fundity; as is alfo the purfuit of literature, as it is carried on by the learned heads of fome of our schools and colleges; many of whom, however deep in words, are fo fhallow of understanding, that if it were not a kind of folecism to call a fcholar a blockhead, we might fet them down for very fad noodles indeed.

It is generally fuppofed that every man of letters is qualified to be a critic in matters of literature: this, however, is an egregious mistake. It is prefumed that no man can understand a foreign or a dead language better than he may be supposed to know his native tongue; and yet how many men are there who understand their native language and vernacular idioms very well, and yet have no talents for writing nor capacity to judge of the compofitions of others. Now, as to be profound in trifles is ftill to be fuperficial, and as we have many fuch fuperficial proficients in England, fo we have many profound adepts in the abftrufe fciences, who cannot be brought to look upon the improvements of style, and the cultivation of the literary arts, as of fufficient importance to claim their attention. They are mistaken, however, if they think their attention may not be as deeply engaged, and their application as intent and ufeful, in the investigation of literary as of fcientific principles. That the objects of their enquiry are more vague and tranfitory than thofe of phyfics and geometry is very certain : but this, by increafing the difficulty, does by no means make the ftudy lefs important or profound. The truth is, that our accurate reafoners are either naturally deficient in genius or imagination, or by generally applying themfelves to the abstract fciences, check that fpontaneous exercife of them, which is neceflary to preferve a taste for the elegant investigations of the fine arts.

Mr. D'Alembert is, perhaps, the moft ftriking example in the prefent age, of the poffibility of reconciling the exercife of the ftricteft mathematical genius, with a tafte for poetry and the other polite arts :-but we detain the Reader from the experimental proof of what we have here afferted.

The first piece in this publication contains Remarks on Tranflation; in regard to which, we have principally to with the Author had confidered his fubject more generally, and had not confined his views fo particularly to the French language. Next to this, we could with he had not fhewn fo great a partiality to the Authors of his own country. But the Reader will judge:

Good tranflations, fays he, are the beft calculated for enriching language. This is the ufe I would make of them, which, in my opinion, is more proper, than what is hinted by a famous fatyrift of the last age, who was as paffionate an admirer of the

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antients,

antients, as he was a fevere, and fometimes unjust cenfor of the moderns. "The French," fays that writer, want tafte, and' only the taste of the antients can form it amongst our authors and connoiffeurs; and good tranflations would give that valuable tafte to those who are not qualified to read the originals." If we want taste, I know not where it is fled. It is not, at least, the fault of the models in our language, which are inferior to the ancients in no refpects. To mention only the dead; who will dare to place Sophocles above Corneille, Euripides above Racine, Theophraftus above Bruyere, or Phædrus above Fontaine? Let not our claffical library confift folely of tranflations, nor let us exclude them. They will multiply good models; they will affift us in understanding the character of writers, ages, and people; they will teach us to perceive those shades, which diftinguifh abfolute and univerfal taste from national.

• The third arbitrary law to which tranflators are subject, is the ridiculous constraint of tranflating an author from beginning to end. By this means the tranflator, fatigued and chilled by the weak paffages, languifhes in the most excellent befides, why fhould he be put to the torture to give an elegant turn to a falfe thought, or to be nice upon a common idea? It is not to bring the faults of the antients to light, that we tranfplant them into our language, but to enrich our learning by what is excellent among them. To tranflate them by parcels is not to mutilate them, it is to paint them in profile, and to advantage. What entertainment can there be in a tranflation of that part of the Æneid, where the harpies rob the Trojans of their dinner; or of thofe cold, and fometimes grofs pleafantries, which disfigure the harangues of Cicero; or of thofe paffages in an hiftorian, which prefent nothing interefting to the reader in point of matter or style? Why, in short, fhould we transfer into another language that which has only graces in its own, like the details of agriculture and paftoral life, which are so agreeable in Virgil, and fo infipid in all the tranflations which have been made of them?

Why should not the wife rule of Horace, to neglect what we cannot fucceed in, be as applicable to tranflations as any other kind of writing?

Our learned men would find a confiderable advantage; in tranflating by parcels certain works, (which contain beauties fufficient to make the fortune of a number of writers,) whofe authors, if they had as much tafte as genius, would eclipfe writers of the first rank. What pleasure, for inftance, would Seneca or Lucan give thus opened and tranflated by a masterly hand Seneca, fo excellent to cite, and fo tirefome to read fuc

ceffively

ceffively forward, who turns round the fame object with a brilliant rapidity; in this refpect different from Cicero, who always keeps advancing, though flowly, to his end. Lucan, the Seneca of poets, fo full of mafculine and true beauties, but too declamatory, too monotonous, too full of maxims, and too void of images. The only writers who have a title to be tranflated intirely, are they whofe agreeablenefs confifts in their very negligence, fuch as Plutarch in his lives of illuftrious men, where, quitting and refuming his fubject every inftant, he converfes with his reader without tiring him.'

The partiality we complained of appears fufficiently in the beginning of the above quotation; and with regard to the latter part of the extract, we can admit the justice of our author's fentiments only in cafes where the tranflator is capable of difplaying as much judgment, in the felection of proper paffages from the original, as Mr. D'Alembert himself hath fhewn in his extracts from Tacitus. It would be a dangerous thing, however, to truft our hackney tranflators with fuch unlimited authority to maim and mutilate refpectable originals. As we are on this fubject, alfo, we cannot difpute it without expreffing a third with, that the Tranflator had duly attended to the feveral excellent rules here laid down for his conduct; a neglect that is the lefs excufeable, as he has even broken through those rules in the very act of transcribing them *.

The second piece is a difcourfe fpoken by our Author on his admiffion to the French academy; a performance, like most others of the kind, replete with panegyric and occafional strokes of affected oratory.

The third piece is a very valuable one, containing reflections on elocution and ftyle in general. We fhall felect from it the following paffage.

Nothing is more oppofite to an eafy ftyle, and confequently to a good tafte, than that figurative and poetical language, which is charged with metaphors and antithefes, which is called, for what reafon I cannot tell, the academic ftyle, though the most celebrated members of the French academy have fhunned it with care, and feverely profcribed it in their works. We may call it, with more reafon, the style of the pulpit, as being used by most of our modern preachers: it makes their fermons refemble-not the effufion of a heart penetrated with

The Author himself, in like manner, in his Essay on ftile and elocution, is blaming an affected mode of expreffion and recommending fimplicity; and while he makes ufe of the following ænigmatical turn, This maxim is both true and fofe; proceeding then to unriddle the fen

tence.

the

the truths which it wants to perfuade others, but a kind of tedious, monotonous representation, where the actor is applauding himself, without being attended to. What fhall we fay of a man, who, being about to addrefs us on the things of a world, where we are moft interested, acquits himself by a ftudied, measured difcourfe, charged with figures and ornaments? Can this rhetorician appear to us any otherwife, than as acting an infipid and ridiculous part? This is the true picture of the generality of our preachers. Their declamation feems beneath the pious comedies of our miffionaries, which make men of the world fmile, and common people weep. Thefe miffionaries feem at least to be affected with what they deliver, and their slocution, coarfe and unpolifhed as it is, produces its effect on thofe for whom it is calculated.'

The miffionaries, of which our Author fpeaks, appear to be of the fame ftamp with fome of our methodift and other diffenting preachers, whofe extravagant declamations have a much more fenfible effect on their hearers, than those of more learned and regular orators.

The fourth piece is an Account of the Government in Geneva. The fifth relates to the Abufe of Criticifm in Matters of Religion, and contains a very candid and forcible apology for fuch philofophers whofe fentiments do not coincide with the profeffed teachers of doctrines, faid to be thofe of Chriftianity. The twelfth fection of this effay may ferve as a specimen of the whole.

During the reign of the Ariftotelian philofophy, that is, for many ages, it was believed, that all our ideas came from the fenfes; and it could not be imagined, that an opinion, fo conformable to reason and experience, fhould ever be regarded as dangerous. It was even forbid, on pain of death, to teach a contrary doctrine. The punishment was, it must be confeffed a little hard, whether our ideas are derived from fenfe or not. It is right all the world fhould live; but the prohibition and the penalty prove the religious attachment of our fathers to an antient opinion, "that fenfation is the fource of all knowlege." Descartes came, and faid, "The foul is fpiritual: now, what is a fpiritual being without ideas? The foul therefore has ideas from the inftant its exiftence commences, that is, it has innate ideas." This reafoning, joined to the attraction of a new opinion, feduced many fchools; but they went farther than their master. From the fpirituality of the foul, Defcartes concluded innate ideas; one of his difciples concluded more, that to deny innate ideas, was to deny the fpirituality of the foul; perhaps they would have made innate ideas an article of faith,

if they could have diffembled, that this pretended truth was only difcovered in the last century. We have feen theologians carry their extravagance fo far, as to maintain, that the opinion, which unites our ideas to our fenfations, endangers the mystery of original fin, and the grace of baptifm. It is thus, that the moft inconteftable maxims in philofophy and the mathematics have been attacked, under pretence of their feeming oppofition with fome doctrine of faith: befides, it is impoffible to combat innate ideas, by the fame weapons of religion which established it? Muft not an infant, who has the idea of God, as the Cartefians pretend, from the breaft, and even from the womb, alfo know the duties owing to God, which is contrary to the first principles of religion and common fenfe? Will any one fay, the idea of God exifts in infants, without being developed? But what are ideas which the foul poffeffes without knowing them, and the things which it knows without thought, and yet is obliged to learn afterwards, as much as if it had never known them? A fpiritual being, fome may fay, muft neceffarily have ideas from the moment it exifts. It is eafy to answer, that this being, in the first moments of its exiftence, may be confined to fenfation; that a capacity of thinking is fufficient to conftitute it immaterial, fince that power, by the confeffion of all divines, belongs only to a fpiritual fubftance. But further, to decide in what fpirituality confifts, and whether it be the nature of a spiritual being to think, or even to perceive always, what diftinct idea have we of the nature of the foul? Let us afk Malebranche, who will not be fufpected of confounding mind with matter. In fine, it is by our fenfes that we have the knowlege of corporeal fubftance: It is therefore through their means, that we have been taught to regard it as incapable of will and fenfation, and confequently of thought from thence refult two confequences; the first, that we owe to our sensations and reflections the knowlege we have of the immateriality of the foul; in the second place, that the idea we have of spirituality is negative, which teaches what a fpiritual being is not, without informing us what it is; it would be prefumption to think otherwife, and weakness to believe we must think otherwise to be orthodox.

The foul is neither matter nor extenfion, and yet it is fomething; though grofs prejudice, fortified by habitude, leads us to judge, that what is not matter is nothing. See where philofophy conducts us, and where it leaves us

The next piece contains an Effay on the Alliance (or connection) betwixt Learned Men and the Great, and was before. published in a late periodical work, intitled, The Library.

The