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."

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.""

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.

(for in every returning event such similarity exists,) is the forgetfulness of a mind uninstructed and weak; a mind ignorant of that great, that providential circulation, which never ceases for a moment through every part of the universe.

It is not like that forgetfulness which I once remember in a man of letters, who, when at the conclusion of a long life, he found his memory began to fail, said cheerfully, "Now I shall have a pleasure I could not have before; that of reading my old books, and finding them all new."

There was in this consolation something philosophical and pleasing. And yet perhaps it is a higher philosophy (could we attain it) not to forget the past; but in contemplation of the past to view the future, so that we may say on the worst prospects, with a becoming resignation, what Æneas said of old to the Cumean prophetess,

Virgin, no scenes of ill

To me or new, or unexpected rise;

I've seen 'em all; have seen, and long before
Within myself revolv'd 'em in my mind."

In such a conduct, if well founded, there is not only fortitude, but piety: fortitude, which never sinks, from a conscious integrity; and piety, which never resists, by referring all to the Divine will.

But lest such speculation, by carrying me above my subject, should expose a writer upon criticism to be himself criticised, I shall here conclude these Philological Inquiries.

• Æn. vi. 103-105.

APPENDIX.

PART I.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE ARABIC MANUSCRIPTS BELONGING TO THE ESCURIAL LIBRARY IN SPAIN.

THIS account is extracted from two fair folio volumes, to the first of which volumes the title is conceived in the following words.

"Bibliothecæ Arabico-Hispanæ Escuraliensis, sive Librorum omnium MSS. quos Arabice ab auctoribus magnam partem Arabo-Hispanis compositos Bibliotheca Cænobii Escuraliensis complectitur, Recensio et Explanatio: Opera et Studio Michaelis Casiri, Syro-Maronitæ, Presbyteri, S. Theologiæ Doctoris, Regis a Bibliotheca, Linguarumque Orientalium Interpretatione; Caroli III. Regis Opt. Max. auctoritate atque auspiciis edita. Tomus Prior. Matriti. Antonius Perez de Soto imprimebat Anno MDCCLX."

This catalogue is particularly valuable, because not only each manuscript is enumerated, but its age also and author (when known) are given, together with large extracts upon occasion, both in the original Arabic and in Latin.

From the first volume it appears that the Arabians cultivated every species of philosophy and philology, as also (according to their systems) jurisprudence and theology.

They were peculiarly fond of poetry, and paid great honours to those whom they esteemed good poets. Their earliest writers were of this sort, some of whom (and those much admired) flourished many centuries before the time of Mahomet.

The study of their poets led them to the art of criticism, whence we find in the above catalogue, not only a multitude of poems, but many works upon composition, metre, &c.

We find in the same catalogue, translations of Aristotle and Plato, together with their lives; as also translations of their best Greek commentators, such as Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Philoponus, and others. We find also comments of their own, and original pieces, formed on the principles of the above philosophers.

There too may be found translations of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius Pergæus, and the other ancient mathematicians, together with their Greek commentators, and many original pieces of their own upon the same mathematical subjects. In the

arithmetical part they are said to follow Diophantus, from whom they learned that algebra of which they are erroneously thought to have been the inventors.

There we may find also the works of Ptolemy translated, and many original treatises of their own upon the subject of astro

nomy.

It appears, too, that they studied with care the important subject of agriculture. One large work in particular is mentioned, composed by a Spanish Arabian, where every mode of culture, and every species of vegetable is treated; pasture, arable, trees, shrubs, flowers, &c. By this work may be perceived (as the editor well observes) how much better Spain was cultivated in those times, and that some species of vegetables were then found there which are now lost.

Here are many tracts on the various parts of jurisprudence; some ancient copies of the Alcoran; innumerable commentaries on it; together with books of prayer, books of devotion, sermons,

&c.

Among their theological works, there are some upon the principles of the mystic divinity; and among their philosophical, some upon the subject of talismans, divination, and judicial astrology.

The first volume, of which we have been speaking, is elegantly printed, and has a learned preface prefixed by the editor, wherein he relates what he has done, together with the assistance he has received, as well from the crown of Spain and its ministers, as from learned men.

He mentions a fatal fire, which happened at the Escurial, in the year 1670; when above three thousand of these valuable manuscripts were destroyed. He has in this volume given an account of about fourteen hundred.

The second volume of this valuable work, which bears the same title with the first, was published at Madrid, ten years after it, in the year 1770.

It contains chiefly the Arabian chronologers, travellers, and historians; and, though national partiality may be sometimes suspected, yet, as these are accounts given us by the Spanish Arabians themselves, there are many incidents preserved, which other writers could not know; incidents respecting not only the successions and the characters of the Arabic-Spanish princes, but the country and its productions, together with the manners and the literature of its then inhabitants.

Nor are the incidents in these volumes confined to Spain only, many of them relate to other countries; such as the growth of sugar in Egypt; the invention of paper there, (of which material there are manuscripts in the Escurial library of the year 1180;) the use of gunpowder, carried not only to the beginning of the fourteenth century, but even so far back (if we can believe it)