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In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals, and conversed with them; the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περί την ερυθραν θάλασσαν εύρον, ανθρωποις Ένα ταν έτος άπαξ εντυγχάνοντα, ταλλα δε συν ταις νύμφαις, suroi xai Taipei, as tearns. He spoke in a tone not far removed from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a fragrance filled the place: φθεγγομένου δι τον τόπον ευωδια κατείχε, του στόματος ήδιστον αποπνέοντος. From him Cleombrotus learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds.

* The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the poem of Heinsius, “In harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum andire sibi visus est Dousa." Page 501.

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VISION OF PHILOSOPHY.

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met The venerable man1; a healthy bloom Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought That tower'd upon his brow; and, when he spoke, 'Twas language sweeten'd into song-such holy

sounds

As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,
When death is nigh2; and still, as he unclos'd
His sacred lips, an odour, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in elysium3, breath'd around.
With silent awe we listen'd, while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man,
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And glimpses of that heavenly form shone thro':-
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster nam'd)
Who mus'd amid the mighty cataclysm,
O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore;+
And gath'ring round him, in the sacred ar,
The mighty secrets of that former globe,
Let not the living star of science 5 sink
Beneath the waters, which ingulph'd a world!-
Of visions, by Calliope reveal'd

To him, who trac'd upon his typic lyre
The diapason of man's mingled frame,
And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven.
With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane,
Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night,

of the deluge, and transmit the secrets of antediluvian knowledge to his posterity. See the extracts made by Bayle, in his article, Cham. The identity of Cham and Zoroaster depends upon the authority of Berosus (or rather the impostor Annius), and a few more such respectable testimonies. See Naudé's Apologie pour les Grands Hommes, &c. chap. viii., where he takes more trouble than is necessary in refuting this gratuitous supposition.

5 Chamum à posteris hujus artis admiratoribus Zoroastrum, seu vivum astrum, propterea fuisse dictum et pro Deo habitum. Bochart. Geograph. Sacr. lib. iv. cap. 1.

6 Orpheus. Paulinus, in his Hebdomades, cap. 2. lib. iii. has endeavoured to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, or octave, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a diapente, which is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient philosophers illustrated their sublime theories, must have tended very much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with associations of the grandest and most interesting nature. See a preceding note, for their ideas upon the harmony of the spheres. Heraclitus compared the mixture of good and evil in this world to the blended varieties of harmony in a musical instrument (Plutarch. de Animæ Procreat.); and Euryphamus, the Pythagorean, in a fragment preserved by Stobæus, describes human life, in its perfection, as a sweet and well tuned lyre. Some of the ancients were so fanciful as to suppose that the

H

Told to the young and bright-hair'd visitant Of Carmel's sacred mount. Then, in a flow Of calmer converse, he beguil❜d us on

operations of the memory were regulated by a kind of musical cadence, and that ideas occurred to it "per arsin et thesin," while others converted the whole man into a mere harmonized machine, whose motion depended upon a certain tension of the body, analogous to that of the strings in an instrument. Cicero indeed ridicules Aristoxenus for this fancy, and says," Let him teach singing, and leave philosophy to Aristotle;" but Aristotle himself, though decidedly opposed to the harmonic speculations of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, could sometimes condescend to enliven his doctrines by reference to the beauties of musical science; as, in the treatise Iɛga zorμov attributed to him, Καθαπες δε εν χορῳ, κορυφαίου καταρξαντος,

2. T. 2.

The Abbé Batteux, in his enquiry into the doctrine of the Stoics, attributes to those philosophers the same mode of illustration. "L'âme étoit cause active ay ati; le corps cause passive noi Tou Tarx:—l'une agissant dans l'autre; et y prenant, par son action même, un caractère, des formes, des modifications, qu'elle n'avoit pas par elle-même; à peu près comme l'air, qui, chassé dans un instrument de musique, fait connoitre, par les différens sons qu'il produit, les differentes modifications qu'il y reçoit." See a fine simile founded upon this notion in Cardinal Polignac's poem, lib. 5. v. 734.

Pythagoras is represented in lamblichus as descending with great solemnity from Mount Carmel, for which reason the Carmelites have claimed him as one of their fraternity. This Mochus or Moschus, with the descendants of whom Pythagoras conversed in Phoenicia, and from whom he derived the doctrines of atomic philosophy, is supposed by some to be the same with Moses. Huett has adopted this idea, Démonstration Evangélique, Prop. iv. chap. 2. §7.; and Le Clerc, amongst others, has refuted it. See Biblioth. Choisie, tom. i. p. 75. It is certain, however, that the doctrine of atoms was known and promulgated long before Epicurus. "With the fountains of Democritus," says Cicero," the gardens of Epicurus were watered;" and the learned author of the Intellectual System has shown, that all the early philosophers, till the time of Plato, were atomists. We find Epicurus, however, boasting that his tenets were new and unborrowed, and perhaps few among the ancients had any stronger claim to originality. In truth, if we examine their schools of philosophy, notwithstanding the peculiarities which seem to distinguish them from each other, we may generally observe that the difference is but verbal and trifling; and that, among those various and learned heresies, there is scarcely one to be selected, whose opinions are its own, original and exclusive. The doctrine of the world's eternity may be traced through all the sects. The continual metempsychosis of Pythagoras, the grand periodic year of the Stoics, (at the conclusion of which the universe is supposed to return to its original order, and commence a new revolution,) the successive dissolution and combination of atoms maintained by the Epicureansall these tenets are but different intimations of the same general belief in the eternity of the world. As explained by St. Austin, the periodic year of the Stoics disagrees only so far with the idea of the Pythagoreans, that instead of an endless transmission of the soul through a variety of bodies, it restores the same body and soul to repeat their former round of existence, so that the "identical Plato, who lectured in the Academy of Athens, shall again and again, at certain intervals, during the lapse of eternity, appear in the same Academy and resume the same functions:"- sic eadem tempora temporaliumque rerum volumina repeti, ut v. g. sicut in isto sæculo Plato philosophus in urbe Atheniensi, in eâ schola quæ Academia dicta est, discipulos docuit, ita per innumerabilia retro sæcula, multum plexis quidem intervallis, sed certis, et idem Plato, et eadem civitas, eademque schola, iidemque discipuli repetiti et per innumerabilia deinde sæcula

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The paradoxical notions of the Stoics upon the beauty, the riches, the dominion of their imaginary sage, are among the most distinguishing characteristics of their school, and, according to their advocate Lipsius, were peculiar to that sect. "Priora illa (decreta) quæ passim in philosophantium scholis ferè obtinent, ista quæ peculiaria huic sectæ et habent contradictionem: i. e. paradoxa."— Manuduct. ad Stoic. Philos. lib. iii. dissertat. 2. But it is evident (as the Abbé Garnier has remarked, Mémoires de l'Acad. tom. xxxv.) that even these absurdities of the Stoics are borrowed, and that Plato is the source of all their extravagant paradoxes. We find their dogma, “dives qui sapiens," (which Clement of Alexandría has transferred from the Philosopher to the Christian, Pædagog. lib. iii. cap. 6.) expressed in the prayer of Socrates at the end of the Phædrus. Ω φίλε Παν τε και άλλοι όσοι της Θεω, δοιητε μοι καλοι γενεσθαι τανδοθεν ταξωθεν δε όσα έχει τοις εντος είναι μοι φιλιά πλουσιον δε νομίζομε τον σοφόν. And many other instances might be adduced from the Aigara, the Ioλsizes, &c. to prove that these weeds of paradox were all gathered among the bowers of the Academy. Hence it is that Cicero, in the preface to his Paradoxes, calls them Socratica; and Lipsius, exulting in the patronage of Socrates, says, "Ille totus est noster." This is indeed a coalition, which evinces as much as can be wished the confused similitude of ancient philosophical opinions: the father of scepticism is here enrolled amongst the founders of the Portico; he, whose best knowledge was that of his own ignorance, is called in to authorise the pretensions of the most obstinate dogmatists in all antiquity.

Rutilius, in his Itinerarium, has ridiculed the sabbath of the Jews, as “lassati mollis imago Dei ;" but Epicurus gave an eternal holiday to his gods, and, rather than disturb the slumbers of Olympus, denied at once the interference of a Providence. He does not, however, seem to have been singular in this opinion. Theophilus of Antioch, if he deserve any credit, imputes a similar belief to Pythagoras: — Es (Πυθαγόρας) τε των πάντων θεους ανθρώπων μηδεν φροντίζειν. And Plutarch, though so hostile to the followers of Epicurus, has unaccountably adopted the very same theological error. Thus, after quoting the opinions of Anaxagoras and Plato upon divinity, he adds, Kovas our άuagtavovory auçoraga, éti τον θεον εποίησαν επιστρεφομένων των ανθρωπίνων.-De Placit. Ph losoph. lib. i. cap. 7. Plato himself has attributed a degree of indifference to the gods, which is not far removed from the apathy of Epicurus's heaven; as thus, in his Philebus, where Protarchus asks, Ouzovy EIXOS YE OUTS XIgLD FROUS, BUTE TO εναντίον ; and Socrates answers, Πάνυ μεν ουν εικός, ασχημών γων αυτών έκατερον γιγνόμενον εστιν; - while Aristotle supposes a still more absurd neutrality, and concludes, by no very flattering analogy, that the deity is as incapable of virtue as of vice. Kau yag wong ouder Ingiou loti xxxia, ovò' agitu, es cas ovde Frov.-Ethic. Nicomach. lib. vii. cap. 1. In truth, Aristotle, upon the subject of Providence, was little more correct than Epicurus. He supposed the moon to be the limit of divine interference, excluding of course this sublunary world from its influence. The first definition of the world, in his treatise Пg Korov (if this treatise be really the work of Aristotle), agrees, almost verbum verbo, with that in the letter of Epicurus to Pythocles; and both omit the mention of a deity. In his Ethics, too, he intimates a doubt whether the gods feel any interest in the concerns of mankind. — Es yag | τις επιμέλεια των ανθρωπίνων ύπο θεων γινεται. It is true, he adds werig dozu, but even this is very sceptical.

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From the pure sun, which, though refracted all
Into a thousand hues, is sunshine still, 1
And bright through every change!— he spoke of Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still.
Him,

Nor yet even then, though sunk in earthly dross,
Corrupted all, nor its etherial touch

The lone 2, eternal One, who dwells above,

And of the soul's untraceable descent

As some bright river, which has roll'd along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold,

From that high fount of spirit, through the When pour'd at length into the dusky deep, grades

Of intellectual being, till it mix

With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark;

In these erroneous conceptions of Aristotle, we trace the cause of that general neglect which his philosophy experienced among the early Christians. Plato is seldom much more orthodox, but the obscure enthusiasm of his style allowed them to accommodate all his fancies to their own purpose. Such glowing steel was easily moulded, and Platonism became a sword in the hands of the fathers.

The Providence of the Stoics, so vaunted in their school, was a power as contemptibly inefficient as the rest. All was fate in the system of the Portico. The chains of destiny were thrown over Jupiter himself, and their deity was like the Borgia of the epigrammatist, "et Cæsar et nihil." Not even the language of Seneca can reconcile this degradation of divinity. "Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidem | fata, sed sequitur; semper paret, semel jussit."-Lib. de Providentia, cap. 5.

With respect to the difference between the Stoics, Peripatetics and Academicians, the following words of Cicero prove that he saw but little to distinguish them from each other:"Peripateticos et Academicos, nominibus differentes, re congruentes; a quibus Stoici ipsi verbis magis quam sententiis dissenserunt." — Academic. lib. ii. 5.; and perhaps what Reid has remarked upon one of their points of controversy might be applied as effectually to the reconcilement of all the rest. "The dispute between the Stoics and Peripatetics was probably all for want of definition. The one said they were good under the control of reason, the other that they should be eradicated." — Essays, vol. iii. In short, it appears a no less difficult matter to establish the boundaries of opinion between any two of the philosophical sects, than it would be to fix the landmarks of those estates in the moon, which Ricciolus so generously allotted to his brother astronomers. Accordingly we observe some of the greatest men of antiquity passing without scruple from school to school, according to the fancy or convenience of the moment. Cicero, the father of Roman philosophy, is sometimes an Academician, sometimes a Stoic; and, more than once, he acknowledges a conformity with Epicurus; "non sine causa igitur Epicurus ausus est dicere semper in pluribus bonis esse sapientem, quia semper sit in voluptatibus."—Tusculan. Quæst. lib. v. Though often pure in his theology, Cicero sometimes smiles at futurity as a fiction; thus, in his Oration for Cluentius, speaking of punishments in the life to come, he says, “ Quæ si falsa sunt, id quod omnes intelligunt, quid ei tandem aliud mors eripuit, præter sensum doloris ?"-though here we should, perhaps, do him but justice by agreeing with his commentator Sylvius, who remarks upon this passage," Hæc autem dixit, ut causæ suæ subserviret." The poet Horace roves like a butterfly through the schools, and now wings along the walls of the Porch, now basks among the flowers of the Garden; while Virgil, with a tone of mind strongly philosophical, has yet left us wholly uncertain as to the sect which he espoused. The balance of opinion declares him to have been an Epicurean, but the ancient author of his life asserts that he was an Academician; and we trace through his poetry the tenets of almost all the leading sects. The same kind of eclectic indifference is observable in most of the Roman writers. Thus Propertius, in the fine elegy to Cynthia, on his departure for Athens,

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Disdains to take at once its briny taint,
But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge,
Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left. 3

Illic vel studiis animum emendare Platonis, Incipiam, aut hortis, docte Epicure, tuis. Lib. iii. Eleg. 21. Though Broeckhusius here reads, "dux Epicure," which seems to fix the poet under the banners of Epicurus. Even the Stoic Seneca, whose doctrines have been considered so orthodox, that St. Jerome has ranked him amongst the ecclesiastical writers, while Boccaccio doubts (in consideration of his supposed correspondence with St. Paul) whether Dante should have placed him in Limbo with the rest of the Pagans -even the rigid Seneca has bestowed such commendations on Epicurus, that if only those passages of his works were preserved to us, we could not hesitate, I think, in pronouncing him a confirmed Epicurean. With similar inconsistency, we find Porphyry, in his work upon abstinence, referring to Epicurus as an example of the most strict Pythagorean temperance; and Lancelotti (the author of "Farfalloni degli antici Istorici") has been seduced by this grave reputation of Epicurus into the absurd error of associating him with Chrysippus, as a chief of the Stoic school. There is no doubt, indeed, that however the Epicurean sect might have relaxed from its original purity, the morals of its founder were as correct as those of any among the ancient philosophers; and his doctrines upon pleasure, as explained in the letter to Menæceus, are rational, amiable, and consistent with our nature. A late writer, De Sablons, in his Grands Hommes vengés, expresses strong indignation against the Encyclopédistes for their just and animated praises of Epicurus, and discussing the question, "si ce philosophe étoit vertueux,' denies it upon no other authority than the calumnies collected by Plutarch, who himself confesses that, on this particular subject, he consulted only opinion and report, without pausing to investigate their truth.- Aλ any dožar, ou Thy aàndisar OXOTOUMLEY. To the factious zeal of his illiberal rivals, the Stoics, Epicurus chiefly owed these gross misrepresentations of the life and opinions of himself and his associates, which, notwithstanding the learned exertions of Gassendi, have still left an odium on the name of his philosophy; and we ought to examine the ancient accounts of this philosopher with about the same degree of cautious belief which, in reading ecclesiastical history, we yield to the invectives of the fathers against the heretics, trusting as little to Plutarch upon a dogma of Epicurus, as we would to the vehement St. Cyril upon a tenet of Nestorius. (1801.)

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The preceding remarks, I wish the reader to observe, were written at a time, when I thought the studies to which they refer much more important as well as more amusing than, I freely confess, they appear to me at present.

1 Lactantius asserts that all the truths of Christianity may be found dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that any one who would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy might form a code in no respect differing from that of the Christian. "Si extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem sparsam per singulos per sectasque diffusam colligeret in unum, ac redigeret in corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a nobis.”—Inst. lib. vi. c. 7.

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Where are the chords she us'd to touch? The airs, the songs she lov'd so much? Those songs are hush'd, those chords are still, And so, perhaps, will every thrill

Of feeling soon be lull'd to rest,
Which late I wak'd in Anna's breast.
Yet, no-the simple notes I play'd
From memory's tablet soon may fade;
The songs, which Anna lov'd to hear,
May vanish from her heart and ear;
But friendship's voice shall ever find
An echo in that gentle mind,
Nor memory lose nor time impair
The sympathies that tremble there.

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Why are husbands like the mint?" Because, forsooth, a husband's duty Is but to set the name and print

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'Twas one of those facetious nights
That Grammont gave this forfeit ring
For breaking grave conundrum-rites,
Or punning ill, or—some such thing:

From whence it can be fairly trac'd,
Through many a branch and many a bough,
From twig to twig, until it grac'd

The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then, to you,

Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical, I swear by Heathcote's eye of blue

To dedicate the important chronicle.

collected together in the Galaxy.- Anues de overger, **** Πυθαγοραν. αι ψυχαι ὡς συναγέσθαι φησιν εις τον γαλαξίαν.

1 According to Pythagoras, the people of Dreams are souls Porphyr. de Antro Nymph.

Long may your ancient inmates give Their mantles to your modern lodgers, And Charles's loves in Heathcote live, And Charles's bards revive in Rogers.

Let no pedantic fools be there;

For ever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware,

And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd.

But still receive the young, the gay,

The few who know the rare delight

Of reading Grammont every day,

And acting Grammont every night.

THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS,

A FRAGMENT.

Τι κακον ὁ γελως ;

CHRYSOST. Homil. in Epist. ad Hebræos.

BUT, whither have these gentle ones,
These rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,
Led my truant brains a dancing?
Instead of studying tomes scholastic,
Ecclesiastic, or monastic,
Off I fly, careering far

In chase of Pollys, prettier far
Than any of their namesakes are,
The Polymaths and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and all their sisters.

1 Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father."-" Nullâ de re unquam præterquam de patre dubitavit."-In Vit. He was very learned-" Là-dedans, (that is, in his head when it was opened.) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque I Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence du Latin avec le Grec," &c.- See L'Histoire de Montmaur, tom. ii. p. 91.

* Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus. —“Philippus Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi," says Stadelius de circumforaneå Literatorum vanitate. He used to I fight the devil every night with a broadsword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (Vide Oporin. Vit. apud Christian. Gryph. Vit. Select. quorundam Eruditissimorum, &c.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen:-" My very beard (says he in his Paragrænum) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna."

3 The angel, who scolded St. Jerom for reading Cicero, as Gratian tells the story in his "Concordantia discordantium Canonum," and says, that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classics: " Episcopus Gentilium libros

So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heap'd around him,-
Mamurra stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus. 2
When lo! while all that's learn'd and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,

And through the window of his study
Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy,
With eyes, as brightly turn'd upon him as
The angel's 3 were on Hieronymus.
Quick fly the folios, widely scatter'd,
Old Homer's laurel'd brow is batter'd,
And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in
The reverend eye of St. Augustin.
Raptur'd he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman, for thy lovelier page :
Sweet book!-unlike the books of art, -
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom the dear errata column
Is the Best page in all the volume ! 4

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non legat."-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying -besides, angels, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenus assures us, have got no tongues. Ουχ ώς ήμιν τα ωτα, ούτως εκείνοις ή γλωττα· ουδ' αν οργανα τις δωη φωνης αγγελοις. - Clem. Alexand. Stromat.

4 The idea of the Rabbins, respecting the origin of woman, is not a little singular. They think that man was originally formed with a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off this appendage, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordinary supposition the following reflection is founded: If such is the tie between women and men, The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf, For he takes to his tail like an idiot again, And thus makes a deplorable ape of himself. Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail, Every husband remembers th' original plan, And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,

Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can.

5 Scaliger. de Emendat. Tempor.-Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians husbandry. See Jacques Gaffarel (Curiosités Inouïes, chap. i.), who says he thinks

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