PERITURAE PARCERE CHARTAE.
What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in ma.n.u.script a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual "literati" of the country, if they would publish the valuable ma.n.u.scripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of----, but it is treading on hot embers!
TO HAVE AND TO BE.
The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet: Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange souls!
The following is offered as a mere playful ill.u.s.tration:
"Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet.
Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave?
I said you had no soul,"tis true: For what you are, you cannot have-- "Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.
PARTY Pa.s.sION.
"Well, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impa.s.sionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?"--"Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes"s talents!"--"Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?"--"Why, Madam! he squints, doesn"t he?"--"Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!"
GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO A MAN OF GENIUS.
"If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man"s being the good poet without being first a good man. (Dedication to "the Fox")."
Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and n.o.ble sentiment from Strabo.
[Greek (transliterated): "h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron genaethenta andra agathon.]
( Lib. I. p. 33. folio.)
MILTON AND BEN JONSON.
Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan"s address to the sun in "Paradise Lost" to the first lines of Ben Jonson"s Poetaster:
"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness!"
But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly ent.i.tled an apotheosis of Jonson"s lines than an imitation.
STATISTICS.
We all remember Burke"s curious a.s.sertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prost.i.tutes, and thieves in the City of London.
Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he a.s.sures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.
MAGNANIMITY.
The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it a.s.suredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:--
"Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium; Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo; Bellerophontisve alitem
Nos vero illo donati sumus genio, Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus, Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera Ingrato adsimus pectore.
Non curamus stultorum quid opinio De n.o.bis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.
Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus!
Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita, Vidimus, quantum satis est.
Illuc conscendent plurimi, n.o.bis ducibus, Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore, Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni; Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus, Divinantum phantasmata.
Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet, Non indoles exculti clara ingenii; Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo, Miraculum armati segete.
Versificantis grammatistae encomium, Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia Lectorem libri salutantum a limine, Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges, Hinc absint testimonia!
Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila, Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae Humano dorso! Porra veri species Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat!
Etsi nullus intelligat, Si c.u.m natura sapio, et sub numine, Id vere plus quam satis est."
The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race; excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the cognizance of our "sober judicious critics," the men of "sound common sense;" that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c.
must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort is,--"Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your reason!"
By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the design and tendency of Bruno"s "Bestia Triomphante"; the object of which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion, and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual discovery. But the princ.i.p.al and most important truth taught in this allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience; that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which are in G.o.d"s power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of the universe, are all alike dangerous superst.i.tions. The worship founded on them, whether offered by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor African to his Fetish differ in form only, not in substance. Herein Bruno speaks not only as a philosopher, but as an enlightened Christian;--the Evangelists and Apostles every where representing their moral precepts not as doctrines then first revealed, but as truths implanted in the hearts of men, which their vices only could have obscured.
NEGROS AND NARCISSUSES.
There are certain tribes of Negros who take for the deity of the day the first thing they see or meet with in the morning. Many of our fine ladies, and some of our very fine gentlemen, are followers of the same sect; though by aid of the looking-gla.s.s they secure a constancy as to the object of their devotion.
AN ANECDOTE.
We here in England received a very high character of Lord ---- during his stay abroad. "Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller; "a dead dog at a distance is said to smell like musk."
THE PHAROS AT ALEXANDRIA.
Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasives from sensual indulgencies, in the works of theologians as well as of satirists and story-writers, may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos; the many lights of which appeared at a distance as one, and this as a polar star, so as more often to occasion wrecks than prevent them.
At the base of the Pharos the name of the reigning monarch was engraved, on a composition, which the artist well knew would last no longer than the king"s life. Under this, and cut deep in the marble itself, was his own name and dedication: "Sostratos of Gyndos, son of Dexiteles to the G.o.ds, protectors of sailors!"--So will it be with the "Georgium Sidus"