he maintains that the very nature of man leads to the exercise of benevolent and disinterested affections in the social state. Conscience he defines as the 'moral sense,' a phrase of which he is the author, and makes this sense akin to feeling, taste, and sentiment rather than to reason. This doctrine, left by its founder in a somewhat unsystematic shape, was taken up and developed by Hutcheson, and influenced Hume and Adam Smith. Shaftesbury was attacked in his own time both by the followers of Clarke's 'intellectual system' and by the more thorough utilitarians. The THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. From an Engraving by Rivers, after Closterman. gentle Berkeley railed at him, and the rugged Warburton dissented from his opinions, while warmly praising his character. Butler heartily admired Shaftesbury's support of the 'natural obligation of virtue;' and there is in all his work evidence of sincere, warm, earnest feeling, the outcome of a generous mind. Sidgwick regards the appearance of the Characteristics as a turningpoint in English ethical speculation, and treats its author as 'the first to make psychological experience the basis of ethics;' and Hettner sees in him a power in European thought. A pronounced optimist, Shaftesbury insisted that God should be loved without fear of reward or punishment, and argued that 'religion is still a discipline and the progress of the soul towards perfection,' a thought which, contemplating not merely the individual but the race, contains the germ of Lessing's famous Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes, and may have suggested this theme to Lessing, who was a diligent student of the Characteristics. Moses Mendelssohn, Herder, and even Kant were influenced by the English peer; Leibnitz and Diderot admired him; and so did Voltaire, though he caricatured his optimism in Candide. Gray, on the other hand, speaks scornfully of Shaftesbury's philosophy; and, oddly enough, Pope, who paraphrased Bolingbroke and was Shaftesbury's friend, told Warburton that the Characteristics had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity put together.' Yet it is impossible not to see that Shaftesbury's philosophy was the foundation of Bolingbroke's. Mackintosh, who rightly thought Shaftesbury's ethical work had at first been admired beyond its literary or philosophical merits, and had next been too unsparingly condemned or still more unjustly neglected, somewhat extravagantly said of the first passage quoted below from The Moralists, that there is scarcely any composition in our language more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments, or more exquisitely elegant and musical in its diction.' From 'Advice to an Author.' One who aspires to the character of a man of breeding and politeness is careful to form his judgment of arts and sciences upon right models of perfection. If he travels to Rome, he inquires which are the truest pieces of architecture, the best remains of statues, the best paintings of a Raphael or a Carache [Caracci]. However antiquated, rough, or dismal they may appear to him at first sight, he resolves to view them over and over, till he has brought himself to relish them, and finds their hidden graces and perfections. He takes particular care to turn his eye from every thing which is gaudy, luscious, and of a false taste. Nor is he less careful to turn his ear from every sort of musick besides that which is of the best manner and truest harmony. 'Twere to be wished we had the same regard to a right taste in life and manners. What mortal being once convinced of a difference in inward character, and of a preference due to one kind above another, would not be concerned to make his own the best? If civility and humanity be a taste; if brutality, insolence, riot, be in the same manner a taste, who, if he could reflect, would not chuse to form himself on the amiable and agreeable rather than the odious and perverse model? Who would not endeavour to force nature as well in this respect as in what relates to a taste or judgment in other arts and sciences? For in each place the force on nature is used only for its redress. If a natural good taste be not already formed in us, why should not we endeavour to form it, and become natural? 'I like! I fancy! I admire! How? By accident: or as I please. No. But I learn to fancy, to admire, to please, as the subjects themselves are deserving and can bear me out. Otherwise, I like at this hour, but dislike the next. I shall be weary of my pursuit, and, upon experience, find little pleasure in the main, if my choice and judgment in it be from no other rule than that single one, because I please. Grotesque and monstrous figures often please. Cruel spectacles and barbarities are also found to please, and, in some tempers, to please beyond all other subjects. But is this pleasure right? And shall I follow it if it presents? Not strive with it, or endeavour to prevent its growth or prevalency in my temper?-How stands the case in a more soft and flattering kind of pleasure?—Effeminacy pleases me. The Indian figures, the Japan-work, the en imel strikes my eye. The luscious colours and glossy paint gain upon my fancy. A French or Flemish style is highly liked by me, at first sight; and I pursue my liking. But what ensues? Do I not for ever forfeit my good relish? How is it possible I should thus come to taste the beauties of an Italian master, or of a hand happily formed on nature and the antients? 'Tis not by wantonness and humour that I shall attain my end, and arrive at the enjoyment I propose. The art itself is severe : the rules rigid. And if I expect the knowledge should come to me by accident, or in play, I shall be grossly deluded, and prove myself, at best, a mock-virtuoso, or mere pedant of the kind.' Here therefore we have once again exhibited our moral science in the same method and manner of soliloquy as above. To this correction of humour and formation of a taste, our reading, if it be of the right sort, must principally contribute. Whatever company we keep, or however polite and agreeable their characters may be with whom we converse or correspond, if the authors we read are of another kind, we shall find our palate strangely turned their way. We are the unhappier in this respect for being scholars if our studies be ill chosen. Nor can I, for this reason, think it proper to call a man well-read who reads many authors, since he must of necessity have more ill models than good, and be more stuffed with bombast, ill fancy, and wry thought, than filled with solid sense and just imagination. But notwithstanding this hazard of our taste from a multiplicity of reading, we are not, it seems, the least scrupulous in our choice of subject. We read whatever comes next us. What was first put into our hand when we were young, serves us afterwards for serious study and wise research, when we are old. We are many of us, indeed, so grave as to continue this exercise of youth through our remaining life. The exercising authors of this kind have been above described, in the beginning of this treatise. The manner of exercise is called meditation, and is of a sort so solemn and profound, that we dare not so much as thorowly examine the subject on which we are bid to meditate. This is a sort of task-reading, in which a taste is not permitted. How little soever we take of this diet, 'tis sufficient to give full exercise to our grave humour, and allay the appetite towards further research and solid contemplation. The rest is holiday, diversion, play, and fancy. We reject all rule: as thinking it an injury to our diversions to have regard to truth or nature without which, however, nothing can be truly agreeable or entertaining, much less instructive or improving. Through a certain surfeit taken in a wrong kind of serious reading, we apply ourselves, with full content, to the most ridiculous. The more remote our pattern is from any thing moral or profitable, the more freedom and satisfaction we find in it. We care not how Gothick or barbarous our models are; what illdesigned or monstrous figures we view; or what false proportions we trace, or see described in history, romance, or fiction. And thus our eye and ear is lost. Our relish or taste must of necessity grow barbarous whilst barbarian customs, savage manners, Indian wars, and wonders of the terra incognita employ our leisure hours, and are the chief materials to furnish out a library. These are in our present days what books of chivalry were in those of our forefathers. I know not what faith our valiant ancestors may have had in the stories of their giants, their dragons, and St Georges. But for our faith indeed as well as our taste, in this other way of reading, I must confess I can't consider it without astonishment. It must certainly be something else than incredulity which fashions the taste and judgment of many gentle. men, whom we hear censured as atheists for alte pting to philosophize after a newer manner than any known of late. For my own part, I have ever thought this sort of men to be in general more credulous, though after ano: her manner, than the mere vulgar Besides what I have observed in conversation with the men of this character, I can produce many anathematized authors who, if they want a true Israelitish faith, can make amends by a Chinese or Indian one. If they are short in Syria or the Palestine, they have their full measure in America or Japan. Histories of Incas or Iroquois written by friars and missionaries, pirates and renegades, sea-captains and trusty travellers, pass for authentick records, and are canonical, with the virtuosos of this sort. Though Christian miracles may not so well satisfy them, they dwell with the highest contentment on the prodigies of Moorish and pagan countries. They have far more pleasure in hearing the monstrous accounts of monstrous men and manners, than the politest and best narrations of the affairs, the governments, and lives of the wisest and most polished people. 'Tis the same taste which makes us prefer a Turkish history to a Grecian or a Roman, an Ariosto to a Virgil, and a romance or novel to an Iliad. We have no regard to the character or genius of our author: nor are so far curious as to observe how able he is in the judg ment of facts, or how ingenious in the texture of his lies. For facts unably related, though with the greatest sincerity and good faith, may prove the worst sort of deceit and mere lies, judiciously composed, can teach us the truth of things beyond any other manner. But to amuse ourselves with such authors as neither know how to lie nor tell truth, discovers a taste which methinks one should not be apt to envy. Yet so enchanted we are with the travelling memoirs of any casual adventurer, that, be his character or genius what it will, we have no sooner turned over a page or two than we begin to interest curselves highly in his affairs. No sooner has he taken shipping at the mouth of the Thames, or sent his baggage before him to Gravesend or buoy in the Nore, than strait our attention is earnestly taken up. If in order to his more distant travels he takes some part of Europe in his way, we can with patience hear of inns and ordinaries, passage-boats and ferries, foul and fair weather; with all the particulars of the author's diet, habit of body, his personal dangers and mischances on land and sea. And thus full of desire and hope we accompany him till he enters on his great scene of action, and begins by the description of some enormous fish or beast. From monstrous brutes he proceeds to yet more monstrous men. For in this race of authors he is ever completest and of the first rank who is able to speak of things the most unnatural and monstrous. This humour our old tragick poet seems to have discovered. He hit our taste in giving us a Moorish hero, full fraught with prodigy: a wondrous story-teller! But for the attentive part, the poet chose to give it to woman kind. What passionate reader of travels or student in the prodigious sciences can refuse to pity that fair lady who fell in love with the miraculous Moor; especially considering with what suitable grace such a lover could relate the most monstrous adventures and satisfy the wondering appetite with the most wondrous tales; wherein (says the hero-traveller): 'Of antres vast and deserts idle. . It was my hint to speak . . . And of the cannibals that each other eat. Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Seriously, 'twas a woful tale! unfit, one would think, to win a tender fair-one. It's true, the poet sufficiently condemns her fancy, and makes her (poor lady!) pay dearly for it in the end. But why, amongst his Greek names, he should have chosen one which denoted the lady superstitious [deisidaimonia in Greek means superstition] I can't imagine: unless, as poets are sometimes prophets too, he should figuratively, under this dark type, have represented to us that about a hundred. years after his time, the fair sex of this island should, by other monstrous tales, be so seduced as to turn their favour chiefly on the persons of the tale-tellers, and change their natural inclination for fair, candid, and courteous knights into a passion for a mysterious race of black enchanters, such as of old were said to creep into houses and lead captive silly women. 'Tis certain there is a very great affinity between the passion of superstition and that of tales. The love of strange narrations and the ardent appetite towards unnatural objects has a near alliance with the like appetite towards the supernatural kind, such as are called prodigious and of dire omen. For so the mind forebodes on every such unusual sight or hearing. Fate, destiny, or the anger of Heaven seems denoted and as it were delineated by the monstrous birth, the horrid fact, or dire event. For this reason the very persons of such relators or tale-tellers, with a small help of dismal habit, suitable countenance and tone, become sacred and tremendous in the eyes of mortals who are thus addicted from their youth. The tender virgins, losing their natural softness, assume this tragick passion, of which they are highly susceptible, especially when a suitable kind of eloquence and action attends the character of the A thousand Desdemona's are then ready to present themselves, and would frankly resign fathers, relations, countrymen, and country itself to follow the fortunes of a hero of the black tribe. narrator. But whatever monstrous zeal or superstitious passion the poet might foretell, either in the gentlemen, ladies, or common people of an after age, 'tis certain that as to books the same Moorish fancy in its plain and literal sense prevails strongly at this present time. Monsters and monsterlands were never more in request: And we may often see a philosopher or a wit run a talegathering in those idle deserts, as familiarly as the silliest woman or merest boy. The Nobler Love. 'You shall find then, said I (taking a grave air), that it is possible for me to be serious, and that 'tis probable I am growing so, for good and all. Your over-seriousness awhile since, at such an unseasonable time, may have driven me perhaps into a contrary extreme, by opposition to your melancholy humour. But I have now a better idea of that melancholy you discovered; and notwithstanding the humorous turn you were pleased to give it, I am persuaded it has a different foundation from any of those fantastical causes I then assigned to it. Love, doubtless, is at the bottom: but a nobler love than such as common beauties inspire.' Here in my turn I began to raise my voice, and imitate the solemn way you had been teaching me. 'Knowing as you are, continued I, well-knowing and experienced in all the degrees and orders of beauty, in all the mysterious charms of the particular forms, you rise to what is more general; and with a larger heart, and mind more comprehensive, you generously seek that which is highest in the kind. Not captivated by the lineaments of a fair face, or the well-drawn proportions of a human body, you view the life itself, and embrace rather the mind which adds the lustre, and renders chiefly amiable. 'Nor is the enjoyment of such a single beauty sufficient to satisfy such an aspiring soul. It seeks how to combine more beauties, and by what coalition of these to form a beautiful society. It views communities, friendships, relations, duties, and considers by what harmony of particular minds the general harmony is composed and commonweal established. 'Nor satisfied even with publick good in one community of men, it frames itself a nobler object, and with enlarged affection seeks the good of mankind. It dwells with pleasure amidst that reason and those orders on which this fair correspondence and goodly interest is established. Laws, constitutions, civil and religious rites; whatever civilizes or polishes rude mankind; the sciences and arts, philosophy, morals, virtue; the flourishing state of human affairs, and the perfection of human nature; these are its delightful prospects, and this the charm of beauty which attracts it. 'Still ardent in this pursuit (such is its love of order and perfection), it rests not here, nor satisfies itself with the beauty of a part; but extending further its communicative bounty, seeks the good of all, and affects the interest and prosperity of the whole. True to its native world and higher country, 'tis here it seeks order and perfection, wishing the best, and hoping still to find a just and wise administration. 'And since all hope of this were vain and idle if no universal mind presided, since without such a supreme intelligence and providential care the distracted universe must be condemned to suffer infinite calamities, 'tis here the generous mind labours to discover that healing cause by which the interest of the whole is securely established, the beauty of things, and the universal order happily sustained. 'This, Palemon, is the labour of your soul, and this its melancholy, when, unsuccessfully pursuing the supreme beauty, it meets with darkning clouds which intercept its sight. Monsters arise-not those from Lybian deserts, but from the heart of man more fertile-and with their horrid aspect cast an unseemly reflection upon nature. She, helpless (as she is thought) and working thus absurdly, is contemned, the government of the world arraigned, and Deity made void. 'Much is alledged in answer to shew why nature errs, and how she came thus impotent and erring from an unerring hand. But I deny she errs; and when she seems most ignorant or perverse in her productions, I assert her even then as wise and provident as in her goodliest works. For 'tis not then that men complain of the world's order, or abhor the face of things, when they see various interests mixed and interfering; natures subordinate, of different kinds, opposed one to another, and in their different operations submitted, the higher to the lower. 'Tis, on the contrary, from this order of inferior and superior things that we admire the world's beauty, founded thus on contrarieties: whilst from such various and disagreeing principles a universal concord is established. 'Thus in the several orders of terrestrial forms a resignation is required, a sacrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death sustain the animals: and animal bodies dissolved enrich the earth and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous insects are reduced by the superior kinds of birds and beasts: and these again are checked by man, who in his turn submits to other natures, and resigns his form a sacrifice in common to the rest of things. And if in natures so little exalted or pre-eminent above each other the sacrifice of interests can appear so just, how much more reasonably may all inferior natures be subjected to the superior nature of the world! That world, Palemon, which even now transported you when the sun's fainting light gave way to these bright constellations, and left you this wide system to contemplate. 'Here are those laws which ought not, nor can submit to any thing below. The central powers, which hold the lasting orbs in their just poize and movement, must not be controuled to save a fleeting form, and rescue from the precipice a puny animal, whose brittle frame, however protected, must of itself so soon dissolve. The ambient air, the inward vapours, the impending meteors, or whatever else is nutrimental or preservative of this earth, must operate in a natural course: and other constitutions must submit to the good habit and constitution of the all-sustaining globe. 'Let us not therefore wonder if by earthquakes, storms, pestilential blasts, nether or upper fires, or floods, the animal kinds are oft afflicted, and whole species perhaps involved at once in common ruin: but much less let us account it strange if, either by outward shock or some interior wound from hostile matter, particular animals are deformed even in their first conception, when the disease invades the seats of generation, and seminal parts are injured and obstructed in their accurate labours. 'Tis then alone that monstrous shapes are seen: nature still working as before, and not perversely or erroneously; not faintly, or with feeble endeavours; but o'erpower'd by a superior rival, and by another nature's justly conquering force. 'Nor need we wonder if the interior form, the soul and temper, partakes of this occasional deformity, and sympathizes often with its close partner. Who is there can wonder either at the sicknesses of sense, or the depravity of minds inclosed in such frail bodies, and dependent on such pervertible organs? 'Here then is that solution you require, and hence those seeming blemishes cast upon nature. Nor is there ought in this beside what is natural and good. 'Tis good which is predominant; and every corruptible and mortal nature by its mortality and corruption yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest nature, which is incorruptible and immortal.' (From Part I. of The Moralists.) Of Dialogue. This brings to my mind a reason I have often sought for, why we moderns, who abound so much in treatises and essays, are so sparing in the way of dialogue, which heretofore was found the politest and best way of managing even the graver subjects. The truth is, 'twould be an abominable falshood and belying of the age to put so much good sense together in any one conversation as might make it hold out steadily and with plain coherence for an hour's time, till any one subject had been rationally examined. (From The Moralists.) Religion & Discipline and Progress of the Soul. Now whether our friend be unfeignedly and sincerely of this latter sort of real theologists, you will learn best from the consequences of his hypothesis. You will observe whether, instead of ending in mere speculation, it leads to practice: and you will then surely be satisfied, when you see such a structure raised as with the generality of the world must pass at least for high re ligion, and with some, in all likelihood, for no less than enthusiasm. For I appeal to you, Philocles, whether there be any thing in divinity which you think has more the air of enthusiasm than that notion of divine love, such as separates from everything worldly, sensual, or meanlyinterested? A love which is simple, pure, and unmixed; which has no other object than merely the excellency of that Being itself, nor admits of any other thought of happiness than in its single fruition. Now I dare presume you will take it as a substantial proof of my friend's being far enough from irreligion if it be shewn that he has espoused this notion, and thinks of making out this high point of divinity, from arguments familiar even to those who oppose religion. According therefore to his hypothesis, he would in the first place, by way of prevention, declare to you, that though the disinterested love of God were the most excellent principle, yet he knew very well that by the indiscreet zeal of some devout well-meaning people it had been stretched too far, perhaps even to extravagance and enthusiasm; as formerly among the mysticks of the antient church, whom these of latter days have followed. On the other hand, that there were those who in opposi tion to this devout mystick way, and as professed enemies to what they call enthusiasm, had so far exploded every. thing of this ecstatick kind as in a manner to have given up devotion, and in reality had left so little of zeal, affection, or warmth in what they call their rational religion as to make them much suspected of their sincerity in any. For though it be natural enough (he would tell you) for a mere political writer to ground his great argument for religion on the necessity of such a belief as that of a future reward and punishment; yet, if you will take his opinion, 'tis a very ill token of sincerity in religion, and in the Christian religion more especially, to reduce it to such a philsophy as will allow no room to that other principle of love, but treats all of that kind as enthusiasm, for so much as aiming at what is called disinterestedness, or teaching the love of God or virtue for God or virtue's sake. Here then we have two sorts of people (according to my friend's account) who in these opposite extremes expose religion to the insults of its adversaries. For as on one hand 'twill be found difficult to defend the notion of that high-raised love espoused with so much warmth by those devout mysticks; so, on the other hand, 'twill be found as hard a task, upon the principles of these cooler men, to guard religion from the imputation of mercenariness and a slavish spirit. For how shall one deny that to serve God by compulsion, or for interest merely, is servile and mercenary? Is it not evident 6 that the only true and liberal service paid either to that supreme Being, or to any other superior, is that which proceeds from an esteem or love of the person served, a sense of duty or gratitude, and a love of the dutiful and grateful part, as good and amiable in itself'? · And where is the injury to religion from such a concession as this? Or what detraction is it from the belief of an after-reward or punishment to own that the service caused by it is not equal to that which is voluntary and with inclination, but is rather disingenuous and of the slavish kind'? Is it not still for the good of mankind and of the world that obedience to the rule of right should some way or other be paid; if not in the better way, yet at least in this imperfect one? And is it not to be shewn, 'that although this service of fear be allowed ever so low or base, yet religion still being a discipline and progress of the soul towards perfection, the motive of reward and punishment is primary and of the highest moment with us; till, being capable of more sublime instruction, we are led from this servile state to the generous service of affection and love'? To this it is that in our friend's opinion we ought all of us to aspire, so as to endeavour that the excellence of the object, not the reward or punishment, should be our motive: but that where, through the corruption of our nature, the former of these motives is found insufficient to excite to virtue, there the latter should be brought in aid, and on no account be undervalued or neglected.' (From Part II. of The Moralists.) See German books on Shaftesbury's philosophy by Spicker (1872) and Gizycki (1876); Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876); Professor Fowler's Shaftesbury and Hutcheson ('Philosophers' series, 1882); the Life and Unpublished Letters, by Bertrand Rand (1900); and the new edition of the Characteristics, by J. M. Robertson (1900). John Gay. Italian opera and English pastorals were driven out of the field at this time by easy, indolent, good-humoured John Gay (1685-1732), most artless and best beloved of all the Pope and Swift circle of wits and poets. Gay was born at Barnstaple, younger son of an impoverished house. Both parents dying when he was about ten years old, he was, after receiving his education in the free grammar - school of his native town, put apprentice to a silk-mercer in London; but disliking this employment, he at length obtained his discharge from his master. In 1708 he published a poem in blank verse entitled Wine; in 1712 he became domestic secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth; and in 1713 appeared his Rural Sports, dedicated to Pope, in which we may trace his joy at emancipation from shopkeeping: But I, who ne'er was blessed by Fortune's hand, A comedy, The Wife of Bath (1713), was not successful. Then came a trivial poem in three books entitled The Fan. The Shepherd's Week, in Six Pastorals (1714), was written to throw ridicule on those of Ambrose Philips, but contains so much genuine comic humour and such entertaining pictures of country-life that it became popular, not as satire, but as affording 'a prospect of his own country.' In an address to the 'courteous reader' Gay says: 'Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or if the hogs are astray, driving them to their sties. My shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge; nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none.' This 'historical' view of rural life was imitated by Allan Ramsay, and was followed by Crabbe with a moral aim to which Gay never aspired. In February 1715 appeared The What d'ye Call It? a tragi-comi-pastoral farce, which the audience had 'not wit enough to take;' and next year, assisted by hints from Swift, Gay produced his mock-heroic Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London, in which he gives a graphic account of the dangers and impediments then encountered in traversing the narrow, crowded, ill-lighted, and vice- infested thoroughfares of the metropolis. His pictures of City-life are in the Dutch style, familiar but forcibly drawn. Here is The Bookstall. Volumes on sheltered stalls expanded lie, The bending shelves with ponderous scholiasts groan, |