Every past age has in its turn been a present age. This, indeed, is obvious, but this is not all; for every past age, when present, has been the object of abuse. Men have been represented by their contemporaries not only as bad, but degenerate; as inferior to their predecessors both in morals and bodily powers.

This is an opinion so generally received, that Virgil, (in conformity to it,) when he would express former times, calls them simply better, as if the term better implied former of course.

Hic genus antiquum Teucri, pulcherrima proles,
Magnanimi heroes, nati melioribus annis.

Æn. vi. 648.

The same opinion is ascribed by Homer to old Nestor, when that venerable chief speaks of those heroes whom he had known in his youth. He relates some of their names-Perithous, Dryas, Cæneus, Theseus; and some also of their exploits-as how they had extirpated the savage Centaurs. He then subjoins,

Κείνοισι δ ̓ ἂν οὕτις,

Τῶν οἱ νῦν βροτοῖ εἰσιν ἐπιχθόνιοι, μαχέοιτο.

"With these no one

Of earthly race, as men are now, could fight."

'IA. A. 271.

As these heroes were supposed to exceed in strength those of the Trojan war, so were the heroes of that period to exceed those that came after. Hence, from the time of the Trojan war to that of Homer, we learn that human strength was decreased by a complete half.

Thus the same Homer:

Ὁ δὲ χερμάδιον λάβε χειρὶ
Τυδείδης, μέγα ἔργον, ὃ οὐ δύο γ ̓ ἄνδρε φέροιεν,
Οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσ' δ δέ μιν ῥέα πάλλε καὶ οἷος.

"Then grasp'd Tydides in his hand a stone,
A bulk immense, which not two men could bear,
As men are now, but he alone with ease

Hurl'd it."

'IA. E. 302.

Virgil goes further, and tells us, that not twelve men of his time (and those, too, chosen ones) could even carry the stone which Turnus flung.

Vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent,

Qualia nunc hominum producit corpora tellus:
Ille manu raptum trepida torquebat in hostem.

Æn. xii. 899.

Thus human strength, which in Homer's time was lessened to half, in Virgil's time was lessened to a twelfth. If strength and bulk (as commonly happens) be proportioned, what pigmies in stature must the men of Virgil's time have been, when their strength, as he informs us, was so far diminished? A man only eight times as strong, (and not, according to the poet, twelve times,) must, at least, have been between five and six feet higher than they were.

But we all know the privilege claimed by poets and painters. It is in virtue of this privilege that Horace, when he mentions the moral degeneracies of his contemporaries, asserts, that "their fathers were worse than their grandfathers; that they were worse than their fathers; and that their children would be worse than they were;" describing no fewer, after the grandfather, than three successions of degeneracy.

Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit

Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem.

Od. 1. iii. 6.

We need only ask, were this a fact, what would the Romans have been, had they degenerated in this proportion for five or six generations more?

Yet Juvenal, subsequent to all this, supposes a similar progression; a progression in vice and infamy, which was not complete till his own times.

Then truly, we learn, it could go no further.

Nil erit ulterius, nostris quod moribus addat

Posteritas, &c.

Omne in præcipiti vitium stetit, &c.

Sat. i. 147, &c.

But even Juvenal, it seems, was mistaken, bad as we must allow his times to have been. Several centuries after, without regard to Juvenal, the same doctrine was inculcated with greater zeal than ever.

When the western empire began to decline, and Europe and Africa were ravaged by barbarians, the calamities then happening (and formidable they were) naturally led men, who felt them, to esteem their own age the worst.

The enemies of Christianity (for Paganism was not then extinct) absurdly turned these calamities to the discredit of the Christian religion, and said the times were so unhappy, because the gods were dishonoured, and the ancient worship neglected. Orosius, a Christian, did not deny the melancholy facts, but, to obviate an objection so dishonourable to the true religion, he endeavours to prove from historians, both sacred and profane, that calamities of every sort had existed in every age, as many and as great as those that existed then.

If Orosius has reasoned right, (and his work is an elaborate one,) it follows that the lamentations made then, and made ever since, are no more than natural declamations incidental to man; declamations naturally arising, let him live at any period, from the superior efficacy of present events upon present sensations.

There is a praise belonging to the past congenial with this censure; a praise formed from negatives, and best illustrated by examples.

Thus a declaimer might assert, (supposing he had a wish, by exalting the eleventh century, to debase the present,) that

"in the time of the Norman conqueror we had no routs, no ridottos, no Newmarkets, no candidates to bribe, no voters to be bribed," &c. and string on negatives as long as he thought proper.

What, then, are we to do, when we hear such panegyric? Are we to deny the facts? That cannot be. Are we to admit the conclusion? That appears not quite agreeable. No method is left but to compare evils with evils, the evils of 1066 with those of 1780, and see whether the former age had not evils of its own, such as the present never experienced, because they do not now exist.

We e may allow the evils of the present day to be real; we may even allow, that a much larger number might have been added; but then we may allege evils, by way of return, felt in those days severely, but now not felt at all.

"We may assert, we have not now, as happened then, seen our country conquered by foreign invaders; nor our property taken from us, and distributed among the conquerors; nor ourselves, from freemen, debased into slaves; nor our rights submitted to unknown laws, imported, without our consent, from foreign countries."

Should the same reasonings be urged in favour of times nearly as remote, and other imputations of evil be brought, which, though well known now, did not then exist; we may still retort, that " we are no longer now, as they were then, subject to feudal oppression; nor dragged to war, as they were then, by the petty tyrant of a neighbouring castle; nor involved in scenes of blood, as they were then, and that for many years, during the uninteresting disputes between a Stephen and a Maud."

Should the same declaimer pass to a later period, and praise after the same manner the reign of Henry the Second, we have then to retort, "that we have now no Beckets." Should he proceed to Richard the First, "that we have now no holy wars;" to John Lackland and his son Henry, "that we have now no barons' wars;" and with regard to both of them, "that, though we enjoy at this instant all the benefits of Magna Charta, we have not been compelled to purchase them at the price of our blood."

A series of convulsions brings us, in a few years more, to the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster; thence, from the fall of the Lancaster family, to the calamities of the York family, and its final destruction in Richard the Third; thence to the oppressive period of his avaricious successor; and from him to the formidable reign of his relentless son, when neither the coronet, nor the mitre, nor even the crown, could protect their wearers; and when (to the amazement of posterity) those by whom church authority was denied, and those by whom it was

maintained, were dragged together to Smithfield, and burnt at one and the same stake."

The reign of his successor was short and turbid, and soon followed by the gloomy one of a bigoted woman.

We stop here, thinking we have instances enough. Those who hear any portion of these past times praised for the invidious purpose above mentioned, may answer by thus retorting the calamities and crimes which existed at the time praised, but which now exist no more. A true estimate can never be formed, but in consequence of such a comparison; for if we drop the laudable, and allege only the bad, or drop the bad, and allege only the laudable, there is no age, whatever its real character, but may be made to pass at pleasure, either for a good one, or a bad one.

If I may be permitted in this place to add an observation, it shall be an observation founded upon many years experience. I have often heard declamations against the present race of men; declamations against them, as if they were the worst of animals; treacherous, false, selfish, envious, oppressive, tyrannical, &c. This (I say) I have often heard from grave declaimers, and have heard the sentiment delivered with a kind of oracular pomp. Yet I never heard any such declaimer say, (what would have been sincere, at least, if it had been nothing more,) “I prove my assertion by an example where I cannot err; I assert myself to be the wretch I have been just describing."

66

So far from this, it would be perhaps dangerous to ask him, even in a gentle whisper, "You have been talking, with much confidence, about certain profligate beings. Are you certain, that you yourself are not one of the number?"

I hope I may be pardoned for the following anecdote, although compelled in relating it to make myself a party.

66

Sitting once in my library with a friend, a worthy but melancholy man, I read him out of a book the following passage.

"In our time it may be spoken more truly than of old, that virtue is gone; the church is under foot; the clergy is in error; the devil reigneth,' &c. My friend interrupted me with a sigh, and said, 'Alas! how true! How just a picture of the times!" I asked him, 'Of what times?' 'Of what times?' replied he, with emotion; Can you suppose any other but the present? Were any before ever so bad, so corrupt, so,' &c.? 'Forgive me,' said I, 'for stopping you: the times I am reading of are older than you imagine; the sentiment was delivered above four hundred years ago; its author sir John Mandeville, who died in 1371.""o

6

"Some of these unfortunate men denied the king's supremacy, and others, the real presence. See the histories of that reign.

• See this writer's own preface, p. 10, in

the large octavo English edition of his Travels, published at London, in 1727. See also of these Philological Inquiries, p. 523.

As man is by nature a social animal, good humour seems an ingredient highly necessary to his character. It is the salt which gives a seasoning to the feast of life; and which, if it be wanting, surely renders the feast incomplete. Many causes contribute to impair this amiable quality, and nothing perhaps more than bad opinions of mankind. Bad opinions of mankind naturally lead us to misanthropy. If these bad opinions go further, and are applied to the universe, then they lead to something worse, for they lead to atheism. The melancholy and morose character being thus insensibly formed, morals and piety sink of course; for what equals have we to love, or what superior have we to revere, when we have no other objects left than those of hatred or of terror?P

It should seem then expedient, if we value our better principles, nay, if we value our own happiness, to withstand such dreary sentiments. It was the advice of a wise man, "Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."

Things present make impressions amazingly superior to things remote; so that, in objects of every kind, we are easily mistaken as to their comparative magnitude. Upon the canvas of the same picture, a near sparrow occupies the space of a distant eagle; a near mole hill, that of a distant mountain. In the perpetration of crimes, there are few persons, I believe, who would not be more shocked at actually seeing a single man assassinated (even taking away the idea of personal danger) than they would be shocked in reading the massacre of Paris.

The wise man, just quoted, wishes to save us from these errors. He has already informed us, "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” He then subjoins the cause of this apparent novelty: things past, when they return, appear new, if they are forgotten; and things present will appear so, should they too be forgotten, when they return.'

This forgetfulness of what is

P Misanthropy is so dangerous a thing, and goes so far in sapping the very foundations of morality and religion, that I esteem the last part of Swift's Gulliver (that I mean relative to his Houyhnhnms and Yahoos) to be a worse book to peruse, than those which we forbid as the most flagitious and obscene.

One absurdity in this author (a wretched philosopher, though a great wit) is well worth remarking: in order to render the nature of man odious, and the nature of beasts amiable, he is compelled to give human characters to his beasts, and beastly

similar in events which return,

characters to his men; so that we are to admire the beasts, not for being beasts, but amiable men; and to detest the men, not for being men, but detestable beasts.

Whoever has been reading this unnatural filth, let him turn for a moment to a Spectator of Addison, and observe the philanthropy of that classical writer; I may add the superior purity of his diction and his wit.

q Ecclesiastes vii. 10.

See of the same Ecclesiastes, chap. i. 9. and ii. 16.