them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he has not translated in Sejanus and Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in his rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love Shakspeare.

CHAUCER AND COWLEY.

In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets1 is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way; but swept, like a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweet-meats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelve-month; for. as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, Not being of God, he could not stand.

Chaucer followed nature everywhere; but was never so bold to go beyond her: and there is a great difference of being poeta,

and nimis poeta,1 if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behavior and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us; but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends-it was auribus istius temporis accommodata. They who lived with him and sometime after him, thought it musical, and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse, where we find but nine. But this opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error, that common sense (which is a rule in every thing but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader, that equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only say, that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children, before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace. Even after Chaucer, there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared.

THE HEATHEN-REASON AND REVELATION.

It has always been my thought, that heathens who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Christ, were yet in a possibility of salvation. Neither will it enter easily into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour, the whole world, excepting only the Jewish nation, should lie under the inevitable necessity of everlasting punishment, for want of that revelation. which was confined to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the sons of Noah we read of one only who was accursed; and if a blessing in the ripeness of time was reserved for Japhet, (of whose progeny we are,) it seems unaccountable to me, why so many generations of the same offspring as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, should be all involved in one common con

1 "A poet and too much of a poet:" by the latter expression is meant conceit and affectation in poetry.

2 "Adapted to the ears of the times."

8 Speght, in 1597.

4 This position, however, has been completely disproved by Mr. Tyrwhitt, who, in his edition of the Canterbury Tales, has admirably explained the versification and language of Chaucer, and shown the former to be in general correct.

demnation, and yet that their posterity should be entitled to the hopes of salvation: as if a bill of exclusion had passed only on the fathers, which debarred not the sons from their succession. O that so many ages had been delivered over to hell, and so many reserved for heaven, and that the devil had the first choice, and God the next. Truly, I am apt to think, that the revealed religion which was taught by Noah to all his sons, might continue for some ages in the whole posterity. That afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Sem, is manifest; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet swarmed into colonies, and those colonies were subdivided into many others, ir "rocess of time their descendants lost by little and little the primitive and purer rites of divine worship, retaining only the notion of one deity; to which succeeding generations added others, for men took their degrees in those ages from conquerors to gods. Revelation being thus eclipsed to almost all mankind, the light of nature, as the next in dignity, was substituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judged. If my supposition be true, then the consequence which I have assumed in my poem may be also true; namely, that Deism, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah: and that our modern philosophers, nay, and some of our philosophizing divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that, by their force, mankind has been able to find out that there is one supreme agent or intellectual being, which we call God: that praise and prayer are his due worship; and the rest of those deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our discourse; I mean as simply considered, and without the benefit of divine illumination. So that we have not lifted up ourselves to God, by the weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to descend to us; and what Socrates said of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philosophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it was set in the race of Noah. That there is something above us, some principle of motion, our reason can apprehend, though it cannot discover what it is by its own virtue. And indeed it is very im probable, that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any Being, not so much as of our own, should be able to find out, by them, that supreme nature, which we cannot otherwise define than by saying it is infinite; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a subject for our narrow understanding. They who would prove religion by reason, do but weaken the cause which they endeavor to support: it is to take away the pillars from our faith, and to prop it only with a twig;

it is to design a tower like that of Babel, which, if it were possible, as it is not, to reach heaven, would come to nothing by the confusion of the workmen. For every man is building a several way; impotently conceited of his own model and his own materials: reason is always striving, and always at a loss; and of necessity it must so come to pass, while it is exercised about that which is not its proper object. Let us be content at last to know God by his own methods; at least, so much of him as he is pleased to reveal to us in the sacred Scriptures: to apprehend them to be the word of God, is all our reason has to do; for all beyond it is the work of faith, which is the seal of heaven impressed upon our human understanding.

JOHN LOCKE. 1632-1704.

JOHN LOCKE, the eminent philosophical writer, was born at Wrington, in Somersetshire, on the 29th of August, 1632. He was educated at Westminster school, and at the age of nineteen entered the University of Oxford. He applied himself with great diligence to the study of classical literature, and to the philosophical works of Bacon and Descartes. He made choice of medicine as a profession, and after taking his degrees in the arts, he practised for a short time in the university. But he was soon compelled to relinquish it from the weakness of his constitution.

In 1664 he visited Berlin, as secretary to the English minister; but after a year he returned to Oxford, where he formed an acquaintance with Lord Ashley, afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury, and accepted his invitation to reside in his house; where he became acquainted with some of the most eminent men of the day. Here he drew up a constitution for the government of South Carolina, which province had been granted by Charles II. to Lord Ashley, with seven others. In 1670 he commenced his investigations in meta. physical philosophy, and laid the plan of that great work, his "Essay on the Human Understanding." In 1675, being apprehensive of consumption, Locke went to Montpelier, in France, and after residing there four years, he was invited to England by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who had been restored to favor and appointed president of the new council. But this prosperity was not of long duration, for in 1682 the earl was obliged to flee to Holland, to avoid a prosecution for high treason. Locke followed his patron, where, even after his death, he continued to reside, for the hostility felt towards Shaftesbury was transferred to Locke. On the Revolution of 1688, he returned with the fleet hat brought over the Prince of Orange; and accepted the offer of apartments in the house of his friend Sir Francis Masham, in Oates, in Essex, where he resided for the remainder of his life, devoting it mostly to the study of the Scriptures, and died on the 28th of October, 1704.

1 The main provisions of his constitution were, that "all men are free and equal by nature,” and that "the object of government is the security of persons and property." What a melancholy reflection it is, that a state which can trace its constitutional history to such a man as John Locke, should hold more than half of its population as "chattels personal, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever."

The great work of Locke, and that which has immortalized his name, is (1.) his "Essay concerning Human Understanding." It applies the Baconian method of observation and experience to establish a theory of human know ledge, showing that we have no innate ideas; that the only source of our knowledge is experience; that this experience is twofold, either internal or external, according as it is employed about sensible objects or the operations of our minds; and hence that there are two kinds of ideas,-ideas of sensation, and ideas of reflection. These positions, with many others collateral and connected, this great work establishes on a basis that can never be shaken.1 His other works, scarcely inferior in value and importance to his " Essay," are, 2.) "On the Reasonableness of Christianity," published in 1695. This was intended to aid the reigning monarch, William III., in his design to reconcile and unite all sects of professing Christians; and accordingly, the object of the tract was to determine what, amid so many conflicting views of religion, were the points of belief common to all. (3.) "Letters on Toleration." (4.) "Two Treatises on Civil Government," in defence of the Revolution, and in answer to the partisans of the exiled king, who called the existing government a usurpation. In this he maintains conclusively, that the legitimacy of a government depends solely and ultimately on the popular sanction, or the consent of men, making use of their reason, to unite and form societies. (5.) « Thoughts on Education." (6.) "A Discourse on Miracles." (7.) "araphrases, with notes, of the Epistles of St. Paul," together with, (8.) an "Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles, by consulting St. Paul himself.” To these were added many minor treatises, with that most useful book, entitled "A New Method of a Common-Place Book."

As to the style of Locke, Dr. Drake makes the following just remarks: "The diction he has adopted is, in general, such as does honor to his judgment. Relinquishing ornament and studied cadences, he is merely solicitous to convey his ideas with perspicuity and precision. No affectation, no conceits, no daring metaphors or inverted periods, disfigure his pages; all is clear, easy, and natural, exhibiting a plain and simple style accommodated to the purposes of philosophy."

As to his personal character, it was in complete harmony with the opinions, political, moral, and religious, which he so zealously and so ably advocated. A more happy combination of the Christian, the gentleman, and the scholar, has, perhaps, never been exhibited than in the person of this distinguished philosopher. While his talents were devoted to works which take the highest rank in English literature, his pure and virtuous life gave the most satisfactory proof of the practical efficacy of a piety, the sincerity of which was clearly proved by his efforts to show that all the parts of the Christian system are reconcilable to human reason.2

PRACTICE AND HABIT.

We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of any hing, such at least as would carry us farther than can be easily

1 "Few books," says Sir James Mackintosh, "have contributed more to rectify prejudice, to undermine established errors, to diffuse a just mode of thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries which nature has prescribed to the human understanding.” 2 "His writings have diffused throughout the civilized world the love of civil liberty; the spirit of toleration and charity in religious differences; the disposition to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or hypothetical in speculation; to abandon problems which admit of no solution; to distrust whatever cannot be clearly expressed; and to prefer those studies which most directly contribute to human happiness."-Sir James Mackintosh.