Befides giving a tranflation of Ariftotle's practical philofophy, contains a new analysis of his fpeculative works. This addition appeared the more neceffary, because the Stagirite's intellectual fyftem is fo compactly built, and fo folidly united, that its feparate parts cannot be completely understood, unlefs the whole be clearly comprehended. The writings indeed here tranflated, ftand more detached and more independent than almost any other; yet, without the aid of the prefixed Analyfis," even the Ethics and Politics would require frequent, almost perpetual elucidation. The reader, I feared, would be foon tired with the unconne&ted prolixity of notes; he will, I hope, be entertained by the Analy fis even of those treatifes to which, independently of any fubftantial utility, his attention may be still allured by a liberal and commendable curiosity.

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"In my work throughout, I am ambitious of exhibiting fully, yet within a narrow compafs, the difcoveries and attainments of a man deemed the wifeft of antiquity; and to whom, even in modern times, it will be easier to name many fuperiors in particular branches of knowledge, than to find any one rival in univerfal fcience. Confidered under this general afpect, my " English Aristotle" is the natufal companion and fit counterpart to my "Hiftory of Ancient Greece;" fince the larning of that country properly terminates in the Stagirite, by whom it was finally embodied into one great work; á work rather impaired than improved by the labours of fucceeding ages. My time, I acknowledge, was miferably mif-fpent in examining his numerous commentators; Greek, Arabic, and Latin; but the attention with which I have many times perufed the whole of his invaluable remains, with a view of rendering him a perpetual commentary on himself, and thereby expreffing his genuine fenfe clearly and forcibly, will not, I hope, prove ufelefs to thofe who ftudy Greek literature on an enlarged and liberal plan; not merely as grammarians and philologifts, but as philofophers, moralifts, and ftatefmen." P. ix.

The work is introduced by a well-digefted and well-written Life of Ariftotle, in which the author collects the materials left by antiquity, and employs them in a manner that does credit to his fagacity and judgment. He justly refifts the calumnies which envy has been able to tranfmit to pofterity, and gives fuch a view of the whole character of his author, as is confiftent in itfelf, fupported by the best documents, and honourable to human nature. The clofe of this Life we fhall lay before our readers, as giving a clear and inftructive hiftory of Ariftotle's writings, their fingular fate, and the proportion fubfifting between thofe originally written, and those at present

extant.

"The extraordinary and unmerited fate of thefe writings, while it excites the curiofity, muft provoke the indignation of every friend to fcience. Few of them were published in his life-time; the greater part nearly perished through neglect; and the remainder has been fo grofsly mifapplied, that doubts have arifen whether its prefervation

L12

ought

ought to be regarded as a benefit. Ariftotle's manufcripts and library were bequeathed to Theophraftus, the moft illuftrious of his pupils. Theophratus again bequeathed them to his own fcholar Neleus, who carrying them to Scepfis, a city of the ancient Troas, left them to his beirs in the undiftinguished mass of his property. The heirs of Neleus, men ignorant of literature and careless of books, totally neglected the int-ilectual treasure that had moft unworthily devolved to them, until they heard that the king of Pergamus, under whofe dominion they lived, was employing much attention and much refearch in collecting a large library. With the caution incident to the fubjects of a defpot, who often have recourfe to concealment in order to avoid robbery, they hid their books under ground; and the writings of Ariftotle, as well as the vast collection of materials from which they had been compofed, thus remained in a fubterranean manfion for many generations, a prey to dampnefs and to worms. At length they were releafed from their prifon, or rather raifed from the grave, and fold for a large fum, together with the works of Theophraftus, to Apellicon of Athens, a lover of books rather than a fcholar; through whofe labour and expence the work of reftoring Ariftotle's manu fcripts, though performed in the fame city in which they had been originally written, was very imperfectly executed. To this, not only the ignorance of the editors, but both the condition and the nature of the writings themselves did not a little contribute. The moft confderable part of his acroatic works, which are almost the whole of those now remaining, confift of little better than text books, containing the detached heads of his difcourfes; and, through want of connexion in the matter, peculiarly liable to corruption from tranfcribers, and highly unfufceptible of conjectural emendation.

"What became of Ariftotle's original manufcript, we are not informed; but the copy made for Apellicon was, together with his whole library, feized by Sylla, the Roman conqueror of Athens, and by him tranfmitted to Rome. Ariftotle's works excited the attention. of Tyrannion, a native of Amyfus in Pontus, who had been taken prifoner by Lucullus in the Mithridatic war, and infolently manumitted, as Plutarch faid, by Muraena, Lucullus's lieutenant. Tyrannion procured the manufcript by paying court to Sylla's librarian; and communicated the ufe of it to Andronycus of Rhodes, who flourished as a philofopher at Rome, in the time of Cicero and Pompey; and who, having undertaken the talk of arranging and correcting thofe long injured writings, finally performed the duty of a skilful editor.

Though the works which formed the object of Andronycus's labours had fuffered fuch injuries as the utmoft diligence and fagacity. could not completely repair, yet in confequence of thofe labours the Peripatetic philofophy began to refume the luftre of which it had been deprived fince the days of Theophraftus; and the later adherents to that fect, as they became acquainted with the real tenets of their mafter, far furpaffed the fane and merit of their ignorant and obfcure predecefors. From the era of Androny cus's publication to that of the invention of printing, a fucceflion of refpectable writers on civil and facred fubjects (not excepting the venerable fathers of the Chrif

* It should be Andronicus. This error occurs frequently. Rev.

tian Church) confirm, by their citations and criticisms, the authenticity of most of the treatifes ftill bearing Ariftotle's name; and of more than ten thousand commentators, who have endeavoured to illuftrate different parts of his works, there are incomparably fewer than might have been expected, whofe vanity has courted the praife of fuperior difcernment by rejecting any confiderable portion of them as fparious. According to the molt credible accounts, therefore, he composed above four hundred different treatifes, of which only forty-eight have been tranfmitted to the prefent age. But many of these last confist of feveral books, and the whole of his remains together ftill form a golden .chain of Greek erudition, exceeding four times the collective bulk of the Iliad and Odyfley." P. 34.

Though we have not inferted the notes by which this account is fully fupported and illuftrated, we must not deny our readers the amusement of feeing how well Aristotle's works were known to the writers and publishers of the French Encyclopedie! The fact is properly fubjoined to the paffage which fays, that out of more than four hundred treatises written by Ariftotle only forty-eight remain. The fuperficial Encyclopedift, under the article Ariftotelifme, fays, "Le nombre de ces ouvrages eft prodigieux; on en peut voir les titres en Diogene Laerce...encore ne fommes pas jûrs de les avoir tous: il eft même probable que nous en avons perdus plufieurs."-" We cannot be fure that we have them all, it is even probable that feveral are loft."

To the Life of Ariftotle, the new Analyfis of his fpeculative works is immediately fubjoined; a task demanding confiderable labour, and a very intimate acquaintance with the writings of the philofopher. Ariftotle, though he faw diftin&tly, what fome have fuppofed a modern difcovery, that our ideas and our knowledge are conveyed to us through the medium of the fenfes, was far from being inclined to confound the operations of matter with those of intellect. He felt and acknowledged the fupreme power of the foul in comparing and employing the intimations thus conveyed to her, and has, more nearly perhaps than any other philofopher, demonftrated the feparate existence of that fuperior and intellectual part, which raises man above the animal creation. This he does by an examination of the act of recollection.

"Every exercife.of recollection, obferves, "is a fpecies of inveftigation, in which the mind may be confcious of its own activity in directing the current of its thoughts, in turning them from one channel to another, in rejecting those which hold by no tie to the perception or image of which it is in queft, and in preferring, examining, and contemplating, in all their relations, those which, by their connection with this perception or image, have a natural tendency to roufe the one, or to revive the other." £, 46.

Thus

Thus then it is that he recognifes the divine principle of reafon or intellect, co-operating with the coarfer powers of fancy or memory.

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Every act of reminifcence," he fays, " as above explained, implies comparifon; and every the flighteft comparifon, expreffed in the fimpleft propofition, indicates a fubfiance different and feparable from matter, a fubftance totally inconceivable by man in his prefent state, where the grofs perceptions of fenfe are the only foundation and fele materials of all others, how lofty foever and refined; but a fubitance, notwithstanding, of whofe existence we are affured, by our consciousnefs of its energies. To illustrate this further by an example, Ariftotle fays, let the comparifon or propofition be one of the fimpleft imaginable, that whitenefs is not fweetness. Thefe fenfible qualities which the vulgar afcribe to external objects, the philofopher knows, as above explained, to depend on certain motions communicated to his internal organs, motions vivid and forcible when firit produced by fenfation, more faint and languid when afterwards revived by imagination or memory. But the comparison of any two objects neceffarily implies, that they fhould be both present in the fame indivifible point of time, to one and the fame comparing power. Yet their prefence to the fenfes, the fancy, or the memory, is known to confift in nothing elfe but certain motions produced in our bodily organs. If the comparison, therefore, could be made by any of them, it would follow that this organ was fufceptible of different and contrary motions, precifely at the fame indivifible inflant; for it is neceffary that the fame fimple power fhould comprehend at once the fweetness and whiteness, or whatever elfe be the fenfations compared, fince if it comprehended them diftributively, by its parts however minute, or fucceffively in patticles of time however fhort, it could no more draw the refult of the comparison, than if the one fenfation was recognized by one man, and the other by another, or one of them recognized in the last century, and another in the prefent. The perception of truth, therefore, being altogether unrelated to time and space, must be totally diffimilar to any corporeal operation, and fo effentially one fimple energy, that it cannot without abfurdity be supposed capable of divifion. But all the motions and actions of body being performed in fpace and time, are therefore indefinitely divifible; and although their fmallness or quicknefs foon escapes the perception of fenfe, and foon eludes the grafp of fancy, yet the intellect ftill purfues aud detects them, knowing that they can never vanish into nothing by their indefinite minutenefs, By our divifions and fubdivifions without limit, we flill leave, in the fmalleft particle, body with its properties; and after all the fteps that poffibly can be taken, rema precifely as diftant from the goal, as at our first fetting out. This goal, therefore, it is impoffible for us ultimately to attain; but in the language of geometers, infinite will be ftill interpofed between operations divifible and indivisible, between perceptions of fenfe and perceptions of reafon, between the nature and properties of mind and the nature and properties of matter. It is not fenfe or fancy, but mind alone, that recognifes itfelf; and this intellectual fubftance, of which we must be contented in our prefent flate

merely

merely to know the existence, and to exercife the energies, is that which chara&erifes and ennobles the creature man, and which gives him a refemblance to his Maker. It is this which, feparated from body, is then only, properly what it is, immortal and divine; which does not decay with our corporeal powers; and whofe energies are fo totally different from thofe of organifed matter, that whereas our fenfes are eafily fatigued, overpowered, and destroyed by the force and intensity of objects fenfible, the intellect is roufed, quickened, and invigorated by the force and intenfity of objects intelligible; inftead of being overtrained or blunted, it sharpens and fortifies amid obftinate exertions; and finds in fuch alone its best improvement and most exquifite delight." P.47..

This account approaches very nearly to demonftration; the only hypothetical part is that where he fpeaks of certain "motions communicated to the internal organs, vivid and forcible when first produced by fenfation, more faint and languid when afterwards revived by imagination or memory." Employ only a more general term, fuch as eff cts or impreffions, and there is nothing of hypothefis in it; for that fome effects are thus produced, and in thefe comparative degrees, is matter of certain knowledge; though whether they are properly motions, or any other fpecies of impreffions, cannot eafily be decided. The great force of the argument is that between any two acts of fenfation, and the power that compares the two together there can be no refemblance. The fenfations are distinct and feparate the comparing power unites them both in a single inftant, and decides upon them,

We have adinitted into our prefent account fo much preliminary matter, that we must referve the remainder of our report to one or more fubfequent articles.

(To be continued.)

ART. II. The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the Thames. A fatirical l'oem. With Notes. Occafioned chiefly, but not wholly, by the Refidence of Henry Grattan, Ex-Reprefentative in Parliament for the City of Dublin, at Twickenham, in November, 198. By the Author of the Purfuits of Literature. Second Edition. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Becket. 1799.

IF

F we confider this Poem as a fifth book of the Pursuits of Literature, we fhall not greatly err in reprefenting its nature and defign. It was time to vary the form of a dialogue between the author and a friend; and the foliloquy of an ima

ginary