ferent authors, and broken traditions of uncertain originals, of various people, and of centuries remote from one another as well as from ours. In fhort, that they might leave no liberty untaken, even a wild fantastical fimilitude of founds has ferved to prop up a fyftem. As the materials they have are few, fo are the very best and such as pafs for authentic extreamly precarious; as fome of these learned perfons themselves confefs.

JULIUS AFRICANUS, EUSEBIUS, and GEORGE the monk, opened the principal fources of all this fcience; but they corrupted the waters. Their point of view was to make profane history and chronology agree with facred; tho the latter chronology is very far from being established, with the clearness and certainty neceffary to make it a rule. For this purpose, the ancient monuments, that thefe writers conveyed to pofterity, were digefted by them according to the fyftem they were to B 4 maintain:

maintain and none of these monuments were delivered down, in their original form, and genuine purity. The Dynafties of MANETHO, for inftance, are broken to pieces by EUSEBIUS, and fuch fragments of them as fuited his defign are ftuck inta his work. We have, we know, no morę of them. The Codex Alexandrinus we owe to GEORGE the monk. We have no other authority for it: and one cannot fee without amazement fuch a man as Sir JOHN MARSHAM undervaluing this authority in one page, and building his fyftem upon it in the next. He feems even by the lightness of his

expreffions, if I remember well, for it is long fince I looked into his canon, not to be much concerned what foundation his fyftem had, so he fhewed his skill in forming one, and in reducing the immenfe antiquity of the Egyptians within the limits of the Hebraic calculation. In short, my lord, all these fyftems are fo many enchanted caftles, they appear to be fomething, they are

nothing

nothing but appearances: like them too, diffolve the charm, and they vanish from the fight. To diffolve the charm, we must begin at the beginning of them: the expreffion may be odd, but it is fignificant. We must examine fcrupulously and indifferently the foundations on which they lean; and when we find thefe either faintly probable, or grofly improbable, it would be foolish to expect any thing better in the fuper-ftructure. This fcience is one of those that are a limine falutandae. To do thus much may be neceffary, that grave authority may not impofe on our ignorance: to do more, would be to affift this very authority in impofing falfe science upon us. I had rather take the DARIUS whom ALEXANDER conquered for the fon of HYST ASPES, and make as many anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than facrifice half my life to collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary.

LET

OF THE

STUDY of HISTORY.

LETTER II.

Concerning the true ufe and advantages of it.

L

ET me fay fomething of history in general, before I defcend into the confideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of ftudy, or of the different views of those that apply themselves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter.

THE love of history feems infeparable from human nature, because it seems infeparable