philo- sophical imagination of the ibrmer, in tliis third part of his poem, almost defecated from all sublunary things by long and solitary musing, spiritualizes all that it touches. The genius of Milton, though itself subjective, was less so than that of Dante ; and he has to recount, to describe, to bring deeds and passions before tlie eye. And two peculiar causes may bo assigned for this difference in the treatment of celestial things between the Divine Comedy and the Paradise Lost : the dra- matic form which IMilton had originally designed to adopt, and his own theological bias towards anthropomorphism, which his posthumous treatise on religion has brought to light. ^ This was no doubt in some measure inevitable in such a subject as that of Paradise Lost; yet much that is ascribed to God, sometimes witli the sanction of Scripture, sometimes without it, is not wholly pleasing; such as "the oath that shook Heaven's whole circumference," and several other images of the same kind, which bring down the Deity in a manner not consonant to philosophical religion, however it may be borne out by the sensual analogies or mythic symbolism of Oriental writing.' 3L We rarely meet with feeble lines in Paradise Lost,' thouf^h with many that are hard, and, in a common Elevation ^ . , ■,•,., ^^ ^ • -\t j. r . of his use of the word, miglit be called prosaic, let tew "'^''*' are truly prosaic ; few wherein the tone is not some 1 Quarterly Review, June, 1825. This done by other poets, who do not scruple article contains some jtood and some ques- to suppose their gods, their ftiiries or tionable remarks on Jlilton : among the devils, or their allegorical personages, in- latter I reckon tlie proposition that his spiring thoughts, and even uniting them- ccntempt for women is shown in the deli- selves with the soul, as well as assuming neation (ifKve ; an opinion not that of Ad- all kinds of form, though their natural dison or of many others, who have thought appearance is almost always anthropo- her exiiui^itely drawn. morphic. And, after all, Satan does not = .iohnson thinks that Milton should animate a real toad, but takes the shape have suMirud the consistency of this poem of one. " Squat like a toad cloxc- by the by kiH'piu" immaterialitv out of sight, and ear of Eve." But he does euter a real scr- enticin" iiis reader to' drop it from his piMit, so that tlie inst.ince of .lohn.son is thouglUs. lUit liere the suliject forbade ill chosen. If he had mentioneil i..e ser him 'to preserve consistcncv. if indeed p('nt, every one wouhl have seen that the there be inronsistoiiev in suppt)sing a rapid identity of the animal seri)eiit with Satan assumption of form' by spiritual beings, is part of the original aoeoiuit. I'or tliough the instance that .Iohnson ■' One of the few exceptions is in the alleges of Inconsistency in Satan's aniniat- .sublime description of Death, where a in"" a toad was not' necessary, yet his wretched hemistich, "Fierce as ten fu- animation of the serpent was absolutely ries,"' stands as an unsightly blemish. Indispensable. And the same has been Chap. V. HIS BLIXDXESS. 229 wny distinguished fi'ora prose. The very artificial style of Mihon, sparing in English idiom, and his study of a rhythm, not always the most grateful to our ears, but preserving hia blank verse from a trivial flow, is the cause of this elevation. It is at least more removed from a prosaic cadence than the slovenly rhymes of such contemporary poets as Chamberlaync. His versification is entirely his own, framed on a Latin and chiefly a Virgilian model ; the pause less frequently resting on the close of the line than in Homer, and much less than in our own dramatic poets. But it is also possible that the Ita- lian and Spanish blank verse may have had some effect upon his ear 32. In the numerous imitations, and still more numerous traces, of older poetry which we perceive in Paradise nisbUad- Lost, it is always to be kept in mind that he had ■^^^*- only his recollection to rely upon. His blindness seems to have been complete before 1 654 ; and I scarcely think that he had begun his poem, before the anxiety and trouble into which the public strife of the Commonwealth and the Resto- ration had thrown him gave leisure for immortal occupations. Then the remembrance of early reading came over his dark and lonely path like the moon emerging from the clouds. Then it was that the Muse was truly his ; not only as she poured her creative inspiration into his mind, but as the daughter of Memory, coming with fi-agments of ancient melo- dies, the voice of Euripides and Homer and Tasso ; sounds that he had loved in youth, and treasured up for the solace of his age. They who, though not enduring the calamity of ]Mil- ton, have known what it is, when afar from books, in solitude or in travelling, or in the intervals of worldly care, to feed on poetical recollections, to murmur over the beautiful lines whose cadence has long delighted their ear, to recall the senti- ments and images which retain by association the charm that early years once gave them, — they will feel the inestimable value of committing to the memory, in the prime of its power, what it will easily receive and indelibly retain. I know not indeed whether an education that deals much with poetrj', such as is still usual in England, has any more solid argument among many in its favor, than that it lays tlic foundation of intellectual pleasures at the other extreme of life. 33. It is owing, in part, to his blindness, but more perhaps to his general residence in a city, that Milton, in the words of 230 PARADISE LOST. Pakt IV Coleridge, is "not a picturesque but a musical poet;" or, His passion as I woultl prefer to nay, is the latter more of the two. for music, pjg describes visible tilings, and often Avith great powers of rendering them manifest, wliat the Greeks called evi'tpyeia, though seldom -with so much circumstantial exactness of observation as Spenser or Dante ; but he feels music. The sense of vision deli";hted his ima";ination ; but that of sound wrapped his whole soul in ecstasy. One of his trifling faults may be connected with this, the excessive passion he displays for stringing together sonoi'ous names, sometimes so obscure that the reader associates nothing with them ; as the word Namancos in Lycidas, Avhich long baffled the commentators. Hence his catalogues, unlike those of Homer and Virgil, are sometimes merely ornamental and misplaced. Thus the names of unbuilt cities come strangely forward in Adam's vision,^ though he has afterwards gone over the same giound Avith better effect in Paradise Regained. In this there was also a mixture of his pedantry. But, though he was rather too ostentatious of learning, the nature of his subject demanded a good deal of episodical ornament. And this, rather than the precedents he might have alleged from the Italians and others, Faults in ^^ pcrhaps the best apology for what some gi-ave Paradise critics have censured, his frequent allusions to fable and mythology. These give nuich relief to the severity of the poem, and few readers would dispense Avith them. Less excuse can be made for some affectation of sci- ence which has produced hard and unpleasing lines ; but he had been born in an age Avhen more credit Avas gained by read- ing much than by writing Avell. The faults, however, of Para- dise Lost are in general less to be called faults than necessary adjuncts of the qualities Ave most admire, and idiosyncrasies of a mighty genius. The verse of Milton is sometimes Avant- ing in grace, and almost always in ease ; but Avhat better can be said of his prose ? His foreign idioms are too frequent in the one ; but they predominate in the other. 34. The sloAvness of IMilton's advance to glory is noAV Its progress generally owned to have been much exaggerated : totimic. ^^,(j niight say that the reverse AA-as nearer the truth. "The sale of 1,300 copies in two years," says Johnson, "in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versifi- cation neAV to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon ' Par. Lost, y.\. 386 Chap. V. PARADISE REGAINED. 231 example of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediataly increase ; for many more readers than were sup- plied at lirst the nation did not afford. Only 3,000 were sold in eleven years." It would hardly, however, be said, even in this age, of a poem 3,000 copies of which had beeft sold in eleven years, that its success had been small ; and some, perliaps, might doubt whether Paradise Lost, published eleven years since, would have met with a greater demand. There is sometimes a want of congeniality in public taste which no power of genius will overcome. For Milton it must be said by every one conversant with the literature of the age that preceded Addison's famous criticism, from Avhich some have dated the reputation of Paradise Lost, that he took his place among great poets from the beginning. The fancy of Johnson, that few dared to praise it, and that " the revolution put an end to the secrecy of love," is without foundation : the Go- vernment of Charles IL was not so absurdly tyrannical ; nor did Dryden, the court's own poet, hesitate, in his preface to the State of Innocence, publislied soon after Milton's death, to speak of its original. Paradise Lost, as " undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." 35. The neglect which Paradise Lost never experienced seems to have been long the lot of Paradise Re- paradise gained. It was not popular with the world : it was i^'^s^'neJ. long believed to manifest a decay of the poet's genius ; and, in spite of all that the critics have written, it is still but the favo- rite of some whose predilections for the Miltonic style are very strong. The subject is so much less capable of calling forth the vast powers of his mind, that we should be unfair in comparing it througliout with the greater poem : it has been called a moilel of the shorter epic, an action comprehending few characters and a brief space of time.^ The love of INIilton for dramatic dialogue, imbibed from Greece, is still more apparent than in Paradise Lost: the whole poem, in fact, may almost be acc-ounted a drama of primal simplicity ; the narrative and descriptive part serving rather to diversify and relieve the speeches of the actors, than tlieir speeches, as ir the legitimate epic, to enliven the narration. Paradise Re gained abounds with passages equal to any of the same nature in Paradise Lost; Dut the argumentative tone is kept up till I Todd's MUton vol. v. p. 308 232 SAMSON AGONISTES. I'akt IV it produces some tediousness ; and perhaps, on the whole, less pains have been exerted to adorn and elevate that which appeals to the imagination. 36. Samson Agonistes is the latest of IMilton's poems: wo Samson See in it, perhaps more distinctly than in Paradise Agonistes. Regained, the ebb of a mighty tide. An air of uncommon grandeur pi'evails throughout ; but the language is less poetical than in Paradise Lost: the vigor of thought remains, but it Avants much of its ancient eloquence. Nor is the lyric tone well kept up by the chorus : they are too sen- tentious, too slow in movement, and, except by the metre, are not easily distinguishable from the other personages. But this metre is itself infelicitous ; the lines being frequently of a number of syllables not recognized in the usage of English poetry, and, destitute of rhythmical measure, fall into prose. Milton seems to have forgotten that the ancient chorus had a musical accompaniment. 37. The style of Samson, being essentially that of Paradise Lost, may show us how much more the latter poem is founded on the Greek traa;edians than on Homer. In Samson we have sometimes the pompous tone of ^schylus, more frequent- ly the sustained majesty of Sophocles ; but the religious solemnity of Milton's own temperament, as Avell as the nature of the subject, have given a sort of breadth, an unbroken severity, to the wliole drama. It is perhaps not very popular even with the lovers of poetry ; yet, upon close comparison, we should find that it deserves a higher place tlian many of its pi-ototypes. We might search tiie Greek tragedies long for a character so powerfully conceived and maintained as that of Samson himself; and it is but conformable to the sculptural simplicity of that form of drama which Milton adopted, that all the rest should be kept in subordination to it. "It is only," Johnson says, "by a blind confidence in the repu- tation of JMilton, that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, nei- ther hasten nor retard the catastroj)he." Such a drama is certainly not to be ranked with Othello and INIacbeth, or even with the CEdipus or the IIii)polytus ; but a similar criticism is applicable to several famous tragedies in the less artificial Bchool of antiquity, — to the Prometheus and the Persa? of iEschylus, and, if we look strictly, to uot a few of the two other ma-sters. CiiAP. V. DRYDEN — ABSALOM AND ACIIITOPHEL. 233 38. The poetical genius of Dryden came slowly to perfeo tioa. Born in 1G31, his first short poems, or, as wo p ,^^^, might rather say, cojiies of verses, were not written his eiirUer till he ap])roaehe(l thirty ; and though some of his p°'^'"^- dramas, not indeed of the best, belong to the next period of his life, he had reached the age of filty before his high rank as a poet had been confirmed by indubitalde proof. Yet he had manifested a superiority to his immediate contemporaries: his Astra;a Redux, on tiie Restoration, is well versified ; the lines are seldom weak ; the couplets have that pointed man- ner which Cowley and Denham had taught tlie world to require ; they are harmonious, but not so varied as the style he afterwards adopted. The Annus Mirabilis, in 1GG7, is of a higher cast : it is not so animated as the later poetry of Dryden, because the alternate quatrain, in which he followed Davenant's Gondibert, is hostile to animation ; but it is not unfavorable to another excellence, — condensed and vigorous thought. Davenant indeed and Denham may be reckoned the models of Dryden, so far as this can be said of a man of original genius, and one far superior to theirs. The distin- guishing characteristic of Diyden, it has been said by Scott, was the power of reasoning, and expressing the result in appropriate language. This indeed was the characteristic of the two whom we have named ; and so far as Dryden has displayed it, which he eminently has done, he bears a resem- blance to them. But it is insufhcient praise for this great poet. His rapidity of conception and readiness of expression are higher qualities. He never loitere about a single thought or image, never labors about the turn of a phrase. The impression upon our minds, that he wrote with exceeding ease, is irresistible ; 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 own experience, with advancing years, as we become more sensible of the difficulty of his style, and of the comparative facility of that which is merely imaginative. 39. Dryden may be considered as a satirical, a reasoning, a descriptive and narrative, a lyric poet, and as a ^^gaiom translator. As a dramatist we must return to him ana again. The greatest of his satires is Absalom and ''^'''"'°^' ^ ' Achitophel, — that work in which his powers became fully known to the world, and which, as many think, he never sur- jassed. The admirable fitness of the English couplet for 2ii4 MAC FLECKNOE. Part IV. satire had never been shown before : in less skilful hands it liad been ineffective. He does not frequently, in tliis poem, carry tlie sense beyond the second line, Avliich, except when skilfully contrived, as it often is by himself, is apt to enfeeble the empliasis: his triplets are less numerous than usual, but energetic. The spontaneous ease of expi-ession, the rapid transitions, tlie general elasticity and movement, have never been excelled. It is superfluous to praise the discrimination and vivacity of the chief characters, especially Shaftesbury nnd Buckingham. Satire, however, is so much easier tlian wanegyric, that with Ormond, Ossory, and Mulgrave he has lot been quite so successful. In the second part of Absalom ind Achitophel, written by Tate, one long passage alone is inserted by Dryden. It is excellent in its line of satire, but the line is less elevated ; the persons delineated are less im- portant, and he has indulged more his natural proneness to virulent ribaldry. This fault of Dryden's writings, it is just to observe, belonged less to the man than to the age. No libellous invective, no coarseness of allusion, had ever been spared towards a private or political enemy. We read with nothing but disgust the satirical poetry of Cleveland, Butler, Oldham, and Marvell, or even of men whose high rank did not soften their style, — Rochester, Doi-set, Mulgrave. In Dryden there was, for the first time, a poignancy of wit which atones for his severity, and a discretion even in his taunts, which made them more cuttina;. 40. The Medal, which is in some measure a continuation Mac Fleck- of Absalom and Achitophel, since it bears wholly on ^°^- Shaftesbury, is of unequal merit, and, on the whole, falls much below the former. In Mac Flecknoe, his satire on his rival Shadwell, we must allow for the inferiority of the subject, which could not bring out so much of Dryden's higher powers of mind ; but scarcely one of his poems is more perfect. Johnson, who admired Dryden almost as much as he could any one, has yet, from his proneness to critical censure, very much exaggerated the poet's defects. " His faults of negli- gence are beyond recital. Such is the unevenness of his compositicns, that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed." Tins might be true, or more nearly true, of other poets of ftie seventeenth century. Ten good consecutive lines will, perhaps, rarely be found, except in Denham, Davenant, and Waller. But it CflAP. V. THE HIND AND PANTHER. 236 seems a great exaggeration as to Drydeii. I would particu- larly instance ]\Iac Flecknoe as a poem of" about four hundred lines, in which no one will be condemned as weak or negli- gent, thotigli three or four are rather too ribaldrous for onr taste. Tiierc are also passages, much exceeding ten lines, in Absalom and Achitophel, as well as in the later works, the Fables, which excite in the reader none of the shame for tlie jtoet's carelessness with which Johnson has furnished him. 41. The argvmientative talents of Dryden appear, more or less, in the greater part of his poetry : reason in .pj^^ m^^ rhyme was his peculiar delight, to which he seems ami to escape from tlie mere excursions of fancy. And it is remarkable that he reasons better and more closely iu poetry tlian in prose. His productions more exclusively rea- soning are the Religio Laici, and the Hind and Panther. The latter is every way an extraordinary poem. It was written in the hey-day of exultation, by a recent proselyte to a winning side as he dreamed it to be, by one who never spared a Aveaker foe, nor repressed his triumph with a dignified moderation. A year was hardly to elapse before he exchanged this fulness of pride for an old age of disappointment and poverty. Yet then, too, his genius w^as unquenched, and even his satire was not less severe. 42. The first lines in the Ilind and Panther are justly reputed among the most musical in our language ; it., singular and perhaps we observe their rhythm the better ^■'■^^^• because it does not gain much by the sense : for the allegory and the fable are seen, even in this commencement, to be awk- wardly blended. Yet notwithstanding tlieir evident inco- herence!, which sometimes leads to the verge of absurdity, and the facihty they give to ridicule, I am not sure that Dryden was wrong in choosing this singular fiction. It was his aim to bring ibrward an old argument in as novel a style as he could" a dialogue between a priest and a parson would have made but a dull poem, even if it had contained some of the excellent paragraphs we read in the Hind and Pautlier. It is the grotesqueness and originality of the fable that give this poem its peculiar zest, of which uo reader, I conceive, is insensible ; and it is also by this means that Dryden has con- trived to relieve his reasoning by sliort but Ijeautitul touches of desciiption, such as the sudden stream of light from heaven 236 FABLES OF DRYDEN Part IV. wliich announces the victory of Sedgmoor near the end of the second book.^ 43. The wit in the Hind and Panther is sharp, ready, and Its reason- pleasant; the reasoning is sometimes admirably close '"S- aud strong ; it is the energy of Bossuet in verse. I do not know that the main argument of the Roman Church could be better stated : all that has been well said for tra- dition and authority, all that serves to expase the inconsist- encies of a vacillating Protestantism, is in the Hind's mouth. It is such an answer as a candid man shoidd admit to any doubts of Dryden's sincerity. He who could argue as power- fully as the Hind may well be allowed to have thought him- self in the right. Yet he could not forget a few bold thoughts of his more sceptical days ; and such is his bias to sarcasm, that he cannot restrain himself from reflections on kings and priests when he is most contending for them." 44. The Fables of Dryden, or stories modernized from Boccaccio and Chaucer, are at this day probably the most read and the most popular of Dryden's poems. They contain passages of so mvich more im}u-essive beauty, and are altogether so far more adapted to general sympath}'^, than those we have mentioned, that I should not hesitate to concur in this judgment. Yet Johnson's accusation of negli- gence is better supported by these than by the earlier poems. Whether it were that age and misfortune, though they had not impaired the poet's vigor, had rendered its continual exertion more wearisome, or, as is perhaps the better supposition, he reckoned an easy style, sustained above prose, in some places, rather by metre than expression, more fitted to narra- tion, we find much which might appear slovenly to critics of Johnson's temper. The latter seems, in fact, to have con- ceived, like Milton, a theory, that good writing, at least in verse, is never either to follow the change of fashion, or to sink into familiar phrase ; and that any deviation from this rigor should be branded as low and colloquial. But Dryden wrote on a different [dan. He thought, like Ariosto, and like Chaucer himself, whom he had to improve, that a story, 1 [I am indebted to a distinguislicd The priest continues what the nurse be- fiiend for the explanation of this line, g;in, which T had uiisiiiidcrstood. — liSriS] Autl tlms the ohild imposes on the ' " By I'ducatinn most havt; lu'i'n iiiislod ; man." — I'lirt iii. So thfiy believe because they so were " Call you tlu^! backing of your friends ? " bred bis new allies might have said CUAP. V. ALEXANDER'S FEAST- VIRGIL. 237 especially when not heroic, should be told in eaay and flowing lunguaj^e, without too much difference from that of prose ; rely- inw ou liis harmony, liis occasional inversions, and his concealed skTu 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 liis contemporaries ; and though this has in many cases now be- come insufferably vulgai', and in others looks like affectation, we should make some allowance for the times in condemning it. This last blemish, liowever, is not much imputable to the Fables. Their beauties are innumerable; yet few are very well chosen : some, as Guiscard and Sigismuuda, he has injured through coarseness of mind, which neither yeare nor religion had purified ; and we want in all the power over emotion, the charm of sympathy, the skilful arrangement and selection of circumstance, which narrative poetry claims as its highest graces. 45. Dryden's fame as a lyric poet depends a very little on his Ode on J\Irs. Killigrew's death, but almost entire- lusOdes: ly on that for St. Cecilia's Day, commonly called ^^^''"^^"^ Alexander's Feast. The former, which is much '''^ ' praised by Johnson, has a few fine lines, mingled with a far greater number ill conceived and ill expressed: the whole composition has that spirit which Dryden liardly ever wanted but it is too faulty for high praise. The latter used to pass for the best work of Dryden, and the best ode in the language. Many Avould now agree with me, that it is neither one nor the other, and that it was rather overrated during a period when criticism was not at a high point. Its beauties, indeed, are undeniable ; it has the raciness, the rapidity, the mastery of language, which belong to Dryden ; the transitions are ani- mated, the contrasts effective. But few lines are highly poeti- cal, and some sink to the level of a common drinking song, It has the defects as well as the merits of that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment. 46. Of Dryden as a translator, it is needless to say much. In some instances, as in an ode of Horace, he has „■„ tj,^„^ done extremely well; but his Virgil is, in my ap- !;}.'^°1|°^ prehension, the least snc-essful of his chief works. Lines of consummate excellence are frequently shot, like threads of gold, through the web ; but the general texture is of an ordinary material. Dryden was little fitted for a trans- 238 MINOR POETS. Part TV. lator of Virgil : his mind was more rapid and vehement than that of his original, but hy far less elegant and judicions. This translation seems to have been made in haste : it is more negligent than an)- of his own poetry ; and the style is often almost studiously, and, as it were, s})itefully vulgar. 47. Tiic supremacy of Dryden from the death of Milton in Decline of 1^74 to liis own in 1700 was not only nnapproaclied poetry by any Englisli poet, but heiield almost a complete liestorJ monopoly of English poetry. This latter period of tion. ^l^Q seventeenth century, setting aside these t\TO great names, is dhe remarkably sterile in poetical genius. Under the first Stuarts, men of warm imagination and sensi- bility, though with deficient taste and Ihtle command of lan- guage, had done some honor 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 kindred minds full as nuich as they deserve. The versifiers of Charles II. and William's days have experienced the ojipo- site fate : popular for a time, and long so lar known, at least by name, as to have entered ratlier largely into collections of poetry, they are now held in no regard, nor do they claim much favor from just criticism. Their object in general was to Avrite like men of tlie world, — with ease, wit, sense, and spirit, but dreading any soaring of fancy, any ardor of moral emotion, as the probable source of ridicule in their readers. Nothing quenches the flame of poetry more than this fear of the prosaic multitude, — unless it is the community of habits with this very multitude, a life such as these poets generally led, of taverns and brothels, or, what came much to the same, of the court. We cannot say of Dryden, that " he bears no traces of those sable streams ; " they sully too much the plumage of that stately swan : but his indomitable genius car- ries him upwards to a purer empyrean. The rest are just distinguisliable from one another, not by any high gifts of the muse, but by degrees of spirit, of ease, of poignancy, of skill and harmony in versification, of good sense and acuteness. They may easily be disposed of. Cleveland is sometimes humorous, but succeeds only in the lightest kinds of poetry. Some minor J^Iarvcll wrotc sometimes with more taste and feeling poets enu- than was usual ; but his satires are gross and stupid, mcratfd. Qldham, far superior in this respect, ranks perhaps next to Dryden : he is spirited and pointed ; but his vcrsidca- CuAP. V. GARTH'S DISPENSARY. 239 tion is too negli.cjent, and liis subjects temporary. Roscom- mon, one of the bc?t for harmony and correctness of language, lias little vigor, but he never otfends ; and Pope has justly praised his " unsjiotted bays." JMuIgrave affects case and spirit; but his Essay on Satire belies the supjiosition that Di-yden had any share in it. Rochester, endowed by nature •with more considerable and vai'ied genius, might have raised himself to a higher jilacc than he holds. Of Otway, Duke, and several more, it is not worth while to give any cliaracter. The Revolution did nothing for poetiy. AVilliani's reign, always excepting Dryden, is our nadir in ^vorks of imagina- tion. Then came J^lackmore with his epic poems of Prince Arthur and King Arthur, and Pomfret with his Choice, both popular in their own age, and both intolerable, by their frigid and tame monotony, in the next. The ligliter poetry, mean- time, of song and epigram, did not sink along witli the serious : 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 Cai'oline period. 48. In the year 1G99, a poem was published, Garth's Dis- pensary, which deserves attention, not so much for its own merit, though it comes nearest to Dryden, at whatever inter- val, as from its indicating a transitional state in our versifi- cation. The general structure of the couplet through the seventeenth century may be called abnormous : the sense is not only often carried beyond the second line, Avhich the French avoid, but the second line of one couplet and the first of the next 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. The former, when as dexterously managed as it was by Dryden, adds much to the beauty of the general versification ; but the latter, a sort of adultery of the lines already wedded to other companions at rhyme's altar, can scarcely ever be pleasing, unless it be in narrative poetry, where it may bring the sound nearer to prose. A tendency, however, to the French rule, of constantly terminating the sense Avith the couplet, will be perceived to have increased from the Restoration. Roscommon seldom deviates from it ; and, in long passages of Dryden himself, there will hardly bo found an exception. But perhaps it had not been so uniform in any former production as in the Dispensary. The versifi- cation of this once-famous mock-heroic poem is smooth and 240 LATIN POETS OF ITALY — CEVA. Part IV. regular, but not forcible ; the language clear and neat ; the parodies and allusions happy. Many lines are excellent in the way of pointed application ; and some are remembered and quoted, where few call to mind the author. It has been remarked, that Garth enlarged and altered the Dispensary in almost every edition ; and, what is more uncommon, that every alteration was for the better. This poem may be called an imitation of the Lutrin, injxsmuch as, but for the Lutrin, it might probably not have been written ; and there are even paj-ticular resemblances. The subject, which is a quarrel between the physicians and apothecaries of London, may vie with that of Boileau iu want of general interest ; yet it seems to afford more diversity to the satirical poet. Garth, as has been observed, is a link of transition between the style and turn of poetry under Charles and ^yilliam, and that we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Pope, during the reign of Anne. Sect. IV. — Ox Latin Poetry. 49. The Jesuits were not unmindful of the credit their Latin poets Latin verses had done them in periods more favora- of Italy. ]j\(, iq j_^jf|f exercise of taste than the present. Even in Italy, which had ceased to be a very genial soil, one of their number, Ceva, may deserve mention. His Jesus Puer is a long poem, not inelegantly written, but rather singular in some of its descriptions, where the poet has been more solicitous to adorn his subject than attentive to its proper character ; and the same objection might be made to some of its episodes. Ceva wrote also a philosophical poem, extolled by Corniani, but which has not fallen into my hands.* Averani, a Florentine of various erudition, Cappellari, Stroz- zi, author of a poem on chocolate, and several others, both within the order of Loyola and without it, cultivated Latin poetry with some success.- But, though some might be supe- ,. rior as poets, none were more remarkable or tamoua than bergardi, best known by some bituig satircb under the name of Q. Sectanus, which he levelled at lus per- > Corniani. viii. 2U ; Salfi, xiv. 257. ^ Bibl. ChoLsie, vol. xxii. ; Salfi, xiv. 233, et post. Chap. V. LATIN FOETS OF FRANCE - MENAGE. 241 sonal enemy, Gravina. The reputation, indeed, of Gravina with posterity has not been affected by such libels ; but they are not wanting either in poignancy and spirit, or in a coai- maiid of Latin phrase.' 50. Tiie superiority of France in Latin verse was no longer contested by Holland or Germany. Several poets or France: of real merit belong to this period. The first in Qui"c'- time was Claude -Quillet, who, in his Callipaxlia, bears the Latinized name of Leti. This is written with much elegance of style and a very harmonious versification. No writer has a more Virgilian cadence. Though inferior to Sammartha- nus, he may be reckoned high among the French poets. He has been reproached with too open an exposition of some parts of his subject ; which applies only to the second book. oL The Latin poems of Menage are not unpleasing: he has indeed no great fire or originality ; but the har- ^^^^^^^_ monious couplets glide over the ear, and the mind is pleased to recognize the tessellated fragments of Ovid and Tibullus. His affected passion for Mademoiselle Lavergne, and lamentations about her cruelty, are ludicrous enough, when we consider the character of the man, as Yadius in the Femmes Savantes of Moliei-e. They are perfect models of want of truth ; but it is a Avant of truth to nature, not to the conventional forms of modern Latin verse. 52. A far superior performance is the poem on gardens by the Jesuit Rene Rapin. For skill in varying and Kapinon adorning his subject, for a truly Virgilian spirit in earJens. expression, for the exclusion of feeble, prosaic, or awkward lines, he may perhaps be equal to any poet, to Sammarthanus, or to Sannazarius himself. His cadences are generally very gratifying to the ear ; and, in this respect, he is much above Vida.- But his subject, or his genius, has prevented him from rising very high : he is the poet of gardens ; and what 1 Salfi. xiv. 299 ; Corniani, viii. 280. Is mibi contingat vestro de muneve ramus, - As tlie poem of Ilapiu is not in tlie Unde saeri quando velaut sua tempura bands of every one wlio lias taste for l^tin vates, poetry, I will give as a specimen the in- Ipse ot amcm meritam capiti imposuisse troduction to the second book ; — coronam. " Me nemora atque omnls nemorum pul- Jam se cautanti frondosa cacumina quer ni^rlnnh^'ndn^, l.ti- fnndanda »or Inclinant. plauduntquc comis nemora olt* coruscis. Et. spatia umbrandum late fundanda per mviUntT^ortis nam si florentibus um- IP^'^ °"'» l"*'" fr^'"""' ^s«°s"1«« bra cundo .,, .. ,. J •» i- • K totis itlausura resnonsat Gallia Silvia Ibfaent rehquo deent sua gratia run. i^r" /..l-i.^^ .„a Ln«.t r.lamo™ Cit Vos grande.s luci et silvas aspirate ca- neuti ; vor- IV 16 Nee me deinde suo teneat clamore Citlta^ von. 242 LATEST POETS OF FRANCE — RAPIN. Part TV gardens are to nature, that is lie to mightier poets. There is also too monotonous a repetition of nearly the same images, as in his long enumeration of tlowcrs in the first hook : the descriptions are separately good, and great artifice is shown iu varying them ; hut the variety could not he sufficient to remove the general sameness that helongs to an horticultural catalogue, Rapin was a great admirer of hox and all topiary- works, or trees cut into artificial forms. 53. The first book of the Gardens of Eapin is on flowens, the second on trees, the third on waters, and the fourth on fruits. The poem is of ahout 3,000 lines, sustained with equable dignity. All kinds of graceful associations are min- gled with the description of his flowers, in the fanciful style of Ovid and Darwin : the violet is lanthis, Avho lurked in val- leys to shun the love of Apollo, and stained her face with purple to preserve her chastity ; the rose is Rhodanthe, proud of her beauty, and worshipped by the people in the place of Diana, but changed by the indignant Apollo to a tree ; while the populace, who had adored her, are converted into her thorns; and her chief lovers, into snails and butterflies. A tendency to conceit is perceived iu Rapin, as in the two poets to whom we have just compared him. Thus, in some pretty lines, he supposes Nature to have "tried her 'prentice hand" in making a convolvulus before she ventured upon a lily.^ 54. In Rapin there will generally be remarked a certain redundancy, which fastidious critics might call tautology of expression. But this is not uncommon in Virgil. The Geor- gics have rarely been more happily imitated, especially in their didactic parts, than by Rapin in the Gardens: but he has not the high flights of his prototype ; his digressions are short, and belong closely to the subject ; we have no plague, no civil war, no Plurydice. If he praises Louis XIV., it is more as the founder of the Garden of Versailles than as the conqueror of Flanders ; though his concluding lines emulate, Mjenalanuo Arcadicis toties lustrata dca- One or two words in tlipse lines are not )i„s, strictly enirect ; but they are highly Vir- Non l)o(iona>i saltiis, silvacquc Molorchi, gilian, botli iu manner and rhytlim. Aut nit;ris late ilicilius neniorosa Calydne, i u Ktturunipis hunium,etuuilto tc flore Et « •^ • ^ • ^ Spanish of Delfino, afterwards Patriarch ot Aquileia, which drama. ^^.^ estecmcd among the best, were possibly written before the middle of the century, and Avere not published till after its termination. The Corradino of Caraccio, in 1694, was also valued at the time.^ Nor can Spain arrest us lon'^er : the school of Calderon in national comedy extended no doubt beyond the death of Philip IV. in 1G65, and many of his own religious pieces are of as late a date : nor were names wholly wanting, which are said to merit remembrance, in the feeble reign of Charles II. ; but they must be left for such as make a particular study of Spanish literature." We are called to a nobler stage. 2. Corneille belongs in his glory to the earlier period of „ . , this century;' though his inferior tragedies, more first numerous than the better, would fall withm the tragedies, j.^j^,^. Fontencllc, indeed, as a devoted admirer, attributes considerable merit to those whicli the general voice botli of critics and of the public had condemned.^ Meantime, another luminary arose on the opposite side of the horizon. The first tragedy of Jean Racine, Lcs Freres Ennemis, was » Walker's JMomoir on Italian Tragedy, do Fontenelle, iii. 111. St. Evremond also p 201 : Siilfi. xii. 57 despised the French public for not admir- 2 Bouterwck •"!? "^^ Sophonisbe of Corneille, which he » Uist. du Th6ati« Francois, in (Euvres had made too Roman for their taste. Cn-vr. VI. EACINE - ANDROMaQUE. 245 rcpresenled in 1664, when he was twenty-five years of age It is so far below his great works as to be scarcely mentioned, yet does not want indications of the genius they were to dis- play. Alexandre, in IG60, raised the young poet to more distinction. It is said that he showed this tragedy lo Cor- neille, who praised his versification, but advised him to a^oid a i)ath which he was not fitted to tread. It is acknowledged by the advocates of Racine, that the chanicters are feebly drawn, and that the conqueror of Asia sinks to the level of a hero in one of those romances of gallantry which had vitiated the taste of France. 8. The glory of Racine commenced with the representation of his Andromaque in 1G67, which was not printed Andro- (ill the end of the following year. He was now at '"'»fi"«- once compared with Corneille, and the scales long continued to oscillate. Criticism, satire, epigrams, were unsparingly launched against the rising poet. But his rival pursued the worst jiolicy by obstinately writing bad tragedies. The public naturally compare the present with the present, and ibrget the past. When he gave them Pertharite, they were dispensed from looking back to Cinna. It is acknowledged even by Fontenelle, that, during the height of Racine's fame, tlie world placed him at least on an equality witli his predecessor ; a decision from which that critic, the relation and friend of Corneille, appeals to what he takes to be the verdict of a later age. 4. Tlic Andromaque was sufficient to show, that Racine had more skill in the management of a plot, in the display of emotion, in power over the sympathy of the spectator, at least where the gentler feelings are concerned, in beauty and grace of style, in all except nobleness of character, strength of thought, and impetuosity of language. He took his fable from Euripides, but changed it according to the requisitions of the French theatre and of French manners. Some of these changes are for the better, as the substitution of Asty anax for an unknown IMolossns of the Greek tragedian, the snpposed son of Andromache by Pyrrhus. "Most of those," says Racine himself very justlv, " who have heard of Andromache, know her only as the widow of Hector and the mother of Astyanax. They cannot reconcile themselves to her loving another husband and another son." And he lias finely improved this happy idea of preserving Astyanax, by ^46 RACINE— BRITANiSnCUS. Part IV making the Greeks, jealous of his name, send an embassy by Orestes to demand his life ; at once deepening the interest and developing tlie plot. 5. The female characters, Andromache and Hermione, are di-awn with all Racine's delicate perception of ideal beauty : the *»ne, indeed, prepared for his hand by those great mastei-s in whose school he had disciplined his own gifts of nature, — Homer, Euripides, Virgil ; the other more original and more full of dramatic effect. It was, as we are told, the fme acting of Mademoiselle de Champmele in tliis part, genei-ally reck- oned one of the most dilficult on the French stage, which secured the success of the play. Racine, after the iirst repre- sentation, threw himself at her feet in a transport of gi-ati- tude, which was soon changed to love. It is more easy to censure some of the other characters. Pyrrhus is bold, haughty, passionate, the true son of Achilles, except where he appears as the lover of Andromache. It is inconceivable and truly ridiculous, that a Greek of the heroic age, and such a Greek as Pyrrhus is represented by tliose whose imagina- tion has given him existence, should feel the respectful passion towards his captive which we might reasonably expect in the romances of chivalry, or should express it in the tone of conventional gallantry that suited the court of Versailles. But Orestes is far worse : love-mad, and yet talking in gallant conceits, cold and polite, he discredits the poet, the tragedy, and the son of Agamemnon himself. It is better to kill one's mother than to utter such trash. In hinting that the previous madness of Orestes was for the love of Hermione, Racine has presumed too much on the ignorance, and too much on the bad taste, of his audience. But far more injudicious is his fantastic remorse and the supposed vision of the Furies in the last scene. It is astonishing that Racine should have challenged comparison Avith one of the most celebrated scenes of Euripides in circumstances that deprived him of the pos- sibility of rendering his own effective. For the style of the Andromaqiie, it abounds with grace and beauty; but there are, to my apprehension, more insipid and feeble lines, and a more effeminate tone, than in liis later tragedies. G. Britannicus appeared in 1GG9; and, in this admirable Britanni- phiy, Racine first sliowed that lie did not depend on *"^* the tone of gallantry usual among his couitly liear- ers, nor on the languid sympathies that it excites. Terror Chai'. VI RACIXE — BRITANNICUS. 247 and pity, ilic twin-spints of trajrpfly, to whom Aristotle has assigned the great moral otlice of purifying the passions, are called forth in their shadowy forms to sustain the consummate beauties of his diction. His subject was original and happy ; with that historic truth which usage required, and that poeti- cal probability which fills up the outline of historic truth without disguising it. What can be more entirely dramatic, what more terrible in the sense that Aristotle means (that is, the spectator's sympathy with the dangers of the innocent) than the absolute master of the woi-ld, like the veiled prophet of Khorasan, throwing off tlie appearances of virtue, and standing out at once in the maturity of enormous guilt ? A presaging gloom, like that which other poets have sought by the hackneyed artitices of superstition, hangs over the scenes of this tragedy, and deepens at its close. We sympathize by turns with the guilty alarms of Agrippina, the virtuous consternation of Burrhus, the virgin modesty of Junia, the unsuspecting ingenuousness of Britannicus. Few tragedies on the French stage, or indeed on any stage, save those of Shakspeare, display so great a variety of contrasted charac- ters. None, indeed, are ineffective, except the confidante of Agrippina; for Narcissus is very far from being the mere confidant of Nero : he is, as in history, his preceptor in crime; and his cold villany is well contrasted with the fierce passion of the despot. The criticisms of Fontenelle and others on small incidents in the plot, such as the concealment of Nero behind a curtain that he may hear the dialogue between Junia and Britannicus, which is certainly more fit for comedy,' ought not to weigh against such excellence as Ave find in all the more essential requisites of a tragic drama, llacine had much improved his language since Andromaque ; the conventional phraseology about flames and fine eyes, though not wholly relinquished, is less frequent ; and if he has not here reached, as he never did, the peculiar impetuosity of Corneille, nor given to his Romans the grandeur of his predecessor's conception, he is full of lines wlierein, as evex-y word is effective, tliere can hardly be any deficiency of vigor. It is the vigor indeed of Virgil, not of Lucan. 7. In one passage, Racine has, I think, excelled Shak speare. They have botli taken the same idea from Plularcli. The lines of Shakspeare are in Antony and Cleopatra : — * It is, however, taken from Tacitus. 248 RACINE— BERENICE— BA J AZET. Part JV " Thy demon, that's the spirit that keeps thee, 13 Noble, courageous, high, uumatdiable, A^'here Cresar's is not ; but, near liini, thy angel tecomes a fear, as being o'erpowered." Tlicse are, to my apprehension, not very forcible, and ob?cure even lo those wlio know, what many do not, that by "a fear" lie meant a common goblin, a supernatural being of a more plebeian rank than a demon or angel. The single verse of l?acinc is magnificent: — " Mon genie ctonne tremble devant Ic sien." 8. Berenice, the next tragedy of Racine, is a surprising proof of what can be done by a great master ; but it must be admitted that it wants many of the essential qualities that are required in the drama. It might almost be compared with Timon of Athens, by the absence of fable and movement. For nobleness and delicacy of sentiment, for grace of style, 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 of Racine, unless perliaps we except Athalie, in which the story presents an evident moral ; but no poet is more uniformly moral in his sentiments. Corneille, to whom the want of dramatic fable was never any great ob- jection, attempted the subject of Berenice about the same time with far inferior success. It required what lie could not give, — the picture of two hearts struggling against a noble and a l)lameless love. 9. It was unfortunate for Racine, that he did not more fre- quently break through the prejudices of the French ajaze . tiigj^tj-g jj^ fj^vor of cUissical subjects. A field was open of almost boundless extent, — the mediaeval history of Europe, and especially of France herself His predecessor had been too successful in the C'id to leave it doubtful whether an audience would approve such an innovation at the hands of a favored tragedian. Racine, however, did not ven- ture on a step, which, in the next century, Voltaire turned so much to account, and which made the fortune of some inferior tragedies. But considering the distance of place equivalent, for tlie ends of the drama, to that of time, he founded on an event in the Turkish history, not more than thirty years old, liis next tragedy, that of Bajazet. The greater part indeed of the fiible is due to his own invention. Bajazet is reckoned to fall below most of his other ti-agedics in beauty of style: Chap. VI. RACINE — MITIIPJDATE. 249 but the fiible is well connected ; there is a great deal of movement ; and an iinintermitting interest is sustained by Bajazet and Atalide, two of tlie noblest characters tluit Ra- cine has drawn. Atalide has not tlie ingenuous simplicity of Junie, but displays a more dramatic flow of sentiment, and not less dignity or tenderness of soul. The character of Rox- aue is conceived with truth and spirit ; nor is the resemblance some have found in it to that of Ilermione greater than be- longs to lijrms of the same type. Acomat, the vizier, is more a favorite with the French critics ; but, in such parts, Racine does not rise to the level of Corneille. No poet is less ex- posed to the imputation of bombastic exaggeration : yet, in the two lines with which Acomat concludes the fourth act, there is at least an approach to burlesque ; and one can hardly say that they would have been out of place in Tom Thumb : — " Mourons, moi, cher Osmin, commc un vizir, et toi, Comuie le favorl d'un homme tel que moi." 10. The next tragedy was Mithridate ; and, in this, Racine has been thought to have wrestled against Corneille on his own ground, the display of the unconquerable mind of a liei-o. We find in the part of Mithridate a great depth of thought, in compressed and energetic language. But, unlike the masculine characters of Corneille, he is not mei-ely sententious. Racine introduces no one for the sake of the speeches he has to utter. In Mithridates he took what history has delivered to us, blending with it no improbable fiction according to the manners of the East. His love for Monime has nothing in it exti'aordinary, or unlike what we4*iiglit expect from the king of Pontus; it is a fierce, a jealous, a vindictive love : the necessities of the French language alone, and the usages of the French theatre, could make it appear feeble. His two sous are naturally less effect- ive ; but tlie loveliness of Monime yields to no female cha- racter of Rai'ine. There is something not quite satisfactory in the stratagems which INIithridates employs to draw from her a confession of her love for his son. They are not un- congenial to the historic character, but, according to ouf chivalrous standard of heroism, seem derogatory to the poeti- cal. 11. Iphigenie followed in 1G74. In this, Racine had again to contend with Euripides in one of his mo3t celebrated tra 250 RACINE -IPIIIG^NIE- Part 17 gedies. He had even, in the character of Acliilles, to con- tend, not with Homer himself, yet 'with the Homeric p genio. rjggQ(,i^{iQ,^3 familiar to every classical scholar. The love, in fact, of Achilles, and his politeness towards Clytem- nestra, are not exempt ti-om a tone of gallantry a little repug- nant to our conception of his manners. Yet the Achilles of Homer is neither incapable of love nor of courtesy, so that there is no essential repugnance to his character. That of Il)higenia in Euripides has been censured by Ai-istotle as in- consistent ; her extreme distress at the first prospect of death being followed by an unusual display of courage. Hurd hag taken upon him the defence of the Greek tragedian, and observes, after Brumoy, that the Iphigenia of Racine, being modelled rather according to the comment of Aristotle than the example of Euripides, is so much the worse.^ But his apology is too subtle, and requires too long reflection, for the ordinary spectator ; and, though Shakspeare might have managed the transition of feeling with some of his wonder- ful knowledge of human nature, it is certainly presented too crudely by Euripides, and much in the style which I have elsewhere observed to be too usual with our old dramatists. The Iphigenia of Racine is not a character, like those of Shakspeare, and of him, perhaps, alone, which nothing less than intense meditation can develop to the reader, but one which a good actress might compass, and a common spectator understand. Racine, like most other tragedians, wrote for the stage : Shakspeare aimed at a point beyond it, and some- times too much lost sight of what it requii-ed. 12. Several critics have censured the part of Eriphile. Yet Fontenelle, pi-ejudiced as he was against Racine, admits that it is necessary for the catastrophe ; though he cavils, I think, against her appearance in the earlier pai-t of the play, laying down a rule, by which our own tragedians would not have chosen to be tried, and which teems far too rigid, that the necessity of the secondary characters should be perceived from their lirst api)earance.- The question for Racine wa^, in what manner he should manage the catastrophe. The fabu lous truth, the actual sacrifice of Iphigenia, was so revolting to the mind, that even Euripides tliought himself obliged to depart from it. But this he effected by a contrivance imp(% * Hurd's Commentary on Horace, vol. i ' Reflexions sur la Vo'iti (ue ; (Euttm d« p. 116 FoutencUe, vol. iii. p. 149 Chap. VI. RACINE — PHEDKE — ESTHER. 251 siblc on the French stage, and which would have changed Racine's tragedy to a common melodrame. It appears to me that he very happily substituted the character of Eriphile, wlio, as Fontenelle well says, is the hind of tlie fable ; and wliose impetuous and somewhat disorderly passions both fur- nish a contrast to the ideal nobleness of Iphigenia throughout the tragedy, and i-econcik; us to her own fate at the close. 13. Once more, in Pliedre, did the great disciple of Euri- pides attempt to surpass liis master. In both tra- j,^^^^ gedies, the character of Phaidra herself throws into shade all the others; but with this important difference, that in Euripides her death occurs about tiie middle of the piece, while she continues in Racine till the conclusion. The French poet has borrowed much from the Greek, more, perhaps, than in any former drama, but has surely heightened the interest, and produced a more splendid work of genius. I have never read the particular criticism in which Schlegel has endeavored to elevate the Hippolytus above the Phedre. Many, even among French critics, have objected to the love of Hip- polytus for Aricia, by which Racine has deviated from the older mythological tradition, though not without the authority of Virgil. But we are hardly tied to all the circumstance of fable ; and tlie cold young huntsman loses nothing in the eyes of a modern reader by a virtuous attachment. This tragedy is said to be more open to verbal criticism than the Iphigenie ; but in poetical beauty I do not know that Racine has ever surpassed it. The description of the death of Hip- polytus is, perhaps, his masterpiece. It is true, that, according to the practice of our own stage, long descriptions, especially in elaborate language, are out of use ; but it is not, at least, for the advocates of Euripides to blame them. 14. The Phedre was represented in 1G77; and, after this, its illustrious author seemed to renounce the stage. ^ ^^ His increasing attachment to the Jansenists made it almost impossible, with any consistency, to promote an amuse- ment which they anathematized. But he was induced, after many years, in 1689, by Madame de Maintenon, to wriU Esther for the purpose of representation by the young ladiei whose education she protected at St. Cyr. Esther, though very much praised for beauty of language, is admitted to pos- sess little merit as a drama. Much, indeed, could not be expected in the cii-cumstances. It was acted at St. Cyr: 252 RACIXE — ATHALIE. Part IV Louis applauded, and it is said that the Prince de Conde wept. The greatest praise of Esther is, that it encouraged its author to write Athalie. Once more restored to AthaUe. di-aniatic conceptions, iiis genius revived from sleep with no loss of the vigor of yesterday. He was even more in Athalie than in Ipiiigenie and Britannicus. This great work, published in 1G91, with a royal prohibition to represent it on any theatre, stands, by general consent, at the head of all tlie tragedies of Racine, for the grandeur, simplicity, and interest of the fable ; for dramatic terror ; for theatrical effect ; for clear and judicious management; for bold and forcible, rather than subtle, delmeation of character; for sublime senti- ment and imagery. It equals, if it does not, as I should incline to think, surpass, all the rest in the perfection of style ; and is far more free from every defect, especially from feeble politeness and gallantry, which of coui-se the subject could not admit. It has been said that he himself gave the preference to Phedre; l)ut it is more extraordinary that not only his enemies, of whom there were many, but the public itself, was for some years incapable of discovering the merit of Athalie. Boileau declared it to be a masterpiece ; and one can only be astonished that any could have thought differently from Boi- leau. It doubtless gained much in general esteem when it came to be represented by good actors ; for no tragedy in the French language is more peculiarly fitted for the stage. 15. The chorus, which he had previously introduced in Esther, was a very bold innovation (for the revival of what is forgotten must always be classed as innovation) ; and it re- quired all the skill of Racine to prevent its appearing in our eyes an impertinent excrescence. But though we do not, perhaps, wholly reconcile ourselves to some of the songs, which too much suggest, by association, the Italian opera, the chorus of Athalie enhances the interest as well as the splendoi of the tragedy. It was, indeed, more full of action and scenie pomp than any he had written, and probably than any other which up to that time had been represented in France. The part of Athalie predominates, but not so as to eclipse the rest. The high-priest .load is drawn with a stern zeal, admi- rably dramatic, and without which the idolatrous queen would have trampled down all beibre her daring the conduct of th« fable, whatever jusuce miglit have ensued at the last. We feel this want of an adequate resistance t< triumphant crime Chap. VI, COMPARED WITH COKNLILLB. 253 in the Rodogune of Comeille. No character appears super- tJuous or feeble : wliile the plot has all the simplicity of the Greek stage, it has all the movement and continual excitation of the modern. IG. Tlie female characters of Racine are of the greatest beauty : thoy have the ideal grace and harmony of naei„e-s ancient sculpture, and bear somewhat of the same fertinence8 of useless, often perverse morality, the extinction, by bad management, of the sympathy that had been raised in the earlier part of a play, the foolish alternation of repartees in a series of single lines, will never be found in Racine. But, when we look only at the highest excellences of Euripides, there is, perhaps, a depth of pathos and an intensity of dra- matic effect which Racine himself has not attained. The difference between the energy and sweetness of the two languages is so important in the comparison, that I shall give even this preference with some hesitation. 18. The style of Racine is exquisite. Perhaps he is second Beauty of Only to Virgil among all poets. But I will give the his style, pvaise of this in the words of a native critic: "His expression is always so happy and so natural, that it seems as if no other could have been found ; and every word is placed in such a manner, that we cannot fancy any other place to have suited it as well. The structure of his style is such that nothing could be displaced, nothing added, nothing retrenched: it is one unalterable whole. Even his incorrectnesses are often but sacrifices required by good taste ; nor would any thincr be more difficult than to write over again a line of Racine. No one has enriched the language Avith a greater number of turns of phrase ; no one is bold with more lelicity and discretion, or figurative with more grace and propriety ; no one has handled with more command an idiom often rebel- lious, or with more skill an instrument always difficult ; no one has better understood that delicacy of style which must not be mistaken for feebleness, and is, in fact, but that air of ease which conceals from the reader the labor of the work and the artifices of the composition; or better managed the variety of cadences, the resoui-ces of rhythm, the association^ and de- duction of ideas. In short, if we consider that his jieHection in these resjjects may be opposed to that of Virgil, and that he spoke a language less ffexible, less poetical, and less harmoni- ous, we shall readily believe that Racine is, of all mankind, the one to whom nature has given the greatest talent for vei-sification." ' 19. Thomas, the younger and far inferior brother of Pierre Conieille, was yet by the fertility of his pen, by the success ' La Uarpe, Eloge de Ilacinc, as quoted by himself in Cours de Litterature, vol li. Chap. VI. THOMAS CORNEILLE — LA FOSSE. 255 of some of his tragedies, and by a certain reputation which two of them have acquii-ed, the next name, but at xhomas a vast interval, to Racine. Vohaire says he woukl cwnviue: have enjoyed a great reputation but for that of his brother ; one of those pointed sayings which seem to convey Boniothing, but are really devoid of meaning. Thomas Cor- neille is never compared with his brother ; and ]irobably his brother has been rather serviceable to his name with posterity than otherwise. He Avrote with more purity, according to the French critics; and it must be owned, that, in his Ariane, he has given to love a tone more passionate and natural than the manly scenes of the older tragedian ever present. Thi? is esteemed his best work ; but it depends wholly on the prin cipal character, whose tenderness and injuries excite our sympathy, and from whose lips many lines of great beauty flow. It may be compared with the Berenice of Racine, represented but a short time before : there is enough of re- semblance in the fables to provoke comparison. That of Thomas Corneille is more tragic, less destitute of theatriea movement, and consequently better chosen; but such relative praise is of little value, where none can be given, in this I'espect, to the object of comparison. We feel that the ])rose romance is the proper sphere for the display of an affection, neither untrue to nature, nor unworthy to move the heart, but wanting the majesty of the tragic muse. An etieminacy uncongenial to tragedy belongs to this play ; and the termi- nation, where the heroine faints away instead of dying, is someAvhat insipid. The only other tragedy of the younger Corneille that can be mentioned is the Earl of Essex. In this he has taken greater liberties with history than his critics approve ; and, though love does not so much predominate as in Ariane, it seems to engross, in a style rather too romantic, both the hero and his sovereign. 20. Neither of these tragedies, perhaps, deserves to be put on a level with the JManlius of La Fosse, to which jianiiusof La Har])e accords the preference above all of the ^'■* ^'"^^■ seventeenth century after those of Corneille and Racine. It is just to observe, what is not denied, that the author has borrowed the greater part of his story from the Venice Pre- served of Otway. The French critics maintain that he has far excelled his original. It is possible that we might hesi- tate to own this general superiority ; but several blemishea 256 MOLlliRE — L'AVARE. Pakt IV. have been removed, and the conduct is perhaps more noble, or at least more fitted to the French stage. But, when we take from La Fosse what belongs to another, — characters strongly marked, sympathies powerfully contrasted, a develop- ment of the plot probable and interesting, — what will remain that is purely his own ? There will remain a vigorous tone of language, a considerable power of description, and a skill in adapting, we may add with justice, in sometimes improving, what he found in a foreign language. We must pass over some other tragedies which have obtained less honor in their native land, — ^^those of Duche, Qninault, and Campistron. 21. Moliere is perhaps, of all French writers, the one wdiom his country has most uniformly admired, and Mohere. .^^ whom her critics are most unwilling to acknow- ledge faults; though the observations of Schlegel on tho defects of Moliere, and especially on his large debts to older comedy, are not altogether without foundation. Moliere began with L'Etourdi in 1653 ; and his pieces followed rapidly till his death in 1G73. About one-half are in verse. I shall select a few, without regard to order of time ; and, first, ono written in prose, — 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 pain it has cost to acquire it, but in the terrors that it brings ; in the disordered state of mind, which is haunted, as by some mysterious guilt, by the con- sciousness of secret wealth. The character of Euclio in the Aulularia is dramatic, and, as far as we know, original: the moral effect i-equires, perhaps, some touches beyond absolute probability ; but it must be confessed that a few passages are over-charged. Moliere borrowed L'Avare from this comedy; and I am not at present aware, that the subject, though so well adapted for the stage, had been chosen by any intermc diate dramatist. He is indebted not merely for the scheme of his play, but for many strokes of humor, to Plautus. But this takes ofi" little from the merit of this excellent comedy. The plot is expanded without iucongruous or improbable cir- cumstances ; new characters are well combined with that of Harpagon, and his OAvn is at once more diverting and less extravagant than that of Euclio. The penuriousness of the latter, though by no means without example, leaves no room for any other object than the concealed treasure, in which his Chap. VI. L'ECOLE DES FEMMES. 257 thoudits are concentred. But Moliere had conceived a more complicated action. Harpagon does not alisolutcly starve the rats ; he jiossesses horses, though he feeds them ill ; he has ser- vants, though he grudges them clothes ; he even contemplates a marriage-supper at his own expense, though he intends to have a had one. He has e^•idently heen compelled to make some sacrifices to the usages of mankind, and is at once a more common and a more theatrical character than PLuclio. In other respects they are much ahke : their avarice has reached that point -where it is without i)ride ; the dread of losing their -wealth has overpo-wered the desire of heing thought to possess it ; and though this is a more natuial inci- dent in the manners of Greece than in those of France, yet the concealment of treasure, even in the time of Moliere, was sufficiently frequent for diamatic probability. A general tone of selfishness, the usual source and necessary consequence of avarice, conspires with the latter quality to render Harpagon odious ; and there wants but a little more poetical justice in the conclusion, which leaves the casket in his possession. 23. Hurd has censured Moliere without much justice. " For the picture of the avaricious man, Plautus and iloliere have presented us with a fantastic, unpleasiug draught of the passion of avarice." It may be answered to this, that Harpa- gon's character is, as has been said above, not so mere a delineation of the passion as that of Euclio. But, as a more general vindication of Moliere, it should be kept in mind, that every exhibition of a predominant passion within the compass of the five acts of a play must be colored beyond the truth of nature, or it will not have time to produce its effect. This is one great advantage that romance possesses over the drama. 24. L'Flcole des Femmes is among the most divertinjr comedies of Moliere. Yet it has in a remarkable r/Ecoie des degree what seems inartificial to our own taste, and Femmes. contravenes a good general precept of Horace : the action passes almost Avholly in recital. But this is so well connected with the development of the plot and characters, and produces such amusing scenes, that no spectator, at least on the Fi-ench theatre, would be sensible of any languor. Arnoli)lie is an excellent modification of the tyjie which Mohere loved to reproduce, — the selfish and morose cynic, whose pretended hatred of the vices of the world springs from an absorbing regard to Ids own gi-atiiication. He has made him as malig- VOL. IV. 17 258 LK MISANTHROPE. Paut IV. nant as censorious ; he delights in tales of scandal ; he ig pleased that Horace should be successful in gallantry, because it degrades others. The half-witted and ill-bred child, of whom he becomes the dupe, as well as the two idiot servants, are delineated with equal vivacity. In this comedy we find the spirited versification, full of grace and humor, in Avhich no one has rivalled Moliere, and which has never been attempted on the Englisli stage. It w^as probably its merit which raised a host of petty detractors, on whom the author revenged him- self in his admirable piece of satire. La Critique de I'lilcole des Femmes. The affected pedantry of the Hotel Rambou illet seems to be ridiculed in this retaliation : nothing, in fact, could be more unlike than the style of Moliere to their own. 25. He gave another proof of contempt for the false taste Le Misan- o^ somc Parisian circles, in the Misanthrope ; though thrope. the criticism of Alceste on the wretched sonnet forms but a subordinate portion of that famous comedy. It is generally placed next to Tartuffe among the works of Moliere. Alceste is again the cynic, bitt more honorable and less openly selfish, and with more of a real disdain of vice in his misan- thropy. 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. Tliis charge, however, seems uncandid: neither the rudenes.s of Alceste, nor the misanthropy from Avhich it springs, are to be called virtues ; and we may observe that he displays no positively good quality beyond sincerity, unless his ungrounded and improbable love for a coquette is to pass for such. It is true that the politeness of Philinthe, with whom the INIisanthrope is contrasted, borders a little too closely upon flattery : but no oblique end is in his view ; he flatters to give pleasure ; and, if we do not much esteem liis character, Ave are not solicitous for his punishment. The dialogue of the Misan- thrope is unifoi-mly of the highest style ; the female, and indeed all the characters, are excellently conceived and sus- tained : if this comedy fails of any tiling at present, it is through the difference of manners, and perhaps, in represen- tation, through the want of animated action on the stage. "2(5. Ill Les Femmes Savantes, there is a more evident personality iu the characters, and a more malicious exposure of absurdity, than in the Misanthrope ; but the. ridicule, fall- Chap. VI. LES FEMMES S AVANTES — TARTUEFE. 259 ing on a less numerous class, is not so well calculated to be appreciated by posterity. It is, however, both in i.ea Femmes reading and representation, a more amusing comedy : ^'^''"*'^''- in no one instance has Moliere delineated such variety of manners, or displayed so much of liis inimitable gayety, and power of fascinating the audience with very little plot, by the mere exhibition of human follies. The satire falls deservedly on pretei^lers to taste and literature, for Avhom IMolierc always testifies a bitterness of scorn in which we perceive some resentment of their criticisms. The shorter piece, entitled Les Precieuses Ridicules, is another shaft directed at the literary ladies of Pai-is. They had provoked a danger- ous enemy; but the good taste of the next age might, be ascribed in great measure to his immerciful exposure of affec- tation and pedantry. 27. It was not easy, so late as the age of Moliere, for the dramatist to find any untrodden field in the follies ,pj^j.tyg.g_ and vices of mankind. But one had been reserved for him in TartufFe, — religious hypocrisy. We should have expected the original draft of such a character on the English stao'e ; nor had our old writers been forgetful of their invete- rate enemies, the Puritans, who gave such full scope for their satire. But, choosing rather the easy path of ridicule, they fell upon the starch dresses and quaint language of tlie fanatical party ; and, where they exhibited these in conjunction with hypocrisy, made the latter more ludicrous than hateful. The Luke of Massinger is deeply and villanously dissembling, but does not wear so conspicuous a garb of religious sanctity as TartufFe. The comedy of IVIoliere is not only original in this character, but is a new creation in dramatic poetry. It has been doubted by some critics, Avhether the depth of guilt that it exhibits, the serious hatred that it inspires, are not beyond the strict province of comedy. But this seems rather a technical cavil. If subjects such as the Tartuffe are not fit for comedy, they are at least fit for dramatic representa- tion ; and some new phrase must be invented to describe their class. 28. A different kind of objection is still sometimes made to this play, tliat it brings religion itself into suspicion. And this would no doubt have been the case, if the contemiwrariea of Moliere in England had dealt with the subject. But the boundaries between the reality and its false appearances are 260 GEORGE DANDIN. Part IV. 60 well guarded in this comedy, that no reasonable gi-ound of exception can be thought to remain. No better advice can be given to those ■who take umbrage at the Tartuffe than to read it again. For there may be good reason to suspect that they are themselves among those for whose benefit it was intended : the Tartuffes, happily, may be comparatively few ; but, Avhile the Orgons and Pernclles are numerous, they will not want their harvest. Moliere did not invent the proto- types of his hypocrite : they were abundant at Paris in his time. 29. The interest of this play continually increases ; and the fifth act is almost crowded by a rapidity of events, not so usual on the French stage as our own. Tartuffe himself is a masterpiece of skill. Pei-haps in the cavils of La Bruyere there may be some justice ; but the essayist has forgotten that no character can be rendered entirely effective to an audience without a little exaggeration of its atti-ibutes. No- thing can be more happily conceived than the credulity of the honest Orgon, and his more doting mother : it is that which we sometimes witness, incurable except by the evidence of the senses, and fighting every inch of ground against that. In such a subject, there was not much opportunity for the comic talent of Moliere ; yet, in some well-known passages, he has enlivened it as far as was possible. The Tartuffe will gene- rally be esteemed the greatest effort of this author's genius : the Misanthrope, the Femmes vSavantes, and the Ecole des Fommes, will follow in various order, according to our tastes. These are by far the best of his comedies in verse. Among those in prose, we may give the first place to L'Avare, and the next either to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, or to George Dandin. 30. These two plays have the same objects of moral satire: Bour-eois ou onc hand, the absurd vanity of plebeians in seck- Oentii- 5ijg the alUance or acquaintance of the nobility ; on Gcorpo' the other, the pride and mcaimcss of the nobility Dandin. thcmselvcs. Tliey arc both abundantly diverting; but the sallies of humor arc, I think, more frequent in the first three acts of the former. The last two acts are improba- ble and less anmsing. The shorter pieces of Moliere border very much ujion farce : he permits himself more vulgarity of character, more grossness in language and incident ; but his {ki-ces are seldom absurd, and never dull. Chap. VI. CHARACTEIl OF MOLIliRE. 261 31. The French have claimed for Moliere, and few perhaps have disputed the pretension, a superiority over all character earlier aud later writers of comedy. He certainly ofMoUere. leaves Piautus, the orij^inal model of the school to which he belonged, ;it a vast distance. Tlie grace and gentlemanly ele- gance of Terence he has not equalled ; but in the more ap- propriate merits of comedy, just and forcible delineation of character, skilfid contrivance of circumstances, and humorous dialogue, we must award him the prize. The Italian and Spanisli dramatists are quite unworthy to be named in com- parison ; and if the Frencii theatre has in later times, as is certainly the case, produced some excellent comedies, we have, I believe, no reason to contradict the suffrage of the nation itself, that they owe almost as much to what they have caujilit from this j^reat model as to the natural genius of their authors. But it is not for us to abandon the rights of Shak- speai'e. In all things most essential to comedy, we cannot acknowledge his inferiority to Moliere. He had far more invention of characters, with an equal vivacity and force in their delineation. His humor was at least as abundant and natural, his wit incomparably more brilliant ; in fact, JNIoliere hardly exhibits this quality at all.^ The Merry Wives of Windsor, almost the only pure comedy of Shakspeare, is surely not distidvantageously compared with George Dandin or Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, or even with L'Ecole des Femmes. For the Tartuffe or the Misanthrope it is vain to seek a proper counterpart in Shakspeare : they belong to a different state of manners. But the powers of Moliere are directed with greater skill to tlieir object : none of his energy is wasted ; the spectator is not interru])ted by the serious scenes of tragi-comedy, nor his attention drawn aside by poeti- cal episodes. Of Shakspeare we may justly say, that he had the greater genius ; but perhaps of Moliere, that he has writ ten the best comedies. We cannot at least put any third dramatist in competition with him. Fletclier and .Tonson, Wycherley and Congreve, Farquhar and Sheridan, with great excellences of their own, fall short of his merit as well as of his fame. Yet, in humorous conception, our admirable play, the Provoked Husband, the best parts of which are due to 1 [A French critic upon the first edition that I should deny the latter quality to of this work has supposed ^vit to be the Moliere. especially after the eulogies I iaxas as es!prit, and is justly astonished have been passing on him. — 1842.] 262 LES PLAIDEURS OF RACINE — REGXARD. Part IV. Vanbrugh, seems to be equal to any tiling be bas left. His spirit(;d and easy versification stands, of course, untoucbed by any Englisb rivalry : we may bave been wise in rejecting verse from our stage ; but we have certainly given the French a right to claim all the honor that belongs to it. 32.. Kacine once only attempted comedy. His wit was ^ _, . quick and sarcastic ; and in epigram be did not spare deurs of his enemies, in his rlaideurs tiiere is more ot Riume. bumor and stage-effect than of wit. The ridicule falls happily on the pedantry of lawyers and the folly of suitors ; but the technical lan";ua2;e is lost in great measure upon the audience. This comedy, if it be not rather a farce, is taken from The Wasps of Aristophanes ; and that Rabelais of antiquity supplied an extravagance very improbably intro- duced into the third act of Les Plaideurs, the trial of the dog. Far from fniproving the humor, which bad been amusingly kept up during the tirst two acts, this degenerates into absur- dity. oo. Regnard is always placed next to Moliere among the Regnard: comic Writers of France in this, and perhaps in any Le Joueur. r^fr^,^ ^j^g plays, indeed, which entitle him to such a rank, are but few. Of these the best is acknowledged to be Le Joueur. Regnard, taught by bis own experience, ha^s here admirably delineated the character of an inveterate gamester : without parade of morality, few comedies are more usefully moral. AVe have not the struggling virtues of a Charles Surface, which the dramatist may feign that he may reward at the fifth act: Regnard has better painted tlie self- ish, ungrateful being, wlio, though not incapable of love, pawns bis mistress's picture, the instant after she has given it to him, that he may return to the dice-box. Her just abandonment, and his own disgrace, terminate the comedy with a moral dignity which the stage does not always maintain, and which, in the first acts, the spectator does not expect. The other characters seem to me various, spirited, and humorous : the valet of Valere the gamester is one of the best of that numer- ous class, to whom comedy bas owed so much ; but the pre- tended marquis, thougli diverting, talks too much like a genu- ine coxcomb of the world. INIoliere did this better in Les Precieuses Ridicules. Regnard is in tliis play full of those gay sallies which cannot be read without laughter ; the inci- dents follow rapidly ; there is more movement than in some Chap. VI. QUINAULT-BOUUSAULT. 2G3 of tlie best of Moliere's comedies, and the speeches arc not so prolix. o4. Next to Le Joueur among Ecgnard's comedies, it has been usual to place Le Legataire, not by any means ins other inferior to the first in humor and vivacity, but with P''*^^- less force of character, and more of the common ti-icks of the stage. Tlie moral, instead of being excellent, is of the worst 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. This servant is, however, a very comical rogue ; and Ave should not, perhaps, wish to see him sent to the galleys. A similar censure might be passed on the comedy of Regnard which stands tliird in reputation, — Les Me- nechmes. 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 Shak- speare have thought of, one avails himself of the likeness to i-eceive a large sum of money due to the other, and is thought very generous at the close of the play when he restores a moiety. Of the plays founded on tliis diverting exaggeration, Regnard's is, perhai)S, the best : he has more variety of inci- dent than Plautus ; and by leaving out the second pair of twins, the Dromio servants, who render the Comedy of Errors almost too inextricably confused for the spectator or reader, as well as by making one of the brothers aware of the mistake, and a party in the deception, he has given an unity of plot instead of a series of incoherent blunders. 35. The JNIere Coquette of Quinault appears a comedy of great merit. AVithout the fine traits of nature which Quinault; we find in those of Moliere, without the sallies of Bo"r.sauu. humor which enliven those of Regnard, with a versification perhaps not very forcible, it pleases us by a fable at once novel, as far as I know, and natural, by the interesting cha- racters of the lovers, by the decency and tone of good company', which are never lost in the manners, the incidents, or the language. Boui'sault, whose tragedies are little esteemed, displayed some originality in Le JNIercure Galant. The idea is one which has not unfrequently been imitated on the Eng- lish as well as French stage ; but it is rather adapted to the shorter diama than to a regular comedy of five acts. The Mercure Galant was a famous magazine of light periodical amusement, such as was tlipn new m Fi'ance, which had a 264 DANCOURT — BRUEYS. Part IV. grreat sale, and is described in a few lines by one of the cha- racters in this piece.^ Boursault places his hero, by the edi- tor's consent, as a temporary substitute in the office of this publication; and brings, in a sei'ies of detachdd scenes, a vari- ety of applicants for his notice. A comedy of this kind is like a compound animal : a few chief characters must give unity to the whole ; but the effect is produced by the successive personages who pass over the stage, display their humor in a single scene, and disappear. Boursault has been in some instances successful ; but such pieces generally owe too much to temporary sources of amusement. 36. Dancourt, as Voltaire has said, holds the same rank _ ^ relatively to Moliere in farce that Re2fnard does in Dancourt. . •' ^ , ^ the higher comedy. He came a little after the for- mer, and when tlie prejudice that had been created against comedies in prose by the great success of the other kind had begun to subside. The Chevalier a la Mode is the only play of Dancourt tliat I know : it is much above farce ; and, if length be a distinctive criterion, it exceeds most comedies. This would be very slight praise, if we could not add, that the reader does not find it one page too long ; tliat tlie ridicule is poignant and Iiappy, the incidents well contrived, the comic situations amusing, the characters clearly marked. La Harpe, who treats Dancourt with a sort of contempt, does not so much as mention this play. It is a satire on the pretensions of a class then rising, the rich financiers, which long supplied materials, through dramatic caricature, to public malignity, and the envy of a less opulent aristocracy. 37. The life of Brueys is rather singular. Born of a noble „ Huguenot familv, he was early devoted to Protes- tant theology, and even presumed to enter the lists against Bossuet. But that champion of the faith was like one of those knitjhts in romance wlio first unhorse their raslj antagonists, and then make them work as slaves. Brueys was soon converted, and betook himself to write against his former ei'rors. He afterwards becami; an ecclesiastic. Thus far, there is nothing miicli out of the common course in his ' " Ii<' Jlercure est unc bonne chose ; Jamais livve i mon gre nc fut plus neces- On y trouve de tout, f.ible, histoire, vers, Siiiri'." Act i. scene 2. prose, The .Mcrcure Galant was established in Sieges, combats, procfes, mort, mariage, 1672 by oik; Visi; : it was intended to fill amour, the same pl.icc as a critical record of polita Nouvelles de province, et nouvelles de literature which the .louraal des S^avaua c.our — did in learning and science Chap. VI. QUINAULT — ENGLISH DRAMA. 265 history. But, grown weary of living alone, and having some natural turn to comedy, he began, rather late, to write for the stage, with the assistance, or perhajjs only under the name, of a certain Palaprat. The plays of Brueys had some success : but he was not in a position to delineate recent manners ; and in the only comedy witli which I am acquainted, Le Muet, he has borrowed the leading part of his story from Terence. The language seems deticient in vivacity, which, when there is no great naturalness or originality of character, cannot be dispensed \\ath. 38. The French opera, after some ineffectual attempts by Mazarin to naturalize an Italian company, was sue- opomsof cessfully established by Lulh in 1G72. It is the Q"i"='"'^'- prerogative of music in the melodrame to render poetry its dependent ally ; but the airs of Lidli have been forgotten, and the verses of his coadjutor Quinault remain. He is not only the earliest, but, by general consent, the unrivalled, poet of French music. Boileau, indeed, treated him with undesei-ved scorn, but probably through dislike of the tone he was obliged to preserve, wliich in the eyes of so stern a judge, and one so insensible to love, appeared languid and efP.'minate. Quinault, nevertheless, was not uicapable of vigorous and impressive poetry ; a lyric grandeur distinguishes some of liis songs ; he seems to possess great felicity of adorning every subject w^ith appropriate imagery and sentiment ; his versification has a smoothness, and charm of melody, which has made some say that the lines were already music before they came to the composer's hands ; his fables, whether taken from mythology or modern romance, display invention and sldll. Voltaire, La Harpe, Schlegel, and the author of the Life of Quinault in the Biographic Universelle, but, most of all, the testimony of the })ublic, have compensated for the severity of Boileau. The Ai-mide is Quinault's latest and also his finest opera. Sect. II. — On the English Drama. state of the Stage after the Restoration — Tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Southern — Comedies of Cougreve aud others. 39. The troubles of twenty years, and, mucli more, tho fanatical antipathy to stage-plays which the predominant party 2G6 CHANGE OF PUBLIC TASTE. Pakt IV. affected, silem",J the muse of the buskin, and broke the con- Revivai of tuiuity of thosc vvorks of the elder dramatists, Avhich the KngiLsh ]iad given a tone to public sentiment as to the drama *^ '^' from the middle of Ellizabeth's reign. Dnvenant had, bj a sort of connivance, opened a small house for the representation of plays, though not avowedly so called, near the Charter House, in 1656. He obtained a patent after the Restoration. By this time another generation had arisen, and the scale of taste was to be adjusted anew. The fondness for the theatre revived with increased avidity : more splendid decoration ; actors probably, especially Betterton, of greater I)Owers ; and, above all, the attraction of femiile performers, "who had never been admitted on the older stage, — conspired with the keen appetite that long restraint produced, and with the general gayety, or rather dissoluteness, of manners. Yet the multitude of places for such amusement was not as great as under the first Stuarts. Two houses only were opened under royal patents, granting them an exclusive privilege : one by what was called the King's Company, in Drury Lane ; another by the Duke of York's Company, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Betterton, who was called the Eluglish Roscius, till Garrick claimed that title, was sent to Paris by Charles H. , that, taking a view of the French stage, he might better judge of what would contribute to the improvement of our own. It has been said, and probably with truth, that he introduced movable scenes, instead of the fixed tapestry that had been hung across the stage ; but this improvement he could not have borrowed from France. The king not only counte- nanced tlie theatre by his patronage, but by so much personal notice of the chief actors, and so much interest in all the affairs of the theatre, as elevated their condition. 40. An actor of great talents is the best friend of the great Change of dramatists: his own genius demands theirs for its public support and display ; and a fine performer would as soon waste the powers of his hand on feeble music, as a man like Betterton or Garrick rcpres^ent what is insi])id or in bad taste. "We know that the former, and some of his contemporaries, were celel)rated in the great parts of our early stage, in those of Shakspcare and Fletcher. But the change of public taste is sometimes irresistible by those who, as, in Johnson's antithesis, they " live to please, must please to live." Neither tragedy nor comedy was maintained at ita Cii.vr. VI. HEROIC TRAGEDIES OF DRYDEX. 2G7 proper level ; and, as the Avorld is apt to demand novelty on the stage, the general tone of" dramatic representation in this period, Avliatever credit it may have done to the performers, reflects little, in comparison with our golden age, upon those who wrote for them. 41. It is observed by Scott, that the French theatre, whicb was now thought to be in perfection, o-uided the criti- ^ Its C. VI. SOUTHERN — LEE — CONGREVE. 271 that of most in this period, runs, almost to an excess, into the line of eleven syllables ; sometimes also into the sdnicciolo form, or twelve syllal)les with a dactylic close. These give a considerable animation to tragic verse. 4G, Southern's Fatal Discovery, latterly represented under the name of Isabella, is almost as familiar to the „ .^ 1 f 1 tr • 'T-. I'M- Southern. lovers or our theatre as Venice Preserved itseli ; and for the same reason, — that, whenever an actress of great tragic powers arises, the part of Isabella is as fitted to exhibit them as that of Belvidera. The choice and conduct of the story are, however. Southern's cliief merits ; for there is little vigor in the language, though it is natural, and fi'ee from the usual faults of his age. A similar character may be given to his other tragedy, Oroonoko ; in which Southei'u deserves the praise of having, first of any English writer, denounced the traffic in slaves, and the cruelties of their West-Indian bond- age. The moral feeling is high in this tragedy, and it has sometimes been acted with a certaui success ; but the execu- tion is not that of a superior dramatist. Of Lee nothing need be said, but that he is, in spite of his proverbial extravagance, a man of poetical mind and some dramatic skill. But he has violated historic truth in Theodo- sius, without gaining much by invention. The Mourning Bride of Congreve is written in prolix declamation, ^ With no power over the passions. Johnson is well known to have praised a few lines in this tragedy as among the finest descriptions in the language ; while others, by a sort of contrariety, have spoken of them as worth nothing. Truth is in its usual middle path : many better passages may be found ; but they are well written and impressive.^ 47. In the early English comedy, Ave find a large intermix- ture of obscenity in the lower characters, nor always comedies of confined to them, with no infrequent scenes of licen- Charles tious incident and languau;e. But these are invaria- ' ^ '^'^'^' bly so brought forward as to manifest the dramatist's scorn of vice, and to excite no other sentiment in a spectator of even an ordinary degree of moral purity. In the plays that ap- peared after the Restoration, and that from the beginning, a different tone was assumed. Vice was in her full career on the stage, unchecked by reproof, unshamed by contrast, and for the most part, unpunished by mortification at the close 1 Mouxniog Bride, act ii. scene 3 ; Johnsou's Life of Congreve 272 WYCHERLET. Part IV. Nor are these less coarse in expression, or less impudent in their delineation of low debauchery, than those of the preced- ing period. It may be observed, on tlie contrary, that they rarely exhibit the manners of truly polished life, accoitling to any notions we can frame of them ; and are, in this respect, much below those of Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley. It might not be easy, perhaps, to find a scene in any comedy of Charles II.'s reign where one character has the behavior of a gentleman, in the sense which we attach to the word. Yet the authors of these were themselves in the world, and some- times men of family and considerable station. The cause must be found in the state of society itself, debased as well as corrupted ; partly by the example of the court ; partly by the practice of living in taverns, which became much more invete- rate after the Restoration than before. The contrast Avith the manners of Paris, as far as the stage is their mirror, does not tell to our advantage. These plays, as it may be expected, do not aim at the higher glories of comic writing : they dis- play no knowledge of natin'e, nor often rise to any other conception of character than is gained by a caricature of some known class, or perhaps of some remarkable individual. Nor do they in general deserve mucli credit as comedies of in- trigue : the plot is seldom invented with much care for its development ; and if scenes follow one another in a series of diverting incidents, if the entanglements are such as produce laughter, above all, if the personages keep up a well-sustained battle of repartee, the purpose is sufficiently answered. It is in this that they often excel : some of them have considerable humor in the representation of character, though this may not be very original ; and a good deal of Avit in their dialogue. 48. Wycherley is remembered for two comedies, the Plain ^ , , Dealer and the Country Wife ; the latter represented Wycherley. . -^ , . , *; With some change, in modern times, under the name of the Country Girl. The former has been frequently said to be taken from the Misanthrope of Moliere ; but this, like many current assertions, seems to have little if any founda- tion. Manly, the Plain Dealer, is, like Alceste, a speaker of truth ; but the idea is at least one which it was easy to conceive without plagiarism, and there is not tlie slightest resemblance in any circumstance- or scene of tlie two come- dies. We cannot say the same of the Country Wife ; it was evidently suggested by L'Ecole des Femmes : the character C^j^y. VI CONGREVE. 273 of Aniolphe has been copied; but even here the whole con- du.-t of the piece of Wyciierley is iiis own. It is more artificial tlian that of Moliere, wherein too much passes in •les,.-ription ; the part of Agues is rendered still more poig- nant ; and, among the comedies of Charles's reign, I am not sure that it is surpassed by any. 41). Shadwcdl and P^therege, aud the famous Afira Behn, have endeavored to make the stage as grossly immoral as their talents permitted ; but the two former, especially Shad- well, are not destitute of luimor. At the death of Charles, it had reaclu'd the lowest point: after the Revolution, it became not much more a school of virtue, but ment iitter rather a better one of polished manners, than be- i"^^^'''"" fore ; and certainly drew to its service some men of comic genius whose names are now not only very familiar to our ears, as the boasts of our tlieatre, but whose works have not all ceased to enliven its walls. 50. Congreve, by the Qld Bachelor, written, as some have said, at twenty-one years of age, but in foct not quite ^.^^^^^^ so soon, and represented in 1 693, placed himself at once in a rank which he has always retained. Though not, I think, the first, he is undeniably among the first names. Tlie Old Bachelor was quickly followed l)y the Double Dealer, and that by Love for Love, in which lie reached tlie summit of his reputation. The last of his four comedies, the Way of the World, is said to have been coldly received ; for wdiicli it is hard to assign any substantial cause, unless it be some want of sequence in the plot. The peculiar excel- lence of Congreve is his wit, incessantly sparkling from the lips of almost'every character ; but on tliis account it is accom- panied by want of nature and simplicity. Nature, indeed, and simplicity do not belong as pro[)er attributes to that comedy whicli, itself the creature of an artificial society, has for its proper business to exaggerate the affectation and hollowness of the Avorld. A critical code which should require the com- edy of polite life to be natural would make it intolerable. But tliere are limits of deviation from likeness, wliich even caricature must not transgress ; and the type of truth should always regulate the playful aberrations of an inventive pen- cil. The manners of Congreve's comedies are not, to us at least, like those of reality : 1 am not sure that we have any (ause to suppose that they much better represent the timca vol.. TV. IS 274 LOVE FOR LOVE. Part IV. m wliich they appeared. His characters, with an exception oi two, are heartless and vicious ; which, on being attacked by Collier, he justified, probably by an afterthought, on the authority of Aristotle's definition of comedy ; that it is ui/j-r/aii ^avAoTepuv, an imitation of what is the worse in human nature.' But it must be acknowledged, that, more than any preceding writer among us, he kept up the tone of a gentleman ; liis men of the world are profligate, but not coarse ; he rarely, like Shadwell, or even Dryden, caters for the populace of the theatre by such indecencies as they must understand ; he gave, in fact, a tone of refinement to the public taste, which it never lost, and which, in its progression, has almost ban- ished his own comedies from the stage. ol. Love for Love is generally reputed the best of these, ixiveii-ir Congreve has never any great success in the con- Love, ception or management of his plot ; but in this comedy there is least to censure : several of the characters are exceedingly humorous ; the incidents are numerous and not complex; the wit is often admirable. Angelica and Miss Prue, Ben and Tattle, have been repeatedly imitated ; but they have, I think, a considerable degree of dramatic origi- nality in themselves. Johnson has observed, that " Ben the sailor is not reckoned over-natural, but he is very diverting.'* Possibly he may be quite as natural a portrait of a mere sailor as that to which we have become used in modern comedy. 52. The Way of the "World I should perhaps incline to place His other next to this : the coquetry of Millamant, not without domedies. gome touclics of dclicacy and affection, the .imperti- nent coxcombry of Petulant and Witwood, the mixtin-e of wit and ridiculous vanity in Lady AVislifbrt, are amusing to the reader. Congreve has here made more use than, as far as I remember, had been common in England, of the all-important soubrette, on Avhoni so much de])ends in French comedy. Tlie manners of France happily enabled her dramatists to impi'ove what they had borrowed with signal suc- cess from the ancic^nt stage, — the witty and artful servant, faithful to his master while he deceives every one besides, — ^by adding this female attendant, not less versed in every artifice, nor less quick in repartee. Mincing and Foible, in this play of Congreve, are good specimens of the class ; but, speaking ' Congreve's Amendmeiitg of Mr. Collier's false citations. CnAr. VI. FARQUHAK — VANBRUGII. 275 with some hesitation, I do not think they will be found, at least not so naturally drawn, in the comedies of Charhis's time. Many would, perhaps not without cause, jirefer the Old Bachelor, which abounds with wit, but seems ratlier deficient in originality of character and circumstance. 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 found it difficult, even in reading, to comprehend it. 53. Congreve is not superior to Farquhar and Vanbrugh^ if we might compare the whole of tlieir works. Farquhar; Never has he equalled in vivacity, in originality of Vanbrugu. contrivance, or in clear aud rapid development of intrigue, the Beaux' Stratagem of the one, and much less the admira- ble delineation of the Wronghead family in the Provoked Husband of the other. But these were of the eighteenth century. Farquhar's Ti-ip to the Jubilee, though once a popu- lar comedy, is not distinguished by more than an easy How of wit, and perhaps a little novelty in some of the characters : it is indeed written in much superior language to the i)lays anterior to the Revolution. But the lielapse and the Pro- voked Wife of Vanbrugh have attained a considerable reputa- tion. In the former, the character of Amanda is interesting, especially in the momentary wavering and q\iick recovery of her virtue. Tiiis is the first homage that the theatre had paid, since the Restoration, to female chastity ; and notwithstanding the vicious tone of the other characters, in which Vanbrugh has gone as great lengths as any of his contem])oraries, we perceive the beginnings of a re-action in public spirit, which gradually reformed and elevated the moral standard of the stage.^ The Provoked Wife, though it cannot be said to give any proofs of this sort of improvement, has some merit as a comedy ; it is witty and animated, as Vanbrugh usually was ; the character of Sir John Brute may not have been too great a cai-icature of real manners, such as survived from the debased reign of Charles ; and the endeavor to expose the grossness of the older generation was itself an evidence, that a better polish had been given to social life. ' This purification of English comedy go along, in a considerable degree, with has sonietiiiies been attributed to the ef- Collier, his animadversions could liave fects of a famous essay by Collier on the produced little change. In point of fact, Immorality of the English stage. But if the subsequent impiovement wius but public opinion bad not been prepared to Blow, aud for some jears rather shown in 276 POLITE LITEEATURE IN PROSb. Part IV CHAPTER Vn. HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1650 TO 1700. Section* I. Italy — Ilish Refinement of French Language — FonteneUe — St. Evremond — S6. yijrne — Bouhoursaud Rapin — Miscellaneous Writers — English Style and Criticism — Dryden. 1. If Italy could furnish no long list of conspicuous names in "this department of literature to our last period, Low state ^ , ,. . . . mi T> of literature she IS far more dehcient m the present, ihe rrose in Italy. Florentine of Dati, a collection of what seemed the best specimens of Italian eloquence in tliis century, served chiefly to prove its mediocrity ; nor lias that editor, by his own panegyric on Louis XIV. or any other of his writings, been able "to redeem it« name.' Tiie sermons of Segneri have already been mentioned : the eulogies bestowed on them seem to be founded, in some measure, on the surrounding barrenness. The letters of Magalotti, and still more of Redi, themselves philosophers, and generally writing on philosophy, seem to do more credit than any thing else to this period.- 2. Crescimbeni, the founder of the Arcadian Society, has Crescim- made an honorable name by his exertions to purify beni. ti^e national taste, as well as by his diligence in pre- serving the memory of better ages than his own. Ilis History of National Poetry is a laborious and useful work, to which I have sometimes been indebted. His treatise on the beauty of that poetry is only known to me through Salfi. It is written in dialogue, the speakers being Arcadians. Anxious to extir- avoidlng coarse indecencies than in much ried this farther; ami the stage afterwards elevatioTi of seiifimeiit. Steele's eonscions grew more and more rethied, till it hecama Lovers is the first comedy which can he languid and sentimental, called moral : Cihber. in those parts of > Salfi, xiv. 25 ; Tirahoschi. xi._412. fhe I'rovtiked Husband that he wrote, car- 2 Salfi, xiv. 17 ; Corniani, viii. 71. Chap. VII. AGE OF LOUIS XIV. IN FRANCE. 277 pate tho school of the Marinists, without falling back alto- gether into that of Petrarch, he set up Costanzo as a model of poetry. Most of his precepts, Salfi observes, are very trivial at present ; but, at the epoch of its appearance, his work was of great service towards the reform of Italian lite- raturi!.' 3. This period, the second part of the seventeenth century, comprehends the most considerable, and in every ^^„f sense the most important and distinguished, portion of ix)uisXTV. ,111 • Ti J.^ 111 Franco what Avas once called the great age in France, — tlie reign of Louis XIV. In this period, the literature of France was adorned by its most brilliant writers; since, notwith- standing the genius and popularity of some who followed, wo generally find a still higher place awarded by men of fine taste to Bossuet and Pascal than to Voltaire and Montesquieu. The language was written witli a cai-e that might have fet- tered the powers of ordinary men, but rendered those of such as we have mentioned more resplendent. The laws of taste and grammar, like those of nature, were held immutable: it was the province of human genius to deal with them, as it does with nature, by a skilful employment, not by a prepos- terous and ineffectual rebellion against their control. Purity and perspicuity, simplicity and ease, were conditions of good writing : it was never thought that an author, especially in prose, might transgress the recognized idiom of his mother- tongue, or invent words unknown to it, for the sake of effect or novelty ; or if, in some rare occurrence, so bold a coui-se might be forgiven, these exceptions wei-e but as miracles in religion, whicii would cease to strike us, or be no miracles at all, but for the regularity of the laws to which they bear witness even while they infringe them. We have not thought it necessary to defer the praise which some great French writers have deserved on the score of their language, for this chapter. Bossuet, Malebranche, Arnauld, and Pascal have already been commemorated ; and it is sufficient to point out two causes in perpetual opei-ation during this period which emiobled, and preserved in purity, the literature of France : one, the salutary influence of the Academy ; the other, that emulation between^ the Jesuits and Jausenists for public es- teem, whicli was better displayed in their politer writings than in the abstruse and endless controversy of the five pro- 1 Salfi, ziiL 450 278 FONTENELLE : HIS CHARACTER. Pakt IV. positions. A few remain to be mentioned ; and as the subject of" tliis chapter, in order to avoid frequent subdivisions, is miscellaneous, the reader must expect to find that we do not, in every instance, confine ourselves to what he may consider as polite letters. 4. Fontenelle, by the variety of his talents, by their appli- fonteneiie • ^ation to the pursuits most congenial to the intellect- his charac- ual character of his contemporaries, and by that '*^'' extraordinary longevity which made those contem- poraries not less than three generations of mankind, may be reckoned the best representative of French literatui'e. Born in 1 (357, and dying within a few days of a complete century, in 1757, he enjoyed the most protracted life of any among the modern learned ; and that a life in the full sunshine of Pari- sian literature, without care and without disease. In nothing was Fontenelle a great wTiter : his mental and moral disposi- tion resembled each other ; equable, without the capacity of performing, and hardly of conceiving, any thing truly elevat- ed, but not less exempt from the fruits of passion, from para- dox, unreasonableness, and prejudice. His best productions are, perhaps, the eulogies on the deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, which he pronounced during almost forty years ; but these nearly all belong to the eighteenth cen- tury : they are just and candid, with suificient, though not very profound, knowledge of the exact sciences, and a style pure and flowing, which his good sense had freed from some early affectation, and his cold temper as well as sound understand- ing restrained from extravagance. In his first works, we have symptoms of an infirmity belonging more frequently to age than to youth ; but Fontenelle was never young in passion. He thei'e affects the tone of somewhat pedantic and frigid gallantry which seems to have survived the society of tlie Hotel Kambouillet Avho had countenanced it, and which bordei-s too nearly on the language which Moliere and his disciples had avcII exposed in their coxcombs on the stage. 5. The Dialogues of the Dead, published in 1683, are „. ^. condenmed by some critics for their false taste and lIis Bia- •' . , . ill loKius of perpetual stram at sometlnng unexpected ana para- theiJead. (joxioal. The leading idea is, of course, borrowed from Lucian ; but Fontenelle has aimed at greater jioignancy by contrast : the ghosts in his dialogues are exactly those who had least in common with each other in life ; and the Chap. VI I. DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD — LES MONDF.S. 27'J general ohjer-t is to bring, by some happy analogy which had not occurred to the reader, or by some ingenious defence of what lie had been accustomed to despise, the prominences and depressions of historic characters to a leveh This is what is iilways well received in the kind of society for which Fontenelle wrote; but if much is mere sophistry in liis dialogues, if the general tone is little above that of the world, there is also, what we often find in the world, some acuteness and novelty, and some things put in a light which it may be worth while not to neglect. 6. Fenelon, not many years afterwards, copied the scheme, though not the style, of Fontenelle in his owu Dia- Those of logues of the Dead, written for the use of his pupil, ^'"^^^°^- the Duke of Burgundy. Some of these dialogues are not truly of the dead : the characters speak as if on earth, and with earthly designs. They have certainly more solid sense and a more elevated morality than those of Fontenelle, to which La Harpe has preferred them. The noble zeal of Fenelon not to spare the vices of kings, in writing for the heir of one so imperious and so open to the censure of reflect- ing minds, shines throughout these dialogues ; but, designed as they were for a boy, they naturally appear in some places rather superficial. 7. Fontenelle succeeded better in his famous dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds, Les Mondes ; in which, if the p^^^g. conception is not wholly original, he has at least de- neiie's veloped it with so much spirit and vivacity, that it of"vJ)ria3. would show as bad taste to censure his work, as to reckon it a model for imitation. It is one of those happy ideas which have been privileged monopolies of the first inventor ; and it will be found, accordingly, that all attempts to copy this whimsical union of gallantry with science have been insipid almost to a ridiculous degree. Fontenelle throws so much gayety and wit into his compliments to the lady whom he initiates into his theory, that we do not con- found them with the nonsense of coxcombs ; and she is herself 60 spirited, unaffected, and clever, that no philosopher could be ashamed of gallantry towards so deserving an object. The fascinating paradox, as then it seemed, though our children are now taught to lisp it, that the moon, the planets, the fixed stars, are full of inhabitants, is presented with no more show of science than was indispensable, but with a varying liveli- 280 HISTORY or ORACLES — ST. EYREIIOND, Pakt IV" ness, that, if we may judge by the consequences, has served to convince as well as amuse. The plurality of worlds had been suggested by Wilkius, and prol)ably by some Cartesians in France ; but it was first rendered a popular tenet by tliis agreeable little book of Fonteuelle, wliich had a great circula- tion in Europe. The ingenuity with which he obviates the dilficulties that he is comiielled to acknowledge, is Avortliy of praise ; and a good deal of the popular truths of physical astronomy is found in these dialogues. 8. The History of Oracles, wliich Fontenelle published in lis History 1G87, is Worthy of observation as a sign of the f Oracles. (.]^j,j,gg j^jjjjt^ ^r^g working in literature. In tlie pro- vinces of erudition and of polite letters, long so independent, perhaps even so hostile, some tendency towards a coalition began to appear. Tlie men of the world especially, after they had acquired a free temper of thinking in religion, and become accustomed to talk about pliilosophy, desired to know something of the questions whicli the learned disputed ; but they demanded this knowledge by a short and easy road, with no great sacviiice of their leisure or attention. Fontenelle, in tlie History of Oracles, as in the dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds, prepared a repast for their taste. A learned Dutch ])hysician, Van Dale, in a dull work, had taken up the subject of the ancient oracles, and explained them by human impos- ture instead of that of the devil, which had been the more orthodox hypothesis. A certain degree of paradox, or want of orthodoxy, already gave a zest to a book in France ; and Fontenelle's lively manner, with more learning than good society at Paris possessed, and about as much as it could endure, united to a clear and acute line of argument, created a popularity for his History of Oracles, which we cannot reckon altogether unmerited.^ 9. The works of St. P^vremond were collected after his St. Evre- death in 1705; but many had been printed before moiid. j,,i(i i,e evidently belongs to tlie latter half of tlio seventeenth century. The fame of St. P^vremond as a bril- liant star, during a long life, in the polished aristocracy of France and England, gave, for a time, a considerable lustre tc his writings ; the greater part of whicli are such effusions as the daily intercourse of good company called forth In verse ' T have not comparod, or indeed read, some of the reasoning, not the learoiag, of Dale's worli ; but I ratlier suspect tliat Fonteaelle is original. Chap. VII. MADAME UE SEVIGNE. 281 or in prose, he is the gallant friend, rather than lover, of ladies, who, secure probably of 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 age was not a little advanced, might have incurred ridicule. Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, is his heroine ; but we take little interest in compliments to a woman neither resi)ected in her life, nor remembered since. Nothing can be more trifling than the general character of the writings of St. Evremoud : but sometimes he rises to literary criticism, or even civil history ; and on such topics he is clear, unaflected, cold, with- out imagination or sensibility, — a type of the frigid being whom an aristocratic and highly polished society is apt to oroduce. The chief merit of St. Evremond is in his style and manner. He has less wit than Voiture, who contributed to form him ; or than Voltaire, whom he contributed to form but he shows neither the eflbrt of the former, nor the restless- ness of the latter. Voltaire, however, when he is most quiet, as in the earliest and best of his histoiical woiks, seems to bear a considerable resemblance to St. Evremond ; and there can be no doubt that he was familiar Avith the latter's writings. 10. A woman has the glory of being full as conspicuous in the graces of style as any writer of this famous age. jiatiame It is evident that this was jMadame de Sevigne. Je seviguc. Her Letters, indeed, were not published till the eighteenth century, but they Avere written in the mid-day of Louis' reign. Their ease, and freedom from affectation, are more striking by contrast with the two epistolary styles which had heen most admired in France : that of Iklzac, which is labo- riously tumid ; and that of Voiture, which becomes insipid by dint of affectation. Every one perceives, 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 speaking and writing what men of wit and taste Avould desire to hear and read gives a ceitain mannerism, I Avill not say aii- of effort, even to the Letters of Madame de Sevigne. The abandonment of the heart to its casual impuls^es is not so genuine as in some that have since been published. It is at least clear, that it is pos- sible to become affected in copying her unaffected style ; and some of Waliwle's letters bear witness to this. Her wit, and talent of painting by single touches, are very eminent : scarce- ly any collection of letters, which contain so little that can 282 THE FRENCH ACADEMY. Pakt IV interest a distant age, are read with such pleasure ; if they have any general fault, it is a little monotony, and excess of affection towards her daughter, which is reported to have wearied its object, and, in contrast with this, a little want of sensibility towards all beyond her immediate friends, and a readiness to find something ludicrous in the dangei-s and suf- ferings of others.' 11. The French Academy had been so judicious both in The French the choice of its members, and in the general tenor Academy, ^f Jtg proceedings, that it stood very high in public esteem ; and a voluntary deference was commonly siiown to its authority. Tiie favor of Louis XIV., when he grew to man- hood, was accorded as amply as that of Richelieu. The Academy was received by tlie king, when they approached him publicly, with the same ceremonies as the superior courts of justice. This body had, almost from its commencement, undertaken a national dictionary, which should carry the lan- guage to its utmost perfection, and trace a road to the highest eloquence that depended on purity and choice of words: more than this could not be given by man. The work pro- ceeded very slowly ; and dictionaries wei-e published in the mean time, — one by Richelet in 1680, another by Furetiere. The former seems to be little more than a glossary of techni- cal or otherwise doubtful words ; - but the latter, though pre- tending to contain only terms of art and science, was found, by its definitions and by the authorities it quoted, to interfere so much with the project of the academicians, who had armed themselves with an exclusive privilege, that they not only expelled Fui-etiere from their body, on the allegation that he had availed himself of materials intrusted to him by the Aca- demy for its own dictionary, but instituted a long process at law to hinder its pubhcation. This was in 1 665 ; and the 1 The proofs of this are niinierous raigned for slighting Racine ; and she has enough in her letten In one of them, bw.n charged with the unfortunate ^redic- she mentions tliat a lady of her acquaint- tion : " 11 pajisera comnie le cafe. ' But ance having been bitten by a mad dog, it is denied that these words can be found, had 'gone to bo dipped in the sea ; and though few hke to give up so diveitiug a amuses herself by taking off the prorin- misialculatiou of futurity. In her time, cial accent with which slie will express Corneille's party was so well supported, herself on the first plunge. She makes a and he deserved .so much gratitude and jest of La Voisin"s execution; and though reverence, that we cannot much wonder that person was a.s little entitled to sym- at her being carried a little too far agaiast pathy a-s any one, yet, when a woman is his rival. Who has ever seen a woman burned alive, it is not usual for another just towards the rivals of her friends, woman to turn it into drollery. though many are just towards their own' Madajue de Sevigmi's taste has been ar- " Ooujet ; Baillet, n. 702. Chap. VU. FRENCH GRAMMARS. 283 dictionary of Furctiere only appeared after his death at Amsterdam in 1690.^ Whatever may have been the delin- quency, moral or legal, of this compiler, his dictionary is praised by Goujet as a rich treasure, in which almost every thing is found that we can desire for a sound know-ledge of the language. It has been frequently reprinted, and con- tinued long in esteem. But the dictionary of the Academy, which was published in 1G94, claimed an authority to which that of a private man could not pretend. Yet the lirst edition seems to have rather disappointed the public expectation. Many objected to the want of quotations, and to the observ- ance of an orthography ■ that had become obsolete. The Academy undertook a revision of its work in 1700; and. finally, profiting by the public opinion on which it endeavored to act, rendered this dictionary the most received standard oi the French language.- 12. The Grammaire Generale et Raisonnee of Lancelot, in which Aruauld took a considerable share, is rather French a treatise on the philosophy of all language than one grau'mars. peculiar to the French. "The best ci-itics," says Bailiet, "acknowledge that there is nothing Avritten by either the ancient or the modern grammarians with so much justness and solidity."^ Vigneul-Marville bestows upon it an almost equal eulogy.* Lancelot was copied, in a great degree, by Lami, in his Rhetoric, or Art of Speaking, with little of value that is original.^ Vaugelas retained his place as the founder of sound grammatical criticism, though his judgments have not been uniformly confirmed by the next generation. His remarks were edited with notes by Thomas Corneille, who had the reputation of an excellent grammarian." The obser-. vations of Menage on the Freu-h language, in 1G7.> and 1G7G, are said to have the fault of reposing too much on obsolete authorities, even those of the sixteenth century, wdiich had long been proscribed by a politer age.' Notwitlistanding the zeal of the Academy, no critical laws could arrest the revolu- tions of speech. Changes came in with the lapse of time, and were sanctioned by the imperious rule of custom. In a book 1 Pclisson, Hist, de rAcademic (conti- * Jlelanges de Littera'-ure, i. 124. Dtiatiou par Olivet), p. 47 ; Goujet, ISiblio- ■> Goujet, i. 56 ; Gibe" , p. 351 th^que Franvait*. i- 232, et post; Biogr. " Goujet, 146; Biogr. TJuJy. Univ., art. "Furctiere." ' Id., 153. 2 I'elisson, p. 69 ; Goujet, p. 261. ' Jugenieus des S^avans. 11.606. Goiyet eooies Bailie t"s words. 284 BOUHOUKS. Part 1\ . on grammar, published as early as 1688, Balzac and Voiture, even Patru and the Port-Royal \vritei*s, are called semi- modems ; ^ so many new phrases had since made their way into composition, so many of theirs had acquired a certain air of antiquity. 13, The genius of the French language, as it was estimated in this age by those who aspired to the character of Entre°iens good critics, may be learned from one of the dia- d^Aristeet logues in a work of Bouhours, — Les Entretiens d Ariste et d Eugene. Bouhoui-s was a eJesuit, who affected a polite and lively tone, according to tlie fashion of liis time, so as to warrant some degree of ridicule ; but a man of taste and judgment, whom, though La Harpe speaks of him with disdain, his contemporaries quoted with respect. The first, and the most interesting at present, of these conver- sations, which are feigned to take place between two gentle- men of literary taste, turns on the French language.- This he presumes to be the best of all modern ; deriding the Spanish for its pomp, the Italian for its finical effeminacy.^ The French has the secret of uniting brevity with clearness, and purity with politeness. The Greek and Latin are obscure where they are concise. The Spanish is always dif- fuse. The Spanish is a turbid torrent, often overspreading the country Avitli great noise ; the Italian, a gentle rivulet, occasionally given to inundate its meadows ; the French, a noble river, enriching the adjacent lands, but with an equal majestic course of waters that never quits its level.'* Spanish, again, he compares to an insolent beauty, that holds her head high, and takes pleasure in splendid dress ; Italian, to a painted coquette, always attired to please ; French, to a modest and agreeable lady, who, if you may call her a prude, has notiu'ng uncivil or repulsive in her prudery. Latin is the common mother ; but, while Italian has the sort of likeness to Latin which an ape bears to a man, in French we have the dignity • 'nibliotheque Universello, xv. 351. — It seems, on reflection, that some of the I'errault makes a similar remark on Patru. expressions he anhnadverts upon must - Uouliours points out several innova- have been affected while the.v were new, tlons which had lately come into use. being in opposition to the correct meaning He dislikes avoir . The "Reflexions sur TEloquence et sur la Poesie of Rapin, another Jesuit, whose Latin poem on Gardens _ . , _ has already been praised, are judicious, though per- AeTions on haps rather too diffuse : his criticism is what would K'^'iji^ofe appear severe m our times ; but it was that ot a man formed by the ancients, and who lived also in the best and most critical age of France. The reflections on poetry are avowedly founded on Aristotle, but with much that is new, and with examples from modern poets to confirm and illus- trate it. The practice at this time in France was to depre- ciate the Italians ; and Tasso is often the subject of Eapin's censure, for want, among other things, of that grave and majestic character which epic poetry demands. Yet Rapin is not so rigorous but that he can blame the coldness of modern precepts in regard to French poetry. After condemn- ing the pompous tone of Brebccuf in his translation of the Pharsalia, he remarks that " we have gone since to an o])posite extreme by too scrupulous a care for the purity of the lan- guage : for we have begun to take from poetry its force and dignity by too much reserve and a false modesty, which we have established as characteristics of our language, so as to deprive it of that judicious boldness which true poetry re- quires ; we have cut off the metaphors and all those figures of speech which give force and spirit to words, and reduced all the artifices of words to a pure, regular style, which exposes itself to no risk by bold expression. The taste of the age, the influence of women who are naturally timid, that of the court Avhich had hardly any thing in common with the ancients, on account of its usual antipathy for learning, accredited this manner of writing." ^ In this, Rapin seems to glance at the polite but cold criticism of his brother Jesuit, l^ouhours. 17. Rapin, in another work of criticism, the Parallels cf Great IMen of Antiquity, has weighed, in the scales jj.^ p^^j^j. of his own judgment, Demosthenes and Cicero, k-is of Homer and Virgil, Thucydides and Livy, Plato and Aristotle. Thus eloquence, poetry, history, and philosophy pass under review. The taste of Rapin is for the Latins Cicero he prefers to Demosthenes; Livy, on the whole, to » p. 147 288 BOSSU ON EPIC POETRY— FOXTENELLE. Pakt IV. Thuoydides, though this he leaves more to the reader ; but is confident that none except mere grammarians have ranked Homer above Virgil.^ The loquacity of the older poet, the frequency of his moral reflections (which Rapiu thinks mis- placed in an epic poem), his similes, the sameness of his transi- tions, are treated very freely ; yet he gives him the preference over Virgil for grandeur and nobleness of narration, for his epithets, and the splendor of liis language. But he is of opinion that iEneas u d, much finer character than Achilles. These two epic poets he holds, however, to be the greatest in the world : as for all the rest, ancient and modern, he enume- rates them one after another, and can find little but faults in them all.' Nor does he esteem dramatic and lyric poets, at least modern, much better, 18. The treatise on Epic Poetry by Bossu was once of Bossu on some reputation. An English poet has thought fit Epic Poetry, ^q gj^y^ i\y^^ ^yQ should have stared, like Indians, at Homer, if Bossu had not taught us to understand him.^ The book is, however, long since forgotten ; and we fancy that we understand Homer not the worse. It is in six books, whicli treat of the fable, the action, the narration, the man- ners, the machinery, the sentiments and expressions, of an epic poem. Homer is the favorite poet of Bossu, and Virgil next to him : this preference of the superior model does him some honor in a generation which was becoming insensible to its excellence. Bossu is judicious and correct in taste, but with- out much depth ; and he seems to want the acuteness of Bouhours. 19. Fontenelle is a critic of whom it may be said, that he Fonu-neUe's ^^^ morc injury to fine taste and sensibility in works critical of imagination and sentiment than any man without ^mtiQss. j^j „QQi\ sense and natural acuteness could havei done. He is systematically cold : if he seems to tolerate any flight of the poet, it is rather by caprice than by a genu- ine discernment of beauty ; but he clings, with the unyielding claw of a cold-blooded animal, to the faults of great writei-s, which he exposes with reason and sarcasm. His Reflections on Poetry i-elate mostly to dramatic composition, and to that of the French stage. Theocritus is his victim in the Disser- » p. 158. » p. 175. ' " ITad Bossu never «Tit, the world had still, Liku ladia.Uii, viewed thii mighty piece of wit." MULaEAVK'3 Essay on Poetry, CiiAP. Vri. SUPERIORITY OF ANCIENTS DISPUTED. 283 tation on Pastoral Poetry: but Fontenelle gave the Sicilian his revenge ; he wrote pastorals himself; and we have alto- gether forgotten, or, when we again look at, can very partially approve, the idyls of tlie Boulevards, while those Doric dactvls of Theocritus linger still, like what Schiller has called soft music of yesterday, from our schoolboy reminiscences, on our aged ears. 20. Tlie reign of mere scholars was now at an end ; no worse'name than that of "pedant" could be imposed on those who sought for glory ; the admiration of of VrencU all that was national in arts, in arras, in manners, as ^^jf^''^^" *° well as in speech, carried away like a torrent those prescriptive titles to reverence which only lingered in colleges. The superiority of the Latin language to French had long been contested ; even Henry Stephens has a dissertation in favor of the latter ; and in this period, though a few resolute scholars did not retire from the field, it was generally held, either that French was every way the better means of ex- pressing our thoughts, or at least so much more convenient as to put nearly an end to tlie use of the other. Latin had been the privileged language of stone ; but Louis XIV., in conse- quence of an essay by Charpentier, in 1676, replaced the inscriptions on his triumphal arches by others in French.* This, of course, does not much afi'ect the general question between the two languages. 21. But it was not in language alone that the ancients were to endure the aggression of a disol^edient posterity. It had long been a problem in Europe, whether they sirpen'onty had not been surpassed ; one, perhaps, which began ^^''"j^j"'* before the younger generations could make good their claim. But time, the nominal ally of the old possessors, gave his more powerful aid to their opponents : every age saw the proportions change, and new men rise up to strengthen the ranks of the assailants. In mathematical science, in natu- ral knowledge, the ancients had none but a few mere pedants, or half-read lovere of paradox, to maintain their superiority but in the beauties of language, in eloquence and poetry, the Butli-asre of criticism had lono- been theirs. It seemed time to O CI dispute even this. CSiarles Perrault, a man of some charies learning, some variety of acquirement, and a good feirauit. deal of ingenuity and quickness, published, in 1687, his « Goiyet, I. 13. VOL. IV. 19 290 PERRAULT — FONTENELLE. Pakt IV. famous Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns in all that j-egards Arts and Sciences. This is a series of dialogues, the parties being, first, a president, deeply learned, and preju- diced in all respects for antiquity ; secondly, an abbe, not ignorant, but having reflected more than read, cool and impar- tial, always made to appear in the right, or, in other words, the autlior's representative ; thirdly, a man of the world, seiz- ing the gay side of every subject, and apparently brought iu to prevent the book from becoming dull. They begiti with architecture and painting, and soon make it clear that Athens was a mere heap of pig-sties in comparison with Versailles : the ancient painters fare equally ill. They next advance to eloquence and poetry ; and here, where tlie strife of war is sharpest, the defeat of antiquity is chanted with triumph. Homer, Virgil, Horace, are successively brought forward for severe and often unjust censure : but, of course, it is not to be imagined that Ferrault is always in the wrong ; he had to fight against a pedantic admiration wliich surrenders all judgment ; and, having found the bow bent too much in one way, he foi-ced it himself too violently into another direction. It is the fault of such books to be one-sided : they are not uufi-e- quently riglit in censuring blemishes, but very uncandid in suj^pressing beauties. Homer has been worst used by Fer- rault, who had not the least power of feeling his excellence ; but the advocate of the newer age in his dialogue admits that the ^Tilneid is superior to any modern epic. In his comparison of elocpience, Perrault has given some specimens of both sides in contrast ; com{)aring, by means, however, of his own ver- sions, the funeral orations of Pericles and Plato with those of Bourdaloue, Bossuet, and Flechier, the description by Pliny of his country-seat with one by Balzac, an epistle of Cicero with another of Balzac. These comparisons were fitted to pi-oduce a great eftect among those who could neither read the original text, nor place themselves iu the midst of ancient feelings and habits. It is easy to jierceive that a vast majori- ty of the French iu that age would agree with Ferrault : the book was written for the times. 22. Fontenelle, in a very short digression on the ancients and moderns, subjoined to his Discourse on Pastoral ionteneiie. p^^^,.^,^ followed "tlic stcps of Ferrault. " The whole question as to pre-eminence between the ancients and mo- derns," he begins, " reduces itself into another, whether the Chap. VII. FIRST REVIEWS. 1)91 trees that used to grow in our woods were larger than those which grow now. If they were, Homer, Phito, Demosthenes, cannot be equalled in these ages ; but, if our ti-ees ai-e oa large as trees were of old, then there is uo reason why we may not equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes." The sophis- try of this is glaring enough ; l)ut it was logic for Paris. In the rest of this short essay, there are the usual characteristics of Fontenelle, — cool good sense, and an incapacity, by natural privation, of feeling the highest excellence in works of taste. 23. Boileau, in observations annexed to his translation of Longinus, as well as in a few sallies of his poetry, j5Qi,g^y,g defended the great poets, especially Homer and Pin- defence of dar, with dignity and moderation ; freely abandoning »o"4"ity the cause of antiquity where he felt it to be untenable. Per- rault replied with courage, — a quality meriting some praise where the adversary Avas so powerful in sarcasm, and so little accustomed to spare it ; but the controversy ceased in tolera- ble friendship. 24. The knowledge of new accessions to literature which its lovers demanded had hitherto been communicated only through the annual catalogues j)ublished at views; Frankfort or other places. But these lists of title- •'"""i-ii d« • r- IT 11 I Svavans pages were unsatisiactory to tlie distant scholar, who sought to become acquainted with the real progress of learn- ing, and to know what he might find it worth while to pur- chase. Denis de Sallo, a member of the Parliament of Paris, and not Avholly undistinguished in literature, though his other works are not much remembered, by carrying into effect a happy project of his own, gave birth, as it were, to a mighty spirit, which has grown up in strength and enterprise, till it Las become the ruling power of the literary world. INIonday, ttie oth of January, 1665, is the date of the first number of the first review, — the Journal des S(;avans, — published by Sallo under the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, which some have said to be that of his servant.^ It Avas printed Avcekly, in a duodecimo or sexto-decimo form; each number eontaiaiug frona 1 Camusat, in his Histoire Critique des was the name of an estate belon^ng to Journaux, in two volumes, 1734, which, Sallo ; and he is called in some public de- notwithstamling its general title, is chiefly srription, witliout reference to the journal, confined to the history of the Journal des Doininus de Sallo de Uedourille in I'arisi- Svavans, and wholly to such as appeared ensi curia senator. —Camus:\t, i. 13. Xot- In France, h,as not been able to clear up withstauding this, tliere is evidence tliat this interesting point : for there are not lejids us to the valet ; so that '• amplias wanting those who assert that Ucdouyille deliberandum censeo ; Res magna est " 292 JOURNAL DES SCAVANS. Part IV twelve to sixteen pages. The first book ever reviewed (let u3 observe the difference of subject between that and the last, whatever the last may be) was an edition of the works of Vic- tor Vitensis and Vigilius Tapsensis, African bishops of the fifth century, by Father Chiflet, a Jesuit.' The second is Spelraan's Glossary. According to the prospectus prefixed to tlie Journal des S(;avans, it was not designed for a mere review, but a lite- rary miscellany ; composed, in the first place, of an exact cata- logue of the chief books which should be printed in Europe • not content with the mere titles, as the majority of bibliogra- l)hers had hitherto been, but giving an account of their con- tents, and their value to the public : it was also to contain a iiecrology of distinguished authors, an accoujit of experiments in physics and chemistry, and of new discoveries in arts and sciences, with the principal decisions of civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, the decrees of 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 a double- headed child bom near Salisbury ; in the second, a question of legitimacy decided in the Parliament of Paris ; in the third, an experiment on a new ship or boat constructed by Sir AVilliam Petty ; in the fourth, an account of a discussion in the college of Jesuits on the nature of comets. The sci- entific articles, which bear a large proportion to the rest, are illustrated by engravings. It was complained that the Journal des S(;avans did not pay much regard to polite or amusing literature ; and this led to the publication of the Mercure Galant, by Vise, which gave reviews of poetry and of the drama. 25. Though the notices in the Journal des S9avans are very short, and, when they give any character, for the most part of a laudatory tone, Sallo did not fiiil to raise up enemies by the mere assumption of power which a reviewer is prone to affect. IMenaoje, on a work of whose he had made some cri- f icism, and by no means, as it appears, without justice, replied in wratli ; Patin and others rose up as injured authors against the self-erected censor : but he made more formidable enemies I "Victoria Vitensis et ViRilii Tapsensis, be, occupies but two pages in small clu(^ Provinriic Bisaconif Episco))orum Opera, dcrinin. Thai on Spehnan"3 Glossary •dent" 11. 1>. OhiHctio, Soc. .lesu. Presb., which follows, is but in half a page ;n 4to nivione "' The critique, if such it Chap. VH. EEYIEWS ESTABLISHED BY BATLE- 293 by some rnthcr blunt declarations of a Gallican feeling, aa became a counselloi* of ti)c Parliament of Paris, ap^inst the court of Rome; and the privile^^e of publication was soon withdrawn from Sallo.' It is said that he had the spirit to refuse the offer "of continuing the journal under a previous censorship ; and it passed into other hands, — those of Gallois, who continued it with great success." It is remarkable that the first review, within a few raontlis of its origin, was silenced for assuming too imperious an authority over literature, and for speaking evil of dignities. " In cunis jam Jove dignus crat." The Journal des S^avans, incomparably the most ancient of living reviews, is still conspicuous for its learning, its candor, and its freedom from those stains of personal and party malice wliich deform more popular Avoiks. 26. The path thus opened to all that could tempt a man who made writing his profession — profit, celebrity, a . perpetual appearance in tlie public eye, the facility estei.iishfd of pouring forth every scattered tliought of his own, ^^ i^ajif, the jwwer of revenge upon every enemy- — could not fail lo tempt more conspicuous men than Sallo or his successor Gal- lois. Two of very high reputation, at least of reputation that hence became very high, entered it, — Bayle and Le Clerc. The former, in 1 684, commenced a new review, — Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. He saw, and was well able lo improve, the opportunities which periodical criticism furnished to a mind eminently qualified for it ; extensively, and, in some points, deeply learned ; full of wit, acuteness, and a happy talent of writing in a lively tone without the insipidity of af- fected politeness. The scholar and philosopher of Rotterdam had a rival in some respects, and ultimately an adversary', in a neighboring city. Le Clerc, settled at Amsterdam Andi« as professor of belles-lettres and of Hebrew in the cierc Arminian seminary, undertook in 1686, at the age of twenty- nine, the first of those three celebrated series of review? to which he owes so much of his fame. This was the Biblio theque TJnivei'sclle, in all the early volumes of which La Croze, a much inferior person, was his coadjutor, published monthly in a very small form. Le Clerc had afterwards a ' C,"mii5af, p. 28. Sallo had also at- lois." Gallois is said to have b«>c n tacked the .lesuits. coadjutor of Sallo from the bepnnning:, 2 Elofie (le Oallois. par Fontenrlle, in and some others are named bv Cacusa^ the lattcr's works, vol. V. p. IfiS. l)ioSt>, and ex-t tir.st book reviewed i.s Christiani Liberii pired in Marcli, is scarcely worth notice : \k!UlO(piMn, Utrecht, 1C81. The editor it "^ professedly a compilation from the proposes to transcribe from the Journal ^"jy'' reviews The Il.story ol the Works cle,9 Scavans whatever is most valuable ; ?1 ^ '''^ '^i'L'",""!- I*"'''"*''*"' '"""''■''>• f""""' ind bv far the greater part of thQ articles Jl'^^ '<> }']}^. "^ '""ch more respctanle : celateto foreign books. This review scetas tlious'i >=» tli" il»o ^ very large proportioa CHAr. \TT. BAYLE'S DlCTIOXART. 295 28. Baylc had first becoine known in 1682 by the Pens^es Diverses sur la Comete de 1 680 ; a work wliich I am not sure that lie ever (h^cidedly surjiassed. Its Thoughts purjwse is one hardly worthy, we should imagine, to Malone has given several proo6 of = This is his own account. "The na- this. Dryden's l»rose Works, vol. i. p;irt ture of a preface is rambling, never wholly 2, p. 13'), et alibi. Dryden thought ex- out of the way, nor iu it. . . . This I prossious wron'^ and incorrect in Sli:ik- have learned from the pr.ictjce of honest 8|»eare and .lonson, which were the current Montaiijuo." — Vol. iii. p. 005. language of tiieir ago. Ch.\p. VII. HIS ESSAY ON DRAMATIC POEST. 301 vulj^risms, and these are not wanting even in his earher prefaces, become more frequent; his periods are often of more slovenly construction ; he forgets, even in his dedications, that he is standing before a lord. Thus, remarking on the account Andromache gives to Hector of her own history, he observes, in a style rather unworthy of him, " The devil was in Hector if he knew not all this matter as well as she who told it him, ibr she had been his bed-fellow for many years together ; and, if he knew it tlien, it must be confessed that Homer in this long digression has rather given us his own character than that of the fair lady whom he paints." ' 37. His Essay on Dramatic Poesy, published in 16G8, was reprinted sixteen years afterwards ; and it is curious j^^ ^^^ to observe the changes which Dryden made in the on Drama- expression. Malone has carefully noted all these: "^ °^^^' they show both the care the autlior took with his own style, and the change which was gradually working in the English lan"'ua"'e.- The Anglicism of terminating the sentence with a preposition is rejected.^ Thus "I cannot thmk so contempti- bly of the age I live in," is exchanged for " the age in which 1 live." '"A deeper expression of belief than all the actor can persuade us to," is altered, "can insinuate into us." And, though the old form continued in use long after tlie time of Dryden, it has, of late years, been reckoned inelegant, and proscribed in all cases, perhaps with an unnecessary fastidious- ness, to which I have not uniformly deferred ; since our lan- guage is of a Teutonic structure, and the rules of Latin or Fi'ench grammar are not always to bind us. 38. This Essay on Dramatic Poesy is written in dialogue ; Dryden himself, under the name of Neander, being improve- probably one of the speakers. It turns on the use ments iu of rhyme in tragedy, on the observation of the uni- * ^ "' ties, and on some other theatrical questions. Dryden, at this time, was favorable to rhymed tragedies, which his practice > Vol. iii. p. 2S6. This is in the dcilica- late frienJ, Mr. Uichnnl Shnrp, whoSB tion of his tUii-J Miscellany to Lord Kat- good tiiste is well known, used to qnole an clilTe. interrogatory of Hooker, " Shall there be - Vol. i. pp. 13')-142. a Go Vol. iii. p. 19. parody is the most unfair weapon that 2 P. 460. ridiculo can upc, they are in most in- * ThiH comedy whs published in 1672 : stances warranted by the oripual. Baycs, tbe parodies are amusing; and, though whether he resembles Dryden or net. is a Chap. VII. RYMER — SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 303 many wore afterwards reaily to forget the merits of the poet in tlic aelinquencies of the i)olitician. "Wliat Virgil wrote," he says, "in the vigor of his age, in plenty and in ease, I liavc undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed by sickness, cnrbed in my genius, lial)le to be misconstrued in all I write ; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me by the lying character which has been given them of my morals." ' 41. Dryden will hardlj be charged with abandoning too hastily our national credit, when he said the French iiymoron were better critics than the English. We had "''^S'-'^^- scarcely any thing worthy of notice to allege beyond his own writings. The Theatrum Poetarum by Philips, nephew of Milton, is superficial in every respect. Thomas Rymer, best known to mankind as the editor of the Foedera, but a strenu- ous advocate for the Aristotelian priucii)les in the drama, pub- lished, in 1*578, The Tragedies of the last Age considered and examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common Sense of all Ages. This contains a censure of some plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakspeare and Jon- .son. " I have cliiefly considered the table or plot, which all conclude to be the soul of a tragedy, which with the ancients is always found to be a reasonable soul, but with us for the most part a brutish, and often worse than brutish."- I have read only his criticisms on the Maid's Tragedy, King and No King, and Rollo ; and, as the conduct and characters of all three are far enough from being invulnerable, it is not surpris- ing that Rymer has often well exposed them. 42. Next to Dryden, the second place among the polite writers of the period from the Restoration to the end g;^ wiUiam of the century has commonly been given to Sir Wil- Tempio's liani Temple. His Miscellanies, to which principal- '""^^'" ly this praise belongs, are not recommended by more erudition than a retired statesman might acquire with no great expense of time, nor by much originality of reflection, lint, if Temjjle has not profound knowledge, he turns all he possesses well to ecount ; if his thoughts are not very striking, they ai-e com- monly just. He has less eloquence than Bolingbroke, but is very comic personage : the character la yoars before the Rehearsal was published, Baid by Johnson to have been sketched anJ could have been i~ no way obnoxi'JUl for Davenant ; but I much doubt this to its satire, report. Danenant had been dead somo i Vol. iii p. 557 * P. 4. 304 STYLE OF LOCKE — SIR G. MACKENZIE. Paut IV. also free from his restlessness and ostentation. IMucli also, which now appears superficial in Temple's historical surveys, was far less familiar in his age : he has the merit of a compre- hensive and a candid mind. His style, to which we should particularly refer, Avill be found, in compai'ison with his con- temporaries, highly polished, and sustained with more equabi lity tlian they preserve, remote from any thing either pedantic or humble. The periods are studiously rhythmical ; yet they want the variety and peculiar charm that we admire in those of Dryden. 43. Locke is certainly a good Avriter, relatively to the style of greater part of his contemporaries : his plain and Locke. manly sentences often give us pleasure by the word- ing alone. But he has some defects : in his Essay on the Human Understanding, he is often too figurative for the sub- ject. In all his writings, and especially in the Treatise on Education, he is occasionally negligent, and though not vul- gar, at least according to the idiom of his age, slovenly in the structure of his sentences as well as the choice of his words : he is not, in mere style, very forcible, and certainly not very elegant. 44. The Essays of Sir George Mackenzie are empty and Sir George tli^ ^^^C : the Style is full of pedantic W^Ords to a de- Mackenzie's gree of barbarism ; and, though they were chieHy ^^^i'^- written after the Revolution, he seems to have whol- ly formed himself on the older writers, such as Sir Tiiomas Browne, or even Feltham. He affects the obsolete and unpleasing termination of the third person of the verb in eth, which was going out of use even in the pulpit, besides other rust of archaism.^ Nothing can be more unlike the manner of Dryden, Locke, or Temple. In his matter he seems a mere declaimer, as if the world would any longer endure the trivial morality Avhich the sixteenth century had borrowed from Seneca, or the dull ethics of sermons. It is probable, that, as Mackenzie was a man who had seen and read much, he must have some better j)assage3 than I have found in glancing shortly at his works. His countryman, Andrew Andrew Flctclier, is a better master of English style : he Fletcher writes with purity, clearness, and spirit; but the ' [It must be confessed that instiincog it is scarcely yet disused, at least in Tery of this td Fontenelle, found support in Sir Wil- defeutiea by liam Temple, wiio has defended it in one of his 'einpie. ysjg.^ys with more zeal than prudence, or knowledge of the various subjects on wliich he contends for the rights of the past. It was, in fact, such a credulous and superficial view as might have been taken by a pedant of the sixteenth cen- tury. For it is in science, taking the word largely, full as much a-s in woi-ks of genius, that he denies the ancients to have been surpassed. Temple's Essay, however, was translat- ed into Fren<;h, and he was supposed by many to have made • " Suspicamur in regione solis niagis intt'llootualis natvira^ solari's sint multuiu esse solaret!, darns et illuiniiiatos iiiU-l- in actn ct paruin in pntuutii, tcnvni vuro lectuale« habitatorcs. spiritiialiorcs I'tiam niasis in putcnti.i ot jiarum in actu, lu- quam iu luna, ubi niagis lunatici, ct in nares in inoiiio Unctuantes,"' &f. — Cusa- terra magiii mateiiales et cnissi, ut illi nu.s, apmi \\ ilkiiij, p. 103 (edit. 1802). Chap. VII. FICTION — QUEYEDO'S VISIONS. 307 a brilliant vindication of injured antiquity. But it was soon refuted in the most solid book that was written in wofton's any country upon this famous disj)ute. William !'«"''«•"««. "Wotton published in 1G'.)4 his lietlections on Ancient and Modern Learning.' He di-aws very well in this the line be- tween Tem})le and Perraidt ; avoiding the tasteless judgment of the latter in poetry and eloquence, but pointing out the superiority of the moderns in the whole range of physical science. Sect. II. — On Fiction. French Romances — La Fayette and others — Pilgrim's Progress — Turkish Spj 48. Spain had, about the middle of this centuiy, a writer of various literature, who is only known in Europe by Quevedo's his fictions. — Qnevedo. His Visions and his Life of ^^^°°^ the great Tacano were early translated, and became veiy popu- lar.^ They may l)e reckoned superior to any tiling in comic romance, exoept Don Quixote, that the seventeenth century produced ; and yet this commendation is not a high one. In the picaresque style, the Life of Tacano is tolerably amusing; but Quevetlo, like others, has long since been sui-passed. The Siiefios, or Visions, are better : they show spirit and sharpness with some originality of invention. I3ut Las Za- hurdas de Pluton, which, like the other Visions, bears a gene- ral i-esemblance to the Pilgrim's Progress, being an allegorical dream, is less powerfully and grapliically written : the satire is also rather too obvious. " Lucian," says Bouterwck, "fur- nished him with tlie original idea of satirical visions ; but Quevedo's were the first of tlieir kind in modern literature. Owing to frequent imitations, their faults are no longer dis- ' Wotton had hoen a Iioy of astonishing granting a degree to one so young, u )irccocity : at .six jears old, hocouiil rt'.iili- special record of his extraordinary pro- iy tnmslate I/atin, Greek, and Hebrew; ficieuey \v;is made in the registers of the at seven he added some knowledge of university. — Monk's Life of Bentley, p. 7. Arabic and Syriao. IIc^ entered Catherine - The translation of this, "made Eng Hall, Cambridge, in his tenth year; at lish by a person of honor,"' takes great thirtoen, when he took the degree of bach- Hbnrties with the original, and endeavonJ elor of arts, he w;is acquaintoil with twelve to excel it in wit by means of freqJient in- • 1 1 ■ • 1 ,• • 1 • 1 , Hamilton. all 1 ans resounded with lany tides : it became the po])ular style for more than half a century. But few of these fall witliiu our limits. Perrault's immediate followers — • jMatlame Murat and the Countess D'Aunoy, especially the latter — have some merit ; but they come very short of the happy simplicity and brevity we find in Mother Goose's Tales. It is possible that Count Antony Hamilton may have written those tales which have made him famous, before the end of the century ; though they were published later. But these, with many admirable strokes of wit and invention, have too forced a tone in both these qualities ; the labor is too evi- dent, and, thrown away on such trifling, excites something like contempt : they are Avritten for an exclusive coterie, not for the world ; and the world in all such cases will sooner or later take its revenge. Yet Hamilton's tales are incom- parably superior to what followed: inventions alternately dull and extravagant, a style negligent or mannered, an im- morality passing onward from the licentiousness of the Re- gency to the debased philosophy of the ensuing age, became the general characteristics of these fictions, which finally expired in the neglect and scorn of the world. 55. The Telemaque of Fenelon, after being suppressed in France, appeared in Holland clandestinely without Telemaque the author's consent in 1G99. It is needless to say ^fieneion that it soon obtained the admiration of Europe ; and perhaps there is no book in the French language that has been more read. Fentilon seems to have conceived, that, metre not being essential, as he assumed, to poetry, he had, by imitating the Odyssey in Telemaque, produced an epic of as legitimate a character as his model. But the boundaries between epic poetry, especially such epics as the Odyssey, and romance, were only perceptible by the employment of verse in the ormer: no elevation of character, no ideality of concei)tion, no charm of imagery or emotion, had been denied to romance. The language of poetry had for two centuries been seized for its use. Telemaque must therefore take its place among ro- mances ; but still it is tnie that no romance had breathed so rJassical a spirit, none had abounded so much with the richness 312 ENGLISH ROMANCES. Part IV, of poetical language (much, in fact, of Homer, Virgil, and SophoL-Ies, having been woven in with no other change than verbal translation), nor had any presei\ecl such dignity in its circumstances, such beauty, harmony, and nobleness in its dic- tion. It would be as idle to say that Fenelon was indebted to D'Urfe and Calprenede, as to deny that some degree of re- semblance may be found in their poetical prose. The one belonged to the morals of chivalry, generous but exaggerated ; the other, to those of Avisdom and religion. The one has been forgotten because its tone is false: the other is ever ad- mired, and is only less regarded because it is true in excess^ because it contains too much of what we know. Telemaque, like some other of Feuelon's writings, is to be considered in reference to its object ; an object of all the noblest, being to form the character of one to whom many must look up for their welfare, but still very different from the inculcation of profound truth. The beauties of Telemaque are very nume- rous ; the descriptions, and indeed the whole tone of the book, have a charm of grace something like the pictures of Guido: but there is also a certain languor which steals over us in reading ; and, though there is no real want of variety in the narration, it reminds us so continually of its source, the Ho- meric legends, as to become rather monotonous. The aban- donment of verse has produced too much diflPuseness : it will be observed, if we look attentively, that, where Homer is circumstantial, Fenelon is more so ; in this he sometimes approaches the minuteness of the romancers. But these defects are more than compensated by the moral and even aesthetic excellence of this romance. 50. If this most fertile province of all literature, as we Deficiency h^^'G now discovcrcd it to be, had yielded so little of lingiish even in France, a nation that might appear eminent- omanccb. j^ fitted to explore it, down to the close of the seven- teenth century, we may be less surprised at the deficiency of our own country. Yet the scarcity of original fiction in Eng- land was so great as to be inexplicable by any reasoning. The public taste was not incapable of being pleaded ; for all the novels and romances of the Continent were readily trans- lated. The maimers of all classes were as open to humorc»u3 description, tlie imagination was as vigorous, the heart as eus!'e[)tible, as in other countries. But not only we find no- tliing good : it can hardly be said that we find any thing at Ohai-. VII. PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 313 all that has ever attrartecl notice in linglish romance. The Parthenissa of Lord Orrery, in the heroic style, and the short novels of Afra Belin, are nearly as many, perhaps, as could be detected in old liltraries. We must leave the beaten track before we can place a single work in this class. f)?. The Pil.a;riin's Progress essentially belongs to it ; and John Banyan may pass for the fatlier of our novel- I'iignm-s ists. His success in a line of composition like the i'™°'>^»'- spiritual romance or allegory, which seems to have been frigid and unreadable in the few instances where it had been attempted, is doubtless enhanced by his want of all learning, and his low station in life. He was therefore rarely, if ever, an imitator: he was never enchained by rules. Bunyan pos- sessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of representation : his inventive faculty was considerable ; but the other is his distinguishing excellence. He saw, and makes us see, what he describes : he is circumstantial without prolixity, and, in the variety and frequent change of his incidents, never loses sight of the unity of his allegorical fVible. His invention was enriched, and rather his choice determined, by one rule he had laid down to himself, — the adaptation of all the inciden- tal language of vScripture to his own use. There is scarce a circumstance or metaplior in the Old Testament which does not find a place, bodily and litei-ally, in the story of the Pil- grim's Progress; and this |)eculiar artifice has made his own imagination appear more creative than it really is. In the conduct of the romance, no rigorous attention to the propriety of the allegory seems to have been uniformly preserved. Vanity Fair, or the cave of the two giants, might, for any thing we see, have been placed elsewhere ; but it is by this neglect of exact parallelism that he better keeps up the reality of the pilgrimage, and takes off the coldness of mere allegory. It is also to be remembered, that we read this book at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or little regarded. In his language, nevertheless, Bunyan sometimes mingles the signification too much with the "fable: we miglit be ])erplexed between the imaginary and the real Christian ; but the liveliness of narriUion soon brings us back, or did at least when we were young, to the fields of fancy. Yet the Pilgrim's Progress, like some other books, has of late been a little overrated : its excellence is great, but it is not of the highest rank ; and we should be 314 TURKISH SPT. Paki IV careful not to break down the landmarks of fame by placing the John I>unyans and the Daniel De Foes among the Dii Majores of our worship. 58. I am inclined to claim for England, not the invention, Turkish ^ut, for the most part, the composition, of another ^py- book, which, being grounded on fiction, may be classed here, — the Turkish Spy. A secret emissary of the Porte is supposed to remain at Paris in disguise for above forty years, from 1635 to 1G82. His correspondence with a number of persons, various in situation, and with whom, therefore, his lettei-s assume various charactei-s, is protracted through eight volumes. Much, indeed most, relates to the history of those times, and to the anecdotes connected with it ; but in these we do not find a large proportion of novelty. The more remarka- ble letters are those which run into metaphysical and theologi- cal speculation. These are written Avith an earnest seriousness, yet with an extraordinary freedom, such as the feigned garb of a INIohammedan could hardly have exempted from censure in Catholic countries. Mahmud, the mysterious writer, stands on a sort of eminence above all human prejudice : he was privileged to judge as a stranger of the religion and philoso- phy of Eiu-ope ; but his bold spirit ranges over the fielyl of Oriental speculation. The Turkish Spy is no ordinary pro- duction, but contains as many proofs of a thoughtful, if not very profound mind, as any we can find. It suggested the Persian Letters to Montesquieu, and the Jewish to Argens ; the former deviating from his model with the originality of talent, the latter following it with a more servile closeness.. Probability, that is, a resemblance to the personated character of an Oriental, was not to be attained, nor was it desiralde, in any of these fictions ; but jNIahmud has something not Euro- pean, something of a solitary, insulated wanderer, gazing on a world that knows him not, which throws, to my feelings, a strik- ing charm over the Turkish Spy ; while the Usbek of Mon- tesquieu has become more than half Parisian ; his ideas are neitlicr those of his birthplace, nor such as have sprung up unbidden from his soul, but those of a ])olite, witty, and acute society ; and the correspondence with his harem in Persia, which Montesquieu has tliought attractive to the reader, is not much more interesting than it is probable, and ends in the style of a common romance. As to the Jewisli Letters of Argens, it is far inferior to the Turkish Spy, and, in fact, rather an insipid book. Chai-. VII. CHIEFLY OF ENGLISH ORIGrN". 315 59. It may be asked why I dispute the claim made by all the foreign biographers in favor of John Paul Mara- chieflv of na, a native of Genoa, who is asserted to have pub- English lished the first volume of the Turkish Spy at Paris °"°"'" in 1084, and the i*est in subsequent years.^ But I am not disputing that Marana is the author of the thirty letters pub- lished in 108-1, and of twenty more in 1080, Avliich have been literally translated into English, and form about half the fii'st volume in English of our Turkish Spy.' Nor do I doubt, in the least, that the remainder of that volume had a French original, though I have never seen it. But tlie later volumes of the Espion Turc, in the edition of 1096, with the date of Cologne, which, according to Barbier, is put for Rouen/ are ' The first portion was publishpil at Paris, and also at Amsterdam. Ka.vie gives the following account: "Get ou- vrage a ete contrefait i Amsterdam du coiiseutement du libraire de I'aris, qui I'a le premier imprime. II sera compose de plusieurs petits volumes qui contien- droat les eveuemens les plus cousijera- bles de la chretiente en general, et de la France en particulier, depuis I'annee 1637 jusqu'en 1G82 Unltalieu, natif de Genes, Marana, donne ces relations pour des let- tres ecrites aux ministres de la I'orte par uu espion Turc qui se tenoit cache i Paris. II pretend les avoir traduites de I'Arabe en Italien : et il racoute forte en long comment il les a trouvties. On soupronno avec beaucoup d'apparence, que c"est un tour d"esprit Italien, et une fiction ingeni- euse.semblableicelledont Virgiles'estservi pour louer Auguste,"" &c. — Xouvelles de la Uepubiique des Lettres ; Mars, 1634 : in tEuvres diverses de Ba\ le, vol. i. p. 20. The E-pion Turc is not to be traced in the index to the .Journal des Scavans ; nor is it noticed in the Bibliotheque Universelle. - Salfi, xiv. 01 ; Biogr. Univ. 3 Dictionnaire des Anonymes, vol. i. p. 405. Barbier's notice of L'Espion, dans les cours des princes Chretiens, 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 consi- derable. I must fortify my own opinion by what evidence I can find. The preface to the second volume (Eng- lish) 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 favorable reception which that found amongst all sorts of readers would have encouraged .'i sjjeedy translation of the rest, had there lH'cu extant any French edition of more than the first part. But, after the strictest inqairii. none cnuldhe lienrii of: and. as for the Italian, our booksellers have not that correspondence in those parts as they have in the more neighboring 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 liad been so busy in printing, and so successful in selling, the continued translation of these Arabian epistles, till it w!is the fortune of an Eng- lish gentleman to travel in those part3 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 Salt- marsh follows, in which the imaginary author tells a strange tale of the manner in which a certain lear:ied pliysician of Ferrara. .Tulio de .Medici, descended from tiie Slediceau family, put tho.^e volumes, in the Italian language, into his hands. This letter is dated Amsterdam, Sept. 9, 1693 ; and, as the preface refers it to the last summer, I lienco conclude that the first edition of the second volume of the Turk- ish Spy was in 1091 ; for I have not seeu that, nor any other eilition earlier than the fifth, printed in 1702. Manina is said by S.alfi and others to have left France in 16S9, having fiUen into a depression of spirits. Now, the first thirty lett<;rs, about one thirtv-seconi part of the entire work, were published in 1684, and about an equal length in 1683. I admit that he liad 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 ate uot struck 316 THE TURKISH SPY. Paut IV. avowedly translated from the English. And to the second volume of our Turkish Spy, published in 1G91, is jjrefixed an account, not very credible, of the manner in which the volumes subsequent to the first had been procured by a traveller, in the original Italian,; no French edition, it is declared, being known to the booksellers. That no Italian edition ever ex- isted, is, I apprehend, now generally admitted ; and it is to be shown, by those who contend for the claims of Marana to seven out of the eight volumes, that they were published in France before IGDl and the subsequent years, when tliey appeared in English. The Cologne or Rouen edition of 169G follows the English so closely, that it has not given the origi- nal letters of the first volume, ])ublished with the name of Marana, but rendered them back from the translation. 60. In these early letters, I am ready to admit, the scheme of the Turkish Spy may be entirely traced. Marana appeai-s not only to have planned the historical part of the letters, but to have struck out the more original and striking idea of a Mohammedan wavering with religious scruples, which the English contmuator has followed up with more jihilosophy and erudition. The internal evidence for their English origin, in all the latter volumes, is, to my apprehension, exceedingly strong ; but I know the difficulty of arguing from this to con- vince a reader. The proof we demand is the production of these volumes in French, that is, the specification of some public or private library where they may be seen, in any edi- tion antei'ior to 1G91 ; and nothing short of this can be satis- factory evidence.^ by this, is it likely that the English trans- 15 it is said, that her father, Sir Roger lator should have fabricated the story Manley, was the genuine author of tlie above mentioned, when the public might first volume of tli» Turkisli Spy. Dr. know that there was actually a French Midgley, an ingenious physician, related original which he had rendered ? The to the family by marriage, had the churge jivention seems without motive. Again : of looking over his papers, among which how came the French edition of 169S to he found that manuscript, which he easily bean avowed translation from the English, reserved to his proper use; and, both by when, according' to the hypothesis of 11. his own pen and the assist.ance of some Barbier, the volumes of Marana had all others, continued the work until the eightii been published in France? Surely, till volume, without ever having the justice these appear, we have reason to suspect to name the author of the first." — MS. their existence ; and the onus probandi note in the copy of the Turkish Spy (edit, lies noio on the advocates of Marana's 1732) in the British Museum, claim. Another MS. note in the same volume 1 I shall now produce .some direct evi- gives tlio following extract from Dunton'.^ dcnce for the English authorship of seven Lift; and Errors: '-Mr. IiraM received in histcricul criticism :i3 truth. — 1842.] 318 PHYSICAL AJS^D OTHER LITERATURE. Pakt IV. CHAPTER VIII. mSXORY OF PHYSICAL AND OTUER LITERATUKE, FROM 1650 TO 1700 Sect. I. — On Experimental Philosophy. Institutions for Science at Florence, London, Paris — Chemistry — Boyle and others. 1. "We have now arrived, according to the method pursued in corresponding periods, at the history of mathema- omut^g^'"" tical and physical science in the hitter part of the mathema- seventeenth century. But I must here entreat my readers to excuse the omission of that which ought to occupy a prominent situation in any work that pretends to trace the 'general progress of human knowledge. Tiie length to which I have found myself already compelled to extend these volumes might be an adequate apology ; but I have one more insuperable in the slightness of my own acquaintance with subjects so momentous and difficult, and upon which I could not write without presumptuousness and much peril of betraying ignorance. The names, therefore, of Wallis and Huygei'iS, Newton and Leibnitz, must be i)assed with distant reverence. 2. This was the age when the experimental philosophy to Academy which Bacou had held tlie torch, and which had deici- already made considerable progress, especially in mento. jt-^iy^ ^vas filially established on the ruins of arbitra- ry figments and partial inductions. Tiiis philosophy was sig- nally indebted to three associations, the eldest of which did not endure long ; but the others have remained to this day the perennial fountains of science, — the Academy del Cimento at Florence, the Royal Society of London, the Academy of Sciences at Paris. The first of these was established in 1G57, with the patronage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II., but under the peculiar care of his brother Leopold. Both were. Chap. VIII. ROYAL SOCIETY. 319 in a manner at that time remarkable, attached to natural phi- losopliy; and Leopold, less engaged in public affairs, had long carried on a corresjiondence with the learned of Europe. It is said that the advice of Viviani, one of the greatest geome- ters that Europe has produced, led to this institution. The name which this academy assumed gave promise of tlicir fundamental rule, — the investigation of truth by experiment alone. The number of academicians w^as unlimited ; and all that was required as an article of faith was the abjuration of all faith, a resolution to inquire into truth without regard to any previous sect of philosophy. This academy lasted, un- fortunately, but ten yeai-s in vigor : it is a great misfortune for any literary institution to depend on one man, and es- pecially on a j)rin(;e, who, shedding a factitious as well as sometimes a genuine lustre round it, is not easily replaced without a diminution of the world's regard. Leopold, in 16G7, became a cardinal, and was thus withdrawn from Flo- rence ; others of the Academy del Cimento died, or w'eut away ; and it rapidly sunk into insignificance. But a volume containing reports of the yearly experiments it made — among others, the celebrated one, proving, as was then supposed, the incompressibility of water — is generally esteemed.^ 3. Tlie germ of our Royal Society may be traced to the year lG-1.3, when Wallis, Wilkins, Glisson, and Royal So- others less known, agreed to meet weekly at a pri- "^'J- vate house in London, in order to converse on subjects con nected with natural, and especially experimental philosophy. Some of these soon afterwards settled in Oxford : and thus arose two little societies in connection with each other ; those at Oxford being recruited by Ward, Petty, AVillis, and Ba- tluirst. They met at Petty's lodgings till he removed to Ireland in 1652; afterwards at those of Wilkins, in Wadham Colleger, till he became Master of Trinity College; Cambridge, in 1G59; about which time most of the Oxford philosophei-g came to London, and held their meetings in Gresham College. Thev became more numerous after the Restoration, which gav e better hope of a tranquillity indispensable for science ; and on the "28111 of November, 16G0, agreed to form a regular society, which should meet weekly for the promotion of natural philosophy: their registers are kept from this time." The 1 Galluzzi, Storia del Gran Dncato. vol. ' Birch's Hist, of Royal Society, Tol. t vii. p. 240 i liraboschi, xi. 201 ; Comiani, p. 1. TiU. 29 320 ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT PARIS. Part FV. king, rather fond himself of these subjects, from the beginning affbrdctl them his patronage: their first charter is dated 15th July, J 662, incorporating them by the style of tlie Royal So- ciety, and appointing Lord Brouncker the first president, assisted by a council of twenty ; the consjjicuous names among which are Boyle, Kenelm Digby, Wilkins, Wren, Evelyn, and Oldenburg.^ The last of these was secretary, and editor of the Philosophical Transactions ; the first number of Avliicli appeared March 1, 16G5, containing sixteen pages in quarto. These were continued monthly, or less frequently, according to the materials he possessed. Oldenburg ceased to be the editor in 1667, and was succeeded by Grew, as he was by Hooke. These early transactions are chiefiy notes of con- versations and remarks made at the meetings, as well as of experiments either tlien made, or reported to the society.- 4. The Academy of Sciences at Paris was established in Acadcmv of ^^^^j under the auspices of Colbert. The king as- Sciences at sifjued to them a room in the Koyal Library for their ^"^' meetings. Those first selected were all mathema- ticians ; but other departments of science, especially chemistry and anatomy, afterwards furnished associates of considerable name. It seems, nevertheless, that this academy did not cultivate experimental philosophy Avith such unremitting zeal as the Eoyal Societ}', and that abstract mathematics have always borne a larger proportion to the rest of their inquiries. They published in this century ten volumes, known as Anciens Memoires de I'Academie. But near its close, in 1697, they received a regidar institution from tlie king, organizing tliem in a manner analogous to the two other great literary ibunda- tions, — tlie French Academy, and tliat of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.'' 5. In several branches of physics, the experimental pliiloso- stateof pher is both guided and corrected by the eternal chemistry, jjivvs of geometry. In others he wants this aid, and, in the words of his master, " knows and understands no more concerning the order of nature, than, as her servant and in terpreter, he has been taught by observation and tentative processes." All that concerns the peculiar actions of bodies on each other was of this desci'iption ; tliough, in our own times, even this has been in some degree brought under the » nirch's Hist, of Hoval Society, p. 88. » Fonfenelle, Tol. v. p. 23; Montucli ' Id., vol. ii. p. 18 j I'homsou's lliat. of llist. ties MatliematiiiUtiB, vol. ii. p. 567. Royal Society, p. 7. CfiAp. VIII. CHEMISTRY — BECKER. 321 omnipotent control of the modem analysis. Chemistry, or the science of the molecular constituents of bodies, manifested in sucli peculiar and reciprocal operations, had never bcea rescued from empirical hands till this period. The transmu- tation of metals, the universal medicine, and other inquiries utterly unphilosophical in themselves, because they assumed the existence of that which they sought to discover, liad occu- pied the cliemlsts so much, that none of them had made any further progress, than occasionally, by some happy combination . or analysis, to contribute an useful preparation to pliarmacy, or to detect an unknown substance. Glauber and Van Hel- mont were the most active and ingenious of these elder chemists ; but the former has only been remembered by hav- ing long given his name to sulphate of soda, while the latter wasted his time on experiments from which he knew not liow to draw right inferences, and his powers on hypotheses which a sounder spirit of the inductive philosophy would have taught him to reject.' 6. Chemistry, as a science of principles, hypothetical no doubt, and in a great measui'e unfounded, but coher- „ , mg m a plausible system, and better than tlie reve- ries of the Paracelsists and Behmenists, was founded bv Becker in Germany, by Boyle and his contemporaries of the Royal Society in England. Becker, a native of Spire, who, after wandering from one city of Germany to another, died in London in 1G85, by his Physica Subterranea, published in 16G9, laid the foundation of a theory, which, having in the next century been perfected by Stahl, became the creed of philosophy till nearly the end of the last century. " Becker's, theory," says an English writer, " stripped of every thing but the naked statement, may be expressed in tlie following sen- tence : Besides water and air, there are three other substances, called earths, which enter into the composition of bodies ; namely, the fusible or vitrifiable earth, tiie inflammable or sulphureous, and the mercurial. By the intimate combination of earths witli water is formed an universal acid, from which proceed all other acid bodies : stones are produced by the combination o1 certain earths ; metals, by the combination of all the three earths in proportions which vary according to the metal." '^ > Thomson's Hist, of Chemistry, i. 183. * Thomson's Hist, of Royal Society, p. 468. vol- IV 21 322 BOYLE. Part IV 7. No one Englishman of the seventeenth century, aftei Lord Bacon, raised to himself so high a reputation °^ ^' in experimental ])hiloso])hy as Robert Boyle. It haa even been remarked, that he was born in the year of Bacon's deatli, as the person destined by nature to succeed him ; an eulogy Avhich would be extravagant if it implied any parallel . between the genius of the two, bat hardly so if we look on Boyle as the most faithful, the most patient, the most success- ful disciple who carried forward the experimental philosophy of Bacon, His works occupy six large volumes in quarto. Tliey may be divided into theological or metaphysical, and physical or experimenta]. Of the former, we may mention as the most philosophical l.is Disquisition into the Final Causes of Natural Things, his Free Inquiry into the received No- tion of Nature, his Discourse of Tilings above Reason, hig Considerations about the Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion, his Excellency of Theology, and his Considerations on the Style of the Scriptures ; but the latter, his chemical and experimental writings, form more than two-thirds of his prolix works. 8. The metaphysical treatises, to use that word in a large His meta- scusc, of Boyle, or rather those concerning Natural physical Tlicology, are very perspicuous, very free from sys- tem, and such as bespeak an independent lover of truth. His Disquisition on Final Causes was a well-timed vindication of that palmary argument against the paradox of the Cartesians, who had denied the validity of an inference from the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the universe to an intelligent Providence. Boyle takes a more philosophi- cal view of the principle of final causes than had been found in many theologians, who weakened the argument itself by the presumptuous liypothesis, that man was the sole object of Providence in the creation.' His greater knowledge of phy- siology led him to perceive, that there are both animal and what lie calls cosmical ends, in which man has no concern. i) The ibllowing passage is so favorable a specimen of the Kxtnict philosophical spirit of Boyle, and so good an illustra- fromone tiou of the theory of idols in the Novum Organura, of thorn. ^j^_^^^ although it might better perhaps liave deserved a place in a former chapter, I will not refrain from inserting it : ''I know not," he says in his Free Inquiry into the re- » Boyle's Works, toI. v. p. 394. Chap. Vm. CHARACTER OF BOYLE. S23 ceived Notion of Nature, " whether it he a prerogative in the human mind, that as it is itself n ti-ue and positive being, so i3 it apt to conceive all other things as true and positive beings also : but, whether or no this propensity to frame such kind of ideas supposes an excellency, I fear it occasions mistakes, and makes us think and speak, after the manner of true and posi- tive beings, of such tilings as are but chimerical, and some of tliem negations or privations themselves ; as death, ignorance, blindness, and the like. It concerns us, therefore, to stand very carefully upon our guard, that we be not insensibly mis- led by such an innate and unheeded temptation to error as we bring into the Avoi-ld Avith' us." ^ 10. Boyle improved the air-pump and the thermometer, though the latter was first made an accurate instru- „. r r • ^- ^- 1 -KT , TT 1 T Ills merits ment ot mvestigation by iNewton. He also disco- in physics vered the law of the air's elasticity ; namely, that its ^"istry ^" bulk is inversely as the pressure upon it. For some of the principles of hydrostatics we are indebted to him, though he did not possess much mathematical knowledge. The Philosophical Transactions contain several valuable papers by him on this science.^ By his Sceptical Chemist, published in IGGl, he did much to overturn the theories of Van Helmont's school, — that commonly called of the iatro- chemists, which Avas in its highest reputation ; raising doubts as to the existence not only of the four elements of the peri- patetics, but of those which these chemists had substituted. Boyle holds the elements of bodies to be atoms of different bhapes and sizes, the union of which gives origin to what are vulgarly called elements.'^ It is unnecessary to remark, that this is the prevailing theory of the present age. 11. I shall boiTow the general character of Boyle and of his contemporaries in English chemistry from a General modern author of credit. " Perhaps Mr. Boyle may ch^iracter be considered as the first person, neither connected ° °^ " ' with pharmacy nor mining, Avho devoted a considerable de- gree of attention to chemical pursuits. Mr. Boyle, though, in common Avith the literary men of his age, he may be accused of credulity, Avas both very laborious and intelligent ; and his chemical pursuits, Avhich Avere vai-ious and extensi\e, and 1 Boyle's Works, toI. v. p. 161. 2 Thomson's Hist, of Kojal Society, pp. 400, 411. » Thomson's liist. of Chemistry, i. 205. 324 HOOKE AND OTHERS. Taut IV. intended solely to develop the truth without any regard to previously conceived opinions, contributed essentially to set ciiemistry free from the trammels of absurdity and supersti- tion in which it had been hitherto enveloped, and to recom- mend it to philosophers as a science deserving to be ^itudied on account of the important information which it was qualified to convey. His refutation of the alchemistical opinions re- specting the constituents of bodies, his observations on cold, on the air, on phosphorus, and on ether, deserve particularly to be mentioned as doing him much honor. We have no regular account of any one pul)stance or of any class of bodies in Mr. Boyle, similar to those which at pi-esent are considered as belonging exclusively to the science of chemistr3^ Neither did he attempt to systematize the phenomena, nor to suljject tiiem to any hypothetical explanation. 12. " But his contemporaiy Dr. Hooke, who had a particu- Of Hnoke lar ]:)redilection for hypothesis, sketched in his Mici"o- aud others, gj-aphia a very beautiful theoretical explanation of combustion, and promised to develop his doctrine more fully in a subsequent book, — a promise whicli he never fulfilled ; though in his Lampas, published about twenty years after- wards, he has given a very beautiful explanation of the way in which a candle burns. Mayow, in his p]ssays, published at Oxford about ten years after the Micrographia, embraced the hypothesis of Dr. Hooke without acknowledgment, but clogged it with so many absurd additions of his own as greatly to obscure its lustre and diminish its beauty. Mayow's first and principal Essay contains some happy experiments on res- ])iration and air, and some fortunate conjectures respecting the combustion of the metals ; but the most valuable part of the whole is the chapter on affinities, in Avhicli he appears to have gone much farther than any other chemist of his day, and to have anticipated some of the best established doctrines of his successors. Sir Isaac Newton, 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 gre.it divisions. The first was pointing out a method of graduating thermometers, so as to be comparable with each otiier in wliatever part of the world observations with them are made. The second was by point- ing out the nature of chemical atfinity, and showing tliat it consisted in an attraction by vviiich the constituents of bodies Cn.vp. Vin. CHE:\nSTRT — NATUEAL HISTORY. 325 4 were drawn towards each other, and united ; thus destroying the previous hypothesis of the hooks and points and rings and wedges, by means of which the different constituents of bodies were conceived to be kept together."* 13. Lemery, a druggist at Paris, by his Cours de Chymie in 1675, is said to have changed the face of the sci- .. ' ° Lemery. once : the change, nevertheless, seems to have gone no deeper. "Lemery," says Fontenelle, "was the first who dispersed the real or pretended obscurities of chemistry; who brought it to clearer and more simple notions ; who abo- lished the gross barbarisms of its language ; who promised nothing but what lie knew the art could perform ; and to this lie owed the success of his book. It shows not only a sound understanding, but some greatness of soul, to strip one's own science of a false pomp." - But we do not find that Lemery had any novel views in chemistry, or that he claims, with any irresistible pretension, the title of a philosopher. In fact, his chemistry seems to liave been little more than pharmacy Sect. II. — On Natural Histout. Zoology — Kay — Botanical Classifications — Grew — Geological Theories. 14. The accumulation of particular knowledge in natural history must always be progressive where any re- giowpro- gsfrd is paid to the subject : every traveller in remote b^ss of . • • ■ . M ^ 1 zoology. countries, every manner, may contribute some obser- vation, correct some error, or bring home some new species. Thus zoology had made a regular advance from the days of Conrad Gesner ; yet with so tardy a step, that, reflecting oa the extensive intercoui-se of Europe with the Eastern and Western World, we may be surprised to find how little .Jon- stou, in the middle of the seventeenth century, had added, even in the most obvious class, that of quadrupeds, to the knowledge collected one hundred years before. But hitherto zoology, confined to mere description, and- that often careless or indefinite, unenlightened by anatomy, unregulated by me« > Thomson's Hist, of Royal Society, p. 466. * Kloge de l/emery, in (Euvre-i Je Fontenelle, t. 361 ; Biogr. UniTerselle. 326 EAT— SYNOPSIS. Pakt IV. thoci, had not merited the name of a science. That name it owes to John Kay. 15. Ray fii-st appeared in natural history as the editor of the Ornithology of his highly accomplished friend y- p,.jjp(,;g "VVilloughby, with whom he had travelled over the Continent. This was published in 1G76; and the History of Fishes followed in 1686. The descriptions are ascribed to Willoughby, the arrangement to Ray, who might liave considered the two Avorks as in great part his own, though he has not interfered with the glory of his deceased friend. Cuvier observes, that the History of Fishes is the more perfect work of the two ; that many species are described which will not be found in earlier ichthyologists ; and that those of the Mediterranean, especially, are given with great pre- cision.' 1 6. Among the original works of Ray, we may select the iiisSynop- Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et sis of Qua- Serpentini Generis, published in 1693. This book drupeds. j^^jj-gs au cpoch in zoology, not for the additions of new species it contains, since there are few wholly such, but as the first classification of animals that can be reckoned both general and grounded in nature. He divides them into those with blood and without blood. The former are such as breathe through lungs, and such as breathe through gills. Of the former of these, some have a heart with two ventricles ; some have one only. And, among the former class of these, some are viviparous, some oviparous. AVe thus come to tlie proper distinction of mammalia. But, in compliance with vulo-ar prejudice, Ray did not include the cetacea in the saaio clas's Avith quadrupeds, though well aware that they properly belonged to it ; and left them as an order of fishes.- Quadru- peds he Avas the first to divide into luujidate and unguiculate, hoofed and clawed ; having himself invented the Latin words.' The former are solkh'pcda, hisnlca, or quadrisvlca ; the latter ai-e hip da or mnl/ifida, and these latter with undivided or with [j'artially divided toes ; which latter again may have broad claws, as monkeys, or narrow claws; and these with nar- row claws he arranges according to their teeth, as either J Biogmphie Univcrselle, art. "Kiiy." pans in omnibus fere prictcrquam in 5 " Nos Ilea eoinniuui hniiiiniim ojiiniono pills ct, pedibus ft eleiui'nto in quo depunt nimls rrccdanius, ct ut iilTci'tatiC novltatls convciiin" vidcajitur, piscibus aiinumerw- notain evitcmus, cetactniin aiiuatilium pc- biuuis." — p. 65. uu.s, quun.vis cum quadnipidibus vivi- ^ 1'. 00. OFTAr Vm RAT — EEDT. 327 carnivora or lepnrina, now generally called rodentia. Besides all these quadrupeds, which he calls analoga, he has a general divi>ion, called anomala, for those without teeth, or with such peculiar arrangements of teeth as we find in the insectivorous genera, tlie liedgehog and mole.' 1 7. Ray was the hrst zoologist who made use of compara- tive anatomy : he inserts, at length, every account Merits of of dissections that he could find ; several had been "^'* '™''^- made at Paris. He does not appear to be very anxious about describing every species : thus, in the simian family, he omits several well known.^ I cannot exactly determine what quad- rupeds he has inserted tliat do not appear in the earlier zoolo- gists;* according to LinniBus, in the twelfth edition of the Systeraa Naturae, if I have counted rightly, they amount to thirty-two : but I have found him very careless in specifying the synouymes of his pi-edecessors ; and many, for which he only quotes Ray, are in Gesner or Jonston. Ray has, how- ever, much the advantage over these in the brevity and close- ness of his specific characters. "The particular distinction of his labors," says Cuvier, " consists in an arrangement more clear, more determinate, than those of any of his predecessors, and applied with more consistency and precision. His distri- bution of the classes of- quadrupeds and birds has been fol- lowed by the English naturalists almost to our own days ; and we find manifest traces of that he has adopted as to the latter class in Linnneus, in Brisson, in Buffon, and in all other orni- thologists." ^ 18. The bloodless animals, and even those of cold blood, with the exception of fishes, had occupied but little attention of any good zoologists till after the middle of the century. They were now studied with considerable success. Redi, established as a physician at Florence, had yet time for that various literature which has immortalized his name. He opposed, and in a great degree disproved by experiment, the prevailing doctrine of the equivocal geneni- tion of insects, or that from corruption ; though, where he was unable to show the means of reproduction, he had recourse to 1 p. 55. he calls Parisiensis ; such, I presume, .is lis 2 '• Uoc genus animalium turn caudato- had found in the Memoirs of the AcaJe- rum turn cauj;i carentium species valde mie des Sciences. But he does not men- numerosae sunt ; non tamen uiult.-e apud tion tlie Simla Inuus. or the S. Ilama- autores fide dignos de.'icriptas occurrunt." drya.s, and several others of the moat He only describes those species he h:i.s kno'.vo species. found in Clusiiis or M.u-egrare, and what * Biogr. Uniy. 828 LISTER — COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. Part IV a paradoxif^al hypothesis of his own. Redi also enlarged our knowledge of intestinal animals, and made some good experi- ments on the poison of vipers.^ jNIalpiglii, who combated, like Redi, the theory of the reproduction of organized bodies from mere corruption, has given one of the most complete treatises on the silkworm that we possess.^ Swammerdam, a Dutch Swammer- natiu'alist, abandoned Ids pursuits in human anatomy dam. tQ follow up that of insects ; and, by his skill and patience in dissection, made numerous discoveries in their structure. His General History of Insects, 1G69, contains a distribution into four classes, founded on their bodily forms, and the metamorphoses they undergo. A posthumous work, Biblia Naturse, not published till 1738, contains, says the Bio- graphie Universelle, "a multitude of facts wholly unknown before Swammerdam : it is impossiL)le to carry iixrther the anatomy of these little animals, or to be more exact in the de- scription of their organs." 19. Lister, an English physician, may be reckoned one of those who have done most to found the science of con- chology by his Historia sive Synopsis Conchyliorum in 1685, — a work very copious, and full of accurate delinea- tions ; and also by his three treatises on English animals, tv.'o of Avhich relate to fluviatile and marine shells. The third, which is on spiders, is not less esteemed in entomology. Lister was also perhaps the first to distinguish the specific charac- ters — such at least as are now reckoned specific, though pro- bably not in his time — of the Asiatic and African elephant. " His works in natural history and comparative anatomy are justly esteemed, because he has shown himself an exact and sagacious observer, and has pointed out with correctness the natural relations of the animals that he describes."^ 20. The beautiful science which bears the imi).oper name compara- ^^ comparative anatomy had but casually occupied •iveana,'to- the attention of the medical profession.' It was to ^^' them, rather than to mere zoologists, that it owed, and indeed strictly must always owe, its discoveries, which > Binjjr. Univ.; Tiraboschi. xi. 252. In the first sense it is never nov? useJ ; 2 BioRr. Univ. ; Tiraboschi, xi. 252. and tlie .si-c-ond is but a part, though an ' Itio^r. Univ. ; Chalmers. important one, of the science. Zoutuniy « It IS most probable that this term has been suf,'Kest<^d as a better name, b>it was orijxinally designed to express a com- it is not unite analogical to anatomy ; and, parison betwren the human structure and on the whole, it seems as if we must re- tliat of brutes, though it might also mean m.ain witli tlie old word, protesting against cue betweeu different spetios of the latter, its propriety. Chap. VIII. BOTANY — JUNGIUS—MOKISON. 329 liad hitherto been very few. It was now more c.iltivated ; and the relations of structure to the capacities of animal life be- came more striking as their varieties were more fully under- stood ; tlie orrand theories of final causes found their most convincing arguments. In tliis period, I believe, comjiarative anatomy made an important progress, which in the earlier part of the eighteenth century was by no means equally rapid. France took the lead in these researches. "• The number of papers on com])arative anatomy," says Dr. Thomson, '• is greater in the Memoirs of the French Academy than in our national publication. This was owing to the pains taken during the reign of Louis XIV. to furnish the academy with proper animals, and the number of anatomists who received a salary, and of course devoted themselves to anatomical sub jects." There are, however, about twenty papers in the Philosophical Transactions before 1700 on this subject.^ 21. ]3otany, notwithstanding the gleams of philosophical light which occasionally illustrate the Avritings of Ca5salpin and Columna, had seldom gone farther than to name, to describe, and to delineate plants with a greater oi less accuracy and copiousness. Yet it long had the advantage over zoology ; and now, when the latter made a considerable step in advance, it still continued to keep ahead. This is a period of great importance in botanical science. Jungius of Hamburg, whose posthumous Isagoge Phytoscopica was published in 1G79, is said to have been the first in the seventeenth century who led the way to a better classification than that of Lobel ; and Sprengel thinks that the PLnglish botanists were not unacquainted with his writings : Ray, indeed, owns his obligations to them.- 22. But the founder of classification, in the eyes of the world, was Robert Morison of Aberdeen, professor . of botany at Oxford ; who, by his Hortus Blesensis in 1669, by his Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova in 1672, and chiefly by his great work, Ilistoria Plantarum Universalis, in 1G78, laid the basis of a systematic classifica- tion, which he partly founded, not on trivial distinctions of appearance, as the older botanists, but, as Ca?salpin had first done, on the fructifying organs. He has been frequently charged with plagiarism from that great Italian, who seems to > Thomson's Hist, of Royal Society, p. 114. * Sprengel, Hi^t. Kei Herbarue, toI. ii. p. 32. 3oO RAY— METHODUS PLANTARUM NOVA. Paiit IV. have suffered, as others have done, by failing to carry forward his own himinous conceptions into such details of proof as the world justly demands ; another instance of which has been seen in his very striking passages on the circulation of the blood. Sprengel, however, who praises jNIorison highly, does not impute to him this injustice towards Ciesalpin, whose writings might possibly be unknown in Britain.^ And it might be observed also, that Morison did not, as has some- times been alleged, establish the fruit as the sole basis of" his arrangement. Out of fifteen classes, into which he distributes all herbaceous plants, but seven are characterized by this dis- tinction.- " The examination of Morison's works," says a late biographer, " will enable us to judge of the service he ren- dered in the reformation of botany. The great botanists, from Gesner to the Bauhins, had published works more or less useful by their discoveries, their observations, their descrip- tions, or their figures. Gesner had made a great step in considering the fruit as the principal distinction of genera. Fabius Columna adopted this view ; Cscsalpin applied it to a classification which should be regarded as better than any that preceded the epoch of which we speak. Morison had made a particular study of fruits, having collected fifteen hundred different species of them, though he did not neglect the im- portance of the natural affinities of other parts. He dwells on this leading idea, insists on the necessity of establishing generic characters, and has founded his chief works on this basis. He has therefore done real service to the science ; nor should the vanity which has made him conceal his obligations to Ca^salpin induce us to refuse him justice."^ Morison speaks of his own theory with excessive vanity, and depre- ciates all earlier botanists as full of confusion. Several English writers have been unfavorable to Morison, out of partiality to Ray, with whom he was on bad terms ; but Tour- nefort declares, that, if he had not enlightened botany, it would still liave been in darkness. 23. Ray, in his INIethodns Phmtarum Nova, 1G82, and in his liistoria Plantarum Universalis, in three volumes. ^' the first published in IGHG, the second in 1GS8, and the third, which is supplemental, in 1704, trod in the steps of ' Sprengel, p. 34. » PulU-nev, Uistorical Progress of Botany in Englaad, Tol. L p. 3(17. • Biogi '."iiiverscUe. Cu.vr. Vm. R.\.Y — RIVINCS. 331 Morison, but with more acknowledgment of what was due to otiiers, and with some improvements of his own. He de- scribed G,900 plants, many of which are now considered as varielies.^ In the botanical works of Ray we find the natural families of plants better defined, the difference of com])lete and incomplete flowers more precise, and the grand division of monocotyledons and dicotyledons fully established. He gave much precision to the characteristics of many classes, and intx'oduced several technical terms very useful for the jjurspicuity of botanical language ; finally, he established many general principles of arrangement which have since been adopted.^ Ray's method of classification was principally by the fruit, though he admits its imperfections. "In fact, his method," says Pulteney, "though he assumes the fruit as the foundation, is an elaborate attempt, for that time, to fix natu ral classes." ^ 24. Rivinus, in his Introductio in Rem Herbariam, Leipsie 1G90, a very short performance, struck into a new . path, which has modified, to a great degree, the sys- tems of later botanists. Caisalpin and Morison had looked mainly to the fruit as the basis of classification : Rivinus added the flower, and laid down as a fundamental rule, that all plants which resemble each other both in the flower and iu the fruit ouglit to bear the same generic name.'* In some pages of this Introduction, we certainly find the basis of the Critica Botanica of Linnajus.'' Rivinus thinks the arrange- ment of Cffisalpin the best, and that Morison has only spoiled what he took : of Ray he speaks in terms of eulogy, but blames some part of his method. Ilis own is primarily founded on the flower ; and thus he forms eighteen classes, which, by considering the differences of the fruits, he snl)di- vides into ninety-one genera. The specific distinctions he founded on the general habit and appearance of the plant. His method is more thoroughly artificial, as opposed to natu- ral ; that is, more established on a single principle, which ofien brings heterogeneous i)lants and families together, than that of any of his predecessors : for even Ray had kept the distinction of trees from shrubs and herbs, conceivins: it to be founded iu their natural fructification. Rivinus set aside » Pulteney. The account of Ray's life 2 Biosr. Universelle. and botanical writings in this work oecu- 3 P. 259. ptjs nearly a humired pages. « Biogr. Universelle. * Id 332 TOUKNEFORT. Paft IV. wholly this leading division. Yet he had not been able to reduce all plants to his method, and admitted several anoma lous divisions.^ '2o. The merit of establishing an uniform and consistent system was reserved for Tournefoi-t. His Elemens Toumefort. y,,, . -, • -i nr, i ^i t .• de la Botanique appeared m 1 Gy4 ; the Liatm ti-nns- lation, Institutiones Rei Herbaria, in 1700. Tournefort, like Rivinus, took the flower or corolla as the basis of his system ; and the varieties in the structure, rather than number, of the petals, fui'nish him with his classes. The genera — for, like other botanists before Linnaeus, he has no intermediate divi- sion — are established by the flower and fruit conjointly, or now and then by less essential diffei-ences ; for he held it better to constitute new genera, than, as others had done, to have anomalous species. The accessory parts of a plant are allowed to supply specific distinctions. But Tournefort di- vides vegetables, according to old prejudice, — which it is sur- prising, that, after the precedent of Rivinus to the contrary, he should have regarded, — into herbs and trees; and tlius he has twenty-two classes. Simple flowers, monopc^alous or polypetalous, form eleven of these ; compasite flowers, three ; the apetalous, one ; the cryptogamous, or those without flower or fruit, make another class ; shrubs or stiffftttices are placed in the seventeenth ; and trees, in five more, are siniilaily distributed, according to their floral characters.- Sprengel extols much of the system of Tournefort, though he disap- pi'oves of the selection of a part so often wanting as the corolla for the sole basis ; nor can its various forms be com- prised in Tournefort's classes. His ordei-s are well marked, according to the same author; but he multiplied both his genera and species too much, and paid too little attention to the stamina. His method was less repugnant to natural affi- nities, and more convenient in practice, than any which had come since Lobel. Most of Tournefort's generic distinctions were pi<;served by Linnasus, and some which had been abro- gated without sufficient reason have since been restored.^ Ray opposed the system of Toui-nefort ; but some have tliought that in his later works he came nearer to it, so as to be called magii corollista guam Jnictista.* This, however, is not ac- 1 Kiogr. TJnJT. ; Sprengel. p. TiO. » )!ioKr. Univ. ; Thomson's llist. of Royal Society, p. 34 ; Sprengel, p. 64 * Kiogr. Universello. * lU. Chap. VIII. GREW — ANATOMY OF PLANTS. 333. kiiowledged by Pulteney, who has paid great attention to Ray's wi-itings. 2G. The classification and description of plants constitute what generally is called botany. But tliese began vegetable now to be studied in connection with the anatomy P'i3»ioiosy. and physiology of the vegetable world ; terms not merely ana- logical, because as strictly applicable as to animals, but which had never been employed before the middle of the seventeenth century. This interesting science is almost wholly due to two men, — Grew and Malpighi. Grew first directed ^^^^^ his thoughts towards the anatomy of plants in 1664, in consequence of reading several books of animal anatomy, which suggested to him, that plants, being the works of the same Author, would probably show similar contrivances. Some had introduced observations of this nature, as High- more, Sharrock, and Hooke, but only collaterally ; so that tiie systematic treatment of the subject, following the plant from the seed, was left quite open for himself. In 1670, he present- ed the first book of his work to the Royal Society, who next year ordered it to be printed. It was laid before the society, in print, December, 1671 ; and on the same day a manuscript by Malpighi on the same subject was read. They went on from this time with equal steps ; Malpighi, however, having caused Grew's book to be translated for his own use. Grew speaks very honorably of Malpighi, and without claiming more than the statement of facts permits him.^ 27. The first book of his Anatomy of Plants, which is the title given to three separate works, when published jjj^, j^^^^^ collectively in 1 682, contains the whole of his physio- tomy of logical theory, which is developed at length in those that follow. The nature of vegetation and its processes seem to have been unknown when he began ; save that common observation, and the more accurate experience of gardeners ana others, must have collected the obvious truths of vegetable anatomy. He does not quote Cicsalpin, and may have been unacquainted with his writings. No man perhaps who creat- ed a science has carried it farther tlian Grew : he is so close and diligent in his observations, making use of the microscope, that comi)aratively few discoveries of great importance have been made in the mere anatomy of plants since his time;'' ' Pulteney ; Chalmers ; Biogr Unir. Sprengel calls Grew'a book t-pi« absolutum U immorlale. * Biogr. Universelle. S34 SEXUAL SYSTEM IN PLANTS. Paki 17 though some of his opinions are latterly disputed by Mirbel and others of a new botanical school. 28. The great discovery ascribed to Grew is of the sexual . system in plants. He speaks thus of what he calls vers the' tlie attire, though rather, I think, in obscure terms : sexual II -pi^g primary and chief use of the attire is such as Eystem 1 *' • TO hath respect to the plant itself, and so appears to be very great and necessary. Because even those plants which have no flower or foliature are yet some way or other attired, either with the seminiform or the floral attire ; so that it seems to perform its service to the seeds as the foliature to the fruit. In discourse hereof \vith our learned Savilian pro- fessor Sir Thomas Milliugtou, he told me he conceived that the attire doth serve, as the male, for the generation of the seed. 1 immediately replied, that I was of the same opinion, and gave him some reasons for it, and answered some objec- tions which might oppose them. But withal, in regard every plant is uppevodrp.vg, or male and female, that I was also of opinion that it serveth for the separation of some parts as well as the affusion of others." ^ He ])roceeds to explain his no- tion of vegetable impregnation. It is singular that he should suppose all plants to be hermaphrodite ; and this shows he could not have recollected what had long been known as to the palm, or the passages in Coesalpin relative to the subject. 29. Ray admitted Grew's opinion cautiously at first : " Nos ut verlsimilem tantum admittimus." But in his Sylloge Stir- pium, 1694, he fully accedes to it. The real establishment of Camerarius ^'^^ scxual theorj^, liowever, is due to Camerarius, confirms profcssor of botauy at Tiibingen, whose letter on that subject, published 1694, in the work of another, did much to spread the theory over Europe. His experiments, indeed, were necessary to confirm what Grew had rather hazarded as a conjecture than brought to a test ; and he showed that flowers deprived of their stamina do not produce seeds capable of continuing the species.- Woodward, in the Philosophical Transactions, illustrated the nutrition of plants by putting sprigs of vegetables in phials filled with water, and, after some time, determining the Aveight they had gained and the quantity they had imbibed." These experiments had 1 Book iv. ch 1. lie had hinted at - Sprengel; Biogr. Univ. ; Pulteney, p. Bome "primary and private use of the 338. attire." iu book . ch. 5. * Ihomson's Uist. of Royal Society, p. 5S. CiLVP. VIII. MALPIGm - GEOLOGY. 335 been made by Van Helmout, who had inferred from them thai Avater is convertible into solid matter.^ 30. It is just to observe, that some had preceded Grew in vepjctable physiology. Aroniatari, in a letter of -p^^^^^^^ only four pages, published at Venice in 1025, on the Forsof generation of plants from seeds, which was reprinted '^'^^"' in the Philosophical Transactions, sliowed the analogy be- tween grains and eggs, each containing a minute organized embryo, which emi)loys the substances enclosing it for its own development. Aromatari has also understood the use of the cotyledons.- Brown, in his Inquiry into Vulgar Errors, has remarks on the budding of ])lants, and on the quinaiy number which they affect in their flower. Keuelm Digby, according to Sprengel, first explained the necessity in vegetation for oxygen, or vital air, which had lately been discovered by Bathurst.^ Ilooke carried the discoveries liitherto made in vegetable anatomy much further in his Micrographia. Shar- rock and Lister contributed some knowledge ; but they were rather later than Grew. None of these deserve such a place as Malpighi, who, says Sprengel, was not inferior to ^^^^ .^^. Grew in acuteness, though probably, through some illusions of prejudice, he has not so well understood and ex- plained many things. But the structure and growth of seeds he has explained better ; and Grew seems to have followed him. His book is also better arranged and more concise.* The Dutch did much to enlarge botanical science. The Hor- tus Indicus Malabaricus of Rheede, who had been a governor in India, Avas published at his own expense in twelve volumes, the first appearing in 1G8G : it contains an immense number of new plants.^ The Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius was collected in the seventeenth century, though not published till 1741.'^ Several botanical gardens were formed in different countries; among others, that of Chelsea was opened in 1G8G.' 31. It was impossible that men of inquiring tempei-s should not have been led to reflect on those remarkable -^.^ T^IW 1 V phenomena of the earth's visible structure, which, notions of being in course of time accurately registered and ^'""^y* 1 Thomson's Hist, of Chemistry. discoTcred in 1774 by Priestley, wlio ex- 2 Sprengel ; Biopn-. Univ. hibited it in a separate state. — 1842.1 8 Sprengel, iii. 176. [It will be under- * Sprengel, p. 15. stood that the name "oxygen," thougL '' liiogr. Univ. The date of the first vob Sprengel uses it, is modem ; and also ume is given erroneously in the liiof^ that this gas is properly said to have been Unir. « Id. ' Sprengel ; Pult«iiey 336 BUENET'S THEORY OF THE EARTH. Part IV. arranged, have become the basis of that noble science, the boast of our age, — geology. The first thing which must strike the eyes of the merest clown, and set the philosopher thinking, is the irregularity of the surface of our globe : the more this is observed, the more signs of violent disruption appear. Some, indeed, of whom Ray seems to have been one,' were so much impressed by the theory of final causes, that, perceiving the fitness of the present earth for its inhabitants, they thought it might have been created in such a state of physical ruin. But the contrary inference is almost irresistible. A still more forcible argument for great revolutions in tlie history of the earth is drawn from a second phenomenon of very general occurrence, — the marine and other fossil relics of organized beings, which are dug up in strata far remote from the places where these bodies could now exist. It was common to account for them by the Mosaic deluge. But the depth at which they are found was incompatible with this hypothesis. Others fancied them to be not really organized, but sports of nature, as they were called, the casual resemblances of shells and fishes in stone. The Italians took the lead in speculating on these jn-oblems ; but they could only arrive now and then at a happier conjecture than usual, and do not seem to have planned any scheme of explaining the general structure of the earth.'- The Mundus Subterraneus of Athanasius Kircher, famous for the variety and originality of his erudition, con- tains, probably, the geology of his age, or at least his own. It was published in 1G62. Ten out of twelve books relate to the surface or the interior of the earth, and to various terrene productions; the remaining two to alchemy, and other arts connected with mineralogy. Kircher seems to have collected a great deal of geographical and geological knowledge. In England, the spirit of observation was so strong after the establishment of the Royal Society, that the Philosophical Transactions in this period contain a considerable number of geognostic papers ; and the genius of theory was aroused, though not at first in his happiest mood.'^ 32. Thomas Burnet, master of the Charterhouse, a man „ ..„ fearless and somewhat rash, with more imagination Theory of than pliilosophy, but mgenious and eloquent, pub- theJJartu. j.^j^^j j^^ jgy^ j^j^ TheoHa Telluris Sacra, which he 1 See Kay's Three Physico-Thcologioal "- LyeU's Principles of Geology, vol. L Discourses on the Creatiou, Deluge, and p. 25. _ final (JonilagraUon. 1GU2. * Thomson's Hist, of Royal Society, Chap. YTU. PROTOG^EA OF LEIBXITZ. 337 nAcrwards translated into English. The primary question for the early geologists had always been, liow to reconcile the phenomena with which they were acquainted to the Mosaic narratives of" the creation and deluge. Every one was satisfied that his own theory was the best; but in every case it has liithei'to proved, whatever may take place in future, that the proposed scheme has neither kept to the letter of Scripture, nor to the legitimate deductions of philosophy. Burnet gives tlie reins to his imagination more than any other Avriter on that, which, if not argued upon by inductive reasoning, must be the dream of one man, little better in reality, though it may be more amusing, than the dream of anotlier. He seems to be eminentlv ijrnorant of ffeolotrical facts, and has liardly ever recoui*se to tiiem as evidence ; and accordingly, though liis book dreAv some attention as an ingenious romance, it does not appear that he made a single disciple. Whistou opposed Burnet's theory, but with one not less unfounded, nor witli less ignorance of all that required to be known. Hooke, Lister, Ray, and Woodward came to the subject other geo- with more philosophical minds, and with a better losists. insight into the real phenomena. Hooke seems to have dis- played his usual sagacity in conjecture : he saw that the com- mon theory of explaining marine fossils by the Mosaic deluge would not suffice, and perceived that, at some time or other, a part of the earth's cru^t must have been elevated and another part depressed by some subterraneous power. Lister was aware of the continuity of certain strata over large districts, and proposed the construction of geological maps. Woodward had a still more extensive knowledge of stratified rocks : he was in a manner the founder of scientific mineralogy in Eng- land ; but his geological theory was not less chimerical than those of his contemporaiies.^ It was fii*st published in tho Philosophical Transactions for IGDo.- 33. The Protogrea of Leibnitz appears, in felicity of conjec- ture and minute attention to facts, far above any of Protogaea these. But this short tract was only iiublished in ofLc'^nitz- 1749 ; and. on reading it, I have found an intimation that it Avas not written within the seventeenth century. Yet I can- not refrain from mentioning that his hypothesis supposes the gradual cooling of the earth from igneous fusion ; the forma- tion of a vast body of water to cover the suifacc;, a part of his > Ljell, p. 31. » Thomson, p. 207. vou IV. 2 J 338 ANATOMY AND IIEDICINE. Pinx IV theory but ill established, and apparently the weakest of the whole ; the subsidence of the lower i)arts of the earth, which he takes to have been once on the level of the higliest moun- tains, by tlie breaking-iu of vaulted caverns within its bosom ;^ the deposition of sedimentary strata from inundations, tlieir induration, and the subsequent covering of these by other strata through fresh inundations ; with many other notions which have been gradually matured and rectified in the process of the science.- No one can read the Protogjea without perceiving, that of all the early geologists, or indeed of all down to a time not very remote, Leibnitz came nearest to the theories which are most received in the P^ngli^li school at this day. It is evident, that if the literal interpretation of Genesis, by a period of six natural days, had not restrained him, he would have gone much farther in his views of tlie progressive revolutions of the earth.^ Leibnitz had made very minute inquiries for liis age into fossil species, and was aware of the main facts which form the basis of modern geology.* Sect. in. — Ox Anatomy and Medicine. 34. Portal begins the history of this period, which occu- pies more than 800 pages of his voluminous work, by announ- cing it as the epoch most ftivorable to anatomy : in less than fifty years, the science put on a new countenance ; nature is * Sect. 21. lie admits also a partial tantum massa ex terrte basi accipio ; nee elevation by intumescence, but savs, " Ut duhito, postea materiam liquidam in su- Tasti.'isimtB Alpcs ex solida jam terra perticie telluris prncurrenteui, quiete mox eruptione surrexerint, niinu.s con.=cnta- rerlilitri, ex ranientis subactis ingentem neum puto. Scimus tanieu ct in illis materia; vim deposuis.se, quorum alia va- depreheudi relic^uias maris. Cum ergo ria.s terra; .species formarunt, alia in f axa alterutrum factum oporteat, credibilius induruere, e quibu.s strata diyersa sibi su- niulto arbitror deHuxi.sse aquas spontancc per iuiposita diversa.s pracipitationum vi- ■ ni.su, quam ingentem tevrarum jiartem ces atcpie intervalla testantur."— Sect 4. Incredibili violeutii tarn alte asccndisse." Tins he calls the incunabula of tli9 gtct. 22. world, and the basis of a new .science, - " Facies teneri adhuc orbls p.-rpius no- which might be denominated " naturalis vata est ; douec quiescentibus causis atque geographia.'" But wisely adds, " Licet con- «equilibratis,consistciitioremergeretstatu3 Spirent vestigia veteris mundi in proe.senti rerum. Undo jam duplex origo intelligi- facie rcrum, tamen rectius omnia defi- tur finnoruni eorporum ; una cum ignis nient posted, ubi curiositas eo processerit. fusionc refrigcscerent, altera cum recon- ut per n-giones procurrentia soli genera et crescerent ex solutiiine aquarum. Nequo strata describant."' — Sect 6. Igitnr putaudum est la^iidea ex sola rsse » See sect. 21, »« aii/j/. _ _ fiiiioM. Id eiiim potisiimum de prima ♦ Sect. 24, e. usr/ue ad fintm librt. Chap. VIII. CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 339 interrogated ; every part of the body is examined -with an observing spirit ; the mutual intercourse of nations diffuses the liglit on every side ; a number of great men appear, whose genius and industry excite our admiration.^ But, tor this very reason, I must in these conchiding pages ghde over a subject rather foreign to my own studies, and to tliose of the generali- ty of my readers, witli a very brief enumeration of names. 3.5. Tlie Harveian theory gained ground, thongli obstinate prejudice gave way but slowly. It was confirmed circuiatio by the experiment of ti-ansfusing blood, tried on dogs, otiiiooj w- at tlie instance of Sir Christopher Wren, in 16o7, ''''^"■'*'^'-''^- and repeated by Lower in 1661.-' Malpighi in 1661, and Leeuwenhoek in 1690, by means of their microscopes, de- monstrated the circulation of the blood in the smaller vessels, and rendered visible the anastomoses of the arteries and veins, upon which tlie theory depended." From tliis time, it seems to liave been out of doubt. Pecqnet's discovery of the thoracic duct (or ratlicr of its uses, as a reservoir of the cliyle from which the blood is elaborated, for the canal itself had been known to Eustachius) stands next to that of Harvey, which would have thrown less light on physiology without it ; and, like his, was perseveringly opposed.^ 36. AVillis, a physician at Oxford, is called by Portal, who thinks all mankind inferior to anatomists, one of the wniis; greatest geniuses that ever lived : his bold systems vieussens. have given him a distinguished place among physiologers.* His Anatomy of the Brain, in which, however, as in his other , works, he was much assisted by an intimate friend and anato- mist of the first character, Lovvei*, is, according to the same writer, a masterpiece of imagination and labor. He made many discoveries in the structure of the brain, and has ti-accd the nerves from it far better than his'predecessors, who had, in general, very obscure ideas of their course. Sprengel says that Willis is the first who has assigned a peculiar mental function to each of the different parts of the brain; forgetting, as it seems, that this hypothesis, the basis of modei-n phreno- logy, had been genei*ally received, as I understand his own account, in the sixteenth century.*^ Vieussens of Montpellier carried on the discoveries in the anatomy of the nerves, in his ' Ilist de I'Anatomie, vol. iii. p. 1. * Portal; Sprengel. - Spr«ust'l, Uist. de la Medecine, vol. iv. " P. 88 ; Biosr. Univ. P- 120. Sprengel, vol. iv. p. 2'tO. Compara » Id . pp. 120, 142 vol. iii. p. 201. 340 MALl'IGHI AND OTHER ANATOiHSlS. Part IV Neurographia Universalis, 1684; tracing tliose arising from the spinal marrow, which Willis had not done, and following the minute I'araifications of those that are spread over the skin.^ 37. Malpighi was the first who employed good microscopes jj^ . J. in anatomy, and thus revealed the secrets, we may say, of an invisible world, which Leeuwenhoek after- ■wards, probably using still better instruments, explored with Other ana- Surprising success. To -Malpighi, anatomists owe tomists. their knowledge of the structure of the lunsrs.' Graaf has overthrown many errors, and suggested many truths, in the economy of generation.'' Malpighi prosecuted this inquiry with his microscope, and first traced the progress of the egg during incubation. But the theory of evolution, as it is called, proposed by Harvey, and supported by Malpighi, received a shock by Leeuwenhoek's or Hartsoeker's discovery of sperma- tic animalcules, Avhich apparently opened a new view of repro- duction. The hypothesis they suggested became very preva- lent for the rest of the seventeenth centurv, though it is said to have been shaken early in the next.* Borelli applied mathematical principles to muscular movements in his trea- tise De Motu Animalium. Tliough he is a better mathemati- cian than anatomist, he produces many interesting facts ; the mechanical laws ai-e rightly applied, and his method is clear and consequent.' Duverney, in his Treatise on Hearing, in 1683, his only work, obtained a considerable reputation: it threw light on man}' parts of a delicate organ, which, by their minuteness, had long baffled the anatomist." In Mayow's Treatise on Respiration, published in London, 1668, we find the necessity of what is now called oxygen to that function laid down ; but this portion of the atmosphere had been dis- covered by Bathurst and Henshaw in 1654, and Hooke had shown by experiment that animals die when the air is de- prived of it.'^ Iluysch, a Dutch physician, perfected the art of injecting anatomical preparations, hardly known before ; and tlms conferred an inestimable benefit on the science. He possessed a celebrated cabinet of natural liistory.** 38. The chemical theory of medicine, which had descended ' Portal, vol. W. p. 5 ; Sprengcl, p. 256; ♦ Sprcngel, p. 309. * Blogr. Univ. » I'ortal, iii. 24') ; Biopn*. Univ. = Portal, vol. iii. p. 120; Sprengcl « l>ort;il, p. 4t)4 : Sprengcl, p. 2S8 p. 57S. ■ ' Sprengcl, iii. IT*), 181 s PorUl iii 219 Sprengcl p 303 Id., p. 2o9; Biogr. Univ. Chap. VIH. MEDICAL THEORIES. 311 from Paracelsus through Van Helmont, was propagated «liiefly by Sylvius, a physician of Holland, who is Medical reckoned the founder of what was called the chemia- 'i^eories. trie school. His works Avere printed at Amsterdam in 1G79 ; but he had promulgated his theory from the middle of the centuiy. His leading principle was, that a perpetual fermen tation goes on in the Innnan body, from the deranged action of which diseases proceed ; most of them from excess of acidi- ty, though a few are of alkaline origin. . " He degraded the physician," says Spreugel, " to the level of a distiller or a brewer."' This writer is very severe on the chemiatrie school, one of their offences in his eyes being their recommen- dation of tea ; " the cupidity of Dutch merchants conspiring with their medical theories." It must be owned, that, when we find them prescribing also a copious use of tobacco, it looks as if the trade of the doctor went hand in hand with those of his patients. Willis, in England, was a partisan of the «hemiatrics,- and they had a great influence in Germany ; though in France the attachment of most physicians to the Hippocratic and Galenic methods, which brought upon tliem so many im])utations of pedantry, was little abated. A second, school of medicine, which sujjerseded this, is called the iatro- mathematical. This seems to have arisen in Italy. EorcUi's application of mechanical principles to the muscles has been mentioned above. These physicians sought to explain every thing by statical and hydraulic huvs : they were, therefore, led to study anatomy, since it was only by an accurate knowledge of all tlie parts that they could apply their mathematics. John Bernouilli even taught them to employ the differential calculus in explaining the bodily functions.^ But this school seems to have had the same leading defect as the chemiatrie : it forgot the ])eculiarity of the laws of organization and life, which often render those of inert matter inapplicable. Pit- cairn and Eoerhaave were leaders of the iatro-mathemati- cians ; and INIead was reckoned the last of its distinguished pati-ons.* Meantime, a third school of medicine grew up, denominated tlie empirical ; a name to be used in a good sense, as denoting their regard to observation and experience, or the Baconian principles of philosophy. Sydenham was the I Vol. V. p. 5); Biosr. Univ. ♦ IJ-, p- 182. See liiographie Univer' * Spreugel, p 73. Belle, art. '• Boerhaave," for a general cri I Id., p. 159. ticism of tlie iatro-inathematicians. 342 ORIENTAL LITERATURE. PAirr IV first of these in England : but they gradually prevailed, to the exclusion of all systematic theory. The discovery of several medicines, especially the Peruvian bark, which was first used in Spain about 1640, and in England about 1654, contributed to the success of the empirical physicians, since the efficacy of some of these could hot be explained on the hypotheses hitherto prevalent.^ Sect. IV. — On Oriental Literature. 39. The famous Polyglot of Brian Walton was published Polyglot of in 1657: but few copies appear to have been sold Walton. before the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, since those are very scarce which contain in the preface the praise of Cromwell for having facilitated and patronized the under- taking ; praise replaced in the change of times by a loyal eulogy on the king. This Polyglot is in nine languages ; though no one book of the Bible is printed in so many. AVal- ton's Prolegomena are in sixteen chapters or dissertations. His learning, perhaps, was greater than his critical acuteness or good sense : such at least is the opinion of Simon and Le Long. The former, in a long examination of Walton's Pro- legomena, treats him with all the superiority of a man who possessed both. Walton was assailed by some bigots at liome for acknowledging various readings in the Scriptures, and for denying the authority of the vowel-punctuation. His Poly- glot is not reckoned so mairnificent as the Parisian edition of Le Lontr; but it is fuller and more convenient.^ Edmund Castell, the coadjutor of AValton in this work, published his Lexicon Heptaglotton in 1669, upon which he had consumed eighteen years and the whole of his substance. This is fre- quently sold together Avith the Polyglot. 40. Ilottinger of Zurich, by a number of works on the P^astern languages, and especially by the Bibliotheca Orientalis in 1658, established a reputation which these books no longer retain since the whole field of Oriental 1 Sprengel, p. 41.'5. tament, p. 541 ; Chalmers ; Biogr. Britan. ; * Simon, llist. Critique du A'ieux Tes- Biogr. Univ. ; Brunet, Man. da Libraire. Chap. VIII. POCOCKE — D'HERBELOT — HYDE. 34o literature has been more fully explored. Spencer, iu a trea- tise of cjreat erudition, De Le";ibiis Hebra?orunn, 1 G85, ^ », Spencer gave some onence by the sugj^jestion, that several of the Mosaic institutions were borrowed from the Egyptian, tliough the general sco])e of the Jewish law was in o|)position to the idolatrous practices of the neighboring nations. The vast learning of Bochart expanded itself over Orien- „ , IjOcliirt tal antiquity, especially that of Avhich the Hebrew nation and language is the central point; but his etymologi cal conjectures have long since been set aside, and he has not in other respects, escaped the fate of the older Orientalists. 41. Tlie great services of Pococke to Arabic literature which had commenced in the earlier part of the cen- „ tury, were extended to the present. His edition and translation of the Annals of Eutychius in 1G58, that of the History of Abulfaragius in 1GG3, with many other works of a similar nature, bear witness to his industry : no Englishman probably has ever contributed so much to that province of learning.' A fine edition of the Koran, and still esteemed the best, was due to Marracci, professor of Arabic in the Sa- pienza or University of Rome, and published, at the expense of Cardinal Barbadigo, in IGD.S.- But France had an Orien- talist of the most extensive learning in D'Herbelot, whose Bibliotheque Orientale must be considered as making an epoch in this literature. It was published in 1G97, after his death, by Galland, who had also some share in arranging the materials. This work, it has been said, is for the seventeenth century what the History of the Huns by De Guignes is for the eighteenth ; with this difference, that D'Herbelot opened the road, and has often been copied by hia successor.^ 42. Hyde, in his Religionis Persarum Historia, published in 1700, was the first who illustrated in a systematic manner the religion of Zoroaster, which he always represents in a favorable manner. The variety and novelty of its contents gave this book a credit, whicii, in some degree, it ])reserves ; but Hyde was ignorant of the ancient language of Persia, and is said to have been often misled by Moham- medan authorities.* The vast increase of Oriental informa- tion in modern times, as has been intimated above, renders it • Chalmers ; Biogj. Unir. ' Biographie CuiverseUa. » Tiraboschi, xi. 398. « la. Uyde. 344 GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. Paet IV difficult for any work of the seventeenth century to keep its ground. In their own times, the wa-itings of Kircher on China, and still more those of Ludolf on Abyssinia, which ■were ibunded on his own knowledge of the country, claimed a respectable place in Oriental learning. It is remarkable that very little Avas yet known of the Indian languages, though grammars existed of the Tamul, and perhaps some others, before the close of the seventeenth century.^ Sect. V. — On Geography and Histort. 43. The progress of geogi'aphical science long continued Maps of the ^^ be slow. If wc Compare the map of the Avorld in Sansons. 1651 by Nicolas Sanson, esteemed on all sides the best geogi-apher of his age, with one by his son in 1G92, the ditferences will not appear, perhaps, so considerable as we might have expected. Yet some improvement may be detected by the eye. Thus the Caspian Sea has assumed its longer diameter from north to south, contrary to the old map. But the Sea of Aral is still wanting. The coasts of New Holland, except to the east, are tolerably laid down ; and Corea is a peninsula instead of an island. Cambalu, the imaginary capital of Tartary, has disappeared;^ but a vast lake is placed in the centre of that region : the Altai range is carried far too much to the north, and the name of Siberia seems unknown. Africa and America have nearly the same outline as before : in the former, the empire of Monomotopa stretches to join that of Abyssinia in about the 1 2th degree of south latitude ; and the Nile still issues, as in all the old maps, from a Lake Zayre, in nearly the same parallel. Tl)e coasts of Europe, and especially of Scandinavia, are a little more accurate than before. The Sanson family, of whom several were publishers of maps, did not take pains enough to improve what their father had executed, thougli tliey might have had material helps from the astronomical observations which were now continually made in different parts of the. world. ' Eichhorn, Oesch. iler Cultur, v. 2C9. qiieiitly placed this capital ol Tathay north * The Oambalu cf Marco I'olo is pro- ol" tlie Wall of Ohiiiu. bably Pekiu ; but tliu gtugrapbers fre- Chap. VIH. MA PS — VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 345 44. Such was the state of geogi*aphy, when, in 1699, De Lisle, the real founder of the science, at the age of ^^ ^^^^^,g twenty-four, published his map of the world. He map of the had been guided by the observations, and worked ^^°^' * under tlie directions, of Cassini, whose tables of the emersion of Jupiter's satellites, calculated for the meridian of Bologna, in 1 GG8, and, with much improvement, for that of Paris, in 1 G93, had prepared tlie way for the perfection of geography. The latitudes of different regions had been tolerably ascei-- tained by observation ; but no good method of determining the longitude had been known before this application of Galileo's great discovery. It is evident, that, the appearance of one of those satellites at Paris being determined by the tables to a precise instant, the means were given, with the help of sufTicient clocks, to find the longitudinal distance of other places by observing the difference of time ; and thus, a great number of observations having gradually been made, a basis was laid for an accurate delineation of the surface of the globe. The previous state of geography, and the imper- fect knowledge which the mere experience of navigators could furnish, may be judged by the fact, that the Mediter- ranean Sea was set down with an excess of 300 leagues in length, being more than one-third of the whole. De Lisle reduced it within its bounds, and cut off at the same time 500 leagues from the longitude of Eastern Asia. This was the commencement of the geographical labors of De Lisle, which reformed, in the first part of the eighteenth century, not only the general outline of the "world, but the minuter relations of various countries. His maps amount to more than one hundred sheets.' 45. The books of travels, in the last fifty years of the seventeenth century, were far more numerous and voyages more valuable than in any earlier period; but we auatrayeta. have no space for more than a few names. Gemelli Carreri, a Neapolitan, is the first who claims to have written an ac- count of his own travels round the world, describing Asia and America with much detail. His Giro del Mondo was pub- lished in 1G'J9. Carreri has been strongly suspected of flibri- cation, and even of having never seen tliL countries which ho describes ; but his character, I" know not Avith what justice, > Eloge de De Lisle, in (Euvres de Fontenelle, toI. vi. p. 253 ; Eloge de Cassini, ia fol. V. p. 328 ; Biogi Univ. 346 HISTORIANS — DE SOLIS -DE RETZ. Part IV lias l3een latterly vindicated.^ The French justly boast the excellent travels of Chardin, Bernier, Thevenot, and Taver- nier, in the Esist : the account of the Indian Archipelago and of China by NieuhofF, employed in a Dutch embassy to the latter empire, is said to have been intei-polated by the editoi-s, though he was an accurate and faithful observer.^ Several other relations of voyages were published in Holland, some of Avhich can only be had in the native language. In English, there w^ere not many of high reputation : Dampier's Voyage round the World, the first edition of which was in 1697, is better known than any which I can call to mind. 46. The general characteristics of historians of this period are neither a luminous philosophy, nor a rigorous Historians. . . n • -, -i^ ■, r exammation oi evidence. iJut, as betore, we men- tion only a few names in this extensive province of literature. De Soiis '^^^^ History of the Conquest of Mexico by Antonio de Solis is " the last good work," says Sismondi, per- haps too severely as to others, " that Spain has produced ; the last where purity of taste, simplicity and truth, are preserved: the imagination, of which the author had given so many j)roofs, does not appear."" Bouterwek is not less favorable; but Robertson, who holds De Solis rather cheap as an histo- rian, does not fail to censure even his style. 47. Tlie French have some authors of history, who, by Memoirs of their elegance and perspicuity, might deserve notice ; ite Ketz. sucii {^s St. Real, Father D'Orleans, and even Varil- las, proverbially discredited as he is for want of veracity. The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz rise above these : their animated style, their excellent portraitures of character, their acute and brilliant remarks, distinguish their pages, as much as the similar qualities did their author. " They are written," gays Voltaire, " with an air of greatness, an impetuosity and an inequality whicli are the image of his life : his expression, sometimes incorrect, often negligent, but almost always origi- nal, recalls continually to his readers what has been so fre- quently said of Caesar's Commentaries, that he wrote with the same spirit that he carried on his wars."* The Mcmoii-s of Grammont, by Antony Hamilton, scarcely challenge a place as historical ; but we are now looking more at the style ' Tiraboscbi, xi. 86 ; Salfi, xi. 442. ♦ Biogr. Univ whence I taka the quo- * \iiogr. Univ. tation. » Littsrature du Midi, iv. 101 On \p. VI n. BOSSUET — BURNET. 3 47 than the intrinsic impoi-tancc of bookp. Every one is aware of the peculiar felicity and fascinating gayety which they display. 48. The Disconi-se of Bossuet'on Universal History is per- haps the greatest effort of his wonderful genius. i5os.«ueton Evei-y preceding abridgment of so immense a sub- iinm-rsai ject had been superficial and dry. He first irradiated ''""'^' the entire annals of antiquity down to the age of Charle- magne with tlashes of light that reveal an unity and coherence which had been lost in their magnitude and obscurity. It is not perhaiJS an unfair objection, that, in a history calling itself that of all mankind, the Jewish people have obtained a dis- proportionate regard ; and it might be almost as reasonable, on religious grounds, to give Palestine an amjiler space in the map of the world, as, on a like pretext, to make the scale of the Jewish history so much larger than that of the rest of the human race. The plan of Bossuet has at least divided his book into two rather heterogeneous portions. But his concep- tions of Greek, and still more of Roman history, are generally magnificent ; profound in philosophy, with an outline firm and suiiiciently exact, never condescending to trivial i-emarks or petty details ; above all, written in that close and nervous style, which no one, certainly in the French language, has ever surpassed. It is evident that Montesquieu in all his writings, but especially in the Grandeur et Decadence des Remains, had the Discourse of Bossuet before his eyes: he is more acute sometimes, and ingenious, and has reflected longer on particular topics of inquiry ; but he wants the simple majesty, the comprehensive eagle-like glance, of the illustrious prelate. 40. Though we fell short in England of the historical rcpu- tation which the fii-st part of the century might p^gi;^,^ entitle us to claim, this period may be reckoned that historical in which a critical attention to truth, sometimes ^°''''^- rather too minute, but ahvays praiseworthy, began to be cha- racteristic of our researches into fact. The only book that I shall mention is Burnet's History of the Refbrma- jj^^^^ tion, written in a better style than those, who know Burnet by his later and more negligent work, are apt to con- ceive, and which has the signal merit of having been the first in English, as far as I remember, which is fortified by a large appendix of documents. This, though frequent in Latin, had not been so usual in the modem languages. It became gradu- 348 CONCLDSIO]S Pakt IV. ally very frequent and almost indispensable in historical writ- ings, where the materials had any peculiar originality. ,..♦••• 50. Tlie change in the spirit of literature and of the public mind in general, Avhich had with gradual and never chamcter receding steps been coming forward in the seven- of i7tu tecnth century, but especially in the latter part of it, ecu ury. ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ircquently pointed out to tlie readers of this and the last volume, that I shall only (piote an obser- vation of Baylo. " I believe," he says, " that the sixteenth centui-y produced a greater number of learned men than the seventeenth ; and yet the former of these ages was far from being as enlightened as the latter. During the reign of criti- cism'and philology, we saw in all Europe many prodigies of erudition. Since the study of the new philosophy and that of living languages has introduced a different taste, we have ceased to behokf this vast and deep leai-ning. But, in return, there is diifused through the republic of letters a more sub- tle understanding and a more exquisite discernment: men are now less learned, but more able." ^ The volumes which are now submitted to the public contain sufficient evidence of this intellectual progress both in philosophy and in polite litera- ture. 51. I here terminate a work, which, it is hardly necessary to say, has furnished the occupation of not very few Conclusion. ^^^^^^ ^^^^j which, for several reasons, it is not my intention to prosecute any farther. The length of these volumes is already greater than I had anticipated ; yet_ I do not perceive much that could have been retrenched, without loss to a part, at least, of the literary world. For the appro- bation which the first of them has received, I am grateful ; for the few corrections that have been communicated to me, I am not less so : the errors and deficiencies of which I am not specially aware may be numerous ; yet I cannot affect to doubt that I have contributed something to the general litera- ture of my country, something to the honorable estimation of my own name, and to the inheritance of those, if it is for me still to cherish that hope, to whom I have to bequeathe it. I Drtionnaire Je Bayle, art. " Aconcc," note U. INDEX INDEX. •»* Tlie Roman Numerals refer to thf Volumes; the Arabic Ifygures, to the FOges »/ each Volume ABBADIE. Abradib, M., his treatise on Christianity, iv. 51. Abelard, Peter, era and disciples of, i. 37 — Abclard and Eloisa, 54. See " Eloisa." Abornethy, Mr., on the Theory of Life, iv. 68. Absalom and Achitophel of Dry den, iv. 2.3.3. Abulfaragius, translation of, by I'ococke, iv. ai3. Aby.isinia, Ludoirs account of, jr. 344. Academy, Aldine, i. 2(32 — Neapolitan, 119, 234 — Florence, 467; ii. 298; iii. 437 — Siena, 437 — Modena, i. 367: ii. 350 — Venice, 350 — French, established by Richelieu, iii. 348-351 — its sentiments respecting the Cid of Corneille, 350 — its labor.s. iv. 282 — Del Cimento, 318 — Delia Crusca, ii. 298; iii. 437 — Lin- cean, 394, 437 — French Academy of Sciences, iv. 320 — Rhenish, i. 218 — of Italy, i. 466; ii. 294,3: iii. 436 — Socie- ty of Arcadians, ii. 183: iv. 215, 276 — Royal Society of I^ondon, iii. 72, 73; iv "319, 320, 336 — Literary Societies of Germany, iii. 239. Accursius, school of law of, i. 83, 85; ii. 170. Achillini, anatomist, i. 456. Acidalius. the philologist, ii. 22. Aconcio, De Stnatagematibus Satan.-c, ii. 88, 424. Acosta, history of the Indies by, ii. 341 ; iii. 412. Adam, Melchior, ii. 31. nntes i, -. Adami, Toliias, Prodromus Philosophine Instiiuratio of, iii. 20. Addison, Joseph, remarks of, iii, 81, note, 42 : ir. 140, 228, twie, 240 — on the Paradise Lost, 226, 228, nntes. Adelard of Bath, his liuclid's Elements, i, 129, Adimari, Alessand'X), translator of Pindar, Ui. 228 alcala'. Adone of Mariti, iii, 223 — character of the poem, ib — its popularity, 224. Adrian VI., pontificate of, i. 29, 325. Adrian's lines to Florus, i. 51, note. Adriani, continuator of Guicciardini'a Ilistory, ii. 345. Adversaria, or Note-book on the Classics, ii. 19, 20 — of Caspar Barthius, 367 — of Uataker, iv. 16. Egjpt, history and chronology of, iy, 23. iEneid, Greek version of, ii. 49. ^schylus, ii. 14 — by Stanley, iv. 16. JR^op, L'Estrange's translation of, iv. 298. Ethiopic Tersion of the New Testament printed at Rome in 1548, i. 463. Africa, travels in, ii. 343. Agard, Arthur, the antiquary, ii. 351 and note. Agostini, his continuation of the Orlando Innamorato, i. 235. Agricola of Saxony, mineralogist, i. 461. Agricola, Kodolph, of Groningen, i. 126, 194 — his erudition, 217. Agrippa. Cornelius, i, .321, 392 — his seep. tical treatise, 393 ; iii. 23. Agustino, eminent jurist, i. 235. Ainsworth, scholar, iii. 427. Air, atmospheric, its specific graTity, mer- cury used in determining its pressure, iii. 405. Alabaster, his tragedy of lioxana, iii. 26*?. Alamanui, ii. 191 — the sonnets of, i. 412, 413 — sublimity of his poetry, 414 — severity of his satire, ib. Alba, Duke of, remark on, ii, 148, Albano, paintings of, ii, 199, Albaten, Arabian geometrician, i. 171. Albert, Archbishop of Mentz, i. 293. Alberti, Ia>o Baptista, a man of universal nenius, i. 227. Albertus Magnus, pliilosophical works of, i. 36, note, 131. Alcala, Polyglot Bible of, i. 319 352 INDEX. AlcalA, school at, i. 278, 339— library of, 409; ii. 348. Alclipmist, Ucn Jonson's play, in. 307. Alrhcmy, study of, i. 1.32. Akiati, Andrew, of Milan, restorer of the Itonuin law. i. 409; ii. 169, 170 Alciiious, philosopliy of. iv. GG. Alcuin. poeuis of. i. 28, 30, anu notes — prejudice of, apaiiist secular learning, 28 — opinions of M. Guizot and Jlr. Wright on, 29, and Jio/e - — liis poem, De I'on- tificibus Eboraccnsis, 31, )iote '. Aldi Neacademia, i. 262. Aldricli-, liis treatise on locric, \\ . 65. Aldrovandus, his Collections on Zoology, ii. 32.5, 329; iii. 411. Aldus Mauutius, ii. 43 — bis press, i. 230, 231 — the Aldine types, 261— editions of classics, 275, 276, 330 — Academy at Venice established by. 466. Aleander, professor of Greek, i. 264. Alenian, Matthew, his Guzman d'Alfa- rache, ii. 314. Alexander ab Alexandro, his Geniales Dies, i. 330; ii. 56. Alexander of Aphrodisea, i. 387. Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling, sonnets by, iii. 256. Alexander's least, ode on, by Dryden, iv. 237. Alexandrine verse, i. 52; ii. 214; iii. 240 — monotony of, 250. Alfred, King, i. 39. Algebra, science of, i. 246, 449; iii. 377; iv. 99 — cubic equations, i. 449 — posi- tive and negative roots, 451 — biquad- ratic equations, ib. — algebraic language symbolical, 452 — letters to express ia- detinito quantities, ih. — .\lbert Girard's, iii. 385 — Wallis's history of, .387 — dis- coveries in, ii. 311-317 — Colebrooke's Indian .Mgebra ; Hindoo algebraists, ii. 312, note -s — elTcct of the study of, on the understanding, iii. 102 — progress of, 3S5 — treatise on, in 1220, i. 127. Algorism, or Notation, i. 128. Allia/.en, works of, i. 130; ii. 321. Alienation, Grotius on the right of, iii. 188. Allen, the .lesuit, ii. 95, 147. Allwoerdea, Life of Servetus by, ii. 84, iiole '. Almanac for 1457, the first printed, i. 168. AluK'loveen, his Lives of the Stephens Family, ii. 24, not/' '. Alpinus, Prosper, I)e I'lantis Kxoticis, ii. .331 — his medical knowledge, 336. AUluisius, .lohn, bis Politics, iii. 160. Alvarez, Kmanuel, grammariiin, ii. 37. Amadigi, the (or Auiadis), of Ucruardo Tiipso, ii. 190. Amadis de Gaul, romance of. i. 148, 312, i'iS; ii 304; iii. 365. 3I>7 — a new era of romance produced by it, i. 148. Amalfei, brothers and Latin poets, ii. 233 ATfTIQUlTIBS. Ania.seo, Roniolo, i. 441. Ambrogio, 'I'eseo, Oriental schol.ar, i. 463. Ambrose of Bergamo, named Bifarius, i 112. Ambrose, St., iii. .353. America, discovery of, i. 271 — animals o^ ii r2i America, North, discoveries in. ii. 312. Ampere, Ilistoire de la Langue I'ranijaise, i. 46, note *. Amvot, Jaques, Plutarch translated by, U. 284. Ana, the, or collection of miscelLaneoufl literature of France, iii. 152; iv. 290. Anabaptists, the, i. 353— their occupation of tlie town of Munster, 364 — their tenets, ii. 85. 412; iii. 182 — Luther'« opinion, i. 373. Anacreon, iii. 227, 231. Anasilla, sonnets of, ii. 188. Anatomy, early works on, i. 137, 270 — progress of di.scoveries in, 456; ii. 334; iii. 410; iv. 338 — on comparative, 828| 329 — of plants, 333. Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton's, iii. 360. Anaxagoras, philosophy of, iii. 21, 42. Andrew, John Valentine, works of, iii. 153. Andreini, the Adamo and other dramas of, iii. 271. Andres, the Jesuit, i. 53, note > ; ii. 108, 2.50, 436 — on the use and era of paper of linen, &c., i. 77 — on collegi.ate foun- dations, 39 — on the Spanish theatre, ii. 249. Andrews, Lancelot, Bishop, ii. 38.3, 391. Audromaque of IJiiciue, iv. 245 — its ex- cellences, ih. 240. Angelica of Boiardo, i. 235. Angennes, Julie d', be.auty of, iii. 346. Angola, chimpanzee of, iii. 412, and note. Anglo-Saxon poetry, i. 33 — lang^uage, changes to English, 64 — MSS. of 8th century, 107, note ■. Anguillara, Italian triinslator of Ovid, ii. 192 — his dramas, 249. Animals, Natural History of, iii. 411 — Icones Animalium of Gesner. ii. 325 — dcscrintion of various, 325-328 ; iv. 325, 327. Annius of A'iterbo, i. 249, and note; ii 377. Anselm, Archbishop, on the existence of a Deity, i. 86, nnte, 90. .\ntioomi:inisni, i. 304. Antiquaries, Society of, in England, found- ed by Archbisliop Parker, 1572, ii. 351. Anti(iuities, the study of, i. 181 ; ii. 56, 375 — of Greece, 375, 377 — works of Zamo- .scius, Sigonius, and Meursius, on Gre- cian, 59, 381 — Potter's Antiquities iv. 20 — Uoman, i. 326; ii. 50, 375, 377 — works of Gnevins and Gronovius, iv. 19 — works of P.arker and Godwin, ii. 65 — collections in Italy, 349 — elecep- IXDEX. 353 ANTommjs. tlons practised, 377 — Jewish, Egyptian, Etruscan, 370, 377 — liberality of the Mediii in collecting works on, i. 182 — veneration for antiquity, 121, 325; ii. 400; iii. 43S — controversy on the com- parative merit of the stujy, 43S — Sir W. Temple's defence of it, iv. 3013. A.ntouinU3, Marcas, Gataker's edition of, iv. 1(J. Antonio, Nicolas, the Bibliotheca Nova of, i. SaH; ii. 53; iii. 230. Antonio da I'istoja. i. 273, note 3. Apatisti of Florence, iii. 437. Apianus, the Cosmography of, i. 464. ApoUonius, geometry of, ii. 317. Apologues, or i'arables, of Andrcce, iii. 153, note. App.'iratus of early writers, i. 82. Apuleius, Golden Ass of, ii. 282. Aquapendente, K. de, oa the language cf brutes, iii. 413. Aquila, Serafino, d', poet, i. 237. Aquina-s, Thonixs, his authority as a scholastic writer, i. 40 — his works, rt. note ^ ; ii. 82, 105 ; iii. 132, 141, 142, 143. Arabian physicians, the, and their school of medicine, i. 454 — mathematicians, 170 — style of poetry, ii. 208, note. Arabian writers early employed cotton- paper, i. 7G — eminent scholars, 4ij3; iii. 428. Arabic, study of, i. 463; ii. 3-39; iii. 427; iv. 343 — lexicon of Golius, iii. 428 — a manuscript version of Hippocrates in, i. 77 — numerals and calculation, 127; note 1. Arantius, the anatomist, ii. So") — on the pulmonary circulation, iii. 418. Aratus, edition of, by Grotius, ii. 33S. Arbiter, Petronius, style of, ii. 370. Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, ii. 289, 290, note 1, 307, 309 ; iii. 439 — of Sannazaro, i. 269; ii. 305. Arcadians, Society of, ii. 183; iv. 215, 276. Archimeiles, ii. 317, 323 — inventions of, iii. 378, 332, 383. Arden of Keversham, play of, ii. 269. Areopagitica, by Milton, iii. 359. Arotin, Peter, comedies of, i. 430 — cha- r.tcter of, ii. 191 — letters of, 282. Aretino, Leonardo, suruamed also Bruni, his Latinity, i. 104 — his polished style, lOo, 115 — lives of Dante and Petrarch by, 175. Argenis, Barclay's, ii. 369 ; iii. 372. Argens, liis .Jewish Letters, iv. .314. Argonsola, Bartholomew, iii. 230. Argensola, Lupercio, iii. 230. Argentier, his medical school, i. 453 — novel principle asserted by, ib. note '. Argonne, d', u Benedictine, under tho name of Vigneul Marville, iii. 345, and note — iv. 283, 286, note i. 297. ASCENSmS. Argyropulus, Greek grammarian, 1. 162, 219. Arian doctrine, the, i. 338 — in Italy, i6. — in England, ii. 85; iv. 43. Ariosto, i. 174 — his Orlando Furioso, 309-312; ii. 19), 197, 103, 2.3J — liis satires analyzed by Uinguene, i. 413 — his Epicurean philosophy and ga)ety, i6. — Comedies of, 275, 4.30 — com pari-, son with Tasso, ii. 195, 197, 203 — witU Spenser, 234 — Harrington's translation of, 227. Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatjpa of G. Vossius, ii. 373. Aristides, version of, ii. 21. Aristocracy, Bodiu's remarks on, ii. 155, 157. Aristophanes, by Aldus, i. 231 — the Wasps of, iv. 276. Ar;i'x>elians, disputes of, i. 162, 390; iii. 12 — scliol;istic and genuine, i. 384; ii. 105 — of Italy, i. 3S7. Aristotle, philosophy of, i. 209, 385, 3S6 ; ii. l05, 121 ; iii. 12, 401 — his physics, ii. S22 — metaphysics, iii. 12; iv. 63, 82, 108 — opponents of, ii. 134. See '• Phi- losophy." His Poetics, ii. 293 ; iv. 13 — rules for Greek tragedy, iii. .350 — de- finition of comedy, iv. 274 — history of animals, ii. 325 — edition of, by Duval. 333 — Jourdain on translations from, i. 87, note - — his logic, iii. 114, note. Arithmetic of Cassiodorus, i. 27, note — of Fibonacci, 127 — of Sacro Bosco, 128. Armenian dictionary, iii. 429. Arminianism, ii. 83 — its rise, 412 — its tendency, 413 — its progress, 415; iv 38 — in England, 40 — in Holland, ii. S3, 420 ; iv. 38, 30. Arminius, James, professor at Leyden, ii. 412. Armorica, De la Hue's researches in, i. 57, note ' — traditions of, ib. Aruauld, Antoine, French controversial writer, iii. 93; iv. 28, 37, 81— his Art de Pen.ser. 65, and «o/f -*, 81, 127 — on True and Fal.se Ideas. 101 — his ohjec tions to the Meditationes of Descartes, iii. 76, 82.. Arnauld, Angelica, iv. 37. Arndt's True Christianity, ii. 441. Aromatari. botanical writer, iv. 335. Arrebo, Norwegian poet, iii. 243. Ars Magna, by Jerome Cardan, the alge- braist, i. 449. Ars Magna, of lva\Tnond LuUy, i. 320, 321. Artedi, works of, ii. 329. Arthur and the Round Table, early ro- mances of, i. 148, note = ; ii. 309 — Ques- tion as to his victories, i. 67, note i — remarks on the story of, ib. 148. Arundelian marbles, at Oxford, ii. 376. Ascensius, Badius, the printer and com meatator. i. 263, 335i ii. 22 XOU IV. 23 854 IXDEX. AScnAU. ABcham, 1. 316; iii. 354 — his treatise of the Schoolmaster, u. 50, 286 — his Toio- philus, i. 443. Aiellius, his discovery of the Lacteals, iii. Asia, voyages to India, China, &c., ii. 341, 342, 344. Asola, Andrew of, liis edition of Galen, i. 332. Asolani, the. of Bembt, i. 209. Assi.ses de Jerusalem, doubts as to the age of the B'rench code. i. 4'J. Astrology, Bodin"s opinions on, ii. 161. Astronomy, i. 27, 131 — treatise of Coper- nicus on the heavenly bodies, 453; ii. 114; iii. 59 — state of the .science of, 3r7 — "orks of Kepler, 390, 391 — of Tycho Brahe, (6. Athanasian Creed, Jeremy Taylor on, ii. 427. Atheism, Cudworth's refutation of, iv. 69, 70. Atomic theory of Dalton, iii. 55. Atterbury, Dr., controversy of, with Bent- ley, iv. l8, and note. Aubigne, Agrippa d', his Baron de Fjfi- neste, iii. 376. Aubrey's Manuscripts, iii. 71, note -. Augerianus, criticism on, ii. 294. Augsburg, the Confcs.sion of, i. 355, 379; ii. 66, 97 — Library of, i. 46S. Anguis, Kecneil des Anciens Poites by, i. 5G; ii. 212, 213, notes; iii. '2oi, note. Augurellus, critici.sm on, ii. 294. Augustin, de Civitate Dei, ii 3j7 — his system of diviuity, ii. 84 — tlie Anti- I'elrtgian writings of, iv. 34 — the Au- gustinus of Jansenius, ib. — doctrine of, iii. 83 — controversy ou Grace and Freewill, ii. 410. Augustinus, Archbishop of Tarragona, ii. 56. Augustinus on Civil Law, ii. 168, 171. Aungerville, his library, i. 124. Annoy, Comtesse d', novels of, iv. 311. Aurispa, John, i. 116, 119. Australia, su])posed delineation of, in 1533, i. 464, 7icte -. Autos, or spiritual drama."!, of Gil Vicente, i. 260 — Sacramentales in Spain, ii. 2.50. Avellenada's invectives on Cervantes, iii. 3j3. Averani, the Florentine, iv. 240. Averroi's, disciples of, i. 4l — liis doctrines, 153, 208, 387 ; ii. 108, 115. Avitus, poems of, i. 33, note. Ayala, Balthazar, ii. 96 — his treatise rn the rights of war, 176 — hst of subjects treated upon, ib. note. Aylnier, English writer, iii. 354. A.ZO, pupils of, i. 82. Itachaumont, poet, iv. 220. Bacon, I^ord, his Henry VII.. iii. 66, 358 — its philosophical spirit, 432 — his Ks- BALDWIM. says, ii. 133; iii. 148 — maxima of, 438 — his philosopliy, 32; iv. 45 — letter to Father Fulgentio, iii. 32, note - — on the Advancement of Learning, 33. 37, 38, 43, 67, 69 — De luterpretatiouo Natural, 12, note - — De Augmentis Scieutiarum, ,33. 31, 37, 43, 57, 67. 73 — his Instauratio Magna, 34, 35. 33 — di- vided iutc P.irtitioue^i Scieutiarum. 34 — Novum Orgauum, 31, 37, 39, 43, 50- 54, 57, 58, OS, and note, 73 — Natural History, 35, 66 — Scala Intellectris, -36- Anticipationes PhilosophiEe, 37 — I'hilo Sophia Secunda, ib. — course of stuti.'i ing his works, 38 — nature of the Baconi.iu induction, 39 — his dislike of Aristotle, 42 — fine passage on poetry. 44 — n.itural theology and metaphysics, 44. 47 — final causes, 40 — on the coastitutiou of man in body and mind, 47 — Logic. Grammar, and Rhetoric, 47, 48; iv. 71 — Kthics, iii. 4S — Politics, 49 — Theology, 50 — Falhicies and Idola, 51 — his confidence, 54 — limits to our knowledge by sense, 50 — inductive logic, 57, 01 — his philo- sophy founded on observation and ex- periment, 58 — further examination and result of the whole, 58-05 — object of his philosophical writings, 39 — and their effect, 05, note ' — his prejudice against mathematics, 69 — hi.s wit, 70 — his fame on the Continent, 71 — his views on an universal jurisprudence, 210 — his His- tory of Henry VII., 66 — his Centuries of Natural History, 35 — his views on Political Philosophy, 101 — comparison of, with Gahleo, Oii — his style, 358^ occasional references to his opinions and authority, i. 13J; ii. 118, 347, wo/e,- iii. 397 ; iv. 69, 103, 120, 134. 341. Bacon, Roger, i. 80, 97, 130 — his Opus Majus, and inventions, 130 — his re- semblance to Lord Bacon, i6. — Optica by, ii. 321. Badius, Jodocus, printer, i. 285. Baif. Lazarus, French poet, i. 285, 3.3**, 434; ii. 212, 214, notes. Baillet, his opinion of Henry Stephens, ii. 24 — his Jugemens des Scavans, iii. 206, note ; iv. 29 5 — his Life of Descartes, iii. 99, 7iote ' ; iv. 77, note s, 286, note '. Baius, his doctrine condemned by Pius \^, iv. 34, 36 — controversy raised by, ii. 82. Balbi, John, the Catholicon of, i. 99, and note. Balbuena, epic poem of, iii. 230, note '. Balde, Sylvje of, iii. 267. Baldi, liis La Nautica, ii. 190 — Sonnets ot 183. Baldric, Bishop of Utrecht, i._109 B.alduin on Roman Law, ii. 56, 170. Baldus, the jurisconsult, i. 86; ii. 179. Baldwin of \Vitteuberg, iii. 143. INDEX. 356 BALLADS. Ballads, Spanish, i. 243 ; ii. 207 — Gprman, 216 — KnglisU and Scottish, 229. See '' Poetry." Balzac, iii. 71, note ' — his critique on lleinsius, 266 — on lionsiird, ii. 211 — his i-cttcrs, iii. 344, 345 — his style, iv. 281. 280. Bandcllo, novels of, ii. 303; iii. 332. 15aib:iro, Irancis, ethical dialogues of, i. 122. Baibarous. on the acceptation of tho term, i. 43, nnte. Barbaras, Ilermolaus, i. 204, 2.32. Barbe.vrac. comuientator on Urotius and Puffendorf, ii. 400 ; iii. 189, and note, 219 ; iv lOG, 109, note ^ 184. Barbier d"Aucour, his attack on Eou- houi-s' Kntretieus, iv. 285 — on the Turkish Spy, 315, note. Barbosa, Arias, i. 180. 339. Barbour, John, his Scottish poem of The Bruce, i. OS. Barclay, the Argenis and Euphormio of, ii. 3lJ9 ; iii. 372, 373. Barclay, \\'iUiaui, De Itegno et Regali Po- testate, ii. 144, 3S3 ; iii. 100. Baret or Barrett, John, his Lexicon, ii. 50. Barhani, Mr., translation of the Adamus Exul of Urotius, iii. 265, note -. Bark, Peruvian, first used as a medicine, iv. 342. Barlaaiii, mission of, i. 114 — Treatise of, on Papacy, ii. 51. Barlaius, Ga.'^par, Latin poems of. iii. 267. Barometer, Pascal's experiment on, iii. 43, note. Baronius, Cardinal, Annals of Ecclesiasti- cal lli.story of, ii. 10, 100 — continued by Spondanus, 436. Barros, .1. de, his Asia, ii. .341. BaiTOw, Dr. Isaac, Greek professor, iv. 15 — Latin poetry of, 243 — his Sermons, 34. 40, 59. Barthius, Caspar, his Pornoboscodida.sca- lus, i. 208 — his Adversaria, 91, note - ; u. 3G0. Bartholin, the physician, iii. 423. Bartlioleinew Massacre, justified by Bole- ro, ii. 148 ; and Naudu, iii. 157. Bartoii. Jesuit, liis writings, iii. 340. Bartolus, jurist, i. 86 ; ii. 170. Basiug, Johu, i. 128. Uasle, press of b'robeuius at, i.276 — Coun- cil of, ii. 94. Ba.sson, .Sebastian, iii. 21. Batliurst discovers vital air, iv. 340. Battle of the Books, the. iv. 317. Baudius, Domiuic, ii. 242. Bauhin, John and Caspar, their works on botiiny, iii. 415. Bauhin, tierard. his Phytopinax, ii. 334. Baxter, William, his commentary ou the Latin tongue, iv. 16. Baxter, Richard, Tieatis? on the Grotian doctiiiies, ii. 398, jiuti. BELLENDEN. Bayard, le Chevalier, memoirs of, i. 4G5. Bayle, his critical remarks, iii. 72, note * — his Philosophical Commentary on Scripture, iv. 53 — Avis aux Kefugies, the, 202 — his Kouvelles de la itipub- lique des Lettres, 293 — his Pcnsees sur la Comete de 1080, 295 — his Ilistoricjil and Critical Dictiouar3 , ib. — character of his works. 290 — his llictionary, ob- servation of, 348. Beattie, Dr. AViUiam, E.ssay on Truth cf, iii. 78, 7iote. Beaumont and Flet.cher. plays of, iii. 300 — the Woman-lmter. 309 and note — coiTuption of their text, 310 — the Maid"s Tragedy, criticism on, 311 and 7wte — Philaster, 312 — King and No King, 312 — the Elder Bif)tlier, 313 — the Spanish Curate, 314, 321. note > — the Custom of the Country, 315 — the Loyal Subject, (6 —Beggar* Bu.sh. 316 — the Scornful Lady, ib. — Valentiuian, 317 — Two Noble Kinsmen, 318 — the Faithful Shepherdess, 201. .309, 319 — Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, 320 — the Knight of the Burning Pestle, 320 — the Chances, ib. — various other of rietchers plays, ib. — origin of Fletch- er's comedies, 321 — defects of the plots. ib. 324, note — sentiments and stylej dramatic, 322 — characters, 323 — theii tragedies inferior to tiicir comedies, 324 — their female jiortraitures, ib. — criti- cisms on, 325. note '. Beaumont, Sir John, his Bosworth F'ield. iii. 252. Beaux' Stratagem, play of, iv. 275. Becanus, principles of, iii. 155. Beccari, Agostiui, pastoral drama of. ii 240. Beccatelli, i. 119. Becker, his Physica Subterranea, jv. 21. Eeckmann's History of Inventions, i 255. Bcda, his censure of Erasmus, i. 356. Bede, the Venerable, character of his writ- ings, i. 29. Beggar's Bush, play of, iii. 316. Bekker, his Monde enchaute, iv. G2. Behmen or Boehm, Jacob, i. 393, iii 23 Behn, writings of Mrs., iv. 273, 313. Belgic iioets, ii. 242. Belief, llobbes on, iii. 117. Bellai-min. Cardinal, a Jesuit, ii. S3, note-, 92 — his merits as a contrnver.'^ial writer of the Church of Rome, 92, 90 : iv. 24 — replies by his adversaries named Anti- Bellarminus, ii. 93— his Answer to James I., 383. Bellay, French poet, ii. 210, 212 — Latm poems of, 240. Belleau, French poet, ii. 210 Bellcforest, translator of Bandello's novels, ii. 304. Bellenden, his treatisa le Statu, iii. 156 356 INDEX. BELLItrS. Bellius, Martin (or Castalio), ii. 87. Bello, Krancesco, surnamed 11 Cieco, poet, i. 233. Bellori, Italian antiquarian writer, iv. 20. Belou's Anecdotes of Literature, ii. 216, nnte i ; 333, note i. Beloi), Travels of, and Natural History bj', ii. 327,335. Bcmbo, I'ietro, i. 819, 327; u. 16 — the A.solani of, i. 269 — an imitator of Pe- trarch and Cicero, 411 — beauties and defects of, 412 — Tassoni's censure of, for adopting lines from I'etrarcli, 412 — his elegance, 441, 442 ; ii. 297 — Le frose, by, i. 444 — Latin poems of, 428, 4(5j5_enjovs his library, and the society of the learned at I'adua, 442— judicioua criticisms of, 444. Bembus, ii. 295. Benaous, poems on the, i. 428. Benedetti.y ."^iii-jii. ii. 384, iiule -. niooil, tnuisf'u.'iioii of, iv. 331>. liocc;i<>'A -r-hi.s Decauierone, i. 441 — his de C'jLsibus Virorum lUustriuui, ii. 217. Boccaliiii, Trajan, iii. 337 — his Raggu.ifili di I'arnasso, (6. 43l> — his Pietra del I'aragono, 338. Uochart, the Geographia Sacr.i of, iii. 427 — liis Hierozoicou, ih. — his worics on Hebrew, &c., iv. 343. Dodin, .lohu, writings of, ii. 102; iii. 150, l6l, 3.5-5 — analysis of his treatise of The Kepublic, ii. 150-164 — couipari.son of, with Maehiavel and Aristotle, 1(56 — with Morites((uieu, ib. See 167, uute. Bodius (or Boyd), Ale.xander, ii. 242. Hodley, Sir Thomas, founder of the Bod- leian Library at O.tford, ii. 348; iii. 433 — its catalogue, 435 — its Oriental ma- nuscripts, 428. Eoerhiuive, works of, iv. 341. BoL'tie, Stephen de la, Le Coutr'Ua of, ii. 13.;, 137. Boethius. <-haracter and death of, i. 26 — ills Consolation of Philosophy, ib. — ]ioem on, 47. Eoiardo, Matteo Maria, Count of Scan- diauo, i. 174, 234 — his Orlando Inna- niorato reviewed, 235, 310, 311. Boileaii, satire of, iii. 371, 372; iv. 217 — praises Malherbe, iii. 237 — his Epistles, iv. 217 — Art of Poetry, 218 — compa- rison with Horace, 21!) — his Lutrin, iii. 220, note; iv. 218, 219 — char.icter of his poetry, 219, 308 — his Longiuus, 291. liois, or Boyse, 5Ir., reviser of the English translation of the Bible, ii. 48. Poisrubert, French academician, iii. 34S. Bologna, University of, i. 33, 39, nole -, 42 ; ii. 346 — painters, 198. Bonibelli, Algebra of, ii. 316. Bon, Pi-ofessor of Civil Law, iv. 208, }lOt€ -. BouarcUi, his Filli di Sciro, a pastoral drama, iii. 272. Bonaniy, literary essays of, i. 42. Bouaventuni, doctrines of, i. 151. Bond, John, his notes on Horace, ii. ■6 ; ii. 413. Brazil, Natural History, &c., of, iii. 411. Breb(icuf, his Pharsalie, iv. 222. Brentius. his controversy on the ubiquity of Christ's body, ii. 81. Breton, English poet, ii. 221 — Mavilla of, 309, note K Breton lays, discussion on, i. 57. Brief Conceit of English PoUcy, ii. 291 ; iii. 162. Briggs, Henry, mathematician, iii. 3S0 — Arithmetica Logarithniica of. 385. Erisson on Koman Law, ii. 56, 171. Britannia's Pastorals of William Browue, iii. 251. British Bibliographer, ii. 216, 291. Brito, Gulielmus, poetry of, i. 94. Broken Heart, the, I'ord's play of, iii. 330. Brooke, Lord, stylo of his poetry, iii. 246. Broughton, Hugh, ii. 92, 340. Brouncker, Lord, first president of Royal Society, iv. 320. Brown, Mr. George Armitage, Shakspeare''s Autobiographical Poems by, iii. 254, r.nle ' ; 255, note -. Brown. Dr. Thom.as, iii. 52. Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, iv. 95 and note '-. Browue, Sir Thom.as, his Picligio Medici, iii. 151 — his Hydrotaphia, 152 — Inquiry into Vulgar Errors, 439; iv. 335. Browne's, William, Britannia's Pastorals, iii. 251. Brucioli, the '\'eneti.an publisher, i. 305, 3S1. Brucker, his History of Philosophy and Analysis, i. 27, ««/'',• ii. 105, 106, 108, 110,111.114; iii. 13. Hruevs, French dramatic author, iv. 264. Bninfels, Otto, the Uerbarum vivas Eico- ncs of, i. 459. BTJETTET. Bruno, .lordano, theories of, i. 109, 321 j ii. 110, 111 ; iii. 13, 20. 401 ; iv. 105 — his pliilosophical works, ii. Ill, 112, 114, 115 — his pantheism, 319 — on the plurality of worlds, 114 — sonnets by, 114, note; 283 — various writings of, ib. Brutes, Fabricius on the language of, iii 413. Bruvere, La, C.aracteves de, iv. 174. Brydges, Sir Egerton, British Bibliogra- pher, r.estituta, and Censura Literaria of, ii. 216, 291. Buccr, works of, circulated in a fictitious name, i. 365. Buchanan, his Scottish llistorj-, ii. 41, 346 — De .lure Kegni, 54, 138, 142; iii. 155 ; iv. 202 — his Latin poetry, ii. 242 ; iii. 265 — his Psalms, 268. Buckhurst, Lord (Thomas Sackville), his Induction to the Mirrour of Magistrates, ii. 217, 218, 262. Buckinck, Arnold, engraver, i. 200. Buckingham, Duke of, the Rehearsal of, iv. 302. Buda, royal library, i. 176. Budicus, works of. i. 239. 285, 286, 333, 355 ; ii. 46 — the Commeutarii Lingua; Grse- ca, i. 333. 334 — his early studies, 239 — his Observations on the Pandects, 266, 408. Burton the naturalist, ii. 329. Buhle on Aristotle, i. .384 — on the logic of, 386 — Kamus, 389 — on the philoso phy of Cesalpin, ii. 108,109 — Commea taries of, on the works of Bruno, 110, 114 — remarks by. iv. 73. Bulgarini on Dante, ii. 298. Bull, Nelson's Life of, iv. 41, note - — his Harmonia Apostolica, ib. — his Defensic Fidei Nicena^, 29. Bullinger, theological writings of, ii. 99. Buncl, Peter, epistles of, i. 329, note. Eunyan, Jolin, his Pilgrim's Progress, i. 315; iv. 313. . ^^ Buonarotti, Michael Angelo, iv. 130, note. Buonmattci, his Grammar Delia Lingua Toscana. iii. 340. Burbage the player, iii. 291. note. Burgersdicius, logician, iii. 10 ; iv. G4. Burke, Edmund, compared with Lord Ba- ron, iii. 66. Burleiah, Lord, refuses to .(sanction the Lambeth Articles of Whitgift, ii. 412. Eurlesquc-poetry writei-s, ii. 191. Burman, quotations from, ii. 375. Burnet, Bishop, his History of his Own Times, iv. 41 — his History of the He- formation, 347 — his translation of the L'topia, i. 283. Burnet, Thomas, his Archieologia PhiIo.so- l)hica, iv. 46 — Theory of the E.irth by, 336. Burney's History of Music, i. 221, note K INDEX. 3i39 BUKTOW. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, iii. Bury, Richard of, i. 75, note ' — library ami riiilobiblou of, 97, 111. Busbeciuius, iii. 357, note. llusonb:uiiii, his Mudulia Ca,suum Con- siienti;x;, iii. 137. Bussv d'Auibois, jilay of Chapman, iii. 333 Uutler, IluJibras of, iv. 223 — satirical 1.101'try of, 231. Rutler's Analogy, iv. 160 and note. IJuxtorf, Che elder, Hebraist, iii. 425. Buxtorf. the son, his controversy on the text of Scripture, iii. 425. Byzantiue literature, i. 113. Cabala, the Jewish, i. 212. Cahot, Sebastian, i. 464; ii. 342. Cadamosto, tlie Venetian, his voyages of discovery, i. 271. Cwlius Khodiginus, ii. 20. Cajsalpin, botanical writer, ii. 333 ; iii. 415; iv. 329 — his Qua;stiones Peripa- teticse, iii. 419, note. Caesarius, llomilies of, i. 33. note. Caius, Koman presbyter, i. 35, note. Caius, Dr., ou British Dogs, ii. 329. Caius, fragment of, on the Cauou of the New Testament, i. 35, note. Cajetau, controversiaUst, ii. 76. Calderino, i. 187. Oalderon de la Barca, Pedro, tragi-come- dies of, iii. 273 — number of his pieces, 274 — comedies of, 275 — his La Vida es Sueno, 276 — his A Secreto Agravio se- crcta A'enganra, 278 — his style, ih. — his merit discussed, 279 — the school of, iv. 244. Calendar, the Gregorian, ii. 64, 320. Calepio, Latin Dictionary of, i. 262, 336 ; ii. 37. Calisto and Meliboea, Spanish play, i. 267 — its great reputation, 268. Calixtus, George, exertions of, for religious concord, ii. 401-404 and notes. Calliniachus, Mad. Dacier's translation of, iv. 13. Callistus, Andronicus, a teacher of Greek, i. 162. Calprenede, his Cassandra, iii. 370 — his Cleopatra, (6. Calvin, John, bom in Picardy, i. 363 — character of his institutions, ib. ; ii. 91, 99; iv. 41 — their great reputation, i. 874 — exposition of liis doctrine, 363 — received as a legishitor at Geneva, ib. — his political opinions, 407 — his contro- versy with Cassander, ii. 79 — death of Servetus instigated and defended bv, 84, 85, 424 — their doctrines, m). 402, 412; iv. 29, 41 — Crypto-Calvinists, Ii. 82 — hostility and intolerance between the Calvinistie and Lutheran churches, 79, 392. CARDAW. Calvisius, Seth, Chronology of, ii. 379. Camaldulenses Annales, i 200 and note ». Canibrensis, Giraldus, remarks on Oxford University by, i. 39. Cambridge, University of, i. 39, 294, note, 345,436; ii. 47, 48, and note ', 339 — state of learning in, 47, 48 — the Uni- versity Library, 348; iii. 435 — Ascham'a cliaracter of, i. 345 — the press, ii. 51. Camden, iii. 306 — his Greek Gr-ommar. ii. 52 — his Britannia, 54 — his Life of Eli- zixbeth, iii. 432. Camera Obscura of Baptista Porta, ii. 321. Camerarius, German scholar, i. 218, 264, 340, 341 — Academy of, 468 — his Com- mentaries, ii. 30 — a restorer of ancient learning, 46 — on botany, iii. 415 ; iv 334. Cameron, a French div'ne, ii. 415. Camoens, the Lusiad of, ii. 204 — its de- fects, ib. — its excellences, ib — minor poems of, 206 — remarks of Southey, 205, note. Campanella, Thomas, ii. 109; ih. 397 — his Politics, 157 — his City of the Sun, 373 — analysis of his philosophy, 1&- 21. Canipano, his Life of Braccio di Montone, i. 328, note. Campanus, version of Euclid b\', i. 129. Campbell, Mr. Thoniiiii, remarks of. ii. 218, 222, note i, 227, 237, note, 266 ; iii. 256, note. Campeggio, Italian dramatist, iii. 272. Campion, English poet, ii. 228. Campistron, tragedies by, iv. 256. C'auini, Syriac Grammar of, ii. 337. Caninius, Angelus, ii. 17 — his Helleniii. mus. 28; iv. 12. Cautacuzenus, Emperor, i. 114. Canter, Theodore, the Variee Lectiones of, h. 31. Canter, William, his versions of Aristidea and Euripides, ii. 21 — his Novae liOC- tioues, .30. 31. Canus, Melchior, his Loci Theolonci, ii. 98. Capella, Martianus, Encycloptedia of, i. 26. Capellari, the Latin poet of Italy, it. 240. Capito, German scholar, i. 302. Cappel, Louis, his Arcanum Punctuationis revelatum, iii. 426 — Critica Sacra of, 427. Caraccio, his dnima of Corradino, iv. 244. Cai-.ite, the Spanish author, on Botany, ii. .3.31. Cardan, .Terome, writer on algebra, i. 394 and note, 449-452 — his rule for cubic equations, 449; ii. 311,313; iii 321 — on mechanics, ii. 385- 860 INDEX. CARDS. Cards, plaj iug, invention of, i. 164. Carew, Tlioni;i.s, merit of his poetry, iii. 257 ; iv 223. • Carew, Richard, his translation of Tas.so, ii. 227. Carion's Chronicle, by Melanchthon, i. 4(3.5. f'arlo.stadt, religious tenets of, ii. 3.5. t'. arlovingian kings, charters by the, i. 76. ""aro, Annibal, correspondence of, ii. 282 — sonnets of, 183 — translation of the .^tlneid bv, 192 — his dispute with Cas- telvetro,"295. larrcri, Genielli. his Travels round the World, iv. 345. Cartesian philosophy, summary of the, iii. 70-101, 398; iv. 71, 127, 137. See " Descartes." Cartliusians, learning of the, i. 92. C'artoblacas, Andronicus, i. 194. Cartwright, his Platform, ii. 55. Cartwright, \Villi:im, on Shakspeare, cou- plet by, iii. 305, note '. Casa. Italian poet, ii. 132, 182, 192, 281. Casanuova, i. 466. Casaubon, Isaac, the eminent scholar, ii. 44, 45, 359 ; iv. 16 — a light of the lite- rary world, ii. 46 — correspondence with Scahger, 27. ncle «, 60, note -, 392 — attack on Bellarmin by, 92, note -. Ca.sauboii, Meric, ii. 334, ttote ', 394, note — his account of Oxford University, iii. 434 — on the classics, iv. 16. Casiniir, lyric poetry of, iii. 265, note. See " Sarbicvus.'' Ca.siri, Catalogue of Arabic MSS. by, i. 77. Casks, Kepler's treatise on the capacity of, iii. 381. Ca.s.sandcr, George, his Consultation on the Confes.sioa of Augsburg, ii. 79— his controversy with Calvin, (6. — Grotius's Annotations, 399. Cassini, tlie gnomon of, at Bologna, i. 198. Cassiodorus, character of his works, i. 26 — his De Orthographia, 44, note. Castalio, Sebastian, reply of. to Calvin, ii. 87, 412, 424 — Beza's "reply to Castalio, 88 — sci-iptural version by, 103 — Aver- sion of the German Theology by, i. 151 1 iii. 22. t'astalio, antiquary, ii. 60. Castanheda, description of Asia by, ii. 341. Castell, Edmund, his Lexicon Ileptaglot- ton, iv. 342. CastcUio, his work on Hydraulics, iii. 404. Castelvetro, criticisms of, i. SIO; ii. 295, 296 — his commentary ou Aristotle's Poetics, 296. CHAI.OWER. Castigl.one, Cortegiano of. i. 395 — Latin poetry of, 428 ; ii. 294, 356. Castilian poets, i. 242: ii. 202. Castillejo, Spanish poet, ii. 202 Castillo, i. 138. Casnistry, and its difficulties, iii. 132. 131. 136, 137 — of the Jesuists, 135; iv. 148 — Taylor's work on, 148 — Casuistical writers, iii. 131-136. Catalogues of new books first published, ii. 352, 7iote — of libraries, iii. 435. Caterus, his objections to Descartes, iii. 82. Catharin, theologian, tenets of, i. 374 ; ii. 98. Cathay of Marco Polo (China), ii. 342. Catholicon of Balbi, in 1460, i. 99 and note. Catholics, their writers, ii. 98, 103 — Eng- lish Catholics, 104 — Catholic Bibles, 103. See " Rome." Cats, popular Dutch poet, iii. 242. Catullus, edition of, by Isaac Vossius, it. 10. Cavalieri, mathematician of Bologna, iii. 383 — his geometry, ib. Cave on the Dark Ages, i. 28, 7iote. Caxton, printed books of, i. 173, 174. Cecchini, celebrated harlequin, iii. 274. Cecil, Lady, ii. 53. Celio Wagno, Odes of, ii. 184 ; iv. 213. Celso, Mino, de Ila^reticis, &c., ii. 89, 424. Celtes, Conrad, i. 218 — dram.as of, 220 — academies established by, 468. Celticus sermo, the patois of Gaul, i. 43 and note. Ceuturiatores, or the church historians, who termed, ii. 99 — of Magdeburg, 81, 99. Century, fifteenth, events and literary acquisitions of, i. 247-249. Cephalfpus, Greek Testament of, i. 379. Cerisantes, Latin poems of, iii. 265. Cervantes, reputation of his Don Quix- ote, iii. 363 — German criticism as tc his design, (6. — observations on the author, 366, 367 — excellence of the romance, 368 — his minor novels, ih. ; ii. 300 — his dramatic pieces, his Nu- manoia, 255-257 — invectives on, by Avelleuada, iii. 363 — criticism by, 371. Ce.salpin, Quaestioaes Peripateticie, ii. 108, 110. Ccsarini, merit of, iii. 265. Cesi, Prince Frederic, founds the Lincean Society at Home, iii. 395, 437. Ceva, his iiatin jioems, iv. 240. Chalcondylos arrives from Constantinople in Italy, i. 162. Chaldee, the language and Scriptures, i. 319 ; ii. asr, : iii. 425, 427. Chaloner, Sir Thomas, his poem De Ro- publicl Instaunindi, ii. 243 — charactej of his poetry, 302. INDEX. 361 CHaMPEAUX Champeaiix, William of, i. 37. Champnifle, Mademoiselle de, iv. 246. Chancellor, his voyage to the North Sea, i,. 342. Chapclaiu, French poet, iii. 348 — his La Pucelle, iv. 222. Chapellc, or riiuillier. poet, iv. 220. Chapman, dramas of, iii. 333 — his Homer, ii.22(j; iii. ii^iS. Charlemagne, cathedral and conventual Fchools e.stablished by, i. 28, 30, 35, 3S. Charlemagne, fabulous voyage of, to Con- stantinople, metrical romance on, i. 50, jiote -. Charles I. of England, ii. 388, 444 ; iii. 104, 292, 331, 354. aVJ. Charles II., education and literature in his reign, iv. 15, 60 — poetry, 238 — comedy, 272. Charles V., the Kmperor, ii. 199. Charles IX. of France, ii. 210. Charles the Bald, i. 25, 30, 46, 47, note >. Charletou, Dr.. hi.s translation ol Gassendl, iv. 125. Chardin. Voyages of, iv. 346. Charron. I'eter, treati?e Des Trois Verites, &c., by, ii. lOl — On Wisdom, 442; iii. 146. Charters, anciently written on papyrus and on parchment, i. 70, 77. Chaucer, remarks on the poetry of, i. 68, 141. 424 ; ii. 217. Chaulieu, poems of, iv. 220. Chekc, Sir John, i. 337 — Greek professor at (Janibridge, 344, 345 — his Ileforma- tio Legum Kcclesiasticarum. ii. 42. Chemistry, science of, iv. 320, 323. Chemnitz, the Loci Theologici of, ii. 98, 99. Chevalier, Hebrew professor, ii. 338. Chevy Chase, pwm of, its probable date. i. 142, 7)otr ' — its effect upon Sir P. Sid- ney, ii. 264. Chiabrera, Italian poet, ii. 184: iii. 226, 267; iv. 211 — his imitators, iii. 228. Chitlet, the Jesuit, the first reviewer, iv. 292. Child, ?ir Josiah, on Trade, iv. 204. Chillingworth, Religion of Protestants by, ii. 40<>-410. Chimpanzee of Angola, iii. 412 and note. China, stereotype-printing known in, i. 165 — missionaries to, ii 342 ; iii. 429 — history of. ii. 342 — Kircher's and Nieu- hoff "s account of, iv. 344, 346 — Voyages in, ii. 344. Chinese language and manu-scripts, iii. 429. Chivalry, its effects on poetry, i. 143-146 — romances of, 146, 4.38 ; ii. 304. Chocolate, poem on, by Strozzi, iv. 240. Christianity, prevalence of disbelief in, iv. 46 — vindications of, 51. Christiad, the, of Vida, i. 428. CLEMENT VIII. Christina of Sweden, iii. !">• iv. 212. Chri.«tine of Pi.sji, a lady of literary accom- plishments in ttie court of Charles V. of France, i. 113 ; iv. 215. Christoplierson, his Jephthah, i. 436, 437. Chronology, Joseph Scaliger"s de Kmenda- tione Temporum, ii. 63 — his Julian Period, 64 — Archbishop Ushcr"s, iv. 21 — the Hebrew chronology, 22 — wri. ters on, ii. 379-381 ; iv. 22, 23.. Chrysoloras, Lm.anuel, J. 112, 115. Chrysostom, Savile"s edition of, ii. 363, vote -. Church, influence of, upon learning, i. 29. Churchyard, writings of. ii. 218. Ciaconius, Alfonsus, ii. 60. Ciacouius (or Chacon), Peter, De Triclinio Koniano. ii. 60. Ciampoli, the Kime of. iii. 228. Cibber, his plays, iv. 276, note. Cicero, Isidore's opinion of, i. 27 — Ora- tions of, discovered by I'oggio, 103 ^ his style a criterion of language, 105, 831 — "argument by, 237 — editions of, 172, 330 ; ii. 20 and note — his Orations elucidated by Sigonius, 58 — his Epis- tles, 283 ; iv."l0. Ciceronian literature, i. 3-30. Cicerouianus of Erasmus, i. 329. Ciceronis Consul, &c., by Bellenden, iii 156. Cid, the, ancient Spanish pnem, i. 62 — • ascribed to i'edro Abad, 135 and note » — Corneille's poem of, iii. 282, 285 — critique on, 349 — romances of the, 229. Cimento, Academy del, iv. 318. Cinthio, Giraldi, his tragedy of the Orbec- che, i. 431 — his Hundred Tales, ii. 303 — invention of, 245. Circumnavigators, account of, ii. 341 Ciriacus of Ancona, i. 182. Cistercians, learning of. i. 92. Citizens, on the privileges of, ii. 152. Civil Law and Civilians. See " La>v.'' Clarendon, Earl of, his History, iii. 359. Clarius, Isidore, edition of the A'ulgate by, ii. 103, 338. Classics, labors of the Florentine critics on, i. 187 — first and celebrated editions of the, 263, .330 ; ii. 14, 15 ; iv. 13 — Variorum editions, i. 330 ; iv. 9 — Del. phin, 12, ft passim — Str.aua's imita- tions, iii. 342. Clauberg, German metaphysician, iv. 79 Claude. French Protestant controversial wTiter. iv. 29 — his conference with Bos suet, 30. Clavius, Euclid of, ii. 317 — calendar r«> formed by, 320. Clemangis, Ijitin verses of, i. 123 — reli- gious v)e\ys of, 151. Clement VIII.. ii. 83 — an edition of Scrip- ture authorized by, 103, 882 — character of, 416. 362 INDEX. CLEMEITT. Clement, JaTUeo, thb .^egioide. ii. 145. Clenanlus, (ireeli (jraium»i' oi, i. 3&1 ; ii. 28 ; iv. 29. Clergy, pii-judice.s of, .igain.st learning, i. 28 — prcservatiou of grauiniatieal lile- ratiin; owing to, 29 — liostility between the S(;cular and the regular, 150 — dis- cipline of, ii. 70. Cler.^elier, metaphysician, iii. 70, 40i ; iv. 79. Cleveland, satirical poetry of, iii. 239, 243. Clugni, Abbot of [sen " Peter Cluniacen- sis "'), i. 77, &( — library of the Abbey of, 92. Olusiu.s, his works on Natural History and Botany, ii. 332; iii. 411. Cluverius, his Germania Antiqua, ii. 377. Coccejus, Summa DoctriuM of, ii. 437; iv. 78. Code.x Chartaceus, Cottonian MS.S. (Galba, lJ.I.)contents, and materials written on, i. 79. CoefTeteau, translation of Floras by, iii. 344. Colfee, its first mention by European wri- ter.s, ii. a31. Coins, collection of, by Petrarch, i. 182 — by Niccoli, ib. — on adulteration of, ii. 165 — Italian tr.acts on, iii. 161 — De- preciation of, under William III., iv. 205. See '• Numismatics." Goiter, anatomist, ii. 335. Colbert, French minister, iv. 320. Colebrooke, Mr., on the algebra of India, i. 247, note. Coleridge, Mr., his praise of Beaumont and Fletcher, iii. 294, note — his opinions on the plays of Shakspeare, 302, 303 — — remarks of, ii. 279 ; iii. 319, .lole, 422, note — on Spenser, ii. 233, noit - — on Shakspeare's Sonnets, iii. 255 -on Mil- ton, iv. 228, note — on the .Argenis, iii. 372, note — his Kemains, iv. 225, note. Colet, Dean, i. 280 — founder of St faul's School, ii. 50. Colinaius, printer at Paris, i. 335, 357, 380. OoUalto, counts of, ii. 187. College of Groot, at Deventer, i. 125 —of William of Wykeham, 178 — King .s, at Cambridge, 178 — of Alcal.1 and Lou- vain, 278, 279. See " Universitie,*."' Collier's History of Dramatic Poetry, and Annals of the Stage, i. 224, note ', 268, nore'; ii. 201,262, notes, 203-266, et seq., 287, note, iii. 290-292, tiotes. Colocci, Angelo, Latin poet, i. 466. Colomies, the Colomesiana, ii. 92, note '. Colonna, Vittoria, widow of the Marquis of I'cscara. i. 367 — her virtues and talents, 413; ii. 189. Jolnccio Salutato, literary merits of, i. 104. COOPER'S HILL. Columbus, Christopher, Epistle of, i. 271 — di.scuvery of America by, 271, 321, 322. Columbus, Rualdus, de Re Anatomici, ii. 335 ; iii. 418, 420, 421. Columua, or Coloana, his botanical works iii. 415 — his etchings of plants, 415 iv. 329. Combat, single, Grotius on, iii. 200. Comedy, iv. 265 — Italian, i. 4.30; ii. 245 — extemporaneous, iii. 273 — Spanish, ii. 249, &c. See " Drama." Comenius, his system of acquiring Latin, ii. 358 — its utility discussed, 3o9, note. Comes Natalis, Mythologia of, ii. 6.3. Comets, theory respecting, ii. 320; iii. 392. Comines, Philip de, i. 245 ; ii. 148. Commandin, the mathematician, ii. 317^ works on geometry edit«d by, ib. Commerce and trade, works on, iii. 163, 164 ; iv. 203, 204. Conmion wealths, origin of, ii. 152 ; iii. 165, 169. 188. Coneeptualists. i. 195. Conchology, Lister's work on, iv. 328. Concordia.' Formula, declaration of faith, ii. 81, 98. Condillac, works of, iii. 113, 114, note, 213, 214. Confession, its importance to the Romish Church, iii. 131 — strict andlax schemes of it, 134. Congreve, William, his comedies, iv. 271, 273— Old Bachelor, i6. — Way of the World, /';. — Love for Love, 274 — his Mourning Bride, 271. Conic Sections, on, iii. 331 — problem of the cycloid, 384. Counan, the civilian, ii. 171 ; iii. 190. Conrad of Wiirtzburg, i. 59. Conringius, Herman, iii. 151, 156, 176. Constance, Council of, ii. 94, 163- Constantin, Robert, reputation of his Lexi- con, ii. 25, 50. Constjintine, History of, drama of, i. 220. Constantinople, revolution in language on its cipture by Mahomet II.. i. 113. Constitutions of European St!»*:ss, printed by the Elzevirs, iii. 156. Contareui, tenets of, ii. 76. Contention of York and Lancaster, play of. ii. 266. Conti, Giusto di, Italian poet, i. 174. Conti, Nicolo di, his travels in the East. i. 159. Contract?, on, iii. 192, 193. Conti'oversy of CathoUcs and Protestants, ii. 77, 390. Convents, expulsion of nuns from their, i. 352. Cooke, Sir Antony, accomplished daugh ters of, ii. 53. Cooper's Ilill, Denham's poem of, iii. 248 — Johusou's remarks on, 247, note. IOT)EX. 3G3 COP. Cop, the physician, i. 338. Copernicus, astronouiical system of, i. 453; ii. 317, 318, 319 ; iii. 17, 391, 393 — his system ailoptcil by (ialileo, ii. 319; iii." 394 — by Kepler. 391. Coppetta. Italian pcK't, ii. 185. Coptic language indebted to the researches of AthuuaMUs Kircher. iii. 429. Cordova, Granada, and Malaga, collegiate institutions of, i. 39. Cord us, Kuricius, his Botanilogicon, i. 4.^9. Corneille. Pierre, drama.s of: his Melite, iii. 282 — the Cid. 282-284: iv. 248 — Clitandre, La Veuve, iii. 282 — Medea, 282 — Lcs Horaces, 284 — Cinna, 285 — I'olyeucte, ib. — Itodogune. 286 ; iv. 253 — I'onipee, iii. 28o — lleiaclius, 287 — Nicomede. ib. — Le Menteur. 288 — htyle of, 283 — fiults and beauties of, 287 — comparison of llacine with, iv. 253. Corneille, Thomas, dramatic works of, iv. 255 — his tragedies unequal in merit, ib. — his Ariane and Earl of Essex, ib. — his grammatical criticisms, 283. Cornelius a Lapide, ii. 43 j. Corniani, critical remarks of, i. 175. 311 ; ii 189, iwie *, 249. .lote =, 283 ; iv. 213. CoiTJUtus. grammarian, i. 44, note. Corporations, ii. 15'o. Correggio and Tasso, their respective ta- lents compared, ii. 199. Correspond(mce, literary, ii. 333. Cortesius, Paulus. his Dialogue de Ilomini- bus Doctis, i. 101, note -. 191 — his com- mentary on the scholastic philosophy, ii. IG. Corviuus, Mathias, King of Hungary, i. 39. Corycius, a patron of learning, i. 466. Cosmo de" Medici, i. 119. Cosmo I. of Florence, type of Machiarers Prince, ii. 298. Cos,«ali. History of .\lgebra by, i. 450, 451, 452, and 7ioles; ii. 313. 315, nole. Costanzo. Angelo di, ii. 1.83, 1.84. 192. Cost;ir, Lawrence, printer of Haarlem, i. 165. Cota. Rodrigo, dramatic author, i. 267. Cotelier, liis Gieek erudition, iv. 14. Cotta, the Latin poet. ii. 294. Councils of the Church of Home. i. 302, 371; ii. 76, 94, 98, 385, 4Ul — of Trent (see '• Trent," &c.). Courcelles, tie.atiseon criticism, ii. 300 Courcelles. Arminian divine, iv 38, 43 Cousin, M.. on the philo.-iophy of liroscelin and Abelard. i. Si, nole i — edition of the works of Dest-ar^es, iii. 101 — re- marks on Locke, iv. i-i!\, 144, note. Covarruvias, Spanish lawyer, ii. 174, 177, 1 I .7. Covenants, on, iii. 167. CoTerdale's edition of the Bib."., i. 380 and n-'te 2 ; ii. 59. CUD WORTH. Cowley, poems of, iii. 249; It. 2.33 — hi* Pindaric Odes, iii. 249 — his Latin style, ib. — .Johnson's character of, 260 — his Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris, iv. 243 — his prose works, 299. Co.x, Leonard, his Art of Khetoric, i. 443 ; ii. 301. Cox, Dr., his Life of Melanchthon, i. 277, nole ■•. Crakauthorp, logical works of, iii. 16. CranuuT, Archbishop, library of, i. .313; ii. 420, 42:3. Crashaw, style of his poetry described, iii. 249. CnLston, Lexicon of, i. 181, 231 — printed by Aldus in 1497, ib. Creed, the Apostles", ii. 427, 430 — the Athanasian, 427. Crellius. de Satisfactione Christi, ii. 417 — his Vindicia;, 425. Cremoniui, Cicsar, ii. 106, 108 ; iii. 14. Cresci. on the loves of Petrarch and Liaura, ii. 295. Crescimbeni, poet and critic, i. 412. 413, note I : ii. 181, 185, 293 ; iii. 228. 273: iv. 215 — History of National Poetry by, 276. Cretensis, Demetrius, i. 319. Crispinus. Milo, Abbot of Westminster, i 9U. note -. Crispin. Greek works printed by, ii. 334. Critici Sacri, ii. 99 ; iv. 61. Criticism, literary, names eminent in, ii. 18 — J C. Scaliger, 292 — Gruter's The- saurus Criticus, 20 — L.ambiuus, 22 — Cruquius. 2.3 — Henry Stephens, ib. et pasiiin — French treatises of, 300 — Italian, i. 444; ii. 186. 294 — Spani-sh critics, 299 — early English critics, 301 — sacred, 435. Croix du Maine, La, ii. 301, .3>3. Croke, liichard, i. 276, 278, 342 — orations of, 294, note. CroU, of Hesse, on Magnetism, iii. 423, note *. Cromwell, .state of learning in the Pro- tector"s time, iv 15, 191 — state of reli- gion, 42. Croyland Abbey, history of, doubtful, i. 39, 7iote -. Cruquius, or de Crusques, scholiast of, on Horace, ii. 23. Crusades, and commerce with Constanti- nople, intiuential on the classical litera- ture of Western Europe, i. 113 — their influence upon the manners of the European aristocracy, 146. Cru.sca, della the Vocabularia, ii. 299 ; iii. 33 J — the Academy of, ii. 298, 350; iii. 437. Crusius, teacher of Romaic, ii. 34. Cudworth, his doctrine, iv. 41, 43. 99, note — his Intellectual System, 66 -^ described, 6*3-70, 94, 7iote, 149 ; Ui. 62 — on Free- will. iv. 113 and itote * — Im- mutable Morality by, 149. 3G4 INDEX. CuBTa, Juan de la, poem of, on the Art of Poetry, ii. 301). Cujacius, and his works on Jurisprudence, ii. 16S-1T1, 172. Culiignu, Count of, type of Hudibras, iii. 22(j. Cumberland, Dr. Richard T)c LegibusNa- turie, iv. 153-163 — remarlis on hia theory, 163, 161. Cumberland, Mr., critioism.s of, iii. 308. UunKus, on the Antiquities of Judaism, iii. 427. ("urccIliKus, letters of, ii. 418. (Jurio.sity, the attribute of, Uobbes on, iii. Currency and Exchange, iii. 163, 164. Curves, the measurement of, iii. 382. Cusanus, Cardinal Nicolivs, mathematician, i. 171, liW. Custom of the Country, by Fletcher, iii. 315. Cuvier, Baron, his character of Agricola as a German metallurgist, i. 461 — opi- nion of, on Conrad Gesner's works, ii. 325 — also on those of Aldrovaudus, 329. See his remarks, iii. 412. Cycles, solar and lunar. &c., ii. 64. Cycloid, problems relating to, iii. J^. Cymbalum Muudi, ii. lUl, note '^. Dach, German devotional songs of, iii. 241. Uacier, the Horace of, iv. 6 — his Aristo- tle, ii. 295 ; iv. G. Dacier. Madame, translations of Homer and Sappho by, iv. 13. D'Ailly, I'eter, the preacher, ii. 94. Dai lie ou the Right Use of ihe Fathers, ii. 404, 435. D'Alembert, iii. 44. Dale, Van, the Dutch physician, iv. ?80. Dalechamps, Hist. Gen. I'lanttirum by, ii. 3.33. Dalgarno, George, his attempt to cstabli.sh an universal character and language, iv. 121 — character of his writings, ib. — attempt by, to instruct the deaf and dumb, 122, note i. Dalida, Italian tragedy of, iii. 269, note. Dalton, atomic theory of, iii. 55. Damon and Pythias, Edwards's play of, ii. 262. Dam pier, voyage round the world by, iv. 316. Dancourt, his Chevalier ^ la Mode, iv. 264. Danes, Greek professor in the University of Paris, i. 338 and nnle i, 350 ; ii. 17. Daniel, his Pane!T>ric addressed to James 1., iii. 246 — his Civil Wars of York and I^am'aster, a poem, 250 — History of England by, 3o8. Daniel. SaniueK his Complaint of Rosa- monl ii. 223. DEMOCEIl VS. Dante, Alighieri, Life of, by Aretin, i. 175 — Commentary on, by I^iindino, ib. — his Divina Commedia,"i. G3, 122 ; iv. 223 — his Purgatory and Paradise, 228 — comparison with Homer, ii. 298 — cmi- troversy as to his merits, ih. — comp:iri- son of Milton with, iv. 225, 227 — tlie Ugolino of, ii. 2.56. D-Argonue, Melanges de Littcrature, iv. 297. Dati, the Prose Florentine of, iv. 276. D'Aubigne, Agrippa, iii. .376. D'Aucour, Barbier, iv. 285. Daunourou the origin of the term "Ju- lian period," ii. (ji, note 2. D'Auvergue, Martial, i. 219. Davanz;itis Tacitus, ii. 283. Davenant, Dr. Charles, his Essay on Ways and Jleans, iv. 207. Davenant, Sir William, his Gondibert, iii. 252 ; iv. 23;3. Davenant, theatre of, iv. 266. David and Bethsabe, pl.ay of, ii. 266. Davies, Sir John, his poem Nosce Tcipsum, or On the Immortality of the Soul, ii. 224; iii. 246. Davila, History of the Civil Wars in France b}', iii. 431. Davison's Poetical Uhapsody, ii. 221, 222. 29;>, note K De Bry ".s Voyages to the Indies, ii. 342. Decameron of Boccaccio, style of, i. 441. Decembrio, the philologist, i. 125. Decline of learning on the fall of the Ro- m.an Empire, i. 26 — in the sixth cen- tury, 27. Dedckind, bis poem on Germany, ii. 132. Defence, self, Grotius on, iii. 184. Definitions of words, on, by Descartes, Locke, Pascal, Leibnitz, Lord Stair, &c., iii. 90, note. De Foe, Daniel, iv. 314. Degerando, remarks of, iv. 7G and note - — llistoire des Systemes, by, ii. 115, note 1. Deistical writers, ii. 101. Dekker, the dramatic poet, iii. 3.34. Delambre, the mathematician, i. 171. Delfino, dramatic works of, iv. 244. Deliciae Poetarum U.iUorum, ii. 2.39. Delicia; Poetarum Bclgarum, ii. 239, 242 Delicioe Poetarum Italorum, ii. 239. Delicife Poetarum Scotorum, ii 242. Delille, French poet, iv. 243. De Lisle's map of the world, iv. 345. Deloin, Francis, i. 285. Delpliine editions of the Latin classics, iv. 12 De Marca, writings on the Gallic.an liber- ties by, ii. 389. Demetrius Crefcnsis, a translator for tho Polyglot Bible of Alcal,i, i. 319. Democracy, Spinosa's dolinitiou of, iv. 190. Dcmocritus, corpuscular theory of, iii. 21 INDEX. 365 SENHAM. I>enham, Sir John, his Cooper's Uill, iii. 24ij. Deuiuiirk, ScaniUnaTian legends and bal- lad^i of, iii. 243. De Doniinis, Autonio, Archbisliop of Spa- l;ito, ii. -104, note i. Duppint;, .Moorish romances published by, ii. 207. De Retz, liistorian, iv. 31:6. fesoartf.-, pliilosophical and scientific de- ductions, &c.. of. i. 3 ) nnte ■* ; iii. 3S7- 389, 393 ; iv. 70, 82, 104, 133 — summary of his ractap'.iysic;il philo.-iophy, &c., iii. 74-101 — his algebraic imi)rovements, ii. 316 ; iii. 387 — his application of algebra to curves, 388 — indebted to Harriott, 388 — his alf;ebraic geometry, 389; ii. 316 — his theory of the universe, iii. 397 — his mechanics, 402 — law of mo- tion by, 403 — on compound forces, 404 — on tlie lever, 404, 7ir<('» •' — his diop- trics, 404, 408, 409- on the curves of lenses, ih. — on the rainbo'.v, ih. — on the nature of light, 398 — on the ini- materiality and seat of the soul, 83, 85-89 — his fomlnes.s for ;inatomical dis- section, 8-5— his Meditations, 86,97 — his Paradoxes, 89 — treatise on logic. 94 — controversy with Voet, 98 — Leibnitz on the claims of earlier writers, lOO and notf — Stewart's estimate of his merits, 101 — his alana on hearing of the sentence on Galileo, 396 -pro- cess of his philosophy, iv. 78, 136^ his coi'respondence, 77 — accused of plagiarism, ii. 120 ; iii. 99, 388. note. DeshouUtires, Madame, poem.s of, iv. 221. Desmarests, the Clovis of, iv. 222. De Soils, Antonio, historian, iv. 346. Despenccr, Hugh de, letter to, i. 79. Desportes, Philippe, the French poet, ii. 213. Despotism, observations of Boc|jn on, ii. 154, 155. Deuxponts, Duke of, encourages the pro- gress of the Keformation, i. 351. Deventer, classics printed at, j. 237 — Col- lege of, 125, 151, 192. Dp Witt's Interest of Holland, iv. 203. D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Oriental, iT. 343. Diana of Afontemavor, ii. 305. Dibdin's Classics, ii. 14, 15. Dibdin, Bibliotheca Spenceriana, i. 168, note -. Dictionaries, early Latin, i. 99,330— Cale- pio's, 262 — Lexicon Pentagiottum, iii. 425 — Lexicon Heptaglotton, iv. 312 — Arabic lexicon, iii. 428 — Hebrew lexi- con, i 462 — Vocabulario della ('rusca, ii. 299 : iii. 3-39 — lo .ver Greek, ii. 3 yi — Latin Thesaurus of II. Stepliens. i. ,333 — Elvot'.s Latin and English, i. 317 — Bavle's, iv. 295, 293 — Moreii's, 295, 296. DRAMA. Dictionnaire de 1' Academic, iv. 282 — it« revi.-ion, 2S3. Dieu, Louis de, on the Old Testament, iii. 425, 427. Dicze, the German critic, ii. 204 ; iii. 230. Digby, Sir Kenelm, philosophical views of; iv. <34, ^V>. Diogenes Laertivis, i. 3.35: iv. 63. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, edition by Stephens of, i. 3^5 — by Sylburgius, ii. .32. Diophantus. his method in algebra fcr indefinite riuantities, i. 4-52. Dioptrics, science of, iii. 404, 408. Dioscoridos. Histoi-y of Plants by, ii. 32.5_. Disputation, scholastic and theological, i. 358 ; ii. 105-109. Divine right of kings, iii. l.jS. Dodona's Grove, romance by Howell, iii. 376. Dodoens, or Dodonspus, botanical work of, ii. 8:31.332; iii. 416. Dodsley"s Old Plays, i. 435; iii. 293, nott. Dogs, on the sagacity of. ii. 120, note 2. Doister, llal]ih Roister, play of. i. 437. Dolce Lodovico, treatise of, i. 445 — his tragedies, ii. 245. Dolet, Stephen, essay of, on Punctuation, i. 445 ; ii. 294. Domat, Loix Civiles of. iv. 209. Domenichino, his style of painting, ii. 199 Domesday, Lord Stirling's poem of, iii. 256 and note ■'. Dominican order opposed to the Francis- can friars, i. 371 ; ii. 123, 416. Dominis, Antonio de, Abp., De Republica Ecclesi;^stica, ii. 404, note i — on the rainbow and solar niys, iii. 407. Donati, the .Jesuit, his Iloma Vetus et Nova, ii. 376. Donatus, Latin grammar, i. 88 — printed in wooden stereotype, 165, 168. Doni, his liibreria, a bibliographical his- tory, ii. 353. Donne, Dr., his .satires, ii. 225 — founder of the metaphysical style of poetry, iii. 247, 248 — sermons of, ii. 4.38 — his let- ter to Counte.ss of Devonshire, iii. 259. Dorat, French poet, ii. 17, 210. D'Orleans, Father, historian, iv. 346. Dorpius, letter of, on Erasmus, i. 296. Dorset, Duke of. poetry of, iv. 234 Dort, Synod of, ii. 413: iv. 41. Double Dealer, play of, iv. 273. Douglas, Gawin, ills translation of th« M\K\<\. i. 283. Dou.sa. poems of. ii. 242 ; iii 242 Drake, Sir Francis, voyages of. ii. 313. Di-ake's Shakspeare and his Times, ii. 228 — remarks of. iii. 298. 303. Dr.ama, ancient Gri-ek. iv. 225.232— Euro- pean, i. 2?0, 266: ii. 245: iv. 244 — Latin plays, i. 220. 433 — mysteries anj mor.alities, i. 221. 222. and note, 4-33^38 of England, i^'. -137 ; ii. 261 ; in. 289 ; >G6 INDEX. DRAYTON. It. 265-276 — France,!. 313; ii.257. iii 281; iv. 244 — Germany, i. 314,435 — Italy. 226, 273, 430; ii. 245, 248, 249 ; iii. 271 ,"273 ; iv. 244 — Portugal, i. 266, 268 — Spain, 266,267,431; ii.249; iii. 273; iv. 244 — Kxtcmpriraneous comedy, iii. 273 and nnle •' — Italian opera, ii. 248 — EDWARD VI. Duns Scotus, a scholastic barbarian, ii 47 Dunton'.s Life and Errors, &c., iv. 316. 317, note. Du I'etit Tliouars, remarks of, ii. 333. Dupin, M., opinions of, ii. 92, 98 — hia panegyric on Hiclier, .386 — his Ancient Discipline of the Galilean Church, iv. pa.«toral drama, 246; iii. 272, 309 — 26 — Ecclesiastical Library, 27. nu'lodranie, ii. 248 — pantomime, iii. 273, note " — Shakspeare, 293-306 — Deauuiont and Fletcher, .3:19-325 — Ben Jonson. 306-309 — Calderon, 275 — Lope de Vega, 274 — Corneille, 282 ; iv. 254. Drayton. Michael, ii. 225 — his Barons' VVavs, 224 — his I'oljolbion, iii. 250. Dreams, Uobbes on the phenomena of, iii. 104. Drabbel Cornelius, the miscroscope of, iii. 407. Dringeberg, Louis, i. 192. Drinkwater Bethune's Life of Galiteo, iii. 395 and note. Drummond, the poems of, iii. 252 — son- nets of, 256. Drusius, biblical criticism of, ii. 330 and note -. Drvdon, .Tohn, iv. 219 — his early poems, 233 -Annus Mirabilis. 2^3 — Absalom and Achitophel, ih. — Heligio Laici, 235 — Mac Flecknoe, 234^ — Hind and Pan- ther, 235 -Fables, 236 — Alexander's Feast and the Odes, 237 — transla- tion of Virgil, ib. — liis pro.so works .and style, 300 — his remarks on Shakspeare, iii. 305, notes — Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 309, note, 324,325. voles: iv. 300,301 — criticisms by, 70 — his heroic tragedies. 267 — Don Sebastian, 268 — Spanish Friar, 269 — All for Love, 270 — State of Innocence, 231, 300 — Conquest of Grenada, 282. Ouaren, interpreter of civil law, ii. 170. Du Bartas, poetry of, ii. 212, 213; iii. 233, 439 ; iv. 219. Dubellay on the French language, ii. 210, 7lote. Dublin, Trinity College, library of, iii. 435. Du Bois, or Sylvius, grammarian, i. 445. Ducanis, Fronto, or Le Due, his St. Chry- fostom, ii. 3'i3, note -. Du Cange, J'reface to the Glossary of, 1. 42. 43, 7iote -, 46, tiole '-. Du Chesne, Uistoire du Baiauisme by, ii. 82, &i, .lilies. Duche.ss of Malfy, play of Webster, Iii. 3.32. Duik, Arthur, on Civil Law, iii. 177. Duke, poetry of, iv. 239. Dunbar, 'William, the Thistle and Rose of, i. 270, 421 — his allegorical poem, the Golden Targe, 270. Dunciad, the, of Pope, iv. 218. Dunlop's History of Fiction, iii. 369, note Duport, James, translations of Scripture by, iv. 14. Duran, his Romanccro, or Spanish ro- mance-ballads, ii, 207 ; iii. 229, tiotr i Duras, Mademoiselle de, Ilehgious Con- ference before, iv. 30. Durer. Albert, treatise on Perspective by, ii. 321. D'Urfci, romance of Astree, iii. 369 ; iv. 221, 312. Duryer, his tragedy of Scevole, iii. 288. Dutch poetry, iii. 242 — grammar of Spie- gel, itj. Dutens, his Origine des Decouvertes attri- buees aux Modernes, iii. 406, note, 421 and note - Du Vair, style of his works, ii. 285 ; iii. 343, 351. Duval"s Aristotle, ii. 863. Duvcrney, Treatise on Hearing by, i7. 340. Dyce. Mr., remarks of, ii. 208, note - ; iii. 316, note, 320, 321, notes. Dyer, Edward, style and poetry of, ii. 302 Dynamics of Galileo, iii. 400. Earle, .Tohn, the Microcosmographia of iii. 361. Earth, rotation of the, ii. 324 — theory of its revolution round the sun. iii. 394 — Burnefs theory of the, iv. 336. Eastern languages, study of, i. 2G6 ; iii. 424-429. See " Language." Ecclesiastical History by Dupin, iv. 28; by Fleury, ib. Ecclesiastical historians, ii. 99 — duties of, 100. Eckius, doctrines of, ii. 93. Economists, poUtical, iii. 161; iv. 203, e« sec/. Education, Milton's Tractate on, iv. 175 — Locke on, 175 — ancient philosophers on, 176 — Fenelou's Sur I'Educatiou des Filles, 181. Edward 1., play of, ii. 267. Edward II., death of, Ii. 140 — reign of, 224 — life of, 265. Kdward II., pUay of. ii. 265. Edward III., embassy from, to the Count of Holland, i. 79. Edward IV., state of learning and litera- ture in time of, i. 177, 197. Edward VI., education cf, i. 346 — state of learning in the time of, ii. 42, 139, 286 — stage-plays, &c., suppressed by his council, i. 436 — AuabaptLsts burnt, ii. 85 ; drowned, 87- INDEA. 567 edwauds. Edwards. Kichard, poet, the Amantium Irw of ii. 21t'>. vole - — Damon and Pythias, 2(2; iii. 2t)0. Eii'hhorn's r.csohkhte dcr Cultur, &o., i. 27, 28-.'!2, £38, Jio/f, £fi3, note; u. 93, vote ; iii. 424, note 2. Eloanor of Casti'c, play of, ii. 207. Klder Brother. pla< of. iii. 313 Klias T.evita. cvitiiism of, iii. 420. Elizabeth, education of. i. 340 — state of learning durins her reign, ii. 47, 132 — her own learning. 48 — philofophical ^orks in her time, 49, 132 — worlds of fiction, iii. ;!74 — poets, ii. 219, 228 : iii. 290 — court of. described, ii. 288 — pun- ishment of the Anabaptists, 87 — Kng- lish divines in her reign, 91 — bull of Pius v. against the queen, 95. See also 147, 221, »13. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine, iii. 96. Ellis's Specimens of Earlv English Poets, ii. 221.710/p-'; iii. 2.59, 200. Ellis, Sir Henry, on the Introduction of Writing on Paper in the llecords, i. 80. Eloise and Abelard. i. 54 — learning of Eloise. 110. Elvot, Sir Thomas, the Governor of, i. "343, 443 — dictionary of. 347. Elzevir llepublics, the publication of, iii. 150. Emmius, Ubbo, Vetus Graecia illustrata of, ii. 378. Empedoeles, discoveries of, ii. 333. Empiricus, Sextus, on Natural Law, ii. 130 ; iii. 145, 147. Encyclopedic works of middle ages, i. 133 England, its state of barbarism in tenth century, i. 31 — its language, 04 — state of its literature at various i)erioils (see "Literature") — dawn of (ircek learn- ing, 240 — Greek scholars in, 279 — state of learning in, 265, 341, 347 ; ii- 132 ; iv. 14 — style of early English writers, i. 443 — improvement in style, iii. 354; iv. 297 — l^atin poets in, iii. 269 — Musa; Anglicanip, iv. 243 — Eng- plish poetrv and poets, ii. 215. 237 : iii. 243; iv. 222 — drama, i. 437; iii. £90; iv. 205 — prose-writers, ii. 280 — mys- teries and moralities, i. 435, 436 — ro- mances and fictions, iii. 374; iv. 312 — writers on morals, ii. 133— historians of, i. 245, 443 ; iii. 432 — Scripture com- mentators, ii. 437 — political writers, iv. 183, 194 — criticisms and philology, ii. 301; iv. 10. 17 — reformation in, i. 364; ii. 412 — high-church party, 403 (see " Reformation ") — controversy be- tween Catholics and Protestants, 890, 891, 31'2 — popular theories and rights, 147 — theologians and sermons, 91. 438 ; 5v. 33, 40, 59. England, Daniel's Ilistory of, iii. 358 ESTE. England's Helicon, contributors to, enu- merated, ii 221. English Constitution, the. iv. 194. Englisli Kcvolution of 1088, iv. 201. Englishman for my .Money, play of, ii. 273, note. Engraving on wood and copper, early ex- amples of. i. I'-fJ; 2f;f; Ennius, annals of, i. 230. Entomology, writers on, iii. 411. Enzina, I'rancis de, New Testament by, i. 381. Enzina, Juan de la, works of, i. 268. Eobanus llessus, Latin poetry of, i. 429. Epiceilia, or funereal lamentations, iii. 207. Epicurus, defence of, iii. 80. Episcopius, Simon, ii. 413 — a writer for the Kemonstrants, iv. 38, 41 —his 'i'he- ological Institutions, ii. 413; iv.41 — his Life by Limborch, ii."415, note K Epithalamia, or nuptial songs, iii. 267. _ Erasmus, his criticisms on Petrarch, i. 101 — visits England, 241 — Greek pro- fessor at Cambridge, 265— jealousy of Budanis and. 285. 286, and jio(c - — hi3 character, 287 — his Greek Testament, 292 — theColloayta, (6. — his letters, 357, iwte — hia controversy with Luther. 302. 307. nnle^, 356, 358 — his De Libero Arbitrio, ih.— his epistles characterized, 359 — his alienation from the reformers. 300 — Ids Adages, 242. 260, 286. 287-292 : ii. 135— his attacks on the monks, i. 297 — his Paraphrase. 374 — his charges against the Lutherans. 307 — his En- chiridion and ethical writings, 398 — his theological writings. 374 — his death, 361 Erastus and Erastianism, ii. 419. Ercilla, the Araucana of. n. 296. Ercolano of Varchi. i^. 297. Erigsna, learning of, i. 32. Erizzo. Sebastian, his work on Medals, li. 02, 349 —his Sei Giomate, or collection of novels, 304. Erpenius, Arabic grammar by, iii. 428. Erythrseus (or Hossi), his Pinacotheca A'i- rorum lllustrium, iii. 265- Escobar, casuistical writings of, iii. 137. Escurial, library of, ii. 347. Espinel, iii. 231 — the Marcos de Obregon of, 368. Espinel, Yincente, La Casa de la Memorw by, ii. 204, note -. Esqiiillaee. Borja de, iii. 232. Essex, Earl of, Apology for the, iii. 355- private character of, ii. 222. Esta<;o, school of, i. 339. Este, house of, patrons of learning, i. 281 310 ; U 248, 330. 3G8 INDEX. ETKBBBQK. Etherese, George, Greek version of the iiEneid, ii. 49. Etliert'ge, Sir George, style of his come- dies, iv. 273. Ethics, on, i. 398 ; iii. 48 ; iv. 104, 105, 153. See "' Philosophy."' Etienne, Charles, anatomist, i. 458. Eton Greek Grammar, its supposed origin discussed, i. ^34 — School, 178, 281, 7iote — education of boys at, in 1.580, ii. 50 and note — Savile's press at, 3!33. ttru.ioan remains, works on, ii. 377. Euclid, first translations of, i. 129, 227, 448 — theorem of, iii. 382 — editions of, ii. 317. £uphormio of Barclay, iii. 373. Euphues, the, of Lilly, &c., ii. 287-289. Euridice, opera of, by Uenuctini, ii. 249. Euripides, ii. 14, 45, 202, note ^ ; iv. 240 — French translations of, i. 434. Eustachius, ItaUan anatomist, ii. 334 : iii. 422. Eustathius of Thesis.alonica, his use of llomaic words, i. 113, note. Eutychius, Annals of, by Pococke, iv. 343. Evelyn's works, iv. 293. Every .Man in his Humor, play of, ii. 280. Every Man out of his Humor, play of, ii. 289. Evidence, on what constitutes, iii. 64, 65, note. Evremond, M. de St., poetry of, iv. 280. Exchange and currency considered, iii. 162. Experiens, Callimachus, i. 176. Faber, or Fabre, Antony, celebrated law- yer of Savoy, ii. 171 ; iii. 170. Faber, Basilius, merit of his Thesaurus, ii. 32. Faber,. Stapulensis, a learned Frenchman, i. 277, 355, 382. Faber, Tanaquil, or Tanneguy le Fevre, iv. 13 — his daughter Anne le Fevre (Madame Dacier), (6. Fables of I^a Fontaine, iv. 210. Fabre, Peter, his Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletici, ii. 60. Fabretti on Roman antiquities and in- scriptions, iv. 20, 21 Fabricius, George, ii. 34, 3-59; iv. 11 — his Bihlintheca Grjeca, 20. I'abricius, John, astronomical observa- tions by, iii, 394 — his treatise De Ma- culis iu Sole, ib. Fabricius de Aquapcndentc, on the lan- guage of brutes, iii. 413 — his medical discoveries, 410, 420. Fabroni, Vita3 Italorum of, iii. 382, note ^ ; iv. 20. Fabry, his Art de plaine Rhetoriciue, i. 445. Faery Queen, papers on, by Professor Wilson, ii. 232, n«/f — description and character of tlie poem, 230-237- FIELD. Fairfax, his Jerusalem, imitated frfm Tasso, ii. 227. Fair Penitent, play of Rowe, iii. 229. Faithful Shepherdess, poem of Fletcher, iii. 201, 309. Falconieri, his Inscriptiones Athleticae, iv. 20. Falkland, Lord, translation of Chilling- worth by, ii. 400. Fallopius, the anatomist, ii. 334; iii. 4]<). Fanaticism, its growth among some ( 1 th4 reformers, i. 353. Farces, i. 226. See " Drama." Farinacci, or Farinaceus, jurist, iii. 176 Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shak- speare, ii. 275, 7iote. Farnaby, 'I'homas, grammarian, ii. 3J7. Farqubar's comedies, iv. 275. Farriiigdon, Uugh, Abbot of Reading, i 440. Fatal Discovery, play of Southern, iv. 2il. Fathers, the, religious respect for their works, ii. 390, 404 — doctrine of some of the, iii. 83. Favette, La, Countess of, novels by, iy. 3U8. Feltham, Owen, the Resolves of, iii. 150. Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, his Max- imes des Saints, iv. 44 — on Female Education, 181 — Dialogues of the Dead by, 278 — merit of his Telemaque, 311. Ferdinand of Tuscany, plants introduced into Europe by, ii. 330. Fermat, liis discoveries in algebra and geometry, iii. 3S4, 389, 404, 408. Fernel, his mode of measuring a degree of the meridian, i. 448 — eminent French physician, 456. Ferrara, Church of, broken up in 1550, i. 308 — Duke of, botanic garden estab- lished by, ii. 330. Ferrara, Hercules I., Marquis of, i. 234. Ferrara, Spanish Bible printed at, ii. 101 — libraries of, i. 409 ; ii. 347. Ferrari, the mathematician, i. 450; ii. 311 — Lexicon Geograpliicum of, iii. 430 — Syriac lexicon of, 427 . Ferrarius, Octavius, on Roman dress, ii 377; iv. 20. Ferreira, Portuguese poet, ii. 207. Ferreo, Scipio, inventor of cubic equa- tions, i. 449. Fibonacci, Leonard, the algebraist, i. 127, 246. Fichet, rector of the Sorbonne, i. 17-?, 2-39. Ficiuus. Marsilius, theology of, i. 153, I'M, 208, 209 — translator of Plotinus. 232. Fiction, on works of, i. 438; ii. 303; iii. 3!i3; iv. 307 — English novels, ii. 307; iii. 374 — Spanish romances, ii.3O0; iii. 303— Italian, i. 175; ii. 303 — Moorish rom.ances, 207. Field on the Church, ii. 437. INDEX. 369 FIESOLK. (legole, villa of Lorenzo de Medici at, i. 188. Fiiitilus. Ilermannus, ii. 22. tiguiToa, !>panish poet, ii. 203. Filelfo, philologist, i. 117, nnte ', 118, 119. liiiciija. \i(enzo, hi.s Siege of Vienna, iv. 211 - - liis Italia uiia, a .sonnet, 212. Filuier, Sirllobei t, his Patriarclia, iii. 171 ; iv. l'J2. Fiiiee, Oronre, niatheniatirian, i. 448. Fioravuuti of liologna, i. 171. Fiore, or FloriJu.s, algebraist, i. 449. Fioretti, or Udeno Ni.-;ieIo, writings of, iii. 341, 437. Fircnzuola, satirical poet, ii. 192 — cha- racter of hi.s prose, 281. FiscUart, Uermau poet, ii. 215. Fisher, the Jesuit, Laud's conference with, ii. 3yl. Fisher, John, i. 280, note =, 294, 7ioU. Fislieries, rights to, iii. 187. Fishes, on, ii. 328; iv. 327. Flacius Illyricus, Ceuturiaj Magdeburgen- ses chiehy by, ii. 81, 99. Flamiuio, Italian poet, i. 367 — Latin ele- gies of Fiaminius, 429. Flavio Biondo, i. 182 Flea at Poitiers, lines on the, ii. 240, nnte ^ Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, iii. 371 ; iv. 55 — liariiiony of his diction, 58. Fleming, lyric poetry of, iii. 241. F'leming, Kobert, i. 177. Klutcher, Andrew, iv. 804. Fletcher, Giles, his poems, iii. 245. Fletcher's John. Faithful Shepherdess, iii. 2G1 .*I9, 319. See "Beaumont and ■ Fletcher." Fletcher, Phincjis, poet, i. 315 — his Pur- ple Island, iii. 244, 245. Fleurv, Claude, Ecclesiastical History by, i. 2"7, 33 ; iv. 28 — his DissertJitions, ib. Florence, Platonic and other academies of, i. 208, 231 — the Gnomon of, 198 — discussion on the language of, 444, 467 ; ii. 298 ; iii. 340 — the Apatisti and men of letters of, 437 — the Laurentian Li- brary, i. 467 ; ii. 347 — poets of, iv. 211 — Academy of. i. 466 ; ii. 298 ; iv. 318 — the villa of Fie.sole, i. 188 — Machiavel's History of, 406 ; ii. 384. {■lorus, lines to, b}' Adrian, i. 51. note. Fludd, Robert, his Mosaic Philosophy, iii. 22. Folengo invents the Macaronic verse, ii. 192, note 2. Fontaine, La, fables of, iv. 216, 217, and note, 311. Fontenelle, poetry of. iv. 221 — criticisms bv ii. 258 ; iii. 282 ; iv. 244, 2.50, 253, 279, 290. 293, )io/f — character of his works, 278 — his eulogies of academi- cians, ib. — his Dialogues of the Dead, ib. — his Plurality of Worlds, 279 — History of Oracles, 280 — on Pastoral Poetry, 289. FEIBCHLIU. Ford, John, critique by Mr. GifTord on his tragedies, iii. 330. Foresti, medical knowledge of, ii. 33!). Forster's Mahouietanism Unveiled, i. 130. Fortescue, Sir.lohn, on Jlonarchy, i 8f7 Fortuuatus, Latin verse of, i. 52. Fortunio, Italian Grammar of, i. 444. Fosse, La, his Manlius, iv. 255. Foufiueliu, his llhetorique Fran(;ai.se, ii. 300. Fourier, M., on algebra, ii. 316, note '. i'owler, his writings on Christian mo- rality, iv. 42. Fracastorius, Latin poetry of, i. 428 ; ii. 294. France, progress of learning in, i. 237, 285, 337 — remarks on the language of, i. 219; ii.300; iii. 351; iv. 296 — Latin poets of, ii. 240; iii. 264; iv. 241 — Latin style in, i. 279 — grammarians, i. 445; iv. 283 — poets and poetry of, i. 418; iii. 235; iv. 216 — drama, ii. 258, 260; iii. 281-290; iv. 244-265 — mysteries and moralities, i. 4.33 — no vels and romances, i. 58; ii. 304; iii 869; iv. 308 — opera^^ iv. 265 — prose- writers, ii. 284; iii. 343 — sermons, iv 55-58 — memoirs, ii. 346 — critics, 36S — Academy of, 111.848-3^51; iv. 282 — Academy of Sciences, iv. 320 — Galilean Church." 11. 386; iv. 25 — Protestants of, ii. 73, 121; iv. 28, 52 — Edict of Nantes, ii. 90,423 ; iv. 28, 52 — League against Henry III., ii. 144 — lloval Library, ii. 348 — lawyers of, ii. 170-174 — histo- rians, i. 135 — reviews by Bayle and other critics, iv. 293, 295. France.sca of Kimini, story of, i. 73. Francis I., King of France, i. 337 — treaty of, with the Turks, iii. 193 — poets in the reign of, 1. 418 — University of Paris encouraged by, ii. 17. Francis of A.ssi.si, St., i. 212. Franciscan order opposed to the Domini can, the, i. 371. Franco, Italian poet, ii. 192. Franconian emperors did not encourage letters, i. 58, note i. Frankfort fair, a mart for books, ii. 350 — catalogue of books offered for .sale fi-oin 1564 to 1592, 353 — Uuiversity of, i. 293. Frederick II., the Emperor, i. 113. Frederick of Ana^'^n, King of Naples, a patron of learning, !. 234. Frederick, Landgrave of lles.se, ii. 319. Free, John, i. 177 — error respecting, 158, note >. Free-will. Molina on, ii. 83 — controversies on. 410. Freinshemius, supplements of, to CurtiiM and Livy, ii. 358. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, play 0^ ii. 207. Friars, Mendicant, philosophy of, i. 40. Frischlin, scholar, ii. 34. VOL. IV. 24 S70 ESTDEX. FKISIUS. Frisius, Gemiua, i. 464. Frobenius, press of, i. 276. 292, 335. Froifsart, historv by, i. 245. Fruitful Society" the, at \\eiinar, iii. 239. Fuchs, Leonard, his botanical works, i. 460; ii. 331. Fuchsia, the plant, i. 460. Fulgentio, Lord Uacou'.s letter to, iii. 32, note. Furctiere, Dictionnaire de, iv. 282 — Eo- nian liourgeois of, 310. Fust, partner of Gutenberg in printing, i. lG(j— their dispute, 168 — Fust in part- nership with Schaeller, ib. Gaguin, Robert, i. 239. Gailiard's Life of Charlemagne, i. 30, note. Galateo of Casa, his treatise on politeness, ii. 132. Gale, his notes on lamblichus, iv. 16 — his Court of the Gentiles, 6(i. Galen, medical theory of, i. 454. 4.55; iii. 417 — edition of, by Andrew of Asola, i 332 — translations of his works, 338. Galileo, persecution of, i.453; iii. 395 — his elegance of stUe, 33 i — remarks on Tas.so by, 341 — his adoiition of Kepler's system of geometry, 383 — his theory of comets, 392 — discovers the .satellites of Jupiter, ib. — planetary discoveries bv, ih. 393 — maintains the Copernicin system, ii. 319; iii. 394— Delia Scienza Meccanica, ii. 322; iii. 400 — his dyna- mics, 401 — on liydrostatica and imeu- matics, 404, 405— his telescope, 406 — comparison of Lord Bacon with. 66 — various sentiments and opinions of. ib. ; iv. 305 — importance of his discoveries to geography, 345. uallantry, its" effect on manners in the middle ages, i. 145 — ubseuce of, in the old Teutonic poetry, ih. Gallican Church, hberties of the, ii. 386- 890 ; iv. 25. Gallois, M.. critic, iv. 293. Galvani, Poesia de Trovatori, i. 52, note -. Ganibara, Veronica, ii. 189. Gamesters, the, play of Shirley, iii. 331. Cammar Onrfon's Needle, comedy, i.438, iiot/- : ii. 261. G.-uulcrshciii, Abbess of. i. 34. note. GariilasfO, Spanisli poet, i. 416 — his style of eclogue, ib. : iii. 229. Gardens, Uapin's poem on. iv. 241, 242, pole — Lord Hacon on, iii. 149 — botani- cii, i. 459 : ii. 3-30 ; iv. 335. GarlaniL .loin. i. 294. note. Garl.ind of .lulia, poetical collection, iii. 346 and mile. Gamier, Kobert, tragedies of, ii. 25S. Oarrick, iii. 307 ; iv. 266. Oarth"s Dispensary, iv. 239 — subject of the poem, ib. 240. GERMANT. Gascoyne, George, his Steel Glass, and Fruits of Vi'iiT, ii. 218 — hU Supposet>, 261 — .locasta, a tragedy, 262, note 3 — on versification, 301. Gasparin of liarziza, excellent Latin style of. i. 102, 105, 173. Gassendi, i. 199, 7iole > — astronomical works and observations of, iii. 399 — his Life of Kpicurus, iii 30; iv. 75 — his philosophy, 71, 72-78,125 — remarks on Lord Herbert, iii. 28- his admiration of B.acon, 71 — attack on Descartes by, 86 — his logic, iv. 71, 81^ 127 — hia physics'. 72 — Exercitationes I'aradoxi- cae", iii. 30 — his Syntagma Philosophi- cum. iv. 71. 77 — his philosophy mis- understood by Stewart, 77 — epitome of the philosophy by Beruier, ib. Gast, Lucas de, writes the romance of Tristan, i. 148, note. Gataker, Thomas, ii. 437— Cinnus or Ad- versaria by, iv. 16 — his Marcus Anto- ninus, ib. Gaudeii, Bishop, and the Icon BasUike, iii. 359, .360. Gaunelo's metaphysics, i. 36, note. Gaza. Theodore. i."ll8, 120, 163. 276, 334. Gellibrand, mathematician, iii. 381. Gems and Medals, collections of, in Italy, ii. 349. Gence, M., on the authorship of De Imi- tatione Christi, i. 152. Generation, Harvey's treatise on, iii. 422. Geneva, republic of, Calvin invited by the, i. 363 — eminent in the annals of let- ters, ii. 45 — Servetus burnt at, 84. Genius, absence of. in writings of the dark ages, i. 32 — poetic genius, ii. 191-244. Gennari, his character of Cujacius, ii. 169, 171. Gensfleisch, the printer, i. 165. Gentilis, Albericus, ii. 170, 176 — on em- ba.ssies, 178 — on the rights of war, &c., 179 ; iii. 160. 179. Geoffrey of Monmouth, i. 58. GeoiTry, Abbot of St. Alban's, i. 222, Geogr.aiihy, writers on, i. 200, 321, 463; u. 3iO-'345, 377 ; iii. 429 — progress of geograpliical discoveries, iv. 305 AH Geology, science of. iv. 335. 336 Geoiiietrv, .science of, i. 27. 131, 448 ; ii. 317 ; iii. 381 ; iv. 99. 102, 131, nuie George of Trebizond, i. 163. Georgius, Francis, scheme of Nco-Platcnie pliilo.-opliv of, i. 393. Gerard, Herbal of, ii. 33-1 — edition by .lohnson, iii. 416. Gerbert. his philo.sophical eminence, i. 32 Gering, Ulrick, the printer, enticed to Paris, i. 172. Gerhard, sacred criticism of, ii. 436 — de- votional Jongs of, iii. 241. Germania Antiqua of Cluverius, ii. 37". Gennanv, progress of learning in, i. 32, 216, 237, Sil — schools of, 192, 340- INDEX. 871 QERPOJT. philologists of, ii. 31, 32; iv. 209 — metaphysicians of, Vo'i — modern Latin pDO* of, iii. 265 — decline of learning in, j. 291'; ii. 31; iv. 11 — the press of, i. 237, 2t53 — hook-fairs, ii. 352 — literary l)atrous of, i. 293 — the stage and popu- lar dramatic writers of, i. 314. 431 — Protestants of, 331 et set/. ; ii. 70. 81 — poets and pnetrv, i. 33, 58, 59 ; iii. 233- 242; iv- 222 — hyums- '• 420: iii. 241 — hallads, ii. 215 — liter.xture, iii. 239 — academies,!. 46S — literary societies, iii. 239 — universities, i. 293; u. 3j5 ^ lihraries, 317 — popular books in fif- teenth century, i. 244 — the Keform.a- tiou and its influence, 299, 351, 370 ; ii. 35, 09. Serson, .John, Chancellor of Paris Univer- sity, opinion of, iii. 142. Gervinus. his I'ootische Literatur der Deutschen, i. 58, note '. Gesuer, Conrad, Pandectte Universales of, i. 350; ii. 33 — great erudition of, i. 350; ii. 33 — his Jlithridates, sive de DiHerentiis Linguarum. /6. — -his work on zoology, i. 461; ii. 325; iii. 415 — his classiticatiou of plants, ii. 329, 331 — Bibliotheca Universalis of, .353 — bo- tanical observations by, iv. 330. Gesta Romanornm. i. 148. Geulinx, metiiphvsics of, iv. 79, note ^. Gibbon, i. 158, 159. Gielee. .laquemars, of Lille, writings of, i. 14S. Gierusalemmc Liberata, ii. 193. See "Tasso." Giffin (or Giphanius), his Lucretius, ii. 22, 28, 171. GifTord, Mr., critici.sms of, iii. 809, note, 33'J — his invective against Druni- mond, 256, note '. Gilbert, astronomer, ii..319 — on the mag- net, 325, note > ; iii. 19, 42. Gil Bias, Le Sage's, ii. .306 ; iii. 368. Gillius, de Vi et Natura Animalium, i. 461. Ginguene, remarks of, i. 80, 221, 274, note, 430, 431 ; ii. 193, 246, 249, 287, note. Giovanni, Ser, Italian novelist, 1. 175. 'liitto, works of, i. 122. (iiraldi, Lilio Gregorio, his Ilistoria de Diis Gentium, ii. (>3. Girard, Albert, his Invention nouvelle. en Alg;bre, iii. 385. Olustiniani, teacher of .\rabic, i. 46.3. Glauvil, Joseph, Vanity of Dogmatizing by. iv. 04, 117- his Plus Ultra, &c., 120 — -Ills treatise on apparitions. 02 — his Saducismus Triuniphatus and Scep- sis Sc:enfilica, 62, 117, 120. Glanvil, Bartholoine-.v, his treatise De Pronrietatibus I!erum, i. 134. Glasgow, University of, ii. 54, 121. Ola-ss, Philologia Sacra by, ii. 435. Glauber, tli' chemist, *'ie salts of, It. 321 GRAFTOW. Glosse.s of early law-writers, i. 82-8.5. Gloucester, Duke Humphrey of, library of, i. 124 ; ii. 348. Gloucester and Bristol, Bishop of. See " U'arburton." Gobbi, poetical collections of, ii. 183. God, the eternal law of, disciuisitioa on, iii. 141-143 — ideas of, by certain metapliy- sicians, ii. 107 : iii. 27, 79-81, and note i, 95, 97, 126, 139 ; iv. 100, 105, et seq., 116, 13S, 149. Godefrov, .lames, his Corpus Juris Civilis, ii. 171 ; iv. 209. Godwin, Francis, his .lourncy of Gonzalea to the JIoou, iii. 375 ; iv. 310. Godwin, Mr., remarks of, on Sidney, ii. 223, note i. Godwin, Dr., ecclesiastical antiquities of, ii. 55 ; iii. 427. Golden Legend, i. 147. Golden Number, the, ii. 65. Golding, translations by, and poems of, iL 220, 302. Golzius. ii. CO — his collection of medals, 02, 349. Gonibauld, French author, iii. 238, 348. Gomborville, his romance of Polexandre, iii. 352, note, 370. Gondibert, Davcuanfs poem of, iii. 252, 2,53. Gongora, Luis de, the Spanish poet, affec- tation of, iii. 233, 234, 342 — schoola formed by, 234. Goose. Mother, Tales of, iv. 311. Gordobuc, a tragedy, by Sackville, iL 202. Gothofred, writings of, on Roman laws, ii. 53. Gouge, writings of, ii. 218. Goujet, criticisms of, i. 445 ; ii. 300 ; iv. 55, 283. Gourmont, Giles, cstablislied the first Greek press at Paris, i. 263. Govea, civilian, ii. 170. Government, Bodin"s remarks on, ii. 161 — patriarchal theory of, iii. 158 — wri- ters on, ii. 134; iv. 18.3-202 — writers against oppressive, ii. 131, 135. 139 — origin of commonwealths, 152 — rights of citizens, ib. — nature of sovereign power, 153 — despotism and monarchy, 1.55 — writings of Locke and Algernon Sidney, iv. 193. 194. See '• King." Gower's poems, i. 68. Graaf, anatomist, iv. 340. Grai-ian, Spanisli author, iii. 312. Gradenigo, his testimony as to vestige? of Greek learning in Italy, i. 113. Gra'ci I lUustrata, Vetus, of Ubbo Kmmius, ii. 378. Gr.xvius, Collections of. ii. 57, 53 — edi- tions of Latin classics by, iv. 10 — The- saurus Antiquitutum Komanarum by, 19: ii.378. Grafton, historian, iii. 35i. 372 INDEX. GRAMMAR. Oramniar, science of, i. 27. Gr.ainmars, Arabic, i. 403; ii. 337; iii. 428 — rhaldee, i. 4b2; ii. 337 — Dutcli, iii. 242 -English, Ben Jonsoii'.s, 362 — Fifi-ch, i. 445; iv. 283, 284 — Greek, i. 2(J3, 334 ; ii. 28, 29, 31, 48, 51, 3t;0-3iJ3 ; \v. 11, 12 — Hebrew, i. 462 — Latin, 42- 45 ; ii. 37, 37U, 373 ; iv. 11, 12 — Oriental, i. 318 — Italian, 444 — I'ersic, iii. 429 — Eton aud I'aduan, i. 3-34 and note '■'; ii. 52, note i — Syriac, 337 — Tamul, iv. 344 — Tuscan, iii. 340. Cranimaticus, 8axo, the philologist, i. 92 — classical taste of, 94. I .■anuiiout. Memoirs of, iv. 346. (iranada, college at, i. .39 — conquest of, 247 — Las Guerras de, romances, ii. 2k8, 307 — Conquest of, b.y Graziani, iii. 228 — translation of, by Mr. Washing- ton Irving, ii. 307 — U'ars of, by Men- do/,a, iii. 432. Grant, master of Westminster School, Gr;tcie Lingua; Spicilegium of, ii. 49. Grassi, .iesuit, his treatise De Tribus Co- metis, anno 1619, iii. 392. Graunt's Bills of Mortality, iv. 207. Gi-avina, criticisms, &c., of, i. 311, 409; ii. 170 ; iv. 210, 215 — satires on, 241. Gravitation, general, denied by Descartes, iii. 397. Gray, Mr., his remarks on rhyme, i. 43, note -, 53 — on the Celtic dialect, 43, note 2 — on the lieformation, 366. Gray, W., Bishop of Ely, i. 177. Graziani, his Conquest of Granada, iii. 228. Grazzini, surnamed II Lasca, the bur- lesque poet, ii. 192. Greaves, Persic Grammar of, iii. 429. Greek learning, revival of, i. 107 — Greek a living language until the fall of Con- stantinople, 113 — progress of its study in England, 241, 279, 343, 345 ; ii. 45- 52 — in France, i. 169,194; ii. 17 — in Italy, 1.169, 248; ii. 18 — Scotland, i. 845: ii. 54 — in Cambridge and O.xford, i. 280, 281, 294, 7iote, 342, 343 ; _ii. 47 ; iv. 15 — eminent scholars, i. 107, 109, 279; ii. 17, 34 — metrical composition, i. 51; ii. 34 — editions of Greek au- thors, i. 231, 273, 276, 335, 312 ; ii. 21, 49 — list of first editions of Greek clas- sics, 14 — tiranniiars and Lexicons, i. 276. 3-34 ; ii. 21. 29. 48, »M, 362 ; iv. 11 — printing of, i. 194, 2ii3, 276: ii. 49, 52 — Greek medicine and physicians, i. 454 — Greek dialects, writers on, ii.362, 368 — Greek poetry of Ueinsiiis, iii. 268 — St'q)hens's treatise on, ii. 3iJ0 — Greek trag»-dy, iv. 226 — on the pronunciation, I. ;J44— decline of Greek learning, ii. 859 (see "Granunar," " licxicon '-) — manuscript of the Lord's I'rayer of el(£htb century, i. 107, note '. GRTJYER. Green, English dramatist, iii. 290. Greene, Robert, plays by, ii. 221, 267, nota, 271 — novels by, 309. Gregorian Calendar, the, ii. 65, S20. Gregory I., his disregard for learning, i. 28,43. Gregory XIII., Jesuits encouraged by, ii. 73 — Greek college established by, (6.— his calendar, 65, 320 — Marouite college founded by, 339. Gregory of Tours, i. 43. Greville, Sir i'ulke, philosophical poems of, iii. 246. Grevin. his Jules Cesar, ii. 258. Grew, his botanical writings, iv. 333, 335. Grey, .Jane, education of, i. 847. Griinani, CardiuJil, his library, i. 469. Grimoald, Nicolas, poems of, i. 426 — tragedy on John the Baptist by, 437. Gringore, Peter, his drama of Prince dea Sots et la Mere sotte, i. 313. Gris(»lin!, Memoirs of Father Paul by, ii 324, 7iote -. Grisolius, commentator, ii. 22. Groat's Worth of Wit, play of, ii. 271. Grocvn, William, a Greek scholar, i. 241, 279. Grollier, John, library of, i. 338. Groningen, College of St. Edward's near, i. 192. Gronovius, James Frederic, critical labors of, iv. 9, 10 — hi.-i Thesaurus Autiquita- tnm Grrecarum, 19 ; ii. 378. Gronovius the younger, iv. 10. Groot, Gerard, college of, i. 125, 151. Grostete, Bishop, I'egge's Life of, i. Ill, note '■'. Grotius, his various works, De Jure Belli, &c., &c., il. 176, 179, 366, 418, 7iote 2 423 ; iii. 146, 177, 220, 265 ; iv. 160, 167, 183, 210 — Uatin poetry of, iii. 265 note - — his religious sentiments, ii. 395, 396, note, 43(j— controversy there- on, 395-402 — controversy of, with Crel- lius, 417 — treatise on Ecclesiastical I'ower of the State, 420 — his Annota tions on the Old and New Testiuiient, 436 — De Veritate, 444 — History and Annals, 369 — moral theories, iii _146 — controversy with Selden, 187 — charged with Socini.anism, ii. 413, 419. Groto, Italian dramatist, ii. 245; iii. 269 and note. Gruchius, or Grouchy, De Comitiis Iloma norum of, ii. 58. Gruter's Thesaurus Criticus, ii. 20, 21, 31, •^[■,f, — tlie Corpus Inscriptionum of, 375 — his Delicire I'oetarum (iallorum, (ier- manorum. Belgarum, and Italorum, 239 ; iii. 239. Gruyer's Essays on De.scartcs, iii. 76 note -. INDEX. 373 QRTX^US. Grynoeus, Simon, translator of riutarch's Lives, i. 3-11 — his geography, 46o ; ii. 340. Qryph, or Gryphius, tragedies of, iii. 241. luarini, Ouarino, of Tcrona, i. 104, 110 — his Pastor Fido, ii. 247; iii. 273. juerias, l^m, do Granada, romance of, ii. 307. Guevara, liis 5Iarco Aurclio, or Golden Book. i. 395-397. Guicciardini. his Hi^lory of Italy, i. 4G5 ; ii. 345 — continued liy Ailriaui, ib. Guicciardiui, Ijudovico, tii. 15ii. GuiJi. Odes of. iii. 22ti ; iv. 213, 215. Guido, the genius of, ii. 11)9 ; iv. 312. Guieune, Duke of, poems by, i. 53. Guignes, De, History of the Huns by, iv. 343. Guijon, Latin poetry of, iii. 264. GuiUon, liis Gnomon, an early work on Greek quantity, ii. 30, note -. Gnizot, M., his observ.-itions on mental advancement, i. 28, 32, 33, notes — on Alcuin, 29, 32, 7iote. Gunter on Sines and Tangents, iii. 381. Guiither, poem of Liguriuus by, i. 92. Gunthorpe. ,lohii, i. 177. Gust.ivus \a.sa, King of Sweden, confis- cates all ecclesiastical estates, i. 352. (iutenberg of Mentz, inventor of the art of printing, i. 165. Gutlier on the Pontifical Law of Rome, ii. 376. Gmon, Madame, writings of, iv. 44. Guzman d'Allarache of Aleman, ii. 306. Il.abington, poetry of, iii. 259. lladdou, Walter, his excellent Latinity, and Orations of, ii. 41. H.tgueiiau, edition of New Testament, i. 3S0. Ilako'.vill, George, on the Power and Pro- viilence of God. iii. 4.39. Ilakluyfs A'oyages, ii. 344 ; iii. 429. Hales, scholastic reputation of, i. 36, note ', 39, note - — his tract on Schi.sm, ii. 406, 409, 410, note. Hall, Bishop, liis works, n. ^1. 7tote : iii. 113 — his .Mundus Alter ot Idem, 375 — Art of Divine Meditation, and Contem- plations, ii. 440 — his Satires, 225 — Pratt's edition of his works, iii. 354, note. Halliweirs edition of the Harrowing of Hell, i. 223. notes. Hamilton, Anthony, iv. 311 — Memoirs of de Granimont by, 346. Hamilton, Sir \ViUiam, on Induction, iii. 40, 41, vote — his etlition of Ileid's "works, 115, vote. Hiunmond, his Paraphrase and Anno- tations on the New Testament, iv 40 HEBREW. Hampden, Dr., remarks of, i. 32, note, 36, 37, note. Hanno, Archbi.'shop, poem on. i 33. llaiiling, metrical chronicler, i. 317. Harding, the Jesuit, ii. 91. Uardt, Von der. Literary History of the Kcformation by, i. 299. note Hardy, French dramatise and comedian, iii. 281 — comedies of, ib. Hare, Archdeacon, on the tenets of Lu- ther, i. 303, 307, note. Ilarleciuius, Italians, iii. 274, note -. Harpe. La. critici..--ms of. ii. 211, 260, note-; iU. 237, 282, 286; iv. 58, 217, 253. Harrington, Sir James, his Oceana, iv. Harrington, Sir John, ii. 216, note - — his translation of Ariosto. 227. Harriott, his generalization of algebraio equations, i. 450, 452; ii. 315 — his Artis Analyticas Praxis, iii. 386, note ^ — on the Spots in the Sun, 394. Harrison on the mode of education at the universities in 1586, ii. 49, note ^^ at the great collegiate schools, 50, note -, 347, note. Harrow School, rules by its founder, Mr. Lyon. ii. 51. Hartley's metaphysical tenets, iii. 129 — his resemblance to Hobbes, ib. 130. Hart.soeker's discovery of spermatic ani- malcules, iv. 340. Harvey, William, his discovery of tho circulation of the blood, i. 458 ; iii. 417, 420 ; iv. 339 — on generation, iii. 422. Hurvev, Gabriel, on English verse, ii. 227. 302. Ilarwood, Alumni Etonenses of, i. 437, note 1. Haslcwood, Mr., collection of early Eng- lish critics by, ii. 301, votes. Haughton, dramatic writer, ii. 273, note. Hiuy, scientific di.=coveries of. iii. 55. Havelok, the Dane, metrical romance, i. 56, 57, 7iote -. Uawcs, Stephen, his Pastime of Pleasure, &c.. i. 314, 315. Hawkins's Ancient Drama, i. 435 ; ii. 267 ttote '. Headley's remarks on Daniel, ii. 224, noU — on Browne, iii. 252. Heat and cold, antagonist principles, ii. 109. Heathen writers, perusal of, forbidden hy I.'idore. i. 28 — library of, .said to have been burned by Pope Gregory I., 28, note. Heber, Bishop, edition of Jeremy Taylor bv. ii. 431. note. Hebrew, study of, i. 212, 462; ii. 338; iu 424 — Rabbinical literature, 425^27 - Hebrew types ii. 339 — books, gr.iin- mars, and lexicons, i.. 462; iv. 22 — 374 INDEX. HEBREW CANTICI.ES. eminent scholars, i. 462; ii. 338; iii. 42r)-427 — critics, ii. 33S — Spencer on tlie laws of the Ilebrews, iv. 3-i3. Hebrew Canticles of Ciistalio, ii. 103. Ilecatomithi, the, of Cinthio, ii. 303. Hector and Andromache of Uomer, Dry- den's criticism on. iv. 301. Heeren, critici.sms of, i. 27, 28, note. Hegius, Alexander, i. 192. Heidelberg, libraries of, i. 469; ii. 347 lleineccius, remark.s of, ii. 169 and note. Heinsius, Daniel, epitaph on Joseph Scaliger b}-, ii. 44, note — viorks of, 3a5 — Latin elegies and play, iii. 265 — his Feplus Urtecorum Epigrammatum, 268. Ueinsius, Nicolas, editions of Prudentius and Claudian by, iv. 10. Helden Buch, the, or Book of Heroes, i. 60. Ilelmont. Van, medical theories of, iii. 423; iv. 321, 341. Helmstadt, University of, ii. 347. llemmings, English actor, iii. 291, note. Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sudden death of, iv. 57, note. Henrietta Maria, Queen, iii. 331. Henry III. of France, ii. 142, 144, 145, 149 — his assassination, 145 — rebellion of League against, 142. Henry IV. of France, deserts the Protes- tant cause, ii. 90 — conference before, at Fontaiueblcau, ib. — refusal of League to acknowledge, 142 — reconciled to the Romish Uhurch, 382 — assassination of, iii. 155 — poets in the reign of, 237. Henry IV. of England, ii. 140. Henry VI., reign of, i. 224, 435. Henry VII. of England, reign of, i. 265, 316, 435. Henry VIII., i. 337, 377, 4*3, 446; ii. 143. Henry of Valois, ii. 143. Henry, Dr., History by, i. 27, note, 29, note -. Herhelot, d', Bibliotheque Orientals of, iv. 343. lerberay, translations of, i. 313. [erbsrt of Cherbury, Lord, his Henry Vlir., iii. 432 — De Keligionc Oentilium, n. 444; iii. 28 — .analysis of bis prin- cipal-.work, De Veritate, ii. 444 ; iii. 24- 2S» — Gassendi's remarks on Herbert, 28. Herbert, George, iii. 33 — his Country Parson, ii. 441. Herliert, Sir Henry, master of the revels, iii. 291. Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke (Sh.ikspeare's ISonncts dedicated to Mr. W. H.), iii. 253, note, 255 — his poems, 259 and note ». Herbert's History nf Printing, i-^344, note * — catalogue, quoted, ii. 56, 57 HOLLAITD. Herbert's, Hon. and Rev. W., poem on Attila, i. 60, 7wte i. Herder, the Zerstreute Blatter of, i. 33, 298, note ^ ; iii. 153. Heresy, Jind its punishments, ii. 89-93, 42.3, -^4, and note 2. Hermolaus Barbaras, celebrity of, i. 232. Ilermonvmus of Sparta, i. 194. Hernando, d'Oviedo, History of the Indies by, i. 465 — natural history by, ii. 330. Herodes Infanticida, Latin play of Uein- sius, iii. 266. Herrera. Spanish poems of, ii. 201. Herrera's History of the West Indies, iii. 412. Herrick, Robert, poems of, iii. 258 and 7iote, 260. Herschel, Sir John, remarks by, iii. 53 and note ', 81, note. Hersent, or Optatus Gallus, in defence of the Gallican liberties, ii. 3S9. Hessus, Eobanus, Latin poetry of, i. 429. Hevwooil, dramatic writings of, ii. 269; iii. 293, 331. Uigden, Riinulph, Chester mysteries by, i. 224 — his Polychronicon, 317, 7iote. Hincmar, Bishop, letter of, i. 108. Hippocrates, Aphorisms of, Arabic version on linen-paper, a.d. 1100, i. 77 — hia system of medicine, by whom restored, 455. Historians, ecclesiastical, ii. 99. Historical and Critical Dictionary of Bayle, iv. 295. Historic of Grande Amour, by Stephen Uawes, i. 314, 315. History, on, iii. 43, 156 — writers of, i. 463, 465; ii. 345; iii. 429 ; iv. 346— classic, ii. 134 — natural, i. 459; ii. 325; iii. 411 ; iv. 345. nistriomasti.\ of Prynne, iii. 292. Hobbes, Thomas, his philosophy and writ- ings, iii. 38, 146 ; iv. 45, 70, 153, ft seq. — summary of his works on metapliy- sical pliilo.sophv, iii. 101-13:3 — De C've by, 101, 164, 165: iv. 187 — his objec- tions to the Meilitations of Descartes, iii. 86, 87, 88, and notes — Leviathan by, 101, 127 ; iv. 67 — his views on geometry, iii. 87, note = — liis De Cor- pnre Politico, 101, 164 — on Human Nature, 101, 165 — his Elementa I'iii- ^ losophia, 127 — on sovereign power, 168 ' — his moral theories, 146 — char.actcr of his moral and political systems, 176 — his merits, 1.30. Hocdeve, English poet, i. 141, 425. Hoilv's De Uraocis illustribus, i. 115, note ♦, 117, note •■), 239, note '■>. Holfmansw.-ildau, (Jcrnian poet, iv. 222. Holbein, amusing designs of, i. 296. Holland, Lord, remarks of, ii. 200, note '. 251, 2.5.3, 2.55; iii. 235 — his Life ni Lope de Vega, ii 253, note - ; iii. 2a4, noU '^ INDEX. 375 HOLLA TTD. Holland, literature, philosophy, and po- etry of the Dutch authors, iii. 241, 2(35 ; iT.a. HoUiiigshod's Chronicle, i. 443, note *. Uoiiier, comparison of Vir;;!! witli, ii. 293 — of Arinsto with, i. 31U; ii. 198 — of Jlilton with, iv. 224, 225 — of Tasso with. ii. 1"J.3, I9S— transl.itions of. 226; iii. &ii ; iv. 13 — of llacine with, 250 — witli I'enulon, 311. Ilooft, I'eter, the Dutch poet, iii. 242. llooke. Dr.. his Micrographia, iv.324 — his goologicil views, 337. Hooker. Ecclesiastical Polity of, ii. 51, 54, 55, 86, 124, 126. 147, 290", 420 ; iii. 141, 170; iv. 19(, 198.201. Horace, emendation of the text of, by Lanihinus, ii. 22 — the edition of, by Cruquius, styled the Scholiast, 23 — by Torrentius, 364 — Bond's, 367 — Farnabv's. ib. — Dacier's. iv. 13 — Odea of, ii. 201; iii. 228 — imitators of, ib., 229, 230. Horaces, l.,cs, tragedy of, by Comeille, iii. 284. Horrox, scientific discoveries of, iii. 399. Uor.se, the celebrated, of Fabretti, the antiquary, iv. 20. Hoschius, Sidonius, works of, iii. 266. Hospinian's character of the Jesuits, ii. 71, 7iote. Hospital, De 1', Latin poems of, ii. 240. Hottinger, Bibliotlieca Orieiitalis of, iv. 342. Uottoman, Francis, the Fnanco-Gallia of, ii. 136, 138 — his Anti-Tribonianus, 172 — on Oujacius, 168. Houssaye, Amelot de la, iv. 191. How.ard, Sir Hobert, his Observations on Dryden, and the poefs reply, iv. 302. Howell, James, his Dodona's Grove, iii. 376; iv. 191. Howes, the continnator of Stow, iii. 291. Uroswitlia, Alibess, poems of, i. 34, note, Hubert, French sermons of, iv. 55. Hudihra-s, iii. 226 ; iv. 223. Hudson's Thucjdidi'S, iv. 16. Huet, Bishop of .4vranches, his Demonstra- tio Evaugelica, iv. 51 — antagonist of .Scaligcr, ii. 380; iii. 371 — Hemarks of, iv. 11 — the Index to the Delphine Cla,s- sics designed by, 13 — his Censura Phl- losophia» (.'artesian;c, 80, 81. Hughes, dramatic writer, ii. 268. Huguenots, conversion of the, ii. 90. Human nature, on, iii. 101 et seq.; iv. 4S- 51. Hunuis, William, poems of, ii. 216. Hunter, observations of, iv. 68. Hunter, Mr., researches on Shakspearc by, ii. 270, note '. Hurd, Bishop, his remarks on Shakspearc, 'ii. 306 and note — on Emipides, iv.250 — on Moliere. 257. Busk, John, ii. 163. INSCKIPTIOTfS. Hutten, Ulric von, the Epistolae Obscuro- rnm Viroruni, i. 298. Hutton's, Dr., Slathematical Dictionary, i.450; ii. 311, 316. Huygeiis, mathematician, iv. 318. Hyde, Keligionis Persarum Historia of ir. ■»13. Hydraulics, science of. discoveries of Cas* tellio .and Torrireili, iii. 404. Hydrostatics and pneumatics, ii. 323 — discoveries of Galileo, Castellio, and Torricelh. iii. 404, 405. Hymns. German, i. 420 ; iii. 241 — of Lu- theran Church, i. 372. Icon Basilike, controversy concerning the, iii. 64, note — author of the, 3-59. Ichthyology of Bondolet, Salviani, Ray, and others, ii. 328. Ideas, the association of, iv. 92, 111 — uni- versal, 112 — Gassendi's theory of, 72- 74 — Arnauld's, lOl — of reflection, iii. 78 ; iv. 126, note — Locke's theory, 125 — vague use of the word "' innate," 126, 142. Idola and fallacies, iii. 51 ; iv. 322. Se« " Bacon." Ignorance and prejudice, on, by Hobbes, iii. 124. lUyricus, Flacius, the ecclesiastical histo- rian, ii. 99. Imagination, the. Descartes and Hobbes on, iii. 84, lU3 — Malebranclie on, iv. 89. Indc))endents, the, principles of toleration claimed by, ii. 425. Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books ii. 354; in. 395. India, languages of, iv. 343. India, Portuguese settlements in, ii. 342. India, History of, by Maffei, ii. ai2. Indies, West, History of, by Acosta, iii. 412. Induction, on the Baconian method of, iii 39, 40, note. Infidelity, progress of, ii. MZ-Aii. Infinites, theory of, Hobbes on, iii. 105. Inghirami on Etruscan antiquities, ii.377 Ingulfus, on the early history of Oxford University, i. 39 ^doubts n,s to tlie au- thenticity of his history, 50 — French Laws in, 50. note i. Innocent X., iv. 37. Innocent XL, dispute of, with Louis XIV., iv. 24. Innocent XTT., treaty of, iv. 24. Inciuisition, the, ii. 69. 110 — Bibles and numerous books burnt by, 354 — its persecutions of the reformers, i. 370, 371. Inscriptions, ancient, i. 181, 182 — .'ollec- lions of yniefius, Keinesius, Grnter, Scaliger, Earl of Arundel, ii. 375. 379 — Falconieri, iv. 20— Pinelli, ii. 349 — Academy of Ancient, i. 42. 376 INDEX. INSECTS. Insectg, General History of, iii. 411- 41S. Jnsiuis, Gualterus de, Latin poetry of, i. 94. Intellectual capacity, Ilobbos on, iii. 121 — GassenUi".s tlirorie8, iv. 75 — System of the Univer.^e by Cudworth, (J6-70, 94. 7ioie — remarks of Kortou on, 69, 7iote. Iphigenie of Racine, iv. 200. Ireland, history of, i. 29 ; ii. 388 — learn- ing in the monasteries of, i. 29. Irenaeus, character of his works, ii. 406. Jrnerius, labors of, i. 82-84. Iscanus, Joseph, leonine rhymes of, i. 94. Isidore of SeTillc, i. 2C, 28 : iii. 140. Italy, Greek learning, i. 103, 107, 201. 202 — academies of, :i34, 460, 467 ; ii. 350 ; iii. 339. 436 — libraries of, i. 469 (."^ee "•Libraries ■■) — universities of, ii. 295, 346 ; iii. 13— I.atin poetry, i. 204, 427 ; ii. 294; iii. 265; iv. 240 — poetry and poets, i. 63, 174, 205, 234, 411 ; ii. 181- 199 ; iii. 221 ; iv. 211 — prose literature, i. 175 ; ii. 281 ; iv. 276 — comedy, i. 430 ; ii. 246; iv. 244 — tragedy, i. 431; ii. 245 ; iii. 271 ; iv. 244 — opera and melo- drame, ii. 248 — novels, and works of fiction, 3tl3; iii. 368 — writers on mo- rals, ii. 132 — criticism, i. 444; ii. 186, 292 — Tuscan dialect, i. 444, 467 ; ii. 191; iii. 340 — eminent scholars, 1.332 — restraints on the press, ii. 3.')4 — col- lections of antiquities, 349 — decline of learning and taste in, i. 231; iii. 335 — spread of the Ueformation in, i. 366- 367 — Arianism in, 368 — comparison of Italian and Spanish writing, 443 — comparison of Italian and Kuglish, ii. 237. Jackson, the English commentator, ii. 437. Janies I., literature and philosoi>hy in the reign of. ii. 51 ; iii. 245, 264, 332, 354 — his Apology for tlie Oath of Allegiance, ii. 383 — principles of govemnient in the reign of, iii. 158 — the Anabaptists junished by, ii. 85 — the Bible tran.s- lated into English by the authority of, 445. Janies I. of Scotland, his poem, the King's Quair, i. 141. Janieson. Mrs., her Essays on the Female Characters of Shakspeare, iii. 306 — Lives of the I'oets, iii. 256, note. Jamyn, Am.adis. the poet, ii. 212. Jansenism, ri.se of, ii. 416. Jansenists, the, ii. 82 ; iv. 11 — their con- troversy with Komo, 34, 36 — writing^ of Arnauld, 37— persecutions of the, ift. • — their casuistry oppo.sed to that of the Jesuits, iii. 132; iv. S6 — their poU»o literature, 277. JOHNSOW. Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, ii. 82 — his Augnstinus, ii. 416; iv. 34 — its con- demnation. 35. Janua Liuguarum Ecserata of Comenius, ii. 358, 359, note '. Jarchis Commentary on the Pentateuch, i. 202. Janregui, his translation of the Aminta of Tas.so. ii. 203, 7uite '■'. Jebh's edition of Aristides, ii. 30. Jenkin.son. Anthony, his travels in Rufsia and Persia, ii. 342. Jens, Zachary. supposed inventor of th» telescope, iii. 406. Jcru.salem of Tasso. ii. 193. Jessauiiue introduced into Europe, iii. 441. Jesuits, bull of Paul 111. establishing their order, i. 370 — their rapid popula- * rity, ib. — their unpopularity, ii._3S8 — their casuistical writings, iii. 135-133; iv. 146 — colleges and scholastic esta- blishments of the, ii. 35, 70, 71 — Latin poetry of, iv. 240 — satire upon the, iii. 374 — their corruption of morality, 135 ^ their niissionaries in China, ii. 341 ; iii. 429 — their colleges in Prance, iv. 11 — seniin.iries at Rome, ii. 72 — writings of Moiina and Lessius, 83; iv. 35 (see also ii. 222; iv. 36, 277)— their learn- ing, ii. 85 ; iv. 11— their rapid progress, ii. 71, 341— course of study and patron- age by the popes, 73 — their encroach- ments, 74 — advocates of tyrannicide, 144 _ their intlucnce, 70, 74, 388. Jewel's Apology, ii. 91 — Defence of the Apology, 55, 91— lectures iu rhetoric at O.xfordby, 49, note. Jew of Malta, play of, ii. 265. Jewish Letters of Argens, iv. 314. Jews, their theor^ of natural law, i. 211 ; iii. 23 -the Cabala, i. 212. 297 — Ca- balistic and Kabbinical authors, iii. 23 — invention of Hebrew vowel-points, iii. 42(5- their history , 427 — their laws, iv. 343. Joachiu), Elector of Rrandenburg, i. 293. Joan, Pope, apotheosis of, i. 227. Jobert, his La Science des Jledailles, iv. 21. Jodelle, dramatist and poet, ii. 212— tra- gedies by, 257 — comedies of, 258. Joh.annes Secundus, i. 429. John the Giganticide, popular tale of, iii 226, note. John Malpaghino. or John of Ravenna i. 102. John 11., King of Castile, favors learning i. 138. John XXI.. Pope, logic of, i. 40, note *. John of Spire, printer, i. 173 John.son, l>r. Samuel, his Lives of th« I'oefs, iv. '223, 225, 7u>te, 231, 236 — rfe marks ou Denham, iii. 247, Jio^e— on Cowley, 249; iv. 299 — ou Shaksppart iii. 30.5 — his Life of Sir Thomas lirowno 151, nou 2. INDEX. 377 JOHIfSOX. Johnson, the Seven Champions of Chris- ceinluiu by, it. iJOS). Joiiivilli', 1)0, aiicioiit manuscript-letter of, i. 7/ aTiil note *. Jousoi), r.eii, his Kvcry Man in his IIu- iiior, merit of, ii. 280 — livery Man out of liis lluci-.>r, ',iS'J — his iiiiuor poetry, iii. 25S — liis plays, 3 J <" — the Alclicmist, ■ib. — Volpone, or the Fox, iii. — the Silent Woman, 308 — pastoral drama of the Sad Shepherd, 2oS, 261, 309 — his Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, 3J2 — Eu'jlish grammar by, ib. J.mston, Arthur, his Delici;e I'oetarum Scotorum, iii. 2t3S — his I'.salms, ih. Jonstcn. Natural History of AnimaLs by, iii. 412; iv. 327. Jortin".s Life of Erasmus, i. 298. Joubert. eminent in medicine, at Montpel- lier, ii. 337. Journal des S(;avans, iv. 291, 292. Jouvancy, Latin orations of, iv. 11. Jovius, I'aulus, his history of Roman fishes, i. 4lJl, 4G5. Jud I, heo, Latin translation of the Scrip- tures by, i. 382. Judicium de Stylo Ilistorico of Scioppius, ii. 370. Jugemens des S^avans. Baillefs, iv. 298. Julian Calendar, ii. 320 — invention of the cycle of the, by Scaliger, 6-i, 65, 379. Julie dWngennes, iii. 346, 371 — the Oar- land of .) ulia, 346. Jungius, his Isagoge Phytoscopica, iv. 329. Junius, Francis, version of Scripture by, ii. 103, 33S. Junius, Hadrian, lexicon of, i. 347. Jurieu, polemical writer, iv. 53, note, 295. Jurisprudence, civil or Konian law, i. 86, 407; iii. 176; iv. 208 — the golden age of, ii. 168-173 — natural jurisprudence, iii. 215. See " Law." Justinian, Code and Pandects, i. 81, 408; iv. 209 — novels of, i. 82. Juvenal, i. 203. Kaimes, Lord, his commentary on Shak- speare, iii. 303. Kant, the metaphysician, iv. 134, note, KJstner, the mathematician, i. 27, note -, 129, note :>, 448, note. Kempis, Thomas i. i. 126 — treatise by, De Imirationo Christi, controversy re- specting, 151, 152. Kepler, his T.ibuliE llodolphin,-c, ii. 319 — his logarithms, iii. 381 — his ne.v geo- metry, ib. — his Stereouietria Doliorum, 381 — ills Commentaries on the Planet Mars, 391 — and astronomical discove- ries, 391, 392 — his discoveries ju op- tics, 405 — on gravitation, 397. LANCELOT. King, Gregory, on the political state of England, iv. 207. King and No King, pl.ay of, iii. 312. Kiiigs, the iKi|ies claim the power of de- posing, ii. 9j — engagements of, to their subjects, 13J-14'J ; iii. 195, 199 — nature of sovereign power, ii. 153, 159: iii. 154, 188, 183 — opinion of Pulfeudorf, iV. 185. Kircher, Athanasius. the Mundus Subter- terraneus of, iv. 338 — on (Miiiia. 344. Knight of the Durniug Pestle, play of, iii. 32(1. Knolles, his grammar, ii. 52 — Ilistciy of the Turks, ib. , hi. 355. Knott, the Jesuit, writings of. ii. 408. Knowledge, Hobbes's definition of, iii 112. Koornhert, Theodore, advocate of tolera tiou, h. 89, 424; iii. 242. Koran, the, by Pagninus, i. 433 ; ii. 340 — by Marracci, a fine edition of, iv. 343. Kuster, Ureek scholar, ii. 359. Kyd, tragedies and poems of, ii. 268 and noU '*. Labbe, Philip, ii 381, 435. La Bruyere, the Characters of. iv. 174. Lacepeile. M., zoology of, ii. 329. La Croi.K du Maine, ii. 301, 353. La Croze, M.. reviewer, iv. 294. Lajtus, Pomponius, i. 176, 220 ; ii. 56. La Fare, poet, iv. 220. La Fayette, tjountess de, her novels, ir. 308. La Fontaine, Fables of, iv. 216, 217, note. La Forge of Saumur, iv. 79. La Fosse, his tragedy of Manlius, iv. 255. La llarpe, criticisms of, ii. 213 ; iii. 370 , iv. 58, 217, 220, 255, 284. Lainezer, French poet, iv. 220. La Mothe le Vayer, dialogues, &c., of, il. 444; iii 147, 148, 157 — remarks by, on the style of the French language, 351. La None, political and military discourses of, ii. l48, 304, note "-. La I'lacette, his Essais de Morale, iv. 150, 169. Lalemandet, Decisiones Philosophicoe of. ih. 14. Lamb, Charles, Specimens of Early Eng Jisli Poets, ii. 285, note '. Lambert of Aschalfenhurg, i. 89. Lambeth Articles of Whitgift, ii. 412. Lamliiuus, his Horace, ii. 22 — his Cicero, 23 — his Plautus, Demosthenes, anij Lucretius, ib. Lami, llhetoric, or Art of Speaking, of, iv. 283. Lancelot, author of the Port-Royal Greek grammar, ii 29; iv. 11 — his French grammar, 283. 378 INDEX. LANCILOTTI. Lancilotti, his L'Hoggidi, or To-day, iii. 4S8, i'sa. I^ndino, critic, i. 175, 190. Liinfranc, Archbishop, and his schools, i. 30, 90, 91, 92— knowledge of Greek hy, 112. Langius, Rodolph, i. 194. L.inguage, Ifobbcs on the origin and abuse of. iii. lOG, 117, 123 — origin of the French, Itahan. and Spanish, i. 42, 46, 63— on the Anglo-Saxon and English, 64 — Armenian, 463 — Arabic, (6. — Ethiopic. ib. — Chaldee and Svriao, 462,463; iii. 427 — French, i. 219; ii. 300; iii. 349, 351; iv. 277, 284 — Ger- man, iii. 239 — Greek, i. 112; ii. 300 — Hebrew, i. 462; iii. 424 — Italian, i. 42, 46. 63; ii.294; ui. 336- Spanish, i. 416— Tuscan. 444, 467; ii. 191 — Oriental, i. 266. 318, 463; ii. 3S1 ; iii. 424; iv. 342 — Persian, ii. 340 — Tamul and Indian, iv. 344 — researches of Du- cange, Le B^Muf, Bonaniy, Muratori, and Kaynouard, on, i. 42, 48 — Dalgar- no"s idea of an universal language, iv. 121 — Locke's methods for acquiring, 180 — Bouhours' remarks on, 284,286 — comparison of ancient and modern, 284 — Fabric! us on the language of brutes, iii. 413. See -'Greek," "He- brew,"' "Latin," "Grammar," "Lexi- con," &c., &c. Lxnguet, Hubert, Vindicife contra Tyran- nos usually ascribed to, ii. 136, 138 — republican notions of, 142 — theories of, repudiated, iii. 155. Lapide, CorneUus i, Commentaries of, ii. 435. Larivey, French comedies by, ii. 260. Larroque, SI.. Avis aux Refugiiiz attri- buted to, iv 202. La Rue, French sermons of, iv. 55. Lasca, novels of, ii. 304. liascaris, Constantine, i. 162 — his Greek Grammar, 181. Lascaris. .lohn, Greek Grammar of, i. 272, and note i. Latimer, William, Greek scholar, i. 241, 279. Latimer, sermons by, i. 375 ; iii. 354. l^atin poetry of the dark ages, i. 33 — Latin of the best ancient authors, 42 — low Latin, ib., 43 — poets and poetry (mo- dern), 204. 273. 427 ; ii. 239. 242. 294 ; :ii. 264-270 ; iv. 240 — pla\ s, i. 220. 227, 436 ; iii. 206 — vulgar dialect, i. 42 — editions of classics. 181. 287, 4'i7 ; ii- 14, 26, 364; iv. 10, 12 — early editions of Latin authors, i. 3.35: ii. 21, 52 — Latin writers, i. 239: ii. 3J9 — progress of I^tin style, i. 101, 279, 440; ii. 33, 34j 239, 873; iv. 11 — state of clas.-iio learn- ing, ii. 33, 43; iv. 10 — comparison of cultivation of. in England and on the Continent, ii. 53 — Latiuity of the se- LEARNnSO. Tenteenth century, 369-375 — Locke's method of teaching, iv. 180 — Latin metres imittited in the modern lan- guages, ii. 192, 213, 227 — Latin com- pared with French and Itahau, iv. 284. See " Learning," " Language." Latini. ISrunetto, philosophical treatise of, i. 58, 134. Latinus Latinius, his classical eminence, ii. 43. Latitudinarians, tenets of the, ii. 414; ir. 40. Laud, Archbi.shop, ii. 391, 409. 423 — his addition to the Bodleian Library, iii. 435. Laura, Petrarch's, real existence of, lia- puted. ii. 295. Laureutiau Library, i. 187 — purchased, 468. Law, early MS. books of, on parchment, i. 80, 81 — legal studies facilitated, >b. — unwritten feudal customs reduced into treatises ; Roman and I'ivii ; Codes of Theodo.sius and .Justinian, 81, 82, 408 — study 01 Civil, ii. 170; iv. 186, 194 — not countenanced in France, ii. 173 — of nations, 174, 176 : iii. 177 ; iv. 187, 210 — writers on Roman .Jurisprudence, ii. 171; iii- 177 — on PubUc Law by Vic- toria, ii. 174 — Eternal, iii. 140 — Re- vealed, 181 — on the Law of Nature, ii. 126 ; iii. 144. 166, 180 ; iv. 153, 160. 165, 186, 188, 2l0 — writers on Jurispru dence, u. 168-174 — Canon Law, 174 — Suarez, De Legibus, iii. 138, 142, 159, 177 — Leibnitz on Roman, iv. 208 — Spencer, De Legibus Hebrseorum, 343 — French lawyers, ii. 171- lAvamon. peculiarities in the works of, i. 66 and note. Lazarillo de Tormes, by Mendoza, i. 439; ii. 306 and note. League, Catholic tenets of the, ii. 142-145 — Satire Menippee upon the, 286. Leake, Col., Researches in the Morea, i. 113, note 3. Learning, retrospect of, in the middle ages, ii 25 — loss of, on the fall of the Roman Empire of the Wo"*-, 26 — its rapid decline in the sixth century, 27 — the church an asylum for, ib. — profane learning obnoxious to the Christian priesthood. 28 ; their influence in the presIr. Hunter on English mo- nastic, i. 124, note * — under Edward VI.. 848 — of Florence, 120, 187, 469; ii. 347 — Ferrara, i. 469 ; ii. 347 — Grol- Uer, i. 3.39 — Heidelberg, ii. 347 — It.Uy, i. 469 — Rome, ii. 347 — Levden, ii. 348 ; iii. 428, 435 — Paris, i. 97; ii. 848 — Nicolas v., i. 157 ^Sion College, iii. 485 — Salamanca, ii. 348 — Strasbourg, i. 468 — Vatican, 157, 468; ii. 347 — Vi- enna, i. 4C9 ; ii. 347 — Venice, i. 469 — Dr. Williams's, ii. 175. Liburnio. his Aolgari Eleganzie, i. 444. Liceto, Fortunio, iii. 15. Life is a Dream, tragi-comedy of Calderon, iii. 273, 275. Lightfoot, biblical works of, ii. 437; iii 427. Lilius, mathematician, ii. 320. Lilv, dramatic writer, ii. 268, 273, note. Liliv. writings of, i. 279 — his Euphues, 288-290 ; iii. 233, 248 Limborch, an Arminian divine, iv. 38, 51, 63. Linacre, eminent English phvsician, i. 241, 265, 280, note ■-', 455 — works of, 342^ Lincean Academy at Rome, iii. 394, 437. LincvfM. Le Itolix de, Documens Inedit* of, i. 50, note =. Linen-paper used in 1100, i. 76 in 1302. 79. 380 INDEX- LIIflfiEUS. Linnscus, his classification of animals, ii. S26; iii. 412; iv. 327 — bis Critica Bo- tanica, 331. lipsius, Justus, bis Polybiua and Tacitus, ii. 21 — on the Roman military .'% i. 2.5-102 — from 1400 to 1440, 103-155 — from 1440 to the close of fifteenth century, 157-259 — fr(toi 1500 to 1520, 2lj(^ -324 — from 1520 to 1550, 325-350 — theological litera- ture, 361-3S2 ; ii. 6G-104, 382-446 ; iv. 24-62 — moral and political, specu- lative philosophy, and jurisprudence, i. 3S3-410 ; ii. 105-122, 123-lSO ; Ui. 11, 125, 131-220 ; iv. 03-146. 146-211 — literature of taste and poetry, i. 411- 447 ; ii. 181-244 ; iii. 221-270 ; iv. 211- 243 — scientific and miscellaneous, i. 448^69; ii. 311-358; iii. 377-410, 411- 442, 324-354 — ■ ancient literature, ii. 13-65, 357-381; iv. 9-23 — dramatic, ii. 24.5-280; iii. 271-a'Jl : i v. 244-275 — prose, ij. 281-310 ; iii. 335-376 ; iv. 276- 318. Liturgy, Anglican, by Whitaker, ii. 49. Livy, hia History, ii. 59 — cMnnieutary on, ih. Lluyd's maps of England in 1569, ii. 344. Lobel, the Stirpium Adversaria of, ii. 332 ; iii. 416. Lobeyra, Vasco de, his Amadis de Gaul, i. 148, 313 ; iii. 369. Loci Communes, or theological systems, i. 86. 359: ii. 97. Loci Theologici, ii. 98. IjOcke, John, his philosophy, iii. 91 ; iv. 45,101 — his Letter on Toleration, 53, 56, and ttnte — his originality, and love of truth, 139 — his Essay on the Human Understanding, iii. 91, 129; iv. 77, 122, i23, note, ft sttj. — his Conduct of the Understanding, iv. 144 — merits of his Treatise on Education. 175 — its de- fects. 176 — on Government, ii. 147; iv. 191-201- on the Coimige, 205 — his exile, 202 — on the imperfection and ir W. Hamilton and Mr. Will, 129, note '304- bis Logic, 70, 77, 12a low3;b. Lockhart, Mr., Spanish ballads of, ii. 208, i}ote -. Lodbrog, Regncr, song of, i. 33. I>odge. poems and plays of, ii. 221, 268. Logarithms, invention of, by Napier, iii. 378. Logic of Cassiodorus, i. 27, note — the Pa- risian .school of, 37 — science of .383 — treatises on, iii. 15 — the Atistotelian mctiiod, ii. 118; iii. 21, 114, 115. 7iote ; iv. G4 — of Descartes, ii. 117; iii. 78, note -, 9i — of G.assendi, 30; iv. 71-75, 81 — of Hobbes, iii. 127 — of Jean Silvain Regis, iv. 79 — the Port-liova! .\rt de Peuser, iv. 65, SI, 82, 127 — of Locke, 76, 122, et sfi?. — of Nizolius, ii. 118 — of Aconcio, 117 — of Ramus, i. 388, 389, . 390 ; ii. 121 ; iii. 12 — of Uacon, ii. 117; iii. .31-62; iv. 14i3-177 — of Waliis, 65 — of Wilson, ii. 301 — -.syllogistic logic, iii. 69, note. 128. 129, note. Logos, the Trinitarian controversy, iv. 44. Lohenstein, imitator of Ovid, iv. 222. Lombard, Peter, theology of, i. 33, 7wte •">. Lombards, the national literature of, iii. 221. Longinus, translation by Boileau of, iv. 291. Longolius, Latin scholar, i. 279 : ii. 374. Longomontanus, scientific writings of, ii. 3:^0. Looking-glass for London, play of, ii. 268. Lope de Rueda, dramatic writer, i. 432. Lope de Vega, ii. 203, 250. Lord's Prayer, the, in forty languages, ii 340. Lorenzo, Italian poetry of, i. 203. Lorenzo de Medici, pnuting-iiress of, i. 181 — library of, 187 — description of hi3 villa at Fiesole, 188, 189 — his character, 188. Lothaire, school under, i. 30. Lotichiua, German poet iu Latin, ii. 239, notes 1, 3. Louis of Gcrm.any, oath of, i. 46. Louis the Debonair, i. 30. Louis III., victory of, i. 33. Louis XIII., popularity of infidel princi- ples in the court of. ii. 444 — high culti- vation of his court, iii. 237 — theatrical representations during his reign, 281. Louis XIV., iv. 11 — high refinement of French language in the reign of, 277 — his dispute with Innocent XI., 24 — h\l reign, 181, 242 — poets an J literati of his age, 172, 219, 242, 277, 279, 281 — Edict of N'antes revoked by, 28. .52. Louvain, College of, i. 277 — Lible of, revised by command of Charles V., 382. Love, the theme of ancient minstrels, i. 5S — HoVjbes's notion of, iii. 120. Love for l>ove, play of, iv. 274. Lovelace, poetry of, iii. 260 ; iv. 223. Lower, anatomical researches of, iv. 339. INDEX. 381 LOYOLA. I>jyola, Ignatius, followers of, i. 332 — fouuJei- of the order of Jesuits, iioU ; ii. 72 : iii. 130. Loyal Suliject, play of. iii. 315. 31G. I>\>"ca, Fra, algebrai.st. i. 402. Lurui. I'liarsalia of, i. 188 :^ iv. 224, 287 — May's supplemeut, iii. 2*19. Ll — sought the p.itronage of.lulian de .Medici, i'>. — prol'alili.' in- fluences th:it governed him, 402 — cha- racter of liis maxims, ib: — palliation of the doctrines in his Prince, /'a — type of his Prince, ii. 298 — his Discourses on Livy. i. 404 — leading principles of, 4l>i — iiermanence, the object of liLs .system of government, ih. — influence of his writings, 405 — his History of Florence, its luminous develojiment, 400: ii. 384 — his dramas, i. 200 — his Wandragola and Clitia, comedies, 430 ; ii. 280 — his Belphegor, i. 438 — com- parison of Bodin's liepublic with, ii. 160 — his taste and diction, 282- the Golden Ass from Apuleius translated by, lb. Mackenzie, Sir George, Essays of, iv. 304. Mackintosh. Sir James, on the Law of Na. tions, iii. 212. 219 — remarks on Cum- berland, iv. 104. 105. Madd(!n. Sir Frederic, on the orthography of Shakspeare, ii. 269, note -. Madness, Hobbes on. iii. 123. Madrigals, beauty of the old. ii. 226. M;cstlin, the mathematician, ii. 319, 320. Maffei, History of India bv, ii. 342. Magalotti. letters of, iv. 270. Magdeburgcnses, Centuri;?, ii. 99. Magdeburg, siege of, poem on, ii. 239. Magdelentt, French lyric poet, iii. 265, note. Magellan, circumnavigator, i. 4G4 ; ii. .341. Maggi, poems of, iv. 214. Magic, writers on, iii. 23. Magistrates, duty of. ii. 156. Magnen, theories of, iii. 21. Magnetism, medical, iii. 423. Magnetism, terrestrial, ii. o'24. Magno, Celio. the Iddio of. iv. 21.3. Maid's Metamorphosis, play of. ii. 273. Maid's Tragedy, play of. iii. 310, 311, 317. Maillard, sermons of, i. 375. Maintenon, Madame de, iv. 251. Mairet, French dramatist, iii 282 — his Sophonisbe. 288. Maitland's Letter on the Dark Ages, i.^ai, note. Maitre Patelin, a French farce, i. 220, note i, 226. Maittaire. his Life of Henry Stephens, ii, 23. note - — on Scapula. 27, note '. Malaga, collegiate institution at. i. 39. Malala, Jolin, Chronicle of, iv. 17. Maldonat, his Commentaries on tha Ev.aii- ge'iists, ii. 99. Malebninrhe, his imitation of TX'scartes, iii. 70 — his Traite de la Nature ot la Grace, iv. 37 — Lettres du Pere .Male- branche, ih. — his Kecherche de J» Vfirite, 85 — his character, 99 — C(iia- pared with Pascal, 100. S82 INDEX. MALERBI. Malerbi, the Venetian, translation of the ISible liy, i. 184, 381. Malherbe, French poetry of, iii. 235-238 ; iv. 219 — his gallantry towards Mary de Medicis, iii. 236. Malleville, French poet, iii. 238. Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur, ii. 310. Malniesbury, William of, history by,i. 89, 7iote. Walone's Shakspeare, ii. 271, note ', 273; iii. 299. 305 — remarks on Dryden, iv. 300, nolr, 301. Malpighi, botanical works of, iv. 328, S35 — experiments on the blood, 340. Malthus, theory of, on population, iii. 65. Manibriano, poem of Francesco Bello, i. 23G. Man, natural history of, iii. 413 — his state, 47, 165 ; iv. 48, 49, 50, 151 — his soul, iii. 84, 85 ; iv. 72, 75, 137, 138, (.see "Philosophy") — human nature of, 49, et seq. — metaphysical inquiry regarding, ii. 107 ; iv. 44. Mancineliiis, commentator, ii. 22. Mancini. Ilorteuse, Duchess of Mazarin, iv. 281. Mandeville, Sir John, the Travelsof, i. 270. Manetti. Gionozzo, i. 117. Manfredi, the Semiramis of, ii. 245. Mauley, Mrs., statements of, examined, iv. 316, note. Manners, Ilobbes on, iii. 124. Mantua, Church of St. Andrew at, i. 227, note ". Mantua, house of, patrons of learning, i. 234. Mantuan, Baptista, Latin poet, i. 232 ; ii. 294. Manuscript, Greek, of the Lord's Prayer in eighth century, i. 107, 7iote i. Manuscripts, at Ix*yden, iii. 428 — in the Bodleian Library, ib. — Chinese MSS. ih. . Orcck i. 194. Manutius, Aldus, i. 230 ; ii. 43. See " Al- dus." Manutius, Aldus, the younger, i. 230 — library of. ii. 349, note >. Manutius, I'aulus (Paolo Manuzio), the eminent scholar, i. 328, 330 ; ii. 43, 56, 282, 374 — his valuable edition of Ci- cero, i. 3.30 — Epistles of, on Roman laws, ii. 40, 50 — De Civitate, 56 — on Cicero, iv. 10. Manzolli, his Zodiacus Vitre, i. 366, 429. Maphreus, History of India by, ii. 41 — continuation oi' the iEneid by, i. 204 ; ii. 294, 374. Maps, geographical, a criterion of pro- gress in the science, iii. 431 — early charts, i. 201, 464, note " : ii. 342- 345; iv. 314 — early engravings of, i. 201. Blarana, John Paul, author of the Turk- ish Spy, iv. 315-317 and note. Uiiraiita on medicinal plants, ii. 330. MASSA. Marbles, sculptures, and bronzes, ii. S19 — the Arundelian marbles, 876 Marburg University, i. 341 — botanical garden of, 459. Marcellinus Ammianus, edition of, by Va- lois, iv. 14. Marcgraf, his Natural History of Brazil, iiiv 412. Marco i'olo, the celebrated horse of Fa- bretfi, iv. 20. Marco Polo, Travels of, i. 270. 463; ii. 341. Marculfus, grammatical rules of, i. 44. Mariana, his de Rege, ii. 144-146; iii. 155 — History of Spain by, ii. 348, note i. Marini, Giovanni Battista, bad taste of his school, iii. 223, 24S, 249, 205 ; iv. 211, 226— his Adoue, iii. 223 — story of Psyche, 225. Markland, publication of the Chester Mys- teries by, i. 224, note s. Marlianus on the topography of ancient Rome, i. 331 ; ii. 56 — his Fasti Consu- lares, i. 331. Marlowe, plays of, iii. 290 — his Come live with me. ii.221 — the Hero and Leander of Musieus not translated by him, 228 — Tamburlaine, 264 — Jew of Maltp, 265 — Mcphistopheles, ii. — Edward II., li. Marmocchini's translation of the Scrip turcs, i. 381. Marot. Clement, simplicity of his style, i. 418 ; iii. 238 ; iv 216. Marracci, professor, a fine edition of the Koran by, iv. 343. Marriage, Grotius on, iii. 188 — Puffeu dorf on, iv. 171. Mars, the planet, eccentricity of, iii. 391. Marsham, Sir John, his Cauou chrouicua iEgyptiacus, iv. 23. Marston. satires by, ii. 225 — dramatic works of, iii. 333. Marsupini, i. 118- Martelli, his tragedy of Txillia, i. 431. Martial d'Auvorgne, his Aigiles de la Mort de Charles VIL, i. 219. JIartianay on Chronology, iv. 22 Martyr, Peter, epistles of, on the discove- ry of America, i. 322 — anachronisms of, 323, note. Martyr, zoology of, ii. 327, 328. Marullus, Latin poems of. i. 233 : ii 294. Marvell, Andrew, satires of, iv. 234, 238. Mary I. of England, education of, i.346 — her reign unfavorable to learning, ii. 47, 139, 286. Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 139, 210. Mascaron. the French divine, iv. 55. Masdeu's Hist. Critica -d'Espana, i. 135, ■note. Maseres. mathematical works of, ii. 313, note '. Masius, the learned Hebraist, ii. 838, ncte » Mas.sa of Venice, anatomist, i. 459 INDEX. 383 MASSIJTOER. MasKlni^r, Philip, his A'irgin Martjor, iii. 325, 329 — general nature of his dramas, J2t) — liis Uclineatious of chanioter, ib. — liis subjects, 327 — beauty of his style, 328 — his comic powers, ?6. — his tragedies, ib. — his other plays, 329 — his character of Sir Giles Overreach, 327, 32y — critique on ib.: iv. 259. • Miusorah, the, of Levita, I. 452. Matoria MedJca, on, ii. 332, 336; iii. 411. Blathematioal and physical sciences, the, i. 12b, 170. 227, 448; ii. 311-324; iii. 377 — niathoniaticiil propositions, ib. — De Aufjmentis Scientiaruni of Lord Bacon, iii. 38, 6G — mathematics of Descartes, 101 — mathematicians, i. 1.31; iv. 318 — works, i. 227 — truths, iv. 134, note. Mathews, Charles, comedian, iii. 274, note 1. JIathias, edition of Gray by, i. 53, notn -. Matthew Paris, history bv, i. 222, note i. Matthews's Uible of 1537,' i. 380. Matthi;e, Preface to his Greek Grammar, ii. 29, note 2. Matthioli, his botanical Commentaries on DioscoriJes, i. 460. Maurice, Elector of Saxony, deserts the Protestant confederacy, ii' 81. Maurolycus, geometrician, ii. 317 — his optical tests, 321 ; iii. 406. Maximilian, Emperor, patronizes learning, i. 293. Maxims of Rochefoucault, iii. 3G9 ; iv. 172, 173. May, supplement to Lucan by, iii. 269 — history of the Parliament by, 359. Ma^•nard. elegance of his i'rench poetry, iii. 237. Mayow, Essays of, iv. 324 — on Respira- tion, 340. Mazarin, Cardinal, attempts to establish an Italian opera at Paris, iv. 265. Mazarin Bible, the, i. 167 — its beauty and scarcity, ib. Mazochius, the Roman bookseller, i. 331. Mazzoni, his treatise de TrinUci Vita, ii. 132 — his defence of Dante, 298. Mead, medical theory of. iv. 341. Mechanics, true principles of the laws of, discovered by (ialileo, iii. 399 — of Des- cartes, 403 — writers on, ii. 321. Meckerlin, German poet, iii. 240. Medals, authors on, ii. 62; iv. 21 — col- lections of gems and, ii. 349. See " Numismatics." Jiede on the Apocalypse, ii. 437. Medici, Cosmo de, a patron of learning and the arts, i.162, 163; ii. 293- his rule arbitrary and jealous, 354 — death of, i. 174. Medici, Lorenzo de, i. 174, 187, 202, 205- 208 — character of. 188 — villa of, ib. botanieal gardens established by, HjQ- MEJTDOZA. Medici, house of, ii. 3-30 — oxp nlsion c/ the, from Florence, in 149i, i. 231. Medicine, science of, i. 454 — the Greeks the founders and best teachers of, ib. — anatomy and medicine, ii. 334 ; iii. 416; iv. 338 — progress towards accurate investigation, ii. .333 — transfusion of the blood, iv. 339 — medical theories, 341 — innovations in, i. 4.>4. Medicis, Marie de, ii. 249 ; iii. 235. Megiser, tlie Lord's Prayer in forty lan- guages by, ii. 340. Mehus on the Florentine literati, i. 102. — his Life of Traversari, 98. Meigret, Louis. French grammar of, i. 445. Meiners, comparison of the middle agea by, i. 27. 31, 37, note i, 101. and note — his Life of Ulric von Hutten, 297 298, and notes. Meister-singers of Germany, i. 61, 419; in. 240. Mela, Pomponius, geography by, i 232. Melauchthon, the reformer, i. 277; ii. 80, 4-38 — early studies of, i. 2(34 — a pro- moter of learning, 341; iii. 14 — his advocacy of Aristotle, i. 387 — guide to the composition of sermons by. ii. 438 — his advice to Luther, i. 353, 354, and notes — his Loci Communes, 303, note ', 363, note ', 374 ; ii. 97 — views on baptism, i. 353, tiote - — Liitin poetry of, 429 — his approbation of the death of Servetus, ii. 87 — style of liis works, 33 — his adversaries, Si — chronicle by, i. 465 — ethics of, 398 — purity of dic- tion and classical taste of, 337 — his tenets, ii. 80, 412 — style of preaching, 438 — his death, 81. Melanges de Litterature, by d'Argonne, iv. 297, 298. Melchior, Adam, the German biographer, ii. 34. Melville, Andrew, ii. 54, 121, 242. Memoirs, political, ii. 147. Memoirs, French, iii. 348; iv. 346. Memory, the, theory of, iii. 84, 103. Mena, Juan de la, i. 267 ; ii. 298. Mena, Christopher do la. iii. 232. Menage, Latin poems of, iv. 241, 308 — on the French language, 283, 292 — Mena- giana, 297. Mendicant friars, their disputations pro motcd scholastic philrsopliy, i. 40 — their superstitions caused the return 01 ignorance, 96 — their contention with Erasmus and Keuchlin, 297-299 — satirized by the regular monks, 150. Mendoza, Diego, Spanish poet and st;ites- man, i. 416; ii. 306; iii. 229 — his Lazarillo de Tonnes, i. 439. Mendoza, his History of the \Var of Gra- nada, iii. 432 — History of China by u. 342. 384 INDEX. MENIKA E MOCA. Menina e Moca, early Portuguese romance in prose, i. 418. Menocliius, De PrKsumptionibus, iii. 176. Sleuot, Fermons of, i. 375. Meuxini, LeneJctto, pc».'m.s of, it. 214. Mephistnpbi'les of Marlo.vo, ii. 265. Meicator, Gerard, his charts, ii. 344. Merchant Taylors' School, statutes of, ii. 50. Merthant of Venice, comeJy of, ii. 278. Mercure Galaat, the, by Vise, iv. 292. Mercury, transits of, iii. SOi). Mercs, ii. 271, note 2 — Wifs Treasury of, 278, note; iii. 258, note. Meriau, voyages to the Indies by, ii..342. Mermaid Club, account of the, iii. 306. Merovingian period, barbarism of, i. 30. Merseuue, works of, iii. 334, 3S9, note, 400 — writings of, against Descartes, 82. Merula, criticisms of, i. 187. Mesmerism, modern, iv. 120, note '. Metallurgy, i. 461. Metaphysical poetry, iii. 247. Metaphysics, iii. 44, 46, 74. See " Philo- sophy." Mctastasio, style of, ii. 248. Metius of Alkmacr. iii. 406. Metouic cycle, ii. 64. Metre .ind rhythm, on, j. 52 — of modern language, 51. Meursius, writings of, ii. 333; iv. 20 — on Grecian antiquities, ii. 377- Mexico, natural history of, by Hernando d'Oviedo, ii. 330. Mezeray, tlie first general historian of France, iii. 432. Michael Angelo, iv. 130, 7iote. Michel, 31., his Theatre Fran^aiso an Moyen Ago, i. 56, note. Micheli, Venetian ambassador, ii. 67. Mickie's translation of the Lusiad of Ca- nioens, ii. 205. Microscope, the invention of, iii. 407 ; iv. 340. Micyllus, De Re Metrica, i. 341 — Latin poetry of, 429. Middle ages defined, i. 247 — eminent scholars of the, 37 — literature of the, 26. Jliddleton, plays of, iii. 334. Midgley, Dr., cor.tinuator of the Turkish Spv, iv. 316, note. 317, note. Jlill's System of Logic, iv. 129, note '. Milling. Abbot of Westminster, i. 240. Millington, Sir Tlinmas, iv. 334. Milner, Isaac, prcjiidiccs and partialities of, a.« to the llcformation, i. 301-304, notes. Milton, .lohn. Paradise ilegained of, i. 236; iv, 231 — his ("omus. iii. 261 — Ljcida-s, ilj. — the .\llegro and II Pcn- seVoso, 263 — Ode on the Nativitv, 2.50, notes, 2*33 — his Sonnets, ii. 1.S7 ; iii. 263 — his discernment, 248 — his Ari- iuu«m, iv. 224 — his Latiu poems, iii. WONSTRELET. 265. note 2. 269; iv. 243- hih contio. Tersy with Salmasius. ii. 368 — his Pa- radise Lost, iii. 2)7, 271 ; iv. 221 230 — tlie polemical writings of, iii. 339 ; iv. 4.3 — his Tract.ate on Education, 175 — compared with Homer, 226 — Dante, 227 ^ elevation of his style, 228 — his blindness, 229 — his passion for music, 230 — his progress to fame, ib. — cri- tique on, 231, 232 — Samson Agonistes of,. 232. Mind, the human, iv. 110, 112 (see " Phi- losophy '") — Spino.sa ou t!ie, 112. Mineralogy, i. 461 — of England, iv. 337. Minerva of Sanctius, a grammatical trea- tise, ii. 37. Minnesingers of Germany, i. 59. Mirame, tragedy of, by Hardy, iii. 281. Miranda. Saa di, Portuguese poet, i. 417. Mirrour of Magistrates, the, a collection of stories, 'j. 217 — Induction to, by Sackville, ib., 262. Misogonus, an early comedy, ii. 261. Mistress of Philarete, play of, iii. 259. Mithridate, by Kacine, beauties of th« composition, iv. 249. Mitscherlich, discoveries of, iii. 55. Modena, Academy of, i. 337; ii- 295, 350 — allusions to the history of, iii. 225, 228. Molanus, German controvertist, iv. 31. Moliiire, his genius and dramatic works, ii. 260, 280, )io/e — his L'Avare, iv. 256 — I/Kcole des Femmes, 257 — Le Mis- anthrope, 258 — Les Femmes Savantes, 259 — Les Precieuses Ridicules, ib. — • Tartuffe, ib. : Bourgeoise Gentilhomme, 260 — George Daudin, ib. — character of his works, 261 — L'Etourdi, 256. Molina, his treatise on Free-will, ii. 83 — • his Semi-Pelagian doctrine, ib. note "., 416 — his tenets, iv. 34. Molza, Ittilian poet, i. 429 — his Latin poetry, ib. Monarchia Solipsorum, a satire on the .lesuits, iii. 374. Monarchy, observations of Bodin on, ii. 154, 165 (see '• King"')- PulJendorfs theory of, iv. 189. Monasteries, suppression of, i. 348 — de- struction of, no injury to learning, ii. — in Ireland, 29, Money and coin, on, iv. 170, 205 — mone- tary writings, iii. 162. Monk, Dr., Bishop of (iloucc.ster, iv. 15 — Life of Eentlev bv, 17, 18, 19, and notes, .39. note. S/dl.'nnie K Monks attacked by Erasmus, i. 296 — de- spised in Germany aiil Switzerland, 307 — various religious orders of, in the twelfth century, 9t — invectives ag.ainst, by Manzolli and Aluuianni, 366 — by Ueuchlin, 297- Monstrclet, historical works of, i. 246. INDEX. 385 MONTAGU. Montnpu, Basil, remarks of, on Bacon, iii. 32. ;i'j, nol'S. b2. 72, note i. Moiitiipu, Mrs., lii'r fesav. iii. 30(). Woiitai;,'iic, K>siiss of. ii. I2lj, 2S4 — their (•lianictc'ri.if, ii. 90,423 — revocation of the EJict .if, iv. 28, 52. Nanteuil, epigram on a portrait by, iii. 372. note K Napier, John, liis invention of logarithms, iii. 378 — his tables, 3S0. Naples, academy of men of learning at, i. 119, 234. Nardi, history by, i. 465. Nardini, Roma Antica of, ii. 376 ; iv. 20. Na.sh, dramatic author, ii. 264, note 3, 268, 291. Natalis Comes, Mythologia of, ii. 16. Nations, rights of, iii. 196, 204. See " Law." Natural history, progress of the study of, i. 459 ; ii. 325 ; iii. 411 ; iv. 325. Nature, law of, iv. 153, 160, 167 — phe- nomena of, l67 — Hobbes on the laws of, iii. 163-168 — Grot! us on, 180 — Puffendorf on, iv. 165-171, 186, 188. Naude, Gabriel, his Considerations sur les Coups-d'Etat, iii. 157 — his Naudajana, ii. 444, note : iii. 15 ; iv. 297. Naugerius, Latin poet, i. 429. Nav:iire, Queen of, Ilistoire des Amans Fortunes of, ii. .304. Navigation, art of, by Baldi, ii. 190. Neander, Michael, grammarian, ii. 32 — Erntemata Ling. Hebrrere of, 338. Netherlands, persecution of Protestants in the, i. 369. Newton, Sir Isaac, works of, iii. 39,408; iv. 323 — his Principia, 137 — definition of algebra bv, ii. 316 — the Newtonian system, iii. 397-399 — his discoveries in chemistry, iv. 323. Newton, Ninian, edition of Cicero by, ii. 53. Nibelungen, the Lav of the, i. 60. Niccoli, I'itizen of Florence, i. 120, 182. Nicene fiith, the, iv. 43. Nicernn, le Pore, biographical works of, i. 327, note ; ii. 24, note ■', 132, note. Nicliolius v.. Pope, a patron of learning, i. 157 — char.acter of, ih. — Letters of Indulgence by, 108 — library of, 176, note ?. Nicolis of Ragusa, i. 194. Nicole on the Protestant controversy, &c., iv. 29, 37, 81— Essais de .Morale, 150. Niol)uhr on the antiquities of Rome, h. — among the Saracens, of remoter an- tiquity, ?6. — called Charta Dama.scena by the Arabian literati, it. — linen p.a- per dated from A.D. 1100, 77 — of mixed materials, 78 — excellence of the linen paper first used for books and printing, 81. Papias, Latin dictionary of, i. 91, 99 — his Latin version of some hues of Uesiod, 112. Papinian, writer on jurisprudence, ii. 171 388 INDEX.. PAPPUS. Pappus, the geometer, editions of, ii. 317. I'apvrus, employed for all documents un- der Charlemagne, i. 76 — Egyptian, ib. Paracelsus, his .speculative philosophy in medicine descrilicd, i. 390. 45G : iii. 423 — school of, ii. 332; iii. 22, 31; Iv. 341 — his impostures and extravagances, iii. 81. Paradise of Dainty Devices, the, ii. 216, 217. Paradise Lo5t, iv. 224. Paradoxes, IIoblies"s. iii. 120 — of Sir Thomas Frowne, 151 . Paroeus on the Epistle to the Komans, and the divine right of lyings, iii. 160. Parchments, the use of them much super- seded by the invention of paper, i. 76 — their expense, ib. — erasure of MSS. thereon, for the sake of new writings, ih. — monuments of learning and record thereby lost, ib. — restoration of some effected, ib. — law MSS. gener.iUy on. SI. Pare, Ambrose, chirurgical writer, ii. 336. Parental authority, iii. 187 ; iv. 196. Parfrey, John, his mystery, Candlemas Day, i. A3&. Paris, University of, origin of. i. 35 — its scliolastic philosophv, ib. 36 — its in- crease. 37, 38. 333 — 'first Greek press at, 261, 3.33 — its repute for philglogical pursuits, ii, 17— Academy of Sciences, iv. 320 — theatres in, ii. 260 — the Koyal Library of, 348 — nominalists of, i. 195 — forbidden to confer degrees in civil law, ii. 173 — press nt,i. 237. See" Erance." Parker, Archbishop, ii. 55. 348. Parkinson, his Theatrum Botanicum, iii. 416. Parliament, English, and Constitution, iv. 197, 198, 199 — May's llistory of, iii. a59. Parmenides on heat and cold, ii. 109. Parnaso EspaSol of Sedano, ii. 199. 202 ; iii. 229. Parnaso Italiano of Rubbi, iii. 222 and note. Parnassus, News from, by Boccalini, iii. 337. Parrha.siana of Tc Clerc, iv. 297. Paruta, I'aolo, Discorsi Politici of, ii. 149. Pascal, his experiment on the barometer, iii. 43, note — on the Puy d(! Uflme, 405 — writings of, iv. 37, 89, 102 — his Thoughts on Miracles, iv. 46-51. 102, 146 — his Provincial Letters, 46, 146 — on geometry, iii. 385; iv. 102 — his re- verence for religion, 103 — his acute observation, Ido. 277 Paschasius, lladbeit, i. 47, note '. Pasor. Ci'orge, Greek scholar, writings of, ii. -.Wl. Pasquicr. ii. 214, 2r,8, 259— hisRecherches de la Krance, 301. Pa.ssau, I'acifi.-ation of. ii. 66, 67. I'jiosavanti, rcU'^^ifpus wiiter i 175. PEN AND THE SWORD Passerat, Latin poet, ii. 240, 286. Passions, the, iv. 115, 151 — analysif" of, by Ilobbes, iii. 119. 123— Spinosa. iv. 114. Paston Letters, the, i. 178, 179, 316, and note 1. Pastor Fido, ii. 247 : iii. 273. Pastoral romance described, i. 268 : iii. 369 — pastoral poetry, ii. 219, 220, 302; •iv. 215 — dram.as, ii.246; iii. 272. 309. Pastorini, sonnet on Genoa by, iv. 215. Pastrengo, i. 182. Paterno, Ludovico, sonnets of, ii. 185. I'atin, Guy, writings of, ii. 444 ; iii. 151. Patri7:zi, Francis, on the Konian military system, ii. 59 — his Discussiones Peri- pateticfr, 108 ; iii. 15. Patru. forensic speeches of, iii. 362 ; iv. 56. Paul II., Pope, persecutes the learned, i. 176. Paul III., Pope, establishes the Jesuits, i 370 — convokes the Council of Trent, 371 : ii. 70, 76, 95. Paul IV., ii. 76, 354. Paul v., ii. 83. note =, 388, 416 — his dis- pute with Venice, 383. Paul's, St., School, i. 281. Paullus on the right of occupancy, iii. 186. Peacock, Mr., definition of algebra by, ii. 814, note 2. Pearson, Bishop, on the Creed, iv. 61. Pearson and Casaubon, notes on Diogenes Laertius by, iv. 16. Pecock, Bishop, remarks on the language of, i. 816. note -. Pecorone, the, a celebrated moral fiction, i. 148. Pecquet, medical ob.servations of, iii. 423 ; iv. 839. Pecle, George, plays of, ii. 266, 267. Peiresc, Nicholas, his learning, iii. 177, 893, 423. 7I0/P 1 — life and character, 440 . — his travels, 441 — his additions to botany, ib. — scientific discoveries, ib. — literary zeal of, 440. Pelagian controversy, the, iv. 34 — the Semi-PelMgians, ii. 80, 83 — their hypo- thesis, 411. Pelham, Ladv, MS, letter of, i. 74, nc«e », 179. Peli.=son, his History of the French Aca- demy, iii. 237, 348. Pellegrino, Caniillo, his controversy with the -Academy of Florence, i. 236, note ' ; ii. ?98, 299 — his poems, 183— his dit- logne, Ii CarafTa, 299, note. Pcllcticv, .ilgebra of, ii. 311. Pelletier s A-t ot Poetry, ii. 300 — also his version of li'ir.Lcc, ib. note. PcUican, his religious tenets, i. S02 — his Comment.irii Bibliorum, 462 — Hebrew grammar bv, 2t)6. Pembroke, A')'illinci, Earl of, poetry of, iii. 256, note, 2i)9. Pen and the Sword, Andreap's parable o^ iii. 153, note 2. INDEX- 389 PEUA. Pena ou botany, ii. 332. Pennants liiitish Zoology, ii. 329. Pensecs Diverscs sur la Cometc tie 1680, by Bajle, iv. 295. Perceptiou, theories of MalebrancUe, Locke, Stewart, &c., on, iv. 87, 88, 89, and jioCe. Percy's Keliques of Ancient Poetry, ii. 233. Peregrino, writings of, iii. 341. Pereira, Gomez, ttie Margarita Antoniana, u. 120. Perez Gines de la Hita, Spanish noTclist, ii. 3i)7. Periers, Bonaventure des, his Oymbalum Mundi, ii. 101. note -. Perizoiiius, ii. 3S — philological works of, 37-1 ; iv. 12. Perkins, Calvinis»ic divine, science of morals by, ii. 91 ; iii. 143. Perotti, Cornucopia, &c., of, i. 204 — medi- cal works of, 312. Perpiniauus, Jesuit of Valencia, orations of, ii. 41. Perrault, Charles, his Parallel of the .An- cients and Moderns, ir. 289, SOS — tales by, 310. Perrault, Nicolas, his Morale des Jesuites, iv. 147. Perron, Du, Cardinal and Archbishop of Sens, the talent and influence of, ii. 3S7, S92, note, 3J3 and woie — Perroniana, iv. 297. Persecution of Protestants, i. 334 — in Spain and in the Low Countries, 369 — day of St. B:irtliolomew, ii. 121, 164 — by the two Marys, 139. Persian language, &c., the, ii. 349 ; iii. 429 ; iv. 343. Persons, the Jesuit, conduct of, ii. 95, 147. Perspective, writers on the science of, ii. 321. Peruvian bark, discovery of, iv. 342. Peruzzi, treatise on perspective by, ii.321. Petavius, chronological works of, ii. 64, 379, 330 ; iv. 22 — his Greek, Hebrew, and Latin poetry, iii. 264 — his Dog- mata Theologiea, ii. 435 ; iv. 43. Peter Cluniaceusis, his treatise against the Jews, i. 77 — explanation of his words, ex rasuris veterum pannorum, ib. and note 3. Peter Lombard, Propositions of the Fa- thers by, i. 33, note 2 — Liber Senten- tiarum of. 112. Petit, French scholar, i. 338 ; ii. 367. Petit, Samuel, on the Athenian laws, ii. 378. Petrarch, the first restorer of letters, i. 63, 100 — attempts the study of Greek. 114 — Latin poems of, 101 ; ii. 295 — hia Eclogues, (6. — his Sonnets and Can- fones, i. 467; ii. 190, note, 295 — idol- ized in Italy, 202 — imitators of, 185 5^ — Tassoni's rouiarks ou, iii. 340 — PHYSICAL SjIEWCEfl. Life of, by Aretin, i. 175 — opinions on the nature of his lovo for Laura, ii. 295. Petri, Olaus, translation of th« Sc-if turea into Swedish by, i. 381. Petty, Sir W'ilUam, poUtical ari-thmoLic ot, iv'. 207. Pcucer, son-in-law of Melanchthon, ii. 82. Pezron, his Antifjuite des Temps devoilee, iv. 22. Pfeffercorn, the conTert«d Jew, i. 297. Phntzing, Melchior, his poem of Theuet- danks, i. 420. Pfister, Bible of, i. 169. PuasJrus, Fabulse of, iv. 217. Phaer, tranelator, ii.'226, 302. Phalaris, Kpistles of, iv. 17. Pharsalia, Lucan's, Breboeuf's, iv. 224, 287 — May's Supplement, iii. 269. Phavorinus, his Etymologic um Magnum, i. 231. 332. Philaster, play of, Ui. 312. Philip Augustus, King of France, i. 83. Philip II. of Spain, reign of, ii. 69, 95, 98, 199, 207, 208, v-ete • — sends an embassy to Pekin in 1580, 342. Philip lU. of Spain, ii. 208, nate »; iii. 229 Philip IV. of Spain, iii. 230. Philips, his Theatrum Poetarum, iv. SOS. Philo and the Alexandrian school of phi- losophy, i. 213. Philology, progress of, ii. 13, 19 — ia (Jer- manv, 34; iv. 10, &e. Philosophic Elementa of Ilobbes, iii. 127 Philosophical Transactions, iv. 320. Philosophy, experimental, iv. 318. Philosophy, the scholastic, i. 36, 40, 41. 383, 384; ii. 34; iii. 14; iv. 63 — of B;icon, ii. 117 ; iii. 32, 73: iv. 45 — of Locke and Bayle, 45 — of Descartes and G:issendi, (6., 64, 69, 71, 72, 78; iii. 74- 101, &c. — of GaUleo and Kepler, 13 — Nizolius's principles of, ii. 118 — of Uobbes, iii. 101-130 — Melanchthon-a Philippic method of. iii. 14 — Campa- nella's theory, 16 — history of specula- tive philosophy, i. 3S3; iii. 11 ; iv. 63 — the ArUtot^'lian philosophy, i. 209, 384, 385 ; ii. 105, lOG ; iu. 11, 14 ; iv. 63, 83 — of Boethius, i. 26 — the Platonic, 208,209; ii. 115; iii. 69 — the Peripa,- tetic dialectics, 13 — scholastic and genuine Aristotelians distinguished, i. 385; ii. 105; iii. 12 — the Epicurean school, 98 — metaphysical writers, 14, 129; iv. 63 f« seq. — "moral philosophy, i. .394; ii. 123; iii. 131-1.53 ; iv. 146 — political philosophy, i. 394 ; ii. 133 ; iii. 154-176; iv. 183 — occult, i. 392 — Stewart's Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, iii. 81, note — Ethics of Spinosa, iv. l51. Physical sciences in the middle agea, i 126. *590 IXDEX. PHYSICIANS. Physicians, College of, founded by Henry VllI , i. too. Physiology, vegetable, iv. 333. Phytopinax, botanical work, ii. 334. Phj topiuax, iii. 415. Pibrac, a lawyer and versifier, ii. 213. Piccolomini, Alexander, Moral Institu- tious of, ii. 132 — Anatomiae Prselec- tiones of, 336. Picture, the, plav of, iii. 329. I'icus of Jlirandola, i. 213-216; ii. 108. Pietra del Paragone of Trajan Boccalini, iii. 338. Pigiifetta, voyages by, ii. 311. Piijhius, antiquary, ii. 60. Piguoria on the Isiac tablet, ii. 377. Pilatus, Leon, translation of Homer by, i. 115. Pilgrim of E*urchas, iii. 429. Pilgrim's Progress of John Bunyan, iv. 307, 313. Pin, John, French scholar, i. 285, 338. Pinciano's treatise on the Art of Poetry, ii. 299. Pincianus, works of, i. 3-39. Pindar, iii. 226, 227 — Italian translation of, 228 — Schmidfs edition of. ii. 3(33. Pinelli, Gian Yincenzio, museum and li- brary of,' ii. 330, 349 ; iii. 440. ?inkerton on mcd tils aud gems, ii. 349. Pinkertoa"s Scottish Poems, i. Sib, note. Pinson the printer, i. 313. Pinzon, his voyage with Columbus, ii 327, note i. Pirckheimer, Bilibald, i. 278 and 7iote *, 364, note i — Epistle of, to Melanchthon, 352, note — Epistle of Erasmus to, ib. 355, 357, note. Pisa, school of, ii. 106 — siege of, in 1508, S46 — Leomird of, 313 — botanical gar- den of. i. 460 : ii. 330 — Leaning Tower of, 322. Piso on the Materia Medica of Brazil, iii 411. Pitcairn, medical theory of, iv. &11. Pitiscus, the mathematician, ii. 317. Pius v., bulls of. against Baius, ii. 82: iv. 33 — against Queen Elizabeth, ii. 95 — his rigor against the press, 355. ■'lacette. La, Essais de Morale of, iv. 150, 169, note *. lants, cla.'isification of, ii. 331 ; iv. 331 — distinction of trees aud shrubs, 331 — on vegetable physiology, 333 — the an.a- tomy of, ib. — the sexual system of, 334. See •< Botany." Plater, medical discoveries of, ii. 335. Platina, the academician at liome, i. 176. Plato, remarks on, by Lord Bacon, iii. 42 — by Descartes, 84. Platonic academy at Florence, i. 190, 208 — philosophy, the, 209, 385; u. 106, 115; iv. 66— theology, i. 208. r'atonisu), the inodera, i. 162, 209; ii. 115 ; if. 66, 09. POLITIAir. Plautus, recovery of his comedies, i. 103 — the Menaechmi of, imitated by Shak- speare and others, ii. 273 — translated aud acted at Ferrara, i. 221 ; iv. 256 — Aulularia, 16. Playfair, dissertations of, i. 449, note 2; ii. 322, note S; iii. 51-55, 401. Pletho, Gemistus, i. 163 and note. Plinian* Exercitationes of Sahnasius, ii. 368. Plotiuus, philosophy of, i. 213 ; ii. 115. Plutarch, imitations of, iii. 148 — transla tious of, into vulgar Greek, in the four teenth century, i. 113, 7iote^ — Amyof French, ii 284 — Xy lander's version of 21 — North's, iU. 299 — Dryden's Lift of, iv. 300. Pococke, his great erudition, iii. 428 ; ir. 343. Poetae Miuores, Winterton's, ii. 364. Poetarum Carmina lUustrium, ii. 233. Poetry, in the tenth and next ensuing centuries, i. 33 — Anglo-.Saxou, ib. — Latin poetry, ib. — effect of chivalry on, 143— Belgic, ii. 242 — Danish, iii. 243 — Dutch, 242 — English, i. 140, 420- 427 ; ii. 215-233 ; iv. 222 — French and Provencjal. i. 53, 140, 219, 418 ; u. 208- 215 ; iii. 235, 281 ; iv. 216 ; German, i. S3, 419; ii. 209-215: iii. 239; iv. 222 — Italian, i. 205. 206, 237, 411 ; U. 181-199 ; iii. 2.35, 340; iv. 211 — Latin, i. 33, 101, 427^29; u. 238-244; iii. 264; iY.240 — Portuguese, i. 24.3, 417; ii. 204-207 — Spanish, i. 1^, 416; ii. 199-208, 265; iii. 229 — Castiliim, i. 416; ii. 199 — Scandinavian, i. 33 — Scottish, 270, 344, note*: ii. 231, 242 — blank verse, i. 424 — pastoral, 268; iv. 221 — epic, ii. 193-199; iv. 222 — serious, ii. 223 — philosophical, iii. 245 — metaphysi- cal, iii. 247 — anonymous poetry, 2'54 — works on poetry, viz. Gascoyne's Notes on Verse and llhyme, ii. 301 — Wcbbe's discourse of English poetry, 302 — Put- tenham's Art of English Poesie, ib. — Ilarvey on English verse, 16. — Piuci ano"s treatise oa the Art of, 299 — • I'elletier's treatise, 300 — Juan de la Cueva"s Art of Poetry, ib. — Dryden's J^say on Dramatic Poesy, iv. 300. Poggio Braccioliui, the first half of the fifteenth century called his age, i. 103 — on the ruins of Rome, 159. Poggio on the degraded state of learning in England in 1420, i. 124. Poiret, his Divine (Economy, iv. 45. Poland, Protestants in, ii. G3 — the Anti- Trinitarians of, 86 — Sociuians of, ib, — college at Iljxcow, ib.. 416 — Polish version of Scripture, 10*. Pole, Cardinal, ii. 140. Polentone, Secco, Dramas of, i. 220. Politirin, his Itali;in poems, i. 175, 204 221, 232, 441, 442 ; ii. 294 — Miscellanie INDEX. iidl rOLITIOAL LITERATtTRE. of, i. 202 — Latin poetry of, 196— his (Iraiiiii of Orfco, 2:^1. l'oli:R"il literature, ii. 133 — sconomif ts, iii. ICl; iv. 203 — f< ieiioo, ii. 134; iii. 4'J— opiuioDS in Cl'tcintli century, i. 1411. Political i)hilosophy, iii. 154 — views of Spinosa, iv. 187 — power, ii. 13'J. Polo, (ill, poetry of, ii. 203, 305. Polo, :\Ian o. Travels of, i. 270 ; ii. 342. Pclvliius. comuientarie.son, by ]*atri/.zi and iioliortellns, ii. i'J, (JO — hf Ciisaubon, 3-yj and Holes. Pohglots, variou.'^, iii. 426, 42' — Piblo of A leal J, i. 319 — of Antwerp, ii. 3:38- I'oUglot alphabet, i. 403 — Brian ^Val- ton"s, iv. 342 Polyoibion of Drayton, iii. 250. Pomfret, liis Choice, a poeui, iv. 239. Pomponatius Ue luiniortalitato, i. 319, 320, 387 i ii. lOl — ou fate and free-will, i. 387. Poniponius Latus, on antiquities, ii. 56. Pomponius Mela, edition of, by Vossius. iv. 10. Pontanu.?, Latin poems of, i. 233; ii. 294 — his poem, De liortis Ilcsperiduni, i. 459, iiole -. Pool, Matthew, Synopsis Criticorum bv, iv. 61. Pope, Alexander, his correspondence, iii. 347 — his Kape of the Lock, 220, note. Pope, Sir Thomas, letter of, i. 343, note '-'. Pope, Joan, ou the e.\isteuce of, iii. 64, note. Pope John XXI., i. 40, note *. Poperv, writings against, iv. 33. See " Papal." Population, King's calculations on, iv. 207 — theory of Malthas on, iii. C5. Port-lloyal tii-eek grammar, the, ii. 29; iv. 11 — l{acine"s History of Port Royal, 35, note — dissolution of the convent of, 37 — the Mes.'^ieurs do Port Iloyal, ih. — their Logic, or I'Art de I'enser, 65, 81, 82, 84. Porta, JSaptista, Blagia Naturalis of, ii. 321, 384, note - — discoveries of, iii. 406. Porta, Simon, a rigid Aristotelian, ii. 100. Portiil's Uiitorv of Anatomy, quoted, i. 457, 458 ; U. 335 ; iii. 418-421 and notes; iv. 33S. Portia Capece, wife of Rota the poet, ii. 180. Porto, Luigi da, author of the novel of Konieo and Juliet, iii. 163, note '. PortugUf',^- dramatic works, i. 206, 267 — poets, 62, 417, 433 ; ii. 204 — poetry, 204 — men of learning in, 207 — conquests and trade in India by the, 341 ; iii. 163, »io((?- — discoveries in Africa, i. 201 — lyrie poetry of, 243. Partus, /EmiUus, a teacher of Greek, ii. 17, 25, 35. PK0.50DY. PoRsevin, Ii. 72 and note, 74— Bibliotheca Sclecta of i. 36, note ?• Postel, William, the Oriental scholar, 463. Potato, early notice of the, ii. 331. Potter's Antiquities of Greece, iv. 20 — his Ijycophron, 16. Poynct, or Ponnet, John, on Politique Power, ii. 139 — on tyrannicide, 140, 141. Pratfs edition of Bishop Hall's works, iii. 354. note. Preaching, style of, before the lUfomia tion, ii. 438 — in England .after the Restoration, iv. 59. Prejudice. Ilobbes on, iii. 124. Prescott, Sir., History of t'erdinand and Lsabella by, i. 3'i3, note. IM-e.ss, the. See " Printing." Prevost, M., his remark on identity, iii. 114, note. Price's. notes on Apulcius, iv. 10. Printing, art of, i. 165 — invention of, 161 — block-books, ih. — known in China, 165 — Gutenberg's and Costar's inovii- ble characters, 165 — first printed book, ib. — progress of the art, 166 — I'eter ."chwlfer's engraved punch, 166 — Fust of Meutz, 160, 169, 173 — Caxton. 184 — early sheets and books', 168 — the first Greek printed, 181 — first Greek press at Paris, 263 ; at Rome, 273 — first edi- tions of the Cheek and Roman classics, 172, 261 ; ii. 14, 51-53 — progress of the art in England, i. 184 ; ii. 355 — France, i. 173, 183, 2 1 6 — Germany, 171. 173, 271 — Italy, 173,230,231 — Spain, 184 — restrictions on the press at Home by I'aul IV. and Pius V., ii. 354, 355 — in Spain by Philip, 354 — in England by Elizabeth and the Star Chamber, 355 — the 1/idex Expurgatorius of printed books, 354 — destruction of works by the Inquisition, ib. — wood-cuts and illustrations, i. 199 — advantages reaped from the art, 250 — its etfects on the Re- formation, 258. Prisoners and slaves, Grotius on the usage of, iii. 205, 207. Promises, Grotius on the obiigation of, iii. 190. Promos and Cassandra, play of, ii. 263; iii. 296. Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, on the, i. 344 — of modem languages, iv. 285. Proportv, law of, iii. 168 — right of, 186, "189; iv. 170, 192— census of, ii 164. Prose, elegance of French, admitted, i 269, note — English writers of, ii. •286 — Ilobbes, iv. 298 — Cowley, 299 — Eve- lyn, 299— Dry den, 300— Italian, L 176- ii. 281. Prosody, Latin, i. 51 ; ii. 373. 392 ENDEX. PKOTESTANT HELIGIOH. Protestant religion, the, progress of, i. 299, 302, S18, a58, 364, 378 ; ii. 68 ; iv. 28, 32 — tenets of the Protestants broached by ■W'iclilfo and his followers, i. 364 — Lu- ther and Calvin, 351-355, 353 — in Spain and the Low Countries, 369; ii. 69 — Austria and Poland, 74. 86 — P)Oheinia and Hungary, 74 — the Protestant con- troversy in Germany and Franco 74 ; jv. 28 — French ProtestiUit refugees, 52 — the Huguenots of France, ii. 89, 121 ; Iv. 28, 52 — bigotry and intolerance of the Luther.an and Calvinistic churches, ii. 79, 86. 87 — decline of Protestantism, 90 — the principle of Protestiintism, i. 377 — Anglican Protestantism, ii. 391. See " Keformation." "Calvin,"' "Lu- ther," " Zwuigle," " Melanchthon,-' &c. Troven^al poetry, the, i. 53 et seij. ; ii. 257 ; iii. 232 — language alUed with Latin, i. 49, 52. Provoked Husband, play of, iv. 261, 275. Provoked Wife, play of, iv. 275. Prudentius, Latin verse of, i. 52. Prynne, the Histriomastix of, iii. 292. Psalters and liturgies. Greek, used in thp church offices in Italy, i. 112 — the Psal ter (printed in 14.57), 166, 168. Psychological theories, iii. 85, 104, 129. Ptolemy, the geography of, i. 201, 270 — Ptolemaic system, iii. 395. Puffendorf. Samuel, on the writings of Bacon, iii. 72 — his Law of Nature and Nations.-211, 219: iv. 156, 165-173, 210 — his Duties of a Man and a Citi- zen, 165 — comparison of, with Dr. Paley, 171 — Theory of Politics of, 183. Pulci, Luigi, poems of, i. 175, 206 — bis Morgante Maggiore, ih. 3 )9 ; iii. 226. Pultcney, History of Botany of, ii. 330, 3.31, and note: iv. S33, 353. Punch in printing invented, i. 166. Punishment of crimps, on, by Grotius and I'uffendorf, iii. 197 ; iv. 186. Purbach, German mathematician, his dis- coveries, i. 171, 199. Purch.-is, the Filgrim, a collection of voy- ages bv, iii. 429. Puritans', the, ii. 86, 222. Purple Islauvl, Fletcher's poem of, iii. 244, 245. Puttenham. his Art of Poesie, i. 421; ii. 51. 286. 3)2. Pynson, books printed by, i. 242, 277, note '. Pyrrhonism, ii. 110, 128 ; iii. 78, 146. Quadrio, Italian critic, i. 312; ii. 185. Quadriviuui, mode of education, i. 27, nrili' - ; ii. 317, tioCe. Quakers, superstitious oppo.-itiou of, to Uwful war, iii. 182. KALPH KOTSTEB DOYSTER. Quarterly Review, articles of the, quoted, i. 113, 7i^te ■■>, 332, 3;i4 ; ii. 27, note s, 205, not--, iii. 280— on Milton, iv. 228, jinte 1 — a. ^icles of, ascribed to Dr. Blom* field, i. 113, note ^, 3-^. Quereughi, Italian author, iii. 255. Quevedo, Spanish satirist, iii. 231 — hi Visions, and Life of Tacano, iv. C^". Quietists and mystics, iv. 44, 45. Quillet, Claude, Callipaedia of, iv. 241. Cjuiuault, dramas of, iv. 2.56 — La Mej* Coiiuette, 263 — opei-as of, 265. Quintiiian, Isidore's opicion of, i. 27 — styles colloquial I>atin as (/uoliiJ.'anm, 43 — on vicious orthography, io. — 51SS. of, discovered by Poggio, 103. tiui.xote, Don, its high reputation, iii. 33? — new views a.s to the design of, ih. — difference between the two parts of, 363 — his library alluded to, ii. 3)5; iii. 363 — translations of, iv. 293 — excellence of this romance, iii. 3J8. Rabelais, his Panfcigrnel, i. 4.39 — works of, still have influence with the pubhc, ii. 356 ; iv. 317. U-vcan, French poet, iii. 237, 281. Uiicine. Jean, his History of Port Royal, iv. 35, »i ore— tragedies of, 220, 244 — Les Freres Knnemis, 244 — Ale.xandrc, 245 — his Andromaque. ih. — Britanni- cus, 246 — Berenice, 248 — Bajazet. 243 — Mithridate, 249 — Iphigenie, 2.50 — Phidre, 261 — Esther, 251— Athalie, 252 — his fL-m.ile characters, 253 — compari- sons with Sli.akspeare, with Corneille, end liuripide*!, 253 — beauty of his style, 254 — his comedy of Les Plai- deurs, 262 — Madame de Sevigne on, 282, note. Ivacow, Anti-Trinitariixn academy at, ii. 86. Radbert, Paschasius, quotations by, i. 47, note 1. Radzivil, Prince, prints the Polish version of tlie Scriptures, ii. 104. RafTaelle, Borghino. treatise on painting by, ii. 282. Raffaelled'Urbino. i. 272. Ilaimondi. .lohn Baptista, the printer, ii. 3;39. The first Italian teacher of He- brew, i. 202 — Persic grammar by, iii. 429 Rainaldus, Annals of Barouius continued bv, ii. 100. Rainbow, theory of the. and expl.inati< a of the outer bo-.v, iii. 409. Riiinolds, Dr. .Tohn, ii. 92. 142, note - character of, by Wood and other.s, 92, note '. Raleigh, Sir Walter, ii. 221, 302; iii. 1-52 — his Hi.tor.v of the U'orlil. 357: iv 298 — the Mermaid Club established by, iii. 306 Pnlph Itovster DoystJ;ion from the con- vents, ib. — revolutionary excitement 353,361 ; ii. 135 — growtii of fanaticism i. 333 — its appeal to the ignorant, 301 — active part taken by women, ib. — parallel between those times and the present, ib. — differences among the le- tbrmers, 363 — its spread in Engl.and, 364 — in Italy, 365, 366 — in Germany and Switzeriand, 301, 302, 351 — in Spain and Low Countries, 369 — perse- cutions by the Inqui.sition, »6. — order of the Jesuits, ib. 370 — character of Luther .and his writings, 371-373 — theo- logical writings of the period, 374, 375 — the controversies of the reformers, 376 — the principle of Protest;intism, 377 — the ]iassions instrument.al in es- tablishing tlie Reformation, 378 — the mi.schiefs arising from the abandonment of the right of free inquiry, 378 — con- troversies of Catholic and Prot«stant churchmen, ii. 390 — defectiou.s to ("a- tholicism, 392, 393 — interference of the civil power with, i. 351: ii. 422, 423 — Confession of Augsburg, i. 355 ; ii. 66 — — controversies of the chief reformers, i. 355, et seq. — dispute between the Swiss reformers and Luther, 363 — it» progress, ii. 66 — the Reformatio I^gum Ecclesiasticarum, under Edward VI., 42 — Protestants of France, their con- troversy with the Gnllican Church, iv 28-a3 — writings of the Church-of- England divines against the doctrines of Rome, 33, 34 — re-action in favor of the Church of Rome in Italy and Spain, ii. 69, 71, 390 — the Formula Concordiae of the Lutheran churches, 81, 401, 402 — Church of England, the Thirty-nine Articles, 83, note > — the Iligh-church party, 403. See " Luther," •• Calvin," '• Melanchthon," " Zwingle," &c. Refraction suggested as tlie cause of pris niatic division of coloi-s, iii. 408 — law of, 406. Regicide. See " Tyrannicide." Regio, works of, i. 188. Regiomontanus, the mathematician, !. 171, 198, 227 — his treatise on triangles, 448, 4-19. Regis, Jean Silvain, his Systemede la Phi- losophic, iv. 80, note ', 81, note. Regius, professor of medicine at Utrecht, iii. 98. Regnard, dramatic author, ii. 260 — hie Le Joueur, iv. 262 — Le Legataire, 268 — Les Menechmes, ib. Begnier, satires of, iii. 237. 394 mDEX. KEHEAESAL. Rehearsal, the, a satire by the Duke of Buckingham, iv. 302. Rciel's Essays, iii. T6, vote -, iv. 87 — his aiiimadversiou ou Descartes, iii. 81, note. Reindeer, the, Albertus on, ii. 326. Reincsius, a Sa.xon physician, Vaiiae Lec- tiones of, ii. 36t3 and note -. Ruinold. I'russian tables of. ii. 318. Kelapse, the, play of, iv. 275. Religio Medici of Sir T. Browne, iii. 151, note. Religion, natural, on, i. 210 — by Lord Ba- ron, iii. 44 — on its laws, i. 386 — in- lluence of reason, 210 — its influence upon poctrv, 147 — inspiration and Scripture, 210 — five notions of, iii. 27 — evidences of, denied by the Socinians, ii. 417 — traditions, i. 211 — legends and influence of saints, 212 — doctrines of the Christian, 299, 300 — vindications of Christianity by Pascal, iv. 47 — by Iluet, 51 — toleration in, ii. IGO, 423, 424, 425 — uuion of religious parties Fought by Grotius, 398. note — and by Cali,\tus, 401 — controversy ou givice and free-will, 410 — religious opinions in the fifteenth century, i. 150 — Deisti- eal writers, ii. 101 — religious toler.a- tion, remarlis of Jeremy Taylor, 425- 434 — theory of Ilobbcs on religion, iii. 125. See '• Rome," " Reformation," '• Protestants." Religious persecution of the sixteenth cen- tury, ii. 423. Remonstrants, the, ii. 4:14 ; iv. 38, 41. See •' Arminians." Renouard on the state of learning in Italy, ii. 43, )iote ^. Reproduction, animal, iv. 340. Republic of Bodin, analysis of, ii. 150-164. Republics, on the institutions of, iv. 190- 193. Resende, Garcia de, Liitin grammar of, i. 339. Retrospective Review in Aleman, ii. 306, note -. Retz. (Cardinal de. Memoirs of, iv. 346. lieiuhlin, i. 219 — cabalistic philosophy of, 288 — contention of, with the monks, 297 — Greek grammar and acciuircuHmts of, 193, jio;e,"l94, 219 — Latiu plays of, 220. Revelation, arguments founded on, iv. 155, 156. Revels, master of the, duties of, ii. 203; iii. 291. Revenues, public, Bodin on, ii. 164. Reviews, the first, the Journal dcs Scavans, iv. 291— the Mercure (ialant, 292 — Bayle"s Nouvellcs de la Rcpnblique des Lettres, 293, 294— Le Clere-g Biblio- theque Universelle, ih. — the Leipsic Acts, ih. — Italian journals, )'/;. — Mer- cure Savant, ib. — English Reviews, ib. ROBERVAL. Revius, the theologian, iii. 83. Revolution, Bodin on the causes of- ii 157. Reynard the Foxe, Caxton"s nistorye of, i. 149. Rba?ticus, Joachim, mathematician, i. 453 ii. 317. Rheede, Ilortus Indicus Malabaricus of iv. 335. Rheirns, Vulgate of, translation of NtW Testament from, by Englisli Catholics in 1582, ii. 104. Rhcnanus Beatus, i. 291, note, 355, 359, note -. Rhenish academy, the, i. 218. Rhetoric of Cassiodorus, i. 27, note. Rhetoric, Fouquelin"3 treatise on, ii. 30C — Wilson's, 301 — C'ox"s, i. 44G ; ii. 301. Rhodiginus, Ca^lius, Lectiones Antiquao of, i. 275, 331 ; ii. 20, 56. Rhodomann, I^aurence, works of, ii. 29, 34, 134 — his Life of Luther, 34 — Greek verses of, ib. Rhyme, Latin, origin of, i. 53 — English, Gascoyne's Notes ou Instruction, ii, _ 301. Ribeyro, Portuguese pastoral poet, i. 418 — his Diana of Moutcm.ayor, ib. Ricci, the Jesuit, Travels in China by, iii. 429. Riccoboni, Hist, da Theatre Italien, iii. 271. Richard II., dethronement of, ii. 140. Richard III., players in the time of, i 435. Richard, Duke of York, play of. ii. 266. Richelet. Dictionnaire de, iv. 282. Richelieu, Cardinal, a patron of men of learning, iii. 281, 346. 348, 349; iv. 282 — supports the liberties of the Gallican Church, ii. 3S9 — prejudice of, against the Cid, iii. 349 — letters and writings of, 348 ; see also iv. 28, 35 — Lord Ba- con esteemed by, iii. 71 and note. Richer, his work ou the ecclesiastical power, ii. 386. Rigault, or Rigaltius, French critic, ii, 307. Riuuccini, Ottavio. suggests the idea of Recitative, ii. 249. Rivella, adventures of, iv. 316, 7iote. Rivers. Lord, liis Diets of Philosophers, i. 198. P.ivet, Calvinist writer, ii. 436. Rivinus, liis Res IIerbari», iv. 331. Rivoli, Armenian dictionary compiled by, iii. 429. Roads, Roman, history of, ii. 376. Robert, King of Naples, a patron of P»» trarch, i. 100. Rol)ertson, Dr., remarks of, i. 28, note * 80, 322. Roberval, French mathematician, ai. 851 404. INDEX. 395 bo3'so:t. Bobison, works of, ill. 73. Rcbortellus, philological work of, ii. 31, -10, otj — his controversy with Sip;onius, 51, note — on military changes, 60. Rocoo, Italian dramatist, iii. 272, 437. KoohcfoHcault, Due Ue la, his Maxims, iii. 124. 3Jt»; iv. 172. Rochester. Earl ot, poems of, ir. 231, 2.39. RoJolph II. of .\ustria persecutes the Pro- testants, ii. 74. Ro^er, the Jesuit, Travels of, iii. 429. llogers, liis Anatomy of the Mind, ii. 55. liogers, Mr., Ixis poem of Italy, i. 190, 7iote 1. Kojxs, I'tmando de, Spanish dramatist, i. 207. EoUenhagen, the Froschmauseler of, ii. 215. Rollock, Hercules, poem by, ii. 242. Komriic, or modem Greek, origin of, i. 113. Roniunce, its genenil tone, i. 14S — in- fluenced the manners of the middle ages, 14(5 — the oldest, Tristan of Ix'o- nois, 148, note - — Romance or I'roven- cal language, i.48, 53, 55; ii. 257; iii. 232 — writers of, Spanish and Moorish, i. 242; ii. 207. 3U5: iii. 22?), 3o3 — French, i. 52, 53; iii. 3Ji) ; iv. 3J8 — heroic, iii. 3')9: iv. 3'J8 — of chivalry, i. 438: ii. 307 — of Italy, 281 — Kng- lish, 289 ; iv. 312 — pastoral, i. 268; iii. 869. Eoine, university or gjmnasium of. i. 273 — the city sacked by Bourbon, 326 — libniry of the Vatican, ii. 347 — works of Cicero, Dionysius. Gellius, Grasvius, Grucliius, Livy, Manutius, Kiebnhr, I'anvinius, I'omponius Lajtus, Robor- tellfis, Sigonius. Sec. Sec, on its his- tory and antiquities, ii. 56-62 — I'oggio's observations on the ruins of, i. 159 — jurisprudence of, ii. 171 ; iii. 176-188, 218; iv. 166, 208-210 — Ixiibnit/, on the laws of, 208 — modern poets of, 211 — Church of. i. 297, 299 ; ii. 66. .389 — ori- gin of the Reformation, i. 298 — contro- versy on the Papal po.ver, ii. 94, 389 : •V. 24 — discipline of the clergy, ii. 70 — books prohibited by the church, 354 — religious treatises of the church, 440. See '• Latin,-' '' Learning," '• Reforma- tion," &c. Rondelet, Ichtbyologv of. ii. 328. Ronsard, I'ieri-e, poetrv of, ii. 210,300: iii. 2.33, 23% 248 ; iv."2l9. Roquefort, hi.s Glossaire de la Langue Ro- Diaiie. i. 46, note. - — Etat de la Poesie Frani;aise, 56. Rosa, Salvator, satire? of, iv. 214. Roscelin, theories of, i. 3), 41, 195. Koscoe, William, bis ciiticism on poetical prose, i. 103, note i, 269, note — oblisa- Hons to. 273. no/e i — his Leo X., 231, HOtt 1, 459, note » BACT. Roscommon, Earl of, poemR by, iv. 230. Ro.=e, or Rossa?us, De justa Reipuhlicas in Reges Potestate, ii. 142, note ; iii. 155. Rosen, Dr., Arabian algebra translated by ii 312, 7iole ^. Rosicrucian society, iii. 1.53. 423. Rosniundi, tragedy of. i. 273. 274. Rossi, or Erythrreus, collections of, ii. 13, note s — criticisms of, iii. 265. Rota, Bernardino, poetry of, ii. 186. Rothuian, the geometrician, ii. 318. Rotrou, plavs of, iii. 282 .and note - — 'Wen. ceslas of,' 289. Rou.«seau"s Contrat Social, iii. 218. Routh, Dr., Religiosoe Sacrae of, i. 35. Rowley, dramatic works of, iii. 334. Rowlev, Thomas, poems attributed to, i. 180. Roxana, Latin tragedy by Alabaster, iii 268 and note. Roy, General, his Military Antiquities, &c., ii. 60, note i. Roval Iving and Loyal Subject, play of, iii 315. Royal Society of London, iii. 72 — the rhiloso])liical Transactions of, iv. 318, 320, 334, 336. Ruarus, Epistles of, ii. 418. llubbi, the Paraaso Italiano of, ii. 184 ; iii. 222. Rubens. Albert, on the Roman costume, iv. 20. RucoU.ii, Rosmunda of, i. 273, 274 — the Bees of, an imitation of Virgil's Fourth Georgic, 414. Rudbeck, Olaus, on the Lactoals, iii. 423. Rue, De la, i. 40, note -, 57, note ' Rueda, Lope de, Spanish pl.ays of, i. 432. Ruel, John, i. 338 — his translation of Dioscorides on botany, 460 — De Na tura Stirpinm, ib. Rubnkenius, his praise of Muretus, ii. 19, 3S. Rule a Wife and have a Wife, iii. 320. Rumpliius, Herbarium Amboineuse of, iv. 335. Russell, Lady, ii. 53. Russell, poems of, ii. 201, note -. Ruteba-uf, the poet, i. 55. Rutgersius, A'aritne Lectiones of, ii. 366. Ruysch, Dutch physician, art of injecting anatomical preparations perfected by, iv. 310. Kymer, remarks of, on tragedy, It. 303. Saavcdra, a political moralist, iii. 161 Sabclli.in tenets, i. 368. Sabinus, George, a Latin poet, ii. 239. Sacchetti, Italian novelist, i. 175. Sachs, Hans, Germ.an dramatic poet i, 314, 419, 4.34, and note ^. Sackville's Induction to the Slirrour of JIagistrates, ii. 217, 262 — his Gorboduc, 262. Sacy, M. de, French author, iv. 37. 396 INDEX. SAD SHEPHERD. Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson, iii. 258, 261, 309. Saclier. Sir Kalp' i, embassy of, to Scotland, i. 3'14. Sadolet, Cardinul, reputation of. i. 272, 326, note; ii. 374 — oKservations of, i. 417, 7inte, 429, 442, nole ^, 466 — his desire lor rpfonii, ii. 76. Ssaint beuve. KeIection.s of, from Ronsard, ii. 211, note 'K Saint Ueal, the Abbe de, iv. 52, note, 346. Sainte Marthe, or Sammarthanus, Latin poet, ii. 241 ; i?. 241. Salamanca, University of, i. 41 — lectures at, by Lebri.xa, 184, 186. Sale.s, St. frauds de, writings of, ii. 441. Salfi, Italian poet, iii. 222, 228,341: ir. 276. Salisbury. .Tohn of. History of, i. 28, no^e =, 39, note I, 1)3, 195 — learning of, 93, 95 — style of, 93.- Sallengi'e, collection of treatises, ii. 56. Sallo, Denis de, publishes the first review, iv. 291. Biillust, influence of, ii. 356. Salniasius, Claude, erudition and works of, ii. 368, 436 — his Minian.-e Exerci- tationes and otiier works, 3(iS — De Lingu.i liellenistica. .362 — controversy with Milton, 368 — death of, iv. 9. Salutato, CoUuccio, on Plutarch, i. 11.3, note 3 — an ornament of learning in the fourt<>enth century, 104. note -. Salvator Rosa, sati""" of, iv. 214. £alvi.ani's Animalium Aquatiliuni His- toria, ii. 328. Salviati, bis attack on Tasso, entitled L'lnfarinato, ii. 299. Salvini, remarks by, iii. 221. Samaritan Pentateuch, the, iii. 426. Sanniiarthanus, ii. 241 ; iv. 241. Sanchez Poesias Castellauas, i. 52. Sanchez, Thomas, woiks and doctrine of, i. 135; U. 11.5-117; iii. 142. Bancroft, Archbishop, his Kur Prjedesti- natus, iv. 40, and note. Sauctius, grammar of, ii. SO, 37 ; iv. 12. Sanctorius, De .Aledirina Statica. iii. 424. Sanderson, an Knghsh casuist, iii. 144. Sandy s's sermons, ii. 91. Sann.-vzaro, the Italian poet, excellent genius of, i. 269, 418 — Latin poetry of, 427, 428 ; ii. 294 ; iv. 241 — Arcadia of, i. 269, 418 : ii. 805. Sanson, Kicolas, his maps, iv. 344. Santeul, or Santolius, Latin poetry of, iv.24.3. i y > Santis, De, economist, iii. 161. Sappho, translated by iladame Dacier, iv. 13. Sarax-cns of Spain, i. 53 — obligations of Eiirope to, 126 — rt'!incment of. 213 Sar^ieuski, poet of Poland, iii. 265, note. Barbievius, Lutiu poet, iii. 264, 266. SCHOLASTIC PHILi)SOFHT. Sarpi, Father Paul, ii. 324, note 2 — Ida account of the work of Rellarmin, 383, note - — his medical discoveries, 384 ; iii. 417 — hi.s religious tenets, ii. 385. See 385, note -. San-azin. French poet, iii. 238. Satire, Origin and Progress of, by Drjdcn iv. 300. Satire Mcnippee, ii. 286. Sauniaise, Claude. See " Salma.siu8 " Saumur, 1*1 Forge of, iv. 79. Savigny, (juotations from, i. 81-86. Savile, Sir Uenry, ii. til — translation of Tacitus by, 54 — his edition of Chrysos- tom, ii.3i.3— his treatise on the Roman militia. 54, ?iote i, Gl. Saxony, Reformation protected in, i. 300. Saxton's map of England in 1580, ii. 344. Scala, Fliiniinio, extemporaneous comedy introduced by, iii. 273. Scaliger, .losepli, the eminent scholar, ii. 18, 44, 46, 242 — chronology of, 63, 320 — .lulian [leriod invented by, 64 — the Scaligerana, 44, 45, and note, 90, note, 338, note 2 ; iv. 297 — epitaph by Ilein- sius on, ii. 44, note — De Emendatione Temporum of, 63 : ii. 379 — his know- ledge of Arabic. 339 ; iii. 428 — Latin poetry of, ii. 240, note- — his opinion of his own learning, 359, note - — criticisms bv the Scaligers, ii. 28, note 3, 99, note ', 3^0, 372. Scaliger, .Julius Ca'sar. i. 329; ii. 44 — De Causis Latince J^ingua;, i. 330 — his Poetics, ii. 292-294 — invective of, .igainst the Ciceronianus, i. 331. Scandinavia, early poetry of, i. 33, 60, note — legends of, iii. 213. Scapula, his abridgment of Stephens'.^ Thesaurus, ii. 27 — distich on, ihr note ' — opinions on the lexicon of, 27, notes. Scarabaeus Aquilam quserit of Erasmus, i. 289, 291. Scarron. Abbe, the Roman Comique of, iv. 309. Scepticism in the middle ages, i. 153. Scha'ffer, Peter, his inventions iu printing, i. 166. Sehedius, Melissus, iii. 265. Scheiner, the .Jesuit, optical discoveries of, iii. 394. 423. Schelstadt, .school of, i. 193, 21". Schism, treat ses on, ii. 409 and note. Schlogel, Frei.erie, his ojiinion that Lu- ther's understanding was tainted with insanity, i. 373. Schlegel, William, his praise of Calderon, iii. 279^ — ^his criticisms on Shakspeare, 29S, 306, 318- on the defects of Mo. liere. iv. 256. Schmidt, Krasmus, obsTvations of, ii. 94 — his Pindar. 353. S«'holastic )>hil(isophy, its slow defeat, i. 383 — defeLdi.d by the auiversitie^ 384. ENDEX. 397 SCHOLASTIC TREATISES, ffsholastic treatises, ii. 105. See " Philoso- Schools, cathedral and conventual, under Charlcniasno and his successors, and their beneficial effects, i. 30. note ^ — state of English schools in the time of Henry Vlll.,34(5 — Knglish institutions and resulations of, in the reign of Kliza- betli, ii.ijO — mode of tcachini]; in,i.2Sl — of Schelstadt, Mxinster. Kuimerich, 193, 104. 217— I'adua, 319; ii. 106 — in t.'ermany, i. 125, 840. Ecience, state of, i. 448; iii. 377 — Lord Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum, 34, et seq. — Hobbes's Chart of Human, 118 — institutions for the advancement of, iv. 318, 319. Scioppius, Gaspar, controversies of, ii. 370, 37^ — his Infamia I'amiani, 370 — his Judicium de Stylo Uistorico, ?6. — his grammar, 370, 373 — remarks on Lip- sius, 37. Scornful Lady, play of, iii. 316 and note. Scot, Itegiuaid, his Discovery of AVitch- craft, ii. 51, 55, 102. Scot of Scotstarvet, Latin elegies of, iii. 268. Scotland, Dunbar, poet of, i. 270 — state of classical learning in, 282; ii. 54 — Greek taught in, i. 344 — Latin poets of, iii. 268 — Calvinists of, ii. 143. Scots ballads, iii 229 — poets, 242. Scott, Michael, pretends to translate Aris- totle, i. Ill, note 2. Scott, Sir Walter, ii. 289 ; iii. 374. Scotti, his Monarchia Solipsoruui, iii. 374. Scottish dialect, ancient poems in the, i. 270, 421, 426, Jio^f. Bcotus, Duns, character and influence of his writings, i. 40 — barbarous char.ac- ter of liis sophistry, ib., notf * ; ii. 47. licotus, John, Krigena, i. 32, 195. Scriptures, Holy, first printed Bible, 5.167 — translations of , 184 — edi tions of Ari us Jlontanus, ii. 103 — Ethiopic, i. 318 — Alcali Polyglot, ih. — Antwerp Poly- glot, ii. 338 — Bishops' Bible, 104 — Chaldee, i. 318 ; ii.338; iii. 425— Cas- talio, ii. 103 — Clarius, ib. — Complu- tensian. i. 379 ; ii. 3.3S— Danish, i. 381 — English, ii. 445 — Tyndale's, i. 364, 380 — buport's translation, iv. 14 — Knglish commentators on, ii. 437 — Geneva, by Coverdale, 104 — Greek, i. 318 : iv. 14 — Hebrew, i. 318; ii. 339; iii. 425— Ita- )ian, i. 381 — Latin, 382 ; ii. 103 — Enusmus, i. 276, 292 — Parisian Poly- glot, iii. 426 : iv. 342 — Pagninus, ii. l03 — Polish translation, 104 — Septua- gint, ih. — Sclavonian, ib. — Samaritan Pentateuch, iii. 426 — Spanish, ii. 104 — Syriac, a37 ; iii. 425, 428 — Sistine, ii. 103 — Swedish. 381 — Tremellius and Junius, 103— Vulgate, 102 — Walton's Ptlyglot, iv. 342 — forty-eight editions of, prohibited by Rome. ii. 354. SEXUAL SYSTEM OP PLANTS. Scuderi, Mademoiselle de, heroic romancef of, iii. 371.372; i v. 221, 308. Scudery, observations on the Cid of Cor- neille by, iii. 3ij0. Seba, Adcodatus (Beza), ii. 240. Sebondc, Kaimond de, Natural Theology of, i. 154 ; ii. 128. Seckendorf attacks the motives of Eras- mus, i. S58,Ho/« 1 — remai'ks on Luther by, 290. Secundus Joannes, Latin poems of, i. 429; ii. 242 ; iii. 200. Sedano, his Parnaso EspaSol, ii. 199, 202 ; iii. 229. Scgneri, Paolo, sermons of, iv. 27G. Segui. history by, i. 465. Segrais, pastoral poetry of, iv. 221 — his novels, 310 — Segrais'iana, &c.,£97,302. Seguier, President, library of, iii. 436. Seicentist), writers of the seventeenth cen- tury, iii. 221, 336. Selden, iii. 300 — his treatise De Jure Niiturah ju.\ta Hebrseos. 144, 145, 427, 428 — Table-Talk of, ii. 437. note = ; iii. 145, note, 152 — his controversy on' fisheries, 187 — Arundelian Marbles of, ii. 376. Self defence, right of. iii. 184 ; iv. 185. Selling, Prior, i. 240 and note ". Seuii-Pelagian tenets, ii. 411. 414. Seneca, tragedies of, ii. 258, 259, 356- Epistles of, iii. 148. Sensation, llobbes's theory of, iii. 102 — definition of, by Malebranche. iv. 87. Sensibility, universal, theory of Cainpa- nella, iii. 16. Sepulture, rights of, Grotius on, iii. 197. Serafiuo d' Aquila, Italian poet, i. 237, 411. Serena, Elisabetta, ii. 185. Sergardi, sjitires of, in Latin, iv. 240. Serlio, treatise on perspective by, ii. 321. Sermons of the .sixteenth century, i. 375 — English, ii. 438; iv. 59 — French, 55, 50. Serra, Antonio, on the means of obtaining money without mines, iii. 162 — on ihe trade of Venice by, ib. — on commercial exchange, ib. Servetus, tenets and works of, i. 368 — his work De Trinitatis Erroribus, ib. — put to death at Geneva, ii. 84, 85, 86, note, 424 and note - — account of his Chris tianisnii Restitutio, passage thei-ein on the circulation of the blood, i. 458 ; ii. 84, 8,1, and notes; iii. 417, 418. Servitu.te, domestic, ii. 151. Seven Champions of Christendom by Johnson, ii. 309. Sevigne, Madame de. Letters of, iv. 281 — her talent, ib. — want of sensibility of 282, 7iote. Seville University, lectures at, i. 1£6 Seiual system cf plauta, iv. 23/i. 398 INDEX. SHAD^VULL. Shad well, plays of, iv. 273 — satire on, by Dry den, 231. Shakspeare, William, iii. 290 — his poems, Vouus and Adonis, ii. 223, 271 — Lu- crew, 223 — his lifu and early plays, 26y, 270, &c. — few obliterations by Sliakspeare, nor any by hope de Vega, 2yU — liis sonnets, iii. 25o-25t3 — plays of: Tuelftli Night. 293 — Merry Wives of Windsor, ih., 294 ; iv. 201 — Muclx Ado about Xothiug, iii. 293 — Hamlet, 298 — Macbeth, ih. — Mea-sure for Mea- sure, ii. 263, 303; iii. 295, 29^, 298 — King Ix-ar, 29j, 298 — Tinion of Athens, 297 — IV-riclea, ii. 271, nole ' ; iii. 299 — the historical plays of, ii. 277 — Julius Ciesar, iii. 300 — Antony and Cleopatra, 300 — Othello, 299, 301 — Ooriolanus, 300 — Richard 11., 303 — Tempest, 301 — Lis other plays, 3J0, 3'Jl, 303, 318 — Ilenry VI., whence taiieii. ii. 206, 271 — Comedy of Krrors, 271: iv. 263 — Midsummer Xighfs Dream ii. 273, 275 — Two (jeutlemen of A'erona, 272, 274 — Love'.s Labor Lost, 272 — Taming of the Shrew, 273 — liomeo and .luliet, 275-277 — Merchant of Venice. 278: iii. 19 ; iv. 269 — .\s You Like It, ii. 279 — Csmbeline, 313 — retirement and death of, iii. 290, note ', 3'Jl — greatness of his genius, ii. 1.33; iii. 302 — judgment of, 303 — his obscurity of st.ile, 304 — his popularity, 303, 305 — critics and commentators on his dramas, ib., 30ij — DryJen's remarks on, 325, note (see also ii. 264, note ■», 288, 291 ; iv. 270) — remarks ou the mode of spelling the poet's name, ii. 269, tiote 2. Sharp, Itichard, Mr., remarks of. iv 301, note ■'. Sh.arrock, De OfRciis, &c., iv. 150. She|)!ierd, Lifu of I'oggio by, i. 103, note », 117. Shepherd's Kalendar, poem of Spenser, ii. 220, 302. Sheridan, plays of, iv. 261. Ship of Fools, the, i. 245. Shirley, dramatic \yorks of, iii. 331 ; iv. 272. Sibilct, Thomas, the .\rt Poetique of, i. 445 — his Iphigeuia of Euripides, 434. Sidn<^y, .'Vlgernon, his Dl-icourscs on Go- vernment, iv. 193. Sidney, Sir I'hilip. h. 178, 222. 263 — his Arcadia, 289, 290, 337-309: iii. 439 — Def.^nce of I'oesie, ii. 220, 261, 290, 302 — .\stri)phcl and Stella, 222 — (loems of, (/'..• iv. 298 — his censure of the English drama, ii. 2G3 — char:icter of his prose, 289. Sidonius, observations of, and their cha- racter, i. 43. Sienna, the llozzi of, ii. 350 - lutrouati of, BOTO. Sigismund, Emperor, literature encoo* raged by, i. 117. Sigismund III., persecution of Protestants by, ii. 70. Sigonius, works of, i. 331 ; ii. 40, 57 — De Consolatione, 42 — ou the Athenian polity, 69 — on Itoman antiiiuity, 56 — De Jure Civium Kom. and De Jure Italiae, 58 — ou anticiuities of Greece, 59. Silvester's translation of the Creation, 01 L.a Sem.aine, by Du lig,rtas, ii. 212 — poems .ascribed to, 222 ; iii. 259. Simler, George, schoolmaster of Hesse, i. 264. Simon, le Pere, iv. 46 — Critical History of, iv. 61, 342. Singers of Germany, i. 60; iii. 240. Sionita, Hebraist, iii. 426, 427. Siphon, power of the, iii. 405. Sinnond, the historian, ii. 435. Sismondi, criticisms of, i. 49 ; iii. 279, 367, et /tiissiin. Si.xtus v., ii. 103, 347 — the Sistine Bible published by, 103. Skel ton's rhymes, i. 318. 421, 4.^5. Slavery, Bodia on, ii. 157 — Grotius on, iii. 205. Sleidan's History of the Reformation, i. 299, note ^. Smetius, .Martin, works en ancient in- scriptions by, ii. 375. Smiglccius, the logician, iv. 64 and note '. Smith, profes.sor at Cambridge, i. 34-1. ■Smith, Adam, remarks of, iii. 216, 217. Snell, Willibrod, his Cyclometricus, iii. 385 — on refraction, 408. Society, llubbes on civil, iii. 173. Society, Hoyal, iv. 320. Socinian academy at Iliicow, ii. 86, 413 — writers, i. 3i8 ; ii. 85, 86 — Sociuianism, 416, 419 — in England, iv. 42. Sociuus, I'austns, ii. 85, 417. Socinus, Ladius, founder of the sect cf Socinians, i. 3-58 : ii. 85. Solids, the ratio of, iii. 384. Solinas, his I'olyhistor, ii. 369. Soils, Antonio de, Comiucst of Mexico bj iv. 346. Solon, philosophy of, iii. 181. Sonnets, Italian, i. 411; ii. 181 et seq., iv. 211-214— French, ii. 214 — of .Mil ton, iii. 2C53 — of SUakspe:ire, 253 — of Drummond of Haivtiiornden, 256 — of the Marl of Stirling, 256 — construc- tion of 257, note '. Sophia, Princess, iv. 32. SopliocUs. style of, iv. 226, 232. Sorbonne, the, i. 239; iv. .37, 63. Soto, Peter, confessor to Charles V , L 374 ; u. 82, note •; ; iii. 143. Soto, Barahona de, jioetrv of., ii. 203. Soto, Dominic. De Justitii, ii. 123, I76v 180. INDEX. 899 Botn,. Sonl. Descartes on the irainateriiility of the, lii 83, 89 — on the seat of, So — theory of (Jiissendi, iv. 72 — Jlale- branclie. 90— Ix)oke, 137, 13S. Soul's Krr.iml, the, early poem, ii. 222. Sousa, Mauuel l-'aria y, sonnets of, iii. South, Dr., sermons of, iv. 40. CO. Southampton, Lord, friend of tShakspeare, ii. 270. Soutliern, his Fatal DiscoTery, iv. 271 — Oroonoko, ib. Southey, Mr., his edition of Ilawes, i. 315 — remarks of. ii. 305 — edition of poets by, iii. 244. 250. )io/c '. Southwell, Itobert, poems of. ii. 222. Sovereign, and sovereign power, the, iii. 108, 182, 183. Sp;un, drama of, i. 2CG, 431 : ii. 249 ; iii. 273-281 ; iv. 244 — poets and poetrv of, I. 268. 41H; ii. 199-203: iii. 229 — bal- lads, i. 135, 242: ii. 207 — novels and romances. 208, 305 ; iii. 229 and note i ; iv. 307 — Cervante.s, iii. 363 — Spanish and Italian writini^ compared, i. 417 — metaphysicians of, iii. 14 — pro-^e-writers of, iii. 342 — philolorists and literati of, i. 3;J9, 433 — Loyola and the .lesuits of, ii. 72 — librarj' of the K-GFLEET, Sprengel, botanical and medi;al remark* of, ii. aSl, ;«0: lU. 418, noli, 419, 422, note, 424 ; iv. 330. St. Vincent, Gregory, geometry of, iii. 385. Staiil, M.adame dc. her Corinne, i. 103, ti.ite ^ — observations of, on Uomco and .luliet. ii. 270. Stair, Lord, work by, iii. 91, note '. Stampa, ti.ospani, an Italian poetess, ii. 186, 187, 189. Stanley, Thom.is, History of Ancient Phi- losojihy by, iv. 1(5, 06, and nule ' — his edition of il->chylus, 16. Stanyhurst, translator, ii. 226. Stapulen.-is, I'aber, i. 285 — conduct of, 355 — edition of the Scriptures by, 382. Star Chamber, the, ii. 355. States, ISodia on the rise and fall of, iL 157; Stitics, treatise of Stevinus on, ii. 323. Stationarii, or booksellers, i. 252. Stationers' Company founded in 1555, ii 355 — its restrictions on the yircss, ih. Statistics, writei-s on, iv. 207 — .stiitistical topography, iii. 163, 104. St;itius, Achilles, or Esta(;o, a Portuguesn commentator, ii. 22. Statius, Thebaid of, U. 294 ; iv. 224. Steele, (.;on.scious Lovers of, iv. 275, ■note Sti^evens, commentjitor on Sh;ikspe^are, ii 266, note -, 271, note > ; iii. 254, 299, 305. Stellatus, Palingenius, the Zodaicus Vitje of. i. 429. Stepliens. Henry i. 26G — his erudition, ii. 23 — his press celebrated. 24 — Life of, by Maittaire, ib. note'^ — by Almeloveen and other biographers, ib. note — hid Thesaurus 1-ingu^ I^atinae, 25-27 — his own testimony on various lexicons. i. 3'29, note; 25, note ■' — Scapi\la's abridgment of the Thesaurus of, 27 — dies in jioverty, ib. — his philological works, 3). 300"; iv. 289 — Liitin epi- grams, ii. 240 — forbidden to print. Sol — Apology for Herodotus by. i. 375 — his treatise on the conformity of the French and Greek languages, ii. 300. Stephens, Itobert, Thesaurus of, i. 3-3'3 — the Novum Testamentum Gia?cum, &c., edited by, 380; ii. 28, ?io(*', 102, 374. Stevinus, Simon, his st.Htics and hydrosta- tics, ii. 323 : iii. 404. Stewart, Diigtild. metaphysical works of ii. 129, 150 : iii. 44, 72", note =. 96. 101, 113. niUt •'. 21.3, 219; iv. 131, note — \\\i remarks on De.scartes, iii. 87 — on Gro tins. 213 — on Gassendi. iv. 76. 7". Stifelius, Michael, ii. 312. 313; iii. 378. Still, John, Bishop of Bath and Wells, ii 261. Stillingflect. writings and tenets of,.iT. 34 41 01, 138. 400 INDEX. STIKLINQ. Stirliog, Earl of, sonnets of, lii. 256 — his poem of Domesday, ib. note 2. Stirpium Adversaria by Pena and Lobel, ii. 332. Stoliffus, edition of, by Grotius, ii. 366. Stockwnod, Jolin, lii.s I'rogjnmasma Scho- lasticuui, ii. 52, note 1. Strada, !• 'amianii.~, ii. &f)9 — hi.s Decades, ib. — character of his imitations, ib. — the Prohisiones AcadeniicK of, iii 342. Strasburg, books published at, ii. 352 — library of, i. 4C8. Strigelius, Loci Theologiri of, ii. 98. Strozzi, poem on chocolate by, iv. 240. Strype, .John, his Life of Smith, i. 344 and note - — remarks of. ii. 139. Stunica. Spanish commentator, i. 819. Sturm, John, his treatise on education in Germany, i. 340. Suard, remarks of, on the French theatre, ii. 268, note 1. Suarez of Granada, his treatise De Legi- bus, iii. 138-143 — titles of his ten books, 138 — his definition of eternal law, 140 — his metaphysical disputa- tions, 14 — theory of government, 158 — his work and opinions on laws, 169, 177. Suckling, Sir John, poetry of, iii. 259. Sugar-cane, first mention of, ii. 331. Suidiis, proverb quoted from, i. 203 — his Lexicon, 231. Sun, spots of the, discovered by Harriott, Fabricius, and Scheiner, iii. 394 — its revolution round its a.xis, ib. Supposes, the, play of, ii. 261. Supralap.«arian tenets, ii. 412. Surrey, Earl of, his style of poetrj' de- scribed, i. 421^27 — the introducer of blank verse, 424 — his polished lan- guage, 426 — remarks of Dr. Nott. 422, 424 — poems of, ii. 215 — character of, by Sidney, 220. Surville, Clotilde de, a supposed French poetess, i. 180. Swabian period of German poetry, i. 58. Swammerdam, naturalist, iii. 413 ; iv. 328. Sweynheim, the printer, i. 200, 252. Swift, Dean, iv. 310— his Tale of a Tub, 317. Suis.'^et, Richard, author of the Calculator, i. 131. Switzerland, the Reformation begun by Zwingle at Zurich, i. 301 — doctrines of the Protestants of, ii. 87. Sword, the Pen and the, Andrcse's parable of, iii. 153, nfite -. Sydenham, medical theory of, iv. 341. Bylburgius, his Greek gi-aniniar, ii. 29, 31, 301 ; iv.4 — bis Aristotle and Dionysius, ii. 31. Syllogism. ?ee" Logic." Sylvius, Dutch physician, 1. 458 ; iii. 416 ; iv. 341. TAYLOR. Sylvius, the French grammarian, i. 279. Synergists, tenets of, ii. 80. Syntagma Philosophicum of Gassecdi, iT 71, 77, 125. Syriac version of the Bible, ii. 337, 338; i'li. 427 — the Maronite college of Mount Libanus, ib. Taberna?montanu8, ii. 334. Table-talk of Selden, ii. 437, note ' ; iii 145, note '. Tacitus, the Annals of, i. 273; ii. 366 — Lipsius's edition of, ii. 21 — Savile's translation of, 54 — Davanzati's transla- tion of, 283. Tale of a Tub by Swift, iv. 317 — compari- son of, with the Pantagruel of Rabelais, i. 439. Talmud, the study of the, iii. 427. Talon, Omer, treatise on eloquence, ii. 121 — lustitutiones Oratorise of, 300. Tauiburlaine, play of, ii. 265. Tancred and Sigismunda, iii. 278. TansiUo, Italian poet, his La Ealia, ii. 185. 241. Tapsensis, Vigilius, the African bishop, works of. reviewed, iv. 292. Tartaglia, Nicolas, his solution of cubic equations in algebra, i. 449 — unfairly published by Cardan, ii. 311 — his me- chanics, 321. Tasso. Bernardo, ii. 185 — bis Amadigi, 190 — celebrated sonnet by, 190, note ». Tas.'O, Torquato, the Gierusalcmme Libe- rata of, ii. 193 et ser;.. 298; iv. 224 — comparison of, with Homer, Virgil, and Ariosto, ii. 193. 196, 197 ^excellence of his style, 194 — his conceits, 195 — defects of the poem, 196 — Fairfax's translation, 226 — his peculiar genius, 190 — the Aminta of, 246 — his Tor- rismond, a tragedy, 245 — his prose ■writings, 281 — Galileo's remarks on, iii. 341. Tassoni. his observations on the poetry of Bembo, i. 412 — on Petrarch, &c., iii. 340 — Secehia Rapita of, 225 — remarks of, iii. 438. Tauler's sermons, i. 71, 151 ; iii. 22. Taurellus, Nicholas, his Alpes Caesas, ii 108, note K Tavanncs, political memoirs by, ii. 148. Tavelegus, grammar of, i. 348, note. Tavernier, his travels in the East, iv. 346. Taxation, Bodin on, ii. 104. I'aylor, Edgar, Lays of the Minnesingers by, i. 69, tiule 2. Taylor, Jeremy, ii. S64, 408, 425 — his Dissuasive from I'operr, iv. 33, 61 — sermons of, ii. 439 — devotional writ- ings of, 440 — his Ductor Dubitantium, iv. 148, 167, 166 — its character and de- fect.i, 148 — his Liberty of Prophesying, Ii. 425 1 iv. 61 — boldness of his doc- trine, ii. 42G — bis defence of tolerationj DiTDEX. 401 TAYLOR. 430, 431 — effect of hU treatise, 433— Its defects, 431 — his Defence of Episco- pacy, t6. Taylor, lirook, Contemplatie Philosophica of, iii. 80, note. Telemachus, Feuiilon's, ir. 311. Telescopek, iv 225 — Uynie* on, 3)3. See '■ Drama.-' Translating, Dryden on the art of. iv. 302 Transubstantiation, controversy on. ii. 78, note. Travels, early writei^ of, i. 270 — latM writers of, iv. 345, 340. See ' Geogra* phy " and " Voyages." vol. IV. 2S 402 INDEX. TEAVERSAEI. Sraversari, Ambrogio, on profane litera- ture, i. 114 — OQ translations from the Greek, 118. Treaties, public, iii. 193, 209 — truces and conventions. 210. Tremellius, the Hebrew critic, ii. 103, 338. Trent, the Council of, its proceedings and history, i. 371 ; ii. 78 and note^ 82, 385, 401. Trevisa's translation of Higden's Poly- chronicon, i. 317, note. Triglandius, a notable theologian at Utrecht, iii. 98. Trigonometry, calculations of Regiomon- tanus in, i. 198, 199. Trinitarian controversy, the, i. 368 ; ii. 84-86 and note; iv. 42. See "Soci- nian." Triquero, Spanish dramatist, ii. 253. Trixmegistus, Hermes, philosophy of, coun- terfeited, i. 213. Trissino, principles of his Italia Liberata, i. 366, 414. Tristan of Leonois, i. 148, note 2. _ Trithemius, Annales Hirsargiensis of, i. 166. Trivium, mode of education, i. 27, note 2 ; ii. 347. Troubadours and Provencal poets, i. 53. Troye, Kecueil des Histoircs de, of Raoul le Fevre, printed by Caxton, i. 173. Truth, intuitive, on, iii. 95. Trypho, Greek treatises of, i. 332. Tubingen monastery, Hebrew taught in, i. 266. Tulpius, Observationes Medicae of, iii. 412. Turauiini, De Legibus, ii. 173. Turberville, poems of, ii. 218, 223. Turenne, Marshal, iv. 29. 58. Turkish Spy, the, iii. 151, note; iv. 314- 317 and notes. Turks, KnoUes's History of the, iii. 355 — the Turkish language, 429. Turnebus, i. 338 — his translations of Greek cl.issics into Latin, ii. 17 — his Adversaria, 18, 366 — Montaigne's cha- racter of, 18 — his reputation, 24 — his Ethics of Aristotle, 33. Turner, Dr., his New Herbal, ii. 330 — his Avium Pra;cipuarum Historia, i. 461. Turner's History of England, i. 27, note i, 29, note 1, 31, note », 33, note i, 37, note ', 14G, note '. Turpin, romance of Charlemagne by, i 50, note -, 146, note '. Turreo2. Woman, the Silent, play of, iii. 308. Women beware Women, play of, iii. 334. Women, Fenelon on the education of, iv. 181 — gallantry towards, its effects, i. 144. Wood, Anthony, his enumeration of great scholars whose names render Oxford illustrious, i. .39. note -. .342 — liis ac- count of Oxford, 346, 347, note - ; ii. 47, noiK. Woodward on the nutrition of pHnts, iv 8Si — ou ueoiotO' , a37. ZODIACUS VIT.B. Wordc, ^Vynkyn de. books printed by, i. 277, note '', 314. AA'onlsworth. sonnets of, iii. 2.">7, note '. World, physical theory of the, ii. 109, 111. World, Raleigh's History of the, iii. 357. Wotton on Ancient and Modern jA'arning iv. 17. 3J7. Wren, Sir Christopher, iv. 320, 339. , Wriglit, I'Idward, mathematician, ii. 319, 324 — on navigation. 314. Wright, Mr., on tlie writings of Alcuin, i. 29, note — the authenticity of the llis tory of Croyland by Ingulfus questioned by, 3y, note - — on the story of Arthur 57, note — the liiographia Britannic* Literaria, 90, note. Wursticius, or Urstichius, ii. 318. AVurtzburg, converts in, ii. 74. AVyatt, Sir Thomas, poems of, i. 421-427 : ii. 215 — llis Epistle to John I'oins, i 422, note '. AVyatt, Sir Thomas, works of, i. 421. AA'ycherley, i)lays of, iv. 272. AVy keham, \\ illiam of, founds a college and school, i. 178. Wyteuliogart, controversy of, yvitli Gro- tius, ii. 397, note — remarkable letter to, from Enusuius, 400. Xavier, the .Tesnit missionary, i. 370. Xenophou, editions and versions of, ii 21. Siuienes, Cardinal, i. 278, 469; ii. 348 — prints the (ireek Testament, i. 292. Xy lander, version of Plutarch by, ii. 21. 134. YorK, school of. i. 29. Yorkshire Tr.igedy, play of, ii. 269. Young, Dr.. the Zanga of, iv. 203. Y'pres, Jansenius, Bishop of, iv. 34. Zaccarias, a Florentine monk, translatiou of the Scriptures by, i. 3S1. Zachary (I'ope), releases the Franks from allegiance to Childeric, ii. 96. Zainer, a printer at Cracow, i. 172. Zunberti. tr.anslator of Kuclid, i. 448. Zimoscius, De Senatu Uomano, ii. 59. Zanchius, theologian, ii. 99. Zippi, oue of the founders of the Society of Arcadians, iv. 215. Zarot, printer at Milan, i. 181, 2.31. Zasius. Ulric, professor at Friburg. i. 291, note, 409. Zell, Ulric, printer at Cologne, i. 172. Zeni, the brothers, voyage of, in 14C0, ii. 341. Zeno, Apostolo, i. 195, 233, 249, note ; m. 4L Zerbi, work on anatomy by, i. 270. Zerbino of .\riosto, ii. 297. Zodiacus Vit;r, moral poem by ManzolU, i. 306 ; ii. 24.1 406 INDEX. ZOOLOGY. Zoology, -writers on, i. 461 ; ii. 325-329 ; iii. 411 ; iv. 325 el seq. Zoroaster, i. 213 — religion of, iv. 343. Zouch'.s Elt'Dienta Juris Civili.'s, iii. 177. Znricli, tlie reformed religion taught by Zwiugle at, i. 301 — Anabapti.«ts con- demned at, and drowned in the Lake of, ii. 87 — Gesner'.s botanical garden at, 831 — di.^putc between the reformers of, and the Lutherans, i. 833. ZWOLL. Zwingle. or Zninglius, the Swiss refoi mer, i. 301 — compared with Luthei. ib. note -, 3.54 — hi.s variance with Eras- mus, 354. note i — character of his writ- ings, 374 — piibli.shed in a fictitious name, 305 — his death, 363 — foretold by Luther, ii. .35 — charge of religioa intolerance against, 86. ZwoU, College of, 1. 192. THK Ein> UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. va:c JAN 3 1 19/8 ^N Z 5 1978 gtlTDlDUR. yuN 1 6 \m PSD 2338 9/77 ■_^'v;-,„^W-: ..^v.■;>;:l^■■i.^^l••- '■'■■J -: ^ ■f ■y'f. »^