measures. In besieging the Norwegian fortress of Frederickshall, Charles XII. was killed by a cannon-ball, 11th December, 1718.

10. Sweden gained by the death of Charles a reformation of her government, and a salutary limitation of the arbitrary power of the sovereign. His sister Ulrica succeeded to the throne, and raised to it her husband, Frederick, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. The States made peace with all the hostile powers. The czar was now engaged in a war with Persia, in the view of obtaining the command and commerce of the Caspian. This object he accomplished, and gained, by cession from the Sophi, three provinces of the Persian empire.

11. Peter the Great died, 28th January, 1725, and was succeeded by the czarina Catharine, formerly a Livonian captive, but who possessed merit equal to her elevated situation. His only son, Alexis Petrowitz, had been condemned to lose his life for treason; and the mode of his death, which immediately followed his condemnation, is at this moment unknown. Russia owes to Peter the Great all those beneficial improvements which have raised her, within the period of a century, from barbarism and obscurity to the highest rank among the powers of Europe. LXVII.-A View of the Progress of Science and Literature in Europe, from the end of the Fifteenth to the end of the Seventeenth Century.

1. We have seen how much literature and the sciences were indebted to the art of printing for their advancement and dissemination towards the end of the 15th century. (Sect 34, § 12.) From that period classical learning, criticism, poetry, and history, made a rapid progress in most of the kingdoms of Europe. Philosophy did not keep pace. The dogmas of Aristotle had possession of the schools down to the 17th century, and had engrafted themselves even on the doctrines of theology. It required a superior genius to dissipate this mist of error, and break those fetters on all advancement in useful science; and such was the great Bacon, Lord Verulam, the most profound philosopher, and perhaps the most universal genius that any age has produced. We find in his works an estimate of the actual attainments in all the sciences, a catalogue of the desiderata in each department, and a detail of the methods best suited to prosecute improvement and new

discoveries. In fine, we owe to Bacon the sure method of advancing in knowledge by experiment and the observation of nature, instead of system and conjecture.

2. The philosophy of Bacon produced its effect only by slow degrees. Gassendi, though he exposed the doctrines of Aristotle, was still a theorist, and attempted to revive the atomic system of Epicurus. Des Cartes followed in the same track, and reared a whimsical theory of the universe, produced, as he supposed, by the fortuitous combination of atoms, moving in vortices through the immensity of space; a theory recommended by the ingenuity with which it was supported, and its apparently solving many of the phenomena of nature. [Des Cartes, however, is the first who laid down the laws of motion; especially that all bodies persist in their present state of rest or uniform rectilineal motion till affected by some force. The most erroneous part of his mechanical philosophy is contained in some propositions as to the collision of bodies, so palpably incompatible with obvious experience, that it seems truly wonderful he could ever have adopted them. But he was led into these paradoxes by one of the arbitrary hypotheses which always governed him. (Hallam's Lit. Europe, chap. viii. § 41.)] Copernicus had, a century before, published his system of the planets, which, though condemned by the church, was received by Des Cartes and the best philosophers.

3. Galileo, in 1609, constructed telescopes, (sect. 34, § 5,) and discovered the satellites of the larger planets, and their motions, for which he was rewarded by imprisonment, as a supporter of the Copernican heresy. Kepler investigated the laws which regulate the motions of the planets, and the analogy between their distances from the sun and periodical revolutions. The discoveries in astronomy led to improvements in navigation, and a great advancement of geometry in all its branches. Napier, in 1614, abridged calculation by the invention of logarithms. The Torricellian experiment determined the weight of the atmosphere. In 1616, Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood.

4. The Royal Society, which originated from private meetings of the English philosophers, was incoporated by Charles II. 1662, and has greatly contributed to the advancement of the sciences and useful arts. The Royal Academy of Sciences was instituted in 1666, by Louis

XIV.; and similar institutions were founded in most of the countries of Europe; among which there is a communication of science, and a laudable emulation excited by the publication of their transactions.

5. In the end of the 17th century arose the immortal Newton, who, by exhausting the most important discoveries of the laws of nature, has rendered it impossible for posterity to eclipse his fame. He had discovered, before the age of 24, the theory of universal gravitation, a principle which solves the chief phenomena of nature, and connects and regulates the whole machine of the universe. His theory of light and colours is the foundation of the whole science of optics, and his Principia the basis and elements of all philosophy.

6. Locke, the contemporary of Newton, successfully applied Lord Bacon's mode of investigation to the study of the human mind; and, utterly rejecting the system of the old philosophers, examined the soul by attending to its operations. From the simple fact, that all knowledge is progressive, and that an infant gains its ideas gradually, through the medium of its senses, he drew the general conclusion, that there are no innate ideas in the mind, but all are either immediate perceptions, conveyed by the senses, or acts of the mind reflecting on those perceptions; a conclusion which has been obstinately controverted, chiefly by drawing from it false consequences, but which has never yet been shaken.

7. The progress of literature in the 16th and 17th centuries was equally remarkable with that of science and philosophy. Trissino was the first of the moderns who composed an epic poem in the language of his country, L'Italia liberata da Goti, and the first Italian who wrote a regular tragedy, Sophonisba. Of much superior merit to the epic poem of Trissino, is the Lusiad of the Portuguese Camöens, a work abounding in passages of high poetic beauty, and displaying a sublime imagination. In the end of the 16th century, Spain produced the Araucana of Ercilla, an epic poem of great inequality of merit, but frequently exhibiting novelty of figures and bold conceptions. The subject is a revolt of the Peruvians against the Spaniards.

8. But the principal epic poems of this age are the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, and the Gierusalemme Liberato of Tasso; the former a work most irregular in its plan,

mest unconnected and desultory in its conduct, most extravagant and absurd in the characters of its persons, but displaying alternately every excellence of poetry in the various departments of the descriptive, comic, satiric, moral, and sublime. The Gierusalemme of Tasso, of a regular plan and perfect polish in its structure, [and allegorical in its composition,] has been frequently brought in comparison with the equally high finished poem of the Eneid; nor does the Italian suffer much in the comparison. There is a romantic charm both in the incidents and characters of his poem, which must ever render it a favourite with all readers of genuine taste.

9. From the time of Tasso, the genius of epic poetry lay dormant for a century, till the days of Milton; for the Fairy Queen of Spenser is rather a romantic allegory than an epic poem. The Paradise Lost, compared with the great poems of antiquity, is more irregular, and less perfect, as a whole, than the Iliad, Eneid, and Odyssey, but exhibits, in detached parts, more of the sublime and be autiful than all of them. It has been well remarked, that the inequality of this poem arises, in a great measure, from the nature of the subject, of which some parts are the most lofty that can enter into the human mind, and others could only have been supported by a laborious elegan ce and polish, which the author's genius could not stoop to bestow.

10. Lyric poetry was cultivated in the 16th century, in Italy, France, and England, but with no high success. The lesser poems of Ariosto and Tasso have no tincture of the genius displayed in their greater works. Chiabrera is perhaps the only lyric poet of this period that merits distinction. In France, Ronsard and Bellay imitated Petrarch with all his false wit, but without his passion. Marot, however, in the naiveté and easy vein of his humour, is justly accounted the master of La Fontaine. In the beginning of the 17th century, French versification received a considerable polish from the compositions of Racan, and yet more from those of Malherbe: and towards the end of that century lyric poetry was cultivated with high success by La Fare, Chapelle [whose real name was L'Huillier] and Bachaumont, Chaulieu, and Gresset.

11. The English lyric poetry of the 16th century, of [Sackville], Spenser, Surrey, Harrington, Sydney, and even Shakspeare, is harsh and inharmonious; nor is much

improvement discernible till the time of Cowley and Waller. The merit of Cowley as a lyric poet was too highly prized in his own age, and is underrated in ours. With all his false wit, pedantry, and obscurity, he is often both sublime and pathetic, in no moderate degree. The lyric ode in the third book of the Davideis has few parallels in the English language. As a prose writer, Cowley shines in that age with superior excellence. Waller is more polished and harmonious than any of the preceding or contemporary poets, but his wit is quaint, and his elevation too frequently bombast.

12. Dryden, in the end of the 17th century, carried lyric poetry to its highest perfection. His ode on St. Cecilia's day, surpasses all the lyric compositions both of antiquity and modern times. He shines conspicuously as a satirist, possessing the keen and caustic wit without the indelicacy of Juvenal or Horace. His versions from Chaucer and Boccaccio are easy and spirited, and display a happy talent for poetic narrative. His numerous dramatic pieces, though exhibiting both invention and poetical beauty, are deficient in true passion and in the just delineation of character.

13. It was not till the end of the 16th century that the drama in Europe began to furnish a rational entertainment. At that period Lope de Vega and Calderona in Spain, and Shakspeare in England, produced those pieces which, though irregular and stained with blemishes, are at this day the admiration of their countrymen. The Spanish plays of that age have been a rich mine for succeeding dramatists, both among the French, Italians, and English. The merits of Shakspeare are familiar to every person of taste. Ignorant of the rules of his art, he is the pure child of nature, and thus exhibits often her caprices and absurdities; but these are redeemed by the most transcendent beauties. The old English drama is, with all its irregularities, incomparably superior to the modern, both in touching the passions, and in displaying just views of human character. The persons are more discriminated by various and appropriate features, and the nicer shades of nearly resembling characters are thus more distinctly marked. The mixture of the comic and tragic in the same plot, though condemned by modern practice, is a great source of pleasure in the pieces of Shakspeare and his contemporaries; nor is there any thing in such a mix