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veries by his successors. In that which regards the sentient and active part of human nature, he has set out from principles, or rather assumptions, so utterly false as to contract and debase his ethics, and to render his politics a mere system of slavery. Should we be so happy as to meet Mr. Stewart when, in the sequel of this discourse, he renders that justice to Locke which there has been of late a disposition to deny to that incomparable person, we may have again an opportunity to consider the writings of Hobbes-undoubtedly the mine from which Mr. Locke extracted part of his treasure: and if ever a contrast between the intellect and character of two great philosophers can be instructive, it seems to be in that which is so striking between the mode and spirit in which Hobbes and Locke have cultivated the same science, and sometimes expounded the same truths. We are told by Mr. Stewart, that "the theory so fashionable at present, which resolves the whole of morality into the principle of Utility, is more nearly akin to Hobbism than some of its partisans are aware of." (Disc. 138.) It is curious to observe," says he, in another place, "how nearly Hobbes and Locke set out from the same assumptions, though they differ so widely in their practical conclusions." (Disc. 62.) There is one sense in which the first of the observations must be allowed to be more absolutely just than it is represented to be. It is that in which Leibnitz regards many ethical systems which hold very different language, as being no more than modifications of a principle differing only in name from that of utility. "The next question," says he, "is, whether the preservation of human society be the principle of the law of nature. This the excellent writer denies, in opposition to Grotius, who founds the obligations of that law in its tendency to maintain society; to Hobbes, who derives it from mutual fear; and to Cumberland, who derives it from mutual benevolence-both which last systems are equally resolvable into its tendency to preserve society." The theory of talent, and the various forms of intellectual character, an equally important and imperfectly cultivated subject, leads Mr. Stewart to observe, that the distinction of Locke between wit and judgment, is substantially the same with that of Malebranche between the sound sense which discerns real differences and the superficial thinker who imagines or supposes resemblances; and finally, with that of Bacon, who says, that "the great and radical division of minds, in relation to philosophy and the sciences, is into the Acute, who can discover the smallest shade of differenceand the Sublime and Discursive, who recognise the slender resemblances of things the most unlike.”

But it seems to us, that no two of these distinctions relate precisely to the same subject. Those of Bacon and Malebranche agree in being applied to the reasoning powers, and to their employment in the pursuit of truth. The distinction is expressly so limited by Bacon; and the words of Malebranche, where he speaks of" supposing resemblances" as the vice of "shallow intellects," clearly imply the same limitation. Malebranche contrasts the healthy state of reason with its chief disease. The division of Lord Bacon is into the two grand classes of merely intellectual power-the acute and the comprehensive understanding; of which last he is himself the most sublime example that human nature has yet exhibited-by the wide range of his reason, independent of all consideration of his splendid imagination, which was only the minister and interpreter of what Leibnitz calls

*The law of nature, here, evidently is co-extensive with morality. The passage is in the Letter to Molanus, cited above, and written in 1700,

his "divine genius. "* The distinction of Locke appears to us to be entirely of another kind. It is not like that of Bacon—the description of two sorts of intellect, both confined to objects of science;-nor like that of Malebranche, a mere contrast between cursory and patient observers. It is a discrimination between the two powers of wit and judgment. It is so far from being limited to philosophising, like the two others, that one of the members is totally without the province of philosophy. Wit can never have any influence on reasoning, but to disturb it. The titles of the chapter and section of Locke, of which the last is "The Difference between Wit and Judgment," manifestly point to a distinction between mental powers essentially different, and employed for different purposes. In all but the terms, it corresponds to the distinction of Hobbes (Hum. Nat. c. 10.) between fancy and judgment. But, says Hobbes, "both fancy and judgment are comprehended under the name of wit." This word has, indeed, in the course of two centuries, passed through more significations than most others in our language. Without going farther back than the reign of James I., wit is used by Sir J. Davies as the most general name for the intellectual faculties, of which reason, judgment, wisdom, etc. are subdivisions. (Immort. of Soul, sect. XXV. In the time of Cowley and Hobbes, it came to denote a superior degree of understanding, and more particularly a quick and brilliant reason. In the famous description of facetiousness by Barrow, the greatest proof of mastery over language ever given by an English writer, wit seems to have retained the acceptation of intellectual superiority. In Dryden's character of Lord Shaftesbury, it has the same signification; and is very nearly synonimous with the modern words talent or ability. But in the course of forty years, from the publication of Hobbes to that of Locke, it had come to denote that particular talent which consists in lively and ingenious combinations of thought. In Mr. Addison's papers on wit, we find an approach to the modern sense of the term. To Mr. Locke's account, which he adopts with warm commendation, he expressly adds (what was perhaps implied in Mr. Locke's language), that it must be such "an assemblage of ideas as will give delight and surprise." From a shade in the meaning of this last word, has gradually arisen that more limited sense of ludicrous surprise, which seems now an essential part of the import of wit, except where some of its more ancient significations are revived by epithets, or preserved in phrases which have descended from former times.

Having mentioned Mr. Addison, in this Discourse very beautifully called the English Fénélon, we cannot refrain from expressing our satisfaction at the justice rendered by Mr. Stewart to the admirable Essays on the Pleasures of Imagination. Perhaps they may deserve a still more ample consideration, when he comes to consider the philosophy of the eighteenth century, in which they seem to have opened a new path of speculation. If we are to measure the previous progress by the notes on Boileau's Longinus, the most eminent writer who had treated a similar subject about the same lime, we must allow that Mr. Addison has made a step in philosophy. We are not indeed aware, that any writer before him had classed together the pleasures of contemplating beauty in nature and the arts, or had distinguished that class of sentiments from the pleasures of sense, as well as those attendant on the exertion of the understanding; or had set the example of classifying them by subdivision, under such heads as Novelty, Beauty, and

* "Divini Ingenii Vir, Franciscus Bacon de Verulamio."

Sublimity. His own claim to originality may indeed be received as a proof of its justice. The modesty of his character, the result of the purity of his taste, as well as of his virtue, is an ample security against undue pretensions. "The Characteristics" had indeed been published a very short time before but the moral colour of that ingenious and often beautiful work, rather rendered it more difficult to distinguish and separate the pleasures of imagination, which were lost in the splendour of a stronger light.

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Soon after the time of Mr. Addison, the application of philosophy, to what he called the pleasures of imagination, became a favourite pursuit in the several countries of Europe. In this country, it was cultivated by a long succession of ingenious writers, of whom some, and these the greatest men of their age, are in this province the disciples of Mr. Addison. On a subject of a very different nature, the two hundred and eighty-seventh Number of the " Spectator" may be recommended to the perusal of those who doubt the vigour and the originality of Mr. Addison's understanding. "That form of government," says he, appears to me the most reasonable which is most conformable to the equality that we find in human nature, provided it be consistent with public peace.". 66 It is odd to consider the connection between despotic government and barbarity; and how the making of one person more than man makes the rest less. Above nine parts of the world in ten are in the lowest state of slavery, and consequently sunk into the most gross and brutal ignorance. European slavery is indeed a state of liberty, if compared with that which prevails in the other three divisions of the world; and therefore, it is no wonder that those who grovel under it, have many tracks of light. Riches and plenty are the natural effects of liberty; and where these abound, learning and all the liberal arts will immediately lift up their heads and flourish. Ease and plenty are the great cherishers of knowledge; and, as most of the despotic governments of the world have neither of them, they are naturally overrun with ignorance and barbarity." The seeds of curiosity scattered abroad by the Essay of Mr. Locke, who had recalled the busy and the lettered to those enquiries, from which they had been scared by the odious opinions and haughty dogmatism of Hobbes, began thus early, in the minds of ingenious men, to produce the fruits of a liberal philosophy on government, as well as of elegant speculation concerning literature and the arts.

"Among the divines who appeared at this era, it is impossible to pass over in silence the name of Barrow, whose theological works (adorned throughout by classical erudition, and by a vigorous though unpolished eloquence), exhibit in every page marks of the same inventive genius which, in mathematics, has secured to him a rank second alone to that of Newton. As a writer, he is equally distinguished by the redundancy of his matter, and by the pregnant brevity of his expression; but what more peculiarly characterises his manner, is a certain air of powerful and of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes." Disc. 69.

We quote this equally discriminating and beautiful passage, not for the unnecessary purpose of praise, nor assuredly with any view to dispute it, nor for the sake of vindicating Barrow from a contradiction imputed to him by Mr. Stewart in the subsequent page, between two passages, in one of which he represents "inordinate self-love" as the parent of most vices, while in the other he allows, that "a self-love working for what is finally beneficial, will be allowed by common sense," which, we must fairly own, appears to us to be no contradiction at all, but a just statement of two equally important and perfectly reconcilable truths. But we take the occasion supplied by this quotation, to express our wonder that we should find no mention of another English divine, who seems to us by his genius, by

the singularities of his ethical writings, and by the vicissitudes of his reputation, to deserve a place in the history of moral philosophy. We advert to Jeremy Taylor, who, though he survived the restoration, belonged to an older school than Barrow. Of unbounded fame in his own time, his devotional writings, which often possess unparalleled beauty, preserved their popularity for more than a century. But in the age of calm and cool philosophy which prevailed among English divines, we scarcely find more than one or two notices of his name among the writings of the learned; and it is only within the last twenty years that he has again become known to many general readers. Two of his works give him a more peculiar claim to the attention of the historian of morals. Probably the last English divine who used the scholastic forms, and was deeply imbued with the metaphysics and theology of the schools, he is the only celebrated Englishman (perhaps the only celebrated Protestant of so late a period) who composed a system of casuistry. Notwithstanding the disadvantages of the form, there are few treatises on morals which (if due allowance be made for obsolete modes of speaking, still more than of thinking), are more sober, more practical, and more liberal. Of the numerous learned authorities with which he has. sprinkled his margin, the names are now scarcely known to the curious enquirer. He seems to survey the learning of a former world. The Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying is memorable-as the first treatise professedly written in defence of toleration in this country, if not in Europe. Like most divines who have been venerated after their death, he obtained the name of a heretic for his charity, which evidently extended, though he durst not avow it, even to Roman Catholics themselves.* These two works, with his Discourse on Friendship, though they do not contain his most splendid passages, are the most uniformly reasonable, and the most judiciously composed, of his writings. It is, perhaps, peculiar to him, that to the acuteness and subtlety of a schoolman, he added the feeling and fancy of a poet. Had he lived out of the schools, and looked at man and nature instead of scholastic treatises, it seems that he would have wanted no poetical power but the art of versification. As Gray called Froissart" Herodotus without his style," perhaps we may venture to say that Taylor was Fénélon without his taste. They had the same tender heart, and flowery imagination; the same tolerant spirit; the same proneness to mystical devotion; and, though in an unequal degree, the same disposition to an ascetic morality, of which the austerities almost become amiable, when they are joined to unusual gentleness and humility. Taylor, in his writings, wanted only the great art of rejection to make the parallel more perfect. In his Devotions alone, where his sensibility is restrained, and his fancy overawed by the subject, he is of unequalled excellence. In general, his taste is more impure, his composition more irregular, his popular discourses more pedantic and scholastic than those of his great predecessors of Elizabeth's age-of Hooker, of Raleigh, and of Bacon. All those great men, placed near the

At the conclusion of the "Liberty of Prophesying" is a Jewish story, told in the manner of a chapter of Genesis, in which God is represented as rebuking Abraham for having driven an idolator out of his tent. This story, Taylor says, is somewhere to be found in the Jewish writers. Till the original be discovered, in some Rabbinical legend, we may ascribe the beauty of the imitation, if not the invention of the incidents, to Taylor himself. Franklin gave the same story, with some slight variations, to Lord Kaimes, who published it in his "Sketches of the History of Man." But the words of Lord Kaimes do not imply that Franklin gave it as his own, though a charge of plagiarism has been grounded on the coincidence. He probably had never read Taylor. He perhaps found the story without an author's name, in some newspaper or magazine, and sent it as a curiosity to Kaimes. A man so rich as Franklin had no temptation to steal.

sources of our written language, in those rare and short intervals, when they resist the allurements of Latin phraseology and arrangement, have a freshness of expression, a choice of picturesque and significant words, very difficult to be attained, after the separate language of books has been long formed. The profuse imagery of Taylor, and his tender sentiments, are sure to catch the eye of the most cursory reader, A careful perusal will also discover, in many quiet and modest passages, chiefly of his argumentative and merely ethical works, an easy and soft flow of native English, not unworthy of the age which produced the prose of Cowley, who, like Taylor, was tender and fertile; but who, happily for his fame, in his prose, and in some of his verse, showed a taste less fatally indulgent to the vices of his genius.

STEWART'S INTRODUCTION TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA. PART II.*

We return with singular satisfaction to the continuance of this admirable Discourse, after having bestowed on the First Part a space, less indeed than its importance merited, but more ample than either the busy or the indolent part of our readers would have willingly allotted to the history of speculation.+

The increase of materials has compelled Mr. Stewart, in this continuation, to limit himself to Metaphysical Philosophy, and to reserve the progress of Moral and Political Science in the Eighteenth Century for distinct discourses. He has thus excluded from his present work what formed the most popular, and not the least important part of the former; and, in the opinion of many, he has left himself little more than the history of controversies which will remain for ever undecided, and of revolutions in which the mind necessarily returns to the point from which it set out. They will dispute the propriety of his very title; and deny that metaphysics have made any progress, though they have undergone many changes. Never, perhaps, since England was a lettered nation, was the disinclination to such enquiries more prevalent than it now is. There is a general disposition to acquiesce, on these subjects, in a sort of practical scepticism, the result of indolence and despondency, rather than to weary the understanding in researches which seem hitherto to have yielded no fruit. These prejudices will be strengthened in the mind of many English readers, when, on opening this Essay, they see in it the naked and seemingly lifeless trunk of metaphysical speculation, stripped of those branches which display its fruitfulness while they hide its rugged forms, and not only cover it with some of their own grace and beauty, but exhibit its power of nourishing the most useful sciences, and of affording shelter and security to the most important labours of practical

reason.

The study of this beautiful Discourse itself will, indeed, prove the best corrective of those prejudices which its title and outline may have alarmed.

* A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Science, since the Revival of Letters. Part II. By Dugald Stewart, Esq. F. R. SS. Lond. and Edin. &c. &c. (Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. V. Part I.)-Vol. xxxvi. page 220. October,

1821.

+ Vol. xxvii. p. 180.