contribute to make us ridiculous as well as miserable, will claim respect for the sake of the vicious and the foolish. It will be then no longer sufficient to spare persons; for to draw even characters of imagination must become criminal, when the application of them to those of highest rank, and greatest power cannot fail to be made. You began to laugh at the ridiculous taste, or the no taste in gardening and building, of some men who are at great expense in both. What a clamor was raised instantly? The name of Timon was applied to a noble person with double malice, to make him ridiculous, and you who lived in friendship with him, odious. By the authority that employed itself to encourage this clamor, and by the industry used to spread and support it, one would have thought that you had directed your satire in that epistle to political subjects, and had inveighed against those who impoverish, dishonor, and sell their country, instead of making yourself inoffensively merry at the expense of men who ruin none but themselves, and render none but themselves ridiculous. What will the clamor be, and how will the same authority foment it, when you proceed to lash, in other instances, our want of elegance even in luxury, and our wild profusion, the source of insatiable rapacity, and almost universal venality? My mind forebodes that the time will come, and who knows how near it may be, when other powers than those of Grub street, may be drawn forth against you, and when vice and folly may be avowedly sheltered behind a power instituted for better, and contrary purposes; for punishment of one, and for the reformation of both.

But however this may be, pursue your task undauntedly, and whilst so many others convert the noblest employments of human society into sordid trades, let the generous muse resume her ancient dignity, re-assert her ancient prerogative, and instruct and reform as well as amuse the world. Let her give a new turn to the thoughts of men, raise new affections in their minds, and determine in another and better manner the passions of their hearts. Poets, they say, were the first philosophers and divines, in every country; and in ours, perhaps, the first institutions of religion, and civil policy, were owing to our hards. Their task might be hard, their merit was certainly great. But if they were to rise now from the dead, they would find the second task, if I mistake not, much harder than the first, and confess it more easy to deal with ignorance than with error. When societies are once established, and governments formed, men flatter themselves that they proceed in cultivating the first rudiments of civility, policy, religion, and learning. But they do not observe that the private interests of many, the prejudices, affections, and passions of all, have a large share in the work, and often the largest. These

put a sort of bias on the mind, which makes it decline from the straight course; and the further these supposed improvements are carried, the greater this declination grows, till men lose sight of primitive and real nature, and have no other guide but custom, a second and a false nature. The author of one is Divine Wisdom, of the other, human imagination; and yet whenever the second stands in opposition to the first, as it does most frequently, the second prevails. From hence it happens, that the most civilised nations are often guilty of injustice and cruelty, which the least civilised would abhor, and that many of the most absurd opinions and doctrines, which have been imposed in the dark ages of ignorance, continue to be the opinions, and doctrines of ages enlightened by philosophy and learning. If I was a philosopher, says Montaigne, I would naturalise art, instead of artilising nature. The expression is odd, but the sense is good, and what he recommends would be done, if the reasons that have been given did not stand in the way; if the self-interest of some men, the madness of others, and the universal pride of the human heart, did not determine them to prefer error to truth, and authority to reason.

Whilst your muse is employed to lash the vicious into repentance, or to laugh the fools of the age into shame, and whilst she rises sometimes to the noblest subjects of philosophical meditation, I shall throw upon paper, for your satisfaction, and for my own, some part at least of what I have thought and said formerly on the last of these subjects, as well as the reflections that they may suggest to me further in writing on them. The strange situation I am in, and the melancholy state of public affairs take up much of my time, divide or even dissipate my thoughts, and which is worse, drag the mind down by perpetual interruptions, from a philosophical tone, or temper, to the drudgery of private and public business. The last lies nearest my heart; and since I am once more engaged in the service of my country, disarmed, gagged, and almost bound as I am, I will not abandon it as long as the integrity and perseverance of those who are under none of these disadvantages, and with whom I now co-operate, make it reasonable for me to act the same part. Further than this, no shadow of duty obliges me to go. Plato ceased to act for the commonwealth, when he ceased to persuade; and Solon laid down his arms before the public magazine, when Pisistratus grew too strong to be opposed any longer with hopes of success.

Though my situation and my engagements are sufficiently known to you, I choose to mention them on this occasion, lest you should expect from me any thing more than I find myself able to perform whilst I am in them. It has been said by many, that they wanted time to make their discourses shorter, and if

this be a good excuse, as I think it may be often, I lay in my claim to it. You must neither expect, in what I am about to write to you, that brevity which might be expected in letters, or essays, nor that exactness of method, nor that fulness of the several parts which they affect to observe, who presume to write philosophical treatises. The merit of brevity is relative to the manner, and style, in which any subject is treated, as well as to the nature of it; for the same subject may be sometimes treated very differently, and yet very properly, in both these respects.— Should the poet make syllogisms in verse, or pursue a long process of reasoning in the didactic style, he would be sure to tire his reader on the whole, like Lucretius, though he reasoned better than the Roman, and put into some parts of his work the same poetical fire. He may write, as you have begun to do, on philosophical subjects, but he must write in his own character. He must contract, he may shadow, he has a right to omit whatever will not be cast in the poetic mould, and when he cannot instruct, he may hope to please. But the philosopher has no such privileges. He may contract sometimes, he must never shadow. He must be limited by his matter, lest he should grow whimsical; and by the parts of it which he understands best, lest he should grow obscure. But these parts he must develope fully, and he has no right to omit any thing that may serve the purpose of truth, whether it please, or not. As it would be disingenuous to sacrifice truth to popularity, so it is trifling to appeal to the reason and experience of mankind, as every philosophical writer does, or must be understood to do, and then to talk, like Plato, and his ancient and modern disciples, to the imagination only. There is no need however to banish eloquence out of philosophy; and truth and reason are no enemies to the purity, nor to the ornaments of language. But as the want of an exact determination of ideas, and of an exact precision in the use of words, is inexcusable in a philosopher, he must preserve them, even at the expense of style. In short, it seems to me, that the business of the philosopher is to dilate, if I may borrow this word from Tully, to press, to prove, to convince; and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart.

Though I seem to prepare an apology for prolixity even in writing essays, I will endeavor not to be tedious; and this endeavor may succeed the better, perhaps, by declining any over strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy, whereof I shall never lose sight; but this will be very consistent with a sort of epistolary license. To digress, and to ramble, are different things; and he who knows the country through which he travels, may venture

out of the high road because he is sure of finding his way back to it again. Thus the several matters that may arise, even accidentally before me, will have some share in guiding my pen.

I dare not promise that the sections or members of these essays will bear that nice proportion to one another, and to the whole, which a severe critic would require. All I dare promise you is, that my thoughts, in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just as they pass through my mind, just as they use to be when we converse together on those, or any other subjects; when we saunter alone, or as we have often done with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick's, among the multiplied scenes of your little garden. That theatre is large enough for my ambition. I dare not pretend to instruct mankind, and I am not humble enough to write to the public for any other purpose. I mean, by writing on such subjects as I intend here, to make some trial of my progress in search of the most important truths, and to make this trial before a friend, in whom, I think, I may confide. These epistolary essays, therefore, will be written with as little regard to form, and with as little reserve, as I used to show in the conversations which have given occasion to them, when I maintained the same opinions, and insisted on the same reasons in defence of them.

It might seem strange to a man, not well acquainted with the world, and in particular with the philosophical and theological tribe, that so much precaution should be necessary in the communication of our thoughts on any subject of the first philosophy, which is of common concern to the whole race of mankind, and wherein no one can have, according to nature and truth, any separate interest. Yet so it is. The separate interests we cannot have by God's institutions, are created by those of man; and there is no subject on which men deal more unfairly with one another than this. There are separate interests, to mention them in general only, of prejudice, and of profession. By the first, men set out in the search of truth under the conduct of error, and work up their heated imaginations often to such a delirium, that the more genius, and the more learning they have, the madder they grow. By the second, they are sworn, as it were, to follow all their lives the authority of some particular school, to which "tanquam scopulo adhærescunt;"* for the condition of their engagement is to defend certain doctrines, and even mere forms of speech, without examination, or to examine only in order to defend them. By both, they become philosophers as men became Christians in the primitive church, or as they determined themselves about disputed doctrines; for, says Hilarius,

* Tully.

writing to St. Austin, "Your holiness knows, that the greatest part of the faithful embrace, or refuse to embrace a doctrine, for no reason but the impression which the name and authority of some body or other makes on them." What now can a man who seeks truth, for the sake of truth, and is indifferent where he finds it, expect from any communication of his thoughts to such men as these? He will be much deceived, if he expects any thing better than imposition, or altercation.

Few men have, I believe, consulted others, both the living and the dead, with less presumption, and in a greater spirit of docility, than I have done; and the more I have consulted, the less have I found of that inward conviction on which a mind that is not absolutely implicit, can rest. I thought, for a time, that this must be my fault. I distrusted, myself, not my teachers, men of the greatest name ancient and modern. But I found at last, that it was safer to trust myself than them, and to proceed by the light of my own understanding, than to wander after these ignes fatui of philosophy. If I am able, therefore, to tell you easily, and at the same time so clearly and distinctly as to be easily understood, and so strongly as not to be easily refuted, how I have thought for myself, I shall be persuaded that I have thought enough on these subjects. If I am not able to do this, it will be evident that I have not thought on them enough. I must review my opinions, discover and correct my errors.

I have said, that the subjects I mean, and which will be the principal objects of these essays, are those of the first philosophy, and it is fit, therefore, that I should explain what I understand by the first philosophy. Do not imagine that I understand what has passed commonly under that name, metaphysical pneumatics, for instance, or ontology. The first are conversant about imaginary substances, such as may, and may not exist. That there is a God we can demonstrate; and although we know nothing of his manner of being, yet we acknowledge him to be immaterial, because a thousand absurdities, and such as imply the strongest contradiction, result from the supposition that the Supreme Being is a system of matter. But of any other spirits we neither have, nor can have any knowledge, and no man will be inquisitive about spiritual physiognomy, nor go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body, more subtile, and more fine, which was one of the Pythagorean, and Platonic whimsies; nor be under any concern to know, if this be not the case of the dead, how souls can be distinguished after their separation, that of Dives, for example, from that of Lazarus. The second, that is ontology, treats most scientifically of Being ab