existence than water, though the mode of that existence we are unable to comprehend. But, I well know, these analogous arguments have little weight; the prejudice of education, the strength of habit, and the force of language, all formed on the supposed union of existence with time, will persuade men to reject this hypothesis as vain and chimerical. To all busy men, and men of business, to all jogging on in the beaten roads of professions, or scrambling up the precipices of ambition, these considerations must appear unprofitable illusions, if not incomprehensible nonsense; for to endeavour to convince a merchant subsisting on long credit, a lawyer enriched by delay, a divine who has purchased a next presentation, a general who is in no hurry to fight, or a minister whose object is the continuance of his power, that time is nothing, is an arduous task, and very unlikely to be attended with success. Whoever desires to taste or understand such abstracted speculations, must leave for awhile the noisy bustle of worldly occupations, and retire into the sequestered shades of solitude and contemplation: from whence he will return, certainly not richer, possibly not wiser, but probably more susceptible of amusement from his own company for want of better, and more able to draw entertainment from his own imaginations; which, in his journey through life, he will often find an acquisition not altogether inconsiderable."

In the Essay "on the analogy between things material and intellectual," the language is more florid and polished than in any of the others, and the ingenuity with which he displays the curious coincidences and relations existing between the moral and the material world, equally remarkable.

Take the following specimens.

"In the material world, for instance, we see all disorders cured by their own excesses; a sultry calm fails not to produce a storm, which dissipates the noxious vapours, and restores a purer air; the fiercest tempest, exhausted by its own violence, at length subsides; and an intense sun-shine, whilst it parches up the thirsty earth, exhales clouds, which quickly water it with refreshing showers. Just so in the moral world, all our passions and vices, by their excesses, defeat themselves: excessive rage renders men impotent to execute the mischiefs which they threaten; repeated treacheries make them unable to deceive, because none will trust them; and extreme profligacy, by the diseases which it occasions, destroys their appetites, and works an unwilling reformation.

"As in the natural world, the elements are restrained in their most destructive effects, by their mutual opposition; so in the moral, are the vices of mankind prevented from being totally subversive of society, by their continually counteracting each other: profusion restores to the public the wealth which avarice has detained from it for a time; envy clips the towering wings of ambition; and even revenge, by its terrors, prevents many injuries and oppressions: the treachery of the thief discovers his accomplices; the perfidy of the prostitute brings the highwayman to justice; and the villainy of the assassin puts an end to the cruelty of a tyrant."

And again:

"We behold with admiration the vivid azure of the vaulted sky, and variegated colours of the distant clouds; but, if we approach them on the summit of some lofty mountain, we discover that the beauteous scene is all illusion, and find ourselves involved only in a dreary fog, or a tempestuous whirlwind; just so, in youth, we look up with pleasing expectation to the pleasures and honours which we fondly imagine will attend maturer age; at which, if we arrive, the brilliant prospect vanishes in disappointment, and we meet with nothing more than a dull inactivity or turbulent contentions.

"The properties of the various seasons of the year, the gaiety of spring, the vigour of summer, the serenity of autumn, and the gloom of winter, have been so often assimilated to the corresponding periods of human life; the dangers and disquietudes of grandeur so often compared to the tempestuous situation of lofty mountains; and the quiet safety of inferior stations, to the calm security of the humbler vale, that a repetition of them here would be impertinent and useless; yet they all contribute to point out that analogy which uniformly pervades every part of the creation with which we are acquainted."

The tendency of the three remaining Essays may be considered doubtful.-Our author certainly does not lean to what is called the liberal side of the question, but yet his views are too elevated, and his reasoning too lively and ingenious, to be confounded with the prejudiced and bigoted diatribes of men, who loudly defend the systems that be, only because they are. In religion, perhaps, our author too decidedly rejects the cooperation of reason with faith; and in civil and ecclesiastical polity, allows his love of ease and quiet to blind him to the difference between personal security and personal liberty.

Though we may refuse our assent to the conclusions to be drawn from the following passage, we cannot deny it to be very amusing.

"That all men are born free. This is so far from being true, that the first infringement of this liberty is being born at all; which is imposed upon them, without their consent given either by themselves or their representatives; and it may easily be shewn, that man, by the constitution of his nature, never subsists a free and independent being, from the first to the last moment of his residence on this terrestrial globe; where, during the first nine months of his existence, he is confined in a dark and sultry prison, debarred from light and air; till at length, by an habeas corpus brought by the hand of some kind deliverer, he is set at liberty: but what kind of liberty does he then enjoy? he is bound hand and foot, and fed upon bread and water, for as long a period; no sooner is he unbound, than he makes so bad a use of his liberty, that it becomes necessary that he should be placed in a state of the severest discipline; first under a nurse, and then a schoolmaster, both equal tyrants in their several departments; by whom he is again confined without law,

condemned without a jury, and whipt without mercy. In this state of slavery he continues many years, and at the expiration of it, he is obliged to commence an involuntary subject of some civil government; to whose authority he must submit, however ingeniously he may dispute her right, or be justly hanged for disobedience to her laws. And this is the sum total of human liberty. Perhaps it may be said, that all this may be ingenious ridicule, but cannot be intended for serious argument; to which I reply, that it is the most serious argument that can be offered, because it is derived from the works and the will of our Creator; and evidently shews, that man was never designed by him to be an independent and self-governed being, but to be trained up in a state of subordination and government in the present life, to fit him for one more perfect in another: and, if it was not a reflection too serious, I should add, that, in the numerous catalogue of human vices, there is not one which so completely disqualifies him from being a member of that celestial community, as a factious and turbulent disposition, and an impatience of controul; which frequently assumes the honourable title of the love of liberty."

He thus attempts to explode the doctrine of the tacit compact between the governors and the governed.

"This imaginary compact is represented by some, as a formal agreement entered into by the two contracting parties, by which the latter give up part of their natural independence, in exchange for protection granted by the former; without which voluntary surrender, no one man, or body of men, could have a right to controul the actions of another; and some have gone so far as to assert, that this surrender cannot be made binding by representation, that parents cannot consent to it for their children, or nations for individuals, but that every one must give his personal concurrence, and that on this alone the constitution of every government is or ought to be founded: but all this is a ridiculous fiction, intended only to subvert all government, and let mankind loose to prey upon each other; for, in fact, no such compact ever was proposed or agreed to, no such natural independence ever possessed, and consequently can never have been given up. We hear a great deal about the constitutions of different states, by which are understood some particular modes of government, settled at some particular times, which ought to be supported with religious veneration through all succeeding ages: in some of these, the people are supposed to have a right to greater degrees of liberty than in others, having made better bargains for themselves, and given up less of their natural independence: but this, and all conclusions drawn from these premises, must be false, because the facts on which they are founded are not true; for no such constitutions, established on general consent, are any where to be found; all which, we see, are the offsprings of force or fraud, of accident, and the circumstances of the times, and must perpetually change with those circumstances: in all of them, the people have an equal right to preserve or regain their liberty, whenever they are able. But the question is not, what right

they have to liberty; but, what degree of it they are capable of enjoying, without accomplishing their own destruction. In some countries this is very small, and in none can it be very great, because the depravity of human nature will not permit it. Compact is repugnant to the very nature of government; whose essence is compulsion, and which originates always from necessity, and never from choice or compact; and it is the most egregious absurdity, to reason from the supposed rights of mankind in an imaginary state of nature, a state the most unnatural, because in such a state they never did or can subsist, or were ever designed. The natural state of man is by no means a state of solitude and independence, but of society and subordination; all the effects of human art are parts of his nature, because the power of producing them is bestowed upon him by the author of it. It is as natural for men to build cities, as for birds to build nests; and to live under some kind of government, as for bees and ants; without which he can no more subsist than those social and industrious insects; nor has he either more right or power than they, to refuse his submission. But if every man was possessed of this natural independence, and had a right to surrender it on a bargain, he must have an equal right to retain it; then he has a right to chuse, whether he will purchase protection at the price of freedom, or whether he prefers liberty and plunder to safety and constraint: a large majority of mankind, who have neither property nor principles, would undoubtedly make choice of the latter, and all these might rob, and murder, and commit all manner of crimes with impunity; for, if this their claim to natural independence is well founded, they could not be justly amenable to any tribunal upon earth, and thus the world would soon become a scene of universal rapine and bloodshed. This shews into what absurdities we run, whenever we reason from speculative principles, without attending to practicability and experience: for the real truth is no more than this, every man, by the constitution of human nature, comes into the world under such a degree of authority and restraint, as is necessary for the preservation and happiness of his species and himself; this is no more left to his choice, than whether he will come into the world or not; and this obligation he carries about with him, so long as he continues in it. Hence he is bound to submit to the laws and constitution of every country in which he resides, and is justly punishable for disobedience to them. To ask a man whether he chuses to be subject to any law or government, is to ask him, whether he chuses to be a man, or a wild beast, and wishes to be treated accordingly. So far are men from being possessed of this natural independence, on which so many systems of anarchy have been erected, that submission to authority is essential to humanity, and a principal condition on which it is bestowed: man is evidently made for society, and society cannot subsist without government, and therefore government is as much a part of human nature, as a hand, a heart, or a head; all these are frequently applied to the worst of purposes, and so is government; but it would be ridiculous from thence to argue, that we should live longer and happier without them. The Supreme Governor of the world has not determined who shall be his vicegerents,

nor what forms of government shall be adopted; but he has unalterably decreed, that there shall be some; and therefore, though no particular governors can lay claim to a divine right of ruling, yet government itself is of divine institution, as much as eating, and for the same reason, because we cannot subsist without it."

This lively little work was written at the advanced age of seventy-eight. It met with considerable attention on its appearance, and a few answers were excited by the paradoxical nature of some of its opinions. Since which time, we believe this specimen of pure and animated English has been classed with the ephemeral publications which die with the sensation they produce.

ART. VII.-Gondibert, an Heroick Poem. Written by Sir William Davenant, 12mo. London, 1651, pp. 243.

It is not our intention in this place to give any biographical account of the eventful life of Sir William Davenant. Our sole design is to consider the heroic fragment on which his fame as a poet chiefly depends. The two first books of it were ushered into the world by a long preface, developing the plan of the poem, which the author addressed to Mr. Hobbes; and by the answer of that philosopher, together with commendatory verses by Waller and Cowley. Its appearance excited the raillery of the wits of the day, who attacked the author in a pamphlet of satirical verses, to which he replied with equal wit and some temper.* Davenant's rejection of all supernatural machinery has given rise to a great deal of discussion and inconsistent criticism. His audacity in choosing to think for himself, and write an epic poem on a principle contrary to the ancient and approved receipt for its construction, has been treated as a high crime against the laws of Parnassus, and himself deemed worthy of banishment from its domains. It is not our wish to revive this controversy, more especially after the ample though tardy justice which has been rendered to Davenant on this subject, by an elegant critict of the present day. His scheme of construct

* Mr. D'Israeli differs from all preceding critics, and considers this second publication a continuation of the satirical attack of the 'Club of Wits,' the irony deriving additional bitterness from being concealed under the disguise of a pretended defence.-Quarrels of Authors, v. 2, p. 231.

+ Miscellanies in Prose, by John Aikin, M.D. and Letitia Barbauld.