common to them all. Instead of the vehement and almost slanderous dehortation from marriage, which the Misogyne, Boccaccio (Vita e Costumi di Dante, p. 12. 16.) addresses to literary men, I would substitute the simple advice; be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honourable augmentation to your arms, but not constitute the coat, or fill the escutcheon!

To objections from conscience I can of course answer in no other way, than by requesting the youthful objector (as I have already done on a former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether other influences may not be at work; whether spirits, "not of health," and with whispers "not from heaven,” may not be walking in the twilight of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce them to a distinct intelligible form; let him be certain that he has read with a docile mind and favourable dispositions, the best and most fundamental works on the subject; that he has had both mind and heart opened to the great and illustrious qualities of the many renowned characters, who had doubted like himself, and whose researches had ended in the clear conviction, that their doubts had been groundless, or at least in no proportion to the counter-weight. Happy will it be for such a man, if, among his contemporaries elder than himself, he should meet with one, who with similar powers, and feelings as acute as his own, had entertained the same scruples; had acted upon them; and who, by after-research (when the step was, alas! irretrievable, but for that very reason his research undeniably disinterested) had discovered himself to have quarrelled with received opinions only to embrace errors, to have left the directions tracked out for him on the high road of honourable exertion, only to deviate into a labyrinth, where, when he had wandered, till his head was giddy, his best good fortune was finally to have found his way out again, too late for prudence, though not too late for conscience or for truth! Time spent in such delay is time won; for manhood in the mean time is advancing, and with it increase of knowledge, strength of judgment, and, above all, temperance of feelings. And even if these should effect no change, yet the delay will at least prevent the final approval of the decision from being alloyed by the inward censure of the rashness and vanity by which it had been precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion, and scarcely less than a libel on human nature, to believe that there is any established and reputable profession or em

ployment, in which a man may not continue to act with honesty and honour; and, doubtless, there is likewise none which may not at times, present temptations to the contrary. But wofully will that man find himself mistaken, who imagines that the profession of literature, or (to speak inore plainly) the trade of authorship, besets its members with fewer or with less insidious temptations, than the church, the law, or the different branches of commerce. But I have treated sufficiently on this unpleasant subject in an early chapter of this volume. I will conclude the present, therefore, with a short extract from HERDER, whose name I might have added to the illustrious list of those who have combined the successful pursuit of the muses, not only with the faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below.* "Am sorgf altigsten, meiden sie die Autorschaft. Zu fruh oder unmassig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wuste und das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine uble Folgen gabe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druceken, lieset wahrscheinlich ubel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder und Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden.

HERDER.

* Translation.-"With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early, or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person who reads only to print, in all probability reads amiss; and he who sends away through the pen and the press, every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor."

CHAPTER XII.

A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or ommission of the chapter that follows.

In the perusal of philosophical works, I have been greatly benefitted by a resolve, which, in the antithetic form, and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: "until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding." This golden rule of mine does, I own, resemble those of Pythagoras, in its obscurity rather than in its depth. If, however, the reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust that he will find its meaning fully explained by the following instances. I have now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic, full of dreams and supernatural experiences. I see clearly the writer's grounds, and their hollowness. I have a complete insight into the causes, which, through the medium of his body, had acted on his mind; and by application of received and ascertained laws, I can satisfactorily explain to my own reason, all the strange incidents which the writer records of himself. And this I can do without suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in broad day-light a mån tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his way in a fog, or by treacherous moonshine; even so, and with the same tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered visionary. I UNDERSTAND HIS IGNO

RANCE.

On the other hand, I have been re-perusing, with the best energies of my mind, the Timæus of PLATO. Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with a reverential sense of the author's genius; but there is a considerable portion of the work to which I can attach no consistent meaning. In other treatises of the same philosopher, intended for the average comprehensions of men, I have been delighted with the masterly good sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and the aptness of the inductions. I recollect, likewise, that numerous passages in this author, which I thoroughly comprehend, were formerly no less unintelligible to me, than the passages now in question. It would, I am aware, be quite fashionable to

dismiss them at once as Platonic jargon. But this I cannot do, with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in vain for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency. I have no insight into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, using words with such half-meanings to himself, as must perforce pass into no-meaning to his readers. When, in addition to the motives thus suggested by my own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance the number and the series of great men, who, after long and zealous study of these works, had joined in honouring the name of PLATO with epithets, that almost transcend humanity, I feel that a contemptuous verdict on my part might argue want of modesty, but would hardly be received by the judicious, as evidence of superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all my at tempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, I CONDLUDE MYSELF

IGNORANT OF HIS UNDERSTANDING.

In lieu of the various requests, which the anxiety of authorship addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are separated from the forms by which they are at once clothed and modified, may perchance present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to alarm and deter. Though I might find numerous precedents, I shall not desire the reader to strip his mind of all prejudices, or to keep all prior systems out of view during his examination of the present. For, in truth, such requests appear to me not much unlike the advice given to hypocondriacal patients in Dr.. Buchan's domestic medicine; videlicit, to preserve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spirits. Till I had discovered the art of destroying the memory a parte post, without injury to its future operations, and without detriment to the judgment, I should suppress the request as premature; and, therefore, however much I may wish to be read with an unprejudiced mind, I do not presume to state it as a necessary condition.

The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may be rationally conjectured before-hand, whether or no a reader

would lose his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any other treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be cruelly misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for the moral or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and therefore of course indemonstrable, and incapable of further analysis, the general notions of matter, soul, body, action, passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is satisfied if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or more of these supposed elements, with plausible subordination and apt arrangement: to such a mind I would as courteously as possible convey the hint, that for him the chapter was not written,

Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.

For these terms do, in truth, include all the difficulties which the human mind can propose for solution. Taking them, therefore, in mass, and unexamined, it requires only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to draw forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors of legerdemain at our village fairs pull out ribbon after ribbon from their mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again to their different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful in rendering our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to it. It does not increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over, the wealth which we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all the established professions of society, this is sufficient. But for philosophy in its highest sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and therefor scientia scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only, though, as a preparative discipline, indispensable.

Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the proselytes of that compendious philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking of brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from body, contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours can qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensations.

But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage to avow it in an age and country, in which disquisitions on all sub