way, but neither of them digests. They heap crudity upon crudity, and nourish and mprove nothing but their distemper. Some such characters I have known, though it is not the most common extreme into which men are apt to fall. One of them I knew n this country [Bishop Warburton]. He joined to a most athletic strength of body a prodigious memory, and to both a prodigious industry. He had read almost constantly fourteen or fifteen hours a day for twenty-five or thirty years, and had heaped together as much learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance with him I consulted him once or twice-not oftener, for I found this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative enough, but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? he had never spared time to think,-all was employed in reading. His reason had not the merit of common mechanism. When you press a watch, or pull a clock, they answer your question with precision; for they repeat exactly the hour of the day, and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know. But when you asked this man a question, he overwhelmed you by pouring forth all that the several terms or words of your question recalled to his memory; and if he omitted anything, it was the very thing to which the sense of the whole question should have led him and confined him. To ask him a question was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity and confused noise, till the force of it was spent; and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed. I never left him that I was not ready to say to him, Dieu vous fasse la grace de devenir moins savant!—a wish that La Mothe le Vayer mentions upon some occasion or other, and that he would have done well to have applied to himself upon many. Ile who reads with discernment and choice will acquire less learning, but more knowledge; and as this knowledge is collected with design, and cultivated with art and method, it will be at all times of immediate and ready use to himself and others. Thus useful arms in magazines we place, All ranged in order, and disposed with grace; Nor thus alone the curious eye to please, But to be found, when need requires, with ease. You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's [Pope's] Essay on Criticism, which was the work of his childhood almost; but is such a monument of good sense and poetry as no other, that I know, has raised in his riper years. He who reads without this discernment and choice, and, like Bodin's pupil, resolves to read all, will not have time, no, nor capacity neither, to do anything else. He will not be able to think, without which it is impertinent to read; nor to act, without which it is impertinent to think. He will assemble materials with much pains, and purchase them at much expense, and have neither leisure nor skill to frame them into proper scantlings, or to prepare them for To what purpose should he husband his time, or learn architecture? he has no design to build. But then, to what purpose all these quarries of stone, all these mountains of sand and lime, all these forests of oak and deal? use. Essay on the Study of History: Bolinybroke's Works, 1754, ii. 330. COMPLAINTS OF THE SHORTNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. I think very differently from most men of the time we have to pass, and the business we have to do in this world. I think we have more of one, and less of the other, than is commonly supposed. Our want of time, and the shortness of human life, are some of the principal commonplace complaints which we prefer against the established order of things: they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathetic lamentations of the philosopher; but they are impertinent and impious in both. The man of business despises the man of pleasure for squandering the time away; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the man of business for the same thing; and yet both concur superciliously and absurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being for having given them so little time. The philosopher, who misspends it very often as much as the others, joins in the same cry, and authorizes this impiety. Theophrastus thought it extremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he had just learned how to live in it. Ilis master, Aristotle, found fault with nature for treating man in this respect worse than several other animals: both very unphilosophically! and I love Seneca the better for his quarrel with the Stagirite on this head. We see, in so many instances, a just proportion of things, according to their several relations to one another, that philosophy should lead us to conclude this proportion preserved, even when we cannot discern it; instead of leading us to conclude that it is not preserved where we do not discern it, or where we think that we see the contrary. To conclude otherwise is shocking presumption. It is to presume that the system of the universe would have been more wisely contrived, if creatures of our low rank among intellectual natures had been called to the councils of the Most High; or that the Creator ought to mend his work by the advice of the creature. That life which seems to our self-love so short, when we compare it with the ideas we frame of eternity, or even with the duration of some other beings, will appear sufficient, upon a less partial view, to all the ends of our creation, and of a just proportion in the successive course of generations. The term itself is long; we render it short; and the want we complain of flows from our profusion, not from our poverty. We are all arrant spendthrifts: some of us dissipate our estates on the trifles, some on the superfluities, and then we all complain that we want the necessaries, of life. The much greatest part never reclaim, but die bankrupts to God and man. Others reclaim late, and they are apt to imagine, when they make up their accounts, and see how their fund is diminished, that they have not enough remaining to live upon, because they have not the whole. But they deceive themselves: they were richer than they thought, and they are not yet poor. If they husband well the remainder, it will be found sufficient for all the necessaries, and for some of the superfluities, and trifles too, perhaps, of life; but then the former order of expense must be inverted, and the necessaries of life must be provided before they put themselves to any cost for the trifles or superfluities. not satisfied. You confessed that these were the literæ nihil sanantes, and you wanted more time to acquire other knowledge. You have had this time: you have passed twenty years more on the other side of your library, among philosophers, rabbis, commentators, schoolmen, and whole legions of modern doctors. You are extremely well versed in all that has been written concerning the nature of God, and of the soul of man, about matter and form, body and spirit, and space and eternal essences, and incorporeal substances, and the rest of those profound speculations. You are a master of the controversies that have arisen about nature and grace, about predestination and free will, and all the other abstruse questions that have made so much noise in the schools and so much hurt in the world. You are going on, as fast as the infirmities you have contracted will permit, in the same course of study; but you begin to foresee that you shall want time, and you make grievous complaints of the shortness of human life. Give me leave now to ask you how many thousand years God must prolong your life in order to reconcile you to his wisdom and goodness? It is plain, at least highly probable, that a life as long as that of the most aged of the patriarchs would be too short to answer your purposes; since the researches and disputes in which you are engaged have been already for a much longer time the objects of learned inquiries, and remain still as imperfect and Let us leave the men of pleasure and of undetermined as they were at first. But let business, who are often candid enough to me ask you again, and deceive neither yourown that they throw away their time, and self nor me, have you, in the course of these thereby to confess that they complain of the forty years, once examined the first prinSupreme Being for no other reason than ciples and the fundamental facts on which this, that he has not proportioned his all those questions depend, with an absolute bounty to their extravagance. Let us con- indifference of judgment, and with a scrupsider the scholar and philosopher, who, far ulous exactness? with the same that you from owning that he throws any time away, have employed in examining the various reproves others for doing it; that solemn consequences drawn from them, and the mortal who abstains from the pleasures, and heterodox opinions about them? Have you declines the business, of the world, that he not taken them for granted in the whole may dedicate his whole time to the search course of your studies? Or, if you have of truth and the improvement of knowledge. looked now and then on the state of the When such a one complains of the short-proofs brought to maintain them, have you ness of human life in general, or of his remaining share in particular, might not a man, more reasonable, though less solemn, expostulate thus with him: "Your complaint is, indeed, consistent with your practice; but you would not possibly renew your complaint if you reviewed your practice. Though reading makes a scholar, yet every scholar is not a philosopher nor every philosopher a wise man. It cost you twenty years to devour all the volumes on one side of your library; you came out a great critic in Latin and Greek, in the oriental tongues, in history and chronology; but you were not done it as a mathematician looks over a demonstration formerly made to refresh his memory, not to satisfy any doubt? If you have thus examined, it may appear marvellous to some that you have spent so much time in many parts of those studies, which have reduced you to this hectic condition of so much heat and weakness. But if you have not thus examined, it must be evident to all, nay, to yourself, on the least reflection, that you are still, notwithstanding_all your learning, in a state of ignorance. For knowledge can alone produce knowledge; and without such an examination of axioms and facts, you can have none about infer ences !" In this manner one might expostulate very reasonably with many a great scholar, many a profound philosopher, many a dogmatical casuist. And it serves to set the complaints about want of time, and the shortness of human life, in a very ridiculous but a true light. THOMAS SHERLOCK, D.D., son of William Sherlock, D.D., born 1678, Master of the Temple, 1704, Prebendary of London, 1713, and of Norwich, 1719, Bishop of Bangor, Feb. 4, 1727-28, Bishop of Salisbury, 1734, Bishop of London, 1748, declined the archbishopric of Canterbury, 1747, died 1761, published a collective edition of his Discourses at the Temple Church, Lond., 1754-58, 4 vols. 8vo, 8th edit. 1775, 3 vols. 12mo; vol. v., Oxf., 1797, 8vo; first complete edition of Sherlock's Works, by Rev. T. S. Hughes, Lond., 1830, 5 vols. 8vo. His best-known works are The Use and Intent of Prophecy, etc., Lond., 1725, 8vo, 4th edit., Lond., 1744, 8vo; 1755, 8vo (usually added as a 5th volume to the early editions of the Discourses); and The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, Lond., 1729, 8vo, 16th edit., Lond., 1807, 8vo; with the Sequel of the Trial, Lond., H. G. Bohn, 1848, 8vo (In the series entitled "Christian Literature"). "They [Sherlock's Sermons] contain admirable defences of the truths of religion, and powerful incitements to the practice of it. They rouse the virtues of Christians by proper motives, and put to silence the doubts and cavils of Infidels by most convincing arguments."-DR. HUGH BLAIR. "Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain." POPE: Dunciad, Book iii., 203. "Sherlock's style is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study."-DR. JOHNSON: Boswell's Life, year 1778. RELIGION. Religion is founded in the principles of sense and nature; and, without supposing this foundation, it would be as rational an act to preach to horses as to men. A man who has the use of reason cannot consider his condition and circumstances in this world, or reflect on his notions of good and evil, and the sense he feels in himself that he is an accountable creature for the good or evil he does, without asking himself how he came into this world, and for what purpose, and to whom it is that he is, or possibly may be, accountable. When, by tracing his own being to the original, he finds that there is one supreme all-wise cause of all things; when by experience he sees that this world neither is nor can be the place for taking a just and adequate account of the actions of men; the presumption that there is another state after this, in which men shall live, grows strong and almost irresistible; when he considers further the fears and hopes of nature with respect to futurity, the fear of death common to all, the desire of continuing in being, which never forsakes us; and reflects for what use and purpose these strong impressions were given us by the Author of nature; he cannot help concluding that man was made not merely to act a short part upon the stage of this world, but that there is another and more lasting state to which he bears relation. And from hence it must necessarily follow that his religion must be formed on a view of securing a future happiness. Since, then, the end that men propose to themselves by religion is such, it will teach us wherein the true excellency of religion consists. If eternal life and future happiness are what we aim at, that will be the best religion which will most certainly lead it will be to no purpose to compare religions us to eternal life and future happiness: and together in any other respects which have no relation to this end. tensions of revelation, and, as we go along, Let us, then, by this rule examine the precompare it with the present state of natural religion, that we may be able to judge “to whom we ought to go." Eternal life and happiness are out of our power to give ourselves, or to obtain by any strength and force, or any policy or wisdom. Could our own arm rescue us from the jaws of death, and the powers of the kingdom of darkness; could we set open the gates of heaven for ourselves, and enter in to take possession of life and glory, we should want no instructions or assistances from religion; since what St. Peter said of Christ every man might apply to himself, and say, "I have the words, or means, of eternal life." But since we have not this power of life and death, and since there is One who has, who governeth all things in heaven and earth, who is over all God blessed for evermore, it necessarily follows that either we must have no share or lot in the glories of futurity, or else that we must obtain them from God, and receive them as his gift and favour; and consequently if eternal life be the end of religion, and likewise the gift of God, religion can be nothing else but the means proper to be made use of by us to obtain of God this most excellent and perfect gift of eternal life for if eternal life be the end of religion, religion must be the means of ob taining eternal life; and if eternal life can only be had from the gift of God, religion must be the means of obtaining this gift of God. And thus far all religions that ever have appeared in the world have agreed: the question has never yet been made by any whether God is to be applied to for eternal happiness or no; but every sect has placed its excellency in this, that it teaches the properest and most effectual way of making this application. Even natural religion pretends to no more than this: it claims not eternal life as the right of nature, but the right of obedience, and of obedience to God, the Lord of nature: and the dispute between natural and revealed religion is not, whether God is to be applied to for eternal happiness; but only whether nature or revelation can best teach us how to make this application. Prayers, and praises, and repentance for sins past are acts of devotion, which nature pretends to instruct and direct us in: but why does she teach us to pray, to praise, or to repent, but that she esteems one to be the proper method of expressing our wants, the other of expressing our gratitude, and the third of making atonement for iniquity and offences against God? In all these acts reference is had to the overruling power of the Almighty; and they amount to this confession, that the upshot of all religion is, to please God in order to make ourselves happy. Several Discourses Preached at the Temple Church: Discourse I., Part II.: John vi. 67-69. HENRY FELTON, D.D., born 1679, Principal of Edmund Hall, 1722, died 1740, was author of A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, and Forming a Just Style, 1711; 4th edit., Lond., 1757, 12mo. A good book. ON THE SUBLIME. We have no instances to produce of any writers that rise at all to the majesty and dignity of the Divine Attributes except the sacred penmen. No less than Divine Inspiration could enable men to write worthily of God, and none but the spirit of God knew how to express his greatness, and display his glory: in comparison of these divine writers, the greatest geniuses, the noblest wits, of the Heathen world, are low and dull. The sublime majesty and royal magnificence of the Scripture poems are above the reach and beyond the power of all mortal wit. Take the best and liveliest poems of antiquity, and read them as we do the Scriptures, in a prose translation, | and they are flat and poor. Horace, and Virgil, and Homer lose their spirits and their strength in the transfusion, to that degree that we have hardly patience to read them. But the sacred writings, even in our translation, preserve their majesty and their glory, and very far surpass the brightest and noblest compositions of Greece and Rome. And this is not owing to the richness and solemnity of the eastern eloquence (for it holds in no other instance), but to the divine direction and assistance of the holy writers. For, let me only make this remark, that the most literal translation of the Scriptures, in the most natural signification of the words, is generally the best; and the same punctualness which debases other writings preserves the spirit and majesty of the sacred text: it can suffer no improvement from human wit; and we may observe that those who have presumed to heighten the expression by a poetical translation or paraphrase have sunk in the attempt; and all the decorations of their verse, whether Greek or Latin, have not been able to reach the dignity, the majesty, and solemnity of our prose: so that the prose of Scripture cannot be improved by verse, and even the divine poetry is most like itself in prose. One observation more I would leave with you: Milton himself, as great a genius as he was, owes his superiority over Homer and Virgil, in majesty of thought and splendour of expression, to the Scriptures: they are the fountain from which he derived his light; the sacred treasure that enriched his fancy, and furnished him with all the truth and wonders of God and his creation, of angels and men, which no mortal brain was able either to discover or conceive: and in him, of all human writers, you will meet all his sentiments and words raised and suited to the greatness and dignity of the subject. I have detained you the longer on this majesty of style, being perhaps myself carried away with the greatness and pleasure of the contemplation. What I have dwelt so much on with respect to divine subjects is more easily to be observed with respect to human: for in all things below divinity we are rather able to exceed than fall short; and in adorning all other subjects our words and sentiments may rise in a just proportion to them: nothing is above the reach of man but heaven; and the same wit can raise a human subject that only debases a divine. A Dissertation on Reading the Classics. THE FORMATION OF A RIGHT TASTE. A perfect mastery and elegance of style is to be learned from the common rules, but must be improved by reading the orators and poets, and the celebrated masters in every kind: this will give you a right taste and a true relish; and when you can distinguish the beauties of every finished piece, you will write yourself with equal commendation. I do not assert that every good writer must have a genius for poetry; I know Tully is an undeniable exception: but I will venture to affirm that a soul that is not moved with poetry, and has no taste that way, is too dull and lumpish ever to write with any prospect of being read. It is a fatal mistake, and simple superstition to discourage youth from poetry, and endeavour to prejudice them against it; if they are of a poetical genius, there is no restraining them: Ovid, you know, was deaf to his father's frequent admonitions. But if they are not quite smitten and bewitched with love of verse, they should be trained to it, to make them masters of every kind of poetry, that by learning to imitate the originals they may arrive at a right conception and a true taste of their authors: and being able to write in verse upon occasion, I can assure you, is no disadvantage to prose for without relishing the one, a man must never pretend to any taste for the other. Taste is a metaphor, borrowed from the palate by which we approve or dislike what we eat and drink from the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the relish in our mouth. Nature directs us in the common use, and every body can tell sweet from bitter, what is sharp, or sour, or vapid, or nauseous; but it requires senses more refined and exercised to discover every taste that is more perfect in its kind; every palate is not to judge of that, and yet drinking is more used than reading. All that I pretend to know of the matter is, that wine should be, like a style, clear, deep, bright, and strong, sincere and pure, sound and dry (as our advertisements do well express it), which last is a commendable term, that contains the juice of the richest spirits, and only keeps out all cold and dampness. It is common to commend a man for an ear to music, and a taste for painting; which are nothing but a just discernment of what is excellent and most perfect in them. The first depends entirely on the ear; a man can never expect to be a master that has not an ear tuned and set to music; and you can no more sing an ode without an ear than without a genius you can write one. Painting, we should think, requires some understanding in the art, and exact knowledge of the best masters' manner, to be a judge of it; but this faculty, like the rest, is founded in nature: knowledge in the art, and frequent conversation with the best originals, will certainly perfect a man's judg ment; but if there is not a natural sagacity and aptness, experience will be of no great service. A good taste is an argument of a great soul, as well as a lively wit. It is the infirmity of poor spirits to be taken with every appearance, and dazzled by everything that sparkles: but to pass by what the generality of the world admires, and to be detained with nothing but what is most perfect and excellent in its kind, speaks a superior genius, and a true discernment. A Dissertation on Reading the Classics. GEORGE BERKELEY, D.D., born in the county of Kilkenny, Ireland, 1684, in 1709 published An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Dublin, 8vo (and a Vindication of this Theory, in 1733), in 1710 The Principles of Human Knowledge, Dublin, 8vo, in 1713 Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philolonous; made Dean of Derry, 1724; in 1728 emigrated to America to carry out his "scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermudas' (Berkeley), and at Newport, Rhode Island, awaited for a long time in vain the receipt of a parliamentary grant to enable him to complete his project; in 1732 published Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, in seven Dialogues, containing an Apology for the Christian Religion against Free-Thinkers, Lond., 2 vols. 8vo; in 1734 was made Bishop of Cloyne, and refused to exchange his see for that of Clogher, of double its value; in 1747 published Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries respecting the Virtues of Tar Water in the Plague, Lond., 8vo, and in 1752 Farther Thoughts on Tar Water, Lond., Svo, and died in the next year. In 1776 was published An Account of his Life, with Notes, containing Strictures upon his Works, &vo: in 1784 his Whole Works, with an Account of his Life, and several of his Letters to Thomas Prior, Esq., Dean Gervais, and Mr. Pope, etc., by T. Prior, Esq., 2 vols. 4to, appeared. There have been two recent editions of his Works, one in 3 vols. 8vo, and another by Rev. G. N. Wright, in 2 vols 8vo, 1843. Mr. W. gives a translation of the Latin Essays (Arithmetica, Miscellanea, Mathematica, and De Motu) and Notes on the Introduction to Human Knowledge. Among his works is The Querist: containing several Queries proposed to the Consideration of the |