initial commit of ebook 2445HEADmain

2 files changed, 4256 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/lteng10.txt b/old/lteng10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17423
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/lteng10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4256 @@
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters on England, by Voltaire*
+#1 in our series by Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Letters on England
+
+by Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)
+
+December, 2000 [Etext #2445]
+
+
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters on England, by Voltaire*
+******This file should be named lteng10.txt or lteng10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, lteng11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, lteng10a.txt
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1894 Cassell & Company edition.
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do usually do NOT! keep
+these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
+files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
+from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
+assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
+more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
+don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+******
+
+To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
+to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
+author and by title, and includes information about how
+to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
+download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
+is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
+for a more complete list of our various sites.
+
+To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
+Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
+sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
+at http://promo.net/pg).
+
+Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
+
+Example FTP session:
+
+ftp sunsite.unc.edu
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+***
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1894 Cassell & Company edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS ON ENGLAND
+
+by Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Francois Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire, was the son of
+Francois Arouet of Poitou, who lived in Paris, had given up his
+office of notary two years before the birth of this his third son,
+and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer's office in the
+Chambre des Comptes.  Voltaire was born in the year 1694.  He lived
+until within ten or eleven years of the outbreak of the Great French
+Revolution, and was a chief leader in the movement of thought that
+preceded the Revolution.  Though he lived to his eighty-fourth year,
+Voltaire was born with a weak body.  His brother Armand, eight years
+his senior, became a Jansenist.  Voltaire when ten years old was
+placed with the Jesuits in the College Louis-le-Grand.  There he was
+taught during seven years, and his genius was encouraged in its bent
+for literature; skill in speaking and in writing being especially
+fostered in the system of education which the Jesuits had planned to
+produce capable men who by voice and pen could give a reason for the
+faith they held.  Verses written for an invalid soldier at the age
+of eleven won for young Voltaire the friendship of Ninon l'Enclos,
+who encouraged him to go on writing verses.  She died soon
+afterwards, and remembered him with a legacy of two thousand livres
+for purchase of books.  He wrote in his lively school-days a tragedy
+that afterwards he burnt.  At the age of seventeen he left the
+College Louis-le-Grand, where he said afterwards that he had been
+taught nothing but Latin and the Stupidities.  He was then sent to
+the law schools, and saw life in Paris as a gay young poet who, with
+all his brilliant liveliness, had an aptitude for looking on the
+tragic side of things, and one of whose first poems was an "Ode on
+the Misfortunes of Life."  His mother died when he was twenty.
+Voltaire's father thought him a fool for his versifying, and
+attached him as secretary to the Marquis of Chateauneuf; when he
+went as ambassador to the Hague.  In December, 1713, he was
+dismissed for his irregularities.  In Paris his unsteadiness and his
+addiction to literature caused his father to rejoice in getting him
+housed in a country chateau with M. de Caumartin.  M. de Caumartin's
+father talked with such enthusiasm of Henri IV. and Sully that
+Voltaire planned the writing of what became his Henriade, and his
+"History of the Age of Louis XIV.," who died on the 1st of
+September, 1715.
+
+Under the regency that followed, Voltaire got into trouble again and
+again through the sharpness of his pen, and at last, accused of
+verse that satirised the Regent, he was locked up--on the 17th of
+May, 1717--in the Bastille.  There he wrote the first two books of
+his Henriade, and finished a play on OEdipus, which he had begun at
+the age of eighteen.  He did not obtain full liberty until the 12th
+of April, 1718, and it was at this time--with a clearly formed
+design to associate the name he took with work of high attempt in
+literature--that Francois Marie Arouet, aged twenty-four, first
+called himself Voltaire.
+
+Voltaire's OEdipe was played with success in November, 1718.  A few
+months later he was again banished from Paris, and finished the
+Henriade in his retirement, as well as another play, Artemise, that
+was acted in February, 1720.  Other plays followed.  In December,
+1721, Voltaire visited Lord Bolingbroke, who was then an exile from
+England, at the Chateau of La Source.  There was now constant
+literary activity.  From July to October, 1722, Voltaire visited
+Holland with Madame de Rupelmonde.  After a serious attack of small-
+pox in November, 1723, Voltaire was active as a poet about the
+Court.  He was then in receipt of a pension of two thousand livres
+from the king, and had inherited more than twice as much by the
+death of his father in January, 1722.  But in December, 1725, a
+quarrel, fastened upon him by the Chevalier de Rohan, who had him
+waylaid and beaten, caused him to send a challenge.  For this he was
+arrested and lodged once more, in April, 1726, in the Bastille.
+There he was detained a month; and his first act when he was
+released was to ask for a passport to England.
+
+Voltaire left France, reached London in August, 1726, went as guest
+to the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth, and remained three
+years in this country, from the age of thirty-two to the age of
+thirty-five.  He was here when George I. died, and George II. became
+king.  He published here his Henriade.  He wrote here his "History
+of Charles XII."  He read "Gulliver's Travels" as a new book, and
+might have been present at the first night of The Beggar's Opera.
+He was here whet Sir Isaac Newton died.
+
+In 1731 he published at Rouen the Lettres sur les Anglais, which
+appeared in England in 1733 in the volume from which they are here
+reprinted.
+
+H.M.
+
+
+
+LETTERS ON ENGLAND
+
+
+
+LETTER I.--ON THE QUAKERS
+
+
+
+I was of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a
+people were worthy the attention of the curious.  To acquaint myself
+with them I made a visit to one of the most eminent Quakers in
+England, who, after having traded thirty years, had the wisdom to
+prescribe limits to his fortune and to his desires, and was settled
+in a little solitude not far from London.  Being come into it, I
+perceived a small but regularly built house, vastly neat, but
+without the least pomp of furniture.  The Quaker who owned it was a
+hale, ruddy-complexioned old man, who had never been afflicted with
+sickness because he had always been insensible to passions, and a
+perfect stranger to intemperance.  I never in my life saw a more
+noble or a more engaging aspect than his.  He was dressed like those
+of his persuasion, in a plain coat without pleats in the sides, or
+buttons on the pockets and sleeves; and had on a beaver, the brims
+of which were horizontal like those of our clergy.  He did not
+uncover himself when I appeared, and advanced towards me without
+once stooping his body; but there appeared more politeness in the
+open, humane air of his countenance, than in the custom of drawing
+one leg behind the other, and taking that from the head which is
+made to cover it.  "Friend," says he to me, "I perceive thou art a
+stranger, but if I can do anything for thee, only tell me."  "Sir,"
+said I to him, bending forwards and advancing, as is usual with us,
+one leg towards him, "I flatter myself that my just curiosity will
+not give you the least offence, and that you'll do me the honour to
+inform me of the particulars of your religion."  "The people of thy
+country," replied the Quaker, "are too full of their bows and
+compliments, but I never yet met with one of them who had so much
+curiosity as thyself.  Come in, and let us first dine together."  I
+still continued to make some very unseasonable ceremonies, it not
+being easy to disengage one's self at once from habits we have been
+long used to; and after taking part in a frugal meal, which began
+and ended with a prayer to God, I began to question my courteous
+host.  I opened with that which good Catholics have more than once
+made to Huguenots.  "My dear sir," said I, "were you ever baptised?"
+"I never was," replied the Quaker, "nor any of my brethren."
+"Zounds!" say I to him, "you are not Christians, then."  "Friend,"
+replies the old man in a soft tone of voice, "swear not; we are
+Christians, and endeavour to be good Christians, but we are not of
+opinion that the sprinkling water on a child's head makes him a
+Christian."  "Heavens!" say I, shocked at his impiety, "you have
+then forgot that Christ was baptised by St. John."  "Friend,"
+replies the mild Quaker once again, "swear not; Christ indeed was
+baptised by John, but He himself never baptised anyone.  We are the
+disciples of Christ, not of John."  I pitied very much the sincerity
+of my worthy Quaker, and was absolutely for forcing him to get
+himself christened.  "Were that all," replied he very gravely, "we
+would submit cheerfully to baptism, purely in compliance with thy
+weakness, for we don't condemn any person who uses it; but then we
+think that those who profess a religion of so holy, so spiritual a
+nature as that of Christ, ought to abstain to the utmost of their
+power from the Jewish ceremonies."  "O unaccountable!" say I:
+"what! baptism a Jewish ceremony?"  "Yes, my friend," says he, "so
+truly Jewish, that a great many Jews use the baptism of John to this
+day.  Look into ancient authors, and thou wilt find that John only
+revived this practice; and that it had been used by the Hebrews,
+long before his time, in like manner as the Mahometans imitated the
+Ishmaelites in their pilgrimages to Mecca.  Jesus indeed submitted
+to the baptism of John, as He had suffered Himself to be
+circumcised; but circumcision and the washing with water ought to be
+abolished by the baptism of Christ, that baptism of the Spirit, that
+ablution of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind.  Thus the
+forerunner said, 'I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance;
+but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not
+worthy to bear:  he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with
+fire.'  Likewise Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, writes as
+follows to the Corinthians, 'Christ sent me not to baptise, but to
+preach the Gospel;' and indeed Paul never baptised but two persons
+with water, and that very much against his inclinations.  He
+circumcised his disciple Timothy, and the other disciples likewise
+circumcised all who were willing to submit to that carnal ordinance.
+But art thou circumcised?" added he.  "I have not the honour to be
+so," say I.  "Well, friend," continues the Quaker, "thou art a
+Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without being
+baptised."  Thus did this pious man make a wrong but very specious
+application of four or five texts of Scripture which seemed to
+favour the tenets of his sect; but at the same time forgot very
+sincerely an hundred texts which made directly against them.  I had
+more sense than to contest with him, since there is no possibility
+of convincing an enthusiast.  A man should never pretend to inform a
+lover of his mistress's faults, no more than one who is at law, of
+the badness of his cause; nor attempt to win over a fanatic by
+strength of reasoning.  Accordingly I waived the subject.
+
+"Well," said I to him, "what sort of a communion have you?"  "We
+have none like that thou hintest at among us," replied he.  "How! no
+communion?" said I.  "Only that spiritual one," replied he, "of
+hearts."  He then began again to throw out his texts of Scripture;
+and preached a most eloquent sermon against that ordinance.  He
+harangued in a tone as though he had been inspired, to prove that
+the sacraments were merely of human invention, and that the word
+"sacrament" was not once mentioned in the Gospel.  "Excuse," said
+he, "my ignorance, for I have not employed a hundredth part of the
+arguments which might be brought to prove the truth of our religion,
+but these thou thyself mayest peruse in the Exposition of our Faith
+written by Robert Barclay.  It is one of the best pieces that ever
+was penned by man; and as our adversaries confess it to be of
+dangerous tendency, the arguments in it must necessarily be very
+convincing."  I promised to peruse this piece, and my Quaker
+imagined he had already made a convert of me.  He afterwards gave me
+an account in few words of some singularities which make this sect
+the contempt of others.  "Confess," said he, "that it was very
+difficult for thee to refrain from laughter, when I answered all thy
+civilities without uncovering my head, and at the same time said
+'thee' and 'thou' to thee.  However, thou appearest to me too well
+read not to know that in Christ's time no nation was so ridiculous
+as to put the plural number for the singular.  Augustus Caesar
+himself was spoken to in such phrases as these:  'I love thee,' 'I
+beseech thee,' 'I thank thee;' but he did not allow any person to
+call him 'Domine,' sir.  It was not till many ages after that men
+would have the word 'you,' as though they were double, instead of
+'thou' employed in speaking to them; and usurped the flattering
+titles of lordship, of eminence, and of holiness, which mere worms
+bestow on other worms by assuring them that they are with a most
+profound respect, and an infamous falsehood, their most obedient
+humble servants.  It is to secure ourselves more strongly from such
+a shameless traffic of lies and flattery, that we 'thee' and 'thou'
+a king with the same freedom as we do a beggar, and salute no
+person; we owing nothing to mankind but charity, and to the laws
+respect and obedience.
+
+"Our apparel is also somewhat different from that of others, and
+this purely, that it may be a perpetual warning to us not to imitate
+them.  Others wear the badges and marks of their several dignities,
+and we those of Christian humility.  We fly from all assemblies of
+pleasure, from diversions of every kind, and from places where
+gaming is practised; and indeed our case would be very deplorable,
+should we fill with such levities as those I have mentioned the
+heart which ought to be the habitation of God.  We never swear, not
+even in a court of justice, being of opinion that the most holy name
+of God ought not to be prostituted in the miserable contests betwixt
+man and man.  When we are obliged to appear before a magistrate upon
+other people's account (for law-suits are unknown among the
+Friends), we give evidence to the truth by sealing it with our yea
+or nay; and the judges believe us on our bare affirmation, whilst so
+many other Christians forswear themselves on the holy Gospels.  We
+never war or fight in any case; but it is not that we are afraid,
+for so far from shuddering at the thoughts of death, we on the
+contrary bless the moment which unites us with the Being of Beings;
+but the reason of our not using the outward sword is, that we are
+neither wolves, tigers, nor mastiffs, but men and Christians.  Our
+God, who has commanded us to love our enemies, and to suffer without
+repining, would certainly not permit us to cross the seas, merely
+because murderers clothed in scarlet, and wearing caps two foot
+high, enlist citizens by a noise made with two little sticks on an
+ass's skin extended.  And when, after a victory is gained, the whole
+city of London is illuminated; when the sky is in a blaze with
+fireworks, and a noise is heard in the air, of thanksgivings, of
+bells, of organs, and of the cannon, we groan in silence, and are
+deeply affected with sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart, for
+the sad havoc which is the occasion of those public rejoicings."
+
+
+
+LETTER II.--ON THE QUAKERS
+
+
+
+Such was the substance of the conversation I had with this very
+singular person; but I was greatly surprised to see him come the
+Sunday following and take me with him to the Quakers' meeting.
+There are several of these in London, but that which he carried me
+to stands near the famous pillar called The Monument.  The brethren
+were already assembled at my entering it with my guide.  There might
+be about four hundred men and three hundred women in the meeting.
+The women hid their faces behind their fans, and the men were
+covered with their broad-brimmed hats.  All were seated, and the
+silence was universal.  I passed through them, but did not perceive
+so much as one lift up his eyes to look at me.  This silence lasted
+a quarter of an hour, when at last one of them rose up, took off his
+hat, and, after making a variety of wry faces and groaning in a most
+lamentable manner, he, partly from his nose and partly from his
+mouth, threw out a strange, confused jumble of words (borrowed, as
+he imagined, from the Gospel) which neither himself nor any of his
+hearers understood.  When this distorter had ended his beautiful
+soliloquy, and that the stupid, but greatly edified, congregation
+were separated, I asked my friend how it was possible for the
+judicious part of their assembly to suffer such a babbling?  "We are
+obliged," says he, "to suffer it, because no one knows when a man
+rises up to hold forth whether he will be moved by the Spirit or by
+folly.  In this doubt and uncertainty we listen patiently to
+everyone; we even allow our women to hold forth.  Two or three of
+these are often inspired at one and the same time, and it is then
+that a most charming noise is heard in the Lord's house."  "You
+have, then, no priests?" say I to him.  "No, no, friend," replies
+the Quaker, "to our great happiness."  Then opening one of the
+Friends' books, as he called it, he read the following words in an
+emphatic tone:- "'God forbid we should presume to ordain anyone to
+receive the Holy Spirit on the Lord's Day to the prejudice of the
+rest of the brethren.'  Thanks to the Almighty, we are the only
+people upon earth that have no priests.  Wouldst thou deprive us of
+so happy a distinction?  Why should we abandon our babe to mercenary
+nurses, when we ourselves have milk enough for it?  These mercenary
+creatures would soon domineer in our houses and destroy both the
+mother and the babe.  God has said, 'Freely you have received,
+freely give.'  Shall we, after these words, cheapen, as it were, the
+Gospel, sell the Holy Ghost, and make of an assembly of Christians a
+mere shop of traders?  We don't pay a set of men clothed in black to
+assist our poor, to bury our dead, or to preach to the brethren.
+These offices are all of too tender a nature for us ever to entrust
+them to others."  "But how is it possible for you," said I, with
+some warmth, "to know whether your discourse is really inspired by
+the Almighty?"  "Whosoever," says he, "shall implore Christ to
+enlighten him, and shall publish the Gospel truths he may feel
+inwardly, such an one may be assured that he is inspired by the
+Lord."  He then poured forth a numberless multitude of Scripture
+texts which proved, as he imagined, that there is no such thing as
+Christianity without an immediate revelation, and added these
+remarkable words:  "When thou movest one of thy limbs, is it moved
+by thy own power?  Certainly not; for this limb is often sensible to
+involuntary motions.  Consequently he who created thy body gives
+motion to this earthly tabernacle.  And are the several ideas of
+which thy soul receives the impression formed by thyself?  Much less
+are they, since these pour in upon thy mind whether thou wilt or no;
+consequently thou receivest thy ideas from Him who created thy soul.
+But as He leaves thy affections at full liberty, He gives thy mind
+such ideas as thy affections may deserve; if thou livest in God,
+thou actest, thou thinkest in God.  After this thou needest only but
+open thine eyes to that light which enlightens all mankind, and it
+is then thou wilt perceive the truth, and make others perceive it."
+"Why, this," said I, "is Malebranche's doctrine to a tittle."  "I am
+acquainted with thy Malebranche," said he; "he had something of the
+Friend in him, but was not enough so."  These are the most
+considerable particulars I learnt concerning the doctrine of the
+Quakers.  In my next letter I shall acquaint you with their history,
+which you will find more singular than their opinions.
+
+
+
+LETTER III.--ON THE QUAKERS
+
+
+
+You have already heard that the Quakers date from Christ, who,
+according to them, was the first Quaker.  Religion, say these, was
+corrupted a little after His death, and remained in that state of
+corruption about sixteen hundred years.  But there were always a few
+Quakers concealed in the world, who carefully preserved the sacred
+fire, which was extinguished in all but themselves, until at last
+this light spread itself in England in 1642.
+
+It was at the time when Great Britain was torn to pieces by the
+intestine wars which three or four sects had raised in the name of
+God, that one George Fox, born in Leicestershire, and son to a silk-
+weaver, took it into his head to preach, and, as he pretended, with
+all the requisites of a true apostle--that is, without being able
+either to read or write.  He was about twenty-five years of age,
+irreproachable in his life and conduct, and a holy madman.  He was
+equipped in leather from head to foot, and travelled from one
+village to another, exclaiming against war and the clergy.  Had his
+invectives been levelled against the soldiery only he would have
+been safe enough, but he inveighed against ecclesiastics.  Fox was
+seized at Derby, and being carried before a justice of peace, he did
+not once offer to pull off his leathern hat, upon which an officer
+gave him a great box of the ear, and cried to him, "Don't you know
+you are to appear uncovered before his worship?"  Fox presented his
+other cheek to the officer, and begged him to give him another box
+for God's sake.  The justice would have had him sworn before he
+asked him any questions.  "Know, friend," says Fox to him, "that I
+never swear."  The justice, observing he "thee'd" and "thou'd" him,
+sent him to the House of Correction, in Derby, with orders that he
+should be whipped there.  Fox praised the Lord all the way he went
+to the House of Correction, where the justice's order was executed
+with the utmost severity.  The men who whipped this enthusiast were
+greatly surprised to hear him beseech them to give him a few more
+lashes for the good of his soul.  There was no need of entreating
+these people; the lashes were repeated, for which Fox thanked them
+very cordially, and began to preach.  At first the spectators fell
+a-laughing, but they afterwards listened to him; and as enthusiasm
+is an epidemical distemper, many were persuaded, and those who
+scourged him became his first disciples.  Being set at liberty, he
+ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his heels,
+still declaiming against the clergy, and was whipped from time to
+time.  Being one day set in the pillory, he harangued the crowd in
+so strong and moving a manner, that fifty of the auditors became his
+converts, and he won the rest so much in his favour that, his head
+being freed tumultuously from the hole where it was fastened, the
+populace went and searched for the Church of England clergyman who
+had been chiefly instrumental in bringing him to this punishment,
+and set him on the same pillory where Fox had stood.
+
+Fox was bold enough to convert some of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers,
+who thereupon quitted the service and refused to take the oaths.
+Oliver, having as great a contempt for a sect which would not allow
+its members to fight, as Sixtus Quintus had for another sect, Dove
+non si chiamava, began to persecute these new converts.  The prisons
+were crowded with them, but persecution seldom has any other effect
+than to increase the number of proselytes.  These came, therefore,
+from their confinement more strongly confirmed in the principles
+they had imbibed, and followed by their gaolers, whom they had
+brought over to their belief.  But the circumstances which
+contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows:-
+Fox thought himself inspired, arid consequently was of opinion that
+he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind.  He
+thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in
+his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the
+priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her
+part to better advantage.  Inspiration soon became so habitual to
+him that he could scarce deliver himself in any other manner.  This
+was the first gift he communicated to his disciples.  These aped
+very sincerely their master's several grimaces, and shook in every
+limb the instant the fit of inspiration came upon them, whence they
+were called Quakers.  The vulgar attempted to mimic them; they
+trembled, they spake through the nose, they quaked and fancied
+themselves inspired by the Holy Ghost.  The only thing now wanting
+was a few miracles, and accordingly they wrought some.
+
+Fox, this modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before
+a large assembly of people:  "Friend, take care what thou dost; God
+will soon punish thee for persecuting His saints."  This magistrate,
+being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy,
+died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a
+mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers.  The sudden death with which
+this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, but
+was universally looked upon as the effect of the holy man's
+predictions; so that this accident made more converts to Quakerism
+than a thousand sermons and as many shaking fits could have done.
+Oliver, finding them increase daily, was desirous of bringing them
+over to his party, and for that purpose attempted to bribe them by
+money.  However, they were incorruptible, which made him one day
+declare that this religion was the only one he had ever met with
+that had resisted the charms of gold.
+
+The Quakers were several times persecuted under Charles II.; not
+upon a religious account, but for refusing to pay the tithes, for
+"theeing" and "thouing" the magistrates, and for refusing to take
+the oaths enacted by the laws.
+
+At last Robert Barclay, a native of Scotland, presented to the King,
+in 1675, his "Apology for the Quakers," a work as well drawn up as
+the subject could possibly admit.  The dedication to Charles II. is
+not filled with mean, flattering encomiums, but abounds with bold
+touches in favour of truth and with the wisest counsels.  "Thou hast
+tasted," says he to the King at the close of his epistle dedicatory,
+"of prosperity and adversity; thou knowest what it is to be banished
+thy native country; to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon
+the throne; and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how
+hateful the Oppressor is both to God and man.  If, after all these
+warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord with
+all thy heart, but forget Him who remembered thee in thy distress,
+and give up thyself to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be
+thy condemnation.
+
+"Against which snare, as well as the temptation of those that may or
+do feed thee and prompt thee to evil, the most excellent and
+prevalent remedy will be, to apply thyself to that light of Christ
+which shineth in thy conscience, which neither can nor will flatter
+thee nor suffer thee to be at ease in thy sins, but doth and will
+deal plainly and faithfully with thee, as those that are followers
+thereof have plainly done.--Thy faithful friend and subject, Robert
+Barclay."
+
+A more surprising circumstance is, that this epistle, written by a
+private man of no figure, was so happy in its effects, as to put a
+stop to the persecution.
+
+
+
+LETTER IV.--ON THE QUAKERS
+
+
+
+About this time arose the illustrious William Penn, who established
+the power of the Quakers in America, and would have made them appear
+venerable in the eyes of the Europeans, were it possible for mankind
+to respect virtue when revealed in a ridiculous light.  He was the
+only son of Vice-Admiral Penn, favourite of the Duke of York,
+afterwards King James II.
+
+William Penn, at twenty years of age, happening to meet with a
+Quaker in Cork, whom he had known at Oxford, this man made a
+proselyte of him; and William being a sprightly youth, and naturally
+eloquent, having a winning aspect, and a very engaging carriage, he
+soon gained over some of his intimates.  He carried matters so far,
+that he formed by insensible degrees a society of young Quakers, who
+met at his house; so that he was at the head of a sect when a little
+above twenty.
+
+Being returned, after his leaving Cork, to the Vice-Admiral his
+father, instead of falling upon his knees to ask his blessing, he
+went up to him with his hat on, and said, "Friend, I am very glad to
+see thee in good health."  The Vice-Admiral imagined his son to be
+crazy, but soon finding he was turned Quaker, he employed all the
+methods that prudence could suggest to engage him to behave and act
+like other people.  The youth made no other answer to his father,
+than by exhorting him to turn Quaker also.  At last his father
+confined himself to this single request, viz., "that he should wait
+upon the King and the Duke of York with his hat under his arm, and
+should not 'thee' and 'thou' them."  William answered, "that he
+could not do these things, for conscience' sake," which exasperated
+his father to such a degree, that he turned him out of doors.  Young
+Pen gave God thanks for permitting him to suffer so early in His
+cause, after which he went into the city, where he held forth, and
+made a great number of converts.
+
+The Church of England clergy found their congregations dwindle away
+daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature,
+the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his
+meeting.  The patriarch, George Fox, hearing of his great
+reputation, came to London (though the journey was very long) purely
+to see and converse with him.  Both resolved to go upon missions
+into foreign countries, and accordingly they embarked for Holland,
+after having left labourers sufficient to take care of the London
+vineyard.
+
+Their labours were crowned with success in Amsterdam, but a
+circumstance which reflected the greatest honour on them, and at the
+same time put their humility to the greatest trial, was the
+reception they met with from Elizabeth, the Princess Palatine, aunt
+to George I. of Great Britain, a lady conspicuous for her genius and
+knowledge, and to whom Descartes had dedicated his Philosophical
+Romance.
+
+She was then retired to the Hague, where she received these Friends,
+for so the Quakers were at that time called in Holland.  This
+princess had several conferences with them in her palace, and she at
+last entertained so favourable an opinion of Quakerism, that they
+confessed she was not far from the kingdom of heaven.  The Friends
+sowed likewise the good seed in Germany, but reaped very little
+fruit; for the mode of "theeing" and "thouing" was not approved of
+in a country where a man is perpetually obliged to employ the titles
+of "highness" and "excellency."  William Penn returned soon to
+England upon hearing of his father's sickness, in order to see him
+before he died.  The Vice-Admiral was reconciled to his son, and
+though of a different persuasion, embraced him tenderly.  William
+made a fruitless exhortation to his father not to receive the
+sacrament, but to die a Quaker, and the good old man entreated his
+son William to wear buttons on his sleeves, and a crape hatband in
+his beaver, but all to no purpose.
+
+William Penn inherited very large possessions, part of which
+consisted in Crown debts due to the Vice-Admiral for sums he had
+advanced for the sea service.  No moneys were at that time more
+insecure than those owing from the king.  Penn was obliged to go
+more than once, and "thee" and "thou" King Charles and his
+Ministers, in order to recover the debt; and at last, instead of
+specie, the Government invested him with the right and sovereignty
+of a province of America, to the south of Maryland.  Thus was a
+Quaker raised to sovereign power.  Penn set sail for his new
+dominions with two ships freighted with Quakers, who followed his
+fortune.  The country was then called Pennsylvania from William
+Penn, who there founded Philadelphia, now the most flourishing city
+in that country.  The first step he took was to enter into an
+alliance with his American neighbours, and this is the only treaty
+between those people and the Christians that was not ratified by an
+oath, and was never infringed.  The new sovereign was at the same
+time the legislator of Pennsylvania, and enacted very wise and
+prudent laws, none of which have ever been changed since his time.
+The first is, to injure no person upon a religious account, and to
+consider as brethren all those who believe in one God.
+
+He had no sooner settled his government, but several American
+merchants came and peopled this colony.  The natives of the country,
+instead of flying into the woods, cultivated by insensible degrees a
+friendship with the peaceable Quakers.  They loved these foreigners
+as much as they detested the other Christians who had conquered and
+laid waste America.  In a little time a great number of these
+savages (falsely so called), charmed with the mild and gentle
+disposition of their neighbours, came in crowds to William Penn, and
+besought him to admit them into the number of his vassals.  It was
+very rare and uncommon for a sovereign to be "thee'd" and "thou'd"
+by the meanest of his subjects, who never took their hats off when
+they came into his presence; and as singular for a Government to be
+without one priest in it, and for a people to be without arms,
+either offensive or defensive; for a body of citizens to be
+absolutely undistinguished but by the public employments, and for
+neighbours not to entertain the least jealousy one against the
+other.
+
+William Penn might glory in having brought down upon earth the so
+much boasted golden age, which in all probability never existed but
+in Pennsylvania.  He returned to England to settle some affairs
+relating to his new dominions.  After the death of King Charles II.,
+King James, who had loved the father, indulged the same affection to
+the son, and no longer considered him as an obscure sectary, but as
+a very great man.  The king's politics on this occasion agreed with
+his inclinations.  He was desirous of pleasing the Quakers by
+annulling the laws made against Nonconformists, in order to have an
+opportunity, by this universal toleration, of establishing the
+Romish religion.  All the sectarists in England saw the snare that
+was laid for them, but did not give into it; they never failing to
+unite when the Romish religion, their common enemy, is to be
+opposed.  But Penn did not think himself bound in any manner to
+renounce his principles, merely to favour Protestants to whom he was
+odious, in opposition to a king who loved him.  He had established a
+universal toleration with regard to conscience in America, and would
+not have it thought that he intended to destroy it in Europe, for
+which reason he adhered so inviolably to King James, that a report
+prevailed universally of his being a Jesuit.  This calumny affected
+him very strongly, and he was obliged to justify himself in print.
+However, the unfortunate King James II., in whom, as in most princes
+of the Stuart family, grandeur and weakness were equally blended,
+and who, like them, as much overdid some things as he was short in
+others, lost his kingdom in a manner that is hardly to be accounted
+for.
+
+All the English sectarists accepted from William III, and his
+Parliament the toleration and indulgence which they had refused when
+offered by King James.  It was then the Quakers began to enjoy, by
+virtue of the laws, the several privileges they possess at this
+time.  Penn having at last seen Quakerism firmly established in his
+native country, went back to Pennsylvania.  His own people and the
+Americans received him with tears of joy, as though he had been a
+father who was returned to visit his children.  All the laws had
+been religiously observed in his absence, a circumstance in which no
+legislator had ever been happy but himself.  After having resided
+some years in Pennsylvania he left it, but with great reluctance, in
+order to return to England, there to solicit some matters in favour
+of the commerce of Pennsylvania.  But he never saw it again, he
+dying in Ruscombe, in Berkshire, in 1718.
+
+I am not able to guess what fate Quakerism may have in America, but
+I perceive it dwindles away daily in England.  In all countries
+where liberty of conscience is allowed, the established religion
+will at last swallow up all the rest.  Quakers are disqualified from
+being members of Parliament; nor can they enjoy any post or
+preferment, because an oath must always be taken on these occasions,
+and they never swear.  They are therefore reduced to the necessity
+of subsisting upon traffic.  Their children, whom the industry of
+their parents has enriched, are desirous of enjoying honours, of
+wearing buttons and ruffles; and quite ashamed of being called
+Quakers they become converts to the Church of England, merely to be
+in the fashion.
+
+
+
+LETTER V.--ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
+
+
+
+England is properly the country of sectarists.  Multae sunt
+mansiones in domo patris mei (in my Father's house are many
+mansions).  An Englishman, as one to whom liberty is natural, may go
+to heaven his own way.
+
+Nevertheless, though every one is permitted to serve God in whatever
+mode or fashion he thinks proper, yet their true religion, that in
+which a man makes his fortune, is the sect of Episcopalians or
+Churchmen, called the Church of England, or simply the Church, by
+way of eminence.  No person can possess an employment either in
+England or Ireland unless he be ranked among the faithful, that is,
+professes himself a member of the Church of England.  This reason
+(which carries mathematical evidence with it) has converted such
+numbers of Dissenters of all persuasions, that not a twentieth part
+of the nation is out of the pale of the Established Church.  The
+English clergy have retained a great number of the Romish
+ceremonies, and especially that of receiving, with a most scrupulous
+attention, their tithes.  They also have the pious ambition to aim
+at superiority.
+
+Moreover, they inspire very religiously their flock with a holy zeal
+against Dissenters of all denominations.  This zeal was pretty
+violent under the Tories in the four last years of Queen Anne; but
+was productive of no greater mischief than the breaking the windows
+of some meeting-houses and the demolishing of a few of them.  For
+religious rage ceased in England with the civil wars, and was no
+more under Queen Anne than the hollow noise of a sea whose billows
+still heaved, though so long after the storm when the Whigs and
+Tories laid waste their native country, in the same manner as the
+Guelphs and Ghibelins formerly did theirs.  It was absolutely
+necessary for both parties to call in religion on this occasion; the
+Tories declared for Episcopacy, and the Whigs, as some imagined,
+were for abolishing it; however, after these had got the upper hand,
+they contented themselves with only abridging it.
+
+At the time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord Bolingbroke used to
+drink healths to the Tories, the Church of England considered those
+noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges.  The lower House
+of Convocation (a kind of House of Commons) composed wholly of the
+clergy, was in some credit at that time; at least the members of it
+had the liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to
+sentence impious books from time to time to the flames, that is,
+books written against themselves.  The Ministry which is now
+composed of Whigs does not so much as allow those gentlemen to
+assemble, so that they are at this time reduced (in the obscurity of
+their respective parishes) to the melancholy occupation of praying
+for the prosperity of the Government whose tranquillity they would
+willingly disturb.  With regard to the bishops, who are twenty-six
+in all, they still have seats in the House of Lords in spite of the
+Whigs, because the ancient abuse of considering them as barons
+subsists to this day.  There is a clause, however, in the oath which
+the Government requires from these gentlemen, that puts their
+Christian patience to a very great trial, viz., that they shall be
+of the Church of England as by law established.  There are few
+bishops, deans, or other dignitaries, but imagine they are so jure
+divino; it is consequently a great mortification to them to be
+obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law
+enacted by a set of profane laymen.  A learned monk (Father
+Courayer) wrote a book lately to prove the validity and succession
+of English ordinations.  This book was forbid in France, but do you
+believe that the English Ministry were pleased with it?  Far from
+it.  Those wicked Whigs don't care a straw whether the episcopal
+succession among them hath been interrupted or not, or whether
+Bishop Parker was consecrated (as it is pretended) in a tavern or a
+church; for these Whigs are much better pleased that the Bishops
+should derive their authority from the Parliament than from the
+Apostles.  The Lord Bolingbroke observed that this notion of divine
+right would only make so many tyrants in lawn sleeves, but that the
+laws made so many citizens.
+
+With regard to the morals of the English clergy, they are more
+regular than those of France, and for this reason.  All the clergy
+(a very few excepted) are educated in the Universities of Oxford or
+Cambridge, far from the depravity and corruption which reign in the
+capital.  They are not called to dignities till very late, at a time
+of life when men are sensible of no other passion but avarice, that
+is, when their ambition craves a supply.  Employments are here
+bestowed both in the Church and the army, as a reward for long
+services; and we never see youngsters made bishops or colonels
+immediately upon their laying aside the academical gown; and besides
+most of the clergy are married.  The stiff and awkward air
+contracted by them at the University, and the little familiarity the
+men of this country have with the ladies, commonly oblige a bishop
+to confine himself to, and rest contented with, his own.  Clergymen
+sometimes take a glass at the tavern, custom giving them a sanction
+on this occasion; and if they fuddle themselves it is in a very
+serious manner, and without giving the least scandal.
+
+That fable-mixed kind of mortal (not to be defined), who is neither
+of the clergy nor of the laity; in a word, the thing called Abbe in
+France; is a species quite unknown in England.  All the clergy here
+are very much upon the reserve, and most of them pedants.  When
+these are told that in France young fellows famous for their
+dissoluteness, and raised to the highest dignities of the Church by
+female intrigues, address the fair publicly in an amorous way, amuse
+themselves in writing tender love songs, entertain their friends
+very splendidly every night at their own houses, and after the
+banquet is ended withdraw to invoke the assistance of the Holy
+Ghost, and call themselves boldly the successors of the Apostles,
+they bless God for their being Protestants.  But these are shameless
+heretics, who deserve to be blown hence through the flames to old
+Nick, as Rabelais says, and for this reason I do not trouble myself
+about them.
+
+
+
+LETTER VI.--ON THE PRESBYTERIANS
+
+
+
+The Church of England is confined almost to the kingdom whence it
+received its name, and to Ireland, for Presbyterianism is the
+established religion in Scotland.  This Presbyterianism is directly
+the same with Calvinism, as it was established in France, and is now
+professed at Geneva.  As the priests of this sect receive but very
+inconsiderable stipends from their churches, and consequently cannot
+emulate the splendid luxury of bishops, they exclaim very naturally
+against honours which they can never attain to.  Figure to yourself
+the haughty Diogenes trampling under foot the pride of Plato.  The
+Scotch Presbyterians are not very unlike that proud though tattered
+reasoner.  Diogenes did not use Alexander half so impertinently as
+these treated King Charles II.; for when they took up arms in his
+cause in opposition to Oliver, who had deceived them, they forced
+that poor monarch to undergo the hearing of three or four sermons
+every day, would not suffer him to play, reduced him to a state of
+penitence and mortification, so that Charles soon grew sick of these
+pedants, and accordingly eloped from them with as much joy as a
+youth does from school.
+
+A Church of England minister appears as another Cato in presence of
+a juvenile, sprightly French graduate, who bawls for a whole morning
+together in the divinity schools, and hums a song in chorus with
+ladies in the evening; but this Cato is a very spark when before a
+Scotch Presbyterian.  The latter affects a serious gait, puts on a
+sour look, wears a vastly broad-brimmed hat and a long cloak over a
+very short coat, preaches through the nose, and gives the name of
+the whore of Babylon to all churches where the ministers are so
+fortunate as to enjoy an annual revenue of five or six thousand
+pounds, and where the people are weak enough to suffer this, and to
+give them the titles of my lord, your lordship, or your eminence.
+
+These gentlemen, who have also some churches in England, introduced
+there the mode of grave and severe exhortations.  To them is owing
+the sanctification of Sunday in the three kingdoms.  People are
+there forbidden to work or take any recreation on that day, in which
+the severity is twice as great as that of the Romish Church.  No
+operas, plays, or concerts are allowed in London on Sundays, and
+even cards are so expressly forbidden that none but persons of
+quality, and those we call the genteel, play on that day; the rest
+of the nation go either to church, to the tavern, or to see their
+mistresses.
+
+Though the Episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two prevailing
+ones in Great Britain, yet all others are very welcome to come and
+settle in it, and live very sociably together, though most of their
+preachers hate one another almost as cordially as a Jansenist damns
+a Jesuit.
+
+Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable
+than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all
+nations meet for the benefit of mankind.  There the Jew, the
+Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all
+professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none
+but bankrupts.  There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist,
+and the Churchman depends on the Quaker's word.
+
+If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would
+very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people
+would cut one another's throats; but as there are such a multitude,
+they all live happy and in peace.
+
+
+
+LETTER VII.--ON THE SOCINIANS, OR ARIANS, OR ANTITRINITARIANS
+
+
+
+There is a little sect here composed of clergymen, and of a few very
+learned persons among the laity, who, though they do not call
+themselves Arians or Socinians, do yet dissent entirely from St.
+Athanasius with regard to their notions of the Trinity, and declare
+very frankly that the Father is greater than the Son.
+
+Do you remember what is related of a certain orthodox bishop, who,
+in order to convince an emperor of the reality of consubstantiation,
+put his hand under the chin of the monarch's son, and took him by
+the nose in presence of his sacred majesty?  The emperor was going
+to order his attendants to throw the bishop out of the window, when
+the good old man gave him this handsome and convincing reason:
+"Since your majesty," says he, "is angry when your son has not due
+respect shown him, what punishment do you think will God the Father
+inflict on those who refuse His Son Jesus the titles due to Him?"
+The persons I just now mentioned declare that the holy bishop took a
+very wrong step, that his argument was inconclusive, and that the
+emperor should have answered him thus:  "Know that there are two
+ways by which men may be wanting in respect to me--first, in not
+doing honour sufficient to my son; and, secondly, in paying him the
+same honour as to me."
+
+Be this as it will, the principles of Arius begin to revive, not
+only in England, but in Holland and Poland.  The celebrated Sir
+Isaac Newton honoured this opinion so far as to countenance it.
+This philosopher thought that the Unitarians argued more
+mathematically than we do.  But the most sanguine stickler for
+Arianism is the illustrious Dr. Clark.  This man is rigidly
+virtuous, and of a mild disposition, is more fond of his tenets than
+desirous of propagating them, and absorbed so entirely in problems
+and calculations that he is a mere reasoning machine.
+
+It is he who wrote a book which is much esteemed and little
+understood, on the existence of God, and another, more intelligible,
+but pretty much contemned, on the truth of the Christian religion.
+
+He never engaged in scholastic disputes, which our friend calls
+venerable trifles.  He only published a work containing all the
+testimonies of the primitive ages for and against the Unitarians,
+and leaves to the reader the counting of the voices and the liberty
+of forming a judgment.  This book won the doctor a great number of
+partisans, and lost him the See of Canterbury; but, in my humble
+opinion, he was out in his calculation, and had better have been
+Primate of all England than merely an Arian parson.
+
+You see that opinions are subject to revolutions as well as empires.
+Arianism, after having triumphed during three centuries, and been
+forgot twelve, rises at last out of its own ashes; but it has chosen
+a very improper season to make its appearance in, the present age
+being quite cloyed with disputes and sects.  The members of this
+sect are, besides, too few to be indulged the liberty of holding
+public assemblies, which, however, they will, doubtless, be
+permitted to do in case they spread considerably.  But people are
+now so very cold with respect to all things of this kind, that there
+is little probability any new religion, or old one, that may be
+revived, will meet with favour.  Is it not whimsical enough that
+Luther, Calvin, and Zuinglius, all of them wretched authors, should
+have founded sects which are now spread over a great part of Europe,
+that Mahomet, though so ignorant, should have given a religion to
+Asia and Africa, and that Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Clark, Mr. Locke,
+Mr. Le Clerc, etc., the greatest philosophers, as well as the ablest
+writers of their ages, should scarcely have been able to raise a
+little flock, which even decreases daily.
+
+This it is to be born at a proper period of time.  Were Cardinal de
+Retz to return again into the world, neither his eloquence nor his
+intrigues would draw together ten women in Paris.
+
+Were Oliver Cromwell, he who beheaded his sovereign, and seized upon
+the kingly dignity, to rise from the dead, he would be a wealthy
+City trader, and no more.
+
+
+
+LETTER VIII.--ON THE PARLIAMENT
+
+
+
+The members of the English Parliament are fond of comparing
+themselves to the old Romans.
+
+Not long since Mr. Shippen opened a speech in the House of Commons
+with these words, "The majesty of the people of England would be
+wounded."  The singularity of the expression occasioned a loud
+laugh; but this gentleman, so far from being disconcerted, repeated
+the same words with a resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased.
+In my opinion, the majesty of the people of England has nothing in
+common with that of the people of Rome, much less is there any
+affinity between their Governments.  There is in London a senate,
+some of the members whereof are accused (doubtless very unjustly) of
+selling their voices on certain occasions, as was done in Rome; this
+is the only resemblance.  Besides, the two nations appear to me
+quite opposite in character, with regard both to good and evil.  The
+Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an
+abomination reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility.
+Marius and Sylla, Caesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not
+draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine
+whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe
+over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink,
+or eat only, in order to take the augury.  The English have hanged
+one another by law, and cut one another to pieces in pitched
+battles, for quarrels of as trifling a nature.  The sects of the
+Episcopalians and Presbyterians quite distracted these very serious
+heads for a time.  But I fancy they will hardly ever be so silly
+again, they seeming to be grown wiser at their own expense; and I do
+not perceive the least inclination in them to murder one another
+merely about syllogisms, as some zealots among them once did.
+
+But here follows a more essential difference between Rome and
+England, which gives the advantage entirely to the latter--viz.,
+that the civil wars of Rome ended in slavery, and those of the
+English in liberty.  The English are the only people upon earth who
+have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by
+resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last
+established that wise Government where the Prince is all-powerful to
+do good, and, at the same time, is restrained from committing evil;
+where the nobles are great without insolence, though there are no
+vassals; and where the people share in the Government without
+confusion.
+
+The House of Lords and that of the Commons divide the legislative
+power under the king, but the Romans had no such balance.  The
+patricians and plebeians in Rome were perpetually at variance, and
+there was no intermediate power to reconcile them.  The Roman
+senate, who were so unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer
+the plebeians to share with them in anything, could find no other
+artifice to keep the latter out of the administration than by
+employing them in foreign wars.  They considered the plebeians as a
+wild beast, whom it behoved them to let loose upon their neighbours,
+for fear they should devour their masters.  Thus the greatest defect
+in the Government of the Romans raised them to be conquerors.  By
+being unhappy at home, they triumphed over and possessed themselves
+of the world, till at last their divisions sunk them to slavery.
+
+The Government of England will never rise to so exalted a pitch of
+glory, nor will its end be so fatal.  The English are not fired with
+the splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their
+neighbours from conquering.  They are not only jealous of their own
+liberty, but even of that of other nations.  The English were
+exasperated against Louis XIV. for no other reason but because he
+was ambitious, and declared war against him merely out of levity,
+not from any interested motives.
+
+The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high
+price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of
+arbitrary power.  Other nations have been involved in as great
+calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they
+spilt in defence of their liberties only enslaved them the more.
+
+That which rises to a revolution in England is no more than a
+sedition in other countries.  A city in Spain, in Barbary, or in
+Turkey, takes up arms in defence of its privileges, when immediately
+it is stormed by mercenary troops, it is punished by executioners,
+and the rest of the nation kiss the chains they are loaded with.
+The French are of opinion that the government of this island is more
+tempestuous than the sea which surrounds it, which indeed is true;
+but then it is never so but when the king raises the storm--when he
+attempts to seize the ship of which he is only the chief pilot.  The
+civil wars of France lasted longer, were more cruel, and productive
+of greater evils than those of England; but none of these civil wars
+had a wise and prudent liberty for their object.
+
+In the detestable reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. the whole
+affair was only whether the people should be slaves to the Guises.
+With regard to the last war of Paris, it deserves only to be hooted
+at.  Methinks I see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against
+their master, and afterwards whipped for it.  Cardinal de Retz, who
+was witty and brave (but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause,
+factious without design, and head of a defenceless party, caballed
+for caballing sake, and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of
+diversion.  The Parliament did not know what he intended, nor what
+he did not intend.  He levied troops by Act of Parliament, and the
+next moment cashiered them.  He threatened, he begged pardon; he set
+a price upon Cardinal Mazarin's head, and afterwards congratulated
+him in a public manner.  Our civil wars under Charles VI. were
+bloody and cruel, those of the League execrable, and that of the
+Frondeurs ridiculous.
+
+That for which the French chiefly reproach the English nation is the
+murder of King Charles I., whom his subjects treated exactly as he
+would have treated them had his reign been prosperous.  After all,
+consider on one side Charles I., defeated in a pitched battle,
+imprisoned, tried, sentenced to die in Westminster Hall, and then
+beheaded.  And on the other, the Emperor Henry VII., poisoned by his
+chaplain at his receiving the Sacrament; Henry III. stabbed by a
+monk; thirty assassinations projected against Henry IV., several of
+them put in execution, and the last bereaving that great monarch of
+his life.  Weigh, I say, all these wicked attempts, and then judge.
+
+
+
+LETTER IX.--ON THE GOVERNMENT
+
+
+
+That mixture in the English Government, that harmony between King,
+Lords, and commons, did not always subsist.  England was enslaved
+for a long series of years by the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, and
+the French successively.  William the Conqueror particularly, ruled
+them with a rod of iron.  He disposed as absolutely of the lives and
+fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern monarch; and
+forbade, upon pain of death, the English either fire or candle in
+their houses after eight o'clock; whether was this to prevent their
+nocturnal meetings, or only to try, by an odd and whimsical
+prohibition, how far it was possible for one man to extend his power
+over his fellow-creatures.  It is true, indeed, that the English had
+Parliaments before and after William the Conqueror, and they boast
+of them, as though these assemblies then called Parliaments,
+composed of ecclesiastical tyrants and of plunderers entitled
+barons, had been the guardians of the public liberty and happiness.
+
+The barbarians who came from the shores of the Baltic, and settled
+in the rest of Europe, brought with them the form of government
+called States or Parliaments, about which so much noise is made, and
+which are so little understood.  Kings, indeed, were not absolute in
+those days; but then the people were more wretched upon that very
+account, and more completely enslaved.  The chiefs of these savages,
+who had laid waste France, Italy, Spain, and England, made
+themselves monarchs.  Their generals divided among themselves the
+several countries they had conquered, whence sprung those margraves,
+those peers, those barons, those petty tyrants, who often contested
+with their sovereigns for the spoils of whole nations.  These were
+birds of prey fighting with an eagle for doves whose blood the
+victorious was to suck.  Every nation, instead of being governed by
+one master, was trampled upon by a hundred tyrants.  The priests
+soon played a part among them.  Before this it had been the fate of
+the Gauls, the Germans, and the Britons, to be always governed by
+their Druids and the chiefs of their villages, an ancient kind of
+barons, not so tyrannical as their successors.  These Druids
+pretended to be mediators between God and man.  They enacted laws,
+they fulminated their excommunications, and sentenced to death.  The
+bishops succeeded, by insensible degrees, to their temporal
+authority in the Goth and Vandal government.  The popes set
+themselves at their head, and armed with their briefs, their bulls,
+and reinforced by monks, they made even kings tremble, deposed and
+assassinated them at pleasure, and employed every artifice to draw
+into their own purses moneys from all parts of Europe.  The weak
+Ina, one of the tyrants of the Saxon Heptarchy in England, was the
+first monarch who submitted, in his pilgrimage to Rome, to pay St.
+Peter's penny (equivalent very near to a French crown) for every
+house in his dominions.  The whole island soon followed his example;
+England became insensibly one of the Pope's provinces, and the Holy
+Father used to send from time to time his legates thither to levy
+exorbitant taxes.  At last King John delivered up by a public
+instrument the kingdom of England to the Pope, who had
+excommunicated him; but the barons, not finding their account in
+this resignation, dethroned the wretched King John and seated Louis,
+father to St. Louis, King of France, in his place.  However, they
+were soon weary of their new monarch, and accordingly obliged him to
+return to France.
+
+Whilst that the barons, the bishops, and the popes, all laid waste
+England, where all were for ruling the most numerous, the most
+useful, even the most virtuous, and consequently the most venerable
+part of mankind, consisting of those who study the laws and the
+sciences, of traders, of artificers, in a word, of all who were not
+tyrants--that is, those who are called the people:  these, I say,
+were by them looked upon as so many animals beneath the dignity of
+the human species.  The Commons in those ages were far from sharing
+in the government, they being villains or peasants, whose labour,
+whose blood, were the property of their masters who entitled
+themselves the nobility.  The major part of men in Europe were at
+that time what they are to this day in several parts of the world--
+they were villains or bondsmen of lords--that is, a kind of cattle
+bought and sold with the land.  Many ages passed away before justice
+could be done to human nature--before mankind were conscious that it
+was abominable for many to sow, and but few reap.  And was not
+France very happy, when the power and authority of those petty
+robbers was abolished by the lawful authority of kings and of the
+people?
+
+Happily, in the violent shocks which the divisions between kings and
+the nobles gave to empires, the chains of nations were more or less
+heavy.  Liberty in England sprang from the quarrels of tyrants.  The
+barons forced King John and King Henry III. to grant the famous
+Magna Charta, the chief design of which was indeed to make kings
+dependent on the Lords; but then the rest of the nation were a
+little favoured in it, in order that they might join on proper
+occasions with their pretended masters.  This great Charter, which
+is considered as the sacred origin of the English liberties, shows
+in itself how little liberty was known.
+
+The title alone proves that the king thought he had a just right to
+be absolute; and that the barons, and even the clergy, forced him to
+give up the pretended right, for no other reason but because they
+were the most powerful.
+
+Magna Charta begins in this style:  "We grant, of our own free will,
+the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, priors, and
+barons of our kingdom," etc.
+
+The House of Commons is not once mentioned in the articles of this
+Charter--a proof that it did not yet exist, or that it existed
+without power.  Mention is therein made, by name, of the freemen of
+England--a melancholy proof that some were not so.  It appears, by
+Article XXXII., that these pretended freemen owed service to their
+lords.  Such a liberty as this was not many removes from slavery.
+
+By Article XXI., the king ordains that his officers shall not
+henceforward seize upon, unless they pay for them, the horses and
+carts of freemen.  The people considered this ordinance as a real
+liberty, though it was a greater tyranny.  Henry VII., that happy
+usurper and great politician, who pretended to love the barons,
+though he in reality hated and feared them, got their lands
+alienated.  By this means the villains, afterwards acquiring riches
+by their industry, purchased the estates and country seats of the
+illustrious peers who had ruined themselves by their folly and
+extravagance, and all the lands got by insensible degrees into other
+hands.
+
+The power of the House of Commons increased every day.  The families
+of the ancient peers were at last extinct; and as peers only are
+properly noble in England, there would be no such thing in
+strictness of law as nobility in that island, had not the kings
+created new barons from time to time, and preserved the body of
+peers, once a terror to them, to oppose them to the Commons, since
+become so formidable.
+
+All these new peers who compose the Higher House receive nothing but
+their titles from the king, and very few of them have estates in
+those places whence they take their titles.  One shall be Duke of D-
+, though he has not a foot of land in Dorsetshire; and another is
+Earl of a village, though he scarce knows where it is situated.  The
+peers have power, but it is only in the Parliament House.
+
+There is no such thing here as haute, moyenne, and basse justice--
+that is, a power to judge in all matters civil and criminal; nor a
+right or privilege of hunting in the grounds of a citizen, who at
+the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in his own field.
+
+No one is exempted in this country from paying certain taxes because
+he is a nobleman or a priest.  All duties and taxes are settled by
+the House of Commons, whose power is greater than that of the Peers,
+though inferior to it in dignity.  The spiritual as well as temporal
+Lords have the liberty to reject a Money Bill brought in by the
+Commons; but they are not allowed to alter anything in it, and must
+either pass or throw it out without restriction.  When the Bill has
+passed the Lords and is signed by the king, then the whole nation
+pays, every man in proportion to his revenue or estate, not
+according to his title, which would be absurd.  There is no such
+thing as an arbitrary subsidy or poll-tax, but a real tax on the
+lands, of all which an estimate was made in the reign of the famous
+King William III.
+
+The land-tax continues still upon the same foot, though the revenue
+of the lands is increased.  Thus no one is tyrannised over, and
+every one is easy.  The feet of the peasants are not bruised by
+wooden shoes; they eat white bread, are well clothed, and are not
+afraid of increasing their stock of cattle, nor of tiling their
+houses, from any apprehension that their taxes will be raised the
+year following.  The annual income of the estates of a great many
+commoners in England amounts to two hundred thousand livres, and yet
+these do not think it beneath them to plough the lands which enrich
+them, and on which they enjoy their liberty.
+
+
+
+LETTER X.--ON TRADE
+
+
+
+As trade enriched the citizens in England, so it contributed to
+their freedom, and this freedom on the other side extended their
+commerce, whence arose the grandeur of the State.  Trade raised by
+insensible degrees the naval power, which gives the English a
+superiority over the seas, and they now are masters of very near two
+hundred ships of war.  Posterity will very probably be surprised to
+hear that an island whose only produce is a little lead, tin,
+fuller's-earth, and coarse wool, should become so powerful by its
+commerce, as to be able to send, in 1723, three fleets at the same
+time to three different and far distanced parts of the globe.  One
+before Gibraltar, conquered and still possessed by the English; a
+second to Portobello, to dispossess the King of Spain of the
+treasures of the West Indies; and a third into the Baltic, to
+prevent the Northern Powers from coming to an engagement.
+
+At the time when Louis XIV. made all Italy tremble, and that his
+armies, which had already possessed themselves of Savoy and
+Piedmont, were upon the point of taking Turin; Prince Eugene was
+obliged to march from the middle of Germany in order to succour
+Savoy.  Having no money, without which cities cannot be either taken
+or defended, he addressed himself to some English merchants.  These,
+at an hour and half's warning, lent him five millions, whereby he
+was enabled to deliver Turin, and to beat the French; after which he
+wrote the following short letter to the persons who had disbursed
+him the above-mentioned sums:  "Gentlemen, I have received your
+money, and flatter myself that I have laid it out to your
+satisfaction."  Such a circumstance as this raises a just pride in
+an English merchant, and makes him presume (not without some reason)
+to compare himself to a Roman citizen; and, indeed, a peer's brother
+does not think traffic beneath him.  When the Lord Townshend was
+Minister of State, a brother of his was content to be a City
+merchant; and at the time that the Earl of Oxford governed Great
+Britain, a younger brother was no more than a factor in Aleppo,
+where he chose to live, and where he died.  This custom, which
+begins, however, to be laid aside, appears monstrous to Germans,
+vainly puffed up with their extraction.  These think it morally
+impossible that the son of an English peer should be no more than a
+rich and powerful citizen, for all are princes in Germany.  There
+have been thirty highnesses of the same name, all whose patrimony
+consisted only in their escutcheons and their pride.
+
+In France the title of marquis is given gratis to any one who will
+accept of it; and whosoever arrives at Paris from the midst of the
+most remote provinces with money in his purse, and a name
+terminating in ac or ille, may strut about, and cry, "Such a man as
+I!  A man of my rank and figure!" and may look down upon a trader
+with sovereign contempt; whilst the trader on the other side, by
+thus often hearing his profession treated so disdainfully, is fool
+enough to blush at it.  However, I need not say which is most useful
+to a nation; a lord, powdered in the tip of the mode, who knows
+exactly at what o'clock the king rises and goes to bed, and who
+gives himself airs of grandeur and state, at the same time that he
+is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a
+merchant, who enriches his country, despatches orders from his
+counting-house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the
+well-being of the world.
+
+
+
+LETTER XI.--ON INOCULATION
+
+
+
+It is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe
+that the English are fools and madmen.  Fools, because they give
+their children the small-pox to prevent their catching it; and
+madmen, because they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful
+distemper to their children, merely to prevent an uncertain evil.
+The English, on the other side, call the rest of the Europeans
+cowardly and unnatural.  Cowardly, because they are afraid of
+putting their children to a little pain; unnatural, because they
+expose them to die one time or other of the small-pox.  But that the
+reader may be able to judge whether the English or those who differ
+from them in opinion are in the right, here follows the history of
+the famed inoculation, which is mentioned with so much dread in
+France.
+
+The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the
+small-pox to their children when not above six months old by making
+an incision in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule,
+taken carefully from the body of another child.  This pustule
+produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a
+piece of dough; it ferments, and diffuses through the whole mass of
+blood the qualities with which it is impregnated.  The pustules of
+the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated
+are employed to communicate the same distemper to others.  There is
+an almost perpetual circulation of it in Circassia; and when
+unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the inhabitants
+of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations when
+their harvest has fallen short.
+
+The circumstance that introduced a custom in Circassia, which
+appears so singular to others, is nevertheless a cause common to all
+nations, I mean maternal tenderness and interest.
+
+The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and
+indeed, it is in them they chiefly trade.  They furnish with
+beauties the seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy,
+and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain
+such precious merchandise.  These maidens are very honourably and
+virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of
+a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most
+voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for
+whom they are designed.  These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson
+to their mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat
+their catechism without understanding one word they say.
+
+Now it often happened that, after a father and mother had taken the
+utmost care of the education of their children, they were frustrated
+of all their hopes in an instant.  The small-pox getting into the
+family, one daughter died of it, another lost an eye, a third had a
+great nose at her recovery, and the unhappy parents were completely
+ruined.  Even, frequently, when the small-pox became epidemical,
+trade was suspended for several years, which thinned very
+considerably the seraglios of Persia and Turkey.
+
+A trading nation is always watchful over its own interests, and
+grasps at every discovery that may be of advantage to its commerce.
+The Circassians observed that scarce one person in a thousand was
+ever attacked by a small-pox of a violent kind.  That some, indeed,
+had this distemper very favourably three or four times, but never
+twice so as to prove fatal; in a word, that no one ever had it in a
+violent degree twice in his life.  They observed farther, that when
+the small-pox is of the milder sort, and the pustules have only a
+tender, delicate skin to break through, they never leave the least
+scar in the face.  From these natural observations they concluded,
+that in case an infant of six months or a year old should have a
+milder sort of small-pox, he would not die of it, would not be
+marked, nor be ever afflicted with it again.
+
+In order, therefore, to preserve the life and beauty of their
+children, the only thing remaining was to give them the small-pox in
+their infant years.  This they did by inoculating in the body of a
+child a pustule taken from the most regular and at the same time the
+most favourable sort of small-pox that could be procured.
+
+The experiment could not possibly fail.  The Turks, who are people
+of good sense, soon adopted this custom, insomuch that at this time
+there is not a bassa in Constantinople but communicates the small-
+pox to his children of both sexes immediately upon their being
+weaned.
+
+Some pretend that the Circassians borrowed this custom anciently
+from the Arabians; but we shall leave the clearing up of this point
+of history to some learned Benedictine, who will not fail to compile
+a great many folios on this subject, with the several proofs or
+authorities.  All I have to say upon it is that, in the beginning of
+the reign of King George I., the Lady Wortley Montague, a woman of
+as fine a genius, and endued with as great a strength of mind, as
+any of her sex in the British Kingdoms, being with her husband, who
+was ambassador at the Porte, made no scruple to communicate the
+small-pox to an infant of which she was delivered in Constantinople.
+The chaplain represented to his lady, but to no purpose, that this
+was an unchristian operation, and therefore that it could succeed
+with none but infidels.  However, it had the most happy effect upon
+the son of the Lady Wortley Montague, who, at her return to England,
+communicated the experiment to the Princess of Wales, now Queen of
+England.  It must be confessed that this princess, abstracted from
+her crown and titles, was born to encourage the whole circle of
+arts, and to do good to mankind.  She appears as an amiable
+philosopher on the throne, having never let slip one opportunity of
+improving the great talents she received from Nature, nor of
+exerting her beneficence.  It is she who, being informed that a
+daughter of Milton was living, but in miserable circumstances,
+immediately sent her a considerable present.  It is she who protects
+the learned Father Courayer.  It is she who condescended to attempt
+a reconciliation between Dr. Clark and Mr. Leibnitz.  The moment
+this princess heard of inoculation, she caused an experiment of it
+to be made on four criminals sentenced to die, and by that means
+preserved their lives doubly; for she not only saved them from the
+gallows, but by means of this artificial small-pox prevented their
+ever having that distemper in a natural way, with which they would
+very probably have been attacked one time or other, and might have
+died of in a more advanced age.
+
+The princess being assured of the usefulness of this operation,
+caused her own children to be inoculated.  A great part of the
+kingdom followed her example, and since that time ten thousand
+children, at least, of persons of condition owe in this manner their
+lives to her Majesty and to the Lady Wortley Montague; and as many
+of the fair sex are obliged to them for their beauty.
+
+Upon a general calculation, threescore persons in every hundred have
+the small-pox.  Of these threescore, twenty die of it in the most
+favourable season of life, and as many more wear the disagreeable
+remains of it in their faces so long as they live.  Thus, a fifth
+part of mankind either die or are disfigured by this distemper.  But
+it does not prove fatal to so much as one among those who are
+inoculated in Turkey or in England, unless the patient be infirm, or
+would have died had not the experiment been made upon him.  Besides,
+no one is disfigured, no one has the small-pox a second time, if the
+inoculation was perfect.  It is therefore certain, that had the lady
+of some French ambassador brought this secret from Constantinople to
+Paris, the nation would have been for ever obliged to her.  Then the
+Duke de Villequier, father to the Duke d'Aumont, who enjoys the most
+vigorous constitution, and is the healthiest man in France, would
+not have been cut off in the flower of his age.
+
+The Prince of Soubise, happy in the finest flush of health, would
+not have been snatched away at five-and-twenty, nor the Dauphin,
+grandfather to Louis XV., have been laid in his grave in his
+fiftieth year.  Twenty thousand persons whom the small-pox swept
+away at Paris in 1723 would have been alive at this time.  But are
+not the French fond of life, and is beauty so inconsiderable an
+advantage as to be disregarded by the ladies?  It must be confessed
+that we are an odd kind of people.  Perhaps our nation will imitate
+ten years hence this practice of the English, if the clergy and the
+physicians will but give them leave to do it; or possibly our
+countrymen may introduce inoculation three months hence in France
+out of mere whim, in case the English should discontinue it through
+fickleness.
+
+I am informed that the Chinese have practised inoculation these
+hundred years, a circumstance that argues very much in its favour,
+since they are thought to be the wisest and best governed people in
+the world.  The Chinese, indeed, do not communicate this distemper
+by inoculation, but at the nose, in the same manner as we take
+snuff.  This is a more agreeable way, but then it produces the like
+effects; and proves at the same time that had inoculation been
+practised in France it would have saved the lives of thousands.
+
+
+
+LETTER XII.--ON THE LORD BACON
+
+
+
+Not long since the trite and frivolous question following was
+debated in a very polite and learned company, viz., Who was the
+greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, Cromwell, &c.?
+
+Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them all.  The
+gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists
+in having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having
+employed it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like
+Sir Isaac Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years,
+is the truly great man.  And those politicians and conquerors (and
+all ages produce some) were generally so many illustrious wicked
+men.  That man claims our respect who commands over the minds of the
+rest of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave their
+fellow-creatures:  he who is acquainted with the universe, not they
+who deface it.
+
+Since, therefore, you desire me to give you an account of the famous
+personages whom England has given birth to, I shall begin with Lord
+Bacon, Mr. Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, &c.  Afterwards the warriors and
+Ministers of State shall come in their order.
+
+I must begin with the celebrated Viscount Verulam, known in Europe
+by the name of Bacon, which was that of his family.  His father had
+been Lord Keeper, and himself was a great many years Lord Chancellor
+under King James I.  Nevertheless, amidst the intrigues of a Court,
+and the affairs of his exalted employment, which alone were enough
+to engross his whole time, he yet found so much leisure for study as
+to make himself a great philosopher, a good historian, and an
+elegant writer; and a still more surprising circumstance is that he
+lived in an age in which the art of writing justly and elegantly was
+little known, much less true philosophy.  Lord Bacon, as is the fate
+of man, was more esteemed after his death than in his lifetime.  His
+enemies were in the British Court, and his admirers were foreigners.
+
+When the Marquis d'Effiat attended in England upon the Princess
+Henrietta Maria, daughter to Henry IV., whom King Charles I. had
+married, that Minister went and visited the Lord Bacon, who, being
+at that time sick in his bed, received him with the curtains shut
+close.  "You resemble the angels," says the Marquis to him; "we hear
+those beings spoken of perpetually, and we believe them superior to
+men, but are never allowed the consolation to see them."
+
+You know that this great man was accused of a crime very unbecoming
+a philosopher:  I mean bribery and extortion.  You know that he was
+sentenced by the House of Lords to pay a fine of about four hundred
+thousand French livres, to lose his peerage and his dignity of
+Chancellor; but in the present age the English revere his memory to
+such a degree, that they will scarce allow him to have been guilty.
+In case you should ask what are my thoughts on this head, I shall
+answer you in the words which I heard the Lord Bolingbroke use on
+another occasion.  Several gentlemen were speaking, in his company,
+of the avarice with which the late Duke of Marlborough had been
+charged, some examples whereof being given, the Lord Bolingbroke was
+appealed to (who, having been in the opposite party, might perhaps,
+without the imputation of indecency, have been allowed to clear up
+that matter):  "He was so great a man," replied his lordship, "that
+I have forgot his vices."
+
+I shall therefore confine myself to those things which so justly
+gained Lord Bacon the esteem of all Europe.
+
+The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at
+this time, is the most useless and the least read, I mean his Novum
+Scientiarum Organum.  This is the scaffold with which the new
+philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it at
+least, the scaffold was no longer of service.
+
+The Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with Nature, but then he knew,
+and pointed out, the several paths that lead to it.  He had despised
+in his younger years the thing called philosophy in the
+Universities, and did all that lay in his power to prevent those
+societies of men instituted to improve human reason from depraving
+it by their quiddities, their horrors of the vacuum, their
+substantial forms, and all those impertinent terms which not only
+ignorance had rendered venerable, but which had been made sacred by
+their being ridiculously blended with religion.
+
+He is the father of experimental philosophy.  It must, indeed, be
+confessed that very surprising secrets had been found out before his
+time--the sea-compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil-
+painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure,
+old men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, &c., had been
+discovered.  A new world had been fought for, found, and conquered.
+Would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made
+by the greatest philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than
+the present?  But it was far otherwise; all these great changes
+happened in the most stupid and barbarous times.  Chance only gave
+birth to most of those inventions; and it is very probable that what
+is called chance contributed very much to the discovery of America;
+at least, it has been always thought that Christopher Columbus
+undertook his voyage merely on the relation of a captain of a ship
+which a storm had driven as far westward as the Caribbean Islands.
+Be this as it will, men had sailed round the world, and could
+destroy cities by an artificial thunder more dreadful than the real
+one; but, then, they were not acquainted with the circulation of the
+blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number
+of our planets, &c.  And a man who maintained a thesis on
+Aristotle's "Categories," on the universals a parte rei, or such-
+like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy.
+
+The most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those
+which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind.  It is to a
+mechanical instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true
+philosophy, that most arts owe their origin.
+
+The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting and
+preparing metals, of building houses, and the invention of the
+shuttle, are infinitely more beneficial to mankind than printing or
+the sea-compass:  and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated,
+savage men.
+
+What a prodigious use the Greeks and Romans made afterwards of
+mechanics!  Nevertheless, they believed that there were crystal
+heavens, that the stars were small lamps which sometimes fell into
+the sea, and one of their greatest philosophers, after long
+researches, found that the stars were so many flints which had been
+detached from the earth.
+
+In a word, no one before the Lord Bacon was acquainted with
+experimental philosophy, nor with the several physical experiments
+which have been made since his time.  Scarce one of them but is
+hinted at in his work, and he himself had made several.  He made a
+kind of pneumatic engine, by which he guessed the elasticity of the
+air.  He approached, on all sides as it were, to the discovery of
+its weight, and had very near attained it, but some time after
+Torricelli seized upon this truth.  In a little time experimental
+philosophy began to be cultivated on a sudden in most parts of
+Europe.  It was a hidden treasure which the Lord Bacon had some
+notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his
+promises, endeavoured to dig up.
+
+But that which surprised me most was to read in his work, in express
+terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is ascribed to Sir
+Isaac Newton.
+
+We must search, says Lord Bacon, whether there may not be a kind of
+magnetic power which operates between the earth and heavy bodies,
+between the moon and the ocean, between the planets, &c.  In another
+place he says either heavy bodies must be carried towards the centre
+of the earth, or must be reciprocally attracted by it; and in the
+latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies, in their falling,
+draw towards the earth, the stronger they will attract one another.
+We must, says he, make an experiment to see whether the same clock
+will go faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine;
+whether the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain and
+increases in the mine.  It is probable that the earth has a true
+attractive power.
+
+This forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer, an
+historian, and a wit.
+
+His moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn up in the
+view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as they are not a
+satire upon mankind, like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," nor written upon
+a sceptical plan, like Montaigne's "Essays," they are not so much
+read as those two ingenious authors.
+
+His History of Henry VII. was looked upon as a masterpiece, but how
+is it possible that some persons can presume to compare so little a
+work with the history of our illustrious Thuanus?
+
+Speaking about the famous impostor Perkin, son to a converted Jew,
+who assumed boldly the name and title of Richard IV., King of
+England, at the instigation of the Duchess of Burgundy, and who
+disputed the crown with Henry VII., the Lord Bacon writes as
+follows:-
+
+"At this time the King began again to be haunted with sprites, by
+the magic and curious arts of the Lady Margaret, who raised up the
+ghost of Richard, Duke of York, second son to King Edward IV., to
+walk and vex the King.
+
+"After such time as she (Margaret of Burgundy) thought he (Perkin
+Warbeck) was perfect in his lesson, she began to cast with herself
+from what coast this blazing star should first appear, and at what
+time it must be upon the horizon of Ireland; for there had the like
+meteor strong influence before."
+
+Methinks our sagacious Thuanus does not give in to such fustian,
+which formerly was looked upon as sublime, but in this age is justly
+called nonsense.
+
+
+
+LETTER XIII.--ON MR. LOCKE
+
+
+
+Perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius,
+or was a more acute logician than Mr. Locke, and yet he was not
+deeply skilled in the mathematics.  This great man could never
+subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the
+dry pursuit of mathematical truths, which do not at first present
+any sensible objects to the mind; and no one has given better proofs
+than he, that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical head
+without the assistance of geometry.  Before his time, several great
+philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms, what the soul
+of man is; but as these absolutely knew nothing about it, they might
+very well be allowed to differ entirely in opinion from one another.
+
+In Greece, the infant seat of arts and of errors, and where the
+grandeur as well as folly of the human mind went such prodigious
+lengths, the people used to reason about the soul in the very same
+manner as we do.
+
+The divine Anaxagoras, in whose honour an altar was erected for his
+having taught mankind that the sun was greater than Peloponnesus,
+that snow was black, and that the heavens were of stone, affirmed
+that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the same time immortal.
+Diogenes (not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined
+base money) declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of
+God:  an idea which we must confess was very sublime.  Epicurus
+maintained that it was composed of parts in the same manner as the
+body.
+
+Aristotle, who has been explained a thousand ways, because he is
+unintelligible, was of opinion, according to some of his disciples,
+that the understanding in all men is one and the same substance.
+
+The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle,--and the divine
+Socrates, master of the divine Plato--used to say that the soul was
+corporeal and eternal.  No doubt but the demon of Socrates had
+instructed him in the nature of it.  Some people, indeed, pretend
+that a man who boasted his being attended by a familiar genius must
+infallibly be either a knave or a madman, but this kind of people
+are seldom satisfied with anything but reason.
+
+With regard to the Fathers of the Church, several in the primitive
+ages believed that the soul was human, and the angels and God
+corporeal.  Men naturally improve upon every system.  St. Bernard,
+as Father Mabillon confesses, taught that the soul after death does
+not see God in the celestial regions, but converses with Christ's
+human nature only.  However, he was not believed this time on his
+bare word; the adventure of the crusade having a little sunk the
+credit of his oracles.  Afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose, such
+as the Irrefragable Doctor, the Subtile Doctor, the Angelic Doctor,
+the Seraphic Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor, who were all sure that
+they had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul, and yet wrote
+in such a manner, that one would conclude they were resolved no one
+should understand a word in their writings.  Our Descartes, born to
+discover the errors of antiquity, and at the same time to substitute
+his own, and hurried away by that systematic spirit which throws a
+cloud over the minds of the greatest men, thought he had
+demonstrated that the soul is the same thing as thought, in the same
+manner as matter, in his opinion, is the same as extension.  He
+asserted, that man thinks eternally, and that the soul, at its
+coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of
+metaphysical notions:  knowing God, infinite space, possessing all
+abstract ideas--in a word, completely endued with the most sublime
+lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb.
+
+Father Malebranche, in his sublime illusions, not only admitted
+innate ideas, but did not doubt of our living wholly in God, and
+that God is, as it were, our soul.
+
+Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the
+soul, a sage at last arose, who gave, with an air of the greatest
+modesty, the history of it.  Mr. Locke has displayed the human soul
+in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs of
+the human body.  He everywhere takes the light of physics for his
+guide.  He sometimes presumes to speak affirmatively, but then he
+presumes also to doubt.  Instead of concluding at once what we know
+not, he examines gradually what we would know.  He takes an infant
+at the instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress
+of his understanding; examines what things he has in common with
+beasts, and what he possesses above them.  Above all, he consults
+himself:  the being conscious that he himself thinks.
+
+"I shall leave," says he, "to those who know more of this matter
+than myself, the examining whether the soul exists before or after
+the organisation of our bodies.  But I confess that it is my lot to
+be animated with one of those heavy souls which do not think always;
+and I am even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more
+necessary the soul should think perpetually than that bodies should
+be for ever in motion."
+
+With regard to myself, I shall boast that I have the honour to be as
+stupid in this particular as Mr. Locke.  No one shall ever make me
+believe that I think always:  and I am as little inclined as he
+could be to fancy that some weeks after I was conceived I was a very
+learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot
+at my birth; and possessing when in the womb (though to no manner of
+purpose) knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it;
+and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly.
+
+Mr. Locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having fully
+renounced the vanity of believing that we think always; after having
+laid down, from the most solid principles, that ideas enter the mind
+through the senses; having examined our simple and complex ideas;
+having traced the human mind through its several operations; having
+shown that all the languages in the world are imperfect, and the
+great abuse that is made of words every moment, he at last comes to
+consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge.
+It was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very modestly,
+the following words:  "We shall, perhaps, never be capable of
+knowing whether a being, purely material, thinks or not."  This sage
+assertion was, by more divines than one, looked upon as a scandalous
+declaration that the soul is material and mortal.  Some Englishmen,
+devout after their way, sounded an alarm.  The superstitious are the
+same in society as cowards in an army; they themselves are seized
+with a panic fear, and communicate it to others.  It was loudly
+exclaimed that Mr. Locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless,
+religion had nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely
+philosophical, altogether independent of faith and revelation.  Mr.
+Locke's opponents needed but to examine, calmly and impartially,
+whether the declaring that matter can think, implies a
+contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate thought to
+matter.  But divines are too apt to begin their declarations with
+saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion;
+in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare
+publicly that Boileau spake irreverently of Louis XIV., because he
+ridiculed their stupid productions.  Bishop Stillingfleet got the
+reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine because he did not
+expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke.
+That divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he
+argued as a schoolman, and Locke as a philosopher, who was perfectly
+acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side of the human
+mind, and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew.  If I might
+presume to give my opinion on so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke,
+I would say, that men have long disputed on the nature and the
+immortality of the soul.  With regard to its immortality, it is
+impossible to give a demonstration of it, since its nature is still
+the subject of controversy; which, however, must be thoroughly
+understood before a person can be able to determine whether it be
+immortal or not.  Human reason is so little able, merely by its own
+strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was
+absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us.  It is of
+advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the
+soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is
+required, and the matter is cleared up at once.  But it is otherwise
+with respect to its nature; it is of little importance to religion,
+which only requires the soul to be virtuous, whatever substance it
+may be made of.  It is a clock which is given us to regulate, but
+the artist has not told us of what materials the spring of this
+chock is composed.
+
+I am a body, and, I think, that's all I know of the matter.  Shall I
+ascribe to an unknown cause, what I can so easily impute to the only
+second cause I am acquainted with?  Here all the school philosophers
+interrupt me with their arguments, and declare that there is only
+extension and solidity in bodies, and that there they can have
+nothing but motion and figure.  Now motion, figure, extension and
+solidity cannot form a thought, and consequently the soul cannot be
+matter.  All this so often repeated mighty series of reasoning,
+amounts to no more than this:  I am absolutely ignorant what matter
+is; I guess, but imperfectly, some properties of it; now I
+absolutely cannot tell whether these properties may be joined to
+thought.  As I therefore know nothing, I maintain positively that
+matter cannot think.  In this manner do the schools reason.
+
+Mr. Locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid, sincere manner
+following:  At least confess yourselves to be as ignorant as I.
+Neither your imaginations nor mine are able to comprehend in what
+manner a body is susceptible of ideas; and do you conceive better in
+what manner a substance, of what kind soever, is susceptible of
+them?  As you cannot comprehend either matter or spirit, why will
+you presume to assert anything?
+
+The superstitious man comes afterwards and declares, that all those
+must be burnt for the good of their souls, who so much as suspect
+that it is possible for the body to think without any foreign
+assistance.  But what would these people say should they themselves
+be proved irreligious?  And indeed, what man can presume to assert,
+without being guilty at the same time of the greatest impiety, that
+it is impossible for the Creator to form matter with thought and
+sensation?  Consider only, I beg you, what a dilemma you bring
+yourselves into, you who confine in this manner the power of the
+Creator.  Beasts have the same organs, the same sensations, the same
+perceptions as we; they have memory, and combine certain ideas.  In
+case it was not in the power of God to animate matter, and inform it
+with sensation, the consequence would be, either that beasts are
+mere machines, or that they have a spiritual soul.
+
+Methinks it is clearly evident that beasts cannot be mere machines,
+which I prove thus.  God has given to them the very same organs of
+sensation as to us:  if therefore they have no sensation, God has
+created a useless thing; now according to your own confession God
+does nothing in vain; He therefore did not create so many organs of
+sensation, merely for them to be uninformed with this faculty;
+consequently beasts are not mere machines.  Beasts, according to
+your assertion, cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will,
+therefore, in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion,
+viz., that God has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter,
+with the faculties of sensation and perception, which you call
+instinct in them.  But why may not God, if He pleases, communicate
+to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feeling, perceiving,
+and thinking, which we call human reason?  To whatever side you
+turn, you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance, and the
+boundless power of the Creator.  Exclaim therefore no more against
+the sage, the modest philosophy of Mr. Locke, which so far from
+interfering with religion, would be of use to demonstrate the truth
+of it, in case religion wanted any such support.  For what
+philosophy can be of a more religious nature than that, which
+affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly, and conscious of
+its own weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to God
+in our examining of the first principles?
+
+Besides, we must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion
+will ever prejudice the religion of a country.  Though our
+demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries, that is nothing to
+the purpose, for the latter are not less revered upon that account
+by our Christian philosophers, who know very well that the objects
+of reason and those of faith are of a very different nature.
+Philosophers will never form a religious sect, the reason of which
+is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they
+themselves are free from enthusiasm.  If we divide mankind into
+twenty parts, it will be found that nineteen of these consist of
+persons employed in manual labour, who will never know that such a
+man as Mr. Locke existed.  In the remaining twentieth part how few
+are readers?  And among such as are so, twenty amuse themselves with
+romances to one who studies philosophy.  The thinking part of
+mankind is confined to a very small number, and these will never
+disturb the peace and tranquillity of the world.
+
+Neither Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the Lord
+Shaftesbury, Collins, nor Toland lighted up the firebrand of discord
+in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who
+being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a
+sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party.  But
+what do I say?  All the works of the modern philosophers put
+together will never make so much noise as even the dispute which
+arose among the Franciscans, merely about the fashion of their
+sleeves and of their cowls.
+
+
+
+LETTER XIV.--ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON
+
+
+
+A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like
+everything else, very much changed there.  He had left the world a
+plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum.  At Paris the universe is seen
+composed of vortices of subtile matter; but nothing like it is seen
+in London.  In France, it is the pressure of the moon that causes
+the tides; but in England it is the sea that gravitates towards the
+moon; so that when you think that the moon should make it flood with
+us, those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb, which very unluckily
+cannot be proved.  For to be able to do this, it is necessary the
+moon and the tides should have been inquired into at the very
+instant of the creation.
+
+You will observe farther, that the sun, which in France is said to
+have nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very near a
+quarter of its assistance.  According to your Cartesians, everything
+is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion;
+and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause
+of which is as much unknown to us.  At Paris you imagine that the
+earth is shaped like a melon, or of an oblique figure; at London it
+has an oblate one.  A Cartesian declares that light exists in the
+air; but a Newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six
+minutes and a half.  The several operations of your chemistry are
+performed by acids, alkalies and subtile matter; but attraction
+prevails even in chemistry among the English.
+
+The very essence of things is totally changed.  You neither are
+agreed upon the definition of the soul, nor on that of matter.
+Descartes, as I observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the
+same thing with thought, and Mr. Locke has given a pretty good proof
+of the contrary.
+
+Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter,
+but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it.
+
+How furiously contradictory are these opinions!
+
+
+"Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites."
+VIRGIL, Eclog. III.
+
+
+"'Tis not for us to end such great disputes."
+
+
+This famous Newton, this destroyer of the Cartesian system, died in
+March, anno 1727.  His countrymen honoured him in his lifetime, and
+interred him as though he had been a king who had made his people
+happy.
+
+The English read with the highest satisfaction, and translated into
+their tongue, the Elogium of Sir Isaac Newton, which M. de
+Fontenelle spoke in the Academy of Sciences.  M. de Fontenelle
+presides as judge over philosophers; and the English expected his
+decision, as a solemn declaration of the superiority of the English
+philosophy over that of the French.  But when it was found that this
+gentleman had compared Descartes to Sir Isaac, the whole Royal
+Society in London rose up in arms.  So far from acquiescing with M.
+Fontenelle's judgment, they criticised his discourse.  And even
+several (who, however, were not the ablest philosophers in that
+body) were offended at the comparison; and for no other reason but
+because Descartes was a Frenchman.
+
+It must be confessed that these two great men differed very much in
+conduct, in fortune, and in philosophy.
+
+Nature had indulged Descartes with a shining and strong imagination,
+whence he became a very singular person both in private life and in
+his manner of reasoning.  This imagination could not conceal itself
+even in his philosophical works, which are everywhere adorned with
+very shining, ingenious metaphors and figures.  Nature had almost
+made him a poet; and indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the
+entertainment of Christina, Queen of Sweden, which however was
+suppressed in honour to his memory.
+
+He embraced a military life for some time, and afterwards becoming a
+complete philosopher, he did not think the passion of love
+derogatory to his character.  He had by his mistress a daughter
+called Froncine, who died young, and was very much regretted by him.
+Thus he experienced every passion incident to mankind.
+
+He was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary for him to
+fly from the society of his fellow creatures, and especially from
+his native country, in order to enjoy the happiness of cultivating
+his philosophical studies in full liberty.
+
+Descartes was very right, for his contemporaries were not knowing
+enough to improve and enlighten his understanding, and were capable
+of little else than of giving him uneasiness.
+
+He left France purely to go in search of truth, which was then
+persecuted by the wretched philosophy of the schools.  However, he
+found that reason was as much disguised and depraved in the
+universities of Holland, into which he withdrew, as in his own
+country.  For at the time that the French condemned the only
+propositions of his philosophy which were true, he was persecuted by
+the pretended philosophers of Holland, who understood him no better;
+and who, having a nearer view of his glory, hated his person the
+more, so that he was obliged to leave Utrecht.  Descartes was
+injuriously accused of being an atheist, the last refuge of
+religious scandal:  and he who had employed all the sagacity and
+penetration of his genius, in searching for new proofs of the
+existence of a God, was suspected to believe there was no such
+Being.
+
+Such a persecution from all sides, must necessarily suppose a most
+exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputation, and indeed
+he possessed both.  Reason at that time darted a ray upon the world
+through the gloom of the schools, and the prejudices of popular
+superstition.  At last his name spread so universally, that the
+French were desirous of bringing him back into his native country by
+rewards, and accordingly offered him an annual pension of a thousand
+crowns.  Upon these hopes Descartes returned to France; paid the
+fees of his patent, which was sold at that time, but no pension was
+settled upon him.  Thus disappointed, he returned to his solitude in
+North Holland, where he again pursued the study of philosophy,
+whilst the great Galileo, at fourscore years of age, was groaning in
+the prisons of the Inquisition, only for having demonstrated the
+earth's motion.
+
+At last Descartes was snatched from the world in the flower of his
+age at Stockholm.  His death was owing to a bad regimen, and he
+expired in the midst of some literati who were his enemies, and
+under the hands of a physician to whom he was odious.
+
+The progress of Sir Isaac Newton's life was quite different.  He
+lived happy, and very much honoured in his native country, to the
+age of fourscore and five years.
+
+It was his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country of
+liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were
+banished from the world.  Reason alone was cultivated, and mankind
+could only be his pupil, not his enemy.
+
+One very singular difference in the lives of these two great men is,
+that Sir Isaac, during the long course of years he enjoyed, was
+never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common
+frailties of mankind, nor ever had any commerce with women--a
+circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who
+attended him in his last moments.
+
+We may admire Sir Isaac Newton on this occasion, but then we must
+not censure Descartes.
+
+The opinion that generally prevails in England with regard to these
+new philosophers is, that the latter was a dreamer, and the former a
+sage.
+
+Very few people in England read Descartes, whose works indeed are
+now useless.  On the other side, but a small number peruse those of
+Sir Isaac, because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in
+the mathematics, otherwise those works will be unintelligible to
+him.  But notwithstanding this, these great men are the subject of
+everyone's discourse.  Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage,
+whilst Descartes is not indulged a single one.  According to some,
+it is to the former that we owe the discovery of a vacuum, that the
+air is a heavy body, and the invention of telescopes.  In a word,
+Sir Isaac Newton is here as the Hercules of fabulous story, to whom
+the ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes.
+
+In a critique that was made in London on Mr. de Fontenelle's
+discourse, the writer presumed to assert that Descartes was not a
+great geometrician.  Those who make such a declaration may justly be
+reproached with flying in their master's face.  Descartes extended
+the limits of geometry as far beyond the place where he found them,
+as Sir Isaac did after him.  The former first taught the method of
+expressing curves by equations.  This geometry which, thanks to him
+for it, is now grown common, was so abstruse in his time, that not
+so much as one professor would undertake to explain it; and Schotten
+in Holland, and Format in France, were the only men who understood
+it.
+
+He applied this geometrical and inventive genius to dioptrics,
+which, when treated of by him, became a new art.  And if he was
+mistaken in some things, the reason of that is, a man who discovers
+a new tract of land cannot at once know all the properties of the
+soil.  Those who come after him, and make these lands fruitful, are
+at least obliged to him for the discovery.  I will not deny but that
+there are innumerable errors in the rest of Descartes' works.
+
+Geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fashioned, which
+would have conducted him safely through the several paths of natural
+philosophy.  Nevertheless, he at last abandoned this guide, and gave
+entirely into the humour of forming hypotheses; and then philosophy
+was no more than an ingenious romance, fit only to amuse the
+ignorant.  He was mistaken in the nature of the soul, in the proofs
+of the existence of a God, in matter, in the laws of motion, and in
+the nature of light.  He admitted innate ideas, he invented new
+elements, he created a world; he made man according to his own
+fancy; and it is justly said, that the man of Descartes is, in fact,
+that of Descartes only, very different from the real one.
+
+He pushed his metaphysical errors so far, as to declare that two and
+two make four for no other reason but because God would have it so.
+However, it will not be making him too great a compliment if we
+affirm that he was valuable even in his mistakes.  He deceived
+himself; but then it was at least in a methodical way.  He destroyed
+all the absurd chimeras with which youth had been infatuated for two
+thousand years.  He taught his contemporaries how to reason, and
+enabled them to employ his own weapons against himself.  If
+Descartes did not pay in good money, he however did great service in
+crying down that of a base alloy.
+
+I indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his
+philosophy in any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton.  The former
+is an essay, the latter a masterpiece.  But then the man who first
+brought us to the path of truth, was perhaps as great a genius as he
+who afterwards conducted us through it.
+
+Descartes gave sight to the blind.  These saw the errors of
+antiquity and of the sciences.  The path he struck out is since
+become boundless.  Rohault's little work was, during some years, a
+complete system of physics; but now all the Transactions of the
+several academies in Europe put together do not form so much as the
+beginning of a system.  In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been
+found.  We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has
+made in it.
+
+
+
+LETTER XV.--ON ATTRACTION
+
+
+
+The discoveries which gained Sir Isaac Newton so universal a
+reputation, relate to the system of the world, to light, to
+geometrical infinities; and, lastly, to chronology, with which he
+used to amuse himself after the fatigue of his severer studies.
+
+I will now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few
+things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas.
+With regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time
+maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, and keeps them in
+their orbits:  and on those causes which make all bodies here below
+descend towards the surface of the earth.
+
+The system of Descartes, explained and improved since his time,
+seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this
+reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all
+capacities.  But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the
+things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he
+does not understand.
+
+Gravity, the falling of accelerated bodies on the earth, the
+revolution of the planets in their orbits, their rotations round
+their axis, all this is mere motion.  Now motion cannot perhaps be
+conceived any otherwise than by impulsion; therefore all those
+bodies must be impelled.  But by what are they impelled?  All space
+is full, it therefore is filled with a very subtile matter, since
+this is imperceptible to us; this matter goes from west to east,
+since all the planets are carried from west to east.  Thus from
+hypothesis to hypothesis, from one appearance to another,
+philosophers have imagined a vast whirlpool of subtile matter, in
+which the planets are carried round the sun:  they also have created
+another particular vortex which floats in the great one, and which
+turns daily round the planets.  When all this is done, it is
+pretended that gravity depends on this diurnal motion; for, say
+these, the velocity of the subtile matter that turns round our
+little vortex, must be seventeen times more rapid than that of the
+earth; or, in case its velocity is seventeen times greater than that
+of the earth, its centrifugal force must be vastly greater, and
+consequently impel all bodies towards the earth.  This is the cause
+of gravity, according to the Cartesian system.  But the theorist,
+before he calculated the centrifugal force and velocity of the
+subtile matter, should first have been certain that it existed.
+
+Sir Isaac Newton, seems to have destroyed all these great and little
+vortices, both that which carries the planets round the sun, as well
+as the other which supposes every planet to turn on its own axis.
+
+First, with regard to the pretended little vortex of the earth, it
+is demonstrated that it must lose its motion by insensible degrees;
+it is demonstrated, that if the earth swims in a fluid, its density
+must be equal to that of the earth; and in case its density be the
+same, all the bodies we endeavour to move must meet with an
+insuperable resistance.
+
+With regard to the great vortices, they are still more chimerical,
+and it is impossible to make them agree with Kepler's law, the truth
+of which has been demonstrated.  Sir Isaac shows, that the
+revolution of the fluid in which Jupiter is supposed to be carried,
+is not the same with regard to the revolution of the fluid of the
+earth, as the revolution of Jupiter with respect to that of the
+earth.  He proves, that as the planets make their revolutions in
+ellipses, and consequently being at a much greater distance one from
+the other in their Aphelia, and a little nearer in their Perihelia;
+the earth's velocity, for instance, ought to be greater when it is
+nearer Venus and Mars, because the fluid that carries it along,
+being then more pressed, ought to have a greater motion; and yet it
+is even then that the earth's motion is slower.
+
+He proves that there is no such thing as a celestial matter which
+goes from west to east since the comets traverse those spaces,
+sometimes from east to west, and at other times from north to south.
+
+In fine, the better to resolve, if possible, every difficulty, he
+proves, and even by experiments, that it is impossible there should
+be a plenum; and brings back the vacuum, which Aristotle and
+Descartes had banished from the world.
+
+Having by these and several other arguments destroyed the Cartesian
+vortices, he despaired of ever being able to discover whether there
+is a secret principle in nature which, at the same time, is the
+cause of the motion of all celestial bodies, and that of gravity on
+the earth.  But being retired in 1666, upon account of the Plague,
+to a solitude near Cambridge; as he was walking one day in his
+garden, and saw some fruits fall from a tree, he fell into a
+profound meditation on that gravity, the cause of which had so long
+been sought, but in vain, by all the philosophers, whilst the vulgar
+think there is nothing mysterious in it.  He said to himself; that
+from what height soever in our hemisphere, those bodies might
+descend, their fall would certainly be in the progression discovered
+by Galileo; and the spaces they run through would be as the square
+of the times.  Why may not this power which causes heavy bodies to
+descend, and is the same without any sensible diminution at the
+remotest distance from the centre of the earth, or on the summits of
+the highest mountains, why, said Sir Isaac, may not this power
+extend as high as the moon?  And in case its influence reaches so
+far, is it not very probable that this power retains it in its
+orbit, and determines its motion?  But in case the moon obeys this
+principle (whatever it be) may we not conclude very naturally that
+the rest of the planets are equally subject to it?  In case this
+power exists (which besides is proved) it must increase in an
+inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.  All, therefore, that
+remains is, to examine how far a heavy body, which should fall upon
+the earth from a moderate height, would go; and how far in the same
+time, a body which should fall from the orbit of the moon, would
+descend.  To find this, nothing is wanted but the measure of the
+earth, and the distance of the moon from it.
+
+Thus Sir Isaac Newton reasoned.  But at that time the English had
+but a very imperfect measure of our globe, and depended on the
+uncertain supposition of mariners, who computed a degree to contain
+but sixty English miles, whereas it consists in reality of near
+seventy.  As this false computation did not agree with the
+conclusions which Sir Isaac intended to draw from them, he laid
+aside this pursuit.  A half-learned philosopher, remarkable only for
+his vanity, would have made the measure of the earth agree, anyhow,
+with his system.  Sir Isaac, however, chose rather to quit the
+researches he was then engaged in.  But after Mr. Picard had
+measured the earth exactly, by tracing that meridian which redounds
+so much to the honour of the French, Sir Isaac Newton resumed his
+former reflections, and found his account in Mr. Picard's
+calculation.
+
+A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that
+such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole
+assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic.
+
+The circumference of the earth is 123,249,600 feet.  This, among
+other things, is necessary to prove the system of attraction.
+
+The instant we know the earth's circumference, and the distance of
+the moon, we know that of the moon's orbit, and the diameter of this
+orbit.  The moon performs its revolution in that orbit in twenty-
+seven days, seven hours, forty-three minutes.  It is demonstrated,
+that the moon in its mean motion makes an hundred and fourscore and
+seven thousand nine hundred and sixty feet (of Paris) in a minute.
+It is likewise demonstrated, by a known theorem, that the central
+force which should make a body fall from the height of the moon,
+would make its velocity no more than fifteen Paris feet in a minute
+of time.  Now, if the law by which bodies gravitate and attract one
+another in an inverse ratio to the squares of the distances be true,
+if the same power acts according to that law throughout all nature,
+it is evident that as the earth is sixty semi-diameters distant from
+the moon, a heavy body must necessarily fall (on the earth) fifteen
+feet in the first second, and fifty-four thousand feet in the first
+minute.
+
+Now a heavy body falls, in reality, fifteen feet in the first
+second, and goes in the first minute fifty-four thousand feet, which
+number is the square of sixty multiplied by fifteen.  Bodies,
+therefore, gravitate in an inverse ratio of the squares of the
+distances; consequently, what causes gravity on earth, and keeps the
+moon in its orbit, is one and the same power; it being demonstrated
+that the moon gravitates on the earth, which is the centre of its
+particular motion, it is demonstrated that the earth and the moon
+gravitate on the sun which is the centre of their annual motion.
+
+The rest of the planets must be subject to this general law; and if
+this law exists, these planets must follow the laws which Kepler
+discovered.  All these laws, all these relations are indeed observed
+by the planets with the utmost exactness; therefore, the power of
+attraction causes all the planets to gravitate towards the sun, in
+like manner as the moon gravitates towards our globe.
+
+Finally, as in all bodies re-action is equal to action, it is
+certain that the earth gravitates also towards the moon; and that
+the sun gravitates towards both.  That every one of the satellites
+of Saturn gravitates towards the other four, and the other four
+towards it; all five towards Saturn, and Saturn towards all.  That
+it is the same with regard to Jupiter; and that all these globes are
+attracted by the sun, which is reciprocally attracted by them.
+
+This power of gravitation acts proportionably to the quantity of
+matter in bodies, a truth which Sir Isaac has demonstrated by
+experiments.  This new discovery has been of use to show that the
+sun (the centre of the planetary system) attracts them all in a
+direct ratio of their quantity of matter combined with their
+nearness.  From hence Sir Isaac, rising by degrees to discoveries
+which seemed not to be formed for the human mind, is bold enough to
+compute the quantity of matter contained in the sun and in every
+planet; and in this manner shows, from the simple laws of mechanics,
+that every celestial globe ought necessarily to be where it is
+placed.
+
+His bare principle of the laws of gravitation accounts for all the
+apparent inequalities in the course of the celestial globes.  The
+variations of the moon are a necessary consequence of those laws.
+Moreover, the reason is evidently seen why the nodes of the moon
+perform their revolutions in nineteen years, and those of the earth
+in about twenty-six thousand.  The several appearances observed in
+the tides are also a very simple effect of this attraction.  The
+proximity of the moon, when at the full, and when it is new, and its
+distance in the quadratures or quarters, combined with the action of
+the sun, exhibit a sensible reason why the ocean swells and sinks.
+
+After having shown by his sublime theory the course and inequalities
+of the planets, he subjects comets to the same law.  The orbit of
+these fires (unknown for so great a series of years), which was the
+terror of mankind and the rock against which philosophy split,
+placed by Aristotle below the moon, and sent back by Descartes above
+the sphere of Saturn, is at last placed in its proper seat by Sir
+Isaac Newton.
+
+He proves that comets are solid bodies which move in the sphere of
+the sun's activity, and that they describe an ellipsis so very
+eccentric, and so near to parabolas, that certain comets must take
+up above five hundred years in their revolution.
+
+The learned Dr. Halley is of opinion that the comet seen in 1680 is
+the same which appeared in Julius Caesar's time.  This shows more
+than any other that comets are hard, opaque bodies; for it descended
+so near to the sun, as to come within a sixth part of the diameter
+of this planet from it, and consequently might have contracted a
+degree of heat two thousand times stronger than that of red-hot
+iron; and would have been soon dispersed in vapour, had it not been
+a firm, dense body.  The guessing the course of comets began then to
+be very much in vogue.  The celebrated Bernoulli concluded by his
+system that the famous comet of 1680 would appear again the 17th of
+May, 1719.  Not a single astronomer in Europe went to bed that
+night.  However, they needed not to have broke their rest, for the
+famous comet never appeared.  There is at least more cunning, if not
+more certainty, in fixing its return to so remote a distance as five
+hundred and seventy-five years.  As to Mr. Whiston, he affirmed very
+seriously that in the time of the Deluge a comet overflowed the
+terrestrial globe.  And he was so unreasonable as to wonder that
+people laughed at him for making such an assertion.  The ancients
+were almost in the same way of thinking with Mr. Whiston, and
+fancied that comets were always the forerunners of some great
+calamity which was to befall mankind.  Sir Isaac Newton, on the
+contrary, suspected that they are very beneficent, and that vapours
+exhale from them merely to nourish and vivify the planets, which
+imbibe in their course the several particles the sun has detached
+from the comets, an opinion which, at least, is more probable than
+the former.  But this is not all.  If this power of gravitation or
+attraction acts on all the celestial globes, it acts undoubtedly on
+the several parts of these globes.  For in case bodies attract one
+another in proportion to the quantity of matter contained in them,
+it can only be in proportion to the quantity of their parts; and if
+this power is found in the whole, it is undoubtedly in the half; in
+the quarters in the eighth part, and so on in infinitum.
+
+This is attraction, the great spring by which all Nature is moved.
+Sir Isaac Newton, after having demonstrated the existence of this
+principle, plainly foresaw that its very name would offend; and,
+therefore, this philosopher, in more places than one of his books,
+gives the reader some caution about it.  He bids him beware of
+confounding this name with what the ancients called occult
+qualities, but to be satisfied with knowing that there is in all
+bodies a central force, which acts to the utmost limits of the
+universe, according to the invariable laws of mechanics.
+
+It is surprising, after the solemn protestations Sir Isaac made,
+that such eminent men as Mr. Sorin and Mr. de Fontenelle should have
+imputed to this great philosopher the verbal and chimerical way of
+reasoning of the Aristotelians; Mr. Sorin in the Memoirs of the
+Academy of 1709, and Mr. de Fontenelle in the very eulogium of Sir
+Isaac Newton.
+
+Most of the French (the learned and others) have repeated this
+reproach.  These are for ever crying out, "Why did he not employ the
+word iMPULSION, which is so well understood, rather than that of
+ATTRACTION, which is unintelligible?"
+
+Sir Isaac might have answered these critics thus: --"First, you have
+as imperfect an idea of the word impulsion as of that of attraction;
+and in case you cannot conceive how one body tends towards the
+centre of another body, neither can you conceive by what power one
+body can impel another.
+
+"Secondly, I could not admit of impulsion; for to do this I must
+have known that a celestial matter was the agent.  But so far from
+knowing that there is any such matter, I have proved it to be merely
+imaginary.
+
+"Thirdly, I use the word attraction for no other reason but to
+express an effect which I discovered in Nature--a certain and
+indisputable effect of an unknown principle--a quality inherent in
+matter, the cause of which persons of greater abilities than I can
+pretend to may, if they can, find out."
+
+"What have you, then, taught us?" will these people say further;
+"and to what purpose are so many calculations to tell us what you
+yourself do not comprehend?"
+
+"I have taught you," may Sir Isaac rejoin, "that all bodies
+gravitate towards one another in proportion to their quantity of
+matter; that these central forces alone keep the planets and comets
+in their orbits, and cause them to move in the proportion before set
+down.  I demonstrate to you that it is impossible there should be
+any other cause which keeps the planets in their orbits than that
+general phenomenon of gravity.  For heavy bodies fall on the earth
+according to the proportion demonstrated of central forces; and the
+planets finishing their course according to these same proportions,
+in case there were another power that acted upon all those bodies,
+it would either increase their velocity or change their direction.
+Now, not one of those bodies ever has a single degree of motion or
+velocity, or has any direction but what is demonstrated to be the
+effect of the central forces.  Consequently it is impossible there
+should be any other principle."
+
+Give me leave once more to introduce Sir Isaac speaking.  Shall he
+not be allowed to say? "My case and that of the ancients is very
+different.  These saw, for instance, water ascend in pumps, and
+said, 'The water rises because it abhors a vacuum.'  But with regard
+to myself; I am in the case of a man who should have first observed
+that water ascends in pumps, but should leave others to explain the
+cause of this effect.  The anatomist, who first declared that the
+motion of the arm is owing to the contraction of the muscles, taught
+mankind an indisputable truth.  But are they less obliged to him
+because he did not know the reason why the muscles contract?  The
+cause of the elasticity of the air is unknown, but he who first
+discovered this spring performed a very signal service to natural
+philosophy.  The spring that I discovered was more hidden and more
+universal, and for that very reason mankind ought to thank me the
+more.  I have discovered a new property of matter--one of the
+secrets of the Creator--and have calculated and discovered the
+effects of it.  After this, shall people quarrel with me about the
+name I give it?"
+
+Vortices may be called an occult quality, because their existence
+was never proved.  Attraction, on the contrary, is a real thing,
+because its effects are demonstrated, and the proportions of it are
+calculated.  The cause of this cause is among the Arcana of the
+Almighty.
+
+
+"Precedes huc, et non amplius."
+
+(Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.)
+
+
+
+LETTER XVI.--ON SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S OPTICS
+
+
+
+The philosophers of the last age found out a new universe; and a
+circumstance which made its discovery more difficult was that no one
+had so much as suspected its existence.  The most sage and judicious
+were of opinion that it was a frantic rashness to dare so much as to
+imagine that it was possible to guess the laws by which the
+celestial bodies move and the manner how light acts.  Galileo, by
+his astronomical discoveries, Kepler, by his calculation, Descartes
+(at least, in his dioptrics), and Sir Isaac Newton, in all his
+works, severally saw the mechanism of the springs of the world.  The
+geometricians have subjected infinity to the laws of calculation.
+The circulation of the blood in animals, and of the sap in
+vegetables, have changed the face of Nature with regard to us.  A
+new kind of existence has been given to bodies in the air-pump.  By
+the assistance of telescopes bodies have been brought nearer to one
+another.  Finally, the several discoveries which Sir Isaac Newton
+has made on light are equal to the boldest things which the
+curiosity of man could expect after so many philosophical novelties.
+
+Till Antonio de Dominis the rainbow was considered as an
+inexplicable miracle.  This philosopher guessed that it was a
+necessary effect of the sun and rain.  Descartes gained immortal
+fame by his mathematical explication of this so natural a
+phenomenon.  He calculated the reflections and refractions of light
+in drops of rain.  And his sagacity on this occasion was at that
+time looked upon as next to divine.
+
+But what would he have said had it been proved to him that he was
+mistaken in the nature of light; that he had not the least reason to
+maintain that it is a globular body?  That it is false to assert
+that this matter, spreading itself through the whole, waits only to
+be projected forward by the sun, in order to be put in action, in
+like manner as a long staff acts at one end when pushed forward by
+the other.  That light is certainly darted by the sun; in fine, that
+light is transmitted from the sun to the earth in about seven
+minutes, though a cannonball, which were not to lose any of its
+velocity, could not go that distance in less than twenty-five years.
+How great would have been his astonishment had he been told that
+light does not reflect directly by impinging against the solid parts
+of bodies, that bodies are not transparent when they have large
+pores, and that a man should arise who would demonstrate all these
+paradoxes, and anatomise a single ray of light with more dexterity
+than the ablest artist dissects a human body.  This man is come.
+Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated to the eye, by the bare assistance
+of the prism, that light is a composition of coloured rays, which,
+being united, form white colour.  A single ray is by him divided
+into seven, which all fall upon a piece of linen, or a sheet of
+white paper, in their order, one above the other, and at unequal
+distances.  The first is red, the second orange, the third yellow,
+the fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a
+violet-purple.  Each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a
+hundred other prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like
+manner, as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never
+change afterwards in the crucible.  As a superabundant proof that
+each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that which
+forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of yellow wood, for
+instance, and set it in the ray of a red colour; this wood will
+instantly be tinged red.  But set it in the ray of a green colour,
+it assumes a green colour, and so of all the rest.
+
+From what cause, therefore, do colours arise in Nature?  It is
+nothing but the disposition of bodies to reflect the rays of a
+certain order and to absorb all the rest.
+
+What, then, is this secret disposition?  Sir Isaac Newton
+demonstrates that it is nothing more than the density of the small
+constituent particles of which a body is composed.  And how is this
+reflection performed?  It was supposed to arise from the rebounding
+of the rays, in the same manner as a ball on the surface of a solid
+body.  But this is a mistake, for Sir Isaac taught the astonished
+philosophers that bodies are opaque for no other reason but because
+their pores are large, that light reflects on our eyes from the very
+bosom of those pores, that the smaller the pores of a body are the
+more such a body is transparent.  Thus paper, which reflects the
+light when dry, transmits it when oiled, because the oil, by filling
+its pores, makes them much smaller.
+
+It is there that examining the vast porosity of bodies, every
+particle having its pores, and every particle of those particles
+having its own, he shows we are not certain that there is a cubic
+inch of solid matter in the universe, so far are we from conceiving
+what matter is.  Having thus divided, as it were, light into its
+elements, and carried the sagacity of his discoveries so far as to
+prove the method of distinguishing compound colours from such as are
+primitive, he shows that these elementary rays, separated by the
+prism, are ranged in their order for no other reason but because
+they are refracted in that very order; and it is this property
+(unknown till he discovered it) of breaking or splitting in this
+proportion; it is this unequal refraction of rays, this power of
+refracting the red less than the orange colour, &c., which he calls
+the different refrangibility.  The most reflexible rays are the most
+refrangible, and from hence he evinces that the same power is the
+cause both of the reflection and refraction of light.
+
+But all these wonders are merely but the opening of his discoveries.
+He found out the secret to see the vibrations or fits of light which
+come and go incessantly, and which either transmit light or reflect
+it, according to the density of the parts they meet with.  He has
+presumed to calculate the density of the particles of air necessary
+between two glasses, the one flat, the other convex on one side, set
+one upon the other, in order to operate such a transmission or
+reflection, or to form such and such a colour.
+
+From all these combinations he discovers the proportion in which
+light acts on bodies and bodies act on light.
+
+He saw light so perfectly, that he has determined to what degree of
+perfection the art of increasing it, and of assisting our eyes by
+telescopes, can be carried.
+
+Descartes, from a noble confidence that was very excusable,
+considering how strongly he was fired at the first discoveries he
+made in an art which he almost first found out; Descartes, I say,
+hoped to discover in the stars, by the assistance of telescopes,
+objects as small as those we discern upon the earth.
+
+But Sir Isaac has shown that dioptric telescopes cannot be brought
+to a greater perfection, because of that refraction, and of that
+very refrangibility, which at the same time that they bring objects
+nearer to us, scatter too much the elementary rays.  He has
+calculated in these glasses the proportion of the scattering of the
+red and of the blue rays; and proceeding so far as to demonstrate
+things which were not supposed even to exist, he examines the
+inequalities which arise from the shape or figure of the glass, and
+that which arises from the refrangibility.  He finds that the object
+glass of the telescope being convex on one side and flat on the
+other, in case the flat side be turned towards the object, the error
+which arises from the construction and position of the glass is
+above five thousand times less than the error which arises from the
+refrangibility; and, therefore, that the shape or figure of the
+glasses is not the cause why telescopes cannot be carried to a
+greater perfection, but arises wholly from the nature of light.
+
+For this reason he invented a telescope, which discovers objects by
+reflection, and not by refraction.  Telescopes of this new kind are
+very hard to make, and their use is not easy; but, according to the
+English, a reflective telescope of but five feet has the same effect
+as another of a hundred feet in length.
+
+
+
+LETTER XVII.--ON INFINITES IN GEOMETRY, AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S
+CHRONOLOGY
+
+
+
+The labyrinth and abyss of infinity is also a new course Sir Isaac
+Newton has gone through, and we are obliged to him for the clue, by
+whose assistance we are enabled to trace its various windings.
+
+Descartes got the start of him also in this astonishing invention.
+He advanced with mighty steps in his geometry, and was arrived at
+the very borders of infinity, but went no farther.  Dr. Wallis,
+about the middle of the last century, was the first who reduced a
+fraction by a perpetual division to an infinite series.
+
+The Lord Brouncker employed this series to square the hyperbola.
+
+Mercator published a demonstration of this quadrature; much about
+which time Sir Isaac Newton, being then twenty-three years of age,
+had invented a general method, to perform on all geometrical curves
+what had just before been tried on the hyperbola.
+
+It is to this method of subjecting everywhere infinity to
+algebraical calculations, that the name is given of differential
+calculations or of fluxions and integral calculation.  It is the art
+of numbering and measuring exactly a thing whose existence cannot be
+conceived.
+
+And, indeed, would you not imagine that a man laughed at you who
+should declare that there are lines infinitely great which form an
+angle infinitely little?
+
+That a right line, which is a right line so long as it is finite, by
+changing infinitely little its direction, becomes an infinite curve;
+and that a curve may become infinitely less than another curve?
+
+That there are infinite squares, infinite cubes, and infinites of
+infinites, all greater than one another, and the last but one of
+which is nothing in comparison of the last?
+
+All these things, which at first appear to be the utmost excess of
+frenzy, are in reality an effort of the subtlety and extent of the
+human mind, and the art of finding truths which till then had been
+unknown.
+
+This so bold edifice is even founded on simple ideas.  The business
+is to measure the diagonal of a square, to give the area of a curve,
+to find the square root of a number, which has none in common
+arithmetic.  After all, the imagination ought not to be startled any
+more at so many orders of infinites than at the so well-known
+proposition, viz., that curve lines may always be made to pass
+between a circle and a tangent; or at that other, namely, that
+matter is divisible in infinitum.  These two truths have been
+demonstrated many years, and are no less incomprehensible than the
+things we have been speaking of.
+
+For many years the invention of this famous calculation was denied
+to Sir Isaac Newton.  In Germany Mr. Leibnitz was considered as the
+inventor of the differences or moments, called fluxions, and Mr.
+Bernouilli claimed the integral calculus.  However, Sir Isaac is now
+thought to have first made the discovery, and the other two have the
+glory of having once made the world doubt whether it was to be
+ascribed to him or them.  Thus some contested with Dr. Harvey the
+invention of the circulation of the blood, as others disputed with
+Mr. Perrault that of the circulation of the sap.
+
+Hartsocher and Leuwenhoek disputed with each other the honour of
+having first seen the vermiculi of which mankind are formed.  This
+Hartsocher also contested with Huygens the invention of a new method
+of calculating the distance of a fixed star.  It is not yet known to
+what philosopher we owe the invention of the cycloid.
+
+Be this as it will, it is by the help of this geometry of infinites
+that Sir Isaac Newton attained to the most sublime discoveries.  I
+am now to speak of another work, which, though more adapted to the
+capacity of the human mind, does nevertheless display some marks of
+that creative genius with which Sir Isaac Newton was informed in all
+his researches.  The work I mean is a chronology of a new kind, for
+what province soever he undertook he was sure to change the ideas
+and opinions received by the rest of men.
+
+Accustomed to unravel and disentangle chaos, he was resolved to
+convey at least some light into that of the fables of antiquity
+which are blended and confounded with history, and fix an uncertain
+chronology.  It is true that there is no family, city, or nation,
+but endeavours to remove its original as far backward as possible.
+Besides, the first historians were the most negligent in setting
+down the eras:  books were infinitely less common than they are at
+this time, and, consequently, authors being not so obnoxious to
+censure, they therefore imposed upon the world with greater
+impunity; and, as it is evident that these have related a great
+number of fictitious particulars, it is probable enough that they
+also gave us several false eras.
+
+It appeared in general to Sir Isaac that the world was five hundred
+years younger than chronologers declare it to be.  He grounds his
+opinion on the ordinary course of Nature, and on the observations
+which astronomers have made.
+
+By the course of Nature we here understand the time that every
+generation of men lives upon the earth.  The Egyptians first
+employed this vague and uncertain method of calculating when they
+began to write the beginning of their history.  These computed three
+hundred and forty-one generations from Menes to Sethon; and, having
+no fixed era, they supposed three generations to consist of a
+hundred years.  In this manner they computed eleven thousand three
+hundred and forty years from Menes's reign to that of Sethon.
+
+The Greeks before they counted by Olympiads followed the method of
+the Egyptians, and even gave a little more extent to generations,
+making each to consist of forty years.
+
+Now, here, both the Egyptians and the Greeks made an erroneous
+computation.  It is true, indeed, that, according to the usual
+course of Nature, three generations last about a hundred and twenty
+years; but three reigns are far from taking up so many.  It is very
+evident that mankind in general live longer than kings are found to
+reign, so that an author who should write a history in which there
+were no dates fixed, and should know that nine kings had reigned
+over a nation; such an historian would commit a great error should
+he allow three hundred years to these nine monarchs.  Every
+generation takes about thirty-six years; every reign is, one with
+the other, about twenty.  Thirty kings of England have swayed the
+sceptre from William the Conqueror to George I., the years of whose
+reigns added together amount to six hundred and forty-eight years;
+which, being divided equally among the thirty kings, give to every
+one a reign of twenty-one years and a half very near.  Sixty-three
+kings of France have sat upon the throne; these have, one with
+another, reigned about twenty years each.  This is the usual course
+of Nature.  The ancients, therefore, were mistaken when they
+supposed the durations in general of reigns to equal that of
+generations.  They, therefore, allowed too great a number of years,
+and consequently some years must be subtracted from their
+computation.
+
+Astronomical observations seem to have lent a still greater
+assistance to our philosopher.  He appears to us stronger when he
+fights upon his own ground.
+
+You know that the earth, besides its annual motion which carries it
+round the sun from west to east in the space of a year, has also a
+singular revolution which was quite unknown till within these late
+years.  Its poles have a very slow retrograde motion from east to
+west, whence it happens that their position every day does not
+correspond exactly with the same point of the heavens.  This
+difference, which is so insensible in a year, becomes pretty
+considerable in time; and in threescore and twelve years the
+difference is found to be of one degree, that is to say, the three
+hundred and sixtieth part of the circumference of the whole heaven.
+Thus after seventy-two years the colure of the vernal equinox which
+passed through a fixed star, corresponds with another fixed star.
+Hence it is that the sun, instead of being in that part of the
+heavens in which the Ram was situated in the time of Hipparchus, is
+found to correspond with that part of the heavens in which the Bull
+was situated; and the Twins are placed where the Bull then stood.
+All the signs have changed their situation, and yet we still retain
+the same manner of speaking as the ancients did.  In this age we say
+that the sun is in the Ram in the spring, from the same principle of
+condescension that we say that the sun turns round.
+
+Hipparchus was the first among the Greeks who observed some change
+in the constellations with regard to the equinoxes, or rather who
+learnt it from the Egyptians.  Philosophers ascribed this motion to
+the stars; for in those ages people were far from imagining such a
+revolution in the earth, which was supposed to be immovable in every
+respect.  They therefore created a heaven in which they fixed the
+several stars, and gave this heaven a particular motion by which it
+was carried towards the east, whilst that all the stars seemed to
+perform their diurnal revolution from east to west.  To this error
+they added a second of much greater consequence, by imagining that
+the pretended heaven of the fixed stars advanced one degree eastward
+every hundred years.  In this manner they were no less mistaken in
+their astronomical calculation than in their system of natural
+philosophy.  As for instance, an astronomer in that age would have
+said that the vernal equinox was in the time of such and such an
+observation, in such a sign, and in such a star.  It has advanced
+two degrees of each since the time that observation was made to the
+present.  Now two degrees are equivalent to two hundred years;
+consequently the astronomer who made that observation lived just so
+many years before me.  It is certain that an astronomer who had
+argued in this manner would have mistook just fifty-four years;
+hence it is that the ancients, who were doubly deceived, made their
+great year of the world, that is, the revolution of the whole
+heavens, to consist of thirty-six thousand years.  But the moderns
+are sensible that this imaginary revolution of the heaven of the
+stars is nothing else than the revolution of the poles of the earth,
+which is performed in twenty-five thousand nine hundred years.  It
+may be proper to observe transiently in this place, that Sir Isaac,
+by determining the figure of the earth, has very happily explained
+the cause of this revolution.
+
+All this being laid down, the only thing remaining to settle
+chronology is to see through what star the colure of the equinoxes
+passes, and where it intersects at this time the ecliptic in the
+spring; and to discover whether some ancient writer does not tell us
+in what point the ecliptic was intersected in his time, by the same
+colure of the equinoxes.
+
+Clemens Alexandrinus informs us, that Chiron, who went with the
+Argonauts, observed the constellations at the time of that famous
+expedition, and fixed the vernal equinox to the middle of the Ram;
+the autumnal equinox to the middle of Libra; our summer solstice to
+the middle of Cancer, and our winter solstice to the middle of
+Capricorn.
+
+A long time after the expedition of the Argonauts, and a year before
+the Peloponnesian war, Methon observed that the point of the summer
+solstice passed through the eighth degree of Cancer.
+
+Now every sign of the zodiac contains thirty degrees.  In Chiron's
+time, the solstice was arrived at the middle of the sign, that is to
+say to the fifteenth degree.  A year before the Peloponnesian war it
+was at the eighth, and therefore it had retarded seven degrees.  A
+degree is equivalent to seventy-two years; consequently, from the
+beginning of the Peloponnesian war to the expedition of the
+Argonauts, there is no more than an interval of seven times seventy-
+two years, which make five hundred and four years, and not seven
+hundred years as the Greeks computed.  Thus in comparing the
+position of the heavens at this time with their position in that
+age, we find that the expedition of the Argonauts ought to be placed
+about nine hundred years before Christ, and not about fourteen
+hundred; and consequently that the world is not so old by five
+hundred years as it was generally supposed to be.  By this
+calculation all the eras are drawn nearer, and the several events
+are found to have happened later than is computed.  I do not know
+whether this ingenious system will be favourably received; and
+whether these notions will prevail so far with the learned, as to
+prompt them to reform the chronology of the world.  Perhaps these
+gentlemen would think it too great a condescension to allow one and
+the same man the glory of having improved natural philosophy,
+geometry, and history.  This would be a kind of universal monarchy,
+with which the principle of self-love that is in man will scarce
+suffer him to indulge his fellow-creature; and, indeed, at the same
+time that some very great philosophers attacked Sir Isaac Newton's
+attractive principle, others fell upon his chronological system.
+Time that should discover to which of these the victory is due, may
+perhaps only leave the dispute still more undetermined.
+
+
+
+LETTER XVIII.--ON TRAGEDY
+
+
+
+The English as well as the Spaniards were possessed of theatres at a
+time when the French had no more than moving, itinerant stages.
+Shakspeare, who was considered as the Corneille of the first-
+mentioned nation, was pretty nearly contemporary with Lopez de Vega,
+and he created, as it were, the English theatre.  Shakspeare boasted
+a strong fruitful genius.  He was natural and sublime, but had not
+so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the
+drama.  I will now hazard a random, but, at the same time, true
+reflection, which is, that the great merit of this dramatic poet has
+been the ruin of the English stage.  There are such beautiful, such
+noble, such dreadful scenes in this writer's monstrous farces, to
+which the name of tragedy is given, that they have always been
+exhibited with great success.  Time, which alone gives reputation to
+writers, at last makes their very faults venerable.  Most of the
+whimsical gigantic images of this poet, have, through length of time
+(it being a hundred and fifty years since they were first drawn)
+acquired a right of passing for sublime.  Most of the modern
+dramatic writers have copied him; but the touches and descriptions
+which are applauded in Shakspeare, are hissed at in these writers;
+and you will easily believe that the veneration in which this author
+is held, increases in proportion to the contempt which is shown to
+the moderns.  Dramatic writers don't consider that they should not
+imitate him; and the ill-success of Shakspeare's imitators produces
+no other effect, than to make him be considered as inimitable.  You
+remember that in the tragedy of Othello, Moor of Venice, a most
+tender piece, a man strangles his wife on the stage, and that the
+poor woman, whilst she is strangling, cries aloud that she dies very
+unjustly.  You know that in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, two grave-
+diggers make a grave, and are all the time drinking, singing
+ballads, and making humorous reflections (natural indeed enough to
+persons of their profession) on the several skulls they throw up
+with their spades; but a circumstance which will surprise you is,
+that this ridiculous incident has been imitated.  In the reign of
+King Charles II., which was that of politeness, and the Golden Age
+of the liberal arts; Otway, in his Venice Preserved, introduces
+Antonio the senator, and Naki, his courtesan, in the midst of the
+horrors of the Marquis of Bedemar's conspiracy.  Antonio, the
+superannuated senator plays, in his mistress's presence, all the
+apish tricks of a lewd, impotent debauchee, who is quite frantic and
+out of his senses.  He mimics a bull and a dog, and bites his
+mistress's legs, who kicks and whips him.  However, the players have
+struck these buffooneries (which indeed were calculated merely for
+the dregs of the people) out of Otway's tragedy; but they have still
+left in Shakspeare's Julius Caesar the jokes of the Roman shoemakers
+and cobblers, who are introduced in the same scene with Brutus and
+Cassius.  You will undoubtedly complain, that those who have
+hitherto discoursed with you on the English stage, and especially on
+the celebrated Shakspeare, have taken notice only of his errors; and
+that no one has translated any of those strong, those forcible
+passages which atone for all his faults.  But to this I will answer,
+that nothing is easier than to exhibit in prose all the silly
+impertinences which a poet may have thrown out; but that it is a
+very difficult task to translate his fine verses.  All your junior
+academical sophs, who set up for censors of the eminent writers,
+compile whole volumes; but methinks two pages which display some of
+the beauties of great geniuses, are of infinitely more value than
+all the idle rhapsodies of those commentators; and I will join in
+opinion with all persons of good taste in declaring, that greater
+advantage may be reaped from a dozen verses of Homer of Virgil, than
+from all the critiques put together which have been made on those
+two great poets.
+
+I have ventured to translate some passages of the most celebrated
+English poets, and shall now give you one from Shakspeare.  Pardon
+the blemishes of the translation for the sake of the original; and
+remember always that when you see a version, you see merely a faint
+print of a beautiful picture.  I have made choice of part of the
+celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, which you may remember is as
+follows:-
+
+
+"To be, or not to be? that is the question!
+Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
+The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
+Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
+And by opposing, end them?  To die! to sleep!
+No more! and by a sleep to say we end
+The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
+That flesh is heir to!  'Tis a consummation
+Devoutly to be wished.  To die! to sleep!
+To sleep; perchance to dream!  O, there's the rub;
+For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
+When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
+Must give us pause.  There's the respect
+That makes calamity of so long life:
+For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
+The oppressor's wrong, the poor man's contumely,
+The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
+The insolence of office, and the spurns
+That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
+When he himself might his quietus make
+With a bare bodkin.  Who would fardels bear
+To groan and sweat under a weary life,
+But that the dread of something after death,
+The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
+No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
+And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
+Than fly to others that we know not of?
+Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
+And thus the native hue of resolution
+Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought:
+And enterprises of great weight and moment
+With this regard their currents turn awry,
+And lose the name of action--"
+
+
+My version of it runs thus:-
+
+
+"Demeure, il faut choisir et passer a l'instant
+De la vie, a la mort, ou de l'etre au neant.
+Dieux cruels, s'il en est, eclairez mon courage.
+Faut-il vieillir courbe sous la main qui m'outrage,
+Supporter, ou finir mon malheur et mon sort?
+Qui suis je?  Qui m'arrete! et qu'est-ce que la mort?
+C'est la fin de nos maux, c'est mon unique asile
+Apres de longs transports, c'est un sommeil tranquile.
+On s'endort, et tout meurt, mais un affreux reveil
+Doit succeder peut etre aux douceurs du sommeil!
+On nous menace, on dit que cette courte vie,
+De tourmens eternels est aussi-tot suivie.
+O mort! moment fatal! affreuse eternite!
+Tout coeur a ton seul nom se glace epouvante.
+Eh! qui pourroit sans toi supporter cette vie,
+De nos pretres menteurs benir l'hypocrisie:
+D'une indigne maitresse encenser les erreurs,
+Ramper sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs;
+Et montrer les langueurs de son ame abattue,
+A des amis ingrats qui detournent la vue?
+La mort seroit trop douce en ces extremitez,
+Mais le scrupule parle, et nous crie, arretez;
+Il defend a nos mains cet heureux homicide
+Et d'un heros guerrier, fait un Chretien timide," &c.
+
+
+Do not imagine that I have translated Shakspeare in a servile
+manner.  Woe to the writer who gives a literal version; who by
+rendering every word of his original, by that very means enervates
+the sense, and extinguishes all the fire of it.  It is on such an
+occasion one may justly affirm, that the letter kills, but the
+Spirit quickens.
+
+Here follows another passage copied from a celebrated tragic writer
+among the English.  It is Dryden, a poet in the reign of Charles
+II.--a writer whose genius was too exuberant, and not accompanied
+with judgment enough.  Had he written only a tenth part of the works
+he left behind him, his character would have been conspicuous in
+every part; but his great fault is his having endeavoured to be
+universal.
+
+The passage in question is as follows:-
+
+
+"When I consider life, 't is all a cheat,
+Yet fooled by hope, men favour the deceit;
+Trust on and think, to-morrow will repay;
+To-morrow's falser than the former day;
+Lies more; and whilst it says we shall be blest
+With some new joy, cuts off what we possessed;
+Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
+Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,
+And from the dregs of life think to receive
+What the first sprightly running could not give.
+I'm tired with waiting for this chymic gold,
+Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."
+
+
+I shall now give you my translation:-
+
+
+"De desseins en regrets et d'erreurs en desirs
+Les mortals insenses promenent leur folie.
+Dans des malheurs presents, dans l'espoir des plaisirs
+Nous ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie.
+Demain, demain, dit-on, va combler tous nos voeux.
+Demain vient, et nous laisse encore plus malheureux.
+Quelle est l'erreur, helas! du soin qui nous devore,
+Nul de nous ne voudroit recommencer son cours.
+De nos premiers momens nous maudissons l'aurore,
+Et de la nuit qui vient nous attendons encore,
+Ce qu'ont en vain promis les plus beaux de nos jours," &c.
+
+
+It is in these detached passages that the English have hitherto
+excelled.  Their dramatic pieces, most of which are barbarous and
+without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such resplendent
+flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish.  The style is too
+much inflated, too unnatural, too closely copied from the Hebrew
+writers, who abound so much with the Asiatic fustian.  But then it
+must be also confessed that the stilts of the figurative style, on
+which the English tongue is lifted up, raises the genius at the same
+time very far aloft, though with an irregular pace.  The first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit
+of elegance through every part of it, was the illustrious Mr.
+Addison.  His "Cato" is a masterpiece, both with regard to the
+diction and to the beauty and harmony of the numbers.  The character
+of Cato is, in my opinion, vastly superior to that of Cornelia in
+the "Pompey" of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything like
+fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character,
+tends sometimes to bombast.  Mr. Addison's Cato appears to me the
+greatest character that was ever brought upon any stage, but then
+the rest of them do not correspond to the dignity of it, and this
+dramatic piece, so excellently well writ, is disfigured by a dull
+love plot, which spreads a certain languor over the whole, that
+quite murders it.
+
+The custom of introducing love at random and at any rate in the
+drama passed from Paris to London about 1660, with our ribbons and
+our perruques.  The ladies who adorn the theatrical circle there, in
+like manner as in this city, will suffer love only to be the theme
+of every conversation.  The judicious Mr. Addison had the effeminate
+complaisance to soften the severity of his dramatic character, so as
+to adapt it to the manners of the age, and, from an endeavour to
+please, quite ruined a masterpiece in its kind.  Since his time the
+drama is become more regular, the audience more difficult to be
+pleased, and writers more correct and less bold.  I have seen some
+new pieces that were written with great regularity, but which, at
+the same time, were very flat and insipid.  One would think that the
+English had been hitherto formed to produce irregular beauties only.
+The shining monsters of Shakspeare give infinite more delight than
+the judicious images of the moderns.  Hitherto the poetical genius
+of the English resembles a tufted tree planted by the hand of
+Nature, that throws out a thousand branches at random, and spreads
+unequally, but with great vigour.  It dies if you attempt to force
+its nature, and to lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees
+of the Garden of Marli.
+
+
+
+LETTER XIX.--ON COMEDY
+
+
+
+I am surprised that the judicious and ingenious Mr. de Muralt, who
+has published some letters on the English and French nations, should
+have confined himself; in treating of comedy, merely to censure
+Shadwell the comic writer.  This author was had in pretty great
+contempt in Mr. de Muralt's time, and was not the poet of the polite
+part of the nation.  His dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in
+acting, were despised by all persons of taste, and might be compared
+to many plays which I have seen in France, that drew crowds to the
+play-house, at the same time that they were intolerable to read; and
+of which it might be said, that the whole city of Paris exploded
+them, and yet all flocked to see them represented on the stage.
+Methinks Mr. de Muralt should have mentioned an excellent comic
+writer (living when he was in England), I mean Mr. Wycherley, who
+was a long time known publicly to be happy in the good graces of the
+most celebrated mistress of King Charles II.  This gentleman, who
+passed his life among persons of the highest distinction, was
+perfectly well acquainted with their lives and their follies, and
+painted them with the strongest pencil, and in the truest colours.
+He has drawn a misanthrope or man-hater, in imitation of that of
+Moliere.  All Wycherley's strokes are stronger and bolder than those
+of our misanthrope, but then they are less delicate, and the rules
+of decorum are not so well observed in this play.  The English
+writer has corrected the only defect that is in Moliere's comedy,
+the thinness of the plot, which also is so disposed that the
+characters in it do not enough raise our concern.  The English
+comedy affects us, and the contrivance of the plot is very
+ingenious, but at the same time it is too bold for the French
+manners.  The fable is this:- A captain of a man-of-war, who is very
+brave, open-hearted, and inflamed with a spirit of contempt for all
+mankind, has a prudent, sincere friend, whom he yet is suspicious
+of; and a mistress that loves him with the utmost excess of passion.
+The captain so far from returning her love, will not even condescend
+to look upon her, but confides entirely in a false friend, who is
+the most worthless wretch living.  At the same time he has given his
+heart to a creature, who is the greatest coquette and the most
+perfidious of her sex, and he is so credulous as to be confident she
+is a Penelope, and his false friend a Cato.  He embarks on board his
+ship in order to go and fight the Dutch, having left all his money,
+his jewels, and everything he had in the world to this virtuous
+creature, whom at the same time he recommends to the care of his
+supposed faithful friend.  Nevertheless the real man of honour, whom
+he suspects so unaccountably, goes on board the ship with him, and
+the mistress, on whom he would not bestow so much as one glance,
+disguises herself in the habit of a page, and is with him the whole
+voyage, without his once knowing that she is of a sex different from
+that she attempts to pass for, which, by the way, is not over
+natural.
+
+The captain having blown up his own ship in an engagement, returns
+to England abandoned and undone, accompanied by his page and his
+friend, without knowing the friendship of the one or the tender
+passion of the other.  Immediately he goes to the jewel among women,
+who he expected had preserved her fidelity to him and the treasure
+he had left in her hands.  He meets with her indeed, but married to
+the honest knave in whom he had reposed so much confidence, and
+finds she had acted as treacherously with regard to the casket he
+had entrusted her with.  The captain can scarce think it possible
+that a woman of virtue and honour can act so vile a part; but to
+convince him still more of the reality of it, this very worthy lady
+falls in love with the little page, and will force him to her
+embraces.  But as it is requisite justice should be done, and that
+in a dramatic piece virtue ought to be rewarded and vice punished,
+it is at last found that the captain takes his page's place, and
+lies with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend,
+thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries
+his page.  You will observe that this play is also larded with a
+petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is
+the most comical character that was ever brought upon the stage.
+
+Wycherley has also copied from Moliere another play, of as singular
+and bold a cast, which is a kind of Ecole des Femmes, or, School for
+Married Women.
+
+The principal character in this comedy is one Homer, a sly fortune
+hunter, and the terror of all the City husbands.  This fellow, in
+order to play a surer game, causes a report to be spread, that in
+his last illness, the surgeons had found it necessary to have him
+made a eunuch.  Upon his appearing in this noble character, all the
+husbands in town flock to him with their wives, and now poor Homer
+is only puzzled about his choice.  However, he gives the preference
+particularly to a little female peasant, a very harmless, innocent
+creature, who enjoys a fine flush of health, and cuckolds her
+husband with a simplicity that has infinitely more merit than the
+witty malice of the most experienced ladies.  This play cannot
+indeed be called the school of good morals, but it is certainly the
+school of wit and true humour.
+
+Sir John Vanbrugh has written several comedies, which are more
+humorous than those of Mr. Wycherley, but not so ingenious.  Sir
+John was a man of pleasure, and likewise a poet and an architect.
+The general opinion is, that he is as sprightly in his writings as
+he is heavy in his buildings.  It is he who raised the famous Castle
+of Blenheim, a ponderous and lasting monument of our unfortunate
+Battle of Hochstet.  Were the apartments but as spacious as the
+walls are thick, this castle would be commodious enough.  Some wag,
+in an epitaph he made on Sir John Vanbrugh, has these lines:-
+
+
+"Earth lie light on him, for he
+Laid many a heavy load on thee."
+
+
+Sir John having taken a tour into France before the glorious war
+that broke out in 1701, was thrown into the Bastille, and detained
+there for some time, without being ever able to discover the motive
+which had prompted our ministry to indulge him with this mark of
+their distinction.  He wrote a comedy during his confinement; and a
+circumstance which appears to me very extraordinary is, that we
+don't meet with so much as a single satirical stroke against the
+country in which he had been so injuriously treated.
+
+The late Mr. Congreve raised the glory of comedy to a greater height
+than any English writer before or since his time.  He wrote only a
+few plays, but they are all excellent in their kind.  The laws of
+the drama are strictly observed in them; they abound with characters
+all which are shadowed with the utmost delicacy, and we don't meet
+with so much as one low or coarse jest.  The language is everywhere
+that of men of honour, but their actions are those of knaves--a
+proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and
+frequented what we call polite company.  He was infirm and come to
+the verge of life when I knew him.  Mr. Congreve had one defect,
+which was his entertaining too mean an idea of his first profession
+(that of a writer), though it was to this he owed his fame and
+fortune.  He spoke of his works as of trifles that were beneath him;
+and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that I should visit him
+upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of
+plainness and simplicity.  I answered, that had he been so
+unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never have come to
+see him; and I was very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of
+vanity.
+
+Mr. Congreve's comedies are the most witty and regular, those of Sir
+John Vanbrugh most gay and humorous, and those of Mr. Wycherley have
+the greatest force and spirit.  It may be proper to observe that
+these fine geniuses never spoke disadvantageously of Moliere; and
+that none but the contemptible writers among the English have
+endeavoured to lessen the character of that great comic poet.  Such
+Italian musicians as despise Lully are themselves persons of no
+character or ability; but a Buononcini esteems that great artist,
+and does justice to his merit.
+
+The English have some other good comic writers living, such as Sir
+Richard Steele and Mr. Cibber, who is an excellent player, and also
+Poet Laureate--a title which, how ridiculous soever it may be
+thought, is yet worth a thousand crowns a year (besides some
+considerable privileges) to the person who enjoys it.  Our
+illustrious Corneille had not so much.
+
+To conclude.  Don't desire me to descend to particulars with regard
+to these English comedies, which I am so fond of applauding; nor to
+give you a single smart saying or humorous stroke from Wycherley or
+Congreve.  We don't laugh in rending a translation.  If you have a
+mind to understand the English comedy, the only way to do this will
+be for you to go to England, to spend three years in London, to make
+yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse
+every night.  I receive but little pleasure from the perusal of
+Aristophanes and Plautus, and for this reason, because I am neither
+a Greek nor a Roman.  The delicacy of the humour, the allusion, the
+a propos--all these are lost to a foreigner.
+
+But it is different with respect to tragedy, this treating only of
+exalted passions and heroical follies, which the antiquated errors
+of fable or history have made sacred.  OEdipus, Electra, and such-
+like characters, may with as much propriety be treated of by the
+Spaniards, the English, or us, as by the Greeks.  But true comedy is
+the speaking picture of the follies and ridiculous foibles of a
+nation; so that he only is able to judge of the painting who is
+perfectly acquainted with the people it represents.
+
+
+
+LETTER XX.--ON SUCH OF THE NOBILITY AS CULTIVATE THE BELLES LETTRES
+
+
+
+There once was a time in France when the polite arts were cultivated
+by persons of the highest rank in the state.  The courtiers
+particularly were conversant in them, although indolence, a taste
+for trifles, and a passion for intrigue, were the divinities of the
+country.  The Court methinks at this time seems to have given into a
+taste quite opposite to that of polite literature, but perhaps the
+mode of thinking may be revived in a little time.  The French are of
+so flexible a disposition, may be moulded into such a variety of
+shapes, that the monarch needs but command and he is immediately
+obeyed.  The English generally think, and learning is had in greater
+honour among them than in our country--an advantage that results
+naturally from the form of their government.  There are about eight
+hundred persons in England who have a right to speak in public, and
+to support the interest of the kingdom; and near five or six
+thousand may in their turns aspire to the same honour.  The whole
+nation set themselves up as judges over these, and every man has the
+liberty of publishing his thoughts with regard to public affairs,
+which shows that all the people in general are indispensably obliged
+to cultivate their understandings.  In England the governments of
+Greece and Rome are the subject of every conversation, so that every
+man is under a necessity of perusing such authors as treat of them,
+how disagreeable soever it may be to him; and this study leads
+naturally to that of polite literature.  Mankind in general speak
+well in their respective professions.  What is the reason why our
+magistrates, our lawyers, our physicians, and a great number of the
+clergy, are abler scholars, have a finer taste, and more wit, than
+persons of all other professions?  The reason is, because their
+condition of life requires a cultivated and enlightened mind, in the
+same manner as a merchant is obliged to be acquainted with his
+traffic.  Not long since an English nobleman, who was very young,
+came to see me at Paris on his return from Italy.  He had written a
+poetical description of that country, which, for delicacy and
+politeness, may vie with anything we meet with in the Earl of
+Rochester, or in our Chaulieu, our Sarrasin, or Chapelle.  The
+translation I have given of it is so inexpressive of the strength
+and delicate humour of the original, that I am obliged seriously to
+ask pardon of the author and of all who understand English.
+However, as this is the only method I have to make his lordship's
+verses known, I shall here present you with them in our tongue:-
+
+
+"Qu'ay je donc vu dans l'Italie?
+Orgueil, astuce, et pauvrete,
+Grands complimens, peu de bonte
+Et beaucoup de ceremonie.
+
+"L'extravagante comedie
+Que souvent l'Inquisition
+Vent qu'on nomme religion
+Mais qu'ici nous nommons folie.
+
+"La Nature en vain bienfaisante
+Vent enricher ses lieux charmans,
+Des pretres la main desolante
+Etouffe ses plus beaux presens.
+
+"Les monsignors, soy disant Grands,
+Seuls dans leurs palais magnifiques
+Y sont d'illustres faineants,
+Sans argent, et sans domestiques.
+
+"Pour les petits, sans liberte,
+Martyrs du joug qui les domine,
+Ils ont fait voeu de pauvrete,
+Priant Dieu par oisivete
+Et toujours jeunant par famine.
+
+"Ces beaux lieux du Pape benis
+Semblent habitez par les diables;
+Et les habitans miserables
+Sont damnes dans le Paradis."
+
+
+
+LETTER XXI.--ON THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND MR. WALLER
+
+
+
+The Earl of Rochester's name is universally known.  Mr. de St.
+Evremont has made very frequent mention of him, but then he has
+represented this famous nobleman in no other light than as the man
+of pleasure, as one who was the idol of the fair; but, with regard
+to myself, I would willingly describe in him the man of genius, the
+great poet.  Among other pieces which display the shining
+imagination, his lordship only could boast he wrote some satires on
+the same subjects as those our celebrated Boileau made choice of.  I
+do not know any better method of improving the taste than to compare
+the productions of such great geniuses as have exercised their
+talent on the same subject.  Boileau declaims as follows against
+human reason in his "Satire on Man:"
+
+
+"Cependant a le voir plein de vapeurs legeres,
+Soi-meme se bercer de ses propres chimeres,
+Lui seul de la nature est la baze et l'appui,
+Et le dixieme ciel ne tourne que pour lui.
+De tous les animaux il est ici le maitre;
+Qui pourroit le nier, poursuis tu?  Moi peut-etre.
+Ce maitre pretendu qui leur donne des loix,
+Ce roi des animaux, combien a-t'il de rois?"
+
+"Yet, pleased with idle whimsies of his brain,
+And puffed with pride, this haughty thing would fain
+Be think himself the only stay and prop
+That holds the mighty frame of Nature up.
+The skies and stars his properties must seem,
+* * *
+Of all the creatures he's the lord, he cries.
+* * *
+And who is there, say you, that dares deny
+So owned a truth?  That may be, sir, do I.
+* * *
+This boasted monarch of the world who awes
+The creatures here, and with his nod gives laws
+This self-named king, who thus pretends to be
+The lord of all, how many lords has he?"
+
+OLDHAM, a little altered.
+
+
+The Lord Rochester expresses himself, in his "Satire against Man,"
+in pretty near the following manner.  But I must first desire you
+always to remember that the versions I give you from the English
+poets are written with freedom and latitude, and that the restraint
+of our versification, and the delicacies of the French tongue, will
+not allow a translator to convey into it the licentious impetuosity
+and fire of the English numbers:-
+
+
+"Cet esprit que je hais, cet esprit plein d'erreur,
+Ce n'est pas ma raison, c'est la tienne, docteur.
+C'est la raison frivole, inquiete, orgueilleuse
+Des sages animaux, rivale dedaigneuse,
+Qui croit entr'eux et l'Ange, occuper le milieu,
+Et pense etre ici bas l'image de son Dieu.
+Vil atome imparfait, qui croit, doute, dispute
+Rampe, s'eleve, tombe, et nie encore sa chute,
+Qui nous dit je suis libre, en nous montrant ses fers,
+Et dont l'oeil trouble et faux, croit percer l'univers.
+Allez, reverends fous, bienheureux fanatiques,
+Compilez bien l'amas de vos riens scholastiques,
+Peres de visions, et d'enigmes sacres,
+Auteurs du labirinthe, ou vous vous egarez.
+Allez obscurement eclaircir vos misteres,
+Et courez dans l'ecole adorer vos chimeres.
+Il est d'autres erreurs, il est de ces devots
+Condamne par eux memes a l'ennui du repos.
+Ce mystique encloitre, fier de son indolence
+Tranquille, au sein de Dieu.  Que peut il faire?  Il pense.
+Non, tu ne penses point, miserable, tu dors:
+Inutile a la terre, et mis au rang des morts.
+Ton esprit enerve croupit dans la molesse.
+Reveille toi, sois homme, et sors de ton ivresse.
+L'homme est ne pour agir, et tu pretens penser?"  &c.
+
+
+The original runs thus:-
+
+"Hold mighty man, I cry all this we know,
+And 'tis this very reason I despise,
+This supernatural gift that makes a mite
+Think he's the image of the Infinite;
+Comparing his short life, void of all rest,
+To the eternal and the ever blest.
+This busy, puzzling stirrer up of doubt,
+That frames deep mysteries, then finds them out,
+Filling, with frantic crowds of thinking fools,
+Those reverend bedlams, colleges, and schools;
+Borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce
+The limits of the boundless universe.
+So charming ointments make an old witch fly,
+And bear a crippled carcase through the sky.
+'Tis this exalted power, whose business lies
+In nonsense and impossibilities.
+This made a whimsical philosopher
+Before the spacious world his tub prefer;
+And we have modern cloistered coxcombs, who
+Retire to think, 'cause they have naught to do.
+But thoughts are given for action's government,
+Where action ceases, thought's impertinent."
+
+
+Whether these ideas are true or false, it is certain they are
+expressed with an energy and fire which form the poet.  I shall be
+very far from attempting to examine philosophically into these
+verses, to lay down the pencil, and take up the rule and compass on
+this occasion; my only design in this letter being to display the
+genius of the English poets, and therefore I shall continue in the
+same view.
+
+The celebrated Mr. Waller has been very much talked of in France,
+and Mr. De la Fontaine, St. Evremont, and Bayle have written his
+eulogium, but still his name only is known.  He had much the same
+reputation in London as Voiture had in Paris, and in my opinion
+deserved it better.  Voiture was born in an age that was just
+emerging from barbarity; an age that was still rude and ignorant,
+the people of which aimed at wit, though they had not the least
+pretensions to it, and sought for points and conceits instead of
+sentiments.  Bristol stones are more easily found than diamonds.
+Voiture, born with an easy and frivolous, genius, was the first who
+shone in this aurora of French literature.  Had he come into the
+world after those great geniuses who spread such a glory over the
+age of Louis XIV., he would either have been unknown, would have
+been despised, or would have corrected his style.  Boileau applauded
+him, but it was in his first satires, at a time when the taste of
+that great poet was not yet formed.  He was young, and in an age
+when persons form a judgment of men from their reputation, and not
+from their writings.  Besides, Boileau was very partial both in his
+encomiums and his censures.  He applauded Segrais, whose works
+nobody reads; he abused Quinault, whose poetical pieces every one
+has got by heart; and is wholly silent upon La Fontaine.  Waller,
+though a better poet than Voiture, was not yet a finished poet.  The
+graces breathe in such of Waller's works as are writ in a tender
+strain; but then they are languid through negligence, and often
+disfigured with false thoughts.  The English had not in his time
+attained the art of correct writing.  But his serious compositions
+exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected
+from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces.  He wrote an
+elegy on Oliver Cromwell, which, with all its faults, is
+nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece.  To understand this copy
+of verses you are to know that the day Oliver died was remarkable
+for a great storm.  His poem begins in this manner:-
+
+
+"Il n'est plus, s'en est fait, soumettons nous au sort,
+Le ciel a signale ce jour par des tempetes,
+Et la voix des tonnerres eclatant sur nos tetes
+Vient d'annoncer sa mort.
+
+"Par ses derniers soupirs il ebranle cet ile;
+Cet ile que son bras fit trembler tant de fois,
+Quand dans le cours de ses exploits,
+Il brisoit la tete des Rois,
+Et soumettoit un peuple a son joug seul docile.
+
+"Mer tu t'en es trouble; O mer tes flots emus
+Semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages
+Que l'effroi de la terre et ton maitre n'est plus.
+
+"Tel au ciel autrefois s'envola Romulus,
+Tel il quitta la Terre, au milieu des orages,
+Tel d'un peuple guerrier il recut les homages;
+Obei dans sa vie, sa mort adore,
+Son palais fut un Temple," &c.
+
+
+"We must resign! heaven his great soul does claim
+In storms as loud as his immortal fame;
+His dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle,
+And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile:
+About his palace their broad roots are tost
+Into the air; so Romulus was lost!
+New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
+And from obeying fell to worshipping.
+On OEta's top thus Hercules lay dead,
+With ruined oaks and pines about him spread.
+Nature herself took notice of his death,
+And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath,
+That to remotest shores the billows rolled,
+Th' approaching fate of his great ruler told."
+
+WALLER.
+
+
+It was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken notice of
+in Bayle's Dictionary), which Waller made to King Charles II.  This
+king, to whom Waller had a little before (as is usual with bards and
+monarchs) presented a copy of verses embroidered with praises,
+reproached the poet for not writing with so much energy and fire as
+when he had applauded the Usurper (meaning Oliver).  "Sir," replied
+Waller to the king, "we poets succeed better in fiction than in
+truth."  This answer was not so sincere as that which a Dutch
+ambassador made, who, when the same monarch complained that his
+masters paid less regard to him than they had done to Cromwell.
+"Ah, sir!" says the Ambassador, "Oliver was quite another man--"  It
+is not my intent to give a commentary on Waller's character, nor on
+that of any other person; for I consider men after their death in no
+other light than as they were writers, and wholly disregard
+everything else.  I shall only observe that Waller, though born in a
+court, and to an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a
+year, was never so proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy
+talent which Nature had indulged him.  The Earls of Dorset and
+Roscommon, the two Dukes of Buckingham, the Lord Halifax, and so
+many other noblemen, did not think the reputation they obtained of
+very great poets and illustrious writers, any way derogatory to
+their quality.  They are more glorious for their works than for
+their titles.  These cultivated the polite arts with as much
+assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence.
+
+They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the
+vulgar, who have need to be led in all things by the great; and who,
+nevertheless, fashion their manners less after those of the nobility
+(in England I mean) than in any other country in the world.
+
+
+
+LETTER XXII.--ON MR. POPE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS POETS
+
+
+
+I intended to treat of Mr. Prior, one of the most amiable English
+poets, whom you saw Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Paris
+in 1712.  I also designed to have given you some idea of the Lord
+Roscommon's and the Lord Dorset's muse; but I find that to do this I
+should be obliged to write a large volume, and that, after much
+pains and trouble, you would have but an imperfect idea of all those
+works.  Poetry is a kind of music in which a man should have some
+knowledge before he pretends to judge of it.  When I give you a
+translation of some passages from those foreign poets, I only prick
+down, and that imperfectly, their music; but then I cannot express
+the taste of their harmony.
+
+There is one English poem especially which I should despair of ever
+making you understand, the title whereof is "Hudibras."  The subject
+of it is the Civil War in the time of the grand rebellion, and the
+principles and practice of the Puritans are therein ridiculed.  It
+is Don Quixote, it is our "Satire Menippee" blended together.  I
+never found so much wit in one single book as in that, which at the
+same time is the most difficult to be translated.  Who would believe
+that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the
+several foibles and follies of mankind, and where we meet with more
+sentiments than words, should baffle the endeavours of the ablest
+translator?  But the reason of this is, almost every part of it
+alludes to particular incidents.  The clergy are there made the
+principal object of ridicule, which is understood but by few among
+the laity.  To explain this a commentary would be requisite, and
+humour when explained is no longer humour.  Whoever sets up for a
+commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead.
+This is the reason why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who
+has been called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood
+in France.  This gentleman has the honour (in common with Rabelais)
+of being a priest, and, like him, laughs at everything; but, in my
+humble opinion, the title of the English Rabelais which is given the
+dean is highly derogatory to his genius.  The former has
+interspersed his unaccountably-fantastic and unintelligible book
+with the most gay strokes of humour; but which, at the same time,
+has a greater proportion of impertinence.  He has been vastly lavish
+of erudition, of smut, and insipid raillery.  An agreeable tale of
+two pages is purchased at the expense of whole volumes of nonsense.
+There are but few persons, and those of a grotesque taste, who
+pretend to understand and to esteem this work; for, as to the rest
+of the nation, they laugh at the pleasant and diverting touches
+which are found in Rabelais and despise his book.  He is looked upon
+as the prince of buffoons.  The readers are vexed to think that a
+man who was master of so much wit should have made so wretched a use
+of it; he is an intoxicated philosopher who never wrote but when he
+was in liquor.
+
+Dean Swift is Rabelais in his senses, and frequenting the politest
+company.  The former, indeed, is not so gay as the latter, but then
+he possesses all the delicacy, the justness, the choice, the good
+taste, in all which particulars our giggling rural Vicar Rabelais is
+wanting.  The poetical numbers of Dean Swift are of a singular and
+almost inimitable taste; true humour, whether in prose or verse,
+seems to be his peculiar talent; but whoever is desirous of
+understanding him perfectly must visit the island in which he was
+born.
+
+It will be much easier for you to form an idea of Mr. Pope's works.
+He is, in my opinion, the most elegant, the most correct poet; and,
+at the same time, the most harmonious (a circumstance which redounds
+very much to the honour of this muse) that England ever gave birth
+to.  He has mellowed the harsh sounds of the English trumpet to the
+soft accents of the flute.  His compositions may be easily
+translated, because they are vastly clear and perspicuous; besides,
+most of his subjects are general, and relative to all nations.
+
+His "Essay on Criticism" will soon be known in France by the
+translation which l'Abbe de Resnel has made of it.
+
+Here is an extract from his poem entitled the "Rape of the Lock,"
+which I just now translated with the latitude I usually take on
+these occasions; for, once again, nothing can be more ridiculous
+than to translate a poet literally:-
+
+
+"Umbriel, a l'instant, vieil gnome rechigne,
+Va d'une aile pesante et d'un air renfrogne
+Chercher en murmurant la caverne profonde,
+Ou loin des doux raions que repand l'oeil du monde
+La Deesse aux Vapeurs a choisi son sejour,
+Les Tristes Aquilons y sifflent a l'entour,
+Et le souffle mal sain de leur aride haleine
+Y porte aux environs la fievre et la migraine.
+Sur un riche sofa derriere un paravent
+Loin des flambeaux, du bruit, des parleurs et du vent,
+La quinteuse deesse incessamment repose,
+Le coeur gros de chagrin, sans en savoir la cause.
+N'aiant pense jamais, l'esprit toujours trouble,
+L'oeil charge, le teint pale, et l'hypocondre enfle.
+La medisante Envie, est assise aupres d'elle,
+Vieil spectre feminin, decrepite pucelle,
+Avec un air devot dechirant son prochain,
+Et chansonnant les Gens l'Evangile a la main.
+Sur un lit plein de fleurs negligemment panchee
+Une jeune beaute non loin d'elle est couchee,
+C'est l'Affectation qui grassaie en parlant,
+Ecoute sans entendre, et lorgne en regardant.
+Qui rougit sans pudeur, et rit de tout sans joie,
+De cent maux differens pretend qu'elle est la proie;
+Et pleine de sante sous le rouge et le fard,
+Se plaint avec molesse, et se pame avec art."
+
+"Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite
+As ever sullied the fair face of light,
+Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
+Repairs to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.
+Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome,
+And in a vapour reached the dismal dome.
+No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
+The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.
+Here, in a grotto, sheltered close from air,
+And screened in shades from day's detested glare,
+She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,
+Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head,
+Two handmaids wait the throne.  Alike in place,
+But differing far in figure and in face,
+Here stood Ill-nature, like an ancient maid,
+Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;
+With store of prayers for mornings, nights, and noons,
+Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.
+There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
+Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
+Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside,
+Faints into airs, and languishes with pride;
+On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
+Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show."
+
+
+This extract, in the original (not in the faint translation I have
+given you of it), may be compared to the description of la Molesse
+(softness or effeminacy), in Boileau's "Lutrin."
+
+Methinks I now have given you specimens enough from the English
+poets.  I have made some transient mention of their philosophers,
+but as for good historians among them, I don't know of any; and,
+indeed, a Frenchman was forced to write their history.  Possibly the
+English genius, which is either languid or impetuous, has not yet
+acquired that unaffected eloquence, that plain but majestic air
+which history requires.  Possibly too, the spirit of party which
+exhibits objects in a dim and confused light may have sunk the
+credit of their historians.  One half of the nation is always at
+variance with the other half.  I have met with people who assured me
+that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and that Mr. Pope was a
+fool; just as some Jesuits in France declare Pascal to have been a
+man of little or no genius, and some Jansenists affirm Father
+Bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler.  The Jacobites consider Mary
+Queen of Scots as a pious heroine, but those of an opposite party
+look upon her as a prostitute, an adulteress, a murderer.  Thus the
+English have memorials of the several reigns, but no such thing as a
+history.  There is, indeed, now living, one Mr. Gordon (the public
+are obliged to him for a translation of Tacitus), who is very
+capable of writing the history of his own country, but Rapin de
+Thoyras got the start of him.  To conclude, in my opinion the
+English have not such good historians as the French have no such
+thing as a real tragedy, have several delightful comedies, some
+wonderful passages in certain of their poems, and boast of
+philosophers that are worthy of instructing mankind.  The English
+have reaped very great benefit from the writers of our nation, and
+therefore we ought (since they have not scrupled to be in our debt)
+to borrow from them.  Both the English and we came after the
+Italians, who have been our instructors in all the arts, and whom we
+have surpassed in some.  I cannot determine which of the three
+nations ought to be honoured with the palm; but happy the writer who
+could display their various merits.
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIII.--ON THE REGARD THAT OUGHT TO BE SHOWN TO MEN OF
+LETTERS
+
+
+
+Neither the English nor any other people have foundations
+established in favour of the polite arts like those in France.
+There are Universities in most countries, but it is in France only
+that we meet with so beneficial an encouragement for astronomy and
+all parts of the mathematics, for physic, for researches into
+antiquity, for painting, sculpture, and architecture.  Louis XIV.
+has immortalised his name by these several foundations, and this
+immortality did not cost him two hundred thousand livres a year.
+
+I must confess that one of the things I very much wonder at is, that
+as the Parliament of Great Britain have promised a reward of 20,000
+pounds sterling to any person who may discover the longitude, they
+should never have once thought to imitate Louis XIV. in his
+munificence with regard to the arts and sciences.
+
+Merit, indeed, meets in England with rewards of another kind, which
+redound more to the honour of the nation.  The English have so great
+a veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their
+country is always sure of making his fortune.  Mr. Addison in France
+would have been elected a member of one of the academies, and, by
+the credit of some women, might have obtained a yearly pension of
+twelve hundred livres, or else might have been imprisoned in the
+Bastile, upon pretence that certain strokes in his tragedy of Cato
+had been discovered which glanced at the porter of some man in
+power.  Mr. Addison was raised to the post of Secretary of State in
+England.  Sir Isaac Newton was made Master of the Royal Mint.  Mr.
+Congreve had a considerable employment.  Mr. Prior was
+Plenipotentiary.  Dr. Swift is Dean of St. Patrick in Dublin, and is
+more revered in Ireland than the Primate himself.  The religion
+which Mr. Pope professes excludes him, indeed, from preferments of
+every kind, but then it did not prevent his gaining two hundred
+thousand livres by his excellent translation of Homer.  I myself saw
+a long time in France the author of Rhadamistus ready to perish for
+hunger.  And the son of one of the greatest men our country ever
+gave birth to, and who was beginning to run the noble career which
+his father had set him, would have been reduced to the extremes of
+misery had he not been patronised by Monsieur Fagon.
+
+But the circumstance which mostly encourages the arts in England is
+the great veneration which is paid them.  The picture of the Prime
+Minister hangs over the chimney of his own closet, but I have seen
+that of Mr. Pope in twenty noblemen's houses.  Sir Isaac Newton was
+revered in his lifetime, and had a due respect paid to him after his
+death; the greatest men in the nation disputing who should have the
+honour of holding up his pall.  Go into Westminster Abbey, and you
+will find that what raises the admiration of the spectator is not
+the mausoleums of the English kings, but the monuments which the
+gratitude of the nation has erected to perpetuate the memory of
+those illustrious men who contributed to its glory.  We view their
+statues in that abbey in the same manner as those of Sophocles,
+Plato, and other immortal personages were viewed in Athens; and I am
+persuaded that the bare sight of those glorious monuments has fired
+more than one breast, and been the occasion of their becoming great
+men.
+
+The English have even been reproached with paying too extravagant
+honours to mere merit, and censured for interring the celebrated
+actress Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster Abbey, with almost the same
+pomp as Sir Isaac Newton.  Some pretend that the English had paid
+her these great funeral honours, purposely to make us more strongly
+sensible of the barbarity and injustice which they object to us, for
+having buried Mademoiselle Le Couvreur ignominiously in the fields.
+
+But be assured from me, that the English were prompted by no other
+principle in burying Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster Abbey than their
+good sense.  They are far from being so ridiculous as to brand with
+infamy an art which has immortalised a Euripides and a Sophocles; or
+to exclude from the body of their citizens a set of people whose
+business is to set off with the utmost grace of speech and action
+those pieces which the nation is proud of.
+
+Under the reign of Charles I. and in the beginning of the civil wars
+raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last were the victims
+to it; a great many pieces were published against theatrical and
+other shows, which were attacked with the greater virulence because
+that monarch and his queen, daughter to Henry I. of France, were
+passionately fond of them.
+
+One Mr. Prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous principles, who
+would have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a
+short cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the
+other to pieces for the glory of God, and the Propaganda Fide; took
+it into his head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty
+good comedies, which were exhibited very innocently every night
+before their majesties.  He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and
+some passages from St. Bonaventure, to prove that the OEdipus of
+Sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; that Terence was
+excommunicated ipso facto; and added, that doubtless Brutus, who was
+a very severe Jansenist, assassinated Julius Caesar for no other
+reason but because he, who was Pontifex Maximus, presumed to write a
+tragedy the subject of which was OEdipus.  Lastly, he declared that
+all who frequented the theatre were excommunicated, as they thereby
+renounced their baptism.  This was casting the highest insult on the
+king and all the royal family; and as the English loved their prince
+at that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of
+excommunicating him, though they themselves afterwards cut his head
+off.  Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star Chamber; his
+wonderful book, from which Father Le Brun stole his, was sentenced
+to be burnt by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears.
+His trial is now extant.
+
+The Italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on the opera,
+or to excommunicate Signor Senesino or Signora Cuzzoni.  With regard
+to myself, I could presume to wish that the magistrates would
+suppress I know not what contemptible pieces written against the
+stage.  For when the English and Italians hear that we brand with
+the greatest mark of infamy an art in which we excel; that we
+excommunicate persons who receive salaries from the king; that we
+condemn as impious a spectacle exhibited in convents and
+monasteries; that we dishonour sports in which Louis XIV. and Louis
+XV., performed as actors; that we give the title of the devil's
+works to pieces which are received by magistrates of the most severe
+character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, I say,
+foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt for the
+royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some presume to
+call Christian severity, what an idea must they entertain of our
+nation?  And how will it be possible for them to conceive, either
+that our laws give a sanction to an art which is declared infamous,
+or that some persons dare to stamp with infamy an art which receives
+a sanction from the laws, is rewarded by kings, cultivated and
+encouraged by the greatest men, and admired by whole nations?  And
+that Father Le Brun's impertinent libel against the stage is seen in
+a bookseller's shop, standing the very next to the immortal labours
+of Racine, of Corneille, of Moliere, &c.
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIV.--ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND OTHER ACADEMIES
+
+
+
+The English had an Academy of Sciences many years before us, but
+then it is not under such prudent regulations as ours, the only
+reason of which very possibly is, because it was founded before the
+Academy of Paris; for had it been founded after, it would very
+probably have adopted some of the sage laws of the former and
+improved upon others.
+
+Two things, and those the most essential to man, are wanting in the
+Royal Society of London, I mean rewards and laws.  A seat in the
+Academy at Paris is a small but secure fortune to a geometrician or
+a chemist; but this is so far from being the case at London, that
+the several members of the Royal Society are at a continual, though
+indeed small expense.  Any man in England who declares himself a
+lover of the mathematics and natural philosophy, and expresses an
+inclination to be a member of the Royal Society, is immediately
+elected into it.  But in France it is not enough that a man who
+aspires to the honour of being a member of the Academy, and of
+receiving the royal stipend, has a love for the sciences; he must at
+the same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute
+the seat with competitors who are so much the more formidable as
+they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the
+difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is
+generally found in those who devote themselves to that pertinacious
+study, the mathematics.
+
+The Academy of Sciences is prudently confined to the study of
+Nature, and, indeed, this is a field spacious enough for fifty or
+threescore persons to range in.  That of London mixes
+indiscriminately literature with physics; but methinks the founding
+an academy merely for the polite arts is more judicious, as it
+prevents confusion, and the joining, in some measure, of
+heterogeneals, such as a dissertation on the head-dresses of the
+Roman ladies with a hundred or more new curves.
+
+As there is very little order and regularity in the Royal Society,
+and not the least encouragement; and that the Academy of Paris is on
+a quite different foot, it is no wonder that our transactions are
+drawn up in a more just and beautiful manner than those of the
+English.  Soldiers who are under a regular discipline, and besides
+well paid, must necessarily at last perform more glorious
+achievements than others who are mere volunteers.  It must indeed be
+confessed that the Royal Society boast their Newton, but then he did
+not owe his knowledge and discoveries to that body; so far from it,
+that the latter were intelligible to very few of his fellow members.
+A genius like that of Sir Isaac belonged to all the academies in the
+world, because all had a thousand things to learn of him.
+
+The celebrated Dean Swift formed a design, in the latter end of the
+late Queen's reign, to found an academy for the English tongue upon
+the model of that of the French.  This project was promoted by the
+late Earl of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer, and much more by the Lord
+Bolingbroke, Secretary of State, who had the happy talent of
+speaking without premeditation in the Parliament House with as much
+purity as Dean Swift wrote in his closet, and who would have been
+the ornament and protector of that academy.  Those only would have
+been chosen members of it whose works will last as long as the
+English tongue, such as Dean Swift, Mr. Prior, whom we saw here
+invested with a public character, and whose fame in England is equal
+to that of La Fontaine in France; Mr. Pope, the English Boileau, Mr.
+Congreve, who may be called their Moliere, and several other eminent
+persons whose names I have forgot; all these would have raised the
+glory of that body to a great height even in its infancy.  But Queen
+Anne being snatched suddenly from the world, the Whigs were resolved
+to ruin the protectors of the intended academy, a circumstance that
+was of the most fatal consequence to polite literature.  The members
+of this academy would have had a very great advantage over those who
+first formed that of the French, for Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden,
+Pope, Addison, &c. had fixed the English tongue by their writings;
+whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Perrin, Cotin, our
+first academicians, were a disgrace to their country; and so much
+ridicule is now attached to their very names, that if an author of
+some genius in this age had the misfortune to be called Chapelain or
+Cotin, he would be under a necessity of changing his name.
+
+One circumstance, to which the English Academy should especially
+have attended, is to have prescribed to themselves occupations of a
+quite different kind from those with which our academicians amuse
+themselves.  A wit of this country asked me for the memoirs of the
+French Academy.  I answered, they have no memoirs, but have printed
+threescore or fourscore volumes in quarto of compliments.  The
+gentleman perused one or two of them, but without being able to
+understand the style in which they were written, though he
+understood all our good authors perfectly.  "All," says he, "I see
+in these elegant discourses is, that the member elect having assured
+the audience that his predecessor was a great man, that Cardinal
+Richelieu was a very great man, that the Chancellor Seguier was a
+pretty great man, that Louis XIV. was a more than great man, the
+director answers in the very same strain, and adds, that the member
+elect may also be a sort of great man, and that himself, in quality
+of director, must also have some share in this greatness."
+
+The cause why all these academical discourses have unhappily done so
+little honour to this body is evident enough.  Vitium est temporis
+potius quam hominis (the fault is owing to the age rather than to
+particular persons).  It grew up insensibly into a custom for every
+academician to repeat these elogiums at his reception; it was laid
+down as a kind of law that the public should be indulged from time
+to time the sullen satisfaction of yawning over these productions.
+If the reason should afterwards be sought, why the greatest geniuses
+who have been incorporated into that body have sometimes made the
+worst speeches, I answer, that it is wholly owing to a strong
+propension, the gentlemen in question had to shine, and to display a
+thread-bare, worn-out subject in a new and uncommon light.  The
+necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to
+say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which
+alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous.
+These gentlemen, not being able to strike out any new thoughts,
+hunted after a new play of words, and delivered themselves without
+thinking at all:  in like manner as people who should seem to chew
+with great eagerness, and make as though they were eating, at the
+same time that they were just starved.
+
+It is a law in the French Academy, to publish all those discourses
+by which only they are known, but they should rather make a law
+never to print any of them.
+
+But the Academy of the Belles Lettres have a more prudent and more
+useful object, which is, to present the public with a collection of
+transactions that abound with curious researches and critiques.
+These transactions are already esteemed by foreigners; and it were
+only to be wished that some subjects in them had been more
+thoroughly examined, and that others had not been treated at all.
+As, for instance, we should have been very well satisfied, had they
+omitted I know not what dissertation on the prerogative of the right
+hand over the left; and some others, which, though not published
+under so ridiculous a title, are yet written on subjects that are
+almost as frivolous and silly.
+
+The Academy of Sciences, in such of their researches as are of a
+more difficult kind and a more sensible use, embrace the knowledge
+of nature and the improvements of the arts.  We may presume that
+such profound, such uninterrupted pursuits as these, such exact
+calculations, such refined discoveries, such extensive and exalted
+views, will, at last, produce something that may prove of advantage
+to the universe.  Hitherto, as we have observed together, the most
+useful discoveries have been made in the most barbarous times.  One
+would conclude that the business of the most enlightened ages and
+the most learned bodies, is, to argue and debate on things which
+were invented by ignorant people.  We know exactly the angle which
+the sail of a ship is to make with the keel in order to its sailing
+better; and yet Columbus discovered America without having the least
+idea of the property of this angle:  however, I am far from
+inferring from hence that we are to confine ourselves merely to a
+blind practice, but happy it were, would naturalists and
+geometricians unite, as much as possible, the practice with the
+theory.
+
+Strange, but so it is, that those things which reflect the greatest
+honour on the human mind are frequently of the least benefit to it!
+A man who understands the four fundamental rules of arithmetic,
+aided by a little good sense, shall amass prodigious wealth in
+trade, shall become a Sir Peter Delme, a Sir Richard Hopkins, a Sir
+Gilbert Heathcote, whilst a poor algebraist spends his whole life in
+searching for astonishing properties and relations in numbers, which
+at the same time are of no manner of use, and will not acquaint him
+with the nature of exchanges.  This is very nearly the case with
+most of the arts:  there is a certain point beyond which all
+researches serve to no other purpose than merely to delight an
+inquisitive mind.  Those ingenious and useless truths may be
+compared to stars which, by being placed at too great a distance,
+cannot afford us the least light.
+
+With regard to the French Academy, how great a service would they do
+to literature, to the language, and the nation, if, instead of
+publishing a set of compliments annually, they would give us new
+editions of the valuable works written in the age of Louis XIV.,
+purged from the several errors of diction which are crept into them.
+There are many of these errors in Corneille and Moliere, but those
+in La Fontaine are very numerous.  Such as could not be corrected
+might at least be pointed out.  By this means, as all the Europeans
+read those works, they would teach them our language in its utmost
+purity--which, by that means, would be fixed to a lasting standard;
+and valuable French books being then printed at the King's expense,
+would prove one of the most glorious monuments the nation could
+boast.  I have been told that Boileau formerly made this proposal,
+and that it has since been revived by a gentleman eminent for his
+genius, his fine sense, and just taste for criticism; but this
+thought has met with the fate of many other useful projects, of
+being applauded and neglected.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters on England, by Voltaire
+
diff --git a/old/lteng10.zip b/old/lteng10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdf1a86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/lteng10.zip