have the fame fuccefs, we must have the fame prudence, and the fame fortune; and fince the example must not only answer the cafe before us in general, but in every minute circumftance. This is the fense of that admirable historian, and these are his words------" é fenza dubio molto pericolofo il governarfi con gl' efempi, "fe non concorono, non solo in generale, "ma in tutti i particulari, le medefime "ragioni; fe le cofe non fono regolate con "la medefima prudenza, & fe oltre a tutti "li altri fondamenti, non v'ha la parte fua "la medefima fortuna," An obfervation that BOILEAU makes, and a rule he lays down in speaking of tranflations, will properly find their place here, and ferve to explain still better what I would establish. "To tranflate fervilely into modern lan guage an ancient author phrase by phrase, "and word by word, is prepofterous: * nothing can be more unlike the origi"nal than such a copy. It is not to fhew, it is to disguise the author: and he " who "who has known him only in this dress, "would not know him in his own. A good "writer, instead of taking this inglorious "and unprofitable task upon him, will "joufter contre l'original, rather imitate than tranflate, and rather emulate "than imitate: he will transfufe the "fense and spirit of the original into his "own work, and will endeavour to "write as the ancient author would have " wrote, had he writ in the fame lan"guage." Now, to improve by examples is to improve by imitation. We must catch the fpirit, if we can, and conform ourselves to the reason of them; but we must not affect to tranflate fervilely into our conduct, if your lordship will allow me the expreffion, the particular conduct of those good and great men, whofe images history sets before us. CoDRUS and the DECII devoted themselves to death: one, because an oracle had foretold that the army whofe general was killed would be victorious; the others in com pliance pliance with a fuperftition that bore great analogy to a ceremony practifed in the old Egyptian church, and added afterwards, as many others of the fame origin were, to the ritual of the Ifraelites. These are examples of great magnanimity to be fure, and of magnanimity employed in the moft worthy cause. In the early days of the Athenian and Roman government, when the credit of oracles and all kinds of fuperftition prevailed, when heaven was piously thought to delight in blood, and even human blood was fhed under wild notions of atonement, propitiation, purgation, expiation, and fatisfaction; they who set fuch examples as these acted an heroical and a rational part too. But if a general should act the fame part now, and, in order to fecure his victory, get killed as faft as he could; he might pass for an hero, but I am fure he would pass for a madman. Even these examples however are of ufe: they excite us at least to venture our lives freely in the fervice of Our our country; by propofing to our imitation men who devoted themselves to certain death in the service of theirs. They fhew us what a turn of imagination can operate, and how the greatest trifle, nay the greatest abfurdity, dreffed up in the folemn airs of religion, can carry ardor and confidence, or the contrary fentiments, into the breasts of thousands. THERE are certain general principles, and rules of life and conduct, which always must be true, because they are conformable to the invariable nature of things. He who studies history as he would ftudy philofophy will foon diftinguish and collect them, and by doing fo will foon form to himself a general system of ethics and politics on the surest foundations, on the trial of these principles and rules in all ages, and on the confirmation of them by univerfal experience. I faid he will diftinguish them; for once more I muft fay, that as to par ticular ticular modes of actions, and measures of conduct, which the cuftoms of different countries, the manners of different ages, and the circumstances of different conjunctures, have appropriated, as it were, it is always ridiculous, or imprudent and dangerous, to employ them. But this is not all. By contemplating the vast variety of particular. characters and events; by examining the ftrange combinations of caufes, different, remote, and seemingly oppofite, that often concur in producing one effect; and the furprifing fertility of one fingle and uniform cause in the producing of a multitude of effects as different, as remote, and feemingly as oppofite; by tracing carefully, as carefully as if the fubject he confiders were of perfonal and immediate concern to him, all the minute and fometimes fcarce-perceivable circumstances, either in the characters of actors, or in the course of actions, that history enables him to trace, and according to which the fuccefs of affairs, even the greateft, is moftly determined; by thefe, VOL. I. F and |