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perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in
vain labour to decipher on some mouldering
pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall
hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen
idol over the ruined dome of our proudest tem-
ple; and shall see a single naked fisherman
wash his nets in the river of ten thousand
masts;-her influence and her glory will still
survive,-fresh in eternal youth, exempt from
mutability and decay, immortal as the intellect-
ual principle from which they derived their
origin, and over which they exercise their con
trol.
LORD MACAULAY :

If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian history, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung directly or indirectly all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of ShakOn the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824. speare? All the triumphs of truth and genius Books, however, were the least part of the over prejudice and power, in every country and education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for a in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand moment, transport ourselves in thought to that against violence and fraud, in the cause of lib-glorious city. Let us imagine that we are enerty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;-by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by

the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage: to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,-liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude? Her power is

indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in

the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wher ever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noble form, the immortal influence of Athens. LORD MACAULAY:

On Mitford's History of Greece, Nov. 1824. The dervise in the Arabian tale did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when,

tering its gates in the time of its power and
glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico.
for Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn
All are gazing with delight at the entablature;
into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting
there: men, women, children are thronging
cheeks: their eyes are fixed: their very breath
round him the tears are running down their
feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands-the
is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the
terrible, the murderous-which had slain so
We enter the public place;
many of his sons.
there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward,
with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation.
Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradic-
Socrates is pitted against the famous atheist from

tion in terms.

herald is crying, "Room for the Prytanes!" But we are interrupted. The The general assembly is to meet. The people is made-"Who wishes to speak?" There is are swarming in on every side. Proclamation a shout, and a clapping of hands: Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of education.

LORD MACAULAY: On the Athenian Orators.

ATTENTION.

Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. "I keep the subject," said Sir Isaac Newton, "constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light." It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of

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In the power of fixing the attention, the most precious of the intellectual habits, mankind differ greatly; but every man possesses some, and it will increase the more it is exerted. He who exercises no discipline over himself in this respect acquires such a volatility of mind, such a vagrancy of imagination, as dooms him to be the sport of every mental vanity: it is impossible such a man should attain to true wisdom. If we cultivate, on the contrary, a habit of attention, it will become natural; thought will strike its roots deep, and we shall, by degrees, experience no difficulty in following the track of the longest connected discourse.

ROBERT HALL: On Hearing the Word. To view attention as a special state of intelligence, and to distinguish it from consciousness, is utterly inept. SIR W. HAMILTON.

It is a way of calling a man a fool when no heed is given to what he says.

ory.

L'ESTRANGE.

By attention ideas are registered in the memLOCKE.

Some ideas which have more than once of fered themselves to the senses have yet been little taken notice of; the mind being either heedless, as in children, or otherwise employed, as in LOCKE.

men.

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AUTHORITY.

by the prejudice of education, or by a deference Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either to the judgment of those who, perhaps, in their own hearts, disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude. ADDISON.

The practice of all ages and all countries hath been to do honour to those who are invested with public authority. ATTERBURY.

Three means to fortify belief are experience, reason, and authority of these the more potent is authority; for belief upon reason, or experience, will stagger. LORD BACON.

With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own judgment to Time, the author of all authors, and therefore of all authority. LORD BACON.

The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness, and facility. For delays give easy access; keep times appointed; go through with that which is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption doth not only bind thine own hands or thy servants from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also from offering: for integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption: therefore, always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to steal it. A servant or a favourite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption. For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent: severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, and not taunting. As for facility, it is worse than bribery; for bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or idle respects lead a man, he shall never be without; as Solomon saith, "To respect persons it is not good, for such a man will transgress for a piece

of bread."

LORD BACON :

Essay XI., Of Great Place.

An argument from authority is but a weaker kind of proof; it being but a topical probation, and an inartificial argument, depending on naked asseveration. SIR T. BROWne.

Reasons of things are rather to be taken by JEREMY COLLier. weight than tale.

With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight or influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon

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The constraint of receiving and holding opinions by authority was rightly called imposition. LOCKE.

We cannot expect that any one should readily quit his own opinion and embrace ours, with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding acknowledges not. LOCKE.

It is conceit rather than understanding if it must be under the restraint of receiving and holding opinions by the authority of anything but their own perceived evidence. LOCKE.

If the opinions of others whom we think well of be a ground of assent, men have reason to be Heathens in Japan, Mahometans in Turkey, Papists in Spain, and Protestants in England.

LOCKE.

There is nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion of authority; like too strong a liquor for a frail glass. SIR P. SIDNEY.

An evil mind in authority doth not follow the sway of the desires already within it, but frames to itself new diseases not before thought of. SIR P. SIDNEY.

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Among the mutilated poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. They give us a taste of her way of writing, which is perfectly conformable with that extraordinary character we find of her in the remarks of those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire. One may see by what is left of them that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. called by ancient authors the tenth muse; and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who breathed out nothing but flame. I do not know by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They are filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, them a reading. that it might have been dangerous to have given

She is

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 223.

Among the English, Shakspeare has incom

parably excelled all others. That noble extravafection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this gance of fancy, which he had in so great perweak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 419.

It is a fine simile in one of Mr. Congreve's prologues which compares a writer to a buttering gamester that stakes all his winning upon one cast; so that if he loses the last throw he is sure to be undone. ADDISON.

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To consider an author as the subject of obloquy and detraction, we may observe with what pleasure a work is received by the invidious part of mankind in which a writer falls short of himself. ADDISON.

Authors who have thus drawn off the spirits of their thoughts should lie still for some time, till their minds have gathered fresh strength, and, by reading, reflecting, and conversation, laid in a new stock of elegancies, sentiments, and images of nature. ADDISON.

It would be well for all authors if they knew when to give over, and to desist from any further pursuits after fame. ADDISON.

I consider time as an immense ocean, into which many noble authors are entirely swallowed

I would recommend Sallust, rather than Tully's epistles; which I think are not so extremely valuable. Besides, Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and elegance of his style. He has, I think, a fine, easy, and diversified narrative, mixed with reflections, moral and political, neither very trite and obvious, nor out of the way and abstract; which is, I think, the true beauty of historical observation. beautiful painting of characters. Neither should I pass by his is an author that, on all accounts, I would reIn short, he commend to you. As for Terence and Plautus, what I fancy you will chiefly get by them, as to the language, is some insight into the common manner of speech used by the Romans. One excels in the justness of his pieces, the other in the humour. I think a play in each will be sufficient. I would recommend to you Tully's orations, excellent indeed.

BURKE, atat. 18, to R. Shackleton.

On the whole, though this father of the Eng

up, many very much shattered and damaged, lish learning [Beda] seems to have been but a

some quite disjointed and broken into pieces. ADDISON.

Aristotle's rules for epic poetry which he had drawn from his reflections upon Homer cannot be supposed to quadrate exactly with the heroic poems which have been made since his time; as it is plain his rules would have been still more perfect could he have perused the Æneid.

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genius of the middle class, neither elevated nor subtile, and one who wrote in a low style, simple, but not elegant, yet, when we reflect upon the time in which he lived, the place in which he spent his whole life, within the walls of a monastery, in so remote and wild a country, it is impossible to refuse him the praise of an incredible industry and a generous thirst of knowledge. BURKE:

Abridgment of English History.

Ovid, not content with catching the leading features of any scene or character, indulged himself in a thousand minutiae of description, a thousand puerile prettinesses, which were in themselves uninteresting, and took off greatly from the effect of the whole; as the numberless suckers and straggling branches of a fruit tree, if permitted to shoot out unrestrained, while they are themselves barren and useless, diminish considerably the vigour of the parent stock. Ovid had more genius, but less judgment, than Virgil; Dryden more imagination, but less correctness, than Pope: had they not been deficient in these points, the former would certainly have equalled, the latter infinitely outshone, the merits of his countryman.

RT. HON. GEORGE CANNING:

Microcosm, No. II. The same populace sits for hours listening to rhapsodists who recite Ariosto. CARLYLE.

It is absolutely necessary to recollect that the age in which Shakspeare lived was one of great abilities applied to individual and prudential purposes, and not an age of high moral feeling and lofty principle, which gives a man of genius the power of thinking of all things in reference to all. If, then, we should find that Shakspeare took these materials as they were presented to him, and yet to all effectual purposes produced the same grand result as others attempted to

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The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down. Besides, it is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb. Living authors, therefore, are usually bad companions: if they have not gained a character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent, for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen: for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith who have never written half so well. COLTON: Lacon.

Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will

remain.

COLTON: Lacon.

Shakespeare, Butler, and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty, or profound.

COLTON: Lacon.

It is a doubt whether mankind are most indebted to those who, like Bacon and Butler, dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility. For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf, and teach her to live with men, have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering her. COLTON: Lacon.

Ariosto observed not moderation in the vastness of his draught. DRYDEN.

Episodical ornaments, such as descriptions and narratives, were delivered to us from the

observations of Aristotle.

DRYDEN.

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For the Italians, Dante had begun to file their language in verse before Boccace, who likewise received no little help from his master Petrarch; but the reformation of their prose was wholly owing to Boccace. DRYDEN.

Boccace lived in the same age with Chaucer, had the same genius, and followed the same studies: both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. DRYDEN.

When I took up Boccace unawares, I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of blood and titles, in the story of Sigismunda. DRYDEN.

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Shakspeare rather writ happily than knowingly and justly; and Jonson, who by studying Horace had been acquainted with the rules, yet seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge, and to make a monopoly of his learning. DRYDEN.

Shakspeare was naturally learned; he needed looked inwards and found her there. not the spectacles of books to read nature; he DRYDEN.

Spenser endeavoured it [imitation] in the Shepherd's Kalendar; but neither will it succeed in English. DRYDEN.

Spenser has followed both Virgil and Theocritus in the charms which he employs for curing Britomartis of her love; but he had also our poet's Ceiris in his eye.

DRYDEN.

I shall take care that they have the advantage of doing, in the regular progression of youthful study, what I have done even in the short intervals of laborious life;-that they shall transcribe with their own hands, from all the works of this most extraordinary person [Burke], the soundest truths of religion-the justest principles of morals, inculcated and rendered delightful by the most sublime eloquence-the highest reach of philosophy brought down to the level of common minds-the most enlightened observations on history, and the most copious collection of useful maxims from the experience of life.

LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE: Speech in Defence of John Horne Tooke, 1794.

Dennis . . . declares with great patriotic vehemence, that he who allows Shakspeare learning, and a learning with the ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory of Great Britain. R. FARMER.

Of all rewards, I grant, the most pleasing to a man of real merit is fame; but a polite age of all times is that in which scarcely any share of merit can acquire it. What numbers of fine writers in the latter empire of Rome, when refinement was carried to the highest pitch, have missed that fame and immortality which they had fondly arrogated to themselves! How many Greek authors, who wrote at the period of the empire, now rest, either not printed, or when Constantinople was the refined mistress not read, in the libraries of Europe! who came first, while either state as yet was barbarous, carried all the reputation away. Authors, as the age refined, became more numer ous, and their numbers destroyed their fame. It is but natural, therefore, for the writer, when conscious that his works will not procure him

Those

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