approve, therefore, very much the devotion of a ftudious man at Chrift-church, who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail with GOD, as devout perfons are apt to do, and, amongst other particular thanksgivings, acknowledging the divine goodness in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries! These men court fame, as well as their betters, by fuch. means as God has given them to acquire it: and Littleton exerted all the genius he had, when he made a dictionary, though Stephens did not. They deserve encouragement, however, whilft they continue to compile, and neither affect wit, nor prefume to reason.

There is a fourth class, of much less use than thefe, but of much greater name; men of the first rank in learning, and to whom the whole tribe of fcholars bow with reverence. A man must be as indifferent as I am to common cenfure or approbation, to avow a thorough contempt for the whole business of these learned lives; for all the researches into antiquity, for all the fyftems of chronology and history, that we owe to the immense labours of a Scaliger, a Bochart, a Petavius, an Usher, and even a Marham. The fame materials are common to them all; but these materials are few, and there is a moral impoffibility that they should ever have more. They have combined thefe into every form that can be given to them: they have fuppofed, they have gueffed, they have joined difjointed paffages of different authors, and broken traditions of uncertain originals, of various peo

ple,

ple, and of centuries remote from one another as well as from ours. In fhort, that they might leave no liberty untaken, even a wild fantastical fimilitude of founds has ferved to prop up a fystem. As the materials they have are few; fo are the very best, and such as pass for authentic, extremely precarious; as fome of these learned perfons themselves confefs.

Julius Africanus, Eufebius, and George the Monk, opened the principal fources of all this fcience; but they corrupted the waters. Their point of view was to make profane history and chronology agree with facred; though the latter chronology is very far from being established with the clearness and certainty neceffary to make it a rule. For this purpose, the ancient monuments, that these writers conveyed to posterity, were digested by them according to the fyftem they were to maintain; and none of these monuments were delivered down in their original form, and genuine purity. The Dynafties of Manetho, for inftance, are broken to pieces by Eufebius, and fuch fragments of them as fuited his defign are struck into his work. We have, we know, no more of them. The Codex Alexandrinus we owe to George the Monk. We have no other authority for it: and one cannot fee without amazement fuch a man as Sir John Marsham undervaluing this authority in one page, and building his fyftem upon it in the next. He feems even by the lightness of his expreffions, if I remember well, for it is long fince I looked into his canon, not to be much

B 3

much concerned what foundation his fyftem had, fo he fhewed his skill in forming one, and in reducing the immenfe antiquity of the Egyptians within the limits of the Hebraic calculation. In fhort, my Lord, all these systems are fo many enchanted caftles; they appear to be fomething, they are nothing but appearances: like them too, diffolve the charm, and they vanifh from the fight. To diffolve the charm, we must begin at the beginning of them: the expreffion may be odd, but it is fignificant. We muft examine fcrupulously and indifferently the foundations on which they lean: and when we find thefe either faintly probable, or grossly improbable, it would be foolish to expect any thing better in the fuperftructure. This fcience is one of those that are a limine falutanda. To do thus much may be neceffary, that grave authority may not impofe on our ignorance: to do more, would be to affist this very authority in impofing falfe fcience upon us. I had rather take the Darius whom Alexander conquered, for the fon of Hydafpes, and make as many anachronisms as a Jewith chronologer, than facrifice half my life to collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary.

LET

LETTER II.

Concerning the true Ufe and Advantages of HISTORY.

ET me say something of history in general, before I defcend into the confideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of study, or of the different views of those that apply themselves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter.

The love of history seems infeparable from human nature, because it seems infeparable from felf-love. The fame principle, in this inftance, carries us forward, and back ward, to future and to paft ages. We imagine that the things which affect us, muft affect pofterity: this fentiment runs thro' mankind, from Cæfar down to the parish-clerk in Pope's Mifcellany. We are fond of preferving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adventures, of thofe of our own time, and of those that preceded it. Rude heaps of stones have been raised, and ruder hymns have been compofed, for this purpose, by nations who had not yet the use of arts and letters. To go no farther back, the triumphs of Odin were celebrated in runic fongs, and the feats of our British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards. The favages of America have the fame cuftom at this day: and long historical ballads of their huntings, and their wars, are fung at all their feftivals. B 4 There

There is no need of faying how this paffion grows among civilized nations, in proportion to the means of gratifying it: but let us obferve, that the fame principle of nature directs us as ftrongly, and more generally as well as more early, to indulge our own curiofity, instead of preparing to gratify that of others. The child hearkens with delight to the tales of his nurse; he learns to read, and he devours with eargernefs, fabulous legends and novels; in riper years, he applies himself to hiftory, or to that which he takes for hiftory, to authorized romance: and, even in age, the defire of knowing what has happened to other men, yields to the defire alone of relating what has happened to ourselves, Thus hiftory, true or falfe, fpeaks to our paffions always. What pity is it, my Lord, that even the beft fhould fpeak to our understandings fo fel-dom! That it does fo, we have none to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her part. She has opened this study to every man who can read and think: and what he has made the moft agreeable, reafon can make the most useful, application of our minds. But if we confult our reason, we shall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures in this, as in moft other cafes, who are fo proud of being rational. We shall neither read to foothe our indolence, nor to gratify our vanity: as little fhall we content ourselves to drudge like grammarians and critics, that others may be able to study with greater ease and profit, like philofophers and ftatefmen; as little fhall we af

fect