But the most memorable body of men that adorned these ages^ were the Schoolmen* They may be considered as the discoverers of the art of logic. The ancients possessed in an eminent def-* gree the gift of genius; but they have little to boast on the score of arrangement, and discover little skill in the strictness of an accurate deduction. They rather arrive at truth by means of a felicity of impulse, than in consequence of having regularly gone through the process which leads to it. The schools of the middle ages gave birth to the Irre- fragable and the Seraphic doctors, the subtlety of whose distinctions, and the perseverance of whose investigations, are among the most wonderful mo- numents of the intellectual power of man. The thirteenth century produced Thomas Aquinas, and Johannes Duns Scotus, and William Occam, and Roger Bacon. In the century before, Thomas a Becket drew around him a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction that they called each other philosophers. The School- men often bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered dogmaa and systems that may astonish the common sense of unsophisticated un- derstandings. But such is man. So great is his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the resolution with which he sets himself, year after IV J ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 81 year, and lustre after lustre, to accomplish the task which his judgment and his zeal have commanded him to pursue...But I return to the question of literary fame. All these men, and men of a hundred other classes, who laboured most commendably and gallantly in their day, may be considered as swept away into the gulph of oblivion. As Swift humorously says in his Dedication to Prince Posterity, " I had prepared a copious list of Titles to present to your highness, as an undisputed argument of the prolificness of human genius in my own time: the originals were posted upon all gates and corners of streets: but, returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all torn down, and fresh ones put in their places^ I enquired after them among readers and book- sellers, but in vain: the memorial of them was lost among men; their place was no more to be found.'' It is a just remark that had been made by Hume ^: " Theories of abstract philosophy, systems of pro- found theology, have prevailed during one age. In a successive period these have been universally exploded; their absurdity has been detected; other theories and systems have supplied their place, which again gave way to their successors; and nothing has been experienced more liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion than these pre- tended decisions of science. The case is not the same with the beauties of eloquence and poetry.
' Essays^ Part I^ Essay xxiii.
G 82 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [ESSAY Just expressions of passion and nature are sure^ after a little time^ to gain public applause^ which they maintain for ever, Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus and Descartes may successively yield to each other: but Terence and Virgil maintain an universal^ undisputed empire over the minds of men. The abstract philosophy of Cicero has lost its credit: the vehemence of his oratory is still the object of our admiration/' A few examples of the instability of fame will place this question in the clearest light.
Nicholas Peiresk was bom in the year 1580. His progress in knowledge was so various and unpre- cedented^ that, from the time that he was twenty-one years of age, he was universally considered as hold- ing the helm of learning in his hand, and guiding the commonwealth of letters. He died at the age of fifty-seven. The academy of the Humoristi at Rome paid the most extraordinary honours to his memory; many of the cardinals assisted at his fune- ral oration; and a collection of verses in his praise was published in more than forty languages.
Salmasius was regarded as a prodigy of learning; and various princes and powers entered into a com- petition who should be so fortunate as to secure his residence in their states. Christina, queen of Swe- den, having obtained the preference, received him with singular reverence and attention; and, Salma- sius being taken ill at Stockholm, and confined to his bed, the queen persisted with her own hand to^ IV.] ACHIEVEI4ENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 83 {>repare his caudles^ and mend his fire. Yet, but for the accident of his having had Milton for his adversary, his name would now be as little remem-^ bered, even by the generality of the learned, as that of Peiresk.
Du Bartas, in the reign of Henry the Fourth of France, was one of the most successful poets that ever existed. His poem on the Creation of the World went through upwards of thirty editions in the course of five or six years, was translated into most European languages, and its commentators promised to equal in copiousness and number the commentators on Homer.
One of the most admired of our English poets about the close of the sixteenth century, was Donne. Unlike many of those trivial writers of verse who succeeded him after an interval of forty or fifty years, and who won for themselves a brilliant reputation by the smoothness of their numbers, die elegance of their conceptions, and the politeness of their styles Donne was fiiU of originality, energy and vigour. No man can read him without feeling himself called upon for earnest / exercise of his thinking powers, and, even with the most fixed attention and appli- cation, the jstudent i& often obliged to confess his inability to take in the whole of the meaning with which the poet's mind was perceptibly fraught. Every sentence that Donne writes, whether in verse or prose, is exclusively his own. In addition to this, his thoughts are often in the noblest sense of g2 / 84 or THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [esSAY die word poetical; and passages may be quoted fix)m him that no English poet may attempt to rival, unless it be Milton and Shakespear. Ben Jonson observed of him with great truth and a prophetic spirit: ^^ Donne for not being under^ stood will perish." But this is not all. If Waller and Suckling and Carew sacrificed every thing to the Graces, Donne went into the other extreme. With a few splendid and admirable exceptions, his phraseology and versification are crabbed and re- pulsive. And, as poetry is read in the first place for pleasure, Donne is left undisturbed on the shelf, or rather in the sepulchre; and not one in an hun-^ dred even among persons of cultivation, can give any account of him, if in reality they ever heard of his productions.
The name of Shakespear is that before which every knee must bow. But it was not always so- When the first novelty of his pieces was gone> they were seldom called into requisition. Only three or four of his plays were upon the acting list of the principal company of players during the reign of Charles the Second; and the productions of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of Shirley, were acted three times for once of his* At length Betterton revived, and by his admirable representation gave popularity to, Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear, a popu- larity they have ever since retained. But Macbeth was not revived (with music, and alterations by sir William Davenant) till 1 674; and Lear a few years IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 8$ later^ with love scenes and a happy catastrophe hy Nahum Tate.
In the latter part of the reign of Charles the Se- cond, Dryden and Otway and Lee held the undis- puted supremacy in the serious drama. Such was the insensibiUty of the English public to nature, and her high priest, Shakespear. The only one of their productions that has survived upon the theatre, is Venice Preserved: and why it has done so it is difficult to say; or rather it would be impossible to assign a just and honourable reason for it. All the personages in this piece are of an abandoned and profligate character. Pierre is a man resolved to destroy and root up the republic by which he was employed, because his mistress, a courtesan, is mercenary, and endures the amorous visits of an Impotent old lecher. Jaffier, without even the profession of any public principle, joins in the con- spiracy, because he has been accustomed to luxury and prodigal expence and is poor. He has however no sooner entered into the plot, than he betrays it, and turns informer to the government against his associates. Belvidera instigates him to this treachery, because she cannot bear the thought of having her father murdered, and is absurd enough to imagine that she and her husband shall be tender and happy lovers ever after. Their love in the latter acts of the play is a continued tirade of bombast and sounding nonsense, without one real sentiment, one just reflection, or one strong emotion working 86 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [ESSAY from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. The folly of this love can only be exceeded, by the ab- ject and despicable crouching and fawning of Jaffier to the man he had so basely betrayed, and their subsequent reconciliation. There is not a production in the whole realms of fiction, that has less preten- sion to manly, or even endurable feeling, or to com- mon propriety. The total defect of a moral sense in this piece is strongly characteristic of the reign in which it was written. It has in the mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness of ac- tion, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost no participation of the understanding! And this unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of passion, and that per- fect anatomy of the human heart, which render the master-pieces of Shakespear a property for all na- tions and all times.
While Shakespear was partly forgotten, it con- tinued to be totally unknown that he had contem- poraries as inexpressibly superior to the dramatic writers that have appeared since, as these contem- poraries were themselves below the almighty master of scenic composition. It was the fashion to say, that Shakespear existed alone in a barbarous age, and that all his imputed crudities, and intermixture of what was noblest with unparalleled absurdity and IV.J ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 87 buffoonery, were to be allowed for to him on that consideration.
Cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy of fame. He was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions. He had a truly poetic frame of soul; and he pours out the beautiful feeUngs that possessed him unreservedly and at large. He was a great sufferer in the Stuart cause; he had been a principal member of the court of the exiled queen; and, when the king was restored, it was a deep sen- timent among his followers and friends to admire the verses of Cowley. He was " the Poet." The royalist rhymers were set lightly by in comparison with him. Milton, the republican, who, by his col* lection published during the civil war, had shewn that he was entitled to the highest eminence, wa$ unanimously consigned to oblivion. Cowley died in 1667; and the duke of Buckingham, the author of the Rehearsal, eight years after, set up his tomb in the cemetery of the nation, with an inscription, declaring him to be at once ^^the Pindar, the Horace and Virgil of his country, the deUght and the glory of his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner.'* — ^Yet — so capricious is fame century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said.
Who now reads Cowley } If he pleases yet^ His moral pleases, not his pointed wit -, Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art. But still I love the language of his heart.
SB OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration, Cleveland stood in the same rank du- ring the civil war. In the publication of his works one edition succeeded to another, yearly or oftener, for more than twenty years. His satire is eminently poignant; he is of a strength and energy of think- ing uncommonly masculine; and he compresses his meaning so as to give it every advantage. His ima- gination is full of coruscation and brilliancy. His petition to Cromwel, lord protector of England, when the poet was under confinement for his loyal pirinciples, is a singular example of manly firmness, great independence of mind, and a happy choice of topics to awaken feelings of forbearance and clemency. It is unnecessary to say that Cleveland is now unknown, except to such as feel themselves impelled to search into things forgotten.
It would be endless to adduce all the examples that might be found of the caprices of fame. It has been one of the arts of the envious to set up a con- temptible rival to eclipse the splendour of sterling merit. Thus Crowne and Settle for a time disturbed the serenity of I)ryden. Voltaire says, the Phaedra of Pradon has not less passion than that of Racine, but expressed in rugged verse and barbarous lan- guage. Pradon is now forgotten: and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. Hay- ley for a few years was applauded as the genuine successor of Pope; and the poem of Sympathy by IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 89 Pratt went tbrongfa twelve editions. For a brief period almost each successive age appears fraught with resplendent genius; but they go out one after another; they set^ ^^ like stars that fall, to rise no more.'* Few indeed wee endowed with that strength of construction, that should enable them to ride triumphant on the tide of ages.
It is the same with conquerors. What tremeur dous battles have been fought, what oceans of blood have been spilled, by men who were resolved that their achievements should be remembered for everl And now even their names are scarcely preserved; and die very effects of the disasters they inflicted on mankind seem to be swept away, as of no more va- lidity than things that never existed. Warriors and poets, the authors of systems and the lights of phi- losophy, men that astonished the earth, and wdre locked up to as Gods, even like an actor on the stage, have strutted their hour, and then been heard of no more.
Books have the advantage of all other produce tions of the human head or hand. Copies of them may be multiplied for ever, the last as good as the first, except so far as some slight inadvertent errors may have insinuated themselves. The Iliad flou- rishes as green now, as on the day that Pisistratus is said first to have stamped upon it its present order. The songs of the Rhapsodists, the Scalds, and the Minstrels, which once seemed as fugitive as the breath of him who chaunted them, repose in 90 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN (^ESSAY libraries, and are embahned in collections. The sportive sallies of eminent wits, and the Table Talk of Luther and Selden, may live as long as there shall be men to read, and judges to appreciate them.
But other human productions have their date* Pictures, however admirable, will only last as long as the colours of which they are composed, and the substance on which they are painted. Three or four hundred years ordinarily limit the existence of the most favoured. We have scarcely any paint- ings of the ancients, and but a small portion of their statues, while of these a great part are mutilated, ^nd various members supplied by later and inferior artists. The library of Bufo is by Pope described, where busts of poets dead. And a true Pindar stood without a head.
Monumental records, alike the slightest and the most solid, are subjected to the destructive opera* tion of time, or to the being removed at the caprice or convenience of successive generations. The pyramids of Egypt remain, but the names of him who founded them, and of him whose memory they seemed destined to perpetuate, have perished toge- ther. Buildings for the use or habitation of man do not last for ever. Mighty cities, as well as de- tached edifices, are destined to disappear. Thebes, Itnd Troy, and Persepolis, and Palmyra have vanish- ed from the i^ce of the earth. ^^ Thorns and bram- bles have grown up in their palaces: they are habir Nations for serpents, and a court for the owl.''
IV.] ACHI£V£M£NTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 91 There are productions of man however that seem more durable than any of the edifices he has raised^ Such are^ in the first place, modes of government. The constitution of Sparta lasted for seven hundred years. That of Rome for about the same period. Institutions, once deeply rooted in the habits of a people, will operate in their efiects through sacces-* sive revolutions. Modes of faith will sometimes be still more permanent. Not to mention the systems of Moses and Christ, which we consider as deliver-^ ed to us by divine inspiration, that of Mahomet hac( continued for twelve hundred years, and may last^ for aught that appears, twelve hundred more. The practices of the empire of China are celebrated all over the earth for their iil[] mutability.
This brings us naturally to reflect upon the dura- bility of the sciences. According to Bailly, the ob- servation of the heavens, and a calculation of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in other words, astronomy, subsisted in maturity in China and the East, for at least three thousand years before the birth of Christ: and, such as it was then, it bids fair to last as long as civilisation shall continue. The additions it has acquired of late years may fall away and perish, but the substance shall remain. The circulation of the blood in man and other ani- mals, is a discovery that shall never be antiquated. And the same may be averred of the fundamental elements of geometry and of some other sciences. Knowledge, in its most considerable branches shall \ 92 DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS. [ESSAY endure, as long as books shall exist to hand it down to successive generations.
It is just therefore, that we should regard with admiration and awe the nature of man, by whom these mighty things have been accomplished, at the aame time that the perishable quality of its indivi* dual monuments, and the temporary character and inconstancy of that fame which in many instances has filled the whole earth with its renown, may reasonably quell the fumes of an inordinate vanity, and keep alive in us the sentiment of a wholsome diffidence and humiUty* r* v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 93 ESSAY V.
OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN.
There is a particular characteristic in the nature of the human mind^ which is somewhat difficult to he explained.
Man is a heing of a rational and an irrational nature.
It has often been said that we have two souls. Araspes, in the Cyropedia^ adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, aiid desertion of principle and honour. The two souls of man, according to this hypothesis, are, first, animal, and, secondly^ intellectual.
But I am not going into any thing of this slight and every-day character..
Man is a rational being. It is by this particular \ that he is eminently distinguished from the brute '■ creation. He collects premises and deduces con- clusions. He enters into systems of thinking, and I combines systems of action, which he pursues from \ day to day, and from year to year. It is by this ^ feature in his constitution that he becomes empha-; tically the subject of history, of poetry and fiction. It is by this that he is raised above the other inha* bitants of the globe of earth, and that the indivi- duals of our race are made the partners of ^^ gods^ and men like gods.''
94 or THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY But our nature^ beside this, has another section. We start occasionally ten thousand miles awry. We resign the sceptre of reason, and the high dignity that belongs to us as beings of a superior species; and, without authority derived to us from any sy- stem of thinking, even without the scheme of gra- tifying any vehement and uncontrolable passion, we are impelled to do, or at least feel ourselves excited to do, something disordinate and strange. It seems as if we had a spring within us, that found the per^ petual restraint of being wise and sober insuppprt- able. We long to be something, or to do some- thing, sudden and unexpected, to throw the fumi* ture of our apartment out at window, or, when we are leaving a place of worship, in which perhaps the most solemn feelings of our nature have been ex* cited, to push the grave person that is just before us, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. A thousand absurdities, wild and extravagant vagaries, come into our heads, and we are only restrained from perpetrating them by the fear, that we may be subjected to the treatment appropriated to this in* sane, or may perhaps be made amenable to the cri-^ minal laws of our country.
A story occurs to me, which I learned from th^ late Dr. Parr at Hatton, that may not unhappily illustrate the point I am endeavouring to explain.
Dr. Samuel Clarke, rector of St. James's, West- minster, the especial friend of Sir Isaac Newton, the distinguished editor of the poems of Homer, and Y.j OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN, 95 author of the Demonstration of the Being and At- tributes of God, was one day summoned from his study, to receive two visitors in the parlour. When he came downstairs, and entered the room, he saw a foreigner, who by his air seemed to be a person of distinction, a professor perhaps of some university on the continent; and an alderman of London, a re-^ lation of the doctor, who had come to introduce the foreigner. The alderman, a man of uncultivated mind and manners, and whom the doctor had been accustomed to see in sordid attire, surroimded with the incumbrances of his trade, was decked out for the occasion in a full-dress suit, with a wig of ma- jestic and voluminous structure^ Clarke was, as it appears, so much struck with the whimsical nature of this unexpected metamorphosis, and the extra- ordinary solemnity of his kinsman's demeanour, as to have felt impelled, almost immediately upon en* tering the room, to snatch the wig from the alder* man's head, and throw it against the ceiling: after which this eminent person immediately escaped, and retired to his own apartment. I was informed from the same authority, that Clarke, after ex- hausting his intellectual faculties by long and in- tense study, would not unfrequently quit his seat, V leap upon the table, and place himself cross-legged like a tailor, being prompted, by these antagonist sallies, to relieve himself from the effect of the too severe strain he had previously put upon his inteU lectual powers.
96 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY But the deviousness and aberration of our human facuhies frequently amount to something consider* ably more serious than this.
I will put a case. i I will suppose myself aiid another human being together, in some spot secure from the intrusion of spectators. A musket is conveniently at hand. It is already loaded. I say to my companion^ ^^ I will place myself before you; I will stand motionless: take up that musket, and shoot me through the heart.^* I want to know what passes in the mind of the man to whom these words are address^.
I say, that one of the thoughts that will occur to many of the persons who should be so invited, will be, " Shall I take him at his word?" ^ ^ There are two things that restrain us from acts of violence and crime. The first is, the laws of morality. The second is, the construction that will be put upon our actions by our fellow-creatures^ and the treatment we shall receive from them.— rl put out of the question here any particular value I may entertain for my challenger, or any degree of friendship and attachment I may feel for him. r The laws of moraUty (setting aside the conside*- ^ ration of any documents of religion or otherwise I may have imbibed from my parents and instruc- tors) are matured within us by experience; In proportion as I am rendered familiar with my fel^ low-creatures, or with society at large, I come to feel the ties which bind men to each other, and the v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 97 wisdom and necessity of governing my conduct by ) inexorable rules. We are thus further and further \ removed from unexpected sallies of the mind^ and the danger of suddenly starting away into acts not ) previously reflected on and considered.
With respect to the censure and retaliation of other men on my proceeding, these, by the terms of my supposition, are left out of the question.
It may be taken for granted, that no man but a madman, would in the case I have stated take die challenger at his word. But what I want to ascertain is, why the bare thought of doing so takes a momentary hold of the mind of the person addressed?; There are three principles in the nature of man which contribute to account for this.
First, the love of novelty.
Secondly, the love of enterprise and adventure. I become insupportably wearied with the repetition erf rotatory acts and every-day occurrences. I want to be alive, to be something more than I commonly am, to change the scene, to cut the cable that binds my bark to the shore, to launch into the wide sea of possibilities, and to nourish my thoughts with observing a train of unforeseen consequences as they arise.
A third principle, which discovers itself in early childhood, and which never entirely quits us, is the love of power. We wish to be assured that we are something, and that we can produce notable effects H 98 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essAT upon other beings out of ourselves. It is this prin- ciple, which instigates a child to destroy his play- things, and to torment and kill the animals around him.
But, even independently of the laws of morality, and the fear of censure and retaliation from our fellow-creatures, there are other things which would obviously restrain us from taking the challenger in the above supposition at his word.
If man were an omnipotent being, and at the same time retained all his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say of what extravagances he would be guilty. It is proverbially affirmed that power has a tendency to corrupt the best disposi- tions. Then what would not omnipotence eflfect? ^ If, when I put an end to the life of a fellow- creature, all vestiges of what I had done were to disappear, this would take oflF a great part of the control upon my actions which at present subsists. But, as it is, there are many consequences that " give us pause." I do not like to see his blood streaming on the ground. I do not like to witness the spasms and convulsions of a dying man. Though wounded to the heart, he may speak. Then what may he chance to say r What looks of reproach may he cast upon me? The musket may miss fire. If I wound him, the wound may be less mortal than I contemplated. Then what may I not have to fear r His dead body will be an incumbrance to me. It must be moved from the place where it lies.
v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 99 It must be buried. How is all this to be done by me? By one precipitate act, I have involved my- self in a long train of loathsome and heait-sick- ening consequences, ^ If it should be said, that no one but a person of \ an abandoned character would fail, when the scene j was actually before him, to feel an instant repug* j nance to the proposition, yet it will perhaps be ad-; mitted, that almost every reader, when he regards; it as a supposition merely, says to himself for a moment, " Would I? Could I?"
But, to bring the irrationality of man more com- pletely to the test, let us change the supposition. Let us imagine him to be gifted with the powers of the fabled basilisk, " to monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks." His present impulses, his passions, his modes of reasoning and choosing shall continue; but his " will is neighboured to his act;" whatever he has formed a conception of with pre- ference, is immediately realised; his thought is succeeded by the effect; and no traces are left be- hind, by means of which a shadow of censure or suspicion can be reflected on him.
Man is in truth a miracle. The human mind is a creature of celestial origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh. We feel a kind of proud impa- tience of the degradation to which we are con- demned. We beat ourselves to pieces against the wires of our cage, and long to escape, to shoot through the elements, and be as free to change at h2 100 OF THE REBEi.LIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essAY any instant the place where we dwell, as to change the subject to which our thoughts are applied.
This, or something like this, seems to be the source of our most portentous follies and absurdi- ties. This is the original sin upon which St. Aus- tin and Calvin descanted. Certain Arabic writers seem to have had this in their minds, when they tell us, that there is a black drop of blood in the heart of every man, in which is contained ihefomespeccatiy and add that, when Mahomet was in the fourth year of his age, the angel Gabriel caught him up from among his playfellows, and taking his heart from his bosom^ squeezed out of it this first principle of frailty, in consequence of which he for ever after remained inaccessible to the weaknesses of other men*.