reverence. THERE is a fourth clafs, of much less use than these, but of much greater name. Men of the first rank in learning, and to whom the whole tribe of scholars bow with A man must be as indifferent as I am to common cenfure or approbation, to avow a thorough contempt for the whole business of these learned lives; for all the researches into antiquity, for all the fyftems of chronology and hiftory, that we owe to the immenfe labours of a SCALIGER, a BOCHART, a PETAVIUS, an USHER, and even a MARSHAM. The fame materials are common to them all; but these materials are few, and there is a moral imposfibility that they fhould ever have more. They have combined these into every form that can be given to them: they have suppofed, they have gueffed, they have join ed disjointed paffages of different 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 pass for authentic, extremely precarious; as fome of thefe learned perfons themselves confefs. and JULIUS AFRICANUS, EUSEBIUS, 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 maintain and none of these monuments were delivered down in their original form, and genuine purity. The Dynasties of MANETHO, for inftance, are broken to pieces by EUSEBIUS, and fuch fragments of them as fuited his defign, are stuck into his work. We have, we know, no more 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 lightnefs 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, fo he fhewed his his skill in forming one, and in reducing the immenfe antiquity of the Egyptians within the limits of the Hebraic calculation. In fhort, my lord, all these systems are fo many enchanted caftles; they appear to be fomething, they are 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 scrupulously 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 fuperftructure. 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 fcience upon us. I had rather take the DARIUS Whom ALEXANDER Conquered, for the fon of HYSTASPES, and make as many anachronifms 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. ET me fay fomething of history in L general, before I defcend into the confideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of study, or of the different views of thofe that apply them-, felves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter. 7 THE love of history seems infeparable; from human nature, because it seems infeparable from felf-love. The fame prin ciple in this inftance carries us forward and backward, to future and to past ages. Weimagine that the things, which affect us, must affect pofterity: this fentiment runs: through mankind, from CAESAR down to the |