later date. Bayle, in his Dictionary, has stated ably and impartially the arguments on both sides of the question; evidently leaning, however, very decidedly, in his own opinion, to that of Machiavel's apologists.

The following passage from the excellent work of M. Simonde de Sismondi on the Literature of the South, appears to me to approach very near to the truth, in the estimate it contains both of the spirit of the Prince, and of the character of the author. "The real object of Machiavel cannot have been to confirm upon the throne a tyrant whom he detested, and against whom he had already conspired; nor is it more probable, that he had a design to expose to the people the maxims of tyranny, in order to render them odious. Universal experience made them at that time sufficiently known to all Italy; and that infernal policy, which Machiavel reduced to prin. ciples, was, in the sixteenth century, practised by every government. There is rather, in his manner of treating it, a universal bitterness against mankind; a contempt of the whole human race; which makes him address them in the language to which they had debased themselves. He speaks to the interests of men, and to their selfish calculations, as if he thought it useless to appeal to their enthusiasm or to their moral feelings."

I agree perfectly with M. de Sismondi in considering the two opposite hypotheses referred to in the above extract, as alike untenable; and have only to add to his remarks, that, in writing the Prince, the author seems to have been more under the influence of spleen, of ill humor, and of blasted hopes, than of any deliberate or systematical purpose, either favorable or adverse to human happiness. The prevailing sentiment in his mind probably was, Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur.*

According to this view of the subject, Machiavel's Prince, instead of being considered as a new system of political morality, invented by himself, ought to be regarded merely as a digest of the maxims of state policy then universally acted upon in the Italian courts. If I be not mistaken, it was in this light that the book was regarded by Lord Bacon, whose opinion concerning it being, in one instance, somewhat ambiguously expressed, has been supposed by several writers of note (particularly Bayle and Mr. Roscoe) to have coincided with that quoted above from Albericus Gentilis. To me it appears, that the very turn of the sentence appealed to on this occasion is rather disrespectful than otherwise to Machiavel's character. "Est itaque quod gratias agamus Machiavellio et hujusmodi scriptoribus, qui aperte et indissimulanter proferunt, quid homines facere soleant, non quid debeant." (De Aug. Scient. Lib. vii. cap. 2.) The best comment, however, on these words, is to be found in another passage of Bacon, where he has expressed his opinion of Machiavel's moral demerits in terms as strong and unequivocal as language can furnish. "Quod enim ad malas artes attinet; si quis Machiavellio se dederit in disciplinam; qui præcipit," &c. &c. &c. See the rest of the paragraph (De Aug. Scient. Lib. viii. cap. 2.) See also a passage in Book vii. chap. 8, beginning thus: "An non et hoc verum est, juvenes multo minus Politica quam Ethice auditores idoneos esse, antequam religione et doctrinâ de moribus et officiis plene imbuantur: ne forte judicio depravati et corrupti, in eam opinionem veniant, non esse rerum differentias morales veras et solidas, sed omnia ex utilitate.-Sic enim Machiavellio dicere placet, Quod si contigisset Cæsarem bello superatum fuisse, Catilinâ ipso fuisset odiosior," &c. &c. After these explicit and repeated declarations of his sentiments on this point, it is hard that Bacon should have been numbered among the apologists of Machiavel, by such high authorities as Bayle, and the excellent biographer of Lorenzo de Medicis.

Note (D.) p. 50.

The charge of plagiarism from Bodin has been urged somewhat indelicately against Montesquieu, by a very respectable writer, the Chevalier de Filangieri. "On a cru, et l'on croit peut-être encore, que Montesquieu a parlé le premier de l'influence du climat. Cette opinion est une erreur. Avant lui, le délicat et ingénieux Fontenelle s'étoit exercé sur cet objet. Machiavel, en plusieurs endroits de ses ouvrages, parle aussi de cette influence du climat sur le physique et sur le moral des peuples. Chardin, un de ces voyageurs qui savent observer, a fait beaucoup de reflexions sur l'influence physique et moral des climats. L'Abbé Dubos a soutenu et développé les

Many traces of this misanthropic disposition occur in the historical and even in the dramatic works of Machiavel. It is very justly observed by M. de Sismondi, that "the pleasantry of his comedies is almost always mingled with gall. laughter at the human race is but the laughter of contempt."

His

J

pensées de Chardin; et Bodin, qui peut-être avoit lu dans Polybe que le climat détermine les formes, la couleur, et les mœurs des peuples, en avoit déjà fait, cent cinquante ans auparavant, la base de son système, dans son livre de la République, et dans sa Méthode de l'Histoire. Avant tous ces écrivains, l'immortel Hippocrate avoit traité fort au long cette matière dans son fameux ouvrage de l'air, des eaux, et des lieux. L'Auteur de l'Esprit des Lois, sans citer un seul de ces philosophes, établit à son tour un système; mais il ne fit qu'altérer les principes d'Hippocrate, et donner une plus grande extension aux idées de Dubos, de Chardin, et de Bodin. Il voulut faire croire au public qu'il avoit eu le premier quelques idées sur ce sujet ; et le public l'on crut sur sa parole." La Science de la Législation, ouvrage traduit de l'Italien. Paris, 1786. Tom. I. p. 225, 226.

The enumeration here given of writers whose works are in every body's hands, might have satisfied Filangieri, that, in giving his sanction to this old theory, Montesquieu had no wish to claim to himself the praise of originality. It is surprising, that, in the foregoing list, the name of Plato should have been omitted, who concludes his fifth book, De Legibus, with remarking, that "all countries are not equally susceptible of the same sort of discipline; and that a wise legislator will pay a due regard to the diversity of national character, arising from the influence of climate and of soil." It is not less surprising, that the name of Charron should have been overlooked, whose observations on the moral influence of physical causes, discover as much originality of thought as those of any of his successors. See De la Sagesse, Livre i. chap. 37,

Innumerable instances of Luther's credulity and superstition are to be found in a book entitled Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia, &c. first published (according to Bayle) in 1571. The only copy of it which I have seen, is a translation from the German into the English tongue by Captain Henrie Bell, (London, 1652.) This work, in which "are gathered up the fragments of the divine discourses which Luther held at his table with Philip Melancthon, and divers other learned men," bears to have been originally collected "out of his holy mouth" by Dr. Anthony Lauterbach, and to have been afterwards "digested into commonplaces" by Dr. Aurifaber. Although not sanctioned with Luther's name, I do not know that the slightest doubts of its details have been suggested, even by such of his followers as have regretted the indiscreet communication to the public, of his unreserved table talk with his confidential companions. The very accurate Seckendorff has not called in question its authenticity; but, on the contrary, gives it his indirect sanction, by remarking, that it was collected with little prudence, and not less imprudently printed: "Libro Colloquiorum Mensalium minus quidem cautè composito et vulgato." (Bayle, Article Luther, Note L.) It is very often quoted as an authority by the candid and judicious Dr. Jortin.

In confirmation of what I have said of Luther's credulity, I shall transcribe, in the words of the English translator, the substance of one of Luther's Divine Discourses, "concerning the devil and his works." "The devil," said Luther, "can transform himself into the shape of a man or a woman, and so deceiveth people; insomuch that one thinketh he lieth by a right woman, and yet is no such matter; for, as St. Paul saith, the devil is strong by the child of unbelief. But insomuch as children or devils are conceived in such sort, the same are very horrible and fearful examples. Like unto this it is also with what they call the Nix in the water, who draweth people unto him as maids and virgins, of whom he begetteth devil's children. The devil can also steal children away; as sometimes children within the space of six weeks after their birth are lost, and other children called supposititii, or changelings, laid in their places. Of the Saxons they were called Killerops.

"Eight years since," said Luther, "at Dessau, I did see and touch such a changed child, which was twelve years of age; he had his eyes, and all members, like another child; he did nothing but feed, and would eat as much as two clowns were able to eat. I told the Prince of Anhalt, if I were prince of that country, I would venture homicidium thereon, and would throw it into the river Moldaw. I admonished the people dwelling in that place devoutly to pray to God to take away the devil. The same was done accordingly, and the second year after the changeling died.

"In Saxony, near unto Halberstad, was a man that also had a killerop, who sucked the mother and five other women dry, and besides devoured very much. This man was advised that he should, in his pilgrimage at Halberstad, make a

promise of the killerop to the Virgin Marie, and should cause him there to be rocked. This advice the man followed, and carried the changeling thither in a basket. But going over a river, being upon the bridge, another devil that was below in the river, called and said, Killerop! Killerop! Then the child in the basket (which never before spake one word) answered, Ho, ho.' The devil in the water asked further, Whither art thou going?' The child in the basket said, I am going towards Hocklestad to our loving mother, to be rocked.' The man being much affrighted thereat, threw the child, with the basket, over the bridge into the water. Whereupon the two devils flew away together, and cried, Ho, ho, ha,' tumbling themselves over one another, and so vanished." (pp. 386, 387.)

With respect to Luther's Theological Disputes with the Devil, see the passages quoted by Bayle, Art. Luther, Note U.

Facts of this sort, so recent in their date, and connected with the history of so great a character, are consolatory to those, who, amid the follies and extravagancies of their contemporaries, are sometimes tempted to despair of the cause of truth, and of the gradual progress of human reason.

Note (F.) page 72.

Ben Jonson is one of the few contemporary writers by whom the transcendent genius of Bacon appears to have been justly appreciated; and the only one I know of, who has transmitted any idea of his forensic eloquence; a subject on which, from his own professional pursuits, combined with the reflecting and philosophical cast of his mind, Jonson was peculiarly qualified to form a competent judgment. "There happened," says he, "in my time, one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. The fear of every man that heard him was, that he should make an end." No finer description of the perfection of this art is to be found in any author, ancient or modern.

The admiration of Jonson for Bacon (whom he appears to have known intimately) seems almost to have blinded him to those indelible shades in his fame, to which, even at this distance of time, it is impossible to turn the eye without feelings of sorrow and humiliation. Yet it is but candid to conclude, from the posthumous praise lavished on him by Jonson and by Sir Kenelm Digby, that the servility of the courtier, and the laxity of the judge, were, in the relations of private life, redeemed by many estimable and amiable qualities. That man must surely have been marked by some rare features of moral as well as of intellectual greatness, of whom, long after his death, Jonson could write in the following words:

My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honors; but I have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his works, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest."

In Aubrey's anecdotes of Bacon, there are several particulars not unworthy of the attention of his future biographers. One expression of this writer is more peculiarly striking: "In short, all that were great and good loved and honored him." When it is considered, that Aubrey's knowledge of Bacon was derived chiefly through the medium of Hobbes, who had lived in habits of the most intimate friendship with both, and whose writings show that he was far from being an idolatrous admirer of Bacon's philosophy, it seems impossible for a candid mind, after reading the foregoing short but comprehensive eulogy, not to feel a strong inclination

* Jonson is said to have translated into Latin great part of the books De Augmentis Scientiarum. Dr. Warton states this (I do not know on what authority) as an undoubted fact. (Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.)

† See his letters to M. de Fermat, printed at the end of Fermat's Opera Mathematica, Tolosæ, 1679.

Lately published in the extracts from the Bodleian library.

to dwell rather on the fair than on the dark side of the Chancellor's character, and, before pronouncing an unqualified condemnation, carefully to separate the faults of the age from those of the individual.

An affecting allusion of his own, in one of his greatest works, to the errors and misfortunes of his public life, if it does not atone for his faults, may at least have some effect in softening the asperity of our censures. "Ad literas potius quam ad aliud quicquam natus, et ad res gerendas nescio quo fato contra genium suum abreptus." (De Aug. Sc. L. viii. c. iii.)

Even in Bacon's professional line, it is now admitted, by the best judges, that he was greatly underrated by his contemporaries. "The Queen did acknowledge," says the Earl of Essex, in a letter to Bacon himself, " you had a great wit, and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning. But in law, she rather thought you could make show, to the utmost of your knowledge, than that you were deep."

"If it be asked," says Dr. Hurd, "how the Queen came to form this conclusion, the answer is plain. It was from Mr. Bacon's having a great wit, an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning." (Hurd's Dialogues.)

The following testimony to Bacon's legal knowledge (pointed out to me by a learned friend) is of somewhat more weight than Queen Elizabeth's judgment against it: "What might we not have expected," says Mr. Hargrave, after a high encomium on the powers displayed by Bacon in his Reading on the Statute on Uses,' "what might we not have expected from the hands of such a master, if his vast mind had not so embraced within its compass the whole field of science, as very much to detach him from professional studies!"

It was probably owing in part to his court disgrace, that so little notice was taken of Bacon, for some time after his death, by those English writers who availed themselves, without any scruple, of the lights struck out in his works. A very remarkaable example of this occurs in a curious, though now almost forgotten book, (published in 1627,) entitled, An Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by George Hakewill, D. D. Archdeacon of Surrey. It is plainly the production of an uncommonly liberal and enlightened mind; well stored with various and choice learning, collected both from ancient and modern authors. Its general aim may be guessed at from the text of Scripture prefixed to it as a motto, "Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days are better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this;" and from the words of Ovid, so happily applied by Hakewill to the "common error touching the golden age,"

"Prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum
Gratulor."

That the general design of the book, as well as many incidental observations contained in it, was borrowed from Bacon, there cannot, I apprehend, be a doubt; and yet I do not recollect more than one or two references (and these very slight ones) to his writings, through the whole volume. One would naturally have expected, that, in the following passage of the epistle dedicatory, the name of the late unfortunate Chancellor of England, who had died in the course of the preceding year, might have found a place along with the other great clerks there enumerated: "I do not believe that all regions of the world, or all ages in the same region, afford wits always alike; but this, I think, (neither is it my opinion alone, but of Scaliger, Vives, Budæus, Bodin, and other great clerks,) that the wits of these latter ages, being manured by industry, directed by precepts, and regulated by method, may be as capable of deep speculations, and produce as masculine and lasting births, as any of the ancienter times have done. But if we conceive them to be giants, and ourselves dwarfs; if we imagine all sciences already to have received their utmost perfection, so as we need not but translate and comment on what they have done, surely there is little hope that we should ever come near them, much less match them. The first step to enable a man to the achieving of great designs, is to be persuaded that he is able to achieve them; the next, not to be persuaded, that whatsoever hath not yet been done, cannot therefore be done. Not any one man, or nation, or age, but rather mankind is it which, in latitude of capacity, answers to the universality of things to be known." In another passage, Hakewill observes, that, "if we will speak properly and punctually, antiquity rather consists in the old age, than in the infancy or youth of the world." I need scarcely add, that some of the foregoing sentences are almost literal transcripts of Bacon's words.

The philosophical fame of Bacon in his own country may be dated from the

establishment of the Royal Society of London; by the founders of which, as appears from their colleague, Dr. Sprat, he was held in so high estimation, that it was once proposed to prefix to the history of their labors some of Bacon's writings, as the best comment on the views with which they were undertaken. Sprat himself, and his illustrious friend Cowley, were among the number of Bacon's earliest eulogists; the latter, in an Ode to the Royal Society, too well known to require any notice here; the former, in a very splendid passage of his History, from which I shall borrow a few sentences, as a conclusion and ornament to this note.

"For, is it not wonderful, that he who had run through all the degrees of that profession, which usually takes up men's whole time; who had studied, and practised, and governed the common law; who had always lived in the crowd, and borne the greatest burden of civil business; should yet find leisure enough for these retired studies, to excel all those men, who separate themselves for this very purpose? He was a man of strong, clear, and powerful imaginations; his genius was searching and inimitable; and of this I need give no other proof than his style itself; which, as for the most part, it describes men's minds, as well as pictures do their bodies, so it did his above all men living. The course of it vigorous and majestical; the wit bold and familiar; the comparisons fetched out of the way, and yet the more easy :* In all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature.”

Note (G.) page 75.

The paradoxical bias of Hobbes's understanding is never so conspicuous as when he engages in physical or in mathematical discussions. On such occasions, he expresses himself with even more than his usual confidence and arrogance. Of the Royal Society (the Virtuosi, as he calls them, that meet at Gresham College) he writes thus: "Conveniant, studia conferant, experimenta faciant quantum volunt, nisi et principiis utantur meis, nihil proficient." And elsewhere: "Ad causas autem propter quas proficere ne paullum quidem potuistis nec poteritis, accedunt etiam alia, ut odium Hobbii, quia nimium libere scripserat de academiis veritatem: Nam ex eo tempore irati physici et mathematici veritatem ab eo venientem non recepturos se palam professi sunt." In his English publications, he indulges in a vein of coarse scurrility, of which his own words alone can convey any idea. "So go your ways," says he, addressing himself to Dr. Wallis and Dr. Seth Ward, two of the most eminent mathematicians then in England, “you uncivil ecclesiastics, inhuman divines, de-doctors of morality, unasinous colleagues, egregious pair of Issachars, most wretched indices and vindices academiarum; and remember Vespasian's law, that it is unlawful to give ill language first, but civil and lawful to return it.”

Note (H.) page 78.

With respect to the Leviathan, a very curious anecdote is mentioned by Lord Clarendon. "When I returned," says he, "from Spain, by Paris, Mr. Hobbes frequently came to me, and told me that his book, which he would call Leviathan, was then printing in England, and that he received every week a sheet to correct; and thought it would be finished within a little more than a month. He added, that he knew when I read the book I would not like it; and thereupon mentioned some conclusions; upon which I asked him why he would publish such doctrines; to which, after a discourse between jest and earnest, he said, 'The truth is, I have a mind to go home."" In another passage, the same writer expresses himself thus: "The review and conclusion of the Leviathan is, in truth, a sly address to Cromwell, that, being out of the kingdom, and so being neither conquered nor his subject, he might by his return submit to his government, and be bound to obey it. This review and conclusion he made short enough to hope that Cromwell might read it; where he should not only receive the pawn of this new subject's allegiance, by declaring his own obligations and obedience; but by publishing such doctrines, as, being diligently infused by such a master in the art of government, might secure the people of the kingdom (over whom he had no right to command) to acquiesce and submit to his brutal power."

By the word easy, I presume Sprat here means the native and spontaneous growth of Bacon's own fancy, in opposition to the traditionary similies borrowed by commonplace writers from their predecessors.