For

gy agree with facred; though the latter chronology is very far from being established with the clearnefs and certainty neceffary to make it a rule. this purpose, the ancient monuments, that thefe 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 ftuck 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 with. out amazement fuch a man as Sir John Marham 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 concerned what foundation his fyftem had, fo he fhowed his fkill in forming one, and in reducing the immenfe antiquity of the Egyptians within the limits of the Hebraic calculation. In fhort, my Lord, all thefe fyftems are fo many inchanted caftles; they appear to be fomething, they are nothing but appearances: Like them too, diffolve the charm, and they vanish 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 must examine fcrupulously and indifferently the foundations on which they lean : And when we find thefe either faintly probable, or grofsly improbable, it would be foolish to expect A 3

any

1

any thing better in the superstructure. This science is one of thofe that 66 are a limine falutandæ." To do thus much may be neceffary, that grave authority may not impofe on our ignorance: To do more, would be to affift this very authority in impofing falfe fcience upon us. I had rather take the Darius whom Alexander conquered, for the son of Hystaf pes, and make as many anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than facrifice half my life to collect all she learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary.

OF THE

STUDY OF HISTORY.

L

LETTER II.

Concerning the true use and advantages of it.

ET me fay fomething of History in general, before I defcend into the confideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of ftudy, or of the different views of thofe that apply themfelves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter.

The love of history feems infeparable from human nature, because it seems infeparable from felf-love. The fame principle in this inftance carries us forward and backward, to future and to paft ages. We imagine that the things, which affect us, must affect pofterity: This fentiment runs through mankind, from Cæfar down to the parish clerk in Pope's Mif cellany. We are fond of preferving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adven⚫ tures, of thofe of our own time, and of those that preceded it. Rude heaps of ftones have been raised, and ruder hymns have been compofed, for this purpofe, 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 recorded in those of their bards. The favages of America have the fame cuf

tom

tom at this day: And long hiftorical ballads of their huntings and their wars are fung at all their festivals. 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 strongly, and more generally as well as more early, to indulge our own curiofity, instead of preparing to gratify that of others. The child harkens with delight to the tales of his nurse: He learns to read, and he devours with eagerness fabulous legends and novels: In riper years he applies himself to hiftory, or to that which he takes for history, to authorised 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 ourfelves. Thus hiftory, true or falfe, fpeaks to our paffions always.. What pity is it, my Lord, that even the best should speak to our understandings fo feldom? That it does fo, we have none to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her part. She has opened this ftudy to every man who can read and think: And what he has made the most agrecable, reafon can make the most ufeful, application of our minds. But if we confult our reason, we fhall be far from following the examples of our fellow creatures, in this as in most other cafes, who are fo proud of being rational. We fhall neither read to foothe our indolence, nor to gratify our vanity: As little fhall we content ourfelves 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 affect the flender merit of becoming great

scholars

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scholars at the expence of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these mistake the true drift of ftudy, and the true ufe of hiftory. Nature gave us curiofity to excite the industry of our minds; but she never intended it fhould be made the principal, much lefs the fole, object of their application. The true and proper object of this application is a conftant improvement in private and in public virtue. An application to any ftudy, that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens, is at beft but a fpecious and ingenious fort of idleness, to ufe an expreffion of Tillotfon: And the knowledge we acquire by it is a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. This creditable kind of ignorance is, in my opinion, the whole benefit which the generality of men, even of the most learned, reap from the ftudy of history: And yet the study of history seems to me, of all other, the most proper to train us up to private and public virtue.

Your Lordship may very well be ready by this time, and after fo much bold cenfure on my part, to afk me, what then is the true ufe of history? in what refpects it may ferve to make us better and wifer and what method is to be purfued in the ftudy of it, for attaining these great ends? I will anfwer you by quoting what I have read fome where or other, in Dionyf. Halicarn. I think, that history is philofophy teaching by examples. We need but to caft our eyes on the world, and we fhall fee the daily force of example: We need but to turn them inward, and we shall foon difcover why example has this force. Pauci prudentia, fays Tacitus, honefta

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