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and delightful to mankind; by the influence of this sun are produced those golden and inexhausted mines of invention, which has furnished the world with treasures so highly esteemed, and so universally known and used, in all the regions that have yet been discovered. From this arises that elevation of genius which can never be produced by any art or study, by pains or by industry, which cannot be taught by precepts or examples; and therefore is agreed by all to be the pure and free gift of heaven or of nature, and to be a fire kindled out of some hidden spark of the very first conception.

But though invention be the mother of poetry, yet this child is, like all others, born naked, and must be nourished with care, clothed with exactness and elegance, educated with industry, instructed with art, improved by application, corrected with severity, and accomplished with labour and with time, before it arrives at any great perfection or growth: 'tis certain that no composition requires so many several ingredients, or of more different sorts than this; nor that, to excel in any qualities, there are necessary so many gifts of nature, and so many improvements of learning and of art. For there must be a universal genius, of great compass as well as great elevation. There must be a sprightly imagination or fancy, fertile in a thousand productions, ranging over infinite ground, piercing into every corner, and, by the light of that true poetical fire, discovering a thousand little bodies or images in the world, and similitudes among them, unseen to common eyes, and which could not be discovered without the rays of that sun.

Besides the heat of invention and liveliness of wit, there must be the coldness of good sense and soundness of judgment, to distinguish between things and conceptions, which, at first sight, or upon short glances, seem alike; to choose, among infinite productions of wit and fancy, which are worth preserving and cultivating, and which are better stifled in the birth, or thrown away when they are born, as not worth bringing up. Without the forces of wit, all poetry is flat and languishing; without the succours of judgment, 'tis wild and extravagant. The true wit of poesy is, that such contraries must meet to compose it; a genius both penetrating and solid; in expression both delicacy and force; and the frame or fabric of a true poem must have something both sublime and just, amazing and agreeable. There must be a great agitation of mind to invent, a great calm to judge and correct; there must be upon the same tree, and at the same time, both flower and fruit. To work up this metal into exquisite figure, there must be employed the fire, the hammer, the chisel, and the file. There must be a general knowledge both of nature and of arts, and, to go the lowest that can be, there are required genius, judgment, and application; for, without this last, all the rest will not serve turn, and ever was a great poet that applied himself much to anything else.

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When I speak of poetry, I mean not an ode or an elegy, a song or a satire; nor by a poet the composer of any of these, but of a just poem; and after all I have said, 'tis no wonder there should be so few that appeared in any parts or any ages of the world, or that such as have should be so much admired, and have almost divinity ascribed to them and to their works.

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I do not here intend to make a further critic upon poetry, which were too great a labour; nor to give rules for it, which were as great a presumption: besides, there has been so much paper blotted upon these subjects, in this curious and censuring age, that 'tis all grown tedious, or repetition. The modern French wits (or pretenders) have been very severe in their censures, and exact in their rules, I think to very little purpose; for I know not why they might not

have contented themselves with those given by Aristotle and Horace, and have translated them rather than commented upon them; for all they have done has been no more; so as they seem, by their writings of this kind, rather to have valued themselves, than improved anybody else. The truth is, there is something in the genius of poetry too libertine to be confined to so many rules; and whoever goes about to subject it to such constraints, loses both its spirit and grace, which are ever native, and never learned, even of the best masters. 'Tis as if, to make excellent honey, you should cut off the wings of your bees, confine them to their hive or their stands, and lay flowers before them such as you think the sweetest, and like to yield the finest extraction; you had as good pull out their stings, and make arrant drones of them. They must range through fields, as well as gardens, choose such flowers as they please, and by proprieties and scents they only know and distinguish: they must work up their cells with admirable art, extract their honey with infinite labour, and sever it from the wax with such distinction and choice, as belongs to none but themselves to perform or to judge.

Sir William Temple's Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning gave occasion to one of the most celebrated literary controversies which have occurred in England. The composition of it was suggested to him principally by a French work of Charles Perrault, on The Age of Louis the Great,' in which, with the view of flattering the pride of the grand monarque, it was affirmed that the writers of antiquity had been excelled by those of modern times. This doctrine excited a warm controversy in France, where the poet Boileau was among those by whom it was strenuously opposed. It was in behalf of the ancients that Sir William Temple also took the field. The first of the enemy's arguments which he controverts, is the allegation, that we must have more knowledge than the ancients, because we have the advantage both of theirs and our own; just as a dwarf standing upon a giant's shoulders sees more and farther than he.' To this he replies, that the ancients may have derived vast stores of knowledge from their predecessors, namely, the Chinese, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syrians, and Jews. Among these nations, says he, 'were planted and cultivated mighty growths of astronomy, astrology, magic, geometry, natural philosophy, and ancient story; and from these sources Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the ancients, are acknowledged to have drawn all made them so renowned in all succeeding ages.' those depths of knowledge or learning which have Here Temple manifests wonderful ignorance and credulity in assuming as facts the veriest fables of the ancients, particularly with respect to Orpheus, of whom he afterwards speaks in conjunction with that equally authentic personage, Arion, and in reference to whose musical powers he asks triumphantly, 'What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so that they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable music?" In the same credulous spirit, he affirms that "The more ancient sages of Greece appear, by the characters remaining of them, to have been much greater men than Hippocrates, Plato, and Xenophon. They were generally princes or lawgivers of their countries, or at least offered or invited to be so, either of their own or of others, that desired

them to frame or reform their several institutions of man deeply versed in Greek literature; on whom he civil government. They were commonly excellent inserted a bitter reflection in his preface. Bentley, poets and great physicians: they were so learned in revenge, demonstrated the Epistles to be a forgery, in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only taking occasion at the same time to speak someeclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, what irreverently of Sir William Temple. Boyle, and storms at sea, great droughts, and great plagues, with the assistance of Aldrich, Atterbury, and much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of other Christ-church doctors (who, indeed, were the fruits or grain; not to mention the magical powers real combatants), sent forth a reply, the plausibility attributed to several of them to allay storms, to of which seemed to give him the advantage; till raise gales, to appease commotions of the people, to Bentley, in a most triumphant rejoinder, exposed the make plagues cease; which qualities, whether upon gross ignorance which lay concealed under the wit any ground of truth or no, yet, if well believed, must and assumption of his opponents. To these parties, have raised them to that strange height they were however, the controversy was not confined. Boyle at, of common esteem and honour, in their own and and his friends were backed by the sarcastic powers, succeeding ages.' The objection occurs to him, as one if not by the learning, of Pope, Swift, Garth, Middlelikely to be set up by the admirers of modern learn- ton, and others. Swift, who came into the field on ing, that there is no evidence of the existence of behalf of his patron Sir William Temple, published books before those now either extant or on record. on this occasion his famous Battle of the Books,' This, however, gives him no alarm: for it is very and to the end of his life continued to speak of Bentdoubtful, he tells us, whether books, though they ley in the language of hatred and contempt. In the may be helps to knowledge, and serviceable in dif- work just mentioned, Swift has ridiculed not only fusing it, are necessary ones, or much advance any that scholar, but also his friend the Rev. William other science beyond the particular records of Wotton, who had opposed Temple in a treatise actions or registers of time-as if any example entitled 'Reflections upon Ancient and Modern could be adduced of science having flourished where Learning,' published in 1694. To some parts of tradition was the only mode of handing it down! that treatise Sir William wrote a reply, the fol His notice of astronomy is equally ludicrous: "There lowing passage in which suggested, we doubt not, is nothing new in astronomy,' says he, to vie with the satirical account given long afterwards by Swift the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system-a in 'Gulliver's Travels,' of the experimental researches system which overturns the whole fabric of ancient of the projectors at Lagoda. What has been proastronomical science, though Temple declares with duced for the use, benefit, or pleasure of mankind, great simplicity that it has made no change in by all the airy speculations of those who have passed the conclusions of astronomy.' In comparing the for the great advancers of knowledge and learning great wits among the moderns' with the authors of these last fifty years (which is the date of our antiquity, he mentions no Englishmen except Sir modern pretenders), I confess I am yet to seek, and Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden, leaving Shak- should be very glad to find. I have indeed heard of speare and Milton altogether out of view. How wondrous pretensions and visions of men possessed little he was qualified to judge of the comparative with notions of the strange advancement of learning merits of ancient and modern authors, is evident not and sciences, on foot in this age, and the progress only from his total ignorance of the Greek language, they are like to make in the next; as the universal but from the very limited knowledge of English lite- medicine, which will certainly cure all that have it; rature evinced by his esteeming Sir Philip Sidney | the philosopher's stone, which will be found out by to be both the greatest poet and the noblest genius men that care not for riches; the transfusion of of any that have left writings behind them, and young blood into old men's veins, which will make published in ours or any other modern language.' them as gamesome as the lambs from which 'tis He farther declares, that after Ariosto, Tasso, and to be derived; a universal language, which may Spenser, he knows none of the moderns that have serve all men's turn when they have forgot their made any achievements in heroic poetry worth re- own; the knowledge of one another's thoughts cording.' Descartes and Hobbes are the only new without the grievous trouble of speaking; the art philosophers that have made entries upon the noble of flying, till a man happens to fall down and break stage of the sciences for fifteen hundred years past,' his neck; double-bottomed ships, whereof none can and these have by no means eclipsed the lustre of ever be cast away besides the first that was made; Plato. Aristotle, Epicurus, and others of the ancients.' the admirable virtues of that noble and necessary Bacon, Newton, and Boyle, are not regarded as phi-juice called spittle, which will come to be sold, and losophers at all. But the most unlucky blunder very cheap, in the apothecaries' shops; discoveries committed by Temple on this occasion was his of new worlds in the planets, and voyages between adducing the Greek Epistles of Phalaris in sup- this and that in the moon to be made as frequently port of the proposition, that the oldest books we as between York and London: which such poor have are still in their kind the best.' These Epis- mortals as I am think as wild as those of Ariosto, tles, says he, I think to have more grace, more but without half so much wit, or so much instrucspirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others tion; for there, these modern sages may know I have seen, either ancient or modern.' Some critics, where they may hope in time to find their lost he admits, have asserted that they are not the pro- senses, preserved in vials, with those of Orlando.' duction of Phalaris (who lived in Sicily more than five centuries before Christ), but of some writer in the declining age of Greek literature. In reply to these sceptics, he enumerates such transcendent excellences of the Epistles, that any man, he thinks, must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original.' The celebrity given to these Epistles by the publication of Temple's Essay. led to the appearance of a new edition of them at Oxford, under the name of Charles Boyle as editor. Boyle, while preparing it for the press, got into a quarrel with the celebrated critic Richard Bentley, a

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WILLIAM WOTTON.

WILLIAM WOTTON (1666–1726), a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, whom we have mentioned as the author of a reply to Sir William Temple, wrote various other works, of which none deserves to be specified except his condemnatory remarks on Swift's Tale of a Tub.' In childhood, his talent for languages was so extraordinary and precocious, that when five years old he was able to read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, almost as well as English. At the age of

twelve he took the degree of bachelor of arts, previously to which he had gained an extensive acquaintance with several additional languages, including Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee; as well as with geography, logic, philosophy, chronology, and mathematics. As in many similar cases, however, the expectations held out by his early proficiency were not justified by any great achievements in after life. We quote the following passage from his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), chiefly because it records the change of manners which took place among literary men during the seventeenth century.

[Decline of Pedantry in England.]

The last of Sir William Temple's reasons of the great decay of modern learning is pedantry; the urging of which is an evident argument that his discourse is levelled against learning, not as it stands now, but as it was fifty or sixty years ago. For the new philosophy has introduced so great a correspondence between men of learning and men of business; which has also been increased by other accidents amongst the masters of other learned professions; and that pedantry which formerly was almost universal is now in a great measure disused, especially amongst the young men, who are taught in the universities to laugh at that frequent citation of scraps of Latin in common discourse, or upon arguments that do not require it; and that nauseous ostentation of reading and scholarship in public companies, which formerly was so much in fashion. Affecting to write politely in modern languages, especially the French and ours, has also helped very much to lessen it, because it has enabled abundance of men, who wanted academical education, to talk plausibly, and some exactly, upon very many learned subjects. This also has made writers habitually careful to avoid those impertinences which they know would be taken notice of and ridiculed; and it is probable that a careful perusal of the fine new French books, which of late years have been greedily sought after by the politer sort of gentlemen and scholars, may in this particular have done abundance of good. By this means, and by the help also of some other concurrent causes, those who were not learned themselves being able to maintain disputes with those that were, forced them to talk more warily, and brought them, by little and little, to be out of countenance at that vain thrusting of their learning into everything, which before had been but too visible.

SIR MATTHEW HALE.

SIR MATTHEW HALE (1609-1676) not only acquired some reputation as a literary man, but is celebrated as one of the most upright judges that have ever sat upon the English bench. Both in his studies and in the exercise of his profession he displayed uncommon industry, which was favoured by his acquaintance with Selden, who esteemed him so highly as to appoint him his executor. Hale was a judge both in the time of the commonwealth and under Charles II., who appointed him chief baron of the exchequer in 1660, and lord chief-justice of the king's bench eleven years after. In the former capacity, one of his most notable and least creditable acts was the condemnation of some persons accused of witchcraft at Bury St Edmunds in 1664. Amidst the immorality of Charles II.'s reign, Sir Matthew Hale stands out with peculiar lustre as an impartial, incorruptible, and determined administrator of justice. Though of a benevolent and devout, as well as righteous disposition, his manners are said to have been austere; he was, moreover, opinionative, and accessible to flattery. In a previous page, we have

extracted from Baxter a character of this estimable man. The productions of his pen, which are many and various, relate chiefly to natural philosophy, divinity, and law. His religious opinions were Calvinistical; and his chief theological work, entitled Contemplations, Moral and Divine, retains considerable popularity among serious people of that persuasion. As a specimen of his style, we present a letter of advice to his children, written about the year 1662.

[On Conversation.]

DEAR CHILDREN-I thank God I came well to Farrington this day, about five o'clock. And as I have some leisure time at my inn, I cannot spend it more to my own satisfaction, and your benefit, than, by a letter, to give you some good counsel. The subject shall be concerning your speech; because much of the good or evil that befalls persons arises from the well or ill managing of their conversation. When I have leisure and opportunity, I shall give you my directions on other subjects.

And

Never speak anything for a truth which you know or believe to be false. Lying is a great sin against God, who gave us a tongue to speak the truth, and not falsehood. It is a great offence against humanity itself; for, where there is no regard to truth, there can be no safe society between man and man. it is an injury to the speaker; for, besides the disgrace which it brings upon him, it occasions so much baseness of mind, that he can scarcely tell truth, or avoid lying, even when he has no colour of necessity for it; and, in time, he comes to such a pass, that as other people cannot believe he speaks truth, so he himself scarcely knows when he tells a falsehood.

As you must be careful not to lie, so you must avoid coming near it. You must not equivocate, nor speak anything positively for which you have no authority but report, or conjecture, or opinion.

Let your words be few, especially when your superiors, or strangers, are present, lest you betray your own weakness, and rob yourselves of the opportunity, which you might otherwise have had, to gain knowledge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those whom you silence by your impertinent talking.

Be not too earnest, loud, or violent in your conversation. Silence your opponent with reason, not with noise.

Be careful not to interrupt another when he is speaking; hear him out, and you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better

answer.

Consider before you speak, especially when the business is of moment; weigh the sense of what you mean to utter, and the expressions you intend to use, that they may be significant, pertinent, and inoffensive. Inconsiderate persons do not think till they speak; or they speak, and then think.

Some men excel in husbandry, some in gardening, some in mathematics. In conversation, learn, as near as you can, where the skill or excellence of any person lies; put him upon talking on that subject, observe what he says, keep it in your memory, or commit it to writing. By this means you will glean the worth and knowledge of everybody you converse with; and, at an easy rate, acquire what may be of use to you on many occasions.

When you are in company with light, vain, impertinent persons, let the observing of their failings make you the more cautious both in your conversation with them and in your general behaviour, that you may avoid their errors.

If any one, whom you do not know to be a person of truth, sobriety, and weight, relates strange stories, be not too ready to believe or report them; and yet

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during which period he became disgusted with the verbal subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy, which he found unfruitful and devoid of practical utility. Having chosen the profession of medicine, he made considerable progress in the necessary studies; but finding the delicacy of his constitution an obstacle to successful practice, he at length abandoned his design. In 1664, he accompanied, in the capacity of secretary, Sir Walter Vane, who was sent by Charles II. as envoy to the Elector of Brandenburg during the Dutch war: some lively and interesting letters written by him from Germany on this occasion have recently been published by Lord King. Those who are acquainted with Locke only in the character of a grave philosopher, will peruse with interest the following humorous account, which he gives to one of his friends, of some Christmas religious ceremonies witnessed by him in a church at Cleves. About one in the morning I went a gossiping to our lady. Think me not profane, for the name is a great deal modester than the service I was at. I shall not describe all the particulars I observed in that church, being the principal of the Catholics in Cleves; but only those that were particular to the occasion. Near the high altar was a little altar for this day's solemnity; the scene was a stable, wherein was an ox, an ass, a cradle, the Virgin, the babe, Joseph, shepherds, and angels, dramatis personæ. Had they but given them motion. it had been a perfect puppet play, and might have deserved pence a-piece; for they were of the same size and make that our English puppets are; and I am confident these shepherds and this Joseph are kin to that Judith and Holophernes which I have seen at Bartholomew fair. A little without the stable was a flock of sheep, cut out of cards; and these, as they then stood without their shepherds, appeared to me the best emblem I had seen a long time, and methought represented these poor innocent people, who, whilst their shepherds pretend so much to follow Christ, and pay their devotion to him, are left unregarded in the barren wilderness. This was the show: the music to it was all vocal in the quire adjoining, but such as I never heard. They had strong voices, but so ill-tuned, so ill-managed, that it was their misfortune, as well as ours, that they could be heard. He that could not, though he had a cold, make better music with a chevy chase over a pot of smooth ale, deserved well to pay the reckoning, and go away athirst. However, I think they were the honestest singing-men I have ever seen, for they endeavoured to deserve their money, and earned it certainly with pains enough; for what they wanted in skill, they made up in loudness and variety. Every one had his own tune, and the result of all was like the noise of choosing parliament men, where every one endeavours to cry loudest. Besides the men, there were a company of little choristers; I thought, when I saw them first, they had danced to the other's music, and that it had been your Gray's Inn revels; for they were jumping up and down about a good charcoal fire that was in the middle of the quire (this their devotion and their singing was enough, I think, to keep them warm, though it were a very cold night); but it was not dancing, but singing they served for; for when it came to their turns, away they ran to their places, and there they made as good harmony as a concert of little pigs would, and they were much about as cleanly. Their part being done, out they sallied again to the fire, where they played till their cue called them, and then back to their places they huddled. So negligent and slight are they in their service in a place where the nearness of adversaries might teach them to be more careful.' In this and

other letters, he continues in the same humorous strain.

In the same year, Locke returned to Oxford, where he soon afterwards received an offer of considerable preferment in the Irish church, if he should think fit to take orders. This, after due consideration, he declined. A man's affairs and whole course of his life,' says he, in a letter to the friend who made the proposal to him, are not to be changed in a moment, and one is not made fit for a calling, and that in a day. I believe you think me too proud to undertake anything wherein I should acquit myself but unworthily. I am sure I cannot content myself with being undermost, possibly the middlemost, of my profession; and you will allow, on consideration, care is to be taken not to engage in a calling wherein, if one chance to be a bungler, there is no retreat. ** It is not enough for such places to be in orders, and I cannot think that preferment of that nature should be thrown upon a man who has never given any proof of himself, nor ever tried the pulpit.'

In 1666, Locke became acquainted with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; and so valuable did his lordship find the medical advice and general conversation of the philosopher, that a close and permanent friendship sprang up between them, and

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Locke became an inmate of his lordship's house. This brought him into the society of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Halifax, and other celebrated wits of the time, to whom his conversation was highly acceptable. An anecdote is told of him, which shows the easy terms on which he stood with these noblemen. On an occasion when several of them were met at Lord Ashley's house, the party, soon after assembling, sat down to cards, so that scarcely any conversation took place. Locke, after looking on for some time, took out his note-book, and began to write in it, with much appearance of gravity and deliberation. One of the party observing this, inquired what he was writing. My lord,' he replied, I am endeavouring to profit as far as I am able in your company; for having waited with impatience for the honour of being in an assembly of the greatest geniuses of the age, and having at length obtained

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