You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's Effay on Criticifm, which was the work of his childhood almoft; but is fuch a monument of good fenfe and poetry as no other, that I know, has raifed in his riper years. He who reads without this difcernment and choice, and, like Bodin's pupil, refolves to read all, will not have time, no, nor capacity neither, to do any thing elfe. 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 affemble materials with much pains, and purchase them at much expenfe, and have neither leifure nor fkill to frame them into proper fcantlings, or to prepare them for use. To what purpose fhould he husband his time, or learn architecture? he has no defign to build. But then to what purpose all thefe quarries of ftone, all these mountains of fand and lime, all these forests of oak and deal? 66 Magno impendio temporum, magna " alienarum aurium moleftia, laudatio hæc conftat, "O hominem literatum! Simus hoc titulo rufticiore " contenti, O virum bonum ! We may add, and SENECA might have added in his own ftyle, and according to the manners and characters of his own age, another title as ruftic, and as little in fashion, "O virum fapientia fua fimplicem, & fimplicitate fua fapientem! O virum utilem fibi, "fuis, reipublicæ, & humano generi!" I have faid perhaps already, but no matter, it cannot be repeated too often, that the drift of all philofophy, and of all political fpeculations, ought to be the making us better men, and better citizens. Thofe ftudies, which have no intention towards improving our moral characters, have no pretence to be styled philofophical. “Quis eft enim," fays TULLY in his Offices, "qui nullis officii præceptis "tradendis, philofophum fe audeat dicere?" Whatever political speculations, inftead of preparing us to be useful to fociety and to promote the happinefs of mankind, are only fyftems for gratifying private ambition, and promoting private interests at the public expense; all fuch, I fay, deferve to be burnt, and the authors of them to ftarve, like MACHIAVEL, in a jail. The great ufe of history, properly fo called, tinguished from the writings of mere hits and antiquaries. 1. Greek and Roman hiftorians. Some idea of a complete hiftory. Further cautions to be obferved in this ftudy, and the regulation of it according to the different profeffions, and fituations of men: above all, the use to be made of it (1) by divines, and (2) by thofe who are called to the fervice of their country. I REMEMBER my laft letter ended adruptly, and a long interval has fince paffed: fo that the thread I had then fpun has flipt from me. I will try to recover it, and to pursue the task your lordship has obliged me to continue. Befides the pleasure of obeying your orders, it is likewife of fome advantage to myfelf, to recollect my thoughts, and resume a study in which I was converfant formerly. For nothing can be more true than that saying of SOLON reported by PLATO, though cenfured by him, impertinently enough in one of his wild books of laws "Affidue addifcens, ad fenium "venio." The truth is, the most knowing man in the course of the longeft life, will have always much to learn, and the wifeft and beft much to improve. This rule will hold in the knowledge and improvement to be acquired by the study of history and therefore even he who has gone to this school in his youth, fhould not neglect it in his age. “I read in LIVY, " fays MONTAGNE, "what another man does not, and PLUIARCH "read there what I do not. " Juft fo the fame man may read at fifty what he did not read in the fame book at five-and-twenty: at least I have found it fo, by my own experience, on many occafions. By comparing, in this ftudy, the experience of other men and other ages with our own, we improve both: we analyse, as it were, philofophy. We reduce all the abstract fpeculations of ethics, and all the general rules of human policy, to their first principles. With these advantages every man may, though few men do, advance daily towards thofe ideas, thofe increated effences, a Platonist would fay, which no human creature can reach in practice, but in the nearest approaches to which the perfection of our nature confifts; becaufe every approach of this kind renders a man better, and wifer for himself, for his family, for the little community of his own country, and for the great community of the world. Be not surprised, my lord, at the order in which I place these objects. Whatever order divines and moralifts, who contemplate the duties belonging to these objects, may place them in, this is the order they hold in nature: and I have always thought that we might lead ourselves and others to private virtue, more effectually by a due obfervation of this order, than by any of those sublime refinements that pervert it. Selflove but ferves the virtuous mind to wake; As the fmall pebble ftirs the peaceful lake. Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, So fings our friend POPE, my lord, and fo I believe. So I fhall prove too, if I mistake not, in an epiftle I am about to write to him, in order to complete a fet that were writ fome years ago. A man of my age, who returns to the ftudy of hiftory, has no time to lofe, because he has little to live: a man of your lordship's age has no time to lofe, because he has much to do. For different reafons therefore the fame rules will fuit us. Neither of us muft grope in the dark, neither of us must wander in the light. I have done the first formerly a good deal; "ne verba mihi daren"tur; ne aliquid effe, in hac recondita antiquitatis "fcientia, magni ac fecreti boni judicaremus. "If you take my word, you will throw none of your time away in the fame manner: and I fhall have the lefs regret for that which I have mifpent, if I perfuade you to haften down from the broken traditions of antiquity, to the more entire as well as more authentic hiftories of ages more modern. In the study of these we shall find many a |