are young, and those whom I have now mentioned are suspected rather to belong to a past age. Your remarks are learned; but who can read them at Newmarket, or in Arthur's coffeehouse?

"There is neither order nor connexion in it," says the offended mathematician. Do not be surprised, he will consider you a deserter. You have not awarded the apple to his Venus, and he judges of a work of taste, on the footing of Euclid's Elements.

Among your critics, I see the literary man himself. I will not say that you think, and leave to him the trouble of compiling. My respect for you is too great to allow me to filch this witticism from Voltaire. But your observations do not consist of corrections of passages. What verse of Aristophanes have you restored? On what manuscript do you rely? Besides, you look at some objects under a new or singular point of view. Your chronology is Newton's; you justify Virgil's anachronism; your gods are not *****'s. Tremble at his new edition; you will have a place in his notes.

I will not reproach you with the obscurity, shall I say, or the profundity of some of your thoughts, your abbreviated sentences, your bold figures. The Academic nation will be less merciful, and will ridicule any one who would apply to you one of your own remarks, and the modest avowal of the Roman orator, when reading over, at a mature age, a much applauded production of his youth. "Quantis illa clamoribus, adolescentuli," (he was six and twenty)" diximus de supplicio parricidarum! quæ nequaquam satis deferbuisse post aliquanto sentire cœpimus..... Sunt enim omnia, sicut adolescentis, non tam re et maturitate, quam spe et expectatione, laudati."-Cicero, Orator. 29.

I have reserved the greatest of your crimes to the last. You are an Englishman, and you have chosen the language of your enemies. Old Cato groans aloud, and in his Antigallican Club denounces you, punch-bowl in hand, as an enemy to the country. My dear friends," says he, "liberty is about to expire. This people, over whom we have always triumphed, regain by their artifices more than they are deprived of by our arms. Is it not enough that we have stage-dancers, hair-dressers, and cooks from Paris? that they drink in our island-yes, drink French wines, that they read French books? Must it be? Good God! is it at the highest period of our glory that an Englishman should set this first example? must we write in their language?”

Against so grave an attack, what defence will you make? Will you find defenders where you have none but accomplices! Shall I dare to raise my voice-I, who, an Englishman only by choice,

but not by birth, have not been able to naturalise my tongue so well as my heart?

Shall I say what Plutarch, who was nearly in the same situation as myself, would have said; that nothing was more empty than the prophecy of the snarling censor, that Greek would ruin his country, since, on the contrary, she rose to the highest pitch of glory and power, at the time when Grecian literature and foreign learning most flourished there (a); that that people who, while they were free, placed their greatness in that only which constitutes the greatness of a nation, brought their grammarians, but not their generals, from Greece; while on the other hand, Carthage drew thence her soldiers and her generals, and forbad the use of the language (6); that Flaminius, Scipio, Cato himself-but, like them, I speak Greek to your accuser. He is equally ignorant that Cicero was initiated at Athens, and that the name of Chesterfield is found in the registers of a celebrated academy at Paris; he would swear that our Henrys and our Edwards never spoke, or at least never read French; and if I pressed him close, he would perhaps maintain that the King of Prussia would have been, ere this, master of Vienna, had he not written, in Voltaire's style, the Memoirs of the House of Brandenburgh.

Nothing, undoubtedly, is more dishonourable than to despise one's own language. But is it despised if every other is not excluded? Cicero, who wrote the history of his own consulship in Greek, preferred, it seems, that language, though he never had a rival in his own, thought the Latin, perhaps through prejudice, more copious than the Greek (c), and, if he did not make it such, yet extended the boundaries of its dominion further than Cæsar did those of the republic.

Were it true that the unsociable genius of different languages prevents a person who wishes to reconcile them, from excelling in any, it would undoubtedly be wrong to run the risk of corrupting the purity of that one which is natural to us, without any hope of succeeding in that which is not. But experience is far from confirming this pretended fear of admixtures; never did the Romans write better Latin than on coming out of the Greek academies. That piece of Cicero's which I have mentioned has probably enhanced the value of Sallust's Latin masterpieces; and had it not been for Polybius's history, reviewed by the hero (d) who had been his disciple, we should perhaps never have had either Livy or Tacitus.

(a) Plutarch, Life of Cato the Censor.

(6) Justin. xx. 5.

(c) De Finibus, lib. 3.

(d) Scipio Africanus.

Every language, when complete within itself, is limited. Your own, more than any other, has been enriching by borrowing. Is it impossible but that it may be rendered softer by Italian, more comprehensive by German, more precise and regular by French? Like those lakes whose waters grow purer and clearer by mixture and agitation with those they receive from neighbouring rivers, so modern tongues can only live by intercommunication, and I might venture to say, by their reciprocal clashings.

No, it is not from the author who exercises his pen in writing with purity a foreign language, that his own has to fear an injurious alteration. The degree of perfection to which it may attain is his object, and analogy is his rule. He is too well acquainted with the treasures of his own tongue, to load it with words uselessly transplanted. He has studied its character, and will not indulge himself in forced constructions under the pretext of causing himself to be read. Respecting even its singularities, he knows that a long continued custom requires delicacy of management, and that a sensible man never distinguishes himself most in this way, and is very rarely the first to do so.

Who, then, are the real corrupters of languages? Those little witlings, who, destitute of new ideas, can distinguish themselves only by their neologian jargon; those young travellers who from Paris, which they have badly seen, bring back and put in circulation the ephemeral expression which they have not understood; and, more insignificant perhaps than either, those half scholars who think they give relief to their paradoxes, and variety to their style, by the introduction of barbarous synonymes, the sense of which they have, perhaps with difficulty, found out in the dictionary.

Seldom does a foreigner succeed in writing in a foreign language in such a manner as not to be detected. But why should it not be so! Lucullus need not have affected Latinisms for fear of being taken for a Greek; and I do not suppose you pride yourself on being with more difficulty recognised for a Briton, than Lucullus for a Roman. But this very circumstance will give you additional merit in the eyes of the French. They will remark a word or an expression foreign to their language, and perhaps wish it were not so. Those striking features, those bold metaphors, that sacrifice of regularity to sentiment and of harmony to strength, will to them be characteristics of the originality of a nation which deserves to be studied, and which is continually being studied more and more. The individuality of the author will not escape their notice, and they will know how to discriminate between what your island owes to you, and what you owe to your island.

When a person is acquainted with but one language, he can know foreign authors only by translations. Is this enough to judge of them by? Shall I be satirising those who devote themselves to the laborious task of translating, if I affirm that their least defect is that of depriving us of the national and personal character of their authors? Oh! why have not these authors themselves written, even though badly, in another language? My own expression is the accompaniment of my thoughts; you, who translate me, do you feel what I feel? Montaigne would always be Montaigne, even if he had himself dressed his essays in English; and I should esteem one book of Milton's written in French or Italian by Milton himself, twenty times as much as the elegant translations of Boccaccio and Rolli.

If, in your so happily isolated country, some persons, jealous of the universality acquired by the French language on the continent, should complain that you have broken through the last barrier opposed to the inundation; let them allow me not to regard it as so great a misfortune, that one common tongue should increasingly unite the states of Europe, should facilitate ministerial conferences, should prevent long negotiations and equivocal treaties, should make peace to be desired, and render it more precious and more durable. The first step to be made towards agreement is to understand each other.

You, sir, have just set a great exemple. In the midst of the successes of your arms, you have honoured the literature of your enemies. This last triumph is the most noble. May it become general and reciprocal, and may the time come, when different nations, the scattered members of the same family, rising above the petty distinctions of English, French, Germans, and Russians, shall merit the appellation of men.

I have the honour to be, sir, with sentiments which depend on no climate and on no time, your very obedient, humble servant,

British Museum, June 16th, 1761.

M. MATY.

ESSAY

ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.

1. THE history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind. If this last branch of study should be, for a thousand considerations, esteemed precious in the eyes of a philosopher, the reflection now made should render it dear to every philanthropist.

II. Oh, that so comfortable a truth were entirely free from exception! But, alas! human nature penetrates but too often into the scholar's study. In that refuge of wisdom it is still led astray by prejudice, agitated by passion, and debased by weakness.

The reign of fashion is founded on the fickleness of mankind; an empire so frivolous in its origin, so direful in its effect. The man of letters dares not rebel against its authority, and if his reasonings delay his defeat, they render it at least more disgraceful.

Every age and country has seen some particular science made the object of a preference, often undeserved, while other branches of study languish in as unreasonable a neglect. Metaphysics and dialectics under Alexander's successors (a), politics and eloquence in the Roman republic, history and poetry in the Augustan age, grammar and jurisprudence under the Lower Empire, scholastic philosophy in the thirteenth century, and literature down to the days of our fathers, have in their turns formed the objects of men's admiration and contempt. Physics and mathematics are

(a) This was the age of philosophical sects, who combated for the different systems of their respective masters with all the acrimony of theologians.

The love of system necessarily produces an attachment to generalisations, which usually leads to a contempt of the details of knowledge.

"The love of system," says M. Freret, "which took possession of men's minds after the time of Aristotle, induced the Greeks to abandon the study of nature, and put a stop to the progress of their philosophical discoveries. Subtle methods of reasoning took the place of experience; the exact sciences, geometry, astronomy, and real philosophy almost entirely disappeared. They were no longer occupied in carefully acquiring fresh knowledge, but in the arrangement and mutual connexion of that which they believed they already possessed, in order to form systems out of it. This gave rise to the formation of the different sects; minds of the highest order were spent in the abstractions of an obscure system of metaphysics, where most frequently words were substituted for things or in the dialectic logic, which, though called by Aristotle the instrument of the mind, often became with its disciples the principal and almost sole object of their attention. The whole period of life was passed in studying the art of reasoning and in never reasoning, or at least in reasoning only about fantastical objects.-Mémoires de l'Académie des Belles-Lettres, tom. vi. p. 159.