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 expence, and have neither leifure nor fkill to frame them into proper fcantlings, or to prepare them for ufe. To what purpose fhould he hufband his time, or learn architecture? He has no defign to build. But then to what purpose all these quarries of stone, all thefe mountains of fand and lime, all these forefts of oak and deal? Magno impendio temporum, magna alienarum aurium moleftia, laudatio hac conftat, O hominem literatum! Simus hoc titulo rufliciore contenti, O virum bonum! We may add, and Seneca might have added in his own fiyle, 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, et fimplicitate fua fapientem! O virum utilem fibi, fuis, reipublicæ, et 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 speculations, 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 ftyled philofophical. Quis eft enim, fays Tully in his Offices, qui nullis officii præceptis tradendis, philofophum fe audeat dicere? Whatever political fpeculations, inftead of preparing us to be useful to fociety, and to promote the happiness of mankind, are only systems for gratifying private ambition, and promoting private interefts ac the public expence; all fuch, I fay, deferve to be burnt, and the authors of them to starve, like Ma- · chiavel, in a jail.

VOL. I.

H

LET

LETTER V.

1. The great use of history, properly fo called, as diftinguished from the writings of mere annalists and antiquaries.

II. Greck and Roman hiftorians.

III. Some idea of a complete hiftory.

IV. Further cautions to be observed in this fludy, and the regulation of it according to the different profef fions, and fituations of men above all, the ufe to be made of it by thofe who are called to the fervice of their country.

I

REMEMBER my last letter ended abruptly, and a long interval has fince paffed: So that the thread I had then fpun has flipt from me. I will try to recover it, and to pursue the task your Lordfhip has obliged me to continue. Befides the pleafure of obeying your orders, it is likewife of fome. advantage to myfelf, to recollect my thoughts, and refume a ftudy in which I was converfant formerly. For nothing can be more true than that faying 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 courfe 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

he who has gone to this fchool in his youth, fhould "I read in Livy, (fays

not neglect it in his age.

"Montagne,) what another man does not and "Plutarch 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 analife, as it were, philofophy. We reduce all the abftract 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 furprised, my Lord, at the order in which I place thefe objects. Whatever order divines and moralifts, who contemplate the duties belonging to thefe objects, may place them in, this is the order they hold in nature and I have always thought that we might lead ourfelves and others to private virtue, more effectually by a due obfervation of this order, than by any of those fublime refinements that pervert it.

Self love but serves the virtuous mind to wake ; As the finall pebble ftirs the peaceful lake.

The centre mov'd, a circle ftrait fucceeds;
Another ftill, and still another spreads:

Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, His country next, and next all human race.

So fings our friend Pope, my Lord, and fo I believe. So I fhall prove too, if I miftake 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 study of hiftory, has no time to lofe, becaufe 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 must grope in the dark, neither of us must wander in the light. I have done the first formerly a good deal; ne verba mihi darentur ; ne aliquid esse, 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 perfuadé 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 ftudy of thefe we fall find many a complete ferics of events, preceded by a deduction of their immediate and remote caufes, related in their full extent, and accompanied with fuch a detail of circumstances, and characters, as may transport the attentive reader back to the very time, make him a party to the councils, and an actor in the whole fcene of affairs. Such draughts as thefe, either found in history or extracted by our own application

from

from it, and fuch alone are truly useful. Thus history becomes what the ought to be, and what fhe has been fometimes called, magiftra vita, the mistress, like philofophy, of human life. If the is not this, he is at beft nuntia vetuftatis, the gazette of antiquity, or a dry register of ufelefs anecdotes. Suetonius fays that Tiberius used to enquire of the grammarians, quæ mater Hecuba? quod Achillis nomen inter virgines fuiffet? quid Syrenes cantare fint Jolita? Seneca mentions certain Greek authors, who examined very accurately, whether Anacreon loved wine or women beft, whether Sappho was a common whore, with other points of equal importance and I make no doubt but that a man, better acquainted than I have the honour to be with the learned perfons of our own country, might find fome who have difcovered feveral anecdotes concerning the giant Albion, concerning Samothes the fon, or Brito. the grandfon of Japhet, and concerning Brutus, who led a colony into our ifland after the fiege of Troy, as the others repeopled it after the deluge. But ten millions of fuch anecdotes as thefe, though they were true; and complete authentic volumes of Egyptian or Chaldean, of Greek or Latin, of Gallic or British, of French or Saxon records, would be of no value in my fenfe, because of no use towards our improvement in wifdom and virtue; if they contained nothing more than dynasties and ge nealogies, and a bare mention of remarkable events in the order of time, like journals, chronological tables, or dry and meagre annals.

I fay the fame of all thofe modern compofitions in which we find rather the heads of hiftory, than